THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

convenes the 

THIRTY-FIRST MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

DAY ONE 

The verbatim transcript of the Meeting of the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health held 

at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel, St. Louis, Missouri, 

on July 5, 2005. 
 

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C O N T E N T S 

July 5, 2005 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 9 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR

DR. LEW WADE, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

BETHLEHEM STEEL TECHNICAL BASIS DOCUMENT 

DR. JIM NETON, NIOSH 13,33 

COMMENTS BY MEMBER OF CONGRESS 

SENATOR CHRISTOPHER BOND 24 

PRIVACY INFORMATION 

LIZ HOMOKI-TITUS, ESQ. 70 

Y-12 SITE PROFILE 

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A 81 

Y-12 SPECIAL EXPOSURE COHORT (SEC) PETITION

LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH, AND PETITIONERS 122 

BOARD DISCUSSION OF Y-12 SEC PETITION 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 134 

IAAP SEC PETITION 

LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH, AND PETITIONERS 160 

BOARD DISCUSSION OF IAAP SEC PETITION 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 167 

GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT 184 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 253 
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TRANSCRIPT LEGEND 

The following transcript contains quoted material. 

Such material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

In the following transcript: a dash (--) indicates 

an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 

sentence. An ellipsis (. . .) indicates halting speech 

or an unfinished sentence in dialogue or omission(s) of 

word(s) when reading written material. 

-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 

of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 

reported. 

-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 

the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 

available. 

-- "uh-huh" represents an affirmative response, and 

"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 

-- "*" denotes a spelling based on phonetics, 

without reference available. 

-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 

failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 

In the following transcript (off microphone) 

refers to microphone malfunction or speaker's neglect 

to depress "on" button. 
 

 

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 P A R T I C I P A N T S 

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

BOARD MEMBERS 

CHAIR 

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

School of Health Sciences 

Purdue University

Lafayette, Indiana 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D.

Senior Science Advisor 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Washington, DC 

MEMBERSHIP 

ANDERSON, Henry A., M.D.

Chief Medical Officer 

Occupational and Environmental Health

Wisconsin Division of Public Health 

Madison, Wisconsin 

DeHART, Roy Lynch, M.D., M.P.H.

Director 

The Vanderbilt Center for Occupational and Environmental

Medicine 

Professor of Medicine 

Nashville, Tennessee 

ESPINOSA, Richard Lee

Sheet Metal Workers Union Local #49 

Johnson Controls 

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Espanola, New Mexico 
5 

GIBSON, Michael H.

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union

Local 5-4200 

Miamisburg, Ohio 

GRIFFON, Mark A.

President 

Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc.

Salem, New Hampshire 

MELIUS, James Malcom, M.D., Ph.D.

Director 

New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund

Albany, New York 

MUNN, Wanda I.

Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired)

Richland, Washington 

OWENS, Charles Leon

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union

Local 5-550 

Paducah, Kentucky 

PRESLEY, Robert W.

Special Projects Engineer

BWXT Y12 National Security Complex

Clinton, Tennessee 

ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

University of Florida

Elysian, Minnesota 
 

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AGENDA SPEAKERS 

(in order of appearance) 

DR. JIM NETON, NIOSH

SENATOR CHRISTOPHER BOND 

MS. LIZ HOMOKI-TITUS, ESQ.

MR. JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

MR. LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR

MR. LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 

STAFF/VENDORS 

CORI HOMER, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH

LASHAWN SHIELDS, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH

STEVEN RAY GREEN, Certified Merit Court Reporter 
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AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS 

ADAMS, EILEEN, NIOSH

AL-NABULSI, ISAF, NCRP

ALGERT, DAVE, DOD/DTRA

BEATTY, EVERETT RAY, SR., FERNALD ATOMIC COUNCIL

BEHLING, HANS, SC&A

BEHLING, KATHY, SC&A

BERRY, CHARLENE, MALLINCKRODT

BLOSSER, FRED, NIOSH

BUHR, LORRAINE

CAPPIELLO, ROBERT, ATTNY FOR WIFE/MALLINCKRODT

CASE, DIANE L., DEPT. OF LABOR

DEEP, HEIDI, NIOSH

DEHART, JULIA

ESPY, RICHARD, MALLINCKRODT WIDOWER

FITZGERALD, JOSEPH, SC&A

FRISCHMAN, BILL, FESTUS

GARNER, DON, ST. LOUIS

GENERI, MARY, MCW

HAPPELL, CARL C., NIOSH

HEARL, FRANK, NIOSH

HEISTER, MELANIE, NCRP/VBDR

HERBST, ALVERA, MALLINCKRODT WIFE

HOLTBAUS, RICHARD A.

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS

KOENEMAN, BARB & TANYA, UNWW

LICAVOLI, JOSEPHINE, MALLINCKRODT SURVIVOR

LOVETT, BRICE, UNWW

MAKARA, MEL, SELF

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A

MCBRIDE, MOLLY

MILLER, RICHARD, GAP

MITAS, JIM, OFFICE OF CONGRESSMAN AKIN

NITCHMAN, JOHN

NOVAK, JUSTINE, MALLINCKRODT

PRESLEY, LOUISE S., WIFE OF ROBERT PRESLEY

RAFKY, MICHAEL, HHS

RAMSPOTT, CHRISTINE

RAMSPOTT, JOHN

SAMPSON, ROBERT, GAO 
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SCANENSEN, CLARENCE, UNWW

SCHNEIDER, MARILYN, UNWW

SCRANEE, DARRELL, MALLINCKRODT

SCRANEE, RON, MALLINCKRODT

STACAOWITZ, RAINER

STEGER, RON, MALLINCKRODT

TAYLOR, GEORGE EDWIN, VBDR

TOOHEY, RICHARD, ORAU

WALKER, EDWIN A., BETHLEHEM STEEL

WALKER, JOYCE, BETHLEHEM STEEL

WHITE, GARY, DOD

WILDHABER, SANDRA, MALLINCKRODT

WINDISCH, ANTHONY J., MALLINCKRODT WORKER

WIPFLER, ED, WELDON SPRING 
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P R O C E E D I N G S

 (1:11 p.m.) 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS

 DR. ZIEMER: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome 

to this, the 31st meeting of the Advisory Board 

on Radiation and Worker Health. We're pleased 

to be back in St. Louis. I think for some of 

the Board members it's beginning to feel like 

old home or a second home or something, but 

we're -- we're pleased to be here in St. Louis 

on this occasion. 

 Several reminders for you. Please, if you 

haven't already done so, register your 

attendance in the registration book, which is 

out in the foyer just outside this room. 

Also, those of you who are intending on 

participating in the public comment period -- 

which is at 7:30 this evening -- we'd like to 

have you register -- or sign up, actually -- 

for public comment so we have some idea of the 

numbers of individuals who will be 

participating in that activity. Again, those 

sign-up sheets are also out in the foyer. 

There are a number of handouts. There are 

copies of the agenda, copies of various 

handouts that'll be used in the meeting here 
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today, as well as other Board-related 

materials. They are in the room just off to 

the side here. Please avail yourselves of 

those materials as you see fit. 

I wanted to make note that we actually now 

officially have a quorum. That's what the 

delay was, we were waiting to actually have a 

quorum so we could begin our meeting. You'll 

notice a couple of empty chairs. We do expect 

Mr. Owens and Ms. Munn and Mr. Espinosa to join 

us, but there are perhaps some travel 

difficulties. 

I would like to note that Michael Gibson will 

not physically be here at the meeting due to 

serious illness of his father, but we are going 

to try to involve Mike, to the extent possible, 

by phone hookup so he may be able to 

participate. I know Mike certainly wants to 

participate when we come to voting on various 

items. 

Also we expect shortly Senator Christopher Bond 

to arrive. My understanding is he will arrive 

about 1:30, and that will serve as a time 

certain as far as our agenda's concerned, as 

when the Senator arrives we will interrupt 
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business and allow him to address the Board and 

the assembly. And then he will be welcome to 

stay or leave, as needed. Knowing the 

Senator's busy schedule, he probably will not 

be able to stay on, but we do look forward to 

hearing from him, as well. 

I'd also like to give our Designated Federal 

Official, Dr. Wade, an opportunity to make a 

couple of opening remarks. Lew? 

 DR. WADE: Thank you, Paul, very much. I'm 

compelled to thank the members of the Board for 

their travel around the July 4th holiday and 

coming together to undertake a very full 

meeting. If you look at the agenda, we have a 

great many items that we need to turn our 

attention to, and I again thank you for your 

willingness to -- to travel here and do this 

most important work. 

I bring you regards from Secretary Leavitt; the 

Director of CDC, Dr. Gerberding; and also Dr. 

John Howard, the NIOSH Director. Dr. Howard is 

again with us during these meetings, and on all 

of their behalf again, I thank you. 

We've done this a little bit differently this 

time in that we will have a subcommittee 
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meeting. It is scheduled to precede our 

deliberations tomorrow and the next day. We 

will exercise some flexibility, if we feel we 

need more time, to extend the day and allow the 

subcommittee to meet. We're trying to get the 

subcommittee together in the morning to address 

issues that will be taken up by the full Board 

later that day. 

So again we will have long days, and hopefully 

productive days. And again I thank you 

personally for your willingness to come and 

join us in this work. Thank you, Paul. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Lew. And I might point 

out that the activities of the subcommittee are 

also public and you're welcome to be here for 

those. Tomorrow morning the subcommittee 

begins at 7:30, so we expect all of you to be 

here bright and early. You are welcome to be 

here for the subcommittee deliberations. The 

Subcommittee on Dose Reconstruction and Site 

Profile Reviews is a group that tries to do 

preliminary work on some of our agenda items 

prior to the full Board addressing some issues. 

The Board members are aware that in their 

packet are two sets of minutes, extensive 
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minutes, which they have not seen prior to 

about a minute ago. And the Chair is going to 

assume that they are unprepared to act on these 

minutes. And in fact, if there's no objection, 

we will delay action on the minutes until 

Thursday, at which time we'll expect the Board 

members to have digested them thoroughly and be 

prepared to take action. So without objection, 

we'll delay action on the minutes. 

And incidentally, there are two sets of 

minutes, Board members, one the minutes of the 

30th meeting, which was the Cedar Rapids 

meeting, and then the other was the conference 

call meeting on April 11th. So both sets of 

minutes should be in your packet there. 

BETHLEHEM STEEL TECHNICAL BASIS DOCUMENT 

Now we're going to move on our agenda then to 

presentation on the Revised Technical Basis 

Document for Bethlehem Steel, and this 

presentation will be brought to us by Dr. Neton 

from NIOSH. Jim, thank you. 

Also, Board members, the copies of the Power 

Point materials that Dr. Neton will use are not 

in your packet but should be by your place 

there. 
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DR. NETON: Good afternoon. It's my pleasure 

to be here this afternoon to talk about the 

Bethlehem Steel site profile and where we're at 

with regards to revising it to be consistent 

with the recommendations of the SC&A report, as 

well as the Board's input that we received at 

the St. Louis meeting the last time we were 

here. 

I think, since it's been a while and this has 

been an ongoing revision process, I think I'd 

like to take a few minutes and just go briefly 

over the history of this profile. 

 Revision 0 was issued at the end of March, 

2003, and we processed a large number -- almost 

all the Bethlehem Steel cases -- using that 

profile, somewhere in the vicinity of 400 or 

500 cases, I forget the exact number now. But 

while we were doing that, we did receive some 

stakeholder comments regarding the profile. 

And most notably the objection we received was 

that we did not have the ingestion pathway 

addressed in that profile. 

And we acknowledged that and we went back to 

the drawing board and incorporated ingestion in 

that pathway -- in that model. And there was a 
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few other minor tweaks in there, but that was 

the most significant alteration that we made -- 

revision we made, and Revision 1 was issued on 

June 29, 2004. 

 We subsequently went back and reviewed all the 

dose reconstructions we did using Rev. 0 

against Rev. 1, and I don't believe any dose 

reconstructions -- the probability of causation 

was -- would move over 50 percent, given that -

- that revision. 

SC&A issued their draft review about the middle 

of September, 2004 of the profile, and NIOSH 

provided our original response at the December 

board meeting in Livermore, if you remember. 

But that response was not complete. It was our 

initial thoughts and reactions to the profile -

- the review, but we -- we hadn't had 

sufficient time to completely think through our 

reaction to it. So at the February 7th Board 

meeting in St. Louis we presented our -- what 

we believed to be our complete response to that 

profile. 

At that Board meeting, if you recall, we -- I 

presented -- I gave a presentation on our 

thoughts on this and described our approaches 
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and asked for the Board's advice on a few key 

issues. And as a result of that presentation, 

the Board actually passed five motions on the 

Bethlehem Steel site profile -- at least our 

response to the review of the Bethlehem Steel 

site profile. 

I took the liberty of summarizing these 

motions. They're paraphrased, so if they're a 

little bit off, I'd appreciate your feedback. 

I did take these directly out of the minutes of 

the Board meeting -- the transcript of the 

Board meeting. 

 The first motion was that the Board accepted 

NIOSH's response to the SC&A review. Now I 

should clarify that doesn't mean they accepted 

all of our discussion, but they just physically 

accepted or received the response. 

The second motion that was passed was that the 

Board concurred with the use of the 95th 

percentile for estimating worker intakes. Now 

that -- that's exactly what it says; however, 

there is a little bit of language after that, 

that NIOSH was encouraged to continue to 

research modes of estimating intakes and use of 

probability distributions, et cetera. But the 
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gist of it was the Board did concur with the 

use of the 95th percentile. 

 The Board also requested that NIOSH review the 

use of the ICRP default values for heavy work 

and oro-nasal breathing. We asked for advice 

on that and the Board asked that we go back and 

re-look at that. 

The Board also concurred with NIOSH's 

characterization of the aerosol particle size 

that was used, which was the default ICRP 

particle size of five microns, and the default 

of the density that was used, which is a 

default of -- of a unit density, one -- a 

density of one. 

And the Board also concurred with NIOSH's 

approach to characterizing external exposure. 

So with that in hand, we went back to the 

drawing board and modified the profile in 

accordance with what we discussed at the 

February Board meeting. And I have a few 

bullets here that summarizes the gist of what 

we've done, and then I'll take some time to go 

over what I think are the more important 

modifications that we've made. 

 The profile itself has increased in volume, 
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it's doubled in size -- tripled, I guess. It 

was only 13 pages -- a scant 13 pages the first 

pass through. I think it's now somewhere -- 

35, 40 pages long, so we've added a lot more 

background material. We've added more 

rationale behind the approaches that we've used 

to reconstruct doses, the background on rolling 

operations, what that means, how Simonds Saw & 

Steel appears to us to be an appropriate 

surrogate facility. We've added some 

information from Joslyn Steel, which was also 

used to roll uranium. And we've also 

characterized in more detail the air sampling 

program. 

I presented a fair amount of this at the last -

- at the St. Louis meeting where I talked about 

the Health and Safety Laboratory's approach to 

-- to air sampling in the workplace and how 

they had different -- indeed had different 

categories of air sampling, job speci-- general 

air sampling, personal air sampling and then 

what they called process sampling, which is not 

really intended to represent a worker's intake 

but sort of to characterize the worst-case 

exposure conditions for an operation, but not 
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necessarily one that someone would be 

breathing. 

 And we've also -- and I'll talk about this in 

some detail later -- our justification or 

evaluation of why -- or why not -- the default 

breathing assumptions in the ICRP models are 

applicable to a facility such as Bethlehem 

Steel. If you recall, we -- we used the -- in 

some cases, the light worker breathing rate 

coupled with normal mouth -- or nasal 

breathing. And the SC&A review suggested that 

heavy work or even greater may be more 

appropriate as far as the ventilation rate of 

the workers, and that there are a certain 

segment of the population that breath through 

their mouths and -- and maybe we should 

consider that, and I'll talk about that in some 

detail later. 

We've also replaced the triangular distribution 

with a time-specific lognormal distribution. 

I've got a few slides on that. 

We've added residual contamination pathway for 

internal and external exposure between 

rollings. We covered ingestion, as I 

mentioned, in Rev. 1. But the SC&A review 
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asserted that we really didn't know the 

contamination control practices good enough to 

assume that there was no internal exposure in 

between rollings, and we acknowledge that and 

we've gone back and put that in. 

 We've also done some work in evaluation of 

exposure to grinding operations. This is some 

-- some input that we received from -- from 

workers, from stakeholders that are involved 

with Bethlehem Steel, and we -- we did an 

evaluation to ensure in our mind the grinding 

operation -- the 95th percentile of the air 

sample distributions that we were using are 

indeed bounding values for all the operations 

in the plant, including grinding -- which on 

paper you would -- you would intuitively sort 

of feel that they were very large high -- high 

airborne concentration operations. It turns 

out that they most likely aren't, and I can 

talk a little bit about that. 

And then we also added a estimate of skin dose 

due to wearing contaminated clothing. It's 

well understood that Bethlehem Steel was a very 

messy, dirty, dusty operation. With these 

large airborne uranium concentrations it's very 
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clear that uranium could deposit on the surface 

of the workers' skin and on the clothing and 

provide a skin dose to the worker. That was 

absent in the original model in the profile and 

we've added that now and will assign skin doses 

to workers. That of course will only be 

relevant for dose reconstructions that are 

performed for purposes of skin cancer. 

Okay. With those few bullets out of the way, 

I'll just proceed through what I think some of 

the more significant issues are. 

 The inhalation exposure model -- like I said, 

we've adopted the use of the 95th percentile of 

the lognormal distribution of air samples. The 

1949 and '50 values, as in the past, rely on 

the Simonds Saw & Steel data. We had some air 

sample data from -- that was taken in the late 

'40's by the Health and Safety Laboratory at 

Simonds Saw & Steel. We've now used those in 

a lognormal distribution to model the exposures 

in those two years. In 1950 and '51 we 

actually have about 200 air samples that were 

taken at Bethlehem Steel, and we've taken those 

and fit those to a lognormal distribution and 

are using the 95th percentile. 
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 I'm just going to skip ahead real quick here, 

just to remind you what we did before. This 

was what appeared on the -- at the last Board 

meeting. I guess I don't have a pointer here, 

but if you recall, the first -- the Rev. 1 

assumed a triangular distribution. It's hard 

to tell on this slide, but that straight line 

descending from left to right is actually a 

triangular distribution. It's so skewed that 

you can't see the line coming down on the -- on 

the Y axis. But what we assumed was that that 

triangular distribution would represent all 

workers over all four years. The blue line and 

the red line represent the 95th percent-- the 

lognormal distribution of the air sample at 

Simonds Saw & Steel and Bethlehem Steel, 

respectively. So we used a composite of the 

two, and there was some criticism that that 

didn't represent the workers' exposures. It 

could not -- a triangular distribution is 

truncated 1,000 times the Maximum Allowable Air 

Concentration. It didn't allow for higher 

values. We accepted that. 

And so effectively what we've done now is we've 

taken the blue line and the red line and fit 
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them specifically for 1949 to '50 for -- using 

the Simonds Saw & Steel data. And in 1950 and 

'51 and '52 the red line represents the 

Bethlehem Steel data. 

Just to refresh everyone's memory, we are now 

assuming that the workers breathe the 95th 

percentile air concentration of the measured 

values for either Simonds Saw & Steel or 

Bethlehem for the entire 10-hour shift. And 

furthermore, we are now assuming that the 

worked breathed continuously 1.7 cubic meters 

of air per hour as opposed to partially -- we 

allowed for 1.2 cubic meters per hour, which 

was light work. We had a sort of a -- we had a 

triangular distribution over that where we 

would allow partially 1.7 cubic meters per 

hour. Now we're assuming full time 1.7 cubic 

meters per hour at the upper end of this 

distribution. 

I'd just remind the Board that the -- the 

Simonds Saw & Steel -- the samples taken at 

Simonds Saw & Steel were for purposes of 

generating a time-weighted average exposure to 

the high-- to the workers, and the highest 

exposed time-weighted average exposure was 
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about one-third of the maximum value measured. 

COMMENTS BY MEMBER OF CONGRESS

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Jim, thank you. We're going 

to interrupt you just a moment here now. I 

understand Senator Bond has arrived, yes? 

Senator Christopher Bond, welcome to the 

podium. We're pleased to have you here today. 

 SENATOR BOND: Good to see you, sir. Thank you 

very much. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And please welcome him to our 

meeting. You can use the podium there or 

you're -- you're welcome to sit or stand, 

whichever is best. 

 SENATOR BOND: All right, thank you very much. 

Thank you. 

Well, thank you very much for allowing me to 

testify. 

I have to apologize for arriving late. We had 

a -- we had what should have been a two-hour 

drive in from mid-Missouri, and fortunately our 

highway department is very busy on 

construction, so we had about a 20-minute delay 

getting here. But I welcome, on behalf of the 

people of Missouri, this distinguished panel. 

We're delighted to have you back in our home 
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state and hope that you are enjoying the warmth 

and humidity of St. Louis at this time of year. 

I heard a story at one point that some foreign 

countries used to declare St. Louis a hardship 

spot when they sent representatives or consuls 

general here, but that was before air 

conditioning and before the St. Louis 

Cardinals, so everything is much better now and 

we -- we hope that you'll be enjoying it. 

 But I sincerely appreciate all the hard work 

and dedication of every member of the Advisory 

Board advising NIOSH on the multitude of 

complex issues that come before the Board. 

Your input and guidance in helping NIOSH to 

resolve these issues is critical to the 

effective performance of NIOSH's duties under 

the Energy Employment's (sic) Occupational 

Illness Compensation Program Act, EEOICPA -- 

being a tongue-twister. This nation and its 

aging Cold Warriors owe you a great debt of 

gratitude for your service. 

At the last two Advisory Board meetings I have 

read and submitted statements for the record 

regarding the urgent need to designate the 

former workers at the Mallinckrodt downtown 
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site as members of the Special Exposure Cohort, 

or SEC. In those statements I clearly stated 

the reasons why I believe that these former 

workers at the downtown site deserve to be 

included in the SEC. Today, for your benefit, 

I don't intend to repeat all those reasons, but 

I do want to highlight some of the reasons why 

I think the SEC designation for the workers who 

worked at the downtown site from 1949 through 

1957 is the only prudent action, the only 

compassionate action, this Board could take to 

bring some long-awaited justice to these aging 

Cold War warriors. 

 However, before I begin, my sincerest thanks to 

the Board for recommending the former 

Mallinckrodt workers who worked at the downtown 

site from 1942 through 1948 for inclusion in 

this -- in the SEC. Your decision to recommend 

these employees be included has brought relief, 

closure and long-awaited justice for these 

victims, who waited for t his result for over 

50 years. As I stated at the previous two 

meetings, I'm convinced that the Mallinckrodt 

downtown site meets the two statutory criteria 

for inclusion in the Special Energy -- Exposure 
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Cohort. As you well know by now, these 

criteria are, one, it's not feasible to 

estimate with sufficient accuracy the radiation 

dose that a class of employees received; and 

two, there's a reasonable likelihood that such 

a radiation dose endangered the health of a 

member of -- of the class of employees. 

And I think that one's pretty obvious for all 

the Mallinckrodt workers. All you really have 

to do is look at the Mallinckrodt workers with 

cancer and the ones who've already died with 

cancer. That leaves the feasibility of this 

reconstruction for former workers. While I've 

said it before on numerous occasion, I'm now 

certain that an accurate, reliable dose 

reconstruction is simply not feasible for the 

former workers at the Mallinckrodt downtown 

site. 

It's almost been five months since I last 

personally addressed this issue before the 

Advisory Board regarding the issue -- five 

months. Since that time even more people have 

died while waiting for dose reconstruction, and 

an overwhelming majority of claimants still 

have yet to have their doses reconstructed. I 
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respectfully ask, how long can this go on? How 

long can it take? 

As I stated at the February meeting here in St. 

Louis, there are important documents regarding 

worker exposure and worker history that are 

either missing, incomplete or destroyed. These 

are documents that indicate a significant 

portion of existing -- the exposure data is 

inaccurate and unreliable. We have evidence 

that some of these records were improperly 

recorded. We know there was a serious dust 

problem at the plant which may have caused 

significant dust exposures. 

 We've also documented the testimony of a former 

Atomic Energy Commission official who stated 

that the Mallinckrodt downtown site was one of 

the two worst plants in the country in terms of 

the level of radioactive contamination. That's 

over ten times the levels at the Paducah site, 

which was previously considered the worst, and 

Paducah of course is one of the four existing 

SEC sites. 

 Yet constantly we hear the same rhetoric out of 

the NIOSH Office of Compensation and Support, 

that dose reconstruction is definitely feasible 
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for these workers. Well, if that's the case, 

why are the overwhelming majority of these 

claimants still waiting for dose reconstruction 

five years after the enactment of the statute? 

If dose reconstruction is feasible, why have 

over 40 Mallinckrodt workers already died 

waiting for dose reconstruction and 

compensation? 

And if dose reconstruction is definitely 

feasible, why did NIOSH and its office send out 

letters in January of this year to former 

Mallinckrodt workers and their survivors 

indicating that NIOSH has to resolve several 

new issues before they can adequately complete 

dose reconstruction for those employees? This 

particular letter came almost one year after 

NIOSH wrote these same former workers and their 

survivors informing them that NIOSH was ready 

to proceed with their dose reconstructions. So 

one year NIOSH says that they can do dose 

reconstructions, then a year later NIOSH says 

they can't until they resolve new issues. Why 

has NIOSH, after almost five years after 

enactment, not completed the dose 

reconstruction for those workers and not 
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provided them with the long-overdue 

compensation they deserve? 

Well, I think the answer to all these questions 

is that dose reconstruction is just not 

feasible for these workers. Because if the 

dose reconstruction is so feasible, wouldn't 

NIOSH have completed almost all of them by now 

instead of completing the relatively small 

number of claims where the necessary 

information for dose reconstruction is readily 

available? The inability of NIOSH to 

reconstruct doses and compensate most of these 

former workers is not consistent with the 

intent of the Act, which is to compensate these 

former workers in a timely manner. But it is 

consistent with the fact that so many records 

of workers are missing, incomplete or 

inaccurate, which is why designating these 

workers as part of the SEC is, in my view -- 

and I would hope in your view -- the only 

practical solution. 

You could ask the victims to wait even longer, 

in the hopes that the records and other 

relevant information will somehow appear, and 

it will be accurate and it will be useful. But 
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for how long? Another six months, a year, two 

more years? 

I trust the members of the Board will keep in 

mind that a good portion of these workers, 

those who have not died, have been waiting for 

dose reconstruction for over four and a half 

years. The sick and aging workers appear to be 

victims of an endless bureaucratic process. At 

some point the Advisory Board has to decide how 

much time NIOSH can spend on each SEC petition 

to determine whether or not dose reconstruction 

is feasible for that particular class of 

employees. Otherwise, the Board runs the risk 

of allowing NIOSH to violate one of the 

cardinal principles of the Act, which five 

years ago said that the purpose of this Act was 

to compensate these former workers in a timely 

manner. 

Been 20 months since NIOSH first released its 

site profile for the downtown site -- 20 

months. I constantly hear from NIOSH that this 

site profile is a living document and subject 

to revision over time. Well, it may be good 

news for the document that the site profile is 

alive and well, but the former Mallinckrodt 
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workers are dying. 

Since the site profile was first introduced in 

October of 2003, numerous workers have already 

passed on, many of them that I had the 

opportunity to work with. Sadly, for a large 

portion of these aging Cold Warriors, time is a 

luxury they simply do not have. The former 

Mallinckrodt workers are some of the oldest 

former nuclear workers in the country. As I 

have already indicated, many have already 

passed on as a result of the illnesses they 

contracted as a result of their service to the 

country. In light of this, once again I urge 

and beg you to recognize the plight of these 

workers and recommend the remaining workers who 

worked at the downtown site from 1949 to 1957 

should constitute a Special Exposure Cohort. 

This would give the workers the compensation 

they need, their families need, to pay the 

medical bills and provide for service. 

 Again, I simply ask you, most sincerely, to do 

the reasonable, prudent and just thing, to help 

these Cold Warriors who did so much for this 

great nation. I thank you for your service and 

I wish you the best in your deliberations, and 
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I appreciate the opportunity to come and meet 

with you. Thank you again for being here. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Senator Bond, 

for a very articulate presentation. We 

appreciate you taking the time to be here with 

the Board today. 

BETHLEHEM STEEL TECHNICAL BASIS DOCUMENT 

Now we'll return to Dr. Neton. Jim, you'll 

have to remind us where we were -- and then 

where we're going. 

DR. NETON: I didn't realize we had a lavaliere 

mike here, that's much better. It just dawned 

on me, that may be the only time in my career 

that I will have both preceded and followed a 

member of the U.S. Senate at the podium. 

I was talking about the internal exposure model 

that we have adopted for Bethlehem Steel, and 

the gist of this presentation was that we've 

adopted a 95th percentile of the air sample 

distributions for Simonds Saw & Steel for 1949 

and '50. We applied that to Bethlehem Steel in 

that time frame. And then in 1951 and '52 

we've applied the actual Bethlehem Steel data 

to the exposures. So this graph depicts the 

lognormal distribution ranked by -- by log on a 
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Z-score plot, which you can think of a Z-score 

as the zero value as the median value of the 

distribution and the 1, 2 and 3 representing 

multiples of standard deviation away from the 

median value -- geometric standard deviation. 

What this indicates is for the samples that 

were taken at Simonds Saw & Steel, the data fit 

very nicely a lognormal distribution. You get 

this very nice straight line with an R-squared 

value of 0.98, and so we're fairly comfortable 

with the fact that this does represent the 

facility distribution of air samples. We've 

chosen the 95th percentile, and the solid line 

that you see drawn on top at 553 MAC -- that's 

553 times the Maximum Allowable Air 

Concentration at that time, which was 70 dpm 

per cubic meter -- is what we'll assume or 

assign to every worker who we're reconstructing 

doses at Bethlehem Steel, whether they -- since 

we can't tell where they were positioned 

relative to the -- that air concentration 

value, we'll assume that they were positioned 

right there at that air concentration the 

entire time. 

Now for 1950 and '51 I mentioned we had a 
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couple hundred -- I think there were actual 213 

air samples -- but only 197 were actually 

legible, where we could actually read and -- 

and use. But using those 197 air samples, 

again, they fit a very nice straight line on -- 

on this type of plot, this cumulative 

probability plot, as it's called. And again, 

you can see that the 95th percentile is fairly 

high. It's up here, it's -- the values -- the 

measured values, by the way, at Bethlehem Steel 

are much, much lower than the values at Simonds 

Saw. There's a number of reasons for that, I 

think, but it's 21 MAC, 21 times the maximum 

allowable air concentration is what we end up 

using for the 95th percentile. So every worker 

who we're reconstructing doses in Bethlehem 

Steel that worked in 1950 and '51 will be 

assigned 20.8 times the maximum allowable air 

concentration at a breathing rate -- as I 

indicated before -- of 1.7 cubic meters per 

hour, which is the heaviest worker designation 

in the ICRP lung bottle*, so we've increased 

that quite a bit. The respiration rate has 

gone up and we've adjusted to 95th percentiles. 

Okay, just to move on and briefly touch on 
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residual contamination, this, it turns out, 

does not add a huge amount of dose to the 

workers, but it is a very important pathway to 

address for completeness' sake, and it does add 

some dose -- it's not zero. But we added 

internal dose due to inhalation and ingestion 

for residual contamination. That is, during the 

rolling operation we assumed people are 

breathing a certain amount of uranium, and 

they're also ingesting. But once the rolling 

operation stopped, we had reason to believe, 

based on some documentation in the files, that 

the operations were cleaned up so there was 

very little potential for internal 

contamination due to -- with the residual 

material. 

We have now assumed that that didn't happen. 

And based on the air concentration in the 

facility, we've assumed a certain amount of 

material was ingested and inhaled in between 

rollings. So we assumed there was one rolling 

a month, for those 29 or 30 days in between 

rollings, we assumed the worker ingested a 

certain amount of material that was just 

present in the -- in the -- on the floor, in 
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the surrounding environment in between those 

rollings. 

It turns out that on day one -- you assign an 

ingestion of about 5.2 milligrams of uranium in 

the '49 and '50 time frame, and a couple tenths 

of a dpm -- I should have been more consistent 

with those units -- that would correspond to 

about .1 milligrams of uranium per day for '51 

and '52. Now the reason those are lower is 

because the air concentrations are lower. The 

amount of contamination you have in the 

facility in general is directly proportional to 

the amount of uranium that was dispersed into 

the air. That's the only way, you know, you're 

going to get it distributed widely about the 

facility. 

 The chronic inhalation model we developed 

relied on residual contamination which was an 

exponential decrease model. What that means is 

we look at a couple of different ways. One 

could go with a dilution model, meaning one day 

a month Bethlehem Steel rolled uranium. The 

remaining times, steel was rolled. So that as 

time goes on for those 29 additional days, 

you'll be adding steel dust and mixing it in 
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with the uranium, which will make it less 

available for inhalation. 

Or we could go with this what's called a 

residual -- exponential decrease model, which 

means we -- we found some air -- some surface 

measurements around Simonds Saw & Steel plant 

where on one day they took a surface 

measurement and then two or three days later 

they took another one, and we can determine how 

much the contamination decreased. 

In evaluating those two models, the surface 

exponential decay model gave the higher dose 

than the dilution model, so we ended up using 

the exponential decay model. 

What happens with the exponential decay model, 

that adds the equivalent to about breathing 22 

times the maximum allowable air concentration 

for one day. Now I'm not saying that happened 

in one day, but if you (unintelligible) that 

over all the -- all the four years, it'd be the 

same as if you breathed 20 times the maximum 

allowable in that day, sort of a nice way of 

trying to bracket how large that is. So it 

adds a -- it adds a fair amount of dose, but 

it's certainly not the largest component of the 
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dose. The largest component of the dose is 

still, of course, the inhalation of the 

material from the rolling itself. 

Okay. I'd like to spend a little time on the 

breathing rate issue because that's the one 

open issue that we had from the last meeting, 

and that's the issue that the Board asked us to 

go and sharpen our pencil and do our homework 

on. 

 Revision 2 still continues to use the ICRP 

defaults, but again, as I indicated, we're 

using the default value for heavy work, not 

light work. So that -- that increases the 

breathing rate to 1.7 cubic meters per hour, 

and that consists of a worker 12 and a half 

percent of the time in heavy exercise and 87.5 

percent of the time in light exercise. It's a 

little confusing. You have to differentiate 

between light exercise and light work, heavy 

exercise and heavy work. Heavy work is a 

combination of light and heavy exercise. These 

values, these heavy work values that were 

developed by the ICRP, were based on a study by 

Monod and Flandrois, who examined the breathing 

habits of factory workers. It's a French study 
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where they went around and determine that yes, 

factory workers do have -- and where there's 

non-mechanical -- non-mechanized work going on, 

they're doing manual labor -- a higher 

breathing rate. They recognized, in the 

development of the model, that they had to have 

something higher than 1.2 cubic meters per 

hour, so they -- they relied in part on this 

study. 

 During heavy exercise I'd also like to point 

out that 50 percent of the air is inspired 

through the mouth, by default. Keep that in 

mind as we move forward. 

 The classification by the ICRP to cover the 

heavy work environment -- and this is right out 

of their own document -- was designed to cover 

workers such as firemen, construction workers, 

farmers. Firemen, construction workers, those 

tend to be workers who are going to be involved 

-- engaged in heavy labor. It doesn't 

specifically say steel workers. 

Now we've gone and surveyed the literature and 

we could not find a good study that detailed 

the breathing rate in steel mills. There's a 

lot of studies out there with heat stress and 
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that sort of thing, but where people have gone 

and actually measured the inspired or expired 

air directly in these workers is difficult to 

come by. 

If one looks at the ICRP, though, this is one 

of the studies they relied on for defining 

heavy work, which is what we've assigned the 

Bethlehem Steel workers. There's a South 

African miner's study that was done where they 

looked at 620 workers in underground gold 

mines, and they actually had expired air 

analyzers on. I mean they were like little 

devices that would measure exactly how much air 

these people breathed out during their shift. 

The mean breathing rate for these underground 

workers was about 1.3 cubic meters per hour. 

And for those performing heavy work within a 

non-mechanized environment -- now they don't 

define what that means, but I assume that means 

manual labor, lifting, that sort of thing -- 70 

percent had a breathing rate greater than 1.2, 

15 percent had a breathing rate greater than 

1.5 -- meaning 85 percent had a breathing rate 

less than 1.5. This is very consistent with 

the designation of the ICRP for heavy work. In 
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fact, this is used as an example to define 

heavy work in their -- in their documents. 

 Another indication that we can get that the 

heavy work -- what the nature of the heavy work 

is for a worker comes from EPA Federal Guidance 

Report No. 12 where it does some comparisons of 

exercise designations to certain activities. 

Here they say that heavy work is characterized 

by such activities as cross-country skiing, 

rock climbing, stair climbing with a load, 

playing handball and chopping with an axe. 

Those are pretty heavy work activities, very 

strenuous related activities. 

Light exercise, on the other hand, is 

characterized by pushing a wheel barrow with a 

15 kilogram load, simple construction, stacking 

firewood. Even those I would not characterize 

as sedentary activities. 

I think if you take these into consideration, 

as well as the South African miner's study, 

that in our mind the designation of heavy work, 

1.7 cubic meters per hour is an appropriate 

designation for -- for a manufacturing 

environment such as a steel mill. 

The EPA also recognized that adaptive responses 
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are important in characterizing breathing rate, 

and that's generally true. As more and more 

work is done in an environment, one goes 

through an acclimatization effect where you do 

become acclimatized to the environment and your 

breathing rate and your body temperature and 

everything will -- will sort of respond and 

start to go back towards more of the normal. 

But anyway, I think these, in totality, sort of 

paint the picture of (unintelligible) very 

consistent with what we see in a steel mill. 

Now I'd like to shift briefly to oro-nasal 

breathing. The ICRP model does discuss two 

distinct breathing patterns. Number one is 

what's known as nasal augmenters. Those are 

people who normally breathe through their nose. 

At a certain point, when the work gets very 

demanding, they start breathing through their 

mouth and that's -- when you get to around I 

think three meters -- three cubic meters per 

hour or something around that level, most 

people start breathing through their mouth to 

supplement their -- their breathing. 

 Although, interestingly, there are people who 

are pure nose breathers. There are people who, 
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no matter how hard they work, they will breathe 

through their nose. 

On the other side of the coin, there are also 

what are called pure mouth breathers, people 

who, no matter what, will breathe through their 

mouths 100 percent of the time. 

So you do have a continual spectrum here of 

pure mouth breathers, pure nose breathers and 

people who are in the middle of the spectrum, 

and most people are nasal augmenters. 

The ICRP does go through a fairly interesting 

evaluation of how to deal with mouth breathers 

in their document. And after looking at the 

mouth breathers -- mouth breather issue, I'll 

call it -- they deliberately chose to use nasal 

augmenters -- that is the normal segment of the 

population -- in their model. Much of that 

rationale is based on this recommendation in a 

study by Miller. I think it was the Annals of 

Occupational Hygiene. It was -- Miller, who 

was from the EPA, teamed up with Mort Lipman* 

at New York University, who is an expert 

respiratory inhalation person, and did a study 

-- a review paper where they looked at the 

difference in deposition to the lung of what 
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they call spontaneous breathers, which would be 

mostly nasal augmenters, versus mouth 

breathers. And it turns out that the 

difference between the breathing patterns was 

smaller than the difference among the subjects 

in total. So in other words, the variability -

- the interperson variability was greater than 

the mean difference between the two breathing 

patterns. 

Because of that, they decided it was not worth 

including this particular pathway in their 

analysis. 

We tried -- that's one piece of information 

that we've obtained. The other thing we did is 

we tried to look at what's -- what else is out 

there. Wesley Bolch evaluated the uncertainty 

in regional lung deposition in a health physics 

publication where he looked at the -- the 

geometric standard deviations of the deposition 

patterns of a number of respirable particles in 

different regions of the lung. Most of the 

deposition fractions that they came up with for 

respirable particles have a geometric standard 

deviation of less than 1.5. It's not a small, 

not a large GSD, but it's -- you know, it's 
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sort of an intermediate level uncertainty. 

If we look at that and say -- and we combine 

that with the fact that the Bethlehem Steel air 

model -- the uncertainty of the air sample that 

a person breathes at Bethlehem Steel has a 

geometric standard deviation of 8.4. In other 

words, the median value has a GSD of 8.4, a 

very large difference. If we combine that 

uncertainty of 1.5 with the GSD of 8.4 in the 

Bethlehem Steel model, that results in a six 

and a half increase in the 95th percentile. 

That is equivalent to about a 40-minute lunch 

break for the worker who we're assuming 

breathed 10 hours a day at 1.7 cubic meters per 

hour at that 95th percentile air concentration. 

It's a very small difference in the -- in the 

inspiration of uranium in these workers, and 

it's very consistent with what the conclusion 

of Miller was in their paper, that the 

variability and all the parameters that go to 

make up the deposition in the worker is very 

large. And to take in -- to start take into 

account some of these other parameters, it gets 

lost in the wash. 

I might add that, if you recall, when we do 
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internal dose calculations based on our best 

estimate, we always put a geometric standard 

deviation of three. There's a reason for that. 

The intake of a person, based on -- for 

instance -- bioassay data, is no better known 

than about a geometric standard deviation of 

three. That results, at the 95th percentile, 

of about a factor of six, either direction. 

We're saying we don't -- at the 95th 

percentile, we really can't say with any 

certainty within a factor of six what that true 

value is. 

The reason it's so large is partly this. The 

variation in the deposition patterns in the 

lung, the interpersonal variability of the 

deposition pattern, the variation of mouth 

breathing versus nose breathing -- there's a 

number of factors that go into making that 

intake variable. I suggest that this is just 

one of them, and the ICRP has essentially said 

the same thing when they tried to accommodate 

mouth breathing in their models and recognized 

that the variability among people is larger 

than the variability between the breathing 

patterns. 
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Another way we tried to approach this -- this 

is sort of a multi-faceted approach -- is we 

looked -- we tried to do an empirical 

evaluation; what does this mean in terms of 

what we've done -- what we have available from 

the data that we have at the various 

facilities. If you look at the Simonds Saw & 

Steel data, we not only have air concentration 

data at Simonds Saw & Steel, we also have some 

urine sample data. In fact, we have urine 

sample data that was taken not too far after 

the time when these air samples were measured 

that were used to generate the Bethlehem Steel 

model. 

We used those urine samples to predict the 

excretion of type M material for the air 

samples. You know, what would be the -- what 

would the person be excreting if they really 

breathed this 553 MAC air for their work shift, 

and we used the default parameters -- one 

micron, standard, oro-nasal breathing, those 

type of things. And what we find here is that 

the predicted urinary excretion far over-arches 

the actual yellow (unintelligible) points, 

which are the measured urine output of the 
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workers. What that gives us is a little 

comfort level. We're saying that not only is 

oro-nasal breathing probably not a significant 

biasing factor in these workers, but other 

factors such as ancillary ingestion, changes in 

default particle size, those sort of factors 

are over-compensated by the fact of using the 

standard models -- using a 95th percentile of 

the air sample concentration on a continuous 

basis to predict the worker's intake, and it's 

confirmed that the urine data are well below 

what we would predict using the urine model. 

So those three things take into account, I 

think -- substantiate or support the use of the 

standard nasal augmenting way of breathing for 

workers, not only at Bethlehem Steel, but I 

think for all of our dose reconstructions. 

So just a little concluding slide here on the 

default breathing parameters. I think -- I 

think the ICRP default value for heavy workers 

is appropriate for Bethlehem Steel. It's 

consistent with the values recommended by 

factory workers and others engaged in strenuous 

occupations as indicated by the ICRP. 

 The ICRP default for nasal augmentation we also 
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think is appropriate for the reasons I've just 

gone over. It allows for mouth breathing at 

higher ventilation rates, which we do account 

for in our -- in our model. And the 

uncertainty in deposition created by breathing 

habit is small compared to the other 

uncertainties. And we believe our empirical 

evaluation of workers at Simonds Saw at least 

supports that. I'm not saying that it proves 

it, but it does support the fact that we're not 

at least biasing the values in -- in the wrong 

direction. 

And I believe that concludes my slides. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Jim. We can 

open the floor for questions by the Board 

members, or discussion on this presentation. 

Who has a question? Mark. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Jim, I -- I'm trying to remember 

back to the SC&A comments on the site profile, 

and I think there were seven -- six or seven 

items that SC&A said that you were working with 

them on -- on certain issues and resolving 

some, and I know certainly oro-nasal breathing 

was one and the triangular distribution was 

another. Does this -- does this presentation 
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cover all those seven items? I know you 

focused on the Board motions rather than the 

SC&A items, and I just want to make sure we're 

cross-walking --

DR. NETON: It was my -- my opinion at the time 

I presented those issues and covered them that 

those were the outstanding issues that we had 

with SC&A. I'm not speaking for them, but I 

think -- in my opinion, they're -- outside of 

the issues I talked about here, I'm not aware 

of any substantive issues that remain to be 

worked out -- and I know they're here, they can 

speak for themselves, of course. But... 

 DR. MELIUS: Paul, can I --

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Jim. 

 DR. MELIUS: My recollection of the meeting -- 

I was the one that made the motion -- was that 

the other issues, and I -- whether there were 

three or four others -- had been essentially 

resolved. They were either sort of factual 

issues or that you had basically -- the two 

parties agreed, and so these were sort of 

outstanding issues that required further -- 

further work -- some of them -- the other ones 

may -- I don't want to say trivial, but they 
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were relatively minor and so did-- we didn't 

feel they needed to be addressed. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Roy. 

 DR. DEHART: Jim, do you have any idea what 

this would do in the calculations, the 50th 

percentile? Do you have some models that 

you've looked at? 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I anticipated that might be a 

question. We've looked at some dose 

reconstructions. I'm reluctant to give real 

quantitative numbers, but it certainly will -- 

would affect those cases that were closer to 50 

percent than not. Now if you remember the 

presentation I gave -- I think Bethlehem Steel 

tends to be bi-modal. There's -- there's a lot 

of claims, I think 40-plus percent, that are 

already over 50 percent. There are 40 percentplus that are less than 10 percent. In my 

opinion, those that are less than 10 percent 

are not likely to change at all, given this 

change. There were some in the middle, and 

there are a few in the 40 percent range, I 

think those we will have to look very closely 

at and I'm -- I'm not sure which way they go, 

but there's a chance that some of those may 
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change. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, need another --

 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) I have another 

couple of -- mainly questions. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Use your mike there. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. Jim, procedurally or 

whatever, where do we stand in terms of 

actually a revised site profile that -- and -- 

and then I guess the subsequent question is 

when will you then be using that site profile 

to go back and re-evaluate what cases need to 

be re-evaluated? 

DR. NETON: The site profile is ready to go. 

It's not been signed off yet, but we antic-- we 

-- we anticipate not hearing any significant 

objections to what we've done here, to using it 

as soon as possible. 

 DR. MELIUS: And are there other changes to the 

-- I mean -- to the site profile that have been 

made, in addition to what -- 

DR. NETON: Nothing substantial, other than 

more supporting documentation and write-ups, 

but these are the substantial numerical -- 

these are the numerical changes that have been 

made as far as estimating intakes. 
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 DR. MELIUS: And then I also have a question, I 

believe it's Ed Walker from the Bethlehem group 

-- workers group, copied me in a letter to 

Larry regarding some questions about -- I guess 

it's the -- the geometric basis for the -- 

whether the right parts of the steel mill were 

used in making some of these estimates. I 

don't -- that I received last week late, or 

sometime during the week, and I don't know if 

you've had time to look at that. I believe it 

-- I'm not sure it's relevant to some of the 

changes you've made since you're now using 

direct air monitoring data. This was a 

question about whether the -- the right parts 

of -- part of the steel mill was used in making 

the --

DR. NETON: Right, I --

 DR. MELIUS: -- calculations, and I don't know 

if other members of the Advisory Board received 

that letter. We can get copies made; I brought 

my copy with me. But I don't know if you have 

any comments on that or --

DR. NETON: I have not read the entire 

document. I'm aware of its existence and have 

looked through it. I would -- if I recall, the 
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key issue was that a photograph that was 

displayed by SC&A in Livermore that purported 

to be the rolling mill was in fact the hot 

strip mill, and that was recognized by us. We 

did not make a big deal about it because it 

really didn't -- was not germane to the dose 

calculation itself. That was purported to be a 

picture of a large industrial operation. The 

facility itself was not modeled, as it was a 

hot strip mill. We modeled it based on the air 

concentration available at Simonds Saw & Steel, 

which was a rolling mill. And then the 1951 

and '52 data at Bethlehem was data taken at the 

rolling mill, not the hot strip mill. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yes. However, I think there's 

some question as to whether -- or the 

question's raised as to whether the Simonds Saw 

rolling mill is similar in setup, geometry, to 

the one at Bethlehem that was used -- 

DR. NETON: Right. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- and whether that's an approp-- 

I think that was the other question -- 

DR. NETON: That's the other issue, and we 

discussed that in the revised site profile. 

It's a fact that the Simonds Saw & Steel was a 
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much smaller, confined space actually works the 

other direction. When you start blowing 

uranium dust into a smaller confined space, if 

anything you would tend to increase the 

concentration and not dilute it. So I'm not 

sure that argument would -- would make a swing 

in the claimant-favorable -- in the direction 

of making the air concentration higher. 

 DR. MELIUS: But I think there's some other 

differences that were pointed out in terms of -

- there's an area underneath the rolling mill 

and --

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- so forth. I mean, again, I 

don't want to get --

DR. NETON: Yeah, I think --

 DR. MELIUS: -- into this without having -- 

DR. NETON: I think the residual contamination 

model that we've added here that accounts for 

the settling of all the dust that was generated 

in the facility, and then being exponentially 

decreased over time -- because it can't sit on 

the surface forever. If you roll steel dust 29 

out of 30 days, you're going to be diluting 

that uranium with a lot of additional dust that 
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makes the uranium not as available for intake. 

I mean it will still be there, but you can't 

put one gram of uranium in the ground and then 

cover it with 100 grams of steel and then -- 

and then assume that it's all pure uranium 

intake. So we've modeled that -- I think it's 

appropriate. I don't know if it really is 

going to change based on the review that I've 

looked at. And again, I have not point by 

point taken a review of Mr. Walker's document. 

That came in fairly late last week, as you 

pointed out. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Larry Elliott from NIOSH can also 

speak to this point. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, the letter from Mr. Walker 

did come in late last week and Mr. Walker will 

get a response. We'll make sure you're copied 

on that, Dr. Melius and other Board members. I 

don't believe we've had a chance at this point 

to react and consider each of the points that 

have been raised. We have talked among 

ourselves briefly about those points that Jim 

spoke to a moment ago, and that's all we've 

done with that so far. This -- this site 

profile would be ready to go into use 
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immediately upon our return and we would 

evaluate all those claims that were in that 

middle category that Jim talked about earlier. 

 DR. WADE: Larry, has the letter in question 

been shared with all the Board members? 

 DR. MELIUS: I've got a copy here so we'll -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't believe --

 DR. MELIUS: -- (unintelligible) make copies. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- it had. I believe it just 

came to me, with a copy to Dr. Melius and may-- 

I don't know who else was copied, but I don't 

think the whole Board -- 

 DR. WADE: We'll see that all the Board members 

get that at the break. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. Other 

comments or questions? 

It does remain for us to determine where we are 

in the Bethlehem Steel profile in terms of 

closure. Let me remind you, initially we had 

the Bethlehem Steel Rev. 0, which I think was 

what the version was that SC&A initially 

reviewed for -- on our behalf as part of our 

process. The action that Jim referred to I 

think -- I'm not sure if that was prior to Rev. 

1 or about the same time. 
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DR. NETON: I think SC&A did review Rev. 1. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Rev. 1. 

DR. NETON: Right, 'cause that was issued in 

June, and they reviewed -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: That was the version they -- 

right. So we had the issues, and of those -- 

and Jim summarized -- there were some things 

that NIOSH accepted, some of the critique 

issues. There was concurrence on several, and 

then this request that they review the use of 

ICRP default values. So one of the questions -

- and I'm not sure I know the answer to this at 

this point -- is how we deal with this in sort 

of coming to closure with our own process 

because the site profile does continue, as they 

all do, to change. But the question is, has 

the -- has NIOSH been responsive to the 

criticisms brought by our contractor and are we 

satisfied that those issues have been addressed 

appropriately. And that's kind of a rhetorical 

question at this point. Jim. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I just find it a little hard 

for us to reach closure on an issue where we -- 

all we've really received -- we've had a slide 

presentation and then some explanation from Jim 
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-- we -- for a document that we -- isn't 

produced yet. We haven't seen the doc-- the 

actual document. There's no written report for 

us to evaluate, and the -- the slides we were -

- received when we got here today, so there 

really wasn't even time to go back and 

reference our old -- concern -- we review the 

old site profile. So I personally would rather 

defer any action until -- that we take until 

we've had a chance, one, to see a revised site 

profile and at least had time to review this 

issue in more detail and have more than an hour 

and 15 minutes or 20 minutes to do so. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me frame the dilemma in a 

somewhat different way. That is that we now 

have Rev. 2, but it wasn't Rev. 2 that we asked 

our contractor to review. And I'm asking how 

we come to closure with respect to the task 

that our contractor did. Whether or not we 

approve Rev. 2 may be a somewhat different 

issue, and of course there can be, at some 

point, a Rev. 3 or -- and so on. So --

 MR. GRIFFON: I guess this is -- this is the -- 

sort of a finding resolution process. I mean 

we're not -- I don't think we should have a 
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complete re-review of Rev. 2, but we have these 

outstanding -- and if it is this list, that's 

fine, but -- and I think these are the major 

ones, but I think that there's some details 

that I'd like to sit down with and maybe have 

our contractor -- and make sure that, you know, 

in a -- for the most part, I think Jim's 

addressed, you know, the 95th percentile. 

Looks fine, I think we just need time to see it 

in its full extent in the -- in the profile and 

make sure that it -- it meets what our concerns 

were prior to this. 

The same with -- you know, this -- this talks 

about an exponential decreased model. Well, I 

understand in principle what Jim's describing, 

but I haven't seen what parameters he's using, 

you know, to -- to model that and -- and do 

they seem conservative and claimant -- 

claimant-favorable, et cetera. I think we need 

more time to examine that, so... 

DR. NETON: I guess I -- I'd like a little 

clarification then, maybe, if possible. I 

understand what -- what was being said here, 

but the issues that are on the table, I think -

- I understand that the residual contamination 
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model hasn't been seen, but is there a sense 

that you want to re-review the use of the 95th 

percentile that is -- I'm working on the 

assumption that the Board has already endorsed 

or accepted a 95th percentile, they've accepted 

the aerosol size and density and they've 

accepted the external exposure. So are we 

going to reopen that with SC&A or -- you know, 

'cause there -- there are certain issues that 

I've been working to that I believed had been 

resolved and accepted by the Advisory Board 

already. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, you are quite right that we 

took specific action on some of those items, 

and hence the nature of my rhetorical question 

is how to come to closure on the task that our 

contractor did. Obviously we can -- if the 

Board wishes, we can go back and ask the 

contractor to now look at Rev. 2, for example. 

Or we could say no, the -- the review has 

served its purpose. We -- you know, we have a 

number of site profile reviews that we are 

asking the contractor to do. And even though 

the site profiles then may be changed, 

reviewed, revised, the task of reviewing them 
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serves a certain kind of purpose. And it's not 

necessarily to bring perfection to a site 

profile so much as to raise the issues, try to 

come to some kind of closure on them and move 

on to other issues. So -- Dr. Melius. 

 DR. MELIUS: Again, repeat what I said, I don't 

think, you know, we can be expected to provide 

adequate closure on, you know, something we 

received at 1:00 o'clock this afternoon and we 

get a presentation on it, without any hint of 

what was going to be in it or anything. I 

don't think we necessarily have to wait for the 

site profile to be revised, but I would 

certainly like to see some more documentation 

than we received in this presentation. If the 

easiest way to do that is that this -- the 

revised site profile that's under review and I 

think close to sign-off, if I -- if I 

understood what Jim was saying and Larry, then 

maybe the easiest way of -- of doing it. If 

there's some other method of achieving, that's 

fine, but we certainly need more time to refer 

back and -- and preferably with some more 

detailed information. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And the Chair's not pushing for 
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closure here today necessarily. I just want to 

make sure that we have in mind where we're 

going on this. 

Okay. Mark. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Let me just follow up on the -- I 

mean I agree. Jim's statement about a 95th 

percentile -- I mean in theory I think we're -- 

we're right there, we agree with that, and I'm 

not sure that -- that we fully accepted what 

sampling data was being used to establish the 

95th in this Bethlehem Steel case. I mean I 

think, you know, just right -- and again, 

looking at this cold, as Jim said, it strikes 

me that you have this -- a situation here again 

where you're using another plant's data for one 

year period and you have 553 MAC being 

assigned, then the next year you have 21 MAC, 

and that may be based on very good data, but it 

does create this equity question in my mind, 

too, where you have a -- you're assigning a 

much higher exposure for that one-year period 

there, I --

DR. NETON: Well, I --

 DR. ZIEMER: I think we saw that data before, 

though. That's not new information. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: No, I know, I know. 

DR. NETON: I was very clear when I think I 

presented, that's the intent of what we're 

doing and the Board voted on that motion. I 

reviewed it very carefully. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It appears, however, that -- that 

perhaps the sense of the Board is they would 

like to at least see Rev. 2 before coming to 

some kind of closure on this. Jim, additional 

comment? 

 DR. MELIUS: I would just clarify that by 

saying I think that the closure that we come to 

ought to be directed at the five issues. I 

mean -- and so I think the question -- that 

were in the presentation were within our 

original motion, however many months ago that 

was, whether the way of providing a more 

detailed background for that is just simply 

giving us the next revision -- is the 

documentation for that's fine, but then our 

review and so-called closure would focus on 

those issues, if that helps to... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Roy. 

 DR. DEHART: Perhaps a mechanism to speed 

things along would be either with a working 
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group or a subcommittee to review the five 

items or whatever in detail and compare that 

with our contractor's remarks and comments and 

come up with a recommendation to the Board as a 

whole. And perhaps we could even handle that 

on a conference call. I'm sure we'll have a 

conference call or two before the next meeting. 

 DR. WADE: We will. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That -- that would be a useful 

suggestion. Any other comments? If it's a 

subcommittee that does this, that would be an 

open meeting, even if it's by phone. 

 DR. MELIUS: Just to, as usual, put Larry on 

the spot -- and Jim -- do we have a rough time 

line on the next -- this revision being signed 

off on? You may have said it already. I may 

have missed it. 

DR. NETON: It's ready to go. I mean it could 

be signed tomorrow if we -- if we felt so 

inclined, although (unintelligible) -- 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay, so something's ready 

(unintelligible) --

 DR. ZIEMER: It's within days. 

 DR. MELIUS: That was my... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Then the Chair's going to 
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take it by consent that we will defer formal 

action on this until such time as we have Rev. 

2 to look at and -- I've made a note here -- 

we'll ask the subcommittee to look at the 

items, make sure that all of the items have 

been appropriately handled. 

 Jim, thank you very much for -- 

DR. NETON: Just a (unintelligible) would -- 

would it be acceptable then if I just sent 

electronically the Board the draft profile and 

 DR. ZIEMER: I would think that would be -- 

DR. NETON: I can do that --

 DR. ZIEMER: Any objections? 

DR. NETON: -- tonight, if that's the case. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 DR. WADE: Maybe we should just take a look at 

where we are and the steps we're going to 

follow, 'cause I think it is terribly important 

that -- that we bring things to closure. And I 

think we're approaching closure on this first 

site profile task. So my understanding is that 

the Board or the subcommittee, and we can 

decide which, in receipt of Jim's presentation 

materials and the revised site profile, will 
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take to answering the question is the site 

profile and NIOSH's work consistent with the 

recommendation of the Board and therefore the 

Board will accept this site profile. That's 

what's in front of us. Would we prefer to do 

that with the subcommittee or with a conference 

call and full Board? We'll probably be having 

both. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think Roy was recommending 

subcommittee. Is that my understanding? 

 DR. DEHART: That's correct, that would be the 

choice that I would have because I think it's 

more likely we can get a smaller number 

together. 

 DR. WADE: And then the subcommittee would 

bring that recommendation to the full Board. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Henry, a comment? 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, at least what I heard from 

Lew was a bit broader of accepting the second 

revision as opposed to -- what I thought we 

were going to do is review to see whether the 

five issues that we raised with Revision 1 -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Had been adequately --

DR. ANDERSON: -- had been adequately 

addressed, where we haven't really been asked 
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or -- to review -- or to approve everything 

that may be in Revision 2. And since we 

haven't seen it, we don't know. There may be 

some things that have been added that were not 

part of our original charge, but to close out 

the first review I think we just want to 

address what we commented on in Revision 1 to 

see that they -- have those issues been 

addressed in Revision 2. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Lew, I think technically that 

would be correct. 

 DR. WADE: Yes, I agree with that completely. 

The other issue I think it would be wise for 

the Board to consider is the work that's been 

brought to the process by what we've been 

through. This will be the first time we've 

been through this detailed process, and I think 

it would be well -- now, or when -- when you 

finally do reach closure, to have a discussion 

of that and then guide future activities by 

that discussion. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, good comment. Before 

we get into the presentations on Special 

Exposure Cohort and Y-12 site profile and so 

on, which come after the break, we -- we are 
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going to have a brief discussion from counsel 

on conflict of interest. Lew, do we have time 

to do that before the break? 

 DR. WADE: I think it would be best to do that 

after --

 DR. ZIEMER: After the break? 

 DR. WADE: We can take our break now. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Then let's go ahead and take the 

break now and then we'll resume at -- let's see 

-- well, in 15 minutes. 

 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 2:30 p.m. 

to 2:50 p.m., during which Mr. Leon Owens and 

Mr. Rich Espinosa arrived and joined the 

assembly.) 

PRIVACY INFORMATION

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we're going to call the 

meeting back to order, if you'd please take 

your seats. Before we begin with the 

presentation on the Y-12 site profile, Liz is 

going to give us some information on conflict 

of interest. As Board members all know, Liz is 

with the General Counsel's Office, Health and 

Human Services. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Am I on? 

 DR. WADE: Yes. 
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MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Okay. Thank you for giving 

me this time to address you briefly. I'm Liz 

Homoki-Titus with the General Counsel's Office 

at Health and Human Services. I just want to 

remind you of information that I know you have 

all heard previously, but with the SEC 

petitions that are coming up, the conflict of 

interest is going to once again be a question. 

First off, as a private citizen you may -- you 

have the right to address this Board and to 

address the Federal government. You can tell 

them anything that you want to, you can act in 

the role as a site expert, but you must do that 

in your role as a private citizen, not in your 

role as a Board member if you have a conflict 

of interest. 

If you do have a conflict of interest for an 

SEC site or a dose reconstruction that's being 

considered, please indicate such and then step 

away from the table. And we want to be very 

clear and make that indication on the record so 

that it's part of the record, and then if you 

step away from the table it'll be very clear 

for the public that you're not participating in 

the discussion and that you're not 
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participating in the vote. 

As far as the dose rec-- individual dose 

reconstructions that you review, if it's a 

general discussion then you may continue to 

participate, but please remember that you're 

not participating in that vote. 

I also want to remind you that if you receive a 

document from another Board member where they 

have made some type of public comments, you may 

review that document, just as you would review 

a public comment from any member of the public. 

You should not give it extra weight just 

because it comes from one of your fellow Board 

members, nor should you ignore it just because 

it comes from one of your fellow Board members. 

But you must remember that you are reviewing 

that and giving it the same consideration that 

you would give any other document that you 

receive from a member of the public who's 

making a comment to the Board or to the 

government. 

And finally, you as a Board may want to 

consider establishing procedures that you as 

Board members are going to follow when you are 

providing a public comment to ensure that your 
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documents are not given any special weight and 

are not viewed any differently by the other 

Board members. Obviously you as a Board set 

your procedures, so if you'd like to do 

something like that you should feel free to go 

ahead and take care of it. 

Do any of you have any questions? I know that 

was short, but I know that you've all heard it 

before in your conflicts interviews. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Liz, let me ask this question. If 

you would clarify -- for example, we have two 

items on our agenda. One is the review of the 

NIOSH site profile for Y-12. The other is the 

Y-12 petition for SEC status. Are both of 

those in the same category, as far as Board 

members are concerned? For example, Mr. 

Presley, who works at Y-12 -- 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: No, those would not be in 

the same category. For the site profile -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- it's a --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- can he -- can he discuss the 

site profile without -- 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: He should be able to discuss 

the site profile and provide his general 
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comments on it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: As a Board member. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: As a Board member, but for 

the --

 DR. ZIEMER: It's only when we get into the 

petitions -- the SEC petitions then -- 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- where this conflict of interest 

issue rears its head? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Right, for the con-- yes, 

for the Special Exposure Cohort petitions, and 

then for individual dose reconstructions that 

you review. But like I said, for the dose 

reconstructions, if you're having a generalized 

discussion about issues, then he could 

participate in that. But he wouldn't want to 

participate in the vote on that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So he cannot discuss that as a 

Board member from the table. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Can he listen from the table? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: No. It would be best if he 

would step away from the table, just to make it 

clear to everyone that he's not participating 

or influencing the debate. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: So if he would join the -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: The sound cannot even reach your 

ears from the table, I guess. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: No, no, he doesn't have to 

leave the room. 

 DR. ZIEMER: No, no. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: He can join the public. 

 DR. ZIEMER: No, it can't be from the table, 

though. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: But it can't be from the 

table. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: And he would be welcome to 

join the public comment session this evening 

and give public comments if he wishes to do 

that, but not from the table. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That in itself I think suggests a 

procedure that we will necessarily need to 

follow, and that is, for example, in such cases 

where a petition is being presented and 

discussed, the individual or individuals having 

conflict would then have to recluse (sic) 

themselves from the table and sit in the -- in 

the more comfortable chairs. 
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Now can you also clarify, at least for the 

Chair -- for example, when we talk about Y-12, 

is that only Y-12 or is the whole Oak Ridge 

reservation included in some way? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I believe that's only Y-12, 

'cause that's what the SEC petition is 

considering -- and the evaluation report and 

what you all's recommendation will be on. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other questions for 

Liz? Roy. 

 DR. DEHART: Is it clear that this only applies 

if you have provided professional consultation 

within the last year? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: It should be only in the 

last year. 

 DR. DEHART: Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim. 

 DR. MELIUS: I just have a procedural question, 

and it's regarding Bob's -- Presley's earlier 

communication to you that I think we all 

received an e-mail about from -- it was either 

from Liz or Lew, I can't remember who sent us 

the commun-- communication, and my only concern 

about that was -- procedurally is that we 

maintain a public record of such communications 
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that -- so that the public -- so that there be 

a record that Bob made that -- those comments 

as a member of the public and that that be -- 

there be transparency to that so that some way 

those get entered into the record of our 

deliberations for the -- our review of the 

petitions. One of the things that came under 

consideration, not from Bob as a Board member 

but from Bob as -- as a public citizen and that 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: It may be best for NIOSH to 

address that because they do have a docket 

office that handles public comments. And like 

I said, each comment, if it comes from a Board 

member as a private citizen, should be handled 

the exact same way that a private citizen's 

comment is. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, which is just fine, I just 

think that's -- we just need to be clear that 

that's the way it (unintelligible) -- 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: And it may help if the Board 

sets up some of its own procedures to ensure 

that that happens. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And in fact I don't know the 

whereabouts of that, but I do know that after I 
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received that I did send an e-mail to the Board 

members alerting you to the fact that you 

should regard this as a public comment from Bob 

as a site expert and not from Bob as a Board 

member. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, my concern there would be -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Giving it no greater weight nor 

lesser weight. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, but -- but by the fact that 

you've not done that with other comments that 

you've received, I think we need -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Actually I have, in cases where it 

appears they are asking for the information to 

be distributed to Board members. But I don't 

think I've gotten any other ones that dealt 

with SECs specifically, but -- 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- but do we know where those -- 

did those comments originally go to NIOSH? 

They did, so... 

 MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) Yes, I 

(unintelligible). 

 (On microphone) The comments from Mr. Presley 

did come to -- I believe -- you, Dr. Ziemer, 

and Dr. Wade with a copy to me. And as you 
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said, you forwarded it on to the Board. I 

believe these were the first set of comments 

from a public commenter, if you will, on a 

particular SEC petition, and we've had no 

others that we've had to deal with. We do 

assemble all those kind of comments, though, in 

with the petition docket and we keep track of 

those that way. If it's the Board's pleasure, 

we can publish them on our web site. 

Other comments that come in to the Board that 

are addressed to you, Dr. Ziemer, as Chair of 

the Board -- they come into my office. We make 

sure that we get them to you, and if you tell 

us to pass them on to the Board, we do. If you 

decide to pass them on to the Board, that's 

your discretion. But that's the extent of how 

we've been handling these types of external 

inputs. 

 DR. MELIUS: Then my suggestion is we do create 

a public docket for those, that those be put on 

the NIOSH web site so that it's -- for its 

transparency, along with any other, you know -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, is --

 DR. MELIUS: -- comments from public -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- your suggestion for all such 
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comments, not just from Board members? 

 DR. MELIUS: Correct --

 DR. ZIEMER: All such comments. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- yes. 

 DR. WADE: Public comments. 

 DR. MELIUS: Public comments --

 DR. ZIEMER: Public comments. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Did I understand, Larry, that you 

in fact do that now, or no? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) No, we don't, 

but we will. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We will. 

 DR. MELIUS: They have a private -- they -- 

they keep track of all of them, I think was 

what I understood Larry to say, they just don't 

-- it's just not posted on the web site or made 

public. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) Correct. That's 

correct and we will post these, if you wish, on 

the web site under the Board page. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Is that agreeable with the other 

Board members? Any objections? I'll take it 

by consent then that we'll agree to do that. 

Thank you, Jim. 
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Liz, any other comments for us? Board members? 

 (No responses) 

Y-12 SITE PROFILE

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, then we're ready to proceed 

with the presentation on the Y-12 site profile, 

and Joe Fitzgerald from SC&A is here. And Joe, 

welcome --

 MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you. 

 DR. WADE: Can I just make some introductory 

comments? No one needs to recuse themselves at 

this point. We're talking about the site 

profile, not the SEC petition, so everyone can 

stay at the table. 

One of the reasons we're doing this is that I 

think it would be good procedure, if at all 

possible, that before we consider an SEC 

petition --if we have a site profile under 

review -- that we discuss that document. And I 

-- and I'll try and schedule that if possible. 

It is not always possible because we will not 

always have a site profile under review. But 

in this case I thought I would ask SC&A to come 

forward and discuss their review of the site 

profile, given the fact that we're going to be 

looking at an SEC petition immediately 
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following. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: (Off microphone) Thank you, 

Mr. Chairman. Is this coming through clear? 

 DR. ZIEMER: No. 

(Pause) 

 MR. FITZGERALD: (Off microphone) How's that, 

any better? 

 DR. ZIEMER: No. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: (Off microphone) No? 

 DR. WADE: Here comes the man. 

(Pause) 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Great, thank you. What I want 

to talk about today is a rather expedited 

review of the Y-12 National Security Complex. 

As the Board will recall, there was a decision 

to expedite our review of Y-12. It's on the 

original list, but because of the SEC 

petitions, certainly the notion was to move it 

up to do it on an expedited basis, which we in 

fact did. 

We went ahead and inaugurated this on May 3rd, 

although quite frankly, most of the work -- 

including documents review and interviews -- 

were conducted within the last 30 days, so when 

I say expedited, I guess -- I want to 
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underscore, this is -- for a site this large, 

for a history this long, this was quite a 

undertaking in terms of the amount of ground 

covered and the amount of subjects covered. 

And I might want to add that this was made 

possible, frankly, with the cooperation with 

ORAU in the sense that we were able to do this 

in real time. And I said this at last meeting, 

that the only way we could accomplish this 

would be to have conference calls to -- 

actually to see documents and to do a number of 

site visits on a rather expeditious basis. 

This site is a classified site. We still have 

notes that we haven't seen yet. They're being 

reviewed for classification purposes. So in 

any case, we expect to have this report ready 

by sometime later this month. 

We looked at the series of site profile TBDs. 

I think the take-home message here is 

essentially these -- this was the third site 

that was actually profiled by NIOSH, and this 

is March of 2003. A lot of the TBDs are -- you 

know, you want to talk about a living document, 

these are definitely living documents. We 

understand that and we looked at it in that 
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context. 

A lot of our findings are ones that frankly 

underscore what I think NIOSH and ORAU already 

recognize in terms of what it's going to take 

to complete and make these TBDs comprehensive. 

So I think you'll hear that -- that refrain 

reiterated during this review. 

We also looked at a number of supporting 

documents that -- this is just a short list of 

what we were able to cover. And again, given 

the time frame, we did go through these I think 

relatively fast just to in fact get a 

underpinning of what was looked at in the TBDs, 

what was referenced by the TBDs. We still have 

some closeouts to do in terms of resolving I 

think final documentation before the report's 

prepared. But again, I think we -- we touched 

most of the bases we needed to touch. 

Just a little bit on Y-12. Again, old site, 

started Manhattan District, certainly developed 

the original enriched uranium for the Hiroshima 

weapon, so we're talking about probably one of 

the oldest of the DOE sites. 

In terms of operating contractors, I kind of 

lumped those that were, you know, sort of in 
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the same family together, but essentially had a 

series of single contractors from the Manhattan 

District days up to the present, a fairly long 

tenure as DOE contractors go -- certainly the 

construction contractors. About 811 acres, 

which is a fairly tight site, in DOE terms. 

And again, about 5,000 employees today. You 

know, quite a few more back in the -- in the 

old days, after the War and during the Cold 

War. So seeing a lot of changes in terms of -- 

of numbers. 

 Missions, electromagnetic separation of 

uranium, basically during the War years, 

producing enriched uranium. Beyond that, 

getting a mission of -- production mission of 

secondaries and doing refurbishment and cases. 

A lot of stockpile stewardship in the later 

years, so it's gone through an evolution of 

missions over the last 40 or 45 years, 

essentially keeping pace with pretty much what 

was going in the national security realm. 

Let me just touch on -- I -- I think, again, we 

really wanted to focus on the completeness of 

this -- of this site profile, looking at the 

TBDs. We wanted to look at the assumptions and 
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the comprehensiveness. And you know, we were -

- you know, I think the ORAU counterparts will 

confirm this. We were taken aback because 

really there were a lot of places we felt just 

weren't being touched on in terms of scope. 

And in the interactions that we've had it's 

pretty clear there's not a disagreement on 

that, but there's certainly acknowledgement of 

this being one of the early site profiles, the 

focus was on the uranium, the central mission 

of the facility, and a lot of the issues that 

certainly we found to be important were not 

addressed in this initial pass at the site 

profile for Y-12. But I don't think that's a -

- as much of a concern as it would be if it 

weren't for the fact that there's a number of 

efforts underway which would augment this Rev. 

00, which is -- was in place and in some cases 

is going to be revised at least once to bring 

these other source terms in, to bring the other 

analyses in. What we'll be covering 

essentially a little bit later will be just 

some of these areas that need to be addressed. 

But I think in general what we see is some 

movement to add these aspects in. We think 
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these are important aspects. I think there's a 

rather extensive records search. I was telling 

somebody it's like the dog catching the car in 

a way, 'cause we're -- we're going to Y-12 on 

the heels of some of the ORAU investigators 

and, you know, they have boxes of documents 

going out the door and we're trying to get our 

hands on the same -- so it's sort of -- you 

know, there's a lot of interaction going on and 

obviously a lot of work that's being done to 

bring these up to date, so we certainly want to 

acknowledge that. 

Last bullet, you know, we've made I think a lot 

of the recycled uranium issue in terms of 

contaminants. And I'd like say I think we were 

very pleased and just want to be very 

supportive of what was done on recycled 

uranium. I think that was one of the more 

comprehensive treatments we've seen, in this 

particular one, in terms of constituents, in 

terms of history, and I think that's a -- 

that's a big plus, particularly in this case. 

I wanted to put this particular slide in, not 

to sort of go back into ancient history, but a 

little -- little context, because -- you know, 
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I -- I lived this history, too, when I was at 

DOE, and -- and clearly, relative to the 

uranium programs, there was a -- clearly an 

issue of -- of how the program was managed in 

terms of health physics standards. And I think 

this is relevant from the standpoint of a 

context by which one looks at the dosimetry 

information, looks -- looking at issues such 

as, you know, ingestion as a pathway, when we 

start getting into trying to figure out, you 

know, what's important, what needs to be 

scrutinized, where one needs to go beyond the 

paper and start looking at actual practices and 

comparing what workers are saying versus what 

the procedures or policies may call for. I --

I only -- as sort of a reminder, when you go 

back into the eighties and seventies, whatever, 

one has to keep this in mind in terms of 

practices that certainly have been upgraded, 

reversed, but at the time raised questions 

about how a lot of these programs were -- were 

managed and what kind of contamination levels 

you might be looking at. And they did 

certainly provide some basis for some of the 

issues that we think are important. So I 
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wanted to at least provide some perspective on 

that. 

Now saying that, I don't think one could find 

better health physics work than by people by 

Hap West and the folks that I -- and the 

documents that I looked at. I mean just 

tremendous work, a lot of focus in areas such 

as the transuranics, neptunium. Outside of 

uranium, I think there was a real concern about 

what was coming into this plant. There was a 

lot of focus on recycled -- you know, recycled 

uranium in terms of contaminants, a lot of 

concern about making sure that one was able to 

evaluate those source terms and actually 

characterize what the implications might be for 

a uranium plant to have that in the plant. So 

there was a lot of scrutiny, a lot of 

monitoring, and it was very impressive in terms 

of the precautions that were taken to manage 

some of these issues such as thorium, such as 

some trace elements such as Pu. But in the 

whole you still had this, you know, issue in 

the -- in the room, which is as far as uranium 

there was a bit of a blind spot that kind of 

carried forward practically into the nineties. 
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I think this is something that we wanted to at 

least make clear. 

In terms of experts, we spent quite a bit of 

time. We didn't have much time, but we spent a 

lot of it down at the site talking to the 

health physics staff, talking to the security 

staff, talking to the line workers. I 

personally interviewed 25 production and 

maintenance workers that dated back to 1969. 

And my colleague, Kathy DeMers, talked to 

security staff, as well as the -- the health 

physics staff. And I'm not going to dwell on 

some of these comments, but you know, some of 

these are pretty important, at least from the 

perspective of wanting to be able to go back 

and compare what some of these accounts are 

versus what we may be seeing in the 

documentation or even in the policies and 

procedures. 

I think some of these are worth mentioning. 

Certainly the notion that workers were very 

mobile within this site is true. Workers moved 

from maintenance to machining. They moved from 

one part of the plant to another, maybe six or 

seven moved. This was the first question I 
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asked to workers is, you know, where do you 

work now and where did you work. And it was 

very rare -- I'd get a answer that they worked 

five, six, seven different places. Some of 

them had come in from K-25. A lot of movement 

coming into Y-12 and out of Y-12, so I think 

that's something that's important to mention. 

 The support workers, you'll -- you'll hear this 

again. I'm concerned about this class of 

workers who aren't the camera operators, who 

aren't the machinists, aren't the people on the 

line, but the folks who actually fix the 

machines, that actually clean up the 

contamination, that actually provide the 

support throughout the plant. And I talked to 

a number of those workers. They were not 

monitored, by and large. I mean they got an 

occasional whole body count, lung count, they, 

you know, may have had occasional urinalyses. 

But essentially they weren't monitored because 

they weren't line workers, up until the latter 

years. Now we'll get into that in a bit, but I 

think that's a -- that's a very important issue 

because characterizing how these workers -- and 

they were certainly able to go into any of the 
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radiological areas, including the Oak Ridge 

facilities; I mean they pretty much had the run 

of the site -- trying to make sure that we 

characterize those exposures adequately. I 

think it's an important -- important issue. 

And some of the other issues, such as the 

plutonium, thorium, what-not, I think that's -- 

that's been recognized by NIOSH and ORAU in the 

site profile. But again, the workers were 

seconding the fact that they were aware of 

these non-uranium isotopes being on -- on -- 

on-site. 

They were troubled -- and this is the bullet on 

the fecal analysis. They were troubled when 

the workers that were doing the high fired 

oxides -- these are the highly insoluble oxides 

-- were -- were switched from routine 

urinalysis to routine fecal analysis just 

overnight. This happened in '98. And of 

course, you know, from a health physics 

standpoint there was a lot of analysis that was 

done. Eckerman* and George Kerr* came -- 

certainly came up with their paper regarding 

how -- you know, the recognition that, after 

operations started up in '98 after being down 
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for four years, it turned out that they felt 

that -- they determined that the uranium was in 

fact hypersoluble, very -- I mean, I'm -- 

insoluble, very insoluble versus the 

recognition it was intermediate before. 

But from their standpoint, they were getting 

these weekly urinalyses and quarterly, you 

know, lung counts for a long time as workers in 

this high fired oxide area. And all of a 

sudden that was discontinued and they were 

getting, you know, weekly fecal analyses and 

sort of the question in their minds, and they 

asked it outright, is -- you know, what does it 

mean? I mean what happened to that data? Is 

that -- I mean is there anything that's going 

to capture that information because, you know, 

now I'm concerned that maybe that -- that dose 

wasn't captured in the past. So I think that 

was certainly a rather telling comment. 

 (Whereupon, Ms. Wanda Munn arrived and assumed 

her seat with the Board.) 

 MR. FITZGERALD: In terms of breathing zone 

sampling, the comment there -- and this is more 

of a cautionary note -- they felt that they 

process by which the maximally exposed 
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individual was selected -- in this case it's 

breathing zone sampling -- but they felt that 

it wasn't always the maximally exposed 

individual that was singled out by management 

to be sampled. And I guess -- again, this is 

just a antidote (sic), but I think it's just a 

cautionary note that one needs to be careful 

about that assumption because from their 

vantage point a lot of times -- and this is, 

again, just reporting what we got from them -- 

it wasn't necessarily the individual who was 

most exposed or who was probably in -- in the 

line of most contamination or operating the 

most hazardous item. So I just want to sort of 

point that out, that this is something I think 

we need to address with some care as we go 

through this. 

Let's move on. In terms of monitoring data, 

this is a rather complex history. And I'm not 

going to bore you 'cause a lot of this is 

seeded in the site profile, but as you go 

through the time frame you do find that things 

shift around, both from the external as well as 

from the internal over time. And there was a 

lot of changes going on. In fact, if I can 
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bring you down from having no data in '43 

through '47, having a paucity of data in '48 

through '60 and then having perhaps the more 

stable program thereafter. There were, over 

time, fairly significant reductions in the 

worker categories, as well as whole departments 

that were getting urinalyses. Okay. There 

were decisions made that -- by virtue of 

results that were being achieved, or simply 

numbers of workers that were in fact being 

flagged, that one could reduce the category of 

workers or departments that would in fact 

continue with urinalysis. They were taken out. 

And I think the -- the -- certainly the issue 

there is one of being able to account for that 

whole movement of information. You have 

information on X number of workers. As years 

progress, that number changes; some workers 

were added, a lot of workers were taken off. 

So you're going to have varying data. Some 

workers were switched from basically urinalysis 

to whole body counting, so there's a lot of 

movement, a lot of changes over time. And 

again, a lot of the analyses on things like 

tritium, plutonium, fecal did not start until 
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later on in the process. 

But getting to the findings -- and again, these 

are findings that I still think are preliminary 

in the sense that we've been at this for about 

a month, maybe five weeks, and we're certainly 

converging on these. We've had a number of 

interactions with ORAU counterparts, but I 

think I would foresee probably one more session 

with ORAU on these, but I wanted to make sure, 

though, that we gave you the best sense of 

where we are right now. 

This first issue addresses these so-called 

support workers. And I don't want to draw too 

fine a line. I mean certainly they're 

janitors, they're the maintenance people. But 

there's a whole class of people who, frankly, 

were taken out of bioassay, and in some cases 

weren't badged till, you know, after '61, who 

are in this generic class of workers that -- 

for which there isn't any real routine data 

coming out of it. And when talking to the 

workers, these -- these folks essentially went 

into the thorium areas, went into the plutonium 

areas and were actively working in terms of 

maintenance activities, as well as clean-up 
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activities and what-not. So again, this is -- 

even though they weren't classified as line 

workers, the issue is to what extent were they 

exposed, how can one really characterize that 

exposure and can we focus on that -- on the -- 

on these -- on these groups. 

The -- the other questions revolve around the 

question of records, what records are possible 

and what -- what air sampling information may 

be possible. Now in some of the discussion 

with -- with ORAU -- and these have been very 

productive -- I think the issue comes down to 

does one treat this kind of issue in a -- as a 

generic issue that needs to be addressed in the 

site profile, or is it something that 

ultimately the dose reconstructor would handle 

based on a CATI interview and whatever 

information is culled out on an individual 

basis. 

I think at this point our thinking is that 

really this is a generic issue. This is a 

question of missing -- potentially missing dose 

for a category or several categories of 

workers, which I think certainly should be 

addressed. And -- and I think right now I 
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can't find much in the way of data that would 

characterize what these workers are exposed to. 

Okay. 

Again, they did the maintenance activities, 

they did the clean-up. If there was a spill, 

these workers would go in and mop up, 

effectively. And so I think the question is 

can we actually address those -- that category. 

There's a class of releases which -- you know, 

I -- I think we're pretty familiar at this 

point with, you know, how accidents and 

incidences are handled, and I -- I want to 

raise that issue. I mean I think we've raised 

it. We understand, you know, these aren't 

typically addressed in site profiles. But with 

Y-12 and I suspect with future sites -- you 

know, we come up against these incidences that 

are more than just, you know, human error. 

They're almost a regular part of the -- of the 

work week, work day. And uranium chip fires 

are certainly one example where they were 

almost part of the way things were -- were -- 

were handled. I mean you had them fairly 

frequently, sometimes two or three times a 

shift -- not always big, they're sometimes 
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small. Uranium being very pyrophoric, some-- 

you're grinding away, the operators were 

expected to be able to douse these things. 

Sometimes they weren't able to douse them and 

there was quite a bit of smoke. And as an 

example of something that is contributing a 

fair amount of what I would call an acute cloud 

of uranium, something that would fill up an 

operating area for some time, the question that 

we're trying to grapple with is, you know, 

what's -- what's -- how's -- how's that 

actually captured by the bioassay program, for 

example, and are you going to be able to see 

these acute releases. 

 And there some other examples here, I didn't 

put all of them up, but we -- we -- we saw a 

number of instances of acute releases of -- of 

uranium and other metals where you had -- had a 

-- certainly an opportunity for a significant 

uptake, but it wasn't clear whether that would 

be captured down the pike in terms of the 

actual monitoring frequency and what you were 

in fact looking for in that bioassay program. 

So we wanted to raise these issues in that 

context, that -- I believe there's a 9206 
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incinerator that continually I think released 

fugitive emissions and that were -- was the 

major contributor to 9206 air concentrations 

and it took years to get that new incinerator 

in, apparently. 

And you have other issues, and I've listed a 

couple that I've just taken out off the top -- 

exhaust fans that were sometimes turned off in 

-- it's not clear how often, you know. It's 

not that I can tell you this was a frequent 

thing, but just sort of instances where yes, 

there was a -- in this case, a blow-back of a 

fair -- fair amount of uranium. Now what did 

that mean in terms of the acute exposure? Not 

clear. Not clear whether that would have been 

picked up if the analysis was done sometime 

later or not. But in any case, just -- just 

trying to raise the issue. 

Now in terms of the third bullet, exposure from 

radon and radium preferentially vaporized, we 

didn't see a whole lot of treatment on radon, 

but it turns out that when one is actually 

casting -- melting and casting both uranium and 

thorium, you do have to deal with what is 

preferentially vaporized in that process 'cause 
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of the melting point and you do get radon and 

radium and the daughters essentially put into 

the air in fairly high activity levels -- so 

high in fact that you exceed plant levels 

almost immediately, and this was a cautionary 

note that one had to be very careful. And I'm 

not clear on -- looking at the TBD, and this is 

something that I think may be addressed in the 

revision, how one is going to look at issues 

such as radon and daughter products that might 

in fact be released in that way. 

So again, this is not your classic accident and 

incidences, but sort of a regularized acute -- 

series of acute releases that would occur 

pretty regular-- frequently, but not as a 

normal part of the process, more of an 

incidental release. 

In terms of nuclides, I think the list in the 

TBD is a good one. I don't think we basically 

identified anything that wasn't already 

fingered in the site profile. Yes, Y-12 did in 

fact handle tritium. It handled returns from 

Los Alamos and other places and tritium figured 

in -- in -- in those operations. Also 

technetium in terms of recycled uranium, 
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thorium as well -- in terms of production. 

Thorium and neptunium were in fact processed, 

fabricated, rolled, the whole works. There 

were production operations at Y-12 for both, 

and both were of particular concern from the 

health physics standpoint because of the 

respective activity levels and the -- and the 

concern over -- in the case of neptunium being 

a bone-seeker, concern over having a long 

residence time in terms of the material. So 

certainly that was an issue for that. 

 Plutonium was in fact both a contaminant as 

well as a production material at Y-12, wasn't 

used very much. It was a small amount used, 

but yet you still have certainly some that 

exists. It's in gloveboxes, sealed. It's not 

a contamination problem, but it's basically an 

issue of having to certainly account for in the 

past. 

 The support workers, again -- we -- we had a 

question regarding how the Oak Ridge facilities 

at Y-12 would be addressed in the context of 

the site profiles, and the answer was those 

facilities would be addressed as part of the 

Oak Ridge National Lab site profile. But we do 
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have this gray area with the support workers 

who are supporting Oak Ridge's -- X-10's 

facilities at Y-12. And certainly those Y-12 

workers would have to be accounted for, more 

than likely in the Y-12 site profile. So 

there's a bit of a gray area there and that's -

- that's certainly one issue that we'd like to 

see addressed and included in the Y-12 profile. 

And this is something that -- certainly there's 

an ongoing effort to collect this data. I 

think we saw all the documentation that was 

flowing out to Mel Chu* and Bryce Rich* and I 

think it's a pretty impressive effort. It's 

just got started. I think they started 

collecting documents back in December and 

they're going through them now and they're 

looking at U-233, looking at thorium, looking 

at recycled uranium. So I think this is well 

on its way, but I think this again underscores 

the fact that for a uranium facility -- I guess 

I was surprised, and I had been at DOE long 

enough -- but for a uranium facility it was a 

fairly diverse amount of non-uranium isotopes 

being handled in different ways. 

 This slide probably could come later, but it's 
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basically a summary of, you know, where we feel 

there's some issue rel-- relative to missed 

dose. And you know, certainly the unmonitored 

categories of workers is one area -- we just 

talked about. 

 Recycled uranium workers prior to '61, it's not 

clear -- you know, recycled uranium workers, 

based on some of the studies done, could be 

anywhere from 1.2 to almost 1.6, 1.7 higher in 

relative exposure just because of the 

constituents. And it's not clear how one's 

going to characterize that, and that's 

something we think should be treated in the 

site profile. 

Uncertainties and detection limits of bioassay 

techniques, this is something we can address -- 

it's being addressed in a couple slides later. 

 Radioactive material solubility and particle 

size assumptions, one thing on particle size 

assumptions -- and this is something that was, 

you know, I think addressed in the -- relative 

to the Bethlehem Steel -- is the default 

particle size of five microns is also being 

used here. And we -- we -- we're still 

troubled by that. I guess it's something that 
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-- you know, the range at Y-12 is one to ten, 

and we see different levels associated with 

uranium -- uranium oxides that are a lot 

smaller than that. We see some data that's 

higher than that. And we're wondering and 

would like to see some treatment of -- can one 

use a generic value like that default value and 

still get the best estimate that you need. And 

can you in fact apply what data you have -- if 

you have particle size data for certain 

operations, would this not argue that you would 

use that data. I think that's -- that's where 

we're coming from on the -- on the particle 

size. A generic particle size default of five 

microns, I think we -- we -- we're still uneasy 

about that. 

The ingestion pathway, I think we said earlier 

that workers throughout the history of the 

plant up through the eighties essentially ate, 

smoked, drank and did everything at their work 

stations. They were encouraged to do so. 

Again, this was in the major production mode of 

Y-12, and there's no question that they 

literally, you know, did everything at the -- 

at the contaminated work site. And I think 
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that just makes ingestion -- I mean we've 

raised the ingestion issue at other sites, but 

in this particular instance I think it's a 

significant issue. It's one that has to be 

treated and treated with that kind of 

importance, and I think that's something that 

needs to be added to the site profile and given 

particular weight. Not to say I know what the 

results would be necessarily. You know, 

certainly the GI tract is going to be the 

vulnerable organ. But certainly with the 

amount of time some of the workers were 

involved in this and the pathways available, it 

certainly would be significant. 

In terms of the application of coworker data, 

we had a -- I think a very vibrant discussion 

last week on this subject with -- with ORAU, 

and I think the way we left it was there isn't 

any verifiable information, no data, to 

indicate how -- how Y-12 came up with the 

maximally exposed individuals who were in fact 

monitored before '61. Okay. And certainly the 

notion is to go to coworker data in order to 

make dose assignments using what data you do 

have. I think our only admonition is that 
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there isn't anything that indicates what the 

basis for judging maximally exposed individual 

is. You know, all you have is the procedure or 

the policy and the fact that if it's -- if it's 

ten percent of the CEDE, they were badged. But 

it's not clear if in fact that was the way it 

was implemented. It's not clear exactly what 

worker categories were in fact included. So 

there's a lot of gray area there that we think 

needs to be addressed. 

The last item gets to the high fired oxides, 

and here we have a situation where you have 

uranium material that's highly insoluble for 

which you did have a urinal-- routine 

urinalysis program. Recognition came in '98 

that in fact this and some other materials were 

in fact -- were insoluble, not something that 

could be picked up in urinalysis, and everybody 

was put on routine fecal analysis. Again, this 

is something that needs to be addressed in the 

site profile. Not a whole lot of treatment 

other than the fact that the -- that that 

change was acknowledged, that they in fact did 

change it, but not anything that would speak to 

what is one going to do about what potentially 
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could be a lot of missing dose for the workers 

that were working with the insoluble uranium. 

We spent some real time on neutrons because, 

again, with Iowa and what have you, we did go 

through this discussion on NTA film. And I 

have to say, we were puzzled with the I think 

hard-held position that 500 to 700 keV was an 

appropriate threshold and in fact that you were 

able to capture 95 percent of the neutrons that 

were important to measure in some of these 

operations. And we had -- again, had some 

vibrant discussions with George Kerr and the 

ORAU folks. I think we -- and in this -- this 

is the product of that discussion, and I think 

we understand that the -- that the assumption 

is that -- based on experience, that these 

neutrons were in fact high energy hard 

neutrons, that in fact you didn't have a 

variety of sources to worry about, that the 

principal source were these high energy 

neutrons and that the NTA film, on that basis, 

could see them, so to speak, at these energies. 

We're not comfortable -- we're not there yet 

with that particular position. And frankly it 

just comes from the fact that there's other 
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sources we feel moderate -- that there's in 

fact sources of moderated neutrons at -- at Y12, that in fact you do have other sources that 

would not fit that -- that -- that template, 

and that I think you're going to not see the 

broad proportion that you -- that is being 

claimed in the site profile. 

I think the -- the comeback was one could look 

at the energy spectra of neutrons at Y-12 and 

try to come up with a broader basis for making 

that claim. But at this point -- at this point 

in time in terms of the site profile, it really 

isn't enough I think to substantiate that, you 

know, neutrons are in fact so exclusively hard 

that -- that NTA film in this particular 

instance -- not other instances, this 

particular instance -- is going to be okay, you 

can in fact rely on it, you can draw all the 

exposures from it. And I think that's the -- 

that's the message that we have here that 

really one is going to have to come up with 

perhaps a stronger basis in terms of spectral 

measurements, or data that speaks to the 

spectrum before I think you -- this case could 

be made. 
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And there's other things in the site profile 

that I think really are contradictory, in a 

way. There were some references to more 

advanced dosimetry for neutrons that were put 

in place in '80, and the comment was made that 

-- that by putting this in place, it would be 

more representative of the workplace because it 

in fact would capture back-scatter and would 

capture moderated neutrons more effectively. 

And so it sort of makes that comment in terms 

of -- of being more representative of the Y-12 

workplace from that instance, but it doesn't 

jive quite with this particular conclusion. 

In terms of the external dose, radiationgenerating devices, this is a scope issue. 

Again, we think there's a number of non-medical 

X-ray machines, 86-inch cyclotron and other 

sources that in fact are radiation sources that 

aren't really addressed in terms of the scope 

of the site profile. I think the comment was 

made in our conference calls last week, this is 

something that'll be picked up in a revision. 

But again, this is a scope issue. These are 

sources that ought to be picked up in terms of 

how they're measured and whether or not the 
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dosimetry's adequate. 

I touched on this before. Again, the methods 

outlined in the site profile are valid if the 

pre-1961 badged workers were in fact the 

highest exposed workers. And the comment was 

made that, you know, if you don't buy that 

supposition, then the coworker approach does 

not work at all. And again, we don't disagree 

with that, but we're not -- we're -- we're 

still skeptical and somewhat dubious that in 

fact this class of workers who were ultimately 

badged represents the highest maximally 

exposed. And we certainly would like to see 

more documentation, more verification on how 

these workers were in fact selected for badging 

and whether one can rest -- a fairly important 

assumption, this is how one is going to 

determine, you know, this -- this -- this broad 

assignment of dose for all these workers before 

'61. It's all going to come down to whether in 

fact these badged workers were the maximally 

exposed. I think that's -- that's where we're 

having some concern. Other than I think some 

reliance on the policies that were in place, 

some confidence in Hap West and maybe the 
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people that were making those decisions, and we 

can't find anything that documents that process 

and how these were selected. And I think 

that's -- that's the qualification that we have 

at this point. Not to say that -- that -- you 

know, the strategy wouldn't work, it's just 

that we can't see anything that -- that 

validates these -- these individuals as being 

maximally exposed. 

In terms of internal dose, other sites -- 

particularly uranium sites -- attention's given 

to the different classes of solubility in terms 

of picking ones that are most conservative for 

the particular pathway involved, whether it be 

air concentrations, whatever. In this case, 

Type F is kind of taken off the table and 

reliance is on S and M. I think -- the only 

thought we have there is that it's not clear if 

that should be the case across the board. We 

think for uranium hexafluoride and certain 

chemical compounds, F class may actually be 

very pertinent from the standpoint of 

inhalation dose, whatever. And we're not clear 

why S and M is being focused on exclusively. 

We understand from the urinalysis standpoint, 
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but I think it's too broad. I think we want to 

see more treatment of different pathways where 

F class may actually be more conservative, 

depending on the cancer and the organ you're 

looking at. And that -- the inconsistency is 

that other sites -- other site profiles, that's 

the way it's been done. So we're just trying 

to see why this is being sort of ruled out, 

taken off the table in terms of how that's 

treated. 

Particle size we talked about. Ingestion we 

talked about, that's a pathway that needs to be 

addressed. 

 And there's uncertainty measurements and 

detection limits that frankly are important in 

understanding what the assumptions were in 

terms of the bioassay measurements that aren't 

clearly laid out in the site profile at this 

point. And again, we'd like to see that 

clarified and be very crisp about it because, 

again, I think that has a heavy influence on 

it. 

 One thing that we picked up on that is a -- 

it's sort of a generic issue, is that workers 

up through the late eighties were told to -- 
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you know, to wait 48 hours before providing a 

sample. They would go home over the weekend 

and come in on Monday and provide the urine 

sample for urinalysis. The basis was to allow 

the soluble uranium to be washed out so you 

wouldn't have that as a background necessarily. 

And again, that isn't treated specifically in 

the site profile, but we believe it has 

implications for missed dose if one doesn't 

look at what the equilibrium value of -- and 

potential exposure might be from some of the 

soluble uranium that's resident because of the 

contamination levels. Not prejudging how 

significant it is, we're just saying it should 

be looked at, should be part of the intake 

model, you know, in terms of this so-called 48-

hour delay that -- that typified how things 

were done. 

This was reversed the late eighties. They went 

from doing it after 48 hours to doing it during 

the weekend -- taking the bottle home, so to 

speak. But again, the workers were pretty 

clear that this is the way it was done before 

then. 

 On the environmental side, again, I think these 
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are points of scope. I don't think there's any 

controversy, but we do think that ingestion 

ought to be factored into the environmental 

assessment. 

Nuclides other than uranium, right now uranium 

is exclusively addressed in the environmental 

dose TBD. 

To the extent that -- because of the proximity 

of the sites, that perhaps X-10 contributes, 

that's something that can be either ruled out 

or ruled in, depending on a very cursory 

scoping analysis, I think. 

And again, they did burn DU chips and the 

question of how that might have contributed. 

Just points to... 

 Extremity and skin doses were pretty 

significant at Y-12. Workers handled uranium 

directly. They, you know, milled it, they 

shaped it, they carried it. And same thing for 

thorium. And the exposures, I just took a item 

out of one of the quarterly dose reports that 

was put out by Y-12, and it was relatively 

significant. I wouldn't say it was a urgent 

issue, but it was relatively significant. Skin 

dose and extremity dose is not covered in any 
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great detail in the site profile. And granted, 

it's not a organ dose issue other than the 

skin, but I think it's fairly significant. I 

think it's something that would need to be 

addressed. I don't think there's any 

disagreement. I understand that ORAU is moving 

toward including extremity and skin dose in the 

site profile. 

And finally, we found the site profile to be an 

adequate treatment of the "core" programs -- 

okay? -- at -- at Y-12. We did have issues of 

completeness. These aren't any surprises. I 

think every instance we've raised, I don't 

think there was any dispute by ORAU. I think 

the notion was that this being a early site 

profile, it was truly, with a capital L, a 

living document. And they were trying to add 

to and complement the profile. 

In terms of where they might be headed, we 

think attention should be paid to the bioassay 

program in terms of its ability to detect 

insoluble uranium oxides, the high fired oxides 

in particular; acute uptakes, some of these 

incidental acute instances of exposure; and 

radionuclides other than uranium -- these are 
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all being addressed. 

The use of coworker issue in terms of trying to 

fill in the gaps before '61 I think is a very 

crucial issue. I think we have situations with 

recycled uranium in other instances where I 

think those judgments are going to be extremely 

important and how you base those values. What 

coworkers you actually use I think is going to 

be a -- a telling point. 

Spectral field measurements for neutrons, I 

think this is an issue that can be answered 

right now. I think there's not a sufficient 

basis for saying that NTA film is fine and you 

can use it in this particular situation. I 

understand the -- certainly the site experts 

who have dealt with the neutron dosimetry at Y12 see this as pretty much a hard neutron field 

and -- but the PNNL study which was done, which 

is actually cited in the site profile, did look 

at one specific source term in terms of 

exposure, and it was a fairly hard source. I'm 

not sure that answers the question in terms of 

the other possible sources at Y-12. 

And again, the question of unmonitored or 

intermittently monitored -- I put 
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intermittently in there because you have the 

unmonitored workers, but the workers we talked 

to -- it's a -- it's a gradation. You have 

some folks that weren't monitored hardly at 

all, some that were occasionally -- bioassays -

- but not on any regular frequency. And I 

think trying to figure out how you treat those 

and certainly deal with the exposures is pretty 

important. 

And of course the environmental dose 

methodologies. 

I want to again close out and acknowledge that 

given the 30 days of active review, we did get 

a lot of cooperation and -- and -- not only 

from NIOSH and ORAU, but also from Y-12. Y-12 

turned around classified reviews within 24 

hours. I've never seen that in my career where 

in fact you could get a cleared document in 24 

hours. They actually did do that at Y-12, so I 

thought that was tremendous and enabled us to 

actually even have something to say, quite 

frankly. So again, it's been a very expedited 

review. 

I did want to engage the ORAU counterparts. 

We've had some pretty good dialogue. I think 
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we have a -- we want to do an issue resolution 

process on this in a couple weeks. I think 

they're agreeable. What I'd like to see is 

some convergence on what's important, because a 

lot of the work being done is ongoing and I 

think this will help perhaps point things in 

the right way. 

Thank you very much. Any questions? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Joe. Let's see if any 

of the Board members have questions. Obviously 

this is a work in progress and it gives us a 

kind of a status report on where they are and 

what they've done so far. 

Yes, Leon Owens. 

MR. OWENS: Some of this -- this class of 

workers that you referred to as service 

workers, do they have occasion to handle any of 

the uranium, based on your interviews? Did you 

get any information regarding that from them? 

 MR. FITZGERALD: They didn't handle it as a 

line production person would handle it. They 

essentially did everything else. I mean, you 

know, when you talk about a maintenance person, 

a maintenance person in a plant like Y-12 could 

do anything from fixing the machines to 
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basically working on the process line to moving 

material around. So when you say "handled", 

they did everything but actually machine or -- 

or do chemical operations, but everything else 

was in bounds. And Y-12 wasn't zoned in such a 

way that people couldn't work anywhere within 

those buildings. So even if you had high fired 

oxides here, thorium here and plutonium in the 

X-10 facilities here, those workers would have 

access. They in fact would have worked in 

those areas. And certainly a concern in those 

cases is if they weren't monitored in any -- 

any meaningful way, it would be hard to even 

know, you know, given the diversity of work 

activities, what they might have been exposed 

to day-to-day. They did move around all the 

time. That was their job, to move around where 

the -- either the maintenance work or the 

janitorial work would be required. But the 

only thing they didn't do is actually the 

machining, the components and, you know, the 

actual handle of the liquid streams, but as far 

as maintenance and cleanup and moving material 

around, that was pretty -- that was pretty 

broad. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Rich Espinosa. 

MR. ESPINOSA: On the exhaust systems, do you -

- does it -- was anything explained to you on 

how the system was zoned and, you know, a lot 

of times when they turn off these exhaust 

systems in these buildings, what happens is it 

creates, like they're saying here, a back-flow 

and the --

 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

MR. ESPINOSA: -- system will literally burp. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. That's essentially 

what happened. This actually came from the 

health physics reports. Y-12 puts out very 

comprehensive quarterly -- I think it's a 

quarterly -- health physics reports, and what 

they were reporting is, you know, in terms of 

anomalies where you had a high -- say 9206 had 

a high air contamination level for that 

particular month, exceeded plant levels. They 

would try to diagnose, you know, what was the 

reason behind that. And a number of examples 

came up. One was the fact that you had this 

back-flow on one instance where it essentially 

pushed the contamination back in the work area 

and put the air concentrations fairly high. 
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Another instance is there's an incinerator in 

9206 that was a bad actor and essentially was 

the source of a lot of the airborne 

particulates and contamination for the 

building, so you'll -- you'll see -- you know, 

we would have been -- at this level -- if it 

weren't for the 9206 incinerator, we would have 

been at this level if it weren't for this backflow on the exhaust. And you kind of pick that 

up over time. There's always another reason 

why things were high, but you had these 

examples of what I would call acute -- acute 

releases of contaminates within the plant. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Any others? Okay, thank you. 

Thank you, Joe, again. 

Y-12 SPECIAL EXPOSURE COHORT (SEC) PETITION 

Let's move on then to the presentation of the 

petition on the Y-12 Special Exposure Cohort, 

and this will be presented by Larry Elliott. 

 DR. WADE: I think -- a couple of issues. We 

have to have Mr. Presley excuse himself, if 

you'd be so kind, sir. And then we did provide 

an open line to the Y-12 petitioners to join 

us. Do we have any indication that any of 

those petitioners have joined us at this point? 
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 (No responses) 

 DR. WADE: Let me get Cori just to work that 

issue. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Let it be known that I am 

stepping away from the table. Also let it be 

known that today is a national holiday for Y-12 

and there may not be anybody there. 

 (Whereupon, Mr. Robert Presley vacated his seat 

at the Board table.) 

 DR. ZIEMER: If you will, wait just a minute, 

Larry, till we find out if any petitioners are 

there. 

(Pause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: You may proceed. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer, and good 

afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the Board 

and the public. 

Well, I appreciate all the good hard work that 

SC&A and Joe Fitzgerald and his team did on the 

Y-12 site profile. It certainly will aid us in 

providing a more comprehensive and robust 

Technical Basis Document for that site. 

 In all deference and respect to Dr. Wade and 

the Board here, though, this is an SEC 

petition. And in that site profile we had 
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reserved the early years of Y-12, indicating 

that we had no data in that site profile for 

those early years. And so this particular SEC 

petition for Y-12 came to us and that's what 

we're here to talk about at this point now. 

We received three Y-12 petitions on behalf of 

employees at the plant. Petition 18 defined a 

class as all control operators that worked in 

the building 9201-5 and the Beta Building at Y12 facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee from 

January, 1944 through December of 1945. 

Petition 26 came to us defining all Tennessee 

Eastman Corporation employees at the Y-12 plant 

that conducted laboratory equipment cleaning 

work from 1943 through 1947. 

Petition 28 specified a class of all 

steamfitters, pipefitters and plumbers who 

worked at Y-12 from October, 1944 through 

December of 1957. 

 These Y-12 submissions as petitions met the 

criteria outlined in 83.7 through 83.9, and 

qualified for evaluation on the following 

dates: Petition 18 qualified on February 3rd, 

2005; Petition 26 qualified on May 9th, 2006; 

and Petition 28 qualified on April 29th, 2005. 
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 Those petitioners were notified by letter, and 

a notice was published in the Federal Register 

on April 7th for Petition 18 and on June 6th of 

this year for Petitions 26 and 28. 

We evaluated the petitions using the guidelines 

that are presented in 83.13, and we submitted a 

summary of findings in a Petition Evaluation 

Report to this Board and to the petitioners. 

The Board received this evaluation report on 

June 13th, 2005 and the petitioners received 

the report on June 14th, 2005. A summary of 

the evaluation report was published in the 

Federal Register on June 22nd. 

As you recall, the statutory requirement is 

that a -- to add a class to the Special 

Exposure Cohort, a two-pronged test must be 

met. One, is it feasible to estimate the level 

of radiation doses of individual members of the 

class with sufficient accuracy; and two, if not 

on number -- if you can't do number one and we 

have to address number two, is there a 

reasonable likelihood that such a radiation 

dose may have endangered the health of members 

of the class. 

NIOSH identified and reviewed data sources to 
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determine the availability of information 

relevant to determining the feasibility of dose 

reconstruction, and we determined the 

availability of information on personal 

monitoring, area monitoring, industrial process 

and radiation source materials that were 

pertinent to these petitions. These particular 

sources that we evaluated for these petitions 

include the site profile and the Technical 

Basis Documents, the previous dose 

reconstructions that had been completed up to 

the point in time of receiving the petitions, 

the NIOSH and ORAU research documents that are 

found on our database, the documentation and/or 

affidavits provided by the petitioners. And we 

evaluated the basis for health endangerment, as 

well, from the information at hand. 

When we looked at the site profile, as I 

mentioned earlier, the early years of the site 

were reserved. We had no data for those years. 

But we used this information from the site 

profile to examine the process history 

information, the information on personal and 

area monitoring, the radiation source 

descriptions and the references to the primary 
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documents that are relevant to the different 

radiological operations at the facility. 

We examined the personal internal and external 

monitoring data and we found none to be 

available for the particular time period of 

interest. There were limited area monitoring 

for external penetrating exposures, and about 

900 dust monitoring data records that are 

available for examination. 

As I mentioned earlier, we reviewed the dose 

reconstruction database that -- for those cases 

that had been completed. There were 810 cases 

that meet the revised class definition 

employment period criteria, and I'll show you 

that class definition in a moment that was 

revised. There were 135 dose reconstructions 

that had been completed for employees at Y-12 

during the years identified in the revised 

class definition. We did not find any internal 

or external dosimetry records that were 

available or had been obtained through our 

requests to DOE for those particular cases. 

Again, the 135 cases that we had completed were 

done through dose reconstruction techniques by 

an overestimating or an underestimating 
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reconstruction approach. These methods are 

outlined in NIOSH internal procedure OCAS-PR003. These methods make use of the relatively 

limited and case-specific information that are 

not sufficient to demonstrate the feasibility 

of estimating radiation doses for an entire 

class of employees. 

 In qualifying and evaluating the petitions, we 

also looked at affidavits and documents that 

were provided by the petitioners, and those 

have also been shared with the Board. 

Only area monitoring techniques were used to 

measure and provide data to support the control 

of radiation exposure during the March, 1943 

through December, 1947 operating period. This 

included the condenser R chamber results. 

There were no personal internal or external 

monitoring data available prior to 1948. 

 Our evaluation report addressed the following 

revised class definition of employees at Y-12. 

We -- we took the definition that was proposed 

by the three petitioners and we revised it into 

this definition that you see before you: All 

DOE, DOE contractors or subcontractors, or AWE 

employees who worked in uranium enrichment 
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operations or other radiological activities at 

the Y-12 facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee from 

March, 1943 through December, 1947. 

 Now what radiological activities did this 

encompass. It included all the Calutron 

uranium enrichment operations and processes for 

that time period. 

It included a program for developing and 

distributing beneficial radioactive isotopes 

which began during the first half of 1944. 

There was also an effort to develop a batteryoperated neutron monitor, and so that was 

included in this class definition. 

There was a large 226 radium source for 

radiographic examinations that was in use and 

had to be maintained. That was also included. 

As well, the assaying of samples of enriched 

isotopes of iron, chromium and lithium were 

included in this list of radiological 

activities for this class. 

Also, a study of the relative behavior of 

thorium and uranium in ether extractions was 

going on at Y-12 at the time. 

Furthermore, a development of a rapid procedure 

for the separation of trace amounts of thorium 
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from large amounts of uranium prior to 

colorimetric estimation with thoron was going 

on at the time at Y-12. 

So through -- March of 1943 through December, 

1947, condenser R chamber measurements indicate 

concern about exposure to X-rays for personnel 

adjacent to the calutron operation. We had 

this documentation available. 

Also, there were formal area dust monitoring 

program, but it was not established until late 

April of 1945. Dust monitoring was conducted 

from 1944 to 1947, and it consisted of general 

area air sampling only. We have not been able 

to locate any documentation that indicates 

whether the samples measured breathing zone 

exposures or not. 

We find that we lack information on the 

frequency of area dust monitoring sampling for 

this time period of March, 1943 through 

December, 1947. 

We have an ORAU report that indicates that 

workers employed during this time frame had a 

high potential for internal intakes because of 

the process that was performed, and that would 

be the calutron operation. 
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We find that the completed dose reconstructions 

that we have done, those 135 dose 

reconstructions that were finished before we 

received this SEC petition, they were 

completed, but they were not sufficient to 

demonstrate the feasibility of estimating 

radiation dose for an entire class of 

employees. 

 Overestimates applied to employees who did not 

routinely work in uranium enrichment buildings 

or the radiological processes at Y-12, or who 

incurred cancers for which the maximum relevant 

radiation doses can be estimated, are included 

in this particular group of 135. These 

overestimates would not apply to uranium 

workers who worked routinely in the uranium 

enrichment buildings. 

Again, there are no individual monitoring 

records that are available prior to 1948. 

 No urinalysis data is available prior to 1948, 

and the later urinalysis data we feel is not 

representative of the urine activity during the 

time period from 1943 to 1947 when the 

calutrons were in operation. In other words, 

we can't use that as a surrogate to gauge what 
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happened during the calutron operation. 

We find that there are no other bioassay data 

in existence, at least none that we can find. 

 The sampling strategies and the frequencies of 

general air sampling for dust is not known, not 

documented. 

NIOSH cannot establish a maximum exposure 

scenario based on source term and process data 

for this time frame and for these operations -- 

for these radiological activities. 

 The calutron operations were unique among 

uranium production and enrichment operations. 

And the inefficiencies of these calutron 

operations, coupled with the continuous 

assembly/disassembly, the huge amount of 

maintenance activity, the large effort to clean 

these devices requires a substantial amount of 

time for workers to receive what we would 

consider to be a substantial airborne 

concentration. So without breathing zone 

measurements for these activities, we do not 

believe we can establish a maximum exposure 

scenario. 

 External radiation exposures would have 

occurred during this time period in specific 
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areas. We can recognize that from the process 

description. 

Exposure to neutron radiation was also possible 

during this particular era and for these 

operations. 

 Occupational medical exposures to X-rays also 

documented for employees during this time 

period do exist. 

 Film badge monitoring did not occur until 1948. 

In summary, NIOSH has established that it lacks 

access to sufficient information to estimate 

either the maximum radiation dose incurred by 

any member of this class, or to estimate such 

radiation doses more precisely than a maximum 

dose estimate. 

The evaluation for Petition 28, January 1948 

through December 1957, for all steamfitters, 

pipefitters and plumbers continues, and that's 

where this review of the site profile and Joe 

Fitzgerald's preview of issues will certainly 

come to bear on this next evaluation that we do 

to finish up Petition 28. That evaluation 

report will be presented to the Board in a 

future meeting. 

There were in our -- for evaluating health 
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endangerment, we were not able to identify any 

discrete incidents to have involved 

exceptionally high levels of acute exposure, no 

criticality incidents, at least none 

documented. 

The hazard characterized as episodic 

inhalations of radionuclides that cumulatively 

resulted in chronic exposures, and so we 

believe that the health was endangered. 

Our proposed class definition for this class 

would be that all DOE, DOE contractors or 

subcontractors, or AWE employees who worked in 

uranium enrichment operations or the other 

radiological activities at Y-12 facility in Oak 

Ridge, Tennessee from March 1943 through 

December 1947. 

In summary, we find that it's not feasible to 

reconstruct doses for those -- this particular 

class, and we do believe that the health was 

endangered. 

BOARD DISCUSSION OF Y-12 SEC PETITION

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Larry. We will have an 

opportunity for some questions here. I'm going 

to kick it off by asking Larry, will you 

confirm to the Board that the lack of data for 
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the years that you indicated is not due to 

there being data that's classified? Can you 

confirm --

 MR. ELLIOTT: I can confirm that to the best of 

my ability. We have not run in-- 

 DR. ZIEMER: I just want to make sure that 

we're not dealing with the issue of classified 

data. It's the issue of there appears, to the 

best of your knowledge not to be that 

information available. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: There appears to be no data, no 

information. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. And would you clarify 

now -- this final definition then includes 

Petition number 18 --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- Petition number 26 --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and what --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Portions of Petition 28. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And portions of 28. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. It would include a portion 

of the time, and of course steamfitters and 

pipefitters, whoever worked in -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: In that time. 
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 MR. ELLIOTT: -- that time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Everybody understand then that 

this proposed class covers those first two 

petitions completely -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, it does. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and a portion of the third 

petition, Petition number 28, and it possibly 

includes some others who wouldn't -- who 

weren't even included in that peti-- those 

petitions. Is that -- I'm (unintelligible) -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't believe we have another 

Y-12 petition that's been qualified at this 

time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: There -- there's some workers that 

might have been identified that weren't 

identified in the original petition's -- it 

seemed like your definition was a little 

broader. Did I misunderstand that? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: The definition for 28 was broader 

in its time frame, but specific in the worker 

categories that it defined. Is that -- is that 

your --

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) No. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Eighteen and 26 were very specific 

in -- in the individuals they included. It 
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appeared that --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, 18 and --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- when you combined them, you 

broadened --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. Yes, we did. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- them, as well. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Eighteen and 26 were specific in 

-- not only in time frame, but specific -- 18 

was specific to the calutron operations. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And we broadened both the time 

frame --

 DR. ZIEMER: And the --

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- and the category of workers 

that were included. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: We're saying all workers -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- not just limiting it to 

(unintelligible) --

 DR. ZIEMER: That's my point, I want to make 

sure that was understood by the Board. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: We also identified a number of 

radiological activities that were not included 

in either --
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 DR. ZIEMER: In the petitions. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- the first two petitions. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. Okay. Jim? 

 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) I have two 

questions. 

(On microphone) One is -- since you brought it 

up, Paul -- the classification issue. I 

believe the Board at our last meeting had 

requested further information on that, 

including a copy of a written decision and -- 

if appropriate now or more appropriate at some 

other point during this meeting -- I'd like to 

get an update on where that issue stands. 

 DR. WADE: We have it on the agenda for 

tomorrow. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay, that's fine. Number two, 

Larry, just to make sure I understand the issue 

of the completed individual dose 

reconstructions that overlap with this -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- petition, as I understand it, 

you -- some have been -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: There's 135 dose reconstructions 

that were completed. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 
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 MR. ELLIOTT: Of those 135, we were able to 

complete them by either using an overestimate 

or an underestimate. These are -- these are 

standard approaches that we use in dose 

reconstruction. In underestimate we can use 

the information at hand for the particular case 

and the type of cancer that is involved and 

show it to be compensable. 

 DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: The overestimate, for the type of 

cancer involved and the information at hand, we 

can provide an overestimate that shows that the 

case is not compensable. 

 DR. MELIUS: Right. But in this case you have 

in one of your slides the overestimate applied 

to employees who did not routinely work in 

uranium enrichment buildings or radiological 

processes at Y-12, or who incurred specific 

cancers for which the maximum relevant 

radiation doses can be estimated. That's part 

I'm a little confused at in terms of -- of -- 

are these people that worked from '43 to '47 -- 

would they or not -- they not be included, the 

(unintelligible) --

 MR. ELLIOTT: They may have had some time in 
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that, but they had more time outside of that 

time period. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. So would some of those 

people now qualify? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: They may very well qualify. If 

they were denied, they may very well be 

qualified. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And Department of Labor will 

examine each of those cases to make that -- 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- determination. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Rich, did you have a question? 

MR. ESPINOSA: No. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's a carry-over, okay. Other 

questions or comments? 

 DR. WADE: You need to see if any petitioners 

are on, if they want to make any comments. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, we need to determine whether 

any petitioners did come on the line, or is 

there anyone in the assembly who is a part of 

the petition who wishes to speak. Apparently 

not. 

 DR. WADE: Yes, we do. 

PETITIONER: (Via telephone) Hello? 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, yes, okay, we apparently do. 

Could you please identify yourself for the 

record and please make your comments. 

PETITIONER: (Unintelligible due to telephone 

connection) 

 DR. ZIEMER: We're having a great deal of 

difficulty with the connection here. It seems 

to be coming in and out. 

PETITIONER: (Unintelligible) Petition 28. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Could you state your name again, 

please? 

PETITIONER: (Unintelligible) Duvall. 

UNIDENTIFIED: Duvall, Paul Duvall. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Paul Duvall, is that correct? 

 MR. DUVALL: I'm James Duvall and Betty Duvall, 

my mother is here. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Please proceed with your 

comments. 

 MR. DUVALL: We're just listening, but at this 

time I don't think we have a comment. I think 

our petition's number 28. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, we have that petition. 

 MR. DUVALL: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Did you have any other comments 

then? 
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 MR. DUVALL: Not at the -- not at this time, 

no. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you very much. 

 MR. DUVALL: Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Mark Griffon. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I -- I just want to 

understand a little bit on -- on sort of where 

-- where you can draw the line on when it's -- 

when you can calculate a plausible maximum. So 

I noticed on the bottom of page 9 you talk 

about --

 DR. ZIEMER: It's on page 9 of which document, 

Mark, are you looking at? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Of the evaluation report, I guess 

for 18. 

 DR. WADE: That's in your binder. It's under 

the tab for Y-12, the last document. You have 

the three petitions and then finally the 

evaluation report for 18. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I -- I guess -- I guess this 

would have been my sense, too, is that the 

calutron operators -- it -- it -- I'm 

summarizing, but it says the calutron operators 

likely had very little or no contaminated dust 

during normal operations. But Larry, you -- 
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you talked about the break-- the constant 

maintenance work and -- and -- and you know, 

handling that went on. I'm wondering if -- if 

these calutron operators were actually involved 

in that kind of work or if we're being too 

broad in -- in the characterization of the 

class here. And I just want to understand 

this, just -- just in terms of our setting 

precedents and how we -- how we deliberate on 

these issues. 

Well, again, we have no information -- no 

exposure monitoring information. It is our 

belief from the work histories that we 

developed in the Computer Assisted Telephone 

Interview process that these people who worked 

in the calutron operation at times were asked 

to serve and clean up and do the maintenance 

and do the disassembly and those -- those 

various sorts of activities. 

 MR. GRIFFON: So -- so they could have well 

been involved in those acti-- they had the 

potential to be involved in -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- that work. Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Melius, did you have another 
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question -- no. Other Board members? 

Now I believe that what is needed is a formal 

action, if the Board is prepared to take 

action, on what is essentially a recommendation 

-- actually we don't have to -- we don't have 

to approve the recommendation, but we have to 

provide to the Secretary, through the Director 

of NIOSH, our recommendation on this petition. 

And I'm a little bit unclear procedurally -- 

and Lew Wade will help me with this -- that 

once the class has been sort of reconstituted, 

as was done in this case, are we then required 

to use this new combined class or -- 

 DR. WADE: I don't think you're required to use 

the new combined class. I think it's the 

Board's prerogative as to how to proceed from 

the original petition. NIOSH is suggesting a 

new class. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So the possible motions here would 

be to act individually on these three 

petitions, or to act on a combined class as 

recommended by NIOSH. Jim, your flag is up. 

Is that --

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I am prepared to make the 

motions on combined classes -- 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, if you'd proceed to make your 

motion. 

 DR. MELIUS: And this is rather lengthy, so -- 

and will sound familiar to the Board -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: You have a wording somewhat 

similar to previous situations -- 

 DR. MELIUS: Quite similar. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 DR. MELIUS: The Board recommends that the 

following letter be transmitted to the 

Secretary of Health and Human Services within 

21 days. Should the Chair become aware of any 

issue that in his judgment would preclude the 

transmittal of this letter within that time 

period, the Board requests that he promptly 

inform the Board of the delay and the reasons 

for this delay, and that he immediately works 

with NIOSH to schedule an emergency meeting of 

the Board to discuss this issue. 

Colon. The letter would read as follows: The 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, 

parentheses, the Board, has evaluated SEC 

Petitions 18, 26 and portions of Petition 28 

under the statutory requirements established by 

EEOICPA and incorporated into 42 CFR Section 
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83.13(c)(1) and 42 CFR 83.13(c)(3). The Board 

respectively recommends a Special Exposure 

Cohort be accorded to all Department of Energy, 

parentheses, DOE, DOE contractor or 

subcontractors, or DOE (sic) employees who 

worked in uranium enrichment operations or 

other radiological activities at the Y-12 

facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee from March 

1943 through December 1947, and whom were 

employed for a number of work days aggregating 

at least 250 work days occurring either solely 

under this employment or in combination with 

work days of employment occurring within the 

parameters established -- excuse me -- within 

the parameters, parentheses, excluding 

aggregate work day requirements, close 

parentheses, established for other classes of 

employees included in the SEC. 

This recommendation is based on three specific 

factors. Number one, the Y-12 facility during 

this time period was one of the earliest sites 

involved in the production of nuclear weapons 

and was constructed and operated during a time 

when radiation control and monitoring methods 

were still under development. 
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 Two, monitoring data, as well as information on 

sources of radiation exposures and process 

information are insufficient for adequate 

individual dose reconstruction for the time 

period involved. In particular, information 

needed for dose reconstruction on the calutron 

operations, an important source of exposure, is 

incomplete. 

Three, there is inadequate information 

necessary for individual dose reconstructions 

on other radiological activities during this 

time period, including development of 

beneficial radiological isotopes, development 

and testing of a neutron monitor, maintenance 

and use of a large Radium 226 sealed source, 

and thorium extraction. 

In its evaluation report NIOSH has concluded 

that it is likely the radiation doses for this 

group of workers at the Y-12 plant during this 

time period could have endangered the health of 

members of this class. The Board concurs. 

Based on these considerations, the Board 

recommends that this Special Exposure Cohort 

petition be granted. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. Is there a 
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second? 

DR. ANDERSON: Second. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, you've heard the motion and 

the second. This motion indeed parallels an 

action by this Board previously, and perhaps 

you would be willing to vote on this extensive 

motion without seeing the detailed wording in 

advance. However, this motion is open for 

discussion, so let me ask if there are those 

who oppose the motion or those who wish to 

speak for the motion, or those who just have 

some other comment. Mark? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think I'd fall in that third 

category. I speak in support of the motion, 

although it might not sound like it right off. 

I've still got some follow-up on -- on just how 

-- how -- how you came to the conclusion that 

you couldn't calculate a maximum plausible dose 

for this class. I mean there's mention of 900 

general area air samples. I understand the 

limitations, but there -- there are a lot of 

air sampling data. There's a mention that 

there's no source term information available, 

and I guess I find that kind of hard to believe 

that there's no source term information 
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available for this time period. Even if you 

had to make worst-case assumptions on 

enrichment, I think there -- there must be 

something that could be -- some kind of 

estimates. And I guess why I raise this is I'm 

thinking other petitions that we're dealing 

with -- you know, I guess we have to understand 

where these lines are drawn and when -- when we 

-- when we think -- I know it's case by case, 

but when we think certain things are sufficient 

to make estimates and when they're not, so I'm 

trying to get -- grapple with that a little 

bit. And I'm wondering how -- whether -- I 

mean you just say there's no -- no source term 

information available or -- or was it that 

there was -- you knew some quantity information 

but there was no specifics on enrichment levels 

and things like that, is that the -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: We knew -- we knew uranium -- we 

knew uranium is the -- is the radionuclide of 

concern in the calutron operation. However, we 

do not know what the quantity of that source 

term is at any given point in time. We do know 

they were trying to enrich it, but to what -- 

to what degree along the path of the calutron 
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operation. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Perhaps Jim Neton will add to 

that. 

DR. NETON: I'd just like to add a little bit 

to that. I think what's critical here is the 

process of the calutron enrichment where -- 

these were essentially a series of many mass 

spectrometers, if you will, in the early days. 

And they would collect these -- this enriched 

uranium on -- in certain locations, and that 

would involve some scraping and collecting and 

all this stuff. And it's unknown to us how 

that all occurred, so we really don't know 

much, if anything, about the process here. 

It's very different if you're working on a 

known process where you can sort of model it or 

know the source term and get some dispersion 

factors. But when you really don't know 

exactly how it was handled and who was in 

proximity to these things and where and that 

sort of thing, I think that's the key unknown 

here, is that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And how about -- how about the -- 

the last question is the -- the health 

endangerment question. I mean I think there 
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was a statement that basically said that it -- 

there was an ORAU report cited that said that 

they -- these people could have had significant 

intakes. I'm not sure I know what significant 

intakes would be, but how -- how was that 

conclusion made? I didn't look at the source 

document, I must admit, but how did that 

conclusion... I guess, you know, the other 

concern when we're looking at these petitions 

is that we're not -- I don't know, just because 

there's very little data and -- we don't want 

to be in a situation where we're potentially 

compensating a very unlikely or very lowly 

exposed classes, either, so -- 

DR. NETON: I honestly am not familiar with the 

report. You know, I did not draft that Y-12 

evaluation, but I would say that when you're 

dealing with enriched uranium in a loose form, 

clearly inhalation exposure and lung cancers 

are -- are not -- would not be unlikely. I 

mean PCs greater than 50 percent for -- for 

certain exposure scenarios would not be 

unlikely, but I can't speak to any more than 

that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other questions or 
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comments? 

I might add that this -- this letter -- if the 

Board approves this action, the letter would 

have an additional paragraph describing 

supporting documentation that would accompany 

it, which is the case in every previous 

situation. It simply describes the -- the 

petition itself, the evaluation of the 

petition, the Board deliberations in terms of 

our minutes (sic) and so on. That all gets 

enumerated as a -- as a final paragraph to 

this, so that would be included. 

The 21 delay -- or 21-day time really is to 

allow time for the -- for the transcripts 

actually to be transcribed. It really is not 

intended to take care of the Chairman's vast 

vacation, even though sometimes it does. But 

we have to allow some time for the supporting 

documentation to catch up with a letter. And 

the letter would go to John Howard and then to 

the Secretary for action. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Just one last question on the 

monitoring practices at the facility at the 

time, and I'm trying to remember whether ORNL 

was doing any monitoring at that time of -- of 
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the workers, whether they were at X-10 -- at 

the X-10 facility or -- I -- I guess I wonder -

- I'm just wondering whether -- why these 

people weren't monitored if there was 

significant intakes -- potential for 

significant intakes, and it looks like fairly 

significant external doses from the X-rays. 

Was it that the technology wasn't available at 

the time or was it... 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't know that we have that 

answer. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: We've searched for the data, and 

we've searched for information on 

administrative controls and practices, and I 

don't think we see anything in that that 

informs us. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Do either of you know when Oak 

Ridge formalized a dosimetry program, either at 

X-10 or Y-12 or K-25? I think they had their 

own system, as I recall. I wonder if Mr. 

Presley, who's a site expert, knows the answer 

to -- as to --

 MR. PRESLEY: Yes, sir, I do. 

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of Y-12, can you tell us -- 

 MR. PRESLEY: As a citizen and employee of Y-12 

and a person that's going through the 10,000 

records for the Tennessee Eastman, there was a 

program started in 1945 to use dosimeters, the 

little film badge dosimeters, and that -- we 

just ran across that document the other day. 

believe it's 1945 is when it was started. 

 DR. ZIEMER: At Y-12? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Y-12. Your --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Do you have any idea why we have 

no data in '45 then? Not to put you on the 

spot, Mr. Presley, but -- 

 MR. PRESLEY: Because -- because Bob Presley's 

not gone through all the 10,000 documents yet. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: These are in the classified 

holdings. 

 MR. PRESLEY: These were declassified in 1957. 

Now, some of the things have been upgraded 

since then, and that's the reason that I'm 

going through them. But that did -- what he 

asked is 1945. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Henry. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I was -- I was just 

wondering, of the 135 cases that were 

I 
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adjudicated so far, how many of those were done 

with the underestimating, do we know? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't have that information. 

don't know. 

DR. ANDERSON: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Rich? 

MR. ESPINOSA: I just want to make sure I 

understand the -- on the portions of Petition 

28, what's covered. Is it just the years of 

'43 to '47 for the steamfitters? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Okay, I just wanted to make sure 

on that. Thank you. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: All workers in those years. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Melius, you have another 

comment? 

 DR. MELIUS: I just want to follow up on some 

of Mark's comments and -- I mean as I read 

NIOSH's evaluation report, I thought they had 

made a -- you know, put a significant effort 

into developing -- trying to obtain information 

and I thought it was thoughtful evaluation of 

what were different approaches that might be 

used in terms of doing individual dose 

reconstruction. And I think their report, you 
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know, sort of -- a lot of blind alleys there, 

there just wasn't adequate -- the information 

to be able to approach -- at least for that -- 

that time period involved. And I think they 

also make a good case for why it's not possible 

to go forward in time from '48 on when there -- 

more monitoring data becomes available and try 

to extrapolate back and -- because of simply -- 

you know, what's missing among records -- you 

know, could there be records someplace that may 

show up whenever? We'll never know. I mean, 

you know, it's always going to be a frustration 

dealing with these facilities. But I think 

that -- you know, I think with the -- say they 

made a good faith effort and I think it made a 

good case here for this particular time period. 

As we get in -- a little further along, you 

know, in the years of this facility, I think 

then they'll -- you know, there will be 

questions about where do we draw the line, when 

is enough information -- you know, a certain 

amount of information adequate and so forth. 

I also think -- back to I think Henry's 

question on the completed dose reconstructions 

-- I mean this is sort of a -- a process that 
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goes on over time and that -- it's not possible 

I think for NIOSH to foresee every possible -- 

you know, what's -- eventually become a Special 

Exposure Cohort, so there are going to be some 

that are going to be evaluated before -- I mean 

the Special Exposure Cohort rule wasn't in 

place for a few years and so some of these may 

be completed during that time period. So I 

think the fact that some dose reconstructions 

have been completed and people have been turned 

down, you know, may have as much as one -- some 

of the individual work histories, but also the 

fact that historically they're trying to, you 

know, get done what they can get done and it's 

not always possible to look at the bigger 

picture and figure out what Special Exposure 

Cohorts may be -- you know, evaluated and -- 

and, you know, passed at later meetings or 

later points in time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Henry. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, my -- my interest was more 

in the ones that might have been unawarded than 

if they did underestimating and they came over 

50 percent. I was curious as to was that 

because of subsequent years when they just 
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happened to work here, or was it that -- you 

know, were there -- how that technically could 

have occurred. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

DR. ANDERSON: I'm assuming it's probably 

subsequent years that added it up. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, any further comments in 

support of or in opposition to the motion 

that's before the Board? 

Are you ready to vote? I also need to ask 

whether or not Mike Gibson is on the line this 

afternoon. Do you know if Mike... 

 DR. WADE: We have not heard from him. Is Mike 

on the line? 

 DR. ZIEMER: We'll see how the vote goes. If -

- if it happens to be one that requires one 

vote to decide it, we may hold the vote open. 

But let's -- let's go ahead and vote. 

All who favor the petition, please raise your 

right hand. 

 (Affirmative responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. All who oppose the 

petition, please raise your right hand. 

 No opposing -- abstentions? 

Dr. DeHart abstaining, and I guess we'd have to 
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say Mr. Presley official abstains, too. Is 

that not in the record? He can't even vote. 

 DR. WADE: He can't vote. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Can't vote, okay. That -- which 

is sort of like abstaining, but it has -- 

 DR. WADE: Totally different. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Totally different. Then the 

motion carries and the -- the actions that are 

included in the motion will be put into motion, 

as it were. 

Now the Chair's going to declare a 10-minute 

comfort break and we will return. 

 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 4:45 p.m. 

to 4:58 p.m.) 

 DR. ZIEMER: We'll call the meeting back to 

order. Before we begin the last item here on 

this afternoon's agenda, I neglected to 

announce to you that NIOSH has a couple of 

staff people here who are available to assist 

people who have issues or questions on 

individual claims, if you want to know the 

status of your claim or have other questions 

about it. I believe those individuals are in 

this room back behind us here to my right in a 

table in the far corner. So if you're a 
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claimant and need information about the status 

of your claim or other information about it, 

they will be available to try to help you. 

IAAP SEC PETITION 

This next item on our agenda is a SEC petition. 

It involves radiographers at the Iowa 

Ammunition Plant and the presentation will be 

made by Larry Elliott. 

 DR. WADE: Just very briefly, we welcome back 

Mr. Presley. We missed you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let the record show that Mr. 

Presley has come back to the table. 

 DR. WADE: I don't think there is anyone 

conflicted on Iowa, so we'll remain whole 

through this discussion. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Larry Elliott. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. Just as a 

reminder from our Cedar Rapids meeting, we went 

through an evaluation report on a petition for 

the Army Ammunition Plant and a portion of that 

work force was still under evaluation, those 

workers being radiographers, and so that is the 

evaluation report that I'm here to present to 

you today. 

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sure everybody has a copy of the document. 

DR. ROESSLER: I don't have one. 

 MR. PRESLEY: I don't have one. 

UNIDENTIFIED: There are none on this 

(unintelligible) --

 DR. ZIEMER: I think we have the petition and 

the evaluation report. I think what people are 

looking for are copies of your presentation, 

Larry. We don't seem to have that. Or should 

we have that? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: You should have that. They --

they were prepared over a week ago, so... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Wade will track them down. 

think you can go ahead and proceed and we'll 

try to get them in the meantime. 

 DR. MELIUS: Next time you'll wait till the day 

before. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Next time you want me to wait 

till the day before? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Too far in advance is what the 

problem is. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Always a hard group to please. 

The Iowa Army Ammunition Plant's submission 

requesting the Secretary of HHS to add a class 

to the Special Exposure Cohort was provided to 

I 
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NIOSH by way of FAX machine on June 15th, 2004. 

The initial class definition that was provided 

in that petition was stated as all technicians, 

laboratory, health physics, chemical, X-ray, et 

cetera, production personnel, hourly and 

salaried, engineers, inspectors, safety 

personnel, physical security personnel and 

maintenance persons working at the Iowa Army 

Ammunition Plant, Line 1, which includes Yard 

C, Yard G, Yard L, Firing Site area, Burning 

Field B, and the storage sites for pits and 

weapons, including Building 73 and 77, from the 

years 1947 through 1974. 

This particular petition submission met the 

criteria outlined in our Rule 42 CFR under 

Sections 83.7 through 83.9, and qualified for 

evaluation on October 20th of 2004. The 

petitioners were notified by letter, and a 

notice that the submission had qualified for 

evaluation was published in the Federal 

Register on October 25th of 2004. 

We evaluated the petition using the guidelines 

as specified in Section 83.13 of our rule and 

submitted a summary of findings and a petition 

evaluation report to the Board and to the 
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petitioners on February 2nd, 2005. A summary 

of the evaluation report was published in the 

Federal Register on February 3rd, 2006. And as 

I said earlier, NIOSH presented the Iowa 

petition evaluation report to the Board on 

February 9th, 2005, and the evaluation report 

proposed this following class definition: All 

employees working at the Iowa Army Ammunition 

Plant, Line 1, which included Yard C, Yard G, 

Yard L, Firing Site area, Burning Field B and 

storage sites for pits and weapons, including 

Buildings 72 and 77, for March 1949 to 1947 -- 

'74, excuse me. 

 Again, we're required under statutory 

requirement to evaluate these petitions using a 

two-pronged test: Is it feasible to estimate 

the level of radiation doses of individual 

members of the class with sufficient accuracy; 

and secondly, is there a reasonable likelihood 

that such radiation dose may have endangered 

the health of members of the class. 

NIOSH had reviewed the available data sources 

for the existence of personal monitoring, area 

monitoring, industrial process information and 

radiological source term information relevant 
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to determining the feasibility of dose 

reconstruction for the class. The various data 

that we looked at and the resources that we 

examined are included in this slide, and they 

consist of the existing site profiles, 

Technical Information Bulletins, the variety of 

individual dose reconstructions that had been 

completed to date, internal databases 

containing personal and area monitoring data, 

Department of Energy records, NIOSH documents, 

scientific reports, information that was gained 

through the interviews with former workers and 

information provided by the petitioners. 

In summary, the available monitoring data was 

found that from 19-- from May of 1948 to March 

of 1949 individual dosimetry is not available 

for the radiographers that are defined in the 

class. Subsequent record searches have not 

identified any detailed information concerning 

the radiographic process, the equipment or the 

procedures that were used during this early 

time period. 

 This evaluation report that we're presenting to 

you today addresses only the following class: 

Industrial radiographers who conducted 
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radiography on non-radiological high explosive 

weapon components at the Iowa Army Ammunition 

Plant from May of 1948 to March of 1949. 

In summary, our evaluation report in -- with 

specific regard to the feasibility of dose 

reconstructions for radiographers, we find that 

there is -- there is no potential for internal 

dose. There was no radiological material onsite at that time, so we're only talking about 

the X-ray exposure that would have occurred to 

this -- in -- during radiographic operations. 

We cannot use surrogate data because NIOSH 

cannot validate the nature of the radiographic 

operations. There is a lack of substantive 

process information associated with radiography 

for the time frame. There's a lack of 

information on the radiation source strength 

and the shielding that was used by 

radiographers in this time frame. Virtually no 

information on radiography practices, the 

equipment, the source strength exists, and it 

is not feasible to estimate an upper bound on 

the potential external dose incurred by 

radiographers. 

 Workers in this class may have accumulated 
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substantial doses through chronic exposure to 

external sources of radiation. And so when we 

look at health endangerment, we believe that 

their health was endangered, and we have found 

no discrete incidents to have involved 

exceptionally high levels of acute exposure. 

 So our proposed class definition would be: 

Employees whose job title was radiographer, 

working at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, Line 

1, which includes Yard C, Yard G, Yard L, 

Firing Site area, Burning Field B and Buildings 

73 and 77 from May 1948 to March 1949 and whom 

were employed for a number of work days 

aggregating at least 250 work days occurring 

under this employment in combination with work 

days of employment occurring within the 

parameters, excluding those aggregate work day 

requirements, established for other classes of 

employees included in the Special Exposure 

Cohort. 

So it's a very short presentation. That's all 

the slides I have. I can tell you that we have 

four claims that fit into this particular class 

of radiographers, only one of which has a job 

title of radiographer. 
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The other issue that I would point your 

attention to is that this time period does not 

include 250 days. It is a very short time 

period. I'm not sure -- I didn't do the math 

yet, but it's shorter than 250 days for this 

particular class. 

 And with that, I'll take questions. 

BOARD DISCUSSION OF IAAP SEC PETITION

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, Larry. 

Questions? Dr. Melius, did you have a question 

or is your flag --

 DR. MELIUS: Now I do, on the basis of Larry's 

last comment. Could you repeat that last 

statement about the time period involved is 

less than 250 days or -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: This is -- this class time 

period, as we've defined it and as the records 

indicate, covers a period from May of 1948 to 

March of 1949. 

 DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: It's short of 250 working days. 

So a person who would have spent a -- for your 

information, a person who would have spent the 

entire duration of this class time period would 

get whatever days acquired there and would have 
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to have other days in the other class at Iowa 

to get their 250 days. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So this period, in and of itself, 

is insufficient to meet the requirement. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: In and of itself is insufficient 

to award a claim for that class. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And I have a follow-up question. 

The proposed definition in the -- in your 

evaluation report says industrial radiographers 

who conducted radiography on non-radiological 

high explosive weapons. Is that definition now 

not operational? You seem to have a -- you 

ended up with a different definition, I 

believe, if I heard it correctly. The final 

definition was more like the other groups, 

described the lines and buildings and -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, the definition that I 

provided at the end is the definition that we 

would -- the evaluation report proposes. 

Earlier in my presentation I have a slide that 

says evaluation report addresses the following 

class: Industrial radiographers who conducted 

radiography on non-radiological high explosive 

materials. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, that's the so-called 
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abbreviated --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, that is an abbreviated -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: My question has to do with the 

phrase "non-radiological high explosives". 

That doesn't occur later, and if a person 

conducted radiography on both non-radiological 

and radiological, would that exclude them from 

this, or does the radiological part -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: No --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- pick them up in the other -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- it would not -- it would not 

exclude them. These folks worked on nonradiological components during this very brief 

time frame from -- from May of '48 to March of 

'49. It's our understanding, and I think one 

of the petitioners verified this understanding 

in Cedar Rapids, as well as here in St. Louis, 

that they -- they themselves believe there were 

no radiological materials on-site prior to -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: At that time. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- March of '49. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And yes, some of these 

radiographers could have worked in this class 

and then continued their radiography work on 
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radioactive components into the next class, and 

we know that that -- that happened. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Which might give them the rest of 

the days they --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- need, yes. Does everybody 

understand the nature of this and it -- it's 

understood by the petitioners that this 

restrictive time period in itself is not 

adequate to meet the needs of a claim. Is that 

correct? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: In and of itself, a worker who 

worked only during this time period would not 

acquire 250 days. They would have had to have 

worked at some other Special Exposure Cohort 

class to aggregate the days. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other questions or 

comments? Yes, Robert Presley. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Larry, do we have anybody that 

falls in that less than 250 days? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: We have four -- we have four 

claims, and I believe only one of those -- one 

of those that is not listed as a radiographer 

may have a limited time in that class. I'm not 

sure on that, but that may be it, only one 
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individual, I believe. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Then if that's the case, then he 

would not be eligible even though he had 

sufficient X-rays for this time period if he 

didn't have the time other than -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: If he didn't have the -- if he 

didn't have the 250 days, he would not be 

eligible. 

 MS. MUNN: In another... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Wanda Munn? 

 MS. MUNN: And the remainder of that 250 days 

would have to be in another SEC. Correct? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: That is correct. 

 MS. MUNN: So --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Or in the Iowa SEC, that would be 

a class. 

 MS. MUNN: So an individual who worked during 

that period of time and had 250 days following 

that, which does not fall into an SEC, would 

not therefore qualify. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: If I understand your statement, I 

believe that's correct, yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The Chair is ready to entertain a 

motion relative to this petition. 

 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) I happen to be 
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ready with one. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Melius is ready. The Chair 

recognizes Dr. Melius for the purpose of making 

a motion. 

 DR. MELIUS: My motion is as follows -- sound 

very familiar, parts of it. 

 The Board recommends the following letter be 

transmitted to the Secretary of Health and 

Human Services within 21 days. Should the 

Chair become aware of any issue that in his 

judgment would preclude the transmittal of this 

letter within that time period, the Board 

requests that he promptly informs the Board of 

the delay and the reasons for this delay, and 

that he immediately works with NIOSH to 

schedule an emergency meeting of the Board to 

discuss the issue. The letter reads as 

follows: 

The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

Health, parentheses, the Board, close 

parentheses, has evaluated SEC Petition 006-2 

concerning industrial radiographers who worked 

at the Iowa Ordnance Plant, IOP, under the 

statutory requirements established by EEOICPA 

and incorporated into 42 CFR Section 
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83.13(c)(1) and 42 CFR Section 83.13(c)(3). 

The Board respectfully recommends a Special 

Exposure Cohort be accorded to all Department 

of Energy employees or its contractor or 

subcontractor employees who worked as 

radiographers from March 1948 to -- excuse me, 

from May 1948 to March 1949 in support of Line 

1 operations of the Iowa Ordnance Plant and 

whom were employed for a number of work days 

aggregating at least 250 work days occurring 

either solely under this employment or in 

combination with work days of employment 

occurring within the parameters, excluding 

aggregate work day requirements, close 

parentheses, established for other classes of 

employees included in the SEC. 

This recommendation is based on two factors. 

During the time period in question there was no 

individual radiation monitoring program at 

IAAP. An individual dosimetry program was not 

established at that site until 1955. However, 

there is not sufficient information available 

on the radiographic operations during the time 

period in question to be able to utilize 

monitoring data from a subsequent time to 
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reconstruct individual exposures during the 

earlier time period. In order to do so in a 

scientifically sound manner, additional 

information on the radiological sources, 

shielding and the radiography process would be 

needed. 

Based on these considerations, NIOSH has 

concluded in its evaluation report that it is 

not feasible to estimate with sufficient 

accuracy the external doses incurred by these 

radiographers at IAAP during the time period in 

question. The Board concurs. 

 Number two, in its evaluation report NIOSH has 

concluded it is likely that radiation doses for 

this group of workers at the Iowa Ordnance 

Plant during this time period could have 

endangered the health of members of this class. 

The Board concurs. 

Based on these considerations, the Board 

recommends that this Special Exposure Cohort 

petition be granted. 

And there's a closing paragraph on supporting 

documentation. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. You've heard the 

motion. Is there a second? 
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 DR. DEHART: Second. 

 DR. ZIEMER: There's a second. The motion is 

on the floor for discussion. Wanda Munn. 

 MS. MUNN: I think I would have to see that 

wording in writing. There is one sentence 

which does not make clear to the reader the 

point which I was just questioning. Namely 

since it is impossible for individuals to have 

achieved the requisite number of days during 

this period, their classification as SEC 

claimants -- favorable claimants would have to 

require their additional occupation in this 

same classification during a different SEC 

period, which had previously been -- or -- 

previously or subsequently identified. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me --

 MS. MUNN: (Unintelligible) --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- respond in part, and then 

perhaps the mover of the motion can also 

respond. I Believe it's true of any SEC 

situation, regardless of whether it's this one 

or any other, under the rules, the individual 

has to get 250 days. This would be true of the 

other ones, even if the time period's greater. 

I think -- the question you're raising is does 
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an individual who fills the full gap of the 

defined time period believe that -- somehow 

that they are entitled to the compensation if 

they sort of filled the full gap. I guess 

that's really what you're asking, and I had 

kind of asked that earlier. But I thought that 

the 250 days were mentioned in the -- in the 

motion, so Jim, can you clarify it for us? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, we have standard language 

that I think we worked out when we did our 

first petition evaluation that indicates that 

they have to -- say and whom were employed for 

a number of work days aggregating at least 250 

work days occurring either solely under this 

employment, or in combination with work days of 

employment occurring within the parameters, 

excluding aggregate work day requirements, 

established for other classes of employees 

included in the SEC. 

 MS. MUNN: And that's -- that's where I raise 

the question, because since it is impossible 

for them to have accomplished it solely under 

this period, I do not think that phrase should 

be incorporated in our letter. Quite to the 

contrary, I think --
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 DR. ZIEMER: Or perhaps modified somewhat to 

indicate that it must be in combination. 

 MS. MUNN: Because this --

 DR. ZIEMER: It's going -- it, of necessity in 

this case, must be in combination, rather than 

solely or in combination. It cannot be solely. 

Is that correct --

 MS. MUNN: Correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and Jim, did it have the word 

"solely" in there or some such? 

 MS. MUNN: The original wording just read did 

have "solely" in it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The Chair will recognize this as a 

friendly amendment, if the mover of the motion 

can -- can --

 DR. MELIUS: Let me wordsmith just a second 

here. 

Okay, what if it -- and whom were employed for 

a number of work days aggregating at least 250 

work days occurring under this employment in 

combination with work days of employment 

occurring within the parameters. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think that would --

 DR. MELIUS: I think that covers --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- make it clear, yes. Wanda, are 
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you agreeable that that addresses your issue? 

 MS. MUNN: I believe so. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 MS. MUNN: Although --

 DR. ZIEMER: The seconder's okay with that? 

 MS. MUNN: -- I'm a visual (unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: The seconder's okay with that. 

Okay. He heard you say you wanted to see the 

words. 

 DR. MELIUS: She said she was visual, I was -- 

come look at the screen. 

 MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 DR. MELIUS: You want a piece of paper? 

 MS. MUNN: No, thanks. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I have a question. Maybe Larry or 

Jim can answer it. Do we know whether these 

radiographers were using X-ray equipment or 

whether they used nuclides -- you know, 

industrial -- were they sources or X-rays -- or 

both? 

UNIDENTIFIED: Sources, I'm sure. 

DR. NETON: I believe they were both, so there 

were some nuclides with -- nuclide-based 

radiography equipment. I believe that one of 

them may have been a cobalt 60 source, if I'm 
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not mistaken. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So we have limited information on 

what was used or -- I mean I -- I would sort of 

raise some questions similar to what Mark did. 

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It seems to me radiographers would 

be much easier to scope or to envelope than 

others. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I think it goes again to how many 

were done in a given time frame. We couldn't 

put a number on that, couldn't quantify that -- 

that amount of the source. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Well, you know -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Or which source was used, whether 

it was X-ray or cobalt 60. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, you know, if you tried to do 

this in a medical facility -- I'm looking -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- you can figure out pretty close 

what physi-- how many exposures you can 

physically make in a day. I mean there's -- 

there's some limits to it, even for fast 

workers. I was actually a little surprised 

that we couldn't scope this one out, but you're 

right, we don't know exactly just... 
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 MR. ELLIOTT: Again, a hard body to please. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Obviously there's a variety of 

issues. The shielding is an issue, the 

distances, apparently no dosimetry. 

 Okay, other questions? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Are the Board members at a point 

where you feel like you are ready to vote? 

There seems to be a consensus that we should 

vote. Thank you, Larry. Again, I --

 MR. ELLIOTT: I'm just standing here because I 

have a comment to make -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh --

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- on behalf of one of the 

petitioners, after you take your vote. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, after? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: He doesn't want me to do this 

before you take your vote. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Let's vote on the motion. 

 DR. MELIUS: Is it the same comment, no matter 

how... 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I think it presumes what the 

comment -- what the vote's going to be. The 

comment, you might presume what it's going to 

be, but if the vote goes the wrong way, he may 
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not want me to use this comment. 

 DR. MELIUS: That's what I'm saying. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. All who support the motion, 

raise your right hand. 

 (Affirmative responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Any opposed? Is Mike Gibson on 

the line? 

Any abstentions? Then the motion carries. 

 Larry, is there a remark that you wish to make? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, Mr. Anderson sent you all an 

e-mail and asked me if I would, you know, make 

this comment for -- for -- on behalf of the 

petitioners from Iowa. He says (reading) To 

the Advisory Board, this petitioner wishes to 

thank the Board and NIOSH for their addition of 

the X-ray workers on Line 1 into the petition. 

Your thoroughness is commendable. Mr. Robert 

Anderson. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. 

 DR. MELIUS: I received that at 11:00 o'clock 

this morning. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We will have a public comment 

period this evening. It will begin at 7:30 

here in this room. 

I also call attention, for Board members, that 
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the session tomorrow morning begins with a 

subcommittee meeting, so you do not all have to 

be here, but I do want to identify who will be 

here. 

I have Mark, Roy -- are you on -- you're on 

this subcommittee? 

 DR. DEHART: Not if he's available. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, you're the -- you were the 

fill-in for Henry. Mark, Henry, I'm involved. 

I think Mike Gibson was on the original group 

and Mike is not able to be here. Who else was 

on the original subcommittee. Gen, were you or 

Wanda? 

DR. ROESSLER: I think Wanda was. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Wanda. So those four individuals 

at least will be here early, if not bright. 

Others are welcome to join us. Is it a bad 

thing if we have a quorum? If we have a quorum 

of Board members, is that -- 

 DR. WADE: No, it's not a bad thing. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Not a bad thing, so others can -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, we're going to be looking I 

think mainly at the Mallinckrodt document, Rev. 

1 and the analysis of Rev. 1 by SC&A, in order 
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to make a recommendation to the full Board. 

And certainly our local folks here are -- from 

St. Louis are welcome to join us. This is an 

open subcommittee session. 

 DR. WADE: And have you mentioned later in the 

day possibly? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, subcommittee members, there's 

a pretty good chance we're going to also want 

to meet tomorrow evening at 7:00 o'clock. We 

have some other documents we need to go through 

in preparation for our work on Thursday, so... 

Are there any other announcements or any other 

information that the Board needs this evening, 

ask our staff. Cori is still with us -- Cori 

or Lew, anything --

 DR. WADE: We will get you copies of Larry's 

presentation on the Iowa SEC petition as 

quickly as we can. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's too late. Liz, did you have 

a comment? 

 DR. MELIUS: Can I just ask, while she's 

getting to the mike, can we leave our stuff 

here or do we have to take it with us? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Do you know if we can leave things 

in the room? 
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MS. HOMER: I would not suggest doing that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, better not to. Liz? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: This is just a housekeeping 

item. I wanted to introduce Emily Howell and 

Michael Rapke*, who are new members of the 

Office of General Counsel team. Emily will be 

assisting me with Board work, so you'll see 

more of her. And Michael came just to see one 

Board meeting to see what goes on. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Welcome. General Counsel's 

view is that you can't have too many lawyers at 

the meeting. Right? Welcome, folks. 

We will recess then till 7:30 this evening. 

Thank you very much. 

 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 5:30 p.m. 

to 7:30 p.m.) 

GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT

 DR. ZIEMER: Good evening, everyone. Welcome 

to the public comment session of the Advisory 

Board on Radiation and Worker Health. We've 

been to St. Louis a time or two before, and 

many of your colleagues have had an opportunity 

to speak to the Board. I know we've had bigger 

crowds in the past and, on a hot summer night I 

-- let's see, the Cards aren't playing tonight, 
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are they? 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oho -- anyway, we're glad you're 

here. I'm Paul Ziemer and I'm the Chairman of 

the Advisory Board. 

I want to take a few minutes here at the 

beginning and familiarize you with what this 

Board is all about. Now for some of you, this 

may not be new information because if you were 

here last time we had a public comment session 

I used the same slides. So sorry about that, 

and the Board members have seen these not only 

here in St. Louis, but a lot of different 

places, so if they fall asleep we'll understand 

why that is -- is true. We've even shown them 

up there in New York. I see Ed is here from 

the Bethlehem Steel area. 

Anyway, let me take a few minutes and just 

familiarize you with the responsibilities of 

this Board. 

Under the legislation on the Energy Employees 

Occupational Illness Act -- under the 

legislation the Board is defined, in terms of 

its composition, as consisting of no more than 

20 members who are appointed by the President 
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of the United States. And you've already 

noticed there are not 20 members here. The 

President has not chosen to -- to identify or 

select that many individuals for the Board, so 

you see all the Board members here, with the 

exception of one who -- whose father is very 

ill and he could not be here tonight. 

 The legislation also says that the Board must 

in a sense represent certain groups, 

particularly the affected workers, as well as 

representatives of the scientific and the 

medical communities. And indeed we have such 

representation on this Board. 

You see their name signs here. Very briefly I 

want to identify for you -- is that readable? 

I can almost read it myself, so -- I'm a 

retired professor from Purdue University. My 

area is radiation safety or the -- in the 

jargon of the profession, health physics. 

Lewis Wade, Dr. Wade at the front table here, 

is -- serves as our Designated Federal 

Official, and he is here in that capacity as 

part of the Centers for Disease Control, which 

is the parent organization of NIOSH. 

Henry Anderson, Dr. Anderson, is here and you 
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see -- I won't go through all their titles 

other than who they are, but this is Dr. 

Anderson from Wisconsin. 

Dr. Roy Lynch DeHart -- I like to get the Lynch 

in there -- from Tennessee; Richard Espinosa 

from Albuquerque, in the Los Alamos area; Mike 

Gibson is the one who could not be here today; 

Mark Griffon is a health physicist and 

consultant, here is Mark; Dr. Melius, Jim 

Melius over here, from New York State; Wanda 

Munn, a nuclear engineer, also retired, from 

the Hanford area; Charles Owens, who we call 

Leon 'cause he goes really by his middle name, 

so here's Leon Owens, and Leon is with U.S. 

Enrichment Corporation in Paducah; Robert 

Presley from Oak Ridge; and Dr. Gen Roessler, 

retired professor from the University of 

Florida, now living in Minnesota. So that is 

the Board, and you do see they represent a 

cross-section of different individuals. 

This Board has three specific responsibilities, 

the first of which is involvement in the 

development of guidelines. Can you read that 

from there, Richard Miller? 

 MR. MILLER: (Off microphone) No, I can't, sir. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Is there any way to blow that up 

bigger? 

 Incidentally, if you want copies of this 

there's hundreds of copies of this, so you 

should get one and have one for your mother or 

your -- yeah, or your spouse. 

 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) Tell Richard to 

move forward. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah -- Richard Miller should move 

forward is what they said. 

This Board is -- had specific responsibilities 

on the development of the guidelines that are 

used for the dose reconstruction process. 

Those guidelines are now part of the Federal 

Register. They have the force, in essence, of 

law. And also the guidelines dealing with 

probability of causation, the methodology by 

with -- by which that magic number is 

calculated. 

We also have a responsibility on assuring and 

confirming the validity of the dose 

reconstructions and the scientific quality of 

those. And so the Board has that as a very 

specific responsibility to, in a sense, look 

over the shoulders of the Federal agency -- in 
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this case NIOSH -- and assuring the quality of 

the dose reconstructions. 

And then we have a responsibility with respect 

to the Special Exposure Cohorts. And that, 

again, is spelled out by law that we are to 

advise the Secretary of Health and Human 

Services on the issue of Special Exposure 

Cohort, a process which, as you know, we are in 

right now with respect to Mallinckrodt, as well 

as some other facilities. 

So those are the three things that this Board 

is responsible for. We do not do the dose 

reconstructions. We do not deal with your 

individual cases. We do no -- we're not an 

appeals body that hears appeals on decisions 

and things like that, so we -- we are, in a 

sense, restricted by law in terms of what we 

can do. 

So in fact I put a slide in here to tell you 

what we don't do. We don't have the authority 

to review individual dose reconstruction cases 

for claimants. Now we do review some cases as 

a part of our quality control process. We look 

at cases that have been finalized to assure 

that they've been done properly. That's more 
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like an audit function. But we do not deal 

with individual cases on behalf of claimants. 

As I already said, we don't serve as a board of 

appeals. We don't even make recommendations to 

Congress. Often we have people in public 

meetings tell us that we should have Congress 

change the law in some way or do something like 

that. We do not lobby Congress. We do have 

opportunities to interact with them, indeed, as 

we did earlier today, to hear from them, as -- 

as the case may be. But we are not a lobbying 

group. 

We are not involved in changing the provisions 

of the law itself. Often people in public 

comment period say well, why don't you do this, 

or why don't you get the law changed. We are 

not the ones that do that. We do have 

opportunities sometimes to input in appropriate 

ways if we believe there's some -- something 

that should be changed, but that is not really 

an official responsibility of this group. 

You may be aware that, in order to assist the 

Board in carrying out those functions that I 

described, we have hired a contractor. And the 

government has made some funds available to the 
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Board so that we can supplement our work 

through the help of a private contractor. And 

we have contracted with S. Cohen & Associates, 

and I know that a number of you have already 

interacted with them because they've been out 

here on behalf of the Board to gather 

information in terms of evaluating site 

profiles and related things in this particular 

case. So they are assisting us in the dose 

reconstruction process reviews. But I do point 

out, as I have in the last bullet here, the 

reviews are the Board's responsibility. We 

have the contractor to advise us, to gather 

information for us, to give us their view of 

what's being done. But ultimately the 

responsibility lies with the Board in terms of 

what we do with the recommendations of S. Cohen 

& Associates. 

 Currently our contractor has four defined 

tasks. Task One is to assist us in reviewing 

site profiles. Now we do not review every site 

profile. We select certain ones to review. 

 Likewise, they assist us in tracking the cases 

that we've reviewed -- basically keeping our 

database for us. 
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 Task Three is reviewing dose reconstructions. 

We select at random numbers of dose 

reconstructions that have been completed. Our 

objective is to -- to sample about two and a 

half percent of all of the dose reconstructions 

as an audit function to determine that they 

have been done properly. And so they assist us 

with that. 

And actually what I just described is Task 

Order Four. Task Order Three is a review of 

the procedures that are used. They go back and 

have reviewed the procedures of NIOSH and its 

contractor, ORAU, to determine whether the 

procedures are suitable and are being properly 

used. So that is the function of our 

contractor. 

Now with that sort of as background material, 

let me make one closing comment here, and that 

is we're here just to listen to you. Some of 

you will want to tell us about your individual 

cases, and we're glad to have you do that. In 

general, we may not be in a position to answer 

specific questions. If you have questions 

about your own case or if you are a claimant or 

are here on behalf of a claimant, we would ask 
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that you contact one of the staff people for 

NIOSH -- and they have people that are here all 

week to assist in specific cases. So if you 

have questions of that type, we will want to 

refer -- refer you back to those staff people 

that can help you with a specific issue that 

you might have in your case. 

 Other than that -- oh, the other thing I want 

to say is we want to give preference tonight to 

those who are here speaking in behalf of or 

related to the Mallinckrodt petition and the 

facility here. We will hear from others, but 

I'm going to give preference in our speaking 

order to -- first to those who are here to talk 

about the local facility. 

So with that, let me return to my seat and I 

have a list of people who have asked to speak. 

It's still not too late, you can -- you can add 

your name to the list, but I'll take these in 

the order that -- that I was -- they were given 

to me, and we'll begin with Dan McKeel. 

 And Dan, we've heard from him before. We're 

glad to see you back, Dan, to -- 

 DR. MCKEEL: Yes, sir. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- address the group. 
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 DR. MCKEEL: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer, and good 

evening to everybody and the members of the 

Board. I am Dan McKeel and tonight I want to 

confine my remarks to put on the facts 

regarding a FOIA request, a Freedom of 

Information Act request, that Ed Heisell* and 

I, of the Missouri Coalition for the 

Environment, made on March 10th of this year 

jointly to ORAU, DOE, Oak Ridge, CDC, NIOSH and 

to Larry Elliott and the OCAS office. 

Our request was basically three parts. We 

sought more information about the -- about an -

- indexes to the six boxes of Mallinckrodt 

records that affected the current petition 

that's under consideration, SEC-0012.2. 

We also sought to ascertain which MCW records 

in the six boxes had been declassified, and we 

were interested in which MCW records of any 

kind remained classified today. 

To date Pamela Bonet* and Deanne Reardon* of 

ORAU have stated that they do not answer FOIA 

requests, as DOE handles such requests for 

them. 

Lynn Armstrong, CDC ATSDR FOIA officer in the 

Office of the Chief of Staff there, responded 
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in part in a three-line letter on April the 

23rd, 2005 by providing a four-page index to 

contents of the six NIOSH boxes. The CDC 

response did not address at all our requests 

two and three dealing with formerly classified 

and now declassified and still classified MCW 

records. CDC also failed to state specific 

exemptions as to why they did not address parts 

two and three, as they are required to do by 

the Freedom of Information Act. 

Amy Rothrock* of DOE Oak Ridge responded 

officially three and a half months later with 

their packet reaching us on June 30th, 2005. 

This response was inadequate in multiple 

respects and will be appealed, and may be taken 

to Federal District Court. 

 Mr. Elliott of OCAS, at earlier ABRWH meetings 

of this group, indicated his office was working 

on the McKeel FOIA request, but no response has 

actually materialized from OCAS as of today. 

 In the supplement to the SEC petition 

evaluation report, Petition SEC-0012.1 and 2, 

which was dated March 14th, '05 and thus should 

have been available to those agencies that 

processed the Heisell-McKeel FOIA request dated 
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3/10/05, yet in their responses -- which was 

dated April the 23rd of this year -- CDC did 

not allude to these data, nor did DOE in their 

response dated 6/28/05. The CDC response did 

in fact include some of the NIOSH supplement 

contents of the six boxes that NIOSH acquired. 

The analysis of the six boxes of records had 

delayed the decision-making process of the 

Board on the MCW SEC-0012.2, and that makes the 

lack of citation of the NIOSH source document 

even more puzzling. 

On May 24th, 2005 I had a amazing approximately 

one-hour long phone conversation with the 

Department of Energy Oak Ridge's Amy Rothrock 

about our March the 10th FOIA request. This 

talk explained a lot about why and how the 

EEOICPA claims had been delayed by the agencies 

involved with processing them. That is NIOSH, 

Department of Energy, Department of Labor and 

ORAU. 

Pertinent to the six boxes of NIOSH -- NIOSH 

MCW data, Ms. Roth-- Ms. Rothrock explained 

that DOE does not generate new indexes to 

records. The most surprising revelation made 

to me was that since 1999 there has been in 
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place a DOE-wide moratorium on destroying any 

former atomic weapons worker records. Ms. 

Rothrock said she believed that the records on 

the 30 percent of MCW workers who do not have 

radiation exposure data, according to NIOSH, 

have been lost, probably forever. She did not 

explain how this unfortunate situation had 

occurred. 

In addition, Ms. Rothrock added, a ruling was 

made in 1999 that all worker records older than 

25 years were to be declassified. Ms. Rothrock 

told me that in the -- and I'm quoting her now 

-- in the 1950's all the worker EH&S, that is 

environmental health and safety, records had 

been classified. Some Mallinckrodt Chemical 

Works records got declassified in 1993 because 

they pertained to human radiation experiments. 

Now Ms. Rothrock went on to explain there are 

about 900 Mallinckrodt worker records that are 

still classified which should have been 

declassified according to the 25-year-old rule. 

She stated that the reasons there was this 

large backlog six years after the 

declassification rule had gone into effect 

included lack of DOE staff and money to process 
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the records. In addition, Ms. Rothrock said 

NIOSH had requested the same information from 

her office at least five times for various 

epidemiologic and mortality studies they were 

doing. And she was referring now to individual 

worker records, primarily. Department of Labor 

and the EEOICPA physicians panels had also 

requested the same set of records that NIOSH 

had repeatedly accessed. 

The agencies do not share information, 

according to Ms. Rothrock, even though she had 

personally urged them to do so in the name of 

efficiency and cost-savings. 

I have not heard any of this mentioned 

previously at ABRWH meetings that address the 

Mallinckrodt second petition or -- or part two 

of the -- one or two. I will take all of this 

information from DOE at face value and 

therefore assume that it is true. If it is, no 

wonder there are so many bureaucratic snafus 

that we have heard about so frequently and so 

vociferously from so many claimants who 

testified in St. Louis in October 2003, 

February 2005 and in Cedar Rapids about 

Mallinckrodt in April of this year. 
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 DOE's response to our FOIA request on June 28th 

consisted of a one-page letter, our original 

four-page request, and another 205 pages of 

material. I quote from paragraph three of Amy 

Rothrock's DOE response letter. (Reading) No 

documents could be located in response to items 

two or three of your request other than the 

enclosed printout of search hits using relevant 

terms for documents housed in the classified 

vault that pertain to Mallinckrodt. 

One data subset (a) was a 35-page listing of 

documents that were marked item three, and that 

was our request about classified documents. 

Eight pages of the 35 were stamped 

unclassified, so I assume that all the other 

MCW records in the remaining 28 pages were 

still classified. Of the total 677 

Mallinckrodt records, 86 or 12.7 percent were 

dated 1942 to '48; and this is pertinent for 

tomorrow, 221 or 32.6 percent were dated 

between 1949 and 1957; 83 or 12.2 percent were 

dated after 1957; and the remaining 287 or 42.4 

percent have no date. The eight pages stamped 

unclassified contained 86 total records, 64 of 

which were from the 1949-'57 time period under 
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consideration of the MCW SEC petition 0012.2, 

which will be taken up tomorrow. 

The other data subsets provided by DOE, 

including the following: Two pages with a 

header, ORAU file cabinets, listing 46 agencies 

and institutions; 72 sheets -- this is eight 

and a half by 11 sheets -- with first and last 

names, not otherwise identified, marked as FC22 drawer two, dispensary records; six pages of 

entity names including five entries for 

Mallinckrodt marked NIOSH film badge Atomic 

Weapons Employers; 30 pages of records with 

titles that pertained to Mallinckrodt Destrehan 

Street and Weldon Spring marked FC-21 drawer 

one. Two examples of this data subset are 

plant 6E breakout radiation hazards standard 

operating procedure, and Mallinckrodt plant 

6E/7E occupational exposure to airborne 

contaminants, report 22 -- report June 22nd, 

1955, HASL, the Health and Safety Lab, MCW 24 -

- and in parentheses, OUO. 

 And finally, the last subset with 60 pages of 

last and first names with the header, shipment 

01-01-4, Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, box one, 

personnel wage folders A through Beu. As far 
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as I could tell, there was no correspondence 

between any of this material and the index to 

the six boxes that NIOSH and CDC produced of 

the MCW records, nor was there any direct 

evidence -- any direct relevance to the 

Heisell-McKeel FOIA request of March 10th, 2005 

except as noted below. 

So finally then, how could this information 

affect the Board's deliberations of the 

Mallinckrodt petition at this meeting tomorrow. 

Point one is, at the very least it raises the 

distinct possibility that hundreds of relevant 

documents to the 1949-'57 time period at 

Mallinckrodt remain classified. It is unclear 

that any of those documents have been read by 

NIOSH or ORAU. The DOE response was 

uninformative about this point. 

A second point is the backlog of stillclassified MCW documents means the public 

access, and that of SEC petitioners, to these 

vital documents is unnecessarily restricted. 

Third, the unwillingness of the various 

agencies to share information not only impairs 

the timely processing of MCW EEOICPA claims, it 

requires duplicated effort to copy the same 
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documents multiple times, which is an added 

taxpayer burden. The situation has strong 

overtones of the lamentable lack of cooperation 

between our intelligence agencies that has 

captured recent national media headlines. 

My fourth and overriding concern is that the 

Board's decision-making ability regarding the 

MCW SEC-0012.2 petition may be seriously 

impeded. Nine hundred still classified and 

possibly unread documents mentioned by Amy 

Rothrock of DOE on May 24th, 2005 is a large 

number. Perhaps among the classified documents 

are reports that show that certain workers of 

the MCW Destrehan Street 1949-'57 cohort got 

much higher radiation doses than are currently 

documented. Or perhaps there have been major 

criticality accidents that have not been 

considered by NIOSH and the Board and by 

Sanford Cohen & Associates, the auditors for 

the Board. 

Finally I would urge, and I understand Dr. 

Ziemer's comment -- this is not directly to the 

Board -- but I would strongly urge Congress to 

address this deplorable situation by mandating 

that the DOE declassification backlog be 
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cleared up immediately, and by making the funds 

available immediately to enable the Department 

of Energy to do so. 

 Thank you, the Board, and best wishes as you 

continue to meet your important obligations. 

Thank you very much. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Dan. 

Tracking down records can indeed be 

frustrating. I think we've shared some of that 

frustration ourselves, and have in the past 

actually written to the Secretary of the 

Department of Energy through the Secretary of 

Health and Human Services on these kinds of 

issues. I -- I don't know if there's anyone 

here from the agencies that can assist you in 

that effort, but if so, I hope that they will 

do so. 

Next, Clarence -- yes, is it Schwensen? 

 MR. SCHWENDESEN: Schwensen. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 MR. SCHWENDESEN: Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You're up. 

 MR. SCHWENDESEN: Good evening and welcome. My 

name is Clarence Schwendesen. I worked for 

Mallinckrodt for 15 years, nine at the St. 
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Louis site and six at the Weldon Spring site. 

I drove a forklift throughout the plant. I 

witnessed many instances of dust, fumes and 

spills in almost every building, never dreaming 

I was being exposed to some of the world's most 

dangerous chemicals. 

I developed cancer of the throat in 1990, a 

tumor at the base of the tongue. I had surgery 

and was on the operating table for 11 hours. 

They went very close to the jugular vein and 

the voice box, but with the aid of 36 radiation 

treatments, I survived. I now have no survivor 

(sic) glands. My taste buds were altered so 

food and drink mean very little to me. I also 

have had pneumonia twice and have a patchy area 

of my lung to deal with. 

I hope the compensation for my fellow workers 

and families will be received before we die. 

I'm 80 years old, so time is very critical to 

me, and to all of us. 

We did our job providing our government with 

the weapons to keep us safe and end the Cold 

War. Now we ask the government to step up and 

do theirs with all speed. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, thank you, Clarence. Next, 
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John Nitchman*. 

MR. NITCHMAN: (Off microphone) I decline. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, John. Ed 

Lamzik*? 

 MR. LAMZIK: My name is Ed Lamzik and I worked 

at Mallinckrodt 45 years, seven years in the 

uranium division. I didn't know what to expect 

tonight. I didn't write anything up. But at a 

recent meeting when we talked about what we did 

there to the people that were concerned, I 

noticed a lot of discrepancies. 

For instance, someone was timing people in the 

old days and saying this could be done in three 

minutes or seven minutes or what. We never had 

anybody work that fast. When I saw that I 

thought hey, something's wrong, somebody -- you 

know, we're talking about exposures now. 

So I had cancer ten years ago. I don't know if 

it's caused from being with uranium or not. 

 Besides my seven years at the uranium division, 

I worked in plant four; 51-A was the original 

building at Mallinckrodt where all this 

started. And I ended up being a 

(unintelligible) operator and so forth, and 

having that building -- you know, one of the 
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buildings that I was supposed to be in charge 

of, and I worked in it constantly. And it was 

really contaminated. After a number of year -- 

oh, it might have been in the eighties already 

-- they decided oh-oh, it's really bad yet, 

'cause they would come by and check it every 

ten years or whatever and it'd be hot. So 

besides doing the seven years, I worked a 

number of years -- we weren't doing uranium 

anymore, but it -- it's where everything 

originated. 

 That's about all I have to say. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. And thank you very much, 

Ed. 

 Eileen Adams? 

MS. ADAMS: Hi. My name is Eileen Adams and I 

worked at the Destrehan plant for a very short 

time. I took a government test and was offered 

a three-month thing there (unintelligible) 

government office to do different types of work 

to replace women and men going on their 

vacations. Well, since I was low man or woman 

on the totem pole, I got a lot of different 

jobs. I never was given a badge, but I was out 

of the office and down in the parking lot on 
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the street, and mostly I was up in a building 

above the plant -- a room that had no air, open 

windows, and a Xerox machine. And that Xerox 

machine became my friend because I spent a lot 

of times with it, but I had no protection 

whatsoever. 

And 23 years ago I -- since I'm blonde, I have 

moles, and I have doctors taking them off and 

checking them, and I had one that was really 

bothering me. I went and had it checked and he 

looked at me and he said just put this robe on, 

we're going across the hall; you need immediate 

surgery. So by the next morning I was having 

immediate surgery, which consisted of (off 

microphone) them taking, from here to here, (on 

microphone) all my lymph nodes out; from here 

to here, all my lymph nodes out. 

My daily life consists of wearing a very heavy 

rubber support stocking, of which I have to 

have six or eight a year for $300 each. Nobody 

covers this. Then I have this little pump I 

use to get the fluid out at night, and I have 

that for two or two and a half hours, and that 

little darling -- which is our third one -- now 

comes to $2,000, and if you pay $500 they'll 
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give you the boot, which if you don't have the 

boot to put on it isn't going to help you. 

And when I first realized I had this melanoma 

and talked to the doctor, he said well, blondes 

sometimes do this. And I said let me tell you 

something. I'm of Irish descent. We all know 

how fragile our skin is. I don't sun worship. 

I'd like to have a tan, but I don't tan. So he 

said well, it's a melanoma and it's in stage 

four. So that's when I had the surgery. And I 

-- he said well, what -- what could have caused 

it, and I said I think it was the exposure I 

had at the plant with fallout. Our stockings 

used to fall off our legs. I said I never had 

the sun do that. 

So we never did decide what it was, but I 

called -- when I found out this organization 

was here, and I was told that melanoma wasn't 

covered. And I was told that our stockings 

didn't fall off our legs. Then I found out 

later that they were paying on melanoma. I 

also found out that some of the Mallinckrodt 

employees were being given a stippance (sic) to 

cover the loss of their hose. We had a very 

casual joke between all the women is don't wear 
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a nylon blouse. And they -- I called back and 

I said I -- you know, you're paying on 

melanoma. Well, you'll have to send us some 

information, which I did. I didn't hear from 

them, of course. And then I called back and 

they said well, we're tracking you. And I said 

what are you tracking? I didn't have a badge. 

If I'd had a badge I would have known. 

But I do have to tell you that at the end of 

three months I quit because I thought this was 

crazy to be doing something that pitted the -- 

my car paint and made holes in my stockings, 

and I couldn't imagine what it must be doing to 

the rest of me. 

But anyway, I live with it now and there's no 

way they're going to track my exposure except 

that I have never felt I had this from the sun 

because I wasn't a sun worshipper. 

But I do feel that the exposure was there. 

This building I went in with the no air had 

fallout dust laying everywhere, and it also was 

in my hair. And I now have had two cancers on 

my head and I'm about to have one removed 

again. So I think some of this -- you know, 

they keep saying we're tracking. What can they 
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track? You know, they should say yes or no 

because I wasn't given that badge to wear. 

Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Marilyn Schneider. 

 MS. SCHNEIDER: I want to thank the Board for 

coming to St. Louis, and you heard me back in 

February. I worked in the office and I think 

that the exposure for office workers cannot be 

discounted. Our skin was exposed. We were 

exposed to breathing contaminated air and 

drinking contaminated water. My contact with 

coworkers from my area shows that many of the 

office workers have developed colon, breast and 

kidney cancers. Many employees sacrificed 

their lives and/or had their lives cut short by 

working for their county's -- country's needs. 

Employees had no knowledge they were being 

exposed to radiation, and Mallinckrodt had no 

concern for their health. 

Because work in St. Charles County was scarce, 

we didn't question the purpose of the plant. 

Now, because of residual radioactivity, the 

Weldon Spring area was decontaminated. 

On 6/29/05 the Associated Press quotes Richard 

Monson*, professor of epidemiology at Harvard 
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School of Public Health -- his quotes -- 

Scientific research base shows there is no 

threshold of exposure below which low levels of 

ionized radiation can be demonstrated to be 

harmless or beneficial. Each unit of 

radiation, no matter how small, is still 

assumed to cause cancer. End of quote. 

There's a very high cancer rate in employees 

many years after working at government 

radiation-related sites. Exposure after the 

fact is a lot of scientific guesswork, as few 

records exist. The burden of proof is placed 

on the victims or survivors. Still-living 

workers are getting despondent and many have 

given up of ever being compensated for cancer 

suffered because of radiation exposure. Fact: 

We have cancer because of exposure to 

radiation. 

At the time of my employment I was a mouthbreather and I have never smoked. Since 1975 

I've had three different cancers -- colon, 

breast and the leiomyosarcoma, which is cancer 

of the connective tissue and muscle. Only 

8,000 cases in the United States, but a very 

common cancer in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. 
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Cancer risk from radiation exposure continues 

throughout life, according to Dale Preston, 

director of statistics at the Radiation Effects 

Research Foundation headquartered in Hiroshima. 

Mr. Preston also states that the younger you 

were at the time of exposure, the higher your 

risk of developing cancer. I was 23, 24 years 

of age when exposed. I've had genetic 

counseling which indicates none of my cancers 

are hereditary, so where did the risk come 

from? 

This -- my feeling is that this program is 

nothing more than a lottery. I saw my 

oncologist. He said I should buy a lottery 

ticket because chances of surviving my latest 

cancer are less than five years, and it's now 

almost four years. But I feel I'm already in 

the Mallinckrodt lottery. The emotional trauma 

and the cost of treatment for a major cancer 

are astronomical. If claims are being 

processed in a timely manner, whose time? The 

dollars are going to the bureaucrats, not to 

the victims. I've had two of the 22 primary 

cancers and still waiting compensation. Will I 

still be alive to see the compensation? 
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Denise Brock was going to provide some 

information on the exposure of radiation to the 

office workers, but I don't think she came down 

-- are you here, Denise? 

MS. BROCK: I'm here. 

 MS. SCHNEIDER: If so, I'd like Denise to speak 

about that, and thank you very much. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Marilyn. And 

Denise, you're welcome to address -- 

MS. BROCK: Thank you. I just wanted to state 

for the record that Victor Amantea is a former 

Mallinckrodt employee. He is very ill, but he 

did send a written letter in to NIOSH, as well 

as Department of Labor, referencing or speaking 

about the office workers and the amount of 

exposure that they had. He spoke in particular 

about Marilyn, and he is a worker -- a former 

worker. He's very ill but he is still living, 

and I was hoping that possibly -- I don't think 

he's ever been interviewed by anyone as a 

coworker, and I think he could give some very 

valuable information. He was going to make it 

to this meeting but, again, he is very, very 

ill and wasn't able to even make the short 

trip. So if somebody could just make sure and 
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check with him, I think he could be of great 

help to some of these office workers. Thank 

you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: What's his name again, Denise? 

MS. BROCK: Victor Amantea. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Could you spell that? 

MS. BROCK: Sure, it's A-m-a-n- like Nancy t-ea. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

MS. BROCK: Sure. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Mary Generi. We've heard from 

Mary before. 

 MS. GENERI: Yes, I was here last -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's a name I don't forget. I 

like that name. 

 MS. GENERI: Well, I worked in the same 

building as Marilyn, so she said a lot that 

covers a lot. I had kidney cancer and my 

kidney was removed. Where I worked, in one 

part of the office there was like seven of us 

that worked within about four feet, and six out 

of the seven have had cancer. And I don't know 

about the seventh one because she doesn't live 

around here. So I think that should tell you 

something. 
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I -- in the cafeteria I have -- I didn't -- I 

trusted Mallinckrodt. I loved working for 

Mallinckrodt, so I thought everything they did 

was right. And later I found out -- like when 

I was in the cafeteria, I saw some of these 

tables that no one would sit at. You know, it 

was kind of like way in the back, and I saw 

like yellow dust on them. I didn't think 

nothing of it, but now, as I hear things, I 

think that was probably some of that dust from 

the plant. 

And I worked close to the mail clerks and then 

I went downstairs and I was receptionist, and 

so I was around a lot of different people. And 

the mail clerks, they had these styrofoam 

containers that they would bring into the 

office and they said they were taking them 

downtown, and they had mail all over the office 

and I know two of the mail clerks that have 

cancer, and I don't know about the rest of 

them, but one's dead, and that was David 

Johnson. And then I talked to another one not 

too long ago and he would have loved to have 

come to the meeting but he's out of town. He 

said in the future he will, and he had cancer, 
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too. So I'm kind of thinking maybe that ought 

to tell us something. 

I really thank everyone for coming and letting 

us talk. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Mary. Now before I 

move on to individuals who are not specifically 

associated with Mallinckrodt, let me give 

opportunity -- are there any other Mallinckrodt 

folks here that wish to address the group? 

Yes, please. State your name for the record. 

MR. VOGT*: My name is George Vogt, and I thank 

the Board for giving me the opportunity to tell 

you about my problems and the time I spent at 

Mallinckrodt. I spent (unintelligible) really 

about 48 years down there, except two years 

when I was in the service, World War II, and 

two years in Korea. But all the rest of the 

time I was at Mallinckrodt. 

My job down there was a tinner, a sheet metal 

worker, and I don't think there was a building 

down there that I had not worked in -- office, 

down in the basements or anywhere, plant 6. 

But I recall -- recall one of the buildings we 

worked in down there, they had geiger counters 

laying in the corners, and you could hear these 
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things (indicating) crack like that. Well, 

anyway, the one time it went off, told 

everybody get out, get out. Well, we all wore 

badges, and they never ever told me -- ever 

told us that well, you have too much radiation 

in your badge (unintelligible) time. 

But as a -- as a tinner, we took -- we had to 

take down and replace the ductwork on vats and 

that. And taking this ductwork down, sometimes 

you'd be full of dust, full of this chemical 

that was in the -- in the ductwork. And I 

don't know whether this was caused -- since -- 

since this time, since I've retired from 

Mallinckrodt -- I retired in 1989 -- I have 

come up with two cancers. I had -- I had 

prostrate (sic) cancer, which I -- I don't have 

it no more. They cut it out of me. 

Now -- and since 1993 I've ended up with three 

tumors in my bladder, and they're all 

cancerous, one at a time. First time I find 

out I had a tumor and they went in and they cut 

it out of me. This was fine. So four months 

later when I -- you know, you go back -- go to 

a doctor and he'll find something wrong with 

you, and I went back again, sure enough, here 
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was another one. So by the fate, here I'm -- 

it seems like a routine that I'm going to -- I 

said how can I -- how can you -- can this 

happen, how can I get rid of these? Oh, we'll 

take your bladder out and you won't have to 

worry about that no more. Well, hell, I can do 

that, I guess, but I -- I'm in the same stage -

- the 19th of this month I'm going to have 

another one taken out. So I don't know, if I 

could get -- get help with some of my doctor 

bills, I would appreciate that. I thank you 

for this effort. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Any -- any other 

Mallinckrodt folks -- yes. 

MR. STEIGER*: My name is Ron Steiger. My wife 

was an employee of Mallinckrodt and she was a 

lab technician in the uranium division. She 

was hired there out of high school. The reason 

she was hired -- I finally found out after 

searching the records and getting somebody to 

find them and get them to me from Oak Ridge -- 

that at the time there was a very -- there was 

a shortage of workers because of the draft for 

Korea. And they probably -- she probably would 

not have got the job if it wasn't for filling 
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in for somebody who went to serve. After I 

found this out I figured she had more of a -- 

she had a more dangerous job than I did and I 

was in the Marine Corps. 

Six months -- or she -- she worked there six 

years -- how did it go. Six years after she 

left there, she was pregnant with our third 

child and was diagnosed with Hodgkin's. She 

lived ten years with Hodgkin's and put up with 

a lot of inconveniences, believe me. So my --

my problem was that my kids didn't have a 

mother. That's all. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Any -- one final 

opportunity, Mallinckrodt folks, anyone else? 

Okay, then I have Richard Miller. Richard 

Miller, Government Accountability Project. 

 MR. MILLER: Good evening. My name is Richard 

Miller. I'm with Government Accountability 

Project. This is working better. Thank you 

for taking comments this evening. 

I'd like to talk a little bit about 

Mallinckrodt Special Exposure Cohort from 1942 

to 1948. When that was up before deliberation 

and you all voted on it in St. Louis a few 

months ago, one of the issues that arose was 
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what dose can be reconstructed and what dose 

cannot. And the Special Exposure Cohort 

evaluation report focused on not being able to 

reconstruct internal dose. In fact, I think if 

you look in the SEC report it'll even indicate 

that for certain periods they can reconstruct -

- NIOSH can reconstruct external dose. 

And so it was with some puzzlement that I 

recently had a conversation with the Labor 

Department and said so, are you going to be 

able to start adjudicating any of the external 

dose cases -- you know, if you can do external 

dosimetry (sic) -- for skin cancer, in 

particular. And the answer was that at this 

time DOL hadn't made up their minds, but that 

they were leaning against doing so and that 

they may return those cases back to NIOSH. And 

since they're non-SEC cancers, it was -- it was 

-- this is -- this is some ambiguity. 

And I said well, it's funny 'cause this issue 

was raised before the Board and I know, Dr. 

Ziemer, you asked for specific clarification in 

framing the motion, and in particular Jim Neton 

was asked about this question, will external 

dose cases like skin -- particularly skin -- be 
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reconstructible for the '42 to '48 period and 

only dealing with Mallinckrodt. And the answer 

was we'll be able to do that. At least that's 

what was on the record. 

So I kind of pushed DOL a little bit on this 

and said geez, you know, it's on the record and 

-- and the answer I got back was well, Jim 

Neton may have -- not have been correct. 

And so I just think this is an unresolved 

policy issue that as you think about this 

question, and I asked DOL about this a little 

bit and I said well, what's really the problem? 

And you know, part of it had to -- was it -- 

was it in the wording of the SEC petition 

itself or was it some -- some other matter that 

-- that -- that would serve as an impairment. 

And there was an indication that possibly 

wording would be an issue. 

So I just wanted to raise this as an issue, 

particularly if you're going to be looking 

forward, and to the extent I don't know how you 

all are going to deliberate on the -- on the 

next SEC petition from Mallinckrodt, but it's 

an awfully important issue about what's going 

to happen to the non-SEC cancers. And if -- if 
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you are acting in reliance on testimony from 

the agency, I think it's going to be important 

if we're dealing with a non-SEC issue to make 

sure that DOL's views are heard since at the 

end of the day they're going to adjudicate 

those cases. 

The second issue I wanted to raise this evening 

had to do with self-identified Special Exposure 

Cohorts. I think we've heard at two or three 

different meetings from Larry Elliott and 

others that NIOSH has been tasking its 

contractor to prepare self-identified SECs, 

those for which they've spotted them and I 

assume that they're going to provide a report 

and the Board has been I guess promised that a 

report would be forthcoming. It seems to me 

that there's really three questions -- or two 

or three questions in that area. 

The first is, where's the report? My 

understanding was it was a deliverable that 

ORAU is supposed to provide as of December 31st 

to NIOSH. 

Secondly, to the extent that report's been 

prepared, we've heard that there was comments 

that were -- NIOSH had sent back to ORAU on it, 
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but still no answer back on exactly okay, then 

so what were those comments and were they 

received and did ORAU respond and where's the 

report? Because if there were self-identified 

SECs out there, it seems to me there's an awful 

lot of efficiency to be gained in this program 

and moving things along if we can find out what 

they are and people can know about it or 

petition appropriately. 

It also seems to me that there ought to be 

cases that are self-identified under 42 CFR 

Part 83.14 where if NIOSH has tried to do a 

dose reconstruction and can't complete it, the 

flag should go up, as the rule provides. How 

many cases are there, where are they and can we 

get some kind of report on how many self-- you 

know, how many self-spotted -- you know, how 

many -- how many cases are spotted under 83.14? 

And the third is, are there categories or 

groups -- subgroups at various facilities for 

which NIOSH is postponing or can't, at least at 

this time, do dose reconstruction. Give you an 

example, glovebox workers. To the extent that 

there were unshielded gloveboxes and to the 

extent that dosimetry badges weren't positioned 
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in a way to be able to even come up with a 

reasonably good estimate, some of the glovebox 

workers may fall into a unique category. 

And there may be others that fall into the same 

type of category, and it would be interesting 

to find out if there are categories of delayed, 

deferred or not-acted-upon because they don't 

have a solution or they're trying to develop a 

Technical Information Bulletin, or maybe it's 

just not -- a good solution out there. But it 

seems to me if there's sort of low-hanging 

fruit in the category of SECs in that area, or 

at least areas where there's major delay 

foreseeable because there are fundamental 

problems in doing SEC -- doing dose 

reconstruction, they should be self-identified 

as well, because after five years now sort of 

people are -- you know, you can sort of hear 

the broken record and it's -- and it's a 

meaningful one, which is how long do we wait to 

get answers on this. And it seems to me NIOSH 

should be more forthcoming in those three 

areas. 

The next area I'd like to -- to -- to -- to 

touch on a little bit is the Board moving 
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forward on an awful lot of backlog. At least 

from the outside at least you all have had an 

enormously busy schedule, and with the SECs 

coming in and the deadlines that are imposed by 

law, you have to act or at least receive these 

things and -- and -- and deal with them 

forthwith. The problem is is that other 

important matters that have been sitting around 

for six, eight months or longer are not getting 

acted on. 

One that stands out in my mind is the Savannah 

River site profile review, which is the very 

first site profile review I believe that you 

got of a meaningful one, and -- of the DOE 

sites, and it has not been taken up. And yet 

that site profile review is needed to resolve 

the dose reconstruction reviews, as I -- my 

recollection is is that four or five of the 

first dose reconstruction reviews can't be 

addressed until the site profile's -- review's 

finished on the -- on Savannah River. And the 

high five issue I think was one of the issues 

that was in contention there. 

So I was sort of wondering what can be done to 

accelerate -- not that you all aren't working 
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hard and that there aren't subcommittee 

meetings and conference calls and so forth, but 

it seems to me when the Board shifted from 

going to four meetings a year from its previous 

schedule of six meetings a year, some degree of 

momentum, coupled with these SECs moving in and 

filling your calendar, has sort of crowded out 

the ability and a lot of things are lagging -- 

the Hanford site profile review I understand is 

completed and is an enormous undertaking in and 

of itself. 

And of course we have the procedures review, 

which for some very small amount of time is on 

the agenda here, but not sufficient to 

undertake what is a huge, 285-page document 

with oodles and oodles of procedures, some of 

which are going to require further work, but 

other of which really need to be taken up 

meaningfully. 

And my worry is is that if you let your 

procedures review go so long and there are 

generic issues that require to be corrected, 

the number of reworks that have to be done 

grow, the cost of the program for 

administration goes up -- or the imperative is 
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gosh, is it really worth reworking these 'cause 

the cost is so great. So it seems to me that 

on areas that involve big, cross-cutting, 

costly -- potentially costly reworks, those 

things ought to get taken up and front-loaded 

as soon as possible. And again, you know, 

procedures review were delivered to the Board 

in January of this year. 

Again, no fault on how hard the Board's 

working, but I'm questioning whether four 

meetings a year can get it all done. And I 

don't think it does, and I think -- I think -- 

I think that there's some -- some -- some 

expectations that are going to -- and 

frustrations that will grow if this doesn't 

find a way to resolve itself more quickly. 

I'd like to then bring two other issues to your 

attention. The first is -- is -- I had the 

pleasure -- after leaving here in St. Louis 

last year, I drove over to Paducah for the site 

profile meetings that were held by NIOSH in 

Paducah and -- and I had a chance to review the 

internal dosimetry report that was done by ORAU 

and NIOSH issued. And the internal dosimetry 

report there raised I think a cross-cutting 
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issue that you've dealt with quite a bit. 

This particular internal dosimetry review -- or 

site -- Technical Basis Document largely 

focused on both uranium uptakes and 

transuranium uptakes. And of course 

transuranics were one of the big drivers that 

sort of got Congress to focus a lot on 

unreconstructible or difficult to reconstruct 

dose and Paducah of course was really put on in 

the SEC with the discovery of over 40 years for 

which the site chose not to bioassay workers 

for transuranium compounds, particularly 

plutonium and neptunium and -- and some of the 

fission products like Tc-99 and -- so when we 

reviewed the internal dose Technical Basis 

Document, we discovered that the person who was 

the primary site expert was a former Martin 

Marietta subcontractor, Carol Berger*, whom 

many of you know. 

And Carol was working for IT Corporation at the 

time she was preparing this, under contract to 

Martin Marietta. And when she prepared the 

report for NIOSH, she relied on her previous 

work that she had done back in the late 1980's 

on transuranium uptakes. And what we 
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discovered -- from our review, at least -- was 

that it overlooked an awful lot of new 

information that has subsequently come out from 

a DOE-sponsored study and -- and that -- and 

that the activity levels were as high as 90 

percent activity levels for neptunium for some 

workers. Startlingly high levels, and yet her 

report only had ten, 15, 20 percent activity 

levels for these transuranics, particularly 

neptunium. 

 And so we looked at these -- these relatively 

low alpha counts compared to -- well, fractions 

of activity compared to what had been reported 

in Union Carbide health physics monthly 

reports. And we said geez, there's a huge 

discrepancy here. 

And the other discrepancy that stood out at us, 

probably more troubling, was that NIOSH was 

relying upon a Martin Marietta employ-- or 

IT/Martin Marietta individual to prepare -- in 

effect to serve as the subject matter expert 

for the preparation of the site profile. And 

what she did was she took her work from 1989, 

roughly, when she did her work for Martin 

Marietta, and she cut and pasted the tables 
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into the NIOSH site profile -- just cut and 

pasted them -- uncited, cut and pasted. 

And -- and we went back and looked at her 

earlier work, which was also uncited, and what 

was most troubling I think was that there was 

no scrutiny that this would pose a potential 

for conflict of interest, that people are 

reviewing their own work. The -- the 

professional question was -- professional 

conduct question was should people be brought 

in as subject matter experts, as they have at 

Hanford and of course at Rocky and elsewhere, 

in Idaho, with no question that they're all 

honorable people, but they're busy reviewing 

their own work product. And in many -- and in 

this particular instance, cut and pasted her 

own previous work, which was in -- which we 

believe to be in error, and put it in NIOSH and 

it was signed off through four levels of review 

by all the people you see on the front page of 

the site profiles, and out the door it went. 

And we went my God, a cut and paste job from 

Martin Marietta, is that what NIOSH is buying? 

Is that what this program has turned into, is 

basically that the agency now has turned over 
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its -- to the DOE health physics community that 

we sought in the legislation to remove from 

running the dosimetry programs. 

Now we know that everybody who has knowledge 

and site-specific knowledge is a resource. And 

nobody is saying those people shouldn't be 

tapped as a resource. But should they be the 

primary subject matter expert? Now she was not 

the primary author of the site profile, but her 

employee was. And he's in no position to say 

that you're conflicted, boss. 

And so I bring this to your attention -- and 

NIOSH, in response -- I wrote a memo to Jim 

Neton and Dick Toohey about this, and I laid 

out our concerns and -- and just last week 

Larry Elliott asked me for the supporting 

documents from our February memo, so it's nice 

to know that somebody at least was wanting to 

actually look at the source documents a few 

months later. And we also heard back from 

NIOSH that they were going to evaluate the 

conflict of interest issue. But five months 

later, we have no answer on the conflict of 

interest. And so I just bring this to your 

attention because I don't know that there's an 
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internal resolution process. 

And I bring this to your attention for another 

reason, because in -- when the meeting was held 

in New Mexico of the Advisory Board, Larry 

Elliott said that he was going to undertake an 

internal self-audit in NIOSH of conflict of 

interest issues, both amongst the Federal staff 

and the contractor and subcontractor staff. 

Now I don't know whether that report's been 

done, whether that self-audit exists. But I 

think it, again, ought to be made public 

because this is the kind of thing I would hope 

would get rooted out. 

The final issue has to do with the degree to 

which worker input really makes a difference. 

Now there are varying degrees of expertise and 

varying degrees of site-specific knowledge, but 

once the Board made the decision to go forward 

and invite worker input and union input and 

site expert input, I think the project had the 

potential for being dramatically enriched, 

because at least there was a new source of 

information and a reality check. 

And I had the opportunity to work with a very 

tiny little obscure facility that most of you 
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have never heard of that processed uranium in 

Springfield, Massachusetts called Chapman 

Valve. And at the Chapman Valve facility they 

basically machined uranium, they had a grinding 

operation, they ran lathes, they did some of 

the same kind of stuff they did at Y-12 in 

terms of machining uranium. 

But what happened in this particular facility 

was we had a meeting. We brought the workers 

together. We thought let's see if we can't do 

better, having the few survivors and those who 

have some knowledge of the facilities 

interacting with NIOSH early rather than sort 

of after the fact like happened at Bethlehem 

Steel where it didn't work out so well. And --

and so a group of workers were pulled together 

and -- and it was cold and in the winter, and 

NIOSH came up on Valentine's Day and there was 

a meeting. And the workers brought some 

documents and there were a number of 

substantive technical issues, like there was an 

incinerator at the facility and documents were 

brought forth, and no one knew the incinerator 

was there and it wasn't in -- it's a source 

term. I mean as we heard from the uranium 
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presentation from Joe Fitzgerald today, these 

incinerators can be significant sources of 

information -- of -- of -- of -- of emissions, 

and this was a uranium chip burner. In fact, 

it was such a crude device that it had a stove 

pipe that went out through the wall of this 

building. 

And you know what they found under the stove 

pipe in what was supposedly a facility handling 

natural uranium? Enriched uranium. And so the 

question was raised, how could O-- O-- actually 

it was ORISE did the -- did the site work -- 

how could they find enriched uranium here? Is 

this an anomaly? 

And so a number of technical questions were 

raised -- particle size, whether the data was 

representative and so forth -- and lo and 

behold, all of this was laid out very neatly 

and ORAU came in for the visit and -- and NIOSH 

came in and sent some staff in. And then what 

happened was the next day, on February 15th, 

NIOSH -- ORAU signed off on the site profile 

and several days later NIOSH signed off on it 

and published it, and that input was never 

considered. 
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It turned out actually that a written memo 

followed up about two weeks after NIOSH was 

there, about the first of March, so there was a 

two-week period after they left, and none of us 

knew that the site profile had been released. 

No one had it announced to them in advance that 

well, we're glad to hear from you tonight but, 

by the way, we're signing off on it tomorrow. 

That would have been courteous, at least, and 

no one would have had the expectation that 

anybody was going to listen. 

So I offer that as an object lesson because I 

had the chance to follow it through. And I 

don't know whether this is an anomalous 

situation and maybe just fell through the 

cracks, but it seems to me that if you're going 

to -- if NIOSH is going to follow the Board's 

advice and they're going to hire contractors 

and they're going to pay to fly them in from 

Tennessee and have them drive in from New 

Hampshire and have them fly in from Cincinnati 

and we're going to have them put them up in 

hotel rooms and we're going to spend the money 

for support staff, government money, to hear 

what workers have to say, and the next day they 
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sign off and none of the comments were 

considered. So when NIOSH came to -- to the -- 

to the western Massachusetts to present on the 

new compensation program and the residual 

radiation provisions, they were asked -- say, 

did you take account of any of the comments you 

received? And the answer that was stated back 

to the public was no, we didn't. We didn't 

have time. We had to get the dose 

reconstructions done. 

So I don't know. I mean I'm hoping that NIOSH 

is going to take a second look at this. I'm 

hoping they're willing to look at the comments. 

I think that they're substantive. I think 

you'll understand that, for example, an 

undisclosed incinerator could in fact be a 

source, particularly as crude as those were in 

the old days. And that things of that nature 

would want to be taken up before you publish 

your site profile. And so we express a little 

disappointment I guess with NIOSH's progress in 

-- in taking public comment and worker comment 

and actually incorporating it into their 

product before they pump it out the door. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, Richard. Now I 
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thought we had limited it to four meetings 

because of your travel budget, Richard, but 

that's not the case. Is that right? You don't 

have to answer that. 

 MR. MILLER: Paul, what's the budget for this 

Board? I think it's about a million and a half 

a year. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Richard, touche -- touche. 

Ed Walker is here. Ed is -- represents 

Bethlehem Steel workers. Ed, welcome. 

 MR. WALKER: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer and the 

Board, for letting me have the chance to speak 

again and good evening to all here. 

I'd like to talk a little bit -- well, first of 

all, it seems like I'm -- if it seems to you 

like I'm following you around, it probably is 

because I am. But I'm glad you didn't go to 

California 'cause I don't know if I could 

handle that. 

I'd like to speak a little bit about the site 

profile at Bethlehem Steel. The site -- we had 

our technical base (sic) document completed in 

March of 2003. The site profile meeting, the 

first one we had with site experts, was in July 

1st of 2004, approximately 16 months after our 
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technical base (sic) document was released. 

And people were being denied -- and some 

approved -- is before they ever talked to one 

person at the site -- at the site that worked 

there, the workers. And this -- and what I'm 

going to bring up a little later -- you'll see 

why it's kind of upsetting of the information 

that was brought out. 

I got a call -- we had our meeting in July 1st 

of '04, again, 16 months after the technical 

base (sic) document. I was called about a 

month before that, possibly two, and I can't 

remember where the call came from. It was a 

simple question, is the facility still 

standing; is the ten-inch bar mill still 

standing. Now mind you, this is 16 months 

approximately after the technical base (sic) 

document was out. Nobody knew if the building 

was standing, and it came I believe from NIOSH. 

Okay? It was just a quick call, one question, 

is the facility standing. 

I would have certainly thought that that long 

after we had our technical base (sic) document, 

somebody would have known what was going on. 

So after we had that meeting on July 1st, 
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approximately a month later I was talking to 

somebody from Oak Ridge, I'm not mentioning 

names, but I says lookit, I says our site 

profile was completed. And he says yes, we 

used Simonds Saw -- part of Simonds Saw to -- 

site profile to add what we couldn't find at 

Bethlehem Steel. And I says well, that could 

make sense. At that point I felt it could. 

And I says okay, well, it's only -- it only 

makes sense to me that if you use Simonds Saw, 

then you must have Simonds Saw site profile 

completed. 

And it went silent on the phone for quite a 

while, and he says no, it isn't. I says you 

mean to tell me our -- our technical base (sic) 

document has been completed now about 17 months 

and it's based on Simonds Saw information, and 

you don't have the technical base (sic) 

document from Simonds Saw? And he says that's 

correct. I understand that just recently, 

within a month or so, Simonds Saw was 

completed. But our document was completed in 

March of the year 2003 and Simonds Saw was just 

completed, and ours was based on theirs. 

I'm not a scientist, I don't -- you all know 
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that by now, but it just doesn't make sense to 

me and to our group. 

And I want to talk a little bit -- when we talk 

about what the worker input had, and this is 

new information and this is what Jim was 

referring to today, alluded to today, this 

cooling bed -- and I mentioned it at the last 

meeting here in St. Louis. There was a large 

area, and I mentioned that it's over the size 

of a football field, and it's about as wide as 

a football field is what they called a cooling 

bed area at Bethlehem Steel. Bethlehem Steel 

building is approximately 900 feet long and 

about 100 feet wide was the ten-inch bar mill. 

A third of that was cooling bed. There was 

also straightening areas. There was also the 

mill where they rolled it. There was also a 

billet preparation. So 90,000 square feet of 

building was there. Almost 30,000 was cooling 

bed, and this area was never picked up by 

anyone. And in some cases -- it wasn't 

someone's fault because I just found it myself 

within -- since I was here at the last meeting. 

I start digging in to find out what this 

basement area was under this cooling bed. 
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After it come out of the rollers this 1100 

degree uranium rods went into a rolling bed 

that had rollers and it spread it out, and you 

can picture yourself setting (sic) at a 

football game and these rods coming out of the 

goal posts on one end and going behind the goal 

posts on the other end, almost as wide as the 

football field, being spread out in what they 

called the cooling bed at Bethlehem Steel. It 

was on rollers. And this cooling bed was about 

four feet off of the floor. Underneath was a 

basement area. 

And I went and I got experts, guys that worked 

there, and I had to send in affidavits to Mr. 

Elliott last week, I just got these, and I got 

more people that are coming in that I've 

contacted with more information. When you were 

in that basement area, this uranium was rolling 

not as high as this ceiling open, you could see 

it, 1100 degrees, going over rollers and 

sliding on bars, dropping down scrapings like 

peppering on your steak or hamburger, whatever 

you have. It would pepper down on it and you 

people were working down there. 

In that area it was impossible to clean. 
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There's pillars in that area that are about -- 

concrete pillars that are about three-foot 

square that hold up motors up underneath those 

rollers. Those rollers -- there's well over 

200 motors in that area the size of a football 

-- keep that in mind, you're looking at a 

football game and another third -- you go past 

the goal post on the other end another 30 

yards, and that -- and that hot uranium that 

comes off -- the scaling that drops off goes 

into this pit area. It gets into those motors 

and not only the motors that run the rollers, 

there's other machinery that has to be driven 

and there's larger motors -- that I haven't 

quite got a handle on just how many; I'm 

guessing it's somewhere around 40 or 50 larger 

motors -- and there's miles and miles of 

conduit and gears. 

Now in the declassified documentation they say 

they cleaned this up over the weekend. They 

rolled uranium over the weekend. It's 

impossible. You couldn't get a cleaner down in 

there, a vacuum, to vacuum. It had to be 

cleaned out by hand. Men worked down there, 

and a couple of people laughed at me when I 
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says men couldn't work there because of that 

hot stuff. You stand next to a fire, a big 

bonfire, and that stuff that goes up in the air 

and comes down is red hot. And I'll take a 

polygraph test on this in a heartbeat, I've 

walked with people, I've walked behind them, 

people have touched me, grabbed me on the 

shoulder and says you're on fire. And this 

area was hot and these things would land on 

your shoulder and to stop your clothes from 

burning, you have to brush it off. There was 

no protection. 

And the grease that come off those motors -- 

they were automatically greased; as I said, I'm 

still bringing in information on it -- and 

oiled -- fell down onto this lower area on top 

of these piers, on top of this -- these conduit 

pipes and onto the motors and into the motors, 

and periodically would flame up and burn. They 

would start -- some of the hot stuff would come 

down and it would flame up and burn. Or if a 

motor burned out that was driving those rollers 

up above, they would flame right up and burn 

out and sometimes it was a month before they'd 

replace -- sometimes there could be four or 
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five motors burned out at one time before they 

would shut down or find time to replace these 

motors. So what, they're -- they say. So 

what. The so what is that when that uranium 

rod -- or steel rod, but -- they were all the 

same -- when they went over there, those 

rollers weren't rolling, so they slid across 

them, which would spark and drop stuff down 

into this lower area. 

This area never had any air samples taken. 

There was no air samples recorded in this area 

at all. And there was never any survey done. 

There was never no smear test down in that 

lower area, and there never can be. So how can 

we tell, with burning -- possibly uranium in 

this area over the size of a football field, 

and it was never gotten -- it was never 

surveyed or anything or any air check or 

nothing, and the men worked down there time and 

time again. 

Today -- in the late seventies or the early 

eighties they encased this whole thing in 

concrete. Wasn't that convenient? All the 

motors and everything were left there. They 

just backed up with trucks and filled the whole 
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area up. They sold the plant and there's no 

residual contamination in the area. Bethlehem 

Steel is one -- if not the only one in western 

New York that don't have residual 

contamination. The rest of the facilities 

around are eligible for residual, but not 

Bethlehem Steel. Doesn't that sound awful odd 

to you? 

We're talking today -- Dr. Neton was talking 

about the dust in the large area and how it 

would -- it wouldn't be very thick in a large 

building. That building, as I said, was 90,000 

square feet. And from one end to the other, 

when uranium went through there, from the 

processing, through the mill that actually 

rolled it -- the six rollers -- through this 

cooling bed, through the shears and into the 

straightening area and the packing area, that 

whole building was wide open with no 

ventilation. Simonds Saw had a small area, 

which wouldn't be -- they wouldn't have the 

contamination. Simonds Saw had ventilation. 

Now I want to ask you, just think about it, if 

this room was filled up with dust, this whole 

room, would you rather be in here with no 
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ventilation or would you rather be in the men's 

room where they've got ventilation and it's 

gone in a couple of minutes? And I -- and I 

can bring you affidavits and I think in some of 

the affidavits that I sent in the men sat in 

that lower area. There's no way -- there's 

areas in there that was impossible to get to. 

You ask the site workers, impossible to get 

into, so when they couldn't shovel it and broom 

it out of that lower basement area, they used 

high-pressure hoses to blow the dust. 

When they'd come on around with these highpressure hoses down there to dust it out, the 

dust went right up into the rollers -- and 

there was rollings above at that time, probably 

steel or whatever. It hit that heat and it 

would take it right up through that whole plant 

again. So that dust area in the large area, I 

can't buy. Just common sense says that's not 

going to happen. 

And we talked about heat today, and of all the 

-- the breathing that people took about 

breathing in -- what you're breathing in when 

you're doing this type of job and when you're 

doing that type of job, when you're pushing a 
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wheelbarrow or if you're baking a cake or 

whatever it might be in the heat. I'm going to 

tell you, the heat in that area -- I worked 

there, and not only -- not only the ten-inch 

bar mill, the heat in that area was 

astronomical. You could walk down next to 

those rod, whatever they'd be, steel or uranium 

-- uranium was only like 1200 degrees -- and 

you would have to shield your face sometimes 

because the heat -- go stand next to a fire. 

Build a big bonfire in your back yard. Go out 

there and look at the stuff that's coming off 

of it and then walk and see how close you can 

get to it. 

That girl that took the movies out in 

California, that film is out and I think, Jim, 

you have a copy of it. And if you look at the 

actual pictures from Bethlehem Steel you'll see 

people walking -- and it's like an explosion, 

like yesterday when the fireworks went off, all 

these burning chips -- the heat was 

astronomical in those buildings. No 

ventilation, with those furnaces going, and I 

can attest to this -- again, I'll take a 

polygraph test -- you could walk outside in the 
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steel plant and they ingots, what they called 

ingots there -- like 11 foot high, four-foot 

square on the bottom, three foot square on top 

-- that are red hot that are on cars -- maybe a 

half a mile of railroad cars -- cooling before 

they make them into billets. That's the 

procedure before it gets to the billets. 

So heat -- and when you're breathing -- every 

day when we went into some of those furnaces, 

like the salt bath and when we went into some 

of the other furnaces, the temperatures were -- 

you -- sometimes you couldn't stay in there 

more than five minutes. I was a brick layer. 

You'd sit down your -- your brick hammer, and 

if you didn't pick it up or set it on top of a 

brick coming in, a new brick you set it on the 

old (unintelligible), that wooden handle would 

burn out of the brick hammer. 

And that's how it was every day. That wasn't 

once a week or once a month, that was every 

day. And again, I can bring you all -- all the 

witnesses for sworn affidavits. 

Then we find there was also experimental work. 

I found that out, that not only did we have 

this new area down below, but they brought in 
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finished product, production rolled rods from 

Simonds Saw. This is documentated (sic), 

declassified from the government. They brought 

them to Bethlehem to dip them in a salt bath 

and -- and heat them up, take them out, cool 

them down and straighten them, and they send 

them to Hanford for experimental work. There 

was no rolling procedure, so obviously there's 

no air samples taken or any survey on that at 

all. 

We don't know how many -- how much -- how many 

times this took place, how many experiments 

they done beside the rolling procedure at 

Bethlehem Steel, but it's enough to tell you 

that when it's experimental, we don't know what 

they done. So they say well, if you can find 

us records -- well, we can tell what happened. 

Bethlehem Steel did not have the records. 

Bethlehem Steel -- I can bring you a man with a 

signed affidavit that worked in the office when 

he got out of high school as a clerk. And he 

told me -- and he says he'll sign an affidavit 

for me -- he says there was guards placed 

around his office, and when they came in and 

made out the government reports that these guys 
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would come over and take the reports, plus the 

carbon paper -- these were old days -- they 

took the carbon paper right out of the 

typewriter and that's -- they couldn't go -- if 

they would go to the men's room or the ladies' 

room, somebody would follow them right into the 

bathroom. So they have the records. 

And now it looks like Bethlehem Steel went 

bankrupt, so we don't have the records. Why 

don't you look down at Bethlehem and see what 

you can find? For 50 years they kept the 

records, so how are we going to find records 

that the government had? And if they're lost, 

the only one that has them is the government. 

And why did they only release so many? So 

these are some real serious questions that I 

think we deserve answers to. I really do. 

And the men that were lied to, we worked 

without protection down here, and that alone is 

enough. Now I know you've all got parents and 

a lot of you have children and grandparents, 

and if it was one of your family that was from 

Bethlehem Steel, I would fight for them as much 

as you. I don't care whether -- whose it is, 

what's right is right and what's wrong is 
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wrong. And I'm begging you to look into this 

and give us a fair shake at Bethlehem Steel. 

I -- maybe I'm just a sentimental guy, I don't 

know, but I would fight for anyone if I heard 

this was going on. I don't care if he's from 

California, he deserves someone to fight for 

him. And these poor fellas that came back from 

fighting a war and made all of this possible, 

this beautiful hotel and the rooms that you can 

stay in, come back -- young kids getting killed 

just like today over in Iraq, and they come 

back and the government lies to them and 

exposes them to this, and now we're arguing how 

much did you get. Did you get this much? 

Well, we can't pay you, but if you got that 

much, we can. And this is a shame. This is --

the injustice in this program is a shame. And 

some of the -- some of the things that we've 

been told and what -- what -- like your 

grandmothers and my grandmothers, to send them 

a questionnaire and ask them what their husband 

done 50 years ago in the plant when they don't 

have a clue, a lot of them never got out of 

school, and then send them a letter saying if 

you don't sign off on this paper we're going to 
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drop your case. This is ludicrous. 

So I hope when you're -- I know you're working 

hard and you're all fighting for the right 

thing, I hope, I mean I'm pretty sure you are, 

just give us some consideration and -- this 

goes for Mallinckrodt people, too, not just -- 

not just Bethlehem Steel. This is going on 

around the country. So thank you very much for 

the time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Ed. Ed has been doing 

at Bethlehem what Denise has been doing here, 

and I know that your colleagues appreciate all 

your efforts. 

 MR. WALKER: Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That completes our public comment 

period for this evening. Thank you all for 

being here. We have an open meeting beginning 

tomorrow morning at 7:30. I hope to see many 

of you there. Thank you, and good night. 

 (Whereupon, the session concluded at 9:00 p.m.) 
_____________________ 

253 

C E R T I F I C A T E OF COURT REPORTER 

STATE OF GEORGIA 

COUNTY OF FULTON 

 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 

Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 

above and foregoing on the day of July 5, 2005; 

and it is a true and accurate transcript of the 

testimony captioned herein. 

 I further certify that I am neither kin 

nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 

have any interest in the cause named herein. 

 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 

18th day of July, 2005. 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102