STEVEN RAY GREEN AND ASSOCIATES 

NATIONALLY CERTIFIED COURT REPORTERS 

404/733-6070 

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 

WORKING GROUP MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

WORKER OUTREACH

 

The verbatim transcript of the Work Group 

Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health held at the Marriott Airport Hotel, 

Cincinnati, Ohio, on Feb. 1, 2008. 
2

C O N T E N T S

Feb. 1, 2008 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 6 

DR. CHRISTINE BRANCHE, DFO 

INTRODUCTION BY CHAIR 11 

MR. MIKE GIBSON, ABRWH 

NIOSH OCAS OVERVIEW OF WORKER OUTREACH 12 

MR. LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH 

SC&A OVERVIEW OF WORKER OUTREACH 81 

DR. ARJUN MAKHIJANI, SC&A 

DISCUSSION, ACTION ITEMS, PATH FORWARD, ETC. 132 

WORKERS, WORKER REPRESENTATIVES/ADVOCATE COMMENTS 150 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 186 

 
3

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. 
4

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

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL

BRANCHE, Christine, Ph.D. 

Principal Associate Director 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Washington, DC 

BOARD MEMBERS

BEACH, Josie 

Nuclear Chemical Operator 

Hanford Reservation 

Richland, Washington 

GIBSON, Michael H. 

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union 

Local 5-4200 

Miamisburg, Ohio 

MUNN, Wanda I. 

Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired) 

Richland, Washington 

SCHOFIELD, Phillip 

Los Alamos Project on Worker Safety 

Los Alamos, New Mexico 
5

PARTICIPANTS

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH 

BARRIE, TERRIE, ANWAG 

BREYER, LAURIE, NIOSH 

BURGOS, ZAIDA, NIOSH 

CHANG, CHIA-CHIA, NIOSH 

ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH 

HINNEFELD, STUART, NIOSH 

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS 

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 

JOHNSON, J.J., NIOSH 

KOTSCH, JEFF, U.S. DOL 

LEWIS, MARK 

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A 

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 

MCDOUGALL, VERNON, ATL 

MCKEEL, DAN, SINEW 

MERRITT, MAUREEN, LANL 

ROBERTSON-DEMERS, KATHY, SC&A 

WADE, LEW, NIOSH 

WALBURN, JEFF 
6

P R O C E E D I N G S

(9:30 a.m.) 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS

DR. CHRISTINE BRANCHE, DFO

1 MR. GIBSON: My name is Mike Gibson. I’m 

2 the Chair of the Worker Outreach Work Group. 

3 With us in attendance here today -- 

4 DR. BRANCHE: If you’ll let me? You’re 

5 stealing my thunder. 

6 This is Christine Branche. Can 

7 everyone on the phone hear me? 

8 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Yes. 

9 DR. BRANCHE: Okay, great. 

10 As you heard Michael Gibson, he’s the 

11 Chair of the group. I’d like to make certain 

12 that we have the Board members who are on, so 

13 let me just do this. Josie Beach? 

14 MS. BEACH: Here. 

15 DR. BRANCHE: Phil Schofield? 

16 MR. SCHOFIELD: Here. 

17 DR. BRANCHE: Wanda Munn? 

18 MS. MUNN: Here. 

19 DR. BRANCHE: Are there any other Board 

20 members who are on the phone? 
7

1 (no response) 

2 DR. BRANCHE: Okay, we don’t have a quorum 

3 of the Board, so we’re doing well. 

4 NIOSH staff, would you please 

5 introduce yourselves? 

6 DR. WADE (by Telephone): This is Lew Wade. 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Stu Hinnefeld from NIOSH. 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: Larry Elliott from NIOSH. 

9 MS. BURGOS (by Telephone): Zaida Burgos 

10 from NIOSH. 

11 MS. BREYER: Laurie Breyer from NIOSH. 

12 MR. JOHNSON: J.J. Johnson, NIOSH. 

13 DR. BRANCHE: And I didn’t introduce myself. 

14 I’m Christine Branche. I’m functioning as 

15 your designated federal official today, and 

16 I’m also with NIOSH. 

17 ORAU staff, Dr. Makhijani? 

18 DR. MAKHIJANI: I’m SC&A. 

19 DR. BRANCHE: Oh, you’re SC&A. Forgive me. 

20 ORAU. Do I have any ORAU staff on the 

21 line? 

22 (no response) 

23 DR. BRANCHE: SC&A. 

24 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): This is John 

25 Mauro. And let me extend my apologies. I was 
8

1 at the airport about an hour ago, and my 

2 flight was canceled. And it was impossible to 

3 get in at a decent time, so I’m back home. So 

4 my apologies for not being there. 

5 DR. BRANCHE: We’re glad you’re all in one 

6 piece and participating by phone. 

7 DR. MAKHIJANI: Arjun Makhijani, SC&A. 

8 MS. DeMERS (by Telephone): This is Kathy 

9 Robertson-DeMers, SC&A. 

10 DR. BRANCHE: Are there any other federal 

11 agencies -- 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: Go to ATL, if you would. 

13 DR. BRANCHE: Okay, ATL? 

14 MR. McDOUGALL: Vernon McDougall from ATL. 

15 MR. KOTSCH (by Telephone): Jeff Kotsch, 

16 Department of Labor. 

17 MS. ADAMS (by Telephone): Nancy Adams, 

18 Christine. 

19 DR. BRANCHE: Thank you. 

20 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): This is 

21 Liz Homoki-Titus with HHS. 

22 MS. HOWELL: This is Emily Howell with HHS. 

23 DR. BRANCHE: Any other federal agency staff 

24 on the phone? 

25 MS. CHANG (by Telephone): Chia-Chia Chang, 
9

1 NIOSH. 

2 DR. BRANCHE: Are there any petitioners or 

3 their representatives on the phone who would 

4 like to identify themselves? 

5 (no response) 

6 DR. BRANCHE: Are there any workers or their 

7 representatives who are participating by phone 

8 who would like to identify themselves? 

9 (no response) 

10 DR. BRANCHE: Are there any members of 

11 Congress or their representatives on the 

12 phone? 

13 (no response) 

14 DR. BRANCHE: Are there any others who would 

15 like to mention their names for the call? 

16 (no response) 

17 DR. BRANCHE: Please understand that 

18 everyone who mentions their name will have 

19 their name appear in the transcript for this 

20 meeting. We will go by the redaction policy 

21 that has been discussed. I have to read this 

22 to you. 

23 Our policy on redaction is as follows: 

24 “If a person making a comment gives his or her 

25 name, no attempt will be made to redact the 
10

1 name from the meeting transcript. NIOSH will 

2 make reasonable steps to ensure that 

3 individuals making public comment are aware of 

4 the fact that their comments, including their 

5 name if provided, will appear in a transcript 

6 of the meeting posted on a public website. 

7 Such reasonable steps include a 

8 statement read at the beginning of the 

9 meeting, a printed copy of the statement,” -- 

10 that I’m reading now -- “a statement such as 

11 outlined above will also appear in the 

12 agenda.” And a statement such as what I’ve 

13 just mentioned will appear in the Federal 

14 Register notice. “If an individual in making 

15 a statement reveals personal information such 

16 as medical information about themselves, that 

17 information will not usually be redacted. 

18 The NIOSH Federal Freedom of 

19 Information Act Coordinator will, however, 

20 review such revelations in accordance with the 

21 Freedom of Information Act and the Federal 

22 Advisory Committee Act, and if deemed 

23 appropriate, will redact such information. 

24 All disclosures of information concerning 

25 third parties will be redacted. 
11

1 If it comes to the attention of the 

2 designated federal official that an individual 

3 wishes to share information with the Board but 

4 objects to doing so in a public forum, the DFO 

5 will work with that individual in accordance 

6 with the Federal Advisory Committee Act to 

7 find a way so that the Board can hear such 

8 comments.” 

9 I thank all of you who are 

10 participating by phone. I do ask that you 

11 mute your phones if you’re not speaking so 

12 that all those who are both in the room and 

13 who are participating by phone can hear the 

14 full discussion. If you do not have a mute 

15 button on your phone, then please use star-six 

16 to mute your phone and use star-six again to 

17 unmute your phone when you’re ready to speak. 

18 And for those of us in the meeting room if you 

19 could please mute your cell phones and pagers, 

20 we would appreciate it. Thank you. 

21 Mr. Gibson. 

22 INTRODUCTION BY CHAIR

23 MR. GIBSON: Thanks, Christine. 

24 The Board takes very seriously the 

25 worker participation in this process, and as 
12

1 well as I think NIOSH and everyone involved 

2 does. So we look at this as a very important 

3 work group, and hopefully we can vet all the 

4 issues and see if there’s any change that 

5 needs to be made and try to recommend that to 

6 the Board. 

7 We have a fairly simple agenda today. 

8 First, we’re going to have an overview of the 

9 current state of worker outreach from NIOSH. 

10 And then we’re going to have our technical 

11 support contractor give an overview of some 

12 things they may have seen based on their 

13 audits of the process. 

14 And then finally this afternoon we’re 

15 going to have some time for workers, their 

16 representatives or their advocates to make any 

17 comments they may have. And then we’ll try to 

18 set a path forward and look at the action 

19 items and set a future meeting. 

20 NIOSH OCAS OVERVIEW OF WORKER OUTREACH

21 So with that we’ll start the 

22 NIOSH/OCAS overview, and I’ll turn it over to 

23 Larry Elliott. 

24 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you, Mike. I concur and 

25 agree that you have a very important work 
13

1 group here, Worker Outreach, and we encourage 

2 and will welcome whatever recommendations or 

3 comments that you want us to consider. 

4 We know that this worker outreach is 

5 only one of our outreach type of efforts. And 

6 in my overview I’m going to give you the 

7 breadth of outreach that we do and not focus 

8 directly on worker outreach per se other than 

9 a few particular comments with regard to where 

10 we stand on that aspect of outreach. 

11 But when I say that outreach varies, 

12 it is very, a variety of outreach that we do, 

13 I’m talking about our Public Health advisors 

14 that interview claimants at the Advisory Board 

15 meeting. That’s one way we try to reach out 

16 to people in this program. 

17 I’m also talking about when we’re 

18 invited to town hall meetings or we conduct a 

19 town hall meeting of our own. And we may or 

20 may not invite DOE or DOL. Those are outreach 

21 efforts as well as we see them. 

22 We certainly consider the public 

23 comment period at Board meetings to be another 

24 opportunity to reach out to people as we hear 

25 them speak and take note of what they have to 
14

1 say to us. And we pull them aside if we can 

2 and react appropriately to their concerns. I 

3 could go on. There are probably other things 

4 I could identify as outreach efforts, but 

5 worker outreach is another effort that we have 

6 embarked upon. 

7 And it has evolved considerably over 

8 the course of this program. It originated, 

9 and we housed Worker Outreach within our dose 

10 reconstruction contract with ORAU originally. 

11 And the review that your contractor has given 

12 the Advisory Board is on a procedure that ORAU 

13 developed to perform outreach to workers who 

14 we consider to be site experts as well as 

15 subject matter experts at sites. 

16 And ORAU used that procedure to 

17 perform outreach to support issues that they 

18 were seeking resolution on with regard to site 

19 profile or technical basis development. 

20 That’s what that procedure was essentially 

21 designed to assist them in doing. 

22 We see worker outreach as being much 

23 broader than that, and we have pulled that 

24 outreach effort out of ORAU now and 

25 transitioned it to ATL with a much broader 
15

1 scope to it. We’re asking ATL to do things 

2 that are beyond just dealing with the site 

3 profile. We asked them to assist us in SEC 

4 procedures. Now SEC evaluations is a conduct 

5 of focus groups both for site profiles or SEC 

6 evaluation efforts. When the Board asked us 

7 to go back to Blockson and ask three 

8 questions, ATL helped us facilitate that. 

9 And we’re constantly strategizing 

10 about how to do better and how to refine this 

11 whole effort on outreach to workers per se. 

12 Whatever our outreach effort is, I’ve asked 

13 that we have a clearly stated purpose and 

14 focus and targeted audience. We want to know 

15 who we are attempting to communicate with in 

16 these venues. And this I think the Board and 

17 this working group and your contractor need to 

18 understand that there are a variety of these 

19 outreach efforts. 

20 And the circumstances that surround 

21 each effort dictate what the purpose, what the 

22 focus, and who the target audience may be. We 

23 have found that in many instances in worker 

24 outreach it’s more beneficial, we get more 

25 bang for the buck, if you will, on what our 
16

1 concerns, what our questions, what our 

2 interests are in trying to find out 

3 information that will improve our approaches 

4 or our understanding of the work environment. 

5 If we meet with small groups, if it’s not like 

6 a town hall meeting, and we meet with five, 

7 six, eight, ten, 12 workers, we have a better 

8 exchange and a better experience. 

9 That’s not to say that we don’t value 

10 public meetings on a broader scale at town 

11 hall meetings, but we must recognize that in 

12 those settings, when you’re engaging more of 

13 the public, more of the claimant population, 

14 what you’re going to get out of that is more 

15 complaints, concerns, issues about the 

16 program, about the process, about what NIOSH 

17 does, what DOL does, and those kind of things. 

18 If we’re interested in really 

19 answering questions about how a site 

20 operations were performed or what the personal 

21 protective equipment strategies were or the 

22 administrative practices were, we’re better 

23 served we have found if we talk with former 

24 and/or current workers. ATL has been engaged 

25 very fully in that regard in pulling together 
17

1 contacts for us with former workers, with 

2 current workers and working with our health 

3 physicists and our dose reconstructor 

4 contractor folks, identifying what issues or 

5 what questions we have that we want to see if 

6 we can get answers to. 

7 That’s not to say that when we have an 

8 engagement with workers they don’t bring 

9 something to the table. In a lot of ways they 

10 bring things to the table our folks hadn’t 

11 thought of, and we value that. 

12 I mentioned targeted audiences here 

13 and I’m talking about the small groups versus 

14 a claimant population which is a town hall, 

15 and the dynamics of each are different. And I 

16 hope you understand that and recognize that 

17 it’s not only a challenge for us, but it’s 

18 something we all need to deal with in our 

19 understanding of what is being done here. 

20 I think another distinction that I 

21 would draw for you is that there’s a lot of 

22 confusion about process and procedure. And I 

23 think that comes from holding up the model of 

24 the Board’s activities, the Board’s 

25 deliberations, and the Board’s processes where 
18

1 that is governed by FACA. 

2 And the Institute has made a decision 

3 to use transcripts as well as minutes. 

4 Minutes are required by FACA; transcripts are 

5 not. But then that engages a Privacy Act 

6 determination and a policy which has been 

7 developed and has also evolved over the course 

8 of time of this program. 

9 Worker outreach as well as the other 

10 outreach efforts that we employ, we have made 

11 policy and practice decisions in those 

12 efforts. It may not reflect, may not be the 

13 same, and for valid good reason are not a 

14 mirror image of what the Board’s practices and 

15 policies are on generating documentation from 

16 a meeting, whether it be transcripts or 

17 documentation used in a meeting, be it white 

18 papers or review papers. 

19 So I’d ask you to make that 

20 distinction in your mind. We are not 

21 operating with the same set of practices, same 

22 set of policies, same set of requirements in 

23 Worker Outreach or our other outreach efforts 

24 as you, the Board, do because you’re governed 

25 by FACA. So we don’t have transcripts in 
19

1 Worker Outreach. 

2 We have what we call minutes, and we 

3 have made a decision to curtail as much as 

4 possible the use of names in those minutes. 

5 We use names in minutes where we want to make 

6 sure we go back to somebody, there’s an action 

7 item or we have somebody’s contributed 

8 something that is very relevant. We talk to 

9 those people about the fact that their name 

10 may appear in this set of minutes. 

11 The minutes are also reviewed as are 

12 Board transcripts and Dave Sundin, I don’t 

13 know if he’s on the line, but he facilitates 

14 that review with the Privacy Act Coordinator 

15 in Atlanta. Before these things can be posted 

16 on our website we particularly are concerned 

17 about third-party information or other 

18 sensitive information that shouldn’t be 

19 publicly displayed. But once we have that 

20 Privacy Act approval to post, the minutes 

21 should be posted. We have a timeframe that 

22 we’re asking that to be done on. We’re 

23 looking at that timeframe. 

24 Vern McDougall’s here and Mark Lewis 

25 is here from ATL, and I think they’re ready to 
20

1 help you and answer questions about the 

2 experiences that they’ve had in setting up 

3 meetings, the various types of meetings, the 

4 various accomplishments, the various concerns 

5 that they have. They have ideas for 

6 improvement as well. 

7 And J.J. Johnson is here from 

8 NIOSH/OCAS, and he is, he serves as the 

9 technical monitor for ATL’s task, but he’s 

10 also revising and rewriting the procedure that 

11 SC&A reviewed that came out of ORAU. There 

12 will be a NIOSH/OCAS procedure when J.J.’s 

13 finished with it. So you are seeing in your 

14 review from SC&A a snapshot which is probably 

15 two years old or so of where things were I 

16 think at that point in time. 

17 A lot of good comments these five 

18 suggestions, five recommendations. I think 

19 J.J. can speak to that or Stu can speak to 

20 that. We see merit there. We see need to 

21 make improvements there in this new procedure 

22 that J.J. is developing. 

23 So one of the things I’m most 

24 interested in seeing come out of your work 

25 group is a clearly focused and purposeful 
21

1 review. And I’m hoping that your review will 

2 aid us in identifying ways that we can improve 

3 our communications and our reactions to worker 

4 input. And so I’ll stop there. 

5 And Stu’s also here because he’s 

6 J.J.’s supervisor, but I need him to make sure 

7 that what comes out of this working group gets 

8 reconnected back into our procedures and how 

9 we handle and how we deal with our dose 

10 reconstructor contractor and what ATL brings 

11 to the table from their efforts. And so that 

12 coupling needs to be made. There needs to be 

13 information that has merit, has benefit, will 

14 influence how we do our work, needs to get 

15 coupled back into our dose reconstruction 

16 contract approaches. 

17 And then also we need to provide, and 

18 we’ve not done a very good job of this. And 

19 we were talking this morning about how ways 

20 and means to do a better job. And certainly, 

21 we’d welcome this work group’s thoughts and 

22 recommendations in that regard. How do we 

23 acknowledge to folks that changes have been 

24 made? 

25 If I hold up the Blockson example for 
22

1 you, considerable change in the Blockson 

2 technical basis approach was made because of 

3 worker input to that process, and we can name 

4 many examples like this. But what I’m 

5 concerned about is we haven’t told those 

6 folks, hey, we heard you, and here’s what 

7 we’ve done with it. So we’re looking for ways 

8 to make that happen, to improve upon this 

9 whole process of gaining input into our 

10 procedures. So I’ll stop at that. 

11 Did Stu or J.J. or Vern have anything 

12 else you want to -- 

13 MR. HINNEFELD: I’ll defer to Vern if he 

14 wants to talk about his view. 

15 MR. McDOUGALL: I’ll just make a couple of 

16 remarks and then really what I’d like to do is 

17 be available to have a dialogue with you as 

18 much as you please. 

19 Mark and I have been working on this 

20 since we started working on it in late 2003. 

21 (Inaudible) came on with us in 2004. We have, 

22 we’ve found this tremendously rewarding as an 

23 opportunity to work with both OCAS and the 

24 labor unions and other groups as we’ve been 

25 able to identify them. Mark and I both have 
23

1 frankly a labor union background. I’ve got 

2 about 26 years in the labor movement working 

3 for various unions. Mark has about a 

4 comparable number of years, comes out of the 

5 Portsmouth gaseous diffusion plant. He was a 

6 long-time Union Safety and Health rep. 

7 We’ve seen this evolve over time. We 

8 are, in many ways the easy part is over. The 

9 easy part was setting up those first meetings 

10 to get input into the site profiles. We’ve 

11 seen that the groups that we’ve dealt with 

12 have gained in their familiarity with this 

13 whole process and with NIOSH over the years. 

14 And we hope that that has changed their 

15 effectiveness and the value that they get, 

16 that they derive from their experience with 

17 NIOSH. 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, with that we’re here to 

19 help the working group in any way that we can 

20 and provide any information you need to do 

21 your job. And again, I would just encourage 

22 you to give this a real good focused and 

23 purposeful review. I hope we can see some 

24 benefit from all that. 

25 MS. BEACH: I have a question. I’m Josie 
24

1 Beach. On the procedure, I just want to be 

2 clear. You got some, the procedure that was 

3 in place, you had some points by points of 

4 changing it. Are you creating a brand new 

5 procedure? 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

7 MS. BEACH: Is that what I heard? 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: That’s what J.J.’s charged to 

9 do is come up with a, and NIOSH procedure. 

10 The one you have reviewed here is one that 

11 ORAU developed for its purposes in performing 

12 the work on site profiles’ technical basis 

13 documents. 

14 MS. BEACH: Okay, so that one will not be 

15 improved? It will just be referred to the new 

16 procedure? 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: The NIOSH procedure will take 

18 precedence on this. And this procedure will 

19 probably go away. 

20 MS. BEACH: And then what’s the timeline on 

21 the new procedure? Any idea? 

22 MR. JOHNSON: It’s in a real crude form 

23 right now. I would say it’s going to be, 

24 because of other activities, it’s going to 

25 take several months to go through and make 
25

1 sure that it’s reviewed properly and approved. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: It’s a ways down the road. 

3 There are a number of changes that we want to 

4 see evident in this new procedure that go 

5 beyond what ORAU had in their procedure and 

6 also encompass and incorporate the comments on 

7 that procedure from SC&A. But we’re taking it 

8 beyond that. There are things that we want to 

9 impart into this that we know about that 

10 weren’t necessarily identified in this review 

11 that we think are pertinent to how we interact 

12 with workers. 

13 But we certainly agree and concur that 

14 comments like we have one way we handle site 

15 or subject matter experts versus talking to 

16 workers, former or current workers, from that 

17 site who are not, again, I deem all workers at 

18 a site to be subject matter experts, site 

19 experts, but we’ve had a tendency to reach out 

20 and pull the senior health physicists or the 

21 management types and deal with them 

22 differently than we’ve dealt with workers from 

23 the process floor. 

24 MR. HINNEFELD: And there will be pieces of 

25 the new procedure that are going to look just 
26

1 like those pieces of the old procedure. 

2 Certain pieces are continuing as they were 

3 because there’ll be additional and then we do 

4 have the advantage of the review and 

5 recommendations from the report that we will 

6 address to the extent we can. 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: Certainly one section is going 

8 to have to deal with making -- in this 

9 procedure -- making sure that what ATL brings 

10 back and what, and how that gets incorporated, 

11 how that gets plugged into the right spot in 

12 our dose reconstruction contract or within 

13 OCAS itself. Maybe it doesn’t need to go 

14 there, but we’ve got to work out that and make 

15 sure that we also have some language that 

16 speaks about going back to the workers with 

17 the right timeframe and the right messages. 

18 We’ve talked this morning a little bit 

19 before this meeting started about how valuable 

20 do the folks find these minutes. We have a 

21 60-day turnaround waiting for folks who were 

22 at the meeting to review and comment. Did we 

23 get it right? Did we capture the minutes 

24 right? Do we need that 60 days? I mean, and 

25 I guess Vern would say to you that probably 
27

1 ten percent, 90 percent don’t care. 

2 We don’t hear from, in 90 percent of 

3 the time if I’m correct, 90 percent of the 

4 time we don’t hear back, 60 days elapses and, 

5 you know. So maybe it’s better that we just 

6 go ahead and put, make sure we’ve got all the 

7 review comment that we can internally and put 

8 those up on the website and notify the folks 

9 that they’re up and say if you’ve got 

10 comments, or if you need a revision to this, 

11 let us know and we’ll change it. 

12 And we can start using the 

13 information, or we start plugging the 

14 information in at that point rather than wait. 

15 There’s a 60 day plus time delay here that 

16 we’re trying to work against to get that up. 

17 So we’ll have to speak to that, too. There’s 

18 a lot of these kinds of procedural details 

19 that we want to address in J.J.’s new 

20 procedure. 

21 DR. MAKHIJANI: Might it be useful to get -- 

22 I don’t know if everybody has recently read 

23 the procedure or the review that we did of it, 

24 and I don’t know. It might be useful to recap 

25 because Larry has made a lot of references to 
28

1 both the procedure and the reviews. So it 

2 might be useful to recap some of the things in 

3 it if you would want. 

4 MS. MUNN: It would certainly be helpful for 

5 me to recap SC&A’s points, because it’s been 

6 well over a year since I’ve looked at those. 

7 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, no, actually, this 

8 review is quite recent. It’s from November of 

9 last year. 

10 MS. MUNN: So this current November. 

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: Last November, yeah. But -- 

12 MS. MUNN: I’m further behind than I 

13 thought. 

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- there’s been a lot of 

15 procedure reviews. 

16 MS. MUNN: Yes, I know there have been. And 

17 it’s -- 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: But the point is that I’m 

19 making is the document that was reviewed, 

20 you’re absolutely right. Your review was 

21 November of last year. But the document that 

22 was reviewed is a snapshot in time of two 

23 years ago. 

24 MS. MUNN: We’ve done a lot since then. 

25 DR. MAKHIJANI: And there’s been a lot of 
29

1 changes. When we reviewed the document, we 

2 found it had many strengths, and we had 

3 comments on things that could be done to 

4 improve it. But the fact that there was a 

5 formal procedure actually to interview workers 

6 to contact unions to get back to them to make 

7 a tape recording for reference in preparing 

8 the minutes, all of those things were very 

9 important and big changes from, some of them, 

10 very informal early contacts where things 

11 seemed to fall through the cracks. And there 

12 was a lot more unhappiness so there was 

13 actually a lot of good changes that have been 

14 made and incorporated into the procedure. And 

15 then if you want, I can just recall the -- 

16 MR. GIBSON: We’ll probably wait until, 

17 Arjun, we’ll wait until the SC&A overview to 

18 go through that. We do want to hear that, but 

19 before we do that we’ll just, is there any 

20 other comments on Larry’s presentation or 

21 anything else? 

22 MS. BEACH: I guess I just want a little bit 

23 of history. You said it went from ORAU over 

24 to ATL. Can you tell us when that took place 

25 and maybe why? 
30

1 MR. HINNEFELD: It happened this past 

2 summer, July? 

MR. McDOUGALL: Right around June 1st 3 give or 

4 take a few days. 

5 MR. HINNEFELD: So it happened this past 

6 summer, and I think the reason was that we 

7 wanted to have direct control over it because 

8 it was, I mean, ORAU had subcontracted it to 

9 ATL so it’s these same people have been doing 

10 it. But that then made this particular 

11 component of the program subject to the 

12 constraints placed on the ORAU contract, you 

13 know, funding constraints, whatever. 

14 And so it became then the ORAU 

15 contractor that was prioritizing this effort 

16 in light of all the other things they had to 

17 do when money got tight or when there were 

18 conflicting priorities on things. And I think 

19 that largely was the reason why we felt like 

20 we would rather have the ability to do that 

21 ourselves and to remove that, well, (a) remove 

22 that issue from ORAU because it’s one more 

23 thing for them to manage. And secondly, to 

24 allow us to decide where this priority lay 

25 against other priorities of the project. 
31

1 MR. GIBSON: Some of the members of the work 

2 group have attended some of the various 

3 meetings put on by NIOSH/OCAS. Any of the 

4 members want to comment on the type of meeting 

5 you attended and your feelings of the meeting? 

6 I know I’ve attended a few myself, and the 

7 meetings certainly do vary. 

8 I’ll have to say that some of the town 

9 hall meetings I actually had sympathy for the 

10 OCAS staff only because some of the members of 

11 the audience I think really didn’t understand 

12 the program and some of them weren’t even 

13 eligible for the program and were wanting OCAS 

14 to do things that weren’t even under the 

15 purview of the EEOICPA. But and then there is 

16 certainly more information I think that’s 

17 gleaned in the smaller worker-type meetings, 

18 and that is a concern of ours is how that’s 

19 implemented into the program. 

20 Do any of the other members have any 

21 comments on meetings you’ve attended or -- 

22 MS. MUNN: You should never punch my button. 

23 Of course, I have comments on meetings that 

24 have been attended personally. One of the 

25 things that strikes me is what a good job Mark 
32

1 does. He’s really very personable, connecting 

2 very easily with the people who attend the 

3 meetings and encourages them to open up and 

4 ask any questions at all that they come with. 

5 And having a personality like that that 

6 interacts with individuals is in my view very 

7 helpful to the process. So thank you, Mark, 

8 for your efforts in the meetings where I’ve 

9 personally seen you at work. 

10 There’s been an enormous difference in 

11 the tenor of various meetings I think partly 

12 because of the sites themselves, partly 

13 because of the work that’s done there, and 

14 partly because of the kinds of workers that 

15 attend these different meetings. As you 

16 alluded to earlier, Larry, the Blockson 

17 meetings were enormously helpful in terms of 

18 getting very specific information about how 

19 the process operated and what made it much, 

20 much more reasonable for us to be fairly 

21 definitive about what went on at that 

22 particular site. 

23 By contrast, the Texas City meeting 

24 which I attended was really a very, although 

25 it was very informative for us, it was very 
33

1 difficult for the workers because a great many 

2 people had apparently either been misinformed 

3 or had misunderstood information that was 

4 being presented to them. I have no 

5 statistics, but my guess is that easily 85 to 

6 90 percent of the people who were there were 

7 not even eligible for the program. They had 

8 mistakenly believed that they were covered; 

9 they were not. That’s a very difficult 

10 situation. And there’s no easy way to be able 

11 to tell people that they just simply are not 

12 covered under this program. 

13 On other sites there’s been much more 

14 of what I would anticipate. A lot of people 

15 have stories to tell very much like our 

16 meetings in Board session. They want to tell 

17 their story and do so. But you get a 

18 combination of people who want to tell their 

19 stories and individuals who have been major 

20 contributors to the activities on the site and 

21 can add significantly to details. 

22 So from the point of view of a work 

23 group member who sits in on these meetings but 

24 does not contribute to them in any way, a 

25 simple observer, it appears from this 
34

1 perspective that they are effective, 

2 frustrating at times, but obviously helpful in 

3 gleaning information ultimately. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: One of the efforts of outreach 

5 that I didn’t speak about, of course, and I 

6 didn’t have it on my notes here -- and I want 

7 to leave Laurie out of this -- is the SEC 

8 outreach effort that Laurie and -- I don’t 

9 know if Denise is on the line. I think she 

10 was going to call in. But they also have an 

11 outreach component where they work with 

12 petitioners, and they work with potential 

13 petitioners and do outreach and held meetings 

14 themselves. And so those meetings and the 

15 minutes from those meetings are done similarly 

16 to what we call worker outreach. 

17 I’m sorry, maybe -- 

18 MS. BREYER: Actually, I don’t do minutes of 

19 those meetings. 

20 MS. BEACH: I have one more question. On 

21 the WISPR database are all the meetings from 

22 every aspect compiled into WISPR or just 

23 certain meetings? 

24 MR. HINNEFELD: On the fly it’s a little 

25 hard for me to say. I would think there’s a 
35

1 possibility that things that were classified 

2 as town hall meetings may not be there. I’d 

3 have to research and find out. 

4 But I think early on or for the design 

5 of that this was more on the kind of a, it was 

6 designed sort of like a focus group sort of 

7 meeting that you would meet with a smaller 

8 group of workers who worked at the site or 

9 used to work at the site and obtain comments 

10 that way. So I won’t promise that every town 

11 hall meeting is on there. But there are a lot 

12 of meetings on there. 

13 But while we’re on WISPR, that’s not 

14 the database we’re putting new information 

15 into, but it still contains the information 

16 that was generated up until June of last year 

17 or whenever the changeover occurred, and it is 

18 still available. 

19 MS. BEACH: I guess that -- oh, sorry, 

20 Larry. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: I was going to add to that 

22 that, yeah, I agree with Stu. There are 

23 meetings that I know that were held that are 

24 not in that particular database. The meetings 

25 that are in that database would be meetings 
36

1 that ORAU had some level of participation in. 

2 You’ll find Board meetings I think, public 

3 comment periods from Board meetings included 

4 in WISPR because an ORAU person was there and 

5 captured whatever they thought was relevant 

6 from that public comment sort of program. 

7 MS. BEACH: I guess one of my frustrations 

8 is going into, we have to go into several 

9 different areas to be able to find those 

10 interviews or the minutes. WISPRS’s one of 

11 them. What’s the future of WISPR, and is 

12 there a way to -- 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: We’re not going to use, we’re 

14 not using WISPR. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: We’re not adding additional 

16 information to it. We’ll have our own 

17 application that we would like -- 

18 MS. BEACH: So eventually we’ll have 

19 something else for -- 

20 MR. HINNEFELD: And even in the interim 

21 until our application’s ready I believe we can 

22 provide a summary of findings in the same type 

23 of information to you in some other, it may be 

24 a kind of a simple format or crude format like 

25 a spreadsheet or something, but I think we 
37

1 could do something like that until the new 

2 system is operational. But I think this new 

3 system will be operable before too long. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: I personally don’t see a lot 

5 of merit to WISPR. That’s not, in my mind 

6 that is not the problem. The problem is 

7 making sure that the information that’s of 

8 use, of merit, of influence gets put to the 

9 right person. WISPR doesn’t do that. 

10 MS. BEACH: And I’m not saying it does. 

11 What I am looking for is an easier route to be 

12 able to go and look at interviews, and WISPR 

13 was just one of them. But I realize when I 

14 was looking at Mound data, it’s not, it’s 

15 2005, so that’s what I was asking you is what 

16 the future of being able to go and look at 

17 worker input, a place to see that. 

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Now which are you looking 

19 for for Mound when you’re talking about 

20 interviews? Are you talking about -- 

21 MS. BEACH: I’ve just been into WISPR and 

22 just looked at stuff and realized that it’s, 

23 to be able to get interviews you have to, 

24 there’s some posted on the O drive. There’s 

25 some posted in the NIOSH. They’re scattered. 
38

1 MR. ELLIOTT: Here’s where a Board member 

2 should be able to go to a folder on the O 

3 drive for what site or petition you’re 

4 concerned with. If it’s GSI, if it’s 

5 Blockson, if it’s Idaho National Engineering 

6 Lab, there should be in one of those folders 

7 any interviews that were conducted. Are we 

8 there yet? No. 

9 There should be for minutes from these 

10 meetings on the website associated with that 

11 site or a petition associated with that site 

12 or if a technical basis document has been 

13 revised based upon worker input, there should 

14 be notice about that. That is where we want 

15 to get to. We are not there yet. I 

16 apologize. I hate to have to say to you, 

17 yeah, you’ve got to go to various different 

18 places. 

19 But I would encourage a Board member 

20 to talk with a NIOSH/OCAS point of contact 

21 you’ve been given for a particular site or a 

22 petition evaluation. And they should be able 

23 to pull that information together for you if 

24 it doesn’t already exist in one location. 

25 MS. BEACH: Right, and one aspect when 
39

1 you’re researching for this worker outreach 

2 meeting, there’s nothing really for this 

3 particular meeting except for kind of all 

4 over. So that’s my point. 

5 MS. BROCK: This is Denise, and I am on the 

6 line. I was just wondering if that’s 

7 something that Laurie and I should be doing 

8 then? Is having minutes? 

9 MS. BREYER: I think the reason we 

10 originally didn’t do minutes as opposed to 

11 town hall- and worker outreach-type meetings 

12 is the SEC was so narrow in its focus, and 

13 there wasn’t, I don’t believe that there was a 

14 chance to really get any information from 

15 workers or members of the public like in town 

16 hall meetings when they want to get up and 

17 tell their story. In worker outreach meetings 

18 we’re asking for it because it’s really just 

19 you and I going, giving our presentation and 

20 the questions really focus just on the SEC. I 

21 don’t know what benefit there would be in 

22 minutes, at least from the two we’ve had so 

23 far because we’ve not gained any information -

24 - 

25 MS. BROCK: You’re right. 
40

1 MR. ELLIOTT: I’ve let you and Laurie have 

2 discretion on whether you want minutes or not. 

3 But it doesn’t relieve you of an obligation. 

4 Once you hear somebody in your SEC counseling 

5 town hall meetings who raises up an issue, you 

6 have to take, you are responsible, and you are 

7 obliged, I feel, to take that back to the 

8 office and make sure it gets handed off to the 

9 right person. 

10 This is another thing that J.J.’s 

11 going to have to incorporate in his procedures 

12 I think. You know, making sure that not only 

13 the health physicists who go out on these 

14 meetings and do worker interviews, Laurie and 

15 the ombudsman need to be able to know where 

16 something’s been said that needs to get 

17 coupled back into the right place. And then 

18 we need to make sure that that person who made 

19 that statement gets some feedback. 

20 MS. BROCK: And I’ve actually, Laurie and I 

21 have done some together, but we’ve also done 

22 some separately. And so each one of those are 

23 different. The amount of people that are 

24 there are different, and so maybe that 

25 something, Laurie, we should talk about and 
41

1 consider maybe, I know we’ve got Pinellas 

2 coming up, and I’m assuming that maybe that’s 

3 going to be a little bit larger group as well. 

4 MR. SCHOFIELD: My observation has been 

5 there are meetings, before I was on the Board 

6 and since I’ve been on the Board, and it 

7 almost seems like we need to split the meeting 

8 in two parts. Have the first part for general 

9 input from the public, the workers, claimants, 

10 claimant families, whatever, where they want 

11 to tell their stories. Sometimes data and 

12 information comes out as Larry knows. It has 

13 before I ever got on the Board. 

14 But people don’t understand this, and 

15 some of them do. And then after that, and 

16 like Laurie held a meeting in Los Alamos that 

17 I attended that was strictly very narrow 

18 focused for people who were interested in 

19 filing an SEC. But by having that pre-meeting 

20 where they kind of get the idea of what this 

21 is, what they need for an SEC, what is an SEC, 

22 then those people who are really interested, 

23 you know, maybe we have a meeting Saturday 

24 afternoon. 

25 Then maybe Saturday evening we have a 
42

1 shorter meeting aimed particularly at those 

2 people for the SEC. Because otherwise -- and 

3 Mark’s been out there in New Mexico a number 

4 of times and helped us and put up some stuff, 

5 brought out stuff from Pace Union -- you get 

6 so much input and so many testimonies, it 

7 really doesn’t allow people in the audience 

8 who have questions about an SEC and how to go 

9 about this the chance to sit down and talk to 

10 Laurie or someone from the Board or someone 

11 from NIOSH. 

12 So it’s almost needed to be split into 

13 two sections. That way those who are then 

14 after the general public may be interested, 

15 they will take the next step. That’s just 

16 kind of an observation, having gone to several 

17 of these meetings and stuff. 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: Well certainly, we can tailor 

19 meetings, or we can tailor events at the 

20 discretion of the folks who are initiating the 

21 event. And again, it varies. You’re talking 

22 about an SEC interaction, and that to me 

23 sounds like it would work very well. 

24 But if the purpose and the focus is 

25 simply to get in front of ten or 12 workers, 
43

1 we’re not going to announce that publicly. 

2 We’re not going to announce it in the paper or 

3 very widely, and we’re going to go in and get 

4 our, have our exchange with those folks and 

5 get out. That’s a different kind of form. 

6 We allow people to tailor the way the 

7 meetings are conducted whether it needs one 

8 meeting, two meetings. We just ask that they 

9 clearly state the purpose, the focus and 

10 understand who they’re targeting as an 

11 audience. And then that dictates how things 

12 should happen. 

13 MR. SCHOFIELD: The resource centers would 

14 be a good place for people to come and get 

15 this information and maybe find somebody to 

16 actually help at the resource center and do 

17 these outreaches to people for technical help 

18 and stuff. I mean, because resource centers, 

19 most of them, they really aren’t, I mean, 

20 they’re trying to get records and stuff, but 

21 they really, a lot of them don’t really 

22 understand the program and how it functions so 

23 some technical assistance for the resource 

24 centers is another thing we could do. 

25 MS. BREYER: I know with the SEC outreach 
44

1 meetings we have invited the resource centers 

2 because we weren’t sure how many questions 

3 they were getting. In Idaho resource center 

4 people did show up. In Calabasas they did 

5 not, but we do try to do outreach with them as 

6 well so they can come and listen in then in 

7 any part E questions for people who want to 

8 file claims who may not have, but decided to 

9 come to the meeting, and then DOL will be 

10 there as well. 

11 Denise and I do try to stick around 

12 after the meeting as well, not necessarily 

13 holding that second smaller meeting, but to 

14 talk to anybody who heard the information, and 

15 they want to talk to either of us about 

16 actually filing a petition. And we have had 

17 some people call, we give out both of our 

18 contact information in those larger meetings 

19 and have had made contact and have had people 

20 contact us who are interested in filing a 

21 petition. 

22 And we talked to them either in a 

23 conference call with Denise and I or each 

24 individually and walked them through the steps 

25 of the petition and the form and get into more 
45

1 detail than maybe a larger meeting that we put 

2 on for them. So we do find that helps a lot. 

3 MS. BROCK: Yeah, I agree. 

4 MR. GIBSON: Do we have any more comments in 

5 this area from anyone in the room? 

6 (no response) 

7 MR. GIBSON: What about on the telephone? 

8 Any comments from anyone? 

9 (no response) 

10 MR. GIBSON: Larry, if we could ask you, as 

11 you and J.J., your ideas about this new 

12 procedure get more concrete and everything, 

13 could we maybe at a future meeting have a 

14 presentation from you or J.J. on just how this 

15 whole procedure is shaping up and how it’s 

16 going to look and everything? 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: Sure, we can give you a 

18 status. 

19 MR. GIBSON: And also on the future of the 

20 database that Josie was asking about? 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: We certainly will plan to do 

22 that. 

23 MR. GIBSON: I guess there’s nothing else 

24 then. We’re ready to move on to SC&A’s -- 

25 MS. BEACH: Can I ask one more? Can we get 
46

1 a copy of that procedure before the 

2 presentation if we’re going to -- 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: Nope. We’re not going to 

4 provide draft pre-decisional documents. We 

5 don’t do that. 

6 MS. BEACH: Well, I guess I wasn’t asking 

7 for a draft, just when the procedure is ready 

8 -- 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: When the procedure’s ready, 

10 we’ll provide it. 

11 MR. ELLIOTT: When the procedure’s ready, 

12 you’ll be given a copy. 

13 MS. BEACH: So the presentation you think 

14 will come before the -- 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: We can give you a status of 

16 where we’re at, what we’re thinking of, how, 

17 you know, the elements of the procedure. And 

18 we may feel it appropriate and beneficial to 

19 seek out your advice on an element or an 

20 approach we’re thinking of before we finalize 

21 it. If we can agree to keep that open, I’d 

22 like to, but we’re not able to share pre23 decisional documents of this nature. It needs 

24 to be our thought, our work and put it on the 

25 table, and you can react to it. 
47

1 MS. MUNN: One tangential thing before we go 

2 on to the next part of our deliberations 

3 today. What work groups are we connecting 

4 here? Obviously, there’s no problem with 

5 respect to connecting with the union members. 

6 That’s going to happen. But in the past it’s 

7 been difficult for me on several occasions to 

8 try to impress upon the group the fact that 

9 not all the workers on AWE and DOE sites are 

10 union members, and they are not privy to the 

11 continual kind of flow of information that 

12 moves back and forth between and among union 

13 members. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: Good question, very good 

15 question. 

16 MS. MUNN: I’m not at all sure what groups 

17 you -- another obvious group is the health 

18 physicists. All you have to do is contact the 

19 local ^ and you have those people on board. 

20 And then people talk about management. Well, 

21 management is not workers. I think by 

22 definition of everybody in this room probably. 

23 That’s an entirely different thing. 

24 They may be site experts in some way, 

25 but they are not thought of generally as 
48

1 workers. And I’ve had people tell me that 

2 they think of engineers as being part of 

3 management. Well, I, as you know, take issue 

4 with that. Those of us who spend all of our 

5 time on the plant floor don’t quite see 

6 ourselves, or arguing with management, don’t 

7 see ourselves in that role. But it has always 

8 been a concern to me that the primary channel 

9 for communication seems to be through 

10 organized workers. What else do we do? 

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, maybe Vern can -- 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, let me answer that in a 

13 general sense, and then I want Vern to speak 

14 in the specific sense with their experiences. 

15 Another reason, you know, I feel it’s 

16 beneficial to have ATL working on this for us 

17 is they have the union contacts. I felt it 

18 was beneficial to put them under our direct 

19 supervision or control or what have you rather 

20 than having it embedded within our dose 

21 reconstruction contract is that we can push 

22 the envelope on what we want them to do. 

23 And I’ve always had a concern that, 

24 yes, we reach out, and we talk to organized 

25 labor reps. We reach out and we talk to 
49

1 subject matter site experts. It may be 

2 management. It may be quasi management, or it 

3 may be just served in the administration of a 

4 monitoring program. 

5 I’ve been concerned, you know, what 

6 are we doing in situations where we don’t have 

7 those readily developed avenues like organized 

8 labor to get in. How do we approach a site 

9 like Savannah River where essentially you’ve 

10 only got one union which doesn’t represent a 

11 majority of the folks on the site. 

12 How do you approach those folks who 

13 are not represented? How do you seek them 

14 out? Do you go to churches? Do you look -- 

15 and I think Vern can speak to some specific 

16 examples on how they do that. 

17 Underserved populations is another 

18 concern I have. We have an African-American 

19 contingent at Savannah River, and I want to 

20 make sure that their voice is heard on this. 

21 I’ve heard their voice in my past doing 

22 research at Savannah River site that they 

23 felt, and probably rightfully so, they got the 

24 dirtiest jobs assigned to them and weren’t 

25 really monitored as well as maybe others were. 
50

1 We have a Native American contingent 

2 at several sites. I’m concerned about how 

3 we’re addressing their particular needs, 

4 concerns and involvement in this program. And 

5 so I’m pushing for that kind of more broad 

6 approach to happen. 

7 Certainly, our health physicists, ORAU 

8 or NIOSH or Battelle when they were on the 

9 program were encouraged, and you could see 

10 this written in our COB policy, site experts, 

11 subject matter experts. Those people who may 

12 have thoughts and information should be heard. 

13 We want to hear workers. We want to 

14 know what they can contribute, not only in the 

15 CATI. We recognize that survivors cannot help 

16 us to any great extent, but we don’t want to 

17 shut them out of the process of providing 

18 input through a CATI. And we want to make 

19 sure that we have a very broad landscape of 

20 opportunity to engage people here. And up to 

21 this point I don’t feel we’ve done a very good 

22 job of that. We’re going to change that. So 

23 Vern, I don’t know if you want to get some 

24 additional -- 

25 MR. McDOUGALL: You look like you’re ready 
51

1 to say something before I -- 

2 MS. MUNN: I’m always ready to say 

3 something. 

4 DR. BRANCHE: Before you do, may I say 

5 something? 

6 This is Christine Branche, and for 

7 those of you who have joined the call since we 

8 started, if you could please mute your phone 

9 it would help improve the quality of all those 

10 who are on the phone participating. If you 

11 don’t have a mute button, then please use star 

12 six, and then you can use star six again to 

13 un-mute your phone when you’re ready to speak. 

14 Thanks so much. 

15 Wanda. 

16 MS. MUNN: I’m wondering, for example, 

17 whether many of the sites have retiree groups. 

18 I’m wondering whether those groups are 

19 routinely contacted with an offer of 

20 presentation for the next meeting. Because 

21 since most of the concerns that we have over 

22 potential exposures are based in earlier 

23 years, then retiree groups are a logical place 

24 to find those people who are non-union, non25 management workers who have first-hand 
52

1 knowledge of the site and the activities that 

2 occurred there. 

3 Now I’ll shut up, Vern. 

4 MR. McDOUGALL: And the key word that you 

5 used is groups. The unions are easy to reach 

6 because they are groups, and we can identify 

7 somebody who can be our point of contact there 

8 and who can reach out and find the right 

9 knowledgeable people to bring to the table. 

10 And I won’t belabor right now how we reach out 

11 to different kinds of union groups. 

12 But there are a number of different 

13 kinds of union groups that are on the site, 

14 the site operating unions, the construction 

15 unions, metal trades councils were somewhat 

16 like the unions, the wall-to-wall unions. We 

17 reached out to them in a number of different 

18 ways that basically suit their own operating 

19 style. 

20 Other groups we have reached out where 

21 we could identify the group, and I’ll give you 

22 a couple concrete examples. Pinellas I think 

23 is a success story. One of the advantages of 

24 Pinellas is they haven’t been closed down that 

25 long. They’ve only been closed down for a 
53

1 little over a decade so there still are a 

2 semi-cohering retiree group. 

3 Now they don’t have business meetings. 

4 They don’t have a president, a secretary5 treasurer and all that. What they have is 

6 mailing lists, and they get together for a 

7 social event twice a year, but we could use 

8 that. So we located the people who kind of 

9 coordinated these social events, and we went 

10 down to Florida and visited them, got 

11 connected to the fellow who maintained the 

12 mailing list. 

13 And we used the mailing list to hold 

14 meetings in the same location where they were 

15 used to having their social events so 

16 everybody was comfortable with this. Those 

17 meetings went, I think, very well, and if you 

18 look at the site profile for Pinellas, you 

19 will find specific information that was 

20 derived from the input from the people from 

21 those meetings. 

22 One fellow from one of those meetings, 

23 from the first meeting, actually went home, 

24 and after he described certain things that 

25 found their way into the site profile, 
54

1 actually went home and on his computer sat 

2 down and graphically laid out, diagrammed, 

3 what he was talking about and submitted that. 

4 And at least one of those is I think now in 

5 the site profile. So it worked very well 

6 where we had a retiree group. 

7 At Blockson, Mark, one of the ways 

8 that we got some of the people that we did was 

9 that Mark found -- and I don’t even remember 

10 how he found it -- but found a small retiree 

11 group there. And this is just a bunch of old 

12 folks who get together every couple weeks for 

13 lunch. And there’s one fellow who has the 

14 phone numbers for everybody else. So we used 

15 that information to reach out to them to get 

16 them involved in the meeting. 

17 At LANL when we met with the unions 

18 there. They said, well, who do you want us to 

19 bring? We said you can bring whoever you 

20 think is important. Okay? Whoever you think 

21 has something to contribute, go ahead, and 

22 they did. They brought people who weren’t 

23 necessarily union members to some of those 

24 meetings, but they were, you know, we looked 

25 at them as the people at that location who 
55

1 knew best how to reach out. 

2 And Lawrence Livermore the same thing. 

3 We had one meeting actually onsite with the 

4 professional employees union there, and at 

5 some of these sites the engineers and people 

6 like that do have an organization. And then 

7 in the evening they sponsored a meeting in 

8 their office for basically people that they 

9 knew of who they thought had something to 

10 contribute. But we basically kind of rely on 

11 the people who live in the community and have 

12 worked at that site to kind of identify who 

13 the key people are. 

14 Texas City -- and I’ll stop in a 

15 minute -- Texas City, actually, Mark, the 

16 story there was those people had been 

17 organized back in the ‘50s, but that union had 

18 long since gone out of existence. We worked 

19 through people that we knew who worked at 

20 actually the facility next door is still an 

21 operating union and basically got in the 

22 community. 

23 Mark actually went down and has kind 

24 of recalled his old organizing skills and went 

25 door to door. One person at a time, go and 
56

1 meet with one person. That person takes you 

2 down the street to another person. And 

3 through a few days of his efforts the worker 

4 outreach now, not the town hall meetings, but 

5 if you read the minutes for the worker 

6 outreach meetings the month before, I think 

7 you’ll find a very different tone and much 

8 more substance. But he dug out people and 

9 recruited them to that meeting that the 

10 petitioner group didn’t know about. 

11 So we had to be fairly creative in all 

12 these efforts which is not to say that we 

13 can’t be more creative. And if we can find 

14 new ways to find some of these groups you 

15 speak about, we can apply the same kind of 

16 approaches, but first and foremost we need to 

17 find a group that we can speak to. 

18 MS. MUNN: Let me make one suggestion that 

19 perhaps has not been considered. I don’t know 

20 whether you have made an effort to work with 

21 local or regional sections of professional 

22 organizations. For example, the natural 

23 engineer mind is to go through the 17 

24 professional organizations that exist in my 

25 community and think, okay, now out of those I 
57

1 can say for a certainty that the American 

2 Nuclear Society has never been contacted to 

3 inform their members. Wouldn’t you think? 

4 I’m sure the Health Physics Society has, our 

5 triple E folks, construction engineers. 

6 You know, you can go down the list of 

7 professional organizations that, to the best 

8 of my knowledge, have not been contacted at 

9 all. This constitutes a significant number if 

10 you get into the chemistry organizations. I 

11 know there are at least two different 

12 professional organizations. Then you’re 

13 talking about an awful lot of people who are 

14 an awful lot of hands-on workers who probably 

15 don’t have any communications channel with 

16 organized labor. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: Good suggestion. One of the 

18 things I think we all struggle with is when is 

19 enough enough. And certainly if we have a 

20 clearly identified avenue of contact, and we 

21 use that. And if that we feel covers the 

22 audience or the group that we need to cover, 

23 and we don’t have to go touch this other 

24 professional organization, maybe we don’t have 

25 to. 
58

1 But when do we, where do we make a 

2 decision that, well, we’ve touched enough 

3 people or we gave an opportunity for people to 

4 make comments. And I’d just like to throw 

5 that on the table because that’s something we 

6 wrestle with, and I’d like to hear thoughts 

7 about that. But I want to make it known that 

8 there are a variety of ways that we empower 

9 people to approach us, to give us comments. 

10 Certainly, on our website you’ll see 

11 that we’ve put a notice on site profiles. 

12 They’re works in progress. They’re living 

13 documents. Give us your comments. That’s a 

14 very passive way. That just captures those 

15 who look at it, and those who are so inclined 

16 to respond. 

17 MS. MUNN: Getting people to the site. 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: So I just want to make those 

19 two points. We wrestle with this all the 

20 time. When’s enough enough? How do we make 

21 sure that we haven’t underserved somebody, and 

22 yet we’ve got what we need within the limited 

23 resources that we have? 

24 MR. GIBSON: Well, I’ll just comment and not 

25 as the Chair of the work group but just as an 
59

1 individual. I think it is important to 

2 determine when enough’s enough, but to me I 

3 think a very important issue, and one of the 

4 big issues that brought this group together, 

5 is to see when the input of a person from a 

6 site that has input on the site profile may 

7 not have his name on it by title as the owner 

8 of the document, but when is a worker’s input 

9 not discounted based on what this person who 

10 may have served in Rad Protection or 

11 something, it’s the interaction between those 

12 two that’s you know, really sees how much 

13 input the worker’s input gets before it’s 

14 discounted. 

15 MR. SCHOFIELD: Another thing is here’s some 

16 what you might call corporate history in some 

17 areas that is really kind of boxed in, as 

18 Laurie and Mark, both having been out in New 

19 Mexico are somewhat familiar with. And that’s 

20 back like you take like the pueblos and stuff. 

21 You don’t just go into the pueblo and 

22 notice we’re here. We want you to come. One 

23 thing is a lot of the people you’re going to 

24 be dealing with are either they were laborers, 

25 or they’re widows, really didn’t know a whole 
60

1 lot. And a lot of the older widows in a lot 

2 of these pueblos in some of these small 

3 villages, they don’t speak English. They 

4 might speak Tewa. They might speak Spanish. 

5 This is a case where they’re going to 

6 actually have to look at maybe giving money to 

7 an advocate group or something to go in, to 

8 get translators, to make arrangements with the 

9 governors of the pueblo or tribal leaders that 

10 say, hey, look, here’s what we want to try and 

11 do for some of your people, we know some of 

12 your people here were, a lot of these peoples’ 

13 work history is very sketchy, and it’s a 

14 little harder to get this kind of work done. 

15 But it is something that’s got to be done. 

16 Like it says, just because somebody 

17 doesn’t speak English or has a very limited 

18 ability to speak it shouldn’t exclude them 

19 from being able to put in what knowledge they 

20 know. And I know that’s kind of a, Los Alamos 

21 is a little unique in that area, but I suspect 

22 you’ll find some of that also near Rocky 

23 Flats, some of those down around Pantex and 

24 Texas City. 

25 MR. ELLIOTT: Let me react to your comment 
61

1 about Native Americans, and I need to say this 

2 because it covers our contractors. It covers 

3 the Board’s contractor. We can’t go on -- 

4 these are sovereign nations. We can’t go on 

5 their soil without going through a series of 

6 hoops to do so. 

7 MR. SCHOFIELD: That’s what I know. 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: Not only hoops within the 

9 pueblo and the governors of the pueblo, but 

10 hoops within HHS/CDC and Health Service. 

11 That’s not an easy -- it’s not just sending 

12 Laurie out and saying do an SEC counseling 

13 meeting or send our health physicists out 

14 saying we need to know what the Zia Company 

15 was really doing back in the day. And those 

16 Native American workers who were part of that 

17 can tell us something about their experience. 

18 We have to go through a real regimented set of 

19 hoops. 

20 MR. SCHOFIELD: I’m well aware of this, and 

21 this issue is something I’ve dealt with my 

22 whole life in that respect, but it’s something 

23 that –- maybe that’s a small category, but 

24 still those are the type of issues that are 

25 going to crop up in some areas, possibility. 
62

1 Or if you have an area with a site that’s been 

2 closed for a long time, basically, the 

3 majority of what you’ve got left are people 

4 who are quite old or a lot of older widows. 

5 They may be the only -- true, their knowledge 

6 is only secondhand, but they may still be able 

7 to bring you out things that otherwise would 

8 not be known. And in some particular cases 

9 we’re going to have to go that extra mile. 

10 MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Excuse me, this 

11 is Denise. I think I’ve heard in the past 

12 that there is an attorney in that area by the 

13 name of Martinez, and I believe that he works 

14 possibly with even some of the resource 

15 centers to get the word out. He actually has 

16 an interpreter that will actually go in and, 

17 if nothing else, relay the message. Is that a 

18 possibility? 

19 MR. ELLIOTT: It may be. It may be. I’d 

20 like to speak also to Mike’s comment, and I 

21 think it’s important for, Mike was talking 

22 about what value do we place on workers input. 

23 What’s the bright line, if there’s a bright 

24 line, of saying that we believe that plant 

25 process operator’s testimony or affidavit over 
63

1 a person who was managing that program. 

2 And I think we all would agree that 

3 there are procedures that are written, but in 

4 the day-to-day activities of working a process 

5 or a functioning process we don’t see those 

6 followed in every regard. There are ways to 

7 shortcut and ways, well, that didn’t work. 

8 The way the procedure reads doesn’t work so 

9 we’re going to do it this way, and it will 

10 work. Those things happen. We recognize 

11 that. 

12 But just for your benefit I hope 

13 information that’s provided to us by a worker 

14 will be accepted and used providing it is 

15 reasonable and supported by substantial 

16 evidence, is not refuted by other evidence, 

17 and is consistent with available information 

18 at hand. That’s the way we, that’s kind of 

19 the test that gets used on anything that we 

20 use whether it’s the process operator saying 

21 something or the manager of that process 

22 saying something to us or his principal health 

23 physicist at the site saying that to us. 

24 We take the information that’s given 

25 to us, and we look at it in the context of 
64

1 what else we know. This stems from our dose 

2 reconstruction regulation. And if you look 

3 there, there’s a couple sections in there that 

4 speak about how information is treated that is 

5 provided either by a claimant or somebody 

6 who’s given us input. Just so you know, it’s 

7 not a bright line per se, but we take that 

8 input in the context of the whole. 

9 MR. GIBSON: I guess I’d just like to 

10 comment, and I guess why this is a concern is 

11 I’ve seen examples of it. And one recent 

12 example when I was on a recent conference call 

13 -- and I won’t mention the site or the person 

14 -- but there was a claimant that had been 

15 alleging that not all of the readings had been 

16 taken from a work activity. And there was a 

17 person on the call that’s had extensive site 

18 history and is under contract for one of your 

19 subcontractors and made the statement 

20 something to the effect that I ran that 

21 program for about 20 years so I know that that 

22 can’t be the case. And it was just like, it 

23 seemed like that the worker’s concern was then 

24 -- 

25 MR. ELLIOTT: Dismissed. 
65

1 MR. GIBSON: -- dismissed. And that’s just 

2 a real sore spot that I think really needs to 

3 be looked at. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: In the example that you give 

5 there, I think where we can do a better job is 

6 saying something to the effect that I’ve just 

7 said that, well, that’s your opinion, and 

8 we’ve considered your opinion. We are 

9 considering what this worker has just told us, 

10 too. I think we have to make these kind of 

11 decisions at the end of the day. 

12 MR. HINNEFELD: I think the key issue here 

13 is to apply the same test whether you’re 

14 getting the information from a health 

15 physicist or a -- well, apply that same test 

16 in terms of consistency with other information 

17 or they’re repeating information or things 

18 like that and significant supporting evidence. 

19 And I think there’s that will require 

20 vigilance on our part as the managers of this 

21 effort because who’s driving the site 

22 profiles, health physicists. 

23 MR. GIBSON: I realize it’s hard to try to 

24 get site history without using some people who 

25 have that site history, but there’s such a 
66

1 thin line between conflict when they’ve run 

2 that program and now they’re in one way or 

3 another being paid by you guys to help 

4 implement the program, and yet they kind of 

5 seem to step over the line and perhaps 

6 influence whether or not someone’s input is 

7 taken as factual or not on maybe an unknown 

8 circumstance at that site. 

9 Maybe that’s true in general that 

10 workers couldn’t be exposed to something or 

11 another, but that doesn’t mean that there 

12 wasn’t an isolated event that this individual 

13 went through on the third day of this month in 

14 this year, and he got a substantial exposure. 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: Certainly, what we’re dealing 

16 with here in some ways, in some cases, goes to 

17 appearances and perspective and appearance 

18 that it’s been dismissed. I would add my 

19 perspective to that and say that a subject 

20 expert who’s not a document owner doesn’t have 

21 the final say. NIOSH has the final say on 

22 what gets incorporated into the documents that 

23 are used. 

24 And, yes, that individual because of 

25 their ownership of that program in the past 
67

1 may have that opinion, but that doesn’t mean 

2 that’s shared with NIOSH, that NIOSH shares 

3 that opinion over the welder who said, no, I 

4 didn’t do that. That didn’t happen that way. 

5 That’s not the case. We, again, take all of 

6 this in consideration with the full context of 

7 what we have available to inform us. 

8 Another way I think we can do a better 

9 job is when we hear the welder say that, maybe 

10 we need to go back and say, well, we’ve got 

11 two obvious different statements here. We 

12 need to go find somebody else that can support 

13 or add to what we hear from the welder. And I 

14 don’t think we’ve done that in every case as 

15 well as we could. 

16 MR. GIBSON: You know, and I just, I see -- 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: I don’t think we, I think one 

18 of the requirements in this new procedure 

19 J.J.’s running is going to have to speak to 

20 treating these sources of input, as Stu says, 

21 equitably, with the same treatment. So if we 

22 have a subject matter expert who ran the 

23 program out at Rocky Flats, and he says, “This 

24 is the way it happened,” and we do that in an 

25 interview, we need to document what is said 
68

1 there and in a way that you all can see that 

2 as transparent as if we go out and have a 

3 worker outreach meeting, and we sit down with 

4 five or six workers, and we hear what they 

5 say, and we’ve got their minutes. 

6 Or if we do an interview, we’ve done 

7 interviews with workers, and we put those 

8 interviews in the right place so that you can 

9 see that. And you can see, I want us to be 

10 able to demonstrate that we are treating these 

11 folks equitably. That’s one of the comments 

12 out of the SC&A review is a criticism about 

13 we’re handling these people in different ways. 

14 And it’s perceived that we believe more from 

15 one than we do from the other. And that’s 

16 not, that’s a perception that we’re going to 

17 have to resolve. 

18 MR. GIBSON: You know, I’m just making some 

19 personal comments, but I think it’s more 

20 important to the individual claimants and 

21 workers than it is to the Board. 

22 MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, you’re right about that. 

23 I agree with you. 

24 MR. GIBSON: Anything else in this area of 

25 discussion? 
69

1 (no response) 

2 MR. GIBSON: Anyone on the telephone make 

3 comments? 

4 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): This is John. We 

5 didn’t get into -- we may -- into one aspect 

6 where we get information from outreach 

7 programs and material provided by claimants 

8 and petitioners. And I’m particularly talking 

9 about the badge left behind issue where we’re 

10 provided with lots of information where there 

11 were claims made that are very important to 

12 the credibility of the records. And there may 

13 be other situations where information is 

14 provided that goes very much to the heart of 

15 the records that we’re using to do dose 

16 reconstruction. 

17 And right now SC&A and NIOSH are 

18 working diligently to find a way to do more 

19 than just listening to the statements made by 

20 the claimants, petitioners and record their 

21 concerns about records left, film badges left 

22 behind but to try to take steps where we could 

23 actually go into the records and help to get 

24 greater insight into the nature, prevalence 

25 and significance of the information that we 
70

1 receive. 

2 So I think an aspect to the outreach 

3 program in addition to listening and 

4 documenting and taking into consideration the 

5 information provided by claimants and 

6 petitioners is there actually might be certain 

7 technical things that we could do as follow-up 

8 action items that tries to get, shed a little 

9 more light into these matters. One, of 

10 course, is this records left behind, and I 

11 think we’re going to do something there. 

12 But I guess I’d like to hear a little 

13 bit more about the kinds of information that 

14 we often get related to factual information 

15 regarding what took place at a site that might 

16 have a bearing on dose reconstruction and are 

17 there things that we can do in order to I 

18 guess get deeper into the issue and its 

19 significance with respect to a given claimant, 

20 site profile or a given SEC petition. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: John, this is Larry Elliott. 

22 I think what I hear in your comment is that we 

23 do our outreach effort, or we have input given 

24 to us and you’re offering that there are ways 

25 that we can react to that input and how, there 
71

1 are many ways that we can react to it, of 

2 course. But one way may be to use a technical 

3 approach to examine the particular issue at 

4 hand that’s being provided to us. I think in 

5 that what I would ask you to think about is 

6 the, there has to be a decision point on what 

7 level of influence a particular issue has on 

8 our dose reconstruction capability or an SEC 

9 evaluation. 

10 And in some cases we would say, well, 

11 that issue, while we recognize it may happen, 

12 it may not have a lot of bearing, a lot of 

13 influence, a lot of minimal benefit to claims, 

14 to petitions. In other instances we may say, 

15 yeah, there is a broad benefit here. It’s 

16 more applicable that we pursue that and see 

17 what we can make of that. And so just keep 

18 that in mind that we do make these kinds of 

19 decisions about how far to pull the string or 

20 how far to push to see what gravity the issue 

21 brings to our ability to reconstruct dose or 

22 answer an SEC evaluation. 

23 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Yeah, I think 

24 you’ve captured the gist of it. I know quite 

25 frankly this is one time this business with 
72

1 the Nevada Test Site and the badge left 

2 behind, where really I guess what I would say 

3 a major effort or a substantial effort is 

4 being mounted to look into this matter. I 

5 think to a certain degree this has also 

6 occurred on the Rocky Flats where petitioners 

7 made certain claims, and it triggered a 

8 certain amount of follow-up activity. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: Sure. 

10 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I’m not sure if 

11 we really had a discussion of almost when we 

12 hear through the various outreach programs 

13 certain information comes in a process to make 

14 a judgment. You know, what should we do? And 

15 maybe it shouldn’t be on an ad hoc basis which 

16 I think it might be right now. It rises to 

17 the level of great importance like when 

18 Senator Harry Reid comes to the meeting and 

19 says, listen, we’ve got a problem here. 

20 But I’m just offering this up as food 

21 for thought, and maybe there are ways that we 

22 can be, and maybe we are already so I may be 

23 out of place here, to be a little more 

24 proactive in maybe actually having a set, I 

25 guess, threshold criteria or categories of 
73

1 information in claims that would trigger 

2 certain lines of inquiry. 

3 Right now I guess, the only reason I’m 

4 saying this now is I’m just looking at it from 

5 what has transpired recently with regard to 

6 badges left behind. And I know that that has 

7 been embraced in a very serious way with a 

8 significant effort being made by all parts to 

9 try to get to the bottom of that. There may 

10 be other categories of information like this 

11 that we get that may warrant that type of 

12 follow-up activity. I don’t know if there are 

13 other examples. That’s the only one I could 

14 think of. 

15 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, let me give another 

16 example. You know, Denise is on the line, and 

17 she will remember this. In her petition there 

18 was a very important claim that was made that 

19 some of the data were bad, were falsified. 

20 And I was responsible for our team to 

21 investigate that, and NIOSH also investigated, 

22 produced quite a lot of documents. I know 

23 Mike Thorne participated. 

24 We tracked down the urinalysis data. 

25 There had been some anomalies in the data. We 
74

1 tracked down all of the reasons for those 

2 anomalies. It turned out there had been some 

3 problems with the labs. They had been 

4 acknowledged at the time. We determined that 

5 it wasn’t a case of fraud or somebody in bad 

6 faith trying to cover up high doses. We were 

7 able to track down all that information. 

8 There’s certainly been a precedent to what is 

9 happening in NIOSH. 

10 And Denise might want to add to some 

11 of this because we worked quite closely with 

12 her as the petitioner. I went out to St. 

13 Louis and held a meeting with her and people 

14 that she gathered together about this and 

15 other topics. So this is not the first time 

16 that we’re handling a very sensitive topic. 

17 At that time at least I believe we did so very 

18 successfully. 

19 Denise, are you on the line still? 

20 MS. BROCK (by Telephone): I am, Arjun, and 

21 I have to agree with that. I thought that the 

22 outcome was amazing. And the workers I always 

23 say are the wealth of information because they 

24 trigger each others’ memories. And I know I 

25 had had some documents from the earlier years 
75

1 that actually were pointing to the 

2 falsification of records. And I think that 

3 was the case in those earlier years, but Arjun 

4 was very up front and said I’ll look at this. 

5 And I have to be completely honest, 

6 and I rightly so had so much faith in SC&A and 

7 felt that whatever findings they came up with 

8 would be right on target and accurate and that 

9 was the case with those latter years. And the 

10 meetings with the claimants or the subject 

11 experts or site experts I think is what you’d 

12 call them, at that time there were probably -- 

13 Arjun, don’t you think at least 

14 probably I’d say two or three meetings and 

15 then Mark Lewis came in as well for the Weldon 

16 Springs site. So the showing of workers was 

17 tremendous, and I think that it was definitely 

18 a plus in the whole process. 

19 DR. MAKHIJANI: We got a lot of very useful 

20 information and it is documented in our 

21 report. And, of course, all of that was run 

22 by -- 

23 Denise, I believe all of the people 

24 who showed up for that rather big meeting that 

25 you organized in April, I remember it very 
76

1 well because it was really an extraordinarily 

2 successful meeting. The people who came were 

3 very, very knowledgeable, and there were many 

4 different site expert worker points of view 

5 that were represented there. And so I think 

6 we’ve resolved a very major sensitive issue 

7 very successfully at that time. 

8 MS. BROCK (by Telephone): And that was in 

9 the very beginning stages, too. I mean, that 

10 was when this all first started, and I 

11 remember the advice that you had given me as 

12 well as Kathy DeMers. And what I tried to do 

13 was gather folks from different walks in that 

14 facility, you know, your chemical operators, 

15 maintenance workers and electricians, and 

16 then, of course, office staff, try to get as 

17 many people as you could that had different 

18 ideas about what their work environment was. 

19 And I thought it was very, very useful, very 

20 helpful. 

21 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I’d like to add 

22 another perspective on this, and it is related 

23 to this outreach program. That is, what I’m 

24 hearing is at least there were two separate 

25 categories of outreach information that had 
77

1 fundamental importance to judgments made. 

2 One, the first one, the one you’re referring 

3 to now dealing with the credibility of the 

4 records from the point of view of 

5 falsification. 

6 With regard to that obviously Arjun 

7 and NIOSH and others went through a process of 

8 looking for particular metrics or information 

9 embedded in the records. And clearly, what 

10 emerged from that was a judgment that we don’t 

11 really see any systematic, deliberate 

12 falsification of records. And I recall that 

13 was the outcome, but I have to say that I 

14 don’t recall what was it that was uncovered 

15 that led to the general, universal agreement 

16 that that was the case. 

17 In other words it seems to be a very 

18 difficult question to answer, but obviously we 

19 all did come to a place that says, no, I think 

20 that maybe certain things that took place, but 

21 it wasn’t of such a nature that we are talking 

22 about a systematic, in this case it was 

23 falsification of records where records were 

24 deliberately changed. I’m not quite sure how 

25 that happened that we all came to that place 
78

1 which is good. 

2 In a similar way I could say right now 

3 we are now embarking on a related type of line 

4 of inquiry. It is not falsification of 

5 records, but it is this business of leaving 

6 badges behind. And I know that we’re trying 

7 to design, right now as we speak, a protocol 

8 or a plan. Okay, how do you go into the 

9 existing records whatever form they’re in and 

10 extract information that would lead us to a 

11 point where we could say something insightful 

12 on whether or not the extent and prevalence of 

13 that particular practice. 

14 But more importantly once we 

15 understand the nature and prevalence of the 

16 practice, to the extent we can find that out, 

17 how do we judge whether or not that practice 

18 was of such an extent in nature that it could 

19 do one of two things. One, will it undermine 

20 our ability to do dose reconstruction for 

21 people who do have records? And two, will it 

22 undermine our ability to create coworker 

23 models because of the nature of the bias or 

24 whatever might have happened -- I’m not saying 

25 it did -- could affect the upper end tail of 
79

1 the distribution of exposures -- external 

2 exposures in this case for film badge workers 

3 -- that you’re going to have quite a 

4 challenge. 

5 So what I’m getting at is the first 

6 case clearly we went through a process where 

7 we looked into the claims in such, in 

8 practice, and we’re right now about to embark 

9 upon a similar study more related to Nevada 

10 Test Site and badges left behind. But more 

11 importantly that very same issue is going to 

12 have applicability to other sites where these 

13 claims are made. So I guess what I’m saying 

14 is that emerging from the processes that we 

15 have engaged over the years are solutions or 

16 strategies for coming to closure on what I 

17 consider to be by far the most important 

18 issues. That’s the credibility of the 

19 records. When all is said and done there’s 

20 the science on how you use the records, and 

21 there’s always going to be some debate on how 

22 to make best use of records, but more 

23 importantly, especially as it applies to SEC 

24 issues, is the credibility, reliability and 

25 completeness and adequacy of the records that 
80

1 really go to the heart of the matter. So I 

2 believe that we’re talking about a subject 

3 that might be as important as it possibly can 

4 be. Because the way we deal with these 

5 claims, these concerns, and the way we elicit 

6 the information, record it, document it and 

7 then follow up on it is going to go to the 

8 heart of our ability to deal with these 

9 fundamental issues. 

10 MR. GIBSON: I’m getting some looks around 

11 the table here. I think we’re going to take a 

12 15-minute break and then we’ll return and 

13 we’ll pick up on this issue and roll right 

14 into SC&A’s discussion of what they found in 

15 their audits of the worker outreach. So we’ll 

16 take a break, and we’ll return at 11:15, 

17 11:20. 

18 DR. BRANCHE: We’ll put the phone on mute. 

19 (Whereupon, a break was taken from 11:05 

20 a.m. until 11:20 a.m.) 

21 DR. BRANCHE: We’re re-engaging the call. 

22 This is Christine Branche from NIOSH. Just 

23 wanting to remind everyone who’s participating 

24 by phone to please mute your phone. It does 

25 really enhance the quality of the listening 
81

1 for the people who are participating by phone. 

2 If you do not have a mute button, then please 

3 use star six to mute your phone. And when you 

4 are going to speak, please use star six again 

5 to unmute your phone. We really appreciate 

6 your cooperation and for those of you who are 

7 in the meeting room if you could please mute 

8 your phone or your pager we would appreciate 

9 that also. Thanks so much. 

10 Mr. Gibson. 

11 SC&A OVERVIEW OF WORKER OUTREACH

12 MR. GIBSON: We’ll reconvene now with a 

13 continuation of what John Mauro and Arjun was 

14 discussing. If there’s any other comments and 

15 if not, we’ll go ahead and let SC&A start with 

16 their overview of their activities on worker 

17 outreach and participation. 

18 DR. MAKHIJANI: Do you want me to confine 

19 comments to the review we did of NIOSH’s work 

20 or also talk about our own work? 

21 MR. GIBSON: I’d say given this is our kick22 off meeting just go ahead and feel free to 

23 give whatever comments you have. 

24 DR. MAKHIJANI: Kathy, you will help me. 

25 Of course, SC&A has done quite a lot 
82

1 of worker outreach so let me just talk about 

2 our own procedures for doing that. Kathy 

3 DeMers, who’s on the line, has been our main 

4 point person on that to organize it, has done 

5 quite a lot of work in this area. A number of 

6 other members of our team have also 

7 participated. 

8 We do site expert outreach in the 

9 context of site profile reviews, and we also 

10 do it in the context of SEC petitions. And 

11 when there’s a petition for the site where 

12 we’ve already done the site profile review, we 

13 do follow up with the specific issues in 

14 relation to petitions. 

15 Part of our procedure -- and Kathy has 

16 done really a magnificent job of this -- is we 

17 try to go to areas and periods where we need 

18 information. So we will try to contact 

19 workers in the early years, people who are 

20 retired as Wanda was saying. Because, for 

21 instance, at Hanford we realized a lot of the 

22 problems and issues are in relation to the 

23 ‘50s and ‘40s. And so we specially try to 

24 contact retired workers who would have special 

25 experience in health physics or in the canyons 
83

1 or in specific, in area 300. 

2 So we identify areas and periods and 

3 job types. We are also, in SECs by our 

4 procedures approved by the Board, obliged to 

5 interview the petitioners, and so we always do 

6 that. And we compile the raw interview 

7 records, and we keep those raw interview 

8 records mostly internal. They’re always 

9 approved by the individuals themselves. We 

10 generally don’t release an individual’s record 

11 unless it is approved. 

12 We may incorporate some things into a 

13 summary, a longer summary because there are 

14 many, many interviews which produce a very 

15 large volume of paper. We produce a 

16 substantive summary by topic, period, and in 

17 the areas of expertise where we were looking 

18 for input. And then we incorporate that 

19 according to our best technical judgment in 

20 the site profile review or SEC review. 

21 So, Kathy, do you want to add 

22 something to the procedures that we employ in 

23 terms of our own interviews and the kinds of 

24 things we’ve done? 

25 (no response) 
84

1 DR. MAKHIJANI: Kathy, are you on the line? 

2 (no response) 

3 DR. BRANCHE: Is anyone on the line? 

4 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): This is John 

5 Mauro, yes, I’m on the line. 

6 DR. BRANCHE: Okay, I just want to make sure 

7 we hadn’t lost anybody with our little 

8 interruption earlier. 

9 DR. MAKHIJANI: Kathy? 

10 (no response) 

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: I think we may have lost 

12 Kathy. 

13 Anyway, so she is our point person. 

14 Maybe at another break I might call her. She 

15 might want to add something to it. But that’s 

16 a pretty fair summary of what we’ve done. 

17 When we do have very specific issues that 

18 might be raised in an SEC petition, we 

19 catalogue those issues and try to follow each 

20 one of them. 

21 And I gave an example earlier of the 

22 most sensitive issue that we resolved. 

23 Falsification issues I think are always the 

24 most sensitive both in terms of the strength 

25 of feeling that people bring and there’s 
85

1 usually some kind of basis, too. Denise had 

2 some documents that indicated that there may 

3 be problems in the data and so on. And so we 

4 always try to follow those up both in terms of 

5 interviews and associated documentation. 

6 We try to seek documentation in 

7 addition to the interviews from the people we 

8 interview in case they have documents that we 

9 may not have access to otherwise. Not often 

10 the case, but sometimes we can get quite 

11 valuable information. We also reach out to, 

12 sometimes survivors can just be experts. 

13 Denise is an excellent example, somebody who 

14 educated herself as the daughter of somebody 

15 who worked there who wound up knowing an 

16 enormous amount, having a lot of extremely 

17 valuable documentation. 

18 And now also other people, activists, 

19 community leaders who may have a lot of 

20 information and documentation. And we try to 

21 reach them as well. So if there are questions 

22 about our procedures, I’ll try and handle them 

23 best. I’m sorry Kathy’s not -- 

24 Kathy, are you here? 

25 MS. DeMERS (by Telephone): Yes. 
86

1 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay, Kathy, did you want to 

2 add something? 

3 MS. DeMERS (by Telephone): I just came back 

4 on so I’m not quite sure -- 

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: I generally outlined what we 

6 do in terms of identifying periods reaching 

7 out to retired workers, community leaders, 

8 active workers, the various areas of 

9 expertise, both production and health physics, 

10 operators and so on in which we need 

11 information, and then how we document that and 

12 how we publish it and use it. And I said that 

13 you were our main point person in devising 

14 those procedures. 

15 If you want to add something, if there 

16 are special things we do to make sure that we 

17 get all the information we need, please go 

18 ahead. 

19 MS. DeMERS (by Telephone): Would it be 

20 helpful to walk through the process? 

21 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, why don’t you do that 

22 since you are our main point person and this 

23 is the first time we’re actually presenting 

24 the working group with that, if that’s all 

25 right with Mike. It may be a little 
87

1 repetitious, but it might be helpful since 

2 Kathy DeMers is our star in this. 

3 MR. GIBSON: Yeah, go ahead, Kathy. 

4 MS. DeMERS (by Telephone): Once we are 

5 assigned a site the first thing that I have to 

6 do is make contact with DOE and inform them 

7 that we are going to conduct a site visit, 

8 that that will include onsite interviews, 

9 offsite interviews, and in addition records 

10 reviews. This is kind of off topic but it’s a 

11 part of our site visit. 

12 We ask to, as far as the onsite 

13 interviews, we ask to interview people who are 

14 possibly historians, production workers and 

15 operation workers from all different fields. 

16 For example, if we have primarily a reactor 

17 site, we’ll pull reactor operators. If we 

18 have accelerators, we’ll pull accelerator 

19 operators. We’ll pull scientists. 

20 At the Test Site we tried to identify 

21 test records and engineers that were involved 

22 in testing as well as the maintenance and 

23 crafts and the ^-type workers. We reach out 

24 to the security guards, engineering. It’s all 

25 types of people. Key elements that we always 
88

1 try and hit are the radiological records 

2 people, internal and external dosimetry, 

3 environmental monitoring, the medical 

4 department and the radiological field 

5 operations. 

6 The EEOICPA Coordinator of each site 

7 helps us to arrange the onsite interviews. 

8 Sometimes they are more productive than 

9 others. What we tell them is we target people 

10 who’ve been at the site with the exception of 

11 the rad con people and environmental people at 

12 least 15 years because through our experience 

13 we found that those people are more likely to 

14 be able to answer our questions. 

15 For offsite interviews we will tap 

16 into just about any resource that we are aware 

17 of including retirees, organizations. If I 

18 hear about a breakfast group, I will show up. 

19 We talk to advocates to identify key workers. 

20 We talk to unions. We talk to the radiation 

21 groups to identify their predecessors. 

22 Another thing we do is in our review 

23 of documentation several names will be 

24 repeated in particular areas, and we may ask 

25 to interview those people if they’re still 
89

1 working or maybe try to track them down. 

2 There’s a lot of different ways we can come at 

3 it so we get the right people. 

4 Some sites are more difficult than 

5 others because of classification issues, for 

6 example, Lawrence Livermore or Los Alamos. 

7 And if we perceive that from the beginning 

8 that there may be issues, there is an option 

9 that the interviewee can either participate in 

10 a classified interview or an unclassified 

11 interview. All of our interview notes have to 

12 go through a derivative declassifier, 

13 regardless of whether it was in an 

14 unclassified or classified setting. 

15 We typically interview groups of like 

16 people. We typically don’t like to have more 

17 than six people in a group. There’s usually 

18 two of us involved in the interview process in 

19 site visits. We prepare in advance questions 

20 that are targeted at particular groups. For 

21 example, you want to be asking questions about 

22 internal dosimetry process and bioassay to the 

23 internal dosimetry group versus machining 

24 processes to maintenance and crafts and the 

25 like. You don’t want to ask a health 
90

1 physicist how they ran the reactors and so on 

2 and so forth. 

3 We try to provide these questions in 

4 advance and that does two things. One is it 

5 relieves some of the anxiety of people that 

6 are being interviewed. And secondly, it 

7 allows them to be better prepared so that they 

8 either come with written responses or they 

9 come with documentation that answers the 

10 questions. 

11 Once we conduct interviews, and we 

12 take notes, and what we do is when we come 

13 back we compile individual summaries of the 

14 interview groups. So if we have maintenance 

15 and crafts group, then we will prepare the 

16 interview summary for them, and it’s broken up 

17 by subgroups. They are returned to the 

18 interviewee either through the EEOICPA 

19 Coordinator or mailed out to offsite people. 

20 They are allowed the opportunity to review the 

21 summary and correct it and add to it if they 

22 want. Then they provide those comments back 

23 to us. We integrate it into their individual 

24 summary. 

25 We have part of our report, take all 
91

1 of the interviews that we’ve conducted, which 

2 can be quite a number sometimes, and we 

3 compile it into a master interview summary 

4 which is what you see in the site profile 

5 review report. This consolidates a lot of 

6 similar comments that are shared by different 

7 sets of people. For example, at Fernald I 

8 don’t think that anyone disagreed that there 

9 wasn’t a contamination problem and by 

10 consolidating it I don’t have to say that 40 

11 times. 

12 One of the most important things that 

13 I find that works is a very simple concept. 

14 That’s shut up and listen. Typically, when we 

15 go through the interviews although we have 

16 questions prepared in advance, inevitably the 

17 worker will bring up a topic that we didn’t 

18 plan for, so we will have to ask follow-up 

19 questions so some of the questions are 

20 impromptu in the process. 

21 One of the, another important thing 

22 that I realized early on is that statements 

23 that appear to conflict may not always be 

24 conflicting. It’s very dependent upon the 

25 perspective of the individual being 
92

1 interviewed. 

2 One of the ways I discovered this was 

3 that the guards at Los Alamos kept saying that 

4 they were eating in a radiological area. So I 

5 had them take me out and show me physically 

6 where they ate and their stations were and so 

7 on and so forth. And noted that the posting 

8 was a radiological controlled area in which 

9 any health physicist would say you’re allowed 

10 to eat. Now so the guards are saying we ate 

11 in a radiological area. And from their 

12 perspective they did. 

13 When you ask the same question of a 

14 health physicist, the first thing that comes 

15 into his mind or her mind is a contamination 

16 area. And they will say absolutely, no, we 

17 did not allow eating in the radiological area. 

18 So from their both perspectives they are 

19 correct, and we have to learn to identify 

20 those type of situations. 

21 I have found the tours that I’ve been 

22 taken on extremely helpful. We’ve done it at 

23 Los Alamos, at Paducah, at Portsmouth and a 

24 couple other sites. And the benefit of that 

25 is that you end up conducting more of an 
93

1 infield interview where you can visualize 

2 what’s going on. 

3 Another thing that happens to me 

4 occasionally is that I get into a situation 

5 where I find a valuable person just based upon 

6 what I’m doing. For example, when I went to 

7 the Atomic Testing Museum to look around, 

8 inevitably they sent me through the museum 

9 with a former security guard. And he actually 

10 was very helpful and provided insightful 

11 information. But you have to be ready to do 

12 those impromptu-type interviews. 

13 I guess it’s probably best if I answer 

14 questions if anyone has any at this point. 

15 MR. GIBSON: Thank you so much, Kathy. 

16 Do I have any questions here in the 

17 room? 

18 MS. MUNN: It’s a good summary. 

19 MR. GIBSON: Yes, it was. 

20 DR. MAKHIJANI: Maybe I can go through our 

21 review of NIOSH’s procedures. 

22 MR. GIBSON: Yes, thank you, Kathy. 

23 Now we’ll hear from Arjun. 

24 DR. MAKHIJANI: We reviewed the procedure 

25 that Larry referred to earlier which is from 
94

1 2005, so it’s over two years old. We sent the 

2 review, this Procedure-0097, and sent the 

3 review to the Board or to this working group. 

4 I think it went to the whole Board in November 

5 and to the Procedures working group and this 

6 working group. 

7 MS. MUNN: I got it. It just seemed to me 

8 that I read it so long ago, Arjun, my 

9 apologies. 

10 DR. MAKHIJANI: That’s because there have 

11 been so many procedures. 

12 MS. MUNN: Yes, so much has happened since 

13 then. But thank you for capturing in there 

14 the concern that I had expressed earlier about 

15 what groups were contacted. That’s 

16 appreciated. 

17 DR. MAKHIJANI: As I alluded to earlier, we 

18 found that, you know, there were a lot of good 

19 things about the procedure which we enumerated 

20 and including the fact that there was a 

21 procedure for reaching out to workers. And 

22 reaching the unions is very important. In 

23 many sites they are the main representatives 

24 of the vast majority of workers. So I think 

25 it does cover most of the kinds of site 
95

1 expertise, but it doesn’t cover everything. 

2 It doesn’t cover retirees. It doesn’t 

3 cover certain kinds of site expertise. So any 

4 comments that we’ve made in regard to reaching 

5 others shouldn’t detract from the fact that 

6 it’s very important to reach the unions and 

7 their contacts with the people whom they know 

8 are repositories of a lot of site expert 

9 information. So the additional sort of 

10 suggestions were not a critique of the fact 

11 that NIOSH is reaching unions, but that 

12 they’re not an exclusive repository. And, you 

13 know, the whole scheduling and the procedures 

14 and so on were very good. 

15 Our main findings in terms of the 

16 deficiencies were five findings. And NIOSH 

17 makes an audiotape of each meeting to help 

18 prepare the minutes. And then the minutes are 

19 sent back ^ some way of understanding that the 

20 minutes are sent back to the union contacts 

21 for review. And then whether or not they hear 

22 back from them, they’re finalized after 60 

23 days and then the audiotapes are destroyed. 

24 We felt the destruction of the 

25 audiotape record, I mean, you may not elect to 
96

1 make an audiotape, but once there is an 

2 audiotape record, we felt that it should be 

3 maintained and not destroyed. So especially 

4 as the minutes may be finalized without, I 

5 realize that minutes have to be finalized at 

6 some point, and there has to be some kind of 

7 deadline so we were sensitive to that. 

8 But if minutes are finalized without 

9 feedback and then the tapes are not there, 

10 then it becomes a ground for misunderstanding, 

11 a he said/she said situation that can’t be 

12 resolved. So some way of finalizing these 

13 minutes and communicating to workers and 

14 maintaining a record and creating a final 

15 record that won’t be the object of disputes 

16 and differences is very important. I mean, 

17 you can’t eliminate all disputes and 

18 differences, but I think the way this is being 

19 done raises a lot of issues that could be 

20 avoided. 

21 The second finding was that there may 

22 be follow-up discussions with workers and they 

23 didn’t have any indication of how these 

24 follow-up discussions are being documented, 

25 used and integrated. Sometimes when we do 
97

1 that, for instance, in regard to the 

2 Massachusetts site that we had so much 

3 discussion on, Chapman Valve, I called up 

4 certain people as follow up because that as I 

5 was compiling the summaries I had some more 

6 questions or some issues were not resolved, 

7 then it’s documented as a supplementary part 

8 of that interview. 

9 And we couldn’t tell from the ORAU 

10 procedure how any of these follow-up 

11 discussions are being documented. And then 

12 there should be some provision for 

13 documenting. And then there were some groups 

14 of workers who were not systematically 

15 included by the procedure. For instance, 

16 workers were not able physically able to 

17 attend meetings. They may have been ill or 

18 may not be nearby. They may be key site 

19 experts who moved away from that location. 

20 There should be a way to identify some 

21 of these people, reach them to do telephone 

22 interviews. You don’t have to be there. We 

23 often do telephone interviews when we can’t 

24 reach people or it’s not convenient or 

25 expeditious to go there, but we try to get the 
98

1 information. But there should be some way of 

2 doing outreach to a variety of groups of 

3 workers, some provision for classified 

4 interviews which we did not see. And we’ve 

5 already discussed, Larry in the earlier 

6 discussion already said that a broader 

7 outreach is needed to retirees and various 

8 groups of workers. 

9 And our last finding was that, as 

10 Larry has already alluded, it’s kind of an 

11 informal system of reaching the managers and 

12 administrators and senior health physicists 

13 and that were not part of this procedure in a 

14 kind of a two-track system, one for unions and 

15 one for administrators, managers. And I 

16 really appreciated Larry’s comment at the 

17 start of this discussion in recognizing that 

18 and kind of treating everybody’s site 

19 expertise on a par and documenting it on a 

20 par. 

21 So those were our main findings in the 

22 review, and this is the first time I guess 

23 we’re having a discussion of that because I 

24 don’t think we had a discussion of it in the 

25 Procedures work group. I think it was ^. 
99

1 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Arjun, this is 

2 John. I would like to add a little bit to 

3 that because -- and if it’s okay with everyone 

4 -- I have sort of a different view. I read 

5 all of the attachments to all the site profile 

6 reviews, and then I get involved in some site 

7 visits, and I get involved in some of the 

8 follow-up investigations, the kinds we have 

9 now. And I do have a perspective that I’d 

10 like to offer. And it’s intended solely as 

11 being a type of constructive observation that 

12 please take it in that spirit. 

13 I get the sense that to a certain 

14 degree when NIOSH makes its visits it has many 

15 purposes. One of the most important purposes 

16 is to try to inform the claimants and the 

17 workers, and it has to do with the site 

18 profile. What the site profile is. And it’s 

19 a communication where NIOSH is explaining to 

20 the workers. Of course, part of that is to 

21 elicit information from the workers, and I 

22 have to say that I do get a certain amount, 

23 after three, four, five sites, it seems that 

24 that direction, that the information flowing 

25 from the workers to NIOSH, is a little bit 
100

1 different than the way in which for better or 

2 worse it’s unfolded at SC&A. 

3 At SC&A I would say overwhelmingly the 

4 purpose when we go out for our visit is -- and 

5 Kathy described the process, but prior to 

6 actually going out and preparing let’s say 

7 certain lines of questions, you know, we 

8 review the site profile, and we review all of 

9 the supporting documentation. And we get to 

10 the point where we have a sensibility of areas 

11 where we like to learn some more. So really 

12 our main mission is to continue with what we 

13 call, you’ve probably heard this term before, 

14 with our horizontal review. 

15 Think of it like this. We’re 

16 basically trying to find out are there aspects 

17 to the types of operations that took place, 

18 the practices that took place, the 

19 radioisotopes that were handled, that somehow 

20 were missed in the site profile or 

21 inadequately evaluated. Because that’s really 

22 what our mission is. 

23 So our role is more one of probative 

24 to say are there areas of inquiry that perhaps 

25 the site profile could improve upon. And 
101

1 then, of course, once we start to learn more 

2 about the richness and complexity of the 

3 activities at the site, then we, and we start 

4 to zero in on some areas that seem to be 

5 especially important -- and you’ve heard us 

6 refer to this also as a vertical review. 

7 So all I’m trying to say is, and I’ll 

8 be glad to be corrected, is that I think when 

9 we go out, we’re going out more from the point 

10 of view of learning much, much more about the 

11 site so that we could provide insightful 

12 commentary on the site profile. And I think 

13 that the feedback that we’ve gotten from, at 

14 least on a number of occasions that I’ve been 

15 involved in, is that that was a bit different 

16 than the nature of the outreach communication 

17 meetings between, let’s say, NIOSH and the 

18 workers. 

19 And again, I’m meaning this purely as 

20 constructive. I think it’s one of the 

21 mission, and I think our mission is usually 

22 fairly simple. We’re trying to learn as much 

23 as we can. And I think NIOSH’s mission on 

24 going out probably has multiple purposes. 

25 And the benefit, of course, is 
102

1 achieving multiple objectives, but the 

2 drawback is that perhaps it’s not probative 

3 enough in terms of being, especially if it’s, 

4 you know, if you’re building a site profile, 

5 if you completed your site profile, probing 

6 areas where the site profile might be 

7 deficient. That’s why we go out there. 

8 And all the time and everything that 

9 Kathy just described to you is really to try 

10 to get a better handle on that. I guess I’d 

11 like to put on the table and certainly hear 

12 more back from NIOSH whether that perspective 

13 that I walk away with as an observer of this 

14 operation is a valid perspective. That I 

15 think more could be done by NIOSH, and this is 

16 by way of constructive criticism and be more 

17 of a recipient of information to better probe 

18 the granularity of the issues that might exist 

19 at a site. 

20 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu. I guess I’ll 

21 offer something on that. I mean, clearly, 

22 when we’re doing worker outreach in advance of 

23 publishing a site profile there has not been, 

24 there is no opportunity to know where are the 

25 potential rough places because you’re in the 
103

1 middle of your research. And so I think 

2 certainly at a preliminary outreach meeting, 

3 there’s essentially no way to focus inquiry 

4 the way there is when you guys then go do it 

5 and are reviewing a document already. And so 

6 you have issues in mind already. 

7 Now with respect to a second visit, 

8 because quite frequently we do go back when a 

9 site profile document is prepared and do 

10 additional outreach. And it’s probably been 

11 awhile since we’ve done one of these I think, 

12 specifically a roll out, a site profile roll 

13 out. 

14 I’d say there might be some validity 

15 to what you say. I don’t know that the author 

16 goes there or the people in the outreach 

17 meeting went there with the site profile 

18 because they describe what the site profile 

19 says, but they don’t really go with the 

20 thought in mind that, well, our research was 

21 really strong in these years, and we really 

22 feel good about here, but we had to make some, 

23 draw some conclusions about these other 

24 questions or these other years. And that 

25 would be a focus area for this kind of case. 
104

1 So I don’t know that that was done exactly. 

2 So there might be some validity to 

3 what you say there. And I think there are 

4 different intents and products and different 

5 stages in the process when the two outreaches 

6 are done which I think make it, well, for lack 

7 of a better word, make it easier for SC&A to 

8 proceed the way they do than it is for us to 

9 proceed that way when we do these. 

10 So I don’t know that we’d ever do, I 

11 don’t know that we would do, which is not to 

12 say we shouldn’t as we build a site profile. 

13 I don’t know if we’d ever look as thoroughly 

14 as some of you guys do on these 

15 investigations, but I think there might be an 

16 issue of perhaps if we do roll out site 

17 profiles in the future, let’s think about 

18 before we go where does the evidence we have 

19 look strong, and where does it look weaker and 

20 we’ll have to draw, make more surmise or more 

21 suppositions. 

22 And let’s focus when we go to these 

23 roll out meetings on the weaker portions and 

24 say, here’s the kinds of things we really, we 

25 have an opinion that we’ve drawn from what’s 
105

1 available, but we could easily have missed 

2 this and so we’re really interested in the 

3 information here. I suppose we haven’t done 

4 that, and that might be something possible. 

5 And then there are also production 

6 schedule constraints on our process as well 

7 because until a site profile is written, dose 

8 reconstructions for that site by and large 

9 don’t get done, and so they sit and wait. And 

10 so people are waiting still longer. So all 

11 those things wrap in I think into why we did 

12 what we did. 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: This is Larry Elliott. Let me 

14 harken back to some of my opening comments. 

15 It’s very important for us to state the 

16 purpose and focus of a meeting. And certainly 

17 I’m not clear, John, on the meetings that 

18 you’re familiar with, but I would offer that 

19 what Stu said is true and accurate. But in 

20 cases like, well, like SEC for some sites, our 

21 folks who have been leading the evaluation 

22 effort have asked to have an outreach meeting 

23 with specific questions in mind and probative 

24 interests. 

25 At the same time, as Stu said, when we 
106

1 roll out a site profile, we’re seeking all 

2 information. We don’t really have something 

3 on the table perhaps that somebody can react 

4 to. When we go back out with a meeting and 

5 the purpose of that meeting being to explain 

6 the site profile as it’s been developed and to 

7 open up for discussion where it can be 

8 improved, I think we have some opportunity 

9 ourselves to do a better job in being more 

10 probative in that. And we should take 

11 advantage of that opportunity, and we perhaps 

12 haven’t done so. 

13 But I think, again, we need to be very 

14 clear in the purpose and the focus and state 

15 that in each of these meetings because that 

16 really sets the stage for what we hope will 

17 happen in the meeting. When we have a town 

18 hall meeting, when we have a claimant 

19 population at hand, we’re generally not there 

20 with a set of probative questions. 

21 We’re there to, we may have a part of 

22 the focus of that kind of a town hall, 

23 claimant population-based, audience-based 

24 meeting may be to provide information about 

25 their site, about the site profile perhaps, 
107

1 but how we’re doing dose reconstructions, 

2 answer any questions they may have, hear 

3 complaints, hear concerns and react to those. 

4 And generally, it’s a claimant 

5 population so you have a variety of folks in 

6 the audience, current workers, former workers, 

7 survivors, interested parties who don’t even 

8 have a claim in. So that’s a whole different 

9 meeting, and we may, in fact, choose not to be 

10 very probative there, more communicative and 

11 educational in our presentation than seeking 

12 direct input on a direct issue. 

13 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I’d like to add 

14 to that because I think that SC&A has been the 

15 beneficiary of some of the more difficult 

16 things that you folks have to deal with. I’m 

17 thinking about General Steel Industries. It 

18 was an interesting experience. You’re about 

19 to see our report on that, and there is a, in 

20 fact, it’s almost like the perfect example of 

21 how things unfold in a way. 

22 That is, you folks went through a 

23 process to generate basically Appendix BB to 

24 TBD-6000 which goes into this business at 

25 General Steel. And I’m bringing it up because 
108

1 it’s something that’s very recent, and 

2 something we’re very involved in. And you had 

3 outreach meetings, and you presented your 

4 Appendix BB. And in a funny sort of way it’s 

5 almost unfair. You folks take your best shot 

6 at putting together a strategy, a package, a 

7 technical approach to how you’re going to do 

8 dose reconstruction for these Betatrons. 

9 Then we come in on the back end of 

10 that and say, okay, now we’re going to start 

11 our review. And then the floodgates open. 

12 The next thing you know, without exaggeration, 

13 we must have received over 100 e-mails with 

14 information, pictures, data, reports, big 

15 reports, all of which that was triggered by 

16 the fact that you folks have put a straw man -

17 - I’m not going to call it a straw man. 

18 That’s not fair. 

19 You put out your report, and then, of 

20 course, we’re brought in to have commentary on 

21 it, and then the floodgates open. So in a 

22 funny sort of way we’re in a process that puts 

23 you folks in a difficult spot because you’re 

24 going to be taking your first shot at putting 

25 out a site profile as best you can within the 
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1 constraints of what a site profile’s supposed 

2 to do. 

3 And then I have to say SC&A’s in a 

4 very fortunate position because then we come 

5 in behind that after the claimants and 

6 petitioners have had a chance to look at it. 

7 And then we become the place where they could 

8 unload. So I’m trying to step back and say I 

9 think we’ve got a process that its very nature 

10 is such that it does put, make it difficult 

11 for NIOSH because you’re sort of the first 

12 guys hitting the, sort of like hitting the 

13 beach. You’re hitting the beach first to try 

14 to make some inroads, learn things, and put 

15 together as best you can a site profile. And 

16 that’s the tough part. 

17 Then we come in behind that learning 

18 everything that you guys have done because 

19 we’ve read everything you’ve written, every 

20 document you have, and then we have all that 

21 in our pocket. And then we show up and so 

22 then we’re in a very good position to hear 

23 what the folks have to say about your site 

24 profile, and we’re on the receiving end. So I 

25 guess in a funny sort of way maybe the process 
110

1 is working the best it could work, and it has 

2 to be this way. 

3 It’s a strange way to package it, but 

4 it’s all part of the same process. And SC&A 

5 just happens to be in the very fortunate 

6 position that we’re coming in at a stage in 

7 the process where the claimants and the 

8 petitioners are given an opportunity to 

9 unload, so to speak, and really give us a 

10 whole bunch of stuff that maybe they didn’t 

11 even think about before until they’ve had a 

12 chance to cogitate on the site profile that 

13 you guys prepared. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah, it’s kind of easier to 

15 know what information to provide when you see 

16 an example like the site profile -- 

17 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Yes. 

18 MR. HINNEFELD: -- and what information is 

19 being sought. 

20 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Well, I mean, in 

21 a way I’m saying that I think that we, SC&A’s 

22 been fortunate in that the very nature of the 

23 process we’ve been in has put us in a position 

24 where we are able to get a tremendous amount, 

25 I mean, the amount of information -- I’m using 
111

1 General Steel as the example. You’ll see our 

2 report. It’ll be coming out in a couple of 

3 weeks. I have a copy of it actually right now 

4 that I’m reading. 

5 But there was literally an avalanche 

6 of information that came in after you folks 

7 published Appendix BB. 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: I’ll be sure to tell Jim 

9 that you said that your job was easier than 

10 his. 

11 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I think it is 

12 easier. I have to say it because you guys are 

13 the first ones to hit the beach so to speak. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: I was going to ask a 

15 question on one of the findings, and I want to 

16 make sure I’m clear on the meaning of Finding 

17 number two, Arjun, where it’s procedure does 

18 not address follow-up discussions with 

19 particular workers and how these are 

20 documented. 

21 So this is a situation where at an 

22 outreach meeting, say a particular worker or 

23 set of workers spoke up and knew a 

24 considerable amount of information that was 

25 valuable, and so to the extent that additional 
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1 conversations were desirable with those 

2 people. And in that circumstance then we 

3 would want to go get additional information 

4 from those people. Is that the situation 

5 you’re talking about? 

6 Or are you talking about a situation 

7 where so-and-so asked this particular question 

8 or provided some feedback, and we said, gee, I 

9 don’t know, but I’ll get back to you, and then 

10 making sure we actually get back to them? Or 

11 making sure we get back to them and let them 

12 know that the information they provided to us 

13 in the outreach meeting is, in fact, being 

14 utilized in the site profile. You see here is 

15 in the site profile where we did revise with 

16 the information you gave us. 

17 So what, I’m not exactly sure in the 

18 context or all of the above or what? 

19 DR. MAKHIJANI: Stu, I must say looking at 

20 what we wrote here we weren’t exactly the 

21 model of providing you with adequate detail. 

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, most of the time you 

23 guys are. I guess that’s why it was puzzling 

24 because normally I’ve got no trouble. 

25 DR. MAKHIJANI: It’s more detail than you 
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1 want probably, but here I don’t think we did. 

2 I think it was more in line with what 

3 Larry was saying earlier is workers need to 

4 know how their individual inputs resulted in 

5 changes, and we didn’t see a mechanism for 

6 doing that. You do get back to the union 

7 about it, and it’s not always clear that the 

8 people who actually provided you with the 

9 input know what happened with their input. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: We came, and we left. 

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah. And my comments 

12 earlier actually were a little bit different 

13 and should have been in the review, but I 

14 don’t see that they are. I’ll just make them 

15 for good measure here again. 

16 Sometimes you need follow-up 

17 discussions, and your revised procedures 

18 should include some provision for doing those 

19 discussions if questions come up. Like when 

20 you communicate some findings to the person 

21 that’s authoring the site profile, then they 

22 may want to follow up with some workers. And 

23 there has to be a way of doing that and 

24 documenting it. 

25 MR. HINNEFELD: I will just comment that we 
114

1 are now retaining the recordings of the 

2 meetings. And I think it’s actually a digital 

3 recording now as opposed to tape, but we are 

4 retaining those. 

5 MR. GIBSON: Wanda, did you have a comment? 

6 MS. MUNN: On the previous discussion with 

7 respect to horizontal and vertical reviews, 

8 since the word of the day seems to be 

9 probative, I’m interpreting John’s comments 

10 about probative work that SC&A does as it’s 

11 what we’ve previously considered to be 

12 drilling down into finer parts. 

13 Am I correct in that assumption, John? 

14 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I think it’s on 

15 both levels, Wanda. I think that probative 

16 goes not only toward the vertical, but 

17 sometimes my experiences probative is even 

18 more important on the horizontal. And the 

19 reason I say that is very often when we start 

20 our review of a site profile, the most 

21 important things that happen are finding out 

22 that there were activities that took place, 

23 isotopes that were handled, that were not the 

24 mainstream activity. 

25 The classic example, I mean to go way 
115

1 back is typically Y-12 or Fernald. Everyone 

2 zeros in, and rightly so, on the uranium 

3 issues. And one of the things that we came 

4 away with during our horizontal review is, you 

5 know, there are an awful lot of other 

6 radionuclides and other practices that took 

7 place there primarily dealing with thorium and 

8 other isotopes and the exotic isotopes -- if 

9 you remember that term -- that I consider to 

10 be a horizontal observation that emerged 

11 during what I would call our horizontal 

12 probative activities. 

13 So I would say the horizontal -- and 

14 strangely enough, I sort of make it a 

15 reversal. At one time I thought our verticals 

16 were important, but, you know what? I think 

17 it’s our horizontals that are really 

18 important. Do you know what the verticals do? 

19 The verticals simply say, okay, through the 

20 horizontal activity we identified a couple of 

21 areas that really need a little bit more 

22 investigation. 

23 And then we go deeply for only one 

24 reason. We go deeply only to the extent we 

25 have to convince ourselves that it might be 
116

1 important. So, for example, if we left out 

2 some exotic radionuclides at a particular 

3 site, yeah, we’ll go vertical on that for one 

4 reason, to say that, well, we don’t know how 

5 important it is and whether or not this could 

6 be a significant area deficiency in the site 

7 profile that needs to be explored further. 

8 So we go vertical more from the point 

9 of view to be able to make a case that, yes, I 

10 think this is a real issue, or, no, you know. 

11 So at one time I thought the vertical was 

12 really where the action was, and I think it’s 

13 still important. We have to probe a little 

14 deeply to make sure that the issue is real 

15 that we uncovered during the horizontal, and 

16 not only real but of some significance. But 

17 it’s the horizontal that I think that really 

18 catches us and everyone else from the blind 

19 side. 

20 You’re going to see a lot of this in 

21 our General Steel Industry. There’s a lot of 

22 horizontal that came out. Of all the 

23 avalanche of information that came in that 

24 says there’s a lot of granularity to the site. 

25 Things that are going on that did not really 
117

1 emerge initially. So I would say both aspects 

2 are probative. 

3 MS. MUNN: Well, heaven knows you’ve touched 

4 on the aspects that give most of us most 

5 trouble I think in all of the sites. But when 

6 we talk horizontal and vertical, and I 

7 immediately see X axes and Y axes and one of 

8 the things that is key if you’re looking at 

9 data in that way, certainly for people with a 

10 mindset like this one here, is there’s a point 

11 of diminishing returns. 

12 And something that I know other Board 

13 members have asked at various times the fact 

14 that we identify another piece of information 

15 is informative, but in terms of what its 

16 effect is on our ability to do dose 

17 reconstructions there is a matter of judgment 

18 that needs to be made with respect to how far 

19 one has to go with these other pieces of 

20 information. 

21 And I guess there’s really no easy 

22 resolution to that other than I did want to 

23 make the point that there is a question of 

24 diminishing returns with information. We like 

25 to say there’s no such thing as too much 
118

1 information, but the truth of the matter is 

2 there is also so much information that it 

3 incapacitates our ability to move forward in a 

4 reasonable fashion. 

5 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): And, Wanda, you 

6 just hit on something that has been the 

7 subject of intense discussion within SC&A over 

8 the last two weeks. 

9 MS. MUNN: I’ll bet it has. 

10 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): You recall at the 

11 last Board meeting in Vegas one of the 

12 missions given to SC&A was to give some 

13 thought to some innovative ways of thinking 

14 about and doing site profile reviews that will 

15 accomplish a number of things. One is 

16 clearing the backlog. That really is still 

17 sitting there. And perhaps other ways of 

18 coming at the problem. 

19 And what you just described we’re 

20 going to be presenting to you within two weeks 

21 alternative strategies for coming at site 

22 profiles in a different way that I think, and 

23 there are advantages and disadvantages for 

24 each of these other strategies, and we’re 

25 going to lay out a few of them for you. But 
119

1 it goes to the heart of what you’ve just 

2 described. How do we find a way to navigate 

3 our way through this process and not get lost 

4 in the weeds and spend lots of time and lots 

5 of money on things that maybe we shouldn’t be 

6 doing? 

7 Not that I’m saying we did that, but I 

8 think that there are other ways of coming at 

9 site profile reviews that certainly I think 

10 the Board will want to look at and think about 

11 and debate as opposed to it would be basically 

12 somewhat different approaches to varying 

13 degrees of what we’re already doing. And it 

14 goes to exactly the issue you raised. 

15 MS. MUNN: Well, I appreciate that, and 

16 thank you very much. I’m sorry. I didn’t 

17 mean to get us off on a tangent. I kind of 

18 feel like we’ve strayed from the precise 

19 nature of our discussion here but felt the 

20 point needed to be made. And I’m glad to know 

21 that SC&A’s addressing that, too. 

22 DR. MAKHIJANI: Wanda, just to be clear 

23 about what we’re doing in regard to what John 

24 just mentioned is the backlog doesn’t refer to 

25 a backlog of site profile reviews that we 
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1 haven’t finished. It refers to the backlog of 

2 a large number of reviews that we’ve submitted 

3 to the Board, but there hasn’t been a comment 

4 resolution process. Perhaps there are too 

5 many comments and trying to develop some sense 

6 of judgment about which ones are important, 

7 and which ones we need to go through so we can 

8 go through them in a more streamlined way. 

9 That’s I think the main topic of concern. 

10 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Arjun, thanks for 

11 that clarification, very good. 

12 MS. MUNN: It’s kind of off of our primary 

13 topic. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, if I could move us back 

15 to the topic at hand, I just want to say that 

16 we appreciate the SC&A review of the ORAU 

17 procedure, review that Arjun has outlined the 

18 five findings on. We’ve taken those five 

19 findings to heart, and you’re going to see in 

20 this revised procedure that J.J.’s working up 

21 how we are addressing those. These are very 

22 good comments, and we appreciate them. 

23 MR. GIBSON: Arjun, do you have anything 

24 else? 

25 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, no, I think both in 
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1 regard to this and the earlier Procedure-0092, 

2 the discussions have been extremely fruitful, 

3 and if I can speak for our team, I think we’re 

4 very gratified that what we’ve done has been 

5 useful to NIOSH. I think it’s in all of our 

6 interests that the workers and site expert 

7 part of the input, and maybe if we can do 

8 things that will be more helpful to you, 

9 perhaps -- and I’m just laying this out on the 

10 table without actually bringing it up with our 

11 team just in the spirit of what’s gone on. We 

12 have quite a lot of detailed individual 

13 interviews that are quite voluminous, and we 

14 don’t actually ever publish those. People 

15 would drown in paper because, as Kathy was 

16 saying, there’s a lot of repetition and the 

17 same things come up again and again, and you 

18 don’t need to hear all that. The Board I 

19 don’t think needs more paper from us, but we 

20 could certainly provide that input to NIOSH -- 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: If you’re willing to do so, I 

22 think it would be -- 

23 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- if the Board authorizes, 

24 and if a publication of those things is part 

25 of the ^ there’s some way of documenting all 
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1 the archives without burdening the Board with 

2 even more voluminous reports that you already 

3 get from us. I mean, John, I hope I’m not out 

4 of turn in -- 

5 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): No, not at all. 

6 In fact, you’re bringing up a part of one more 

7 issue that I wanted to bring up, and that has 

8 to do with WISPRS (sic). As you know in our 

9 PROC-0097 review, one of the things we really 

10 never did to -- right now what we have is SC&A 

11 has an historical record of interviews that 

12 are part of every site profile review which 

13 captures our findings. 

14 In a similar way WISPRS -- and you may 

15 have noticed if you had a chance to review our 

16 review of PROC-0097 -- is that one of the 

17 things we didn’t do, because it wasn’t 

18 available to us at the time, is to factor in 

19 and bring into the story our review of WISPRS 

20 and how it deals with the -- because that’s 

21 very much part of the outreach program. So I 

22 guess from both perspectives, SC&A’s backlog -

23 - not the backlog but, I guess, compendium, 

24 that’s the right word -- compendium of 

25 interviews and NIOSH’s compendium of 
123

1 interviews as captured in WISPRS, right now 

2 has not really been brought forth before. And 

3 any type of review, discussion of those 

4 records, have really not been brought to the 

5 foreground yet. 

6 DR. MAKHIJANI: But wait a minute, John -- 

7 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Sure. 

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: First of all, in fairness to 

9 NIOSH we did get access to WISPRS, and we were 

10 so close to actually sending our review out 

11 that we thought we should send it out. But 

12 now, as Larry has said, they’re moving on from 

13 WISPRS, so I think it’s a little bit in 

14 getting information about certain interviews. 

15 But as far our own interviews are 

16 concerned, I mean, we’ve always made the 

17 essential substance of that part of our 

18 report. So the Board and NIOSH has, I think, 

19 available to them all the essential technical 

20 substance that arises in our interviews. 

21 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): You’re correct. 

22 My apologies, Arjun. I threw them in the same 

23 boxes in my head. I said, okay, we have this 

24 compendium that’s sitting in the back of every 

25 one of our site profile reviews, and there is 
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1 also clearly a compendium of records of a 

2 similar nature sitting in WISPRS, and I sort 

3 of had them in the same place. But you’re 

4 right. Of course, our compendium is sitting 

5 on the shelves, but there’s a lot of material 

6 out there to digest. 

7 And you’re right; we have been trained 

8 by the way on the use of WISPRS, we just 

9 never, it turned out the timing was such that 

10 when PROC-0097 was written, it was actually 

11 completed about two, three days before the day 

12 we got the training program on WISPRS, and we 

13 felt that we should put out that our work 

14 product, and in fact, one of the things in our 

15 review was to -- and I don’t think we’ve done 

16 that yet -- was to pose the question to the 

17 work group whether or not there’s anything we, 

18 SC&A, should be doing in terms of WISPRS at 

19 this time. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: I would react to both these 

21 comments. Certainly, it’s the working group’s 

22 prerogative to tell you whether they want 

23 WISPRS reviewed or not or what they want to 

24 include in your, again, I encourage you to 

25 have a purposeful and focused review of worker 
125

1 outreach here. And I’ve told you that we 

2 don’t put a lot of stock into this WISPRS 

3 thing right now. We’re moving beyond that. 

4 But more importantly, I would speak to 

5 Arjun’s offer. Yes, we would hope that the 

6 interviews that SC&A has done is not lost to 

7 the program. But my immediate reaction is 

8 that they should be, if you want to hand them 

9 over to us, we’ll compile them into the right 

10 folders and associate them with the right 

11 review documents to make sure that the Board 

12 has full access on the O drive to those. 

13 And then if people on the outside feel 

14 that they need them, like we have before, 

15 we’ll get them redacted and provided. But 

16 again, in a world of limited resources I think 

17 that’s the working group’s decision to try to 

18 make here. 

19 DR. MAKHIJANI: We’ve tried to make the 

20 summaries in order to look for ourselves. I 

21 mean, it’s very important to have some kind of 

22 sense of the issues rather than what everybody 

23 said at some time so we can actually make use 

24 of the technical information. And that’s what 

25 you’re trying to do in WISPRS. You’re trying 
126

1 to boil it down to a set of issues that you 

2 can actually incorporate. And so we had 

3 somewhat different methods of doing that, but 

4 I think the objective was the same. But there 

5 is a fairly rich record and we have all of 

6 those interviews. On one occasion it has come 

7 up where the Board did want the detailed 

8 interviews, and they were provided to the 

9 Board. I can’t, it might have been the 

10 Fernald site. I don’t remember which site. 

11 But it has come up once, and I don’t know, 

12 Kathy, but I think we would be able to provide 

13 the individual interview records if Mike or 

14 the working group -- 

15 MR. GIBSON: As far as the working group 

16 we’ll ask SC&A to look into what it would take 

17 to do that and hand it to NIOSH. But as far 

18 as actually giving SC&A to go ahead, I think 

19 that I should probably send that request to 

20 Dr. Ziemer and let him make that request of 

21 the full Board rather than just the working 

22 group even though it involves worker 

23 information. But I think asking you guys to 

24 do something should come from the full Board. 

25 DR. MAKHIJANI: It also may involve quite a 
127

1 lot of effort on our part, on NIOSH’s part in 

2 terms of actually -- 

3 Kathy, would it take a lot of effort 

4 on our part to compile the raw interviews and 

5 the final records of the individual interviews 

6 and provide them to NIOSH? 

7 MS. DeMERS (by Telephone): It would take 

8 some effort. 

9 DR. MAKHIJANI: I think there’s a lot there. 

10 MR. GIBSON: I think it’s safe to say that 

11 you guys can go ahead and look into what it 

12 would take to do that. In the interim I’ll 

13 send Dr. Ziemer an e-mail and have him poll 

14 the-- 

15 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Dr. Branche? I’m sorry, 

16 this is Liz Homoki-Titus. I just wanted to 

17 let you know since SC&A is not actually an 

18 Advisory Board contractor, there’s no reason 

19 or, I mean, if you want to go to the Board to 

20 get their approval that’s fine, but SC&A is a 

21 NIOSH contractor and every document that SC&A 

22 prepares is owned by NIOSH. There shouldn’t 

23 be any reason for SC&A to withhold anything 

24 from NIOSH. 

25 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Liz, I was going 
128

1 to just say that. I mean, right now what we 

2 do is, you know, we have the raw records. And 

3 as you can imagine they’re handwritten records 

4 or prepared or written on a laptop in 

5 shorthand so to speak. And then it’s 

6 converted into these attachments that we all 

7 see in the back of our site profile reviews. 

8 What I’m hearing is that is there an interest 

9 to get those very raw original records? Is 

10 that what the interest is and just turn them 

11 over? 

12 MR. GIBSON: If I could cut in here a 

13 minute. Since there’s some legal question 

14 here, Liz, maybe if you and John could talk 

15 about this issue and whether or not the Board 

16 even needs to take an action for this to 

17 happen and then get back to us. And if there 

18 needs to be a Board action for us to recommend 

19 SC&A to do that so we could just stay on 

20 schedule here. 

21 DR. MAKHIJANI: We’re not withholding any 

22 records. We’ve provided all the information 

23 except the underlying, raw documentation. 

24 MR. ELLIOTT: And maybe in the raw form is 

25 okay. That might be suitable. We wouldn’t 
129

1 have to clean it up or do anything beyond 

2 that. 

3 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, they’re clean in the 

4 sense that each interview has been gone over 

5 and proofread and been approved by the person 

6 who’s been interviewed. So we have clean 

7 records we could provide you, and that’s not a 

8 problem. 

9 DR. BRANCHE: But, Liz, Mike asked you a 

10 question. 

11 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Yeah, I don’t, I guess 

12 I’m a little confused why there’s a legal 

13 issue here. SC&A is a NIOSH contractor. 

14 Every document that SC&A prepares that is paid 

15 for by NIOSH is owned by NIOSH whether it’s a 

16 handwritten document or whatever. So there 

17 shouldn’t be a legal issue regarding the Board 

18 meeting to direct SC&A to release anything to 

19 NIOSH. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: It’s a procurement issue. 

21 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Now, usually the Board 

22 does make those types of directions by giving 

23 their opinion to the DFO, and so therefore if 

24 the DFO feels that it would be most 

25 appropriate to seek that type of opinion from 
130

1 the Board, they can do so. But there’s no 

2 legal question about who owns those documents. 

3 NIOSH owns those documents. 

4 DR. MAKHIJANI: It’s simply a question of 

5 the amount of effort and whether it was worth 

6 it. 

7 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Right, and that would be 

8 between the DFO and the contracting officer to 

9 figure out the prices. All I’m saying is that 

10 there’s no legal question about who owns those 

11 documents or whether they can be released to 

12 NIOSH. 

13 DR. BRANCHE: I think we’re fine. 

14 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Okay, thanks. 

15 MS. MUNN: It’s a matter of diminishing 

16 returns. 

17 MR. GIBSON: Well, we’re into the lunch 

18 hour. Do we want to take a lunch break? Do 

19 you all that are traveling want to go ahead 

20 and see if we can finish up early or it’s up 

21 to you guys. 

22 MS. MUNN: I vote for lunch myself. 

23 DR. BRANCHE: How much longer do you think 

24 we have, Mike? 

25 MR. GIBSON: I think we probably can do the 
131

1 rest of our, the work group’s activities and 

2 everything else and be ready to hear of their 

3 worker or worker reps at one and hear their 

4 comments, and probably by 1:30 or so. 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: You’re saying if we stick to 

6 it. 

7 MR. GIBSON: Let’s take about a 15-minute 

8 break then, and then we’ll come back and get 

9 stuff in here. We’ll resume in about 15 

10 minutes. 

11 (Whereupon, a break was taken from 12:25 

12 p.m. until 12:40 p.m.) 

13 DR. BRANCHE: We are re-initiating the call. 

14 Just a reminder to those of you who are in the 

15 room if you could please mute your phones or 

16 pagers. And those of you who are 

17 participating by phone if you could please -- 

18 first of all could I hear from someone on the 

19 phone to let me know that you can hear me. 

20 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I can hear you 

21 fine, Christine. This is John. 

22 DR. BRANCHE: Thanks, John. 

23 Now, back to what I was saying. If 

24 those of you who are participating by phone 

25 could please mute your phones. If you don’t 
132

1 have a mute button, then please use star six 

2 to mute your phones, and then when you’re 

3 ready to speak, use star six again. 

4 I just admonish you that the quality 

5 of the call for the persons participating by 

6 phone is far enhanced when those of you who 

7 are on the phone can please mute. Thank you. 

8 Mr. Gibson. 

9 MR. GIBSON: We’ll reconvene. John or 

10 Arjun, is there any additional comments you 

11 want to make on your -- 

12 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): No, I’m fine, 

13 thank you. 

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: I think we’ve covered the 

15 points that we want to make. 

16 MR. GIBSON: Okay, then what we’ll do, we 

17 have time set aside at one o’clock for 

18 workers, their representatives or advocates to 

19 give comments so we’ll try to wait awhile for 

20 that area of the agenda and maybe move ahead 

21 to any discussions, action items or paths 

22 forward for this work group. 

23 DISCUSSION, ACTION ITEMS, PATH FORWARD, ETC.

24 The only action that I’ve reported is 

25 that we get periodic future updates from OCAS 
133

1 on their new procedure and the database 

2 they’re developing. Is there any actions that 

3 I’ve missed? 

4 DR. MAKHIJANI: We were going to give you an 

5 estimate of resources that it would take for 

6 us to compile all the interviews and make 

7 files for each site and give them to NIOSH. 

8 DR. BRANCHE: If you could please make 

9 certain that when you provide those estimates 

10 that you copy me or Larry, if you prefer, just 

11 forward it to me in our interaction with the 

12 contract staff. 

13 DR. MAKHIJANI: They will go forward 

14 formally as things associated with resources 

15 go from John Mauro, I guess, to the ^. I 

16 don’t even know who all it goes to. 

17 DR. BRANCHE: John knows the drill. Thank 

18 you. 

19 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): This is John. 

20 One question, there is a bit of overlap 

21 between this working group and Task Three 

22 working group chaired by Wanda in terms of 

23 tracking issues and close out. 

24 As you know, Wanda, you know, we have 

25 our, this is just one procedure, well, two 
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1 procedures. We’re really talking about, the 

2 discussion we’ve had addresses PROC-0092, -

3 0097 and -0010, I believe. And I believe at 

4 least two of those are part of our Task Three 

5 work. 

6 MS. MUNN: Yes. 

7 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): And just from a 

8 logistics point of view tracking all these 

9 matters, how best to proceed? 

10 DR. MAKHIJANI: Isn’t this working group 

11 part of Task Three also because of worker 

12 procedures? 

13 MS. MUNN: Yes, it is. 

14 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Okay, that 

15 answered the question. Thank you. 

16 DR. MAKHIJANI: And that’s what I was 

17 assuming anyway. 

18 MS. MUNN: I think we’re all in the same 

19 box. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: So the Procedures work group 

21 matrix would speak to Procedure-0097 being, 

22 review Procedure-0097 being handled in this 

23 work group. 

24 MS. MUNN: Yes. 

25 DR. MAKHIJANI: We have not prepared a 
135

1 matrix for Procedure-0097. I don’t know if 

2 it’s necessary, but the findings are -- 

3 MS. MUNN: I really don’t think it is. 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: We’ve already accepted them. 

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- and NIOSH already has 

6 accepted them, so -- 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: It’s up to you guys. 

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: --but they’re not part of 

9 the, I don’t believe they’re part of the 

10 matrix we’ve given you, Wanda. 

11 MS. MUNN: No, to the best of my knowledge 

12 they’re not, and I see no reason why they 

13 should be actually. 

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: Maybe you could just make a 

15 note of it in that database that Kathy has 

16 prepared as to what has happened. 

17 MS. MUNN: We’ll indicate it. 

18 DR. MAKHIJANI: So I’ll send an e-mail to 

19 Kathy asking her to do that. 

20 MS. MUNN: That should be all it takes. 

21 MR. GIBSON: Does anyone have any ideas of 

22 what they see as the path forward here as far 

23 as we don’t seem to be really getting into 

24 depth on procedure reviews. It’s mainly 

25 trying to look at process and -- 
136

1 MS. MUNN: It would be of interest to me to 

2 know whether additional worker group meetings 

3 are planned at this time, and if so, where 

4 they are. 

5 MR. GIBSON: NIOSH or ATL? 

6 MR. McDOUGALL: I think we’re, well, Mark 

7 and I are going to go to meet with the 

8 steelworkers at their headquarters next week. 

9 But pending that right now I don’t think we 

10 have anything on the agenda. 

11 MS. MUNN: You see, I’m so far out of your 

12 loop, I don’t even know where the steelworkers 

13 headquarters is. 

14 MR. McDOUGALL: Pittsburgh. 

15 MS. MUNN: Thank you. That makes sense. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: I think it does beg a question 

17 though of how to make sure that this working 

18 group is notified or knowledgeable of our 

19 timeline of events. And I think we should 

20 talk about that a little bit. I mean, I’ve 

21 asked J.J. to make sure Mike knows and so Mike 

22 could distribute, if that’s not sufficient we 

23 should examine that and see if we want to 

24 enhance it. But I think there’s also things 

25 that we do that we need to think with regard 
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1 to this working group whether you want to know 

2 about them or want to just know about worker 

3 outreach meetings where we go out in the 

4 field. 

5 Or do you want to know like, for 

6 example, two weeks ago we had a meeting here 

7 in Cincinnati at the Taft Labs with the Metal 

8 Trades Council, entirely different type of 

9 meeting than we’ve been talking about. Maybe 

10 Vern wants to speak a little more about this, 

11 but we brought the Metal Trades Council here 

12 really to build a better relationship and 

13 answer questions that they had of us. 

14 MR. McDOUGALL: That’s exactly what the 

15 purpose of this meeting was. And this is the 

16 kind of meetings that I used to participate in 

17 with government agencies when I was a union 

18 representative. And it was a meeting to 

19 establish process, to understand, you know, 

20 just to understand how, so union people 

21 understand how this works. The meeting was 

22 asked for by the Metal Trades Department of 

23 AFL-CIO, and then they brought in all their 

24 affiliated Metal Trades Councils from the 

25 different sites. 
138

1 For those of you who don’t know what a 

2 Metal Trades Council is at some sites, notably 

3 Hanford, Oak Ridge, Sandia, Pantex and 

4 Fernald, there are really consortiums of 

5 unions in the same way that Mike’s local union 

6 represented all the workers at Mound, there 

7 were probably I’m guessing 12 or 13 different 

8 local unions in the Metal Trades Council at 

9 Fernald that represented essentially the same 

10 classes of workers. 

11 So these are, these and the 

12 steelworkers and the building trades are 

13 probably the three biggest stakeholder groups 

14 at least in organized labor, a bunch of 

15 others. But we felt it was time to really 

16 bring these people together and talk about 

17 what they had in common in terms of their 

18 concerns at the sites and how we can move 

19 forward with them to accomplish some new 

20 things. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: Is that a type of meeting you 

22 want to be notified of and offered an 

23 opportunity to participate in or observe? You 

24 know, we’ve also, so you can consider that. 

25 We’ve also had workshops here where I told the 
139

1 Board about our conduct in these workshops 

2 have been to describe the dose reconstruction 

3 process, and we’ve invited in organized labor 

4 reps and worker advocates and activists to sit 

5 in on these workshops. 

6 We’re planning another workshop for 

7 later this spring, early summer timeframe 

8 where we have a specific focus and 

9 specifically targeted audience. And in that 

10 focus we’re thinking of responding to things 

11 that this group has expressed they would want 

12 to hear, want to know more about. So do you 

13 want to know about those kind of things? I 

14 would pledge to you we’d put together a 

15 calendar of events and keep that updated so 

16 that you know if we know what kind of events 

17 you want to be made aware of. 

18 MS. BREYER: We have an SEC outreach meeting 

19 Denise and I are doing in Pinellas. 

20 Originally it was at the end of February, but 

21 it might go into March now whenever we’re 

22 planning it. Usually I send out an e-mail to 

23 the full Board, but I can send that just to 

24 Mike and let him distribute it as he needs. 

25 But that’s one we have coming up as well. 
140

1 MR. HINNEFELD: Would it be easier to make 

2 announcements to the whole work group? 

3 MS. MUNN: It was my assumption when I asked 

4 to be a member of this particular group that 

5 this is the kind of information to which we’d 

6 be privy, things that were coming up and 

7 whether they were of a nature and of a focus 

8 that seemed it would be reasonable for one of 

9 us to attend. 

10 But what has transpired for the most 

11 part is that in most instances I personally am 

12 aware after the fact that you’ve had meetings 

13 somewhere, that Laurie has had meetings 

14 somewhere, and unless it’s something that Mike 

15 has been notified that he has sent out a 

16 message does anybody want to go, then I’m 

17 completely unaware of them. I was under the 

18 assumption that the work group as a work group 

19 would have knowledge of what was transpiring, 

20 by whom, where, ahead of time. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: So a calendar of events will 

22 be more inclusive. We will try not to exclude 

23 anything. Like, for example, we were invited 

24 by DOL to a town hall meeting for Pinellas 

25 that Laurie went to that I don’t believe we 
141

1 told you about. 

2 MS. BREYER: Yeah, that was the Nuclear 

3 Workers of Florida Advocacy Group. It was 

4 just kind of getting started and invited DOL 

5 out to one of their meetings. And then Monday 

6 -- Tuesday and Wednesday and I have a press 

7 release here from DOL, they’re holding a town 

8 hall meeting in Pittsburgh and invited NIOSH. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: For NUMEC. 

10 MS. BREYER: For NUMEC. And they’re taking 

11 their traveling resource center, so I’ll be 

12 interested in seeing kind of how DOL holds one 

13 of these town hall meetings. That’s more of 

14 the non-traditional in the sense of what NIOSH 

15 holds from what we usually do, but we still 

16 are invited to those regularly if that makes 

17 sense. So there’s even some of us going out 

18 to that. 

19 DR. BRANCHE: And there’s no problem with 

20 our turning the invitation over -- 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: Including the Board members. 

22 MR. HINNEFELD: That meeting’s north in 

23 Kiskee Valley. 

24 MS. BREYER: New Kensington. 

25 MR. HINNEFELD: New Kensington, it’s not 
142

1 actually in Pittsburgh. 

2 MS. BEACH: Well, and I’m curious, does 

3 SC&A’s site visits, does that have any bearing 

4 on any of this? And, Mike, you might know 

5 that. I don’t. I know SC&A does site visits 

6 to do interviews. Do we want to include those 

7 or not? 

8 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): This is John. 

9 What we’re doing is once we get a site profile 

10 review authorization, for example, right now 

11 we’re authorized to do Argonne East and Weldon 

12 Springs. The automatic process goes like 

13 this. Kathy DeMers then begins the process 

14 that she described earlier. Once she gets a 

15 tentative date for such a meeting, then we, 

16 usually me, I send out an e-mail to all Board 

17 members and to Jim Neton that a meeting has 

18 been scheduled, is about to be scheduled, for 

19 a given date at a given location, and 

20 certainly extend an offer to any Board members 

21 or NIOSH folks to join us. So that’s how 

22 we’ve been handling that. And I think that’s 

23 been working out pretty good because we 

24 usually get one or two Board members that do 

25 want to join us. 
143

1 MS. MUNN: Yeah, that’s worked well from my 

2 perspective. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: From the NIOSH perspective 

4 I’ll ask J.J., if he will, to put, this needs 

5 to go to J.J., not ATL, because there’s a lot 

6 of other things like the SEC counselor and 

7 ombudsman efforts and town hall meetings that 

8 we’re asked to participate in or that we set 

9 up without ATL support. So we really need 

10 J.J., if he will, to put together this 

11 calendar of events and update it as it’s 

12 needed. 

13 And if the Board members want to take 

14 that and then add to it whatever SC&A events 

15 are identified, that’s fine. But we’ll do 

16 that for you. We’ll try to make sure that you 

17 are knowledgeable of the events as we know 

18 them to be committed to and scheduled. 

19 MS. MUNN: That would be more than 

20 satisfactory from my perspective, very nice to 

21 have. 

22 DR. MAKHIJANI: Larry, is there a calendar 

23 of events that’s posted somewhere like on the 

24 O drive or some place? 

25 MR. ELLIOTT: There’s not, and it’s 
144

1 something I’ve kind have been thinking we 

2 should have. So unfortunate to have this 

3 mechanism. And this would be specifically for 

4 outreach. I’m going to call it an outreach 

5 calendar. 

6 MS. MUNN: Right. 

7 MR. GIBSON: Sounds good. 

8 MS. BEACH: I have one more comment/question 

9 I guess. Is there some kind of a flowchart or 

10 how the process works from beginning to end 

11 when you start off with the worker outreach 

12 and then you take those comments, what happens 

13 to the comments? Is that part of the 

14 procedure or is that not -- 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: I think that’s a good 

16 suggestion. 

17 MR. HINNEFELD: I think flowcharting as part 

18 of the procedure would be an effective way to 

19 make sure your procedure’s complete. 

20 MS. BEACH: That way you could track what 

21 happens and what, make it easier. 

22 MR. ELLIOTT: Good suggestion. 

23 MR. GIBSON: As far as the next meeting for 

24 this group, Wanda, you have a Procedures work 

group meeting scheduled on the 13th 25 of March, 
145

1 right, here in Cincinnati? 

2 MS. MUNN: Uh-huh, yeah. 

3 MR. GIBSON: Maybe a Wednesday or a Friday, 

4 the day before or after that meeting would be 

5 good for another meeting for this group? 

6 MS. MUNN: Will we have material at that 

7 time that will be -- 

8 MR. GIBSON: That’s a month and a couple 

9 weeks. 

10 DR. MAKHIJANI: Is it a face-to-face meeting 

11 or a call? 

12 DR. BRANCHE: Procedures is a face-to-face 

13 meeting. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: I don’t know that we’ll have a 

15 procedure. 

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah, I don’t know if the 

17 procedure will be done. We can give a status 

18 report on the procedure and the database that 

19 we’re developing. But I don’t know that 

20 either database might be done. But I don’t 

21 know that either will be done, so we could -- 

22 see, at least two of the members here are on 

23 the Procedures work group, right? Or is that 

24 just... 

25 I was going to say we can provide it 
146

1 at that, you know, rather than get this work 

2 group together, we can provide a summary there 

3 or, of course, that leaves out a couple 

4 members. But I don’t know that we’ll have 

much by March 15th 5 . You know, we could give 

6 you a status, but getting together for a 

7 status seems like a long trip for some people 

8 just to come here. 

9 MR. GIBSON: This may be looking at a 

teleconference call on the 12th or the 14th 10 . 

11 How would that be? 

12 (no response) 

13 MR. GIBSON: Did you have anything else? 

14 DR. BRANCHE: No, I was just going to say 

15 that if you had everyone assembled, most of 

16 the people assembled for the Procedures 

17 meeting, that tends to be a long meeting. But 

18 if you wanted to incorporate a phone call at 

19 the end of that or somehow incorporate an 

20 update on this work group on that day later in 

21 the day, it might be a matter of just 

22 involving a few more people, and you can plug 

23 them in by phone. 

24 If Wanda -- I’m trying to think -- 

25 because you’ll already be here. And then 
147

1 you’d have to patch in two of the Advisory and 

2 Josie and Phil in by phone, but you’ll already 

3 have assembled a lot of the SC&A staff, and 

4 you’d have to plug in Laurie and J.J. 

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: And John and I will be here. 

6 DR. BRANCHE: It’ll just be a logistical 

7 issue. 

8 MR. GIBSON: If it’s okay with Wanda. 

9 MS. DeMERS (by Telephone): Could you repeat 

10 the dates? This is Kathy DeMers. 

11 MS. MUNN: Well, our Procedures meeting is 

March the 13th, Thursday, the 13th 12 . 

13 MS. DeMERS (by Telephone): I may be tied up 

14 in a site visit that week. 

15 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, it’s just a NIOSH 

16 update so -- 

17 MS. MUNN: Yeah, it would be a short update 

18 for us, I think, for this work group. 

19 MR. GIBSON: Right. 

20 DR. BRANCHE: And, Wanda, how long do you 

21 anticipate that your meeting would be? 

22 Starting off around nine or 9:30 and -- 

23 MS. MUNN: Yeah, we’ll start at nine or 

24 9:30, and we’ll have certainly more than a 

25 morning’s worth of work ahead of us. We might 
148

1 be able to do this especially since if our 

2 other Board members are in a western time 

3 zone, we might be able to do this after the 

4 Procedures group if everyone was still here 

5 since we don’t anticipate a great deal of 

6 time. Let’s see if we can arrange that. And 

7 perhaps if we did -- 

8 DR. BRANCHE: Two, 2:30 or three? 

9 MS. MUNN: I was leaning toward more like 

10 four. But maybe three if you think that’s 

11 reasonable. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Three o’clock p.m. on the 13th 12 . 

13 MS. MUNN: Let’s tentatively say three 

o’clock, three eastern on the 13th 14 , Thursday, 

the 13th 15 . 

16 DR. BRANCHE: Mike, is that okay with you? 

17 MR. GIBSON: Yes. 

18 MS. BEACH: You might have a better idea 

19 then of when the procedures will be ready. 

20 DR. BRANCHE: Well, you’re going to give 

21 some sort of status report no matter what. 

22 MR. GIBSON: I guess now before we, the only 

23 thing I’d like to do now before we move on to 

24 the comments from workers or their advocates, 

25 we received a notice today, and I’d just like 
149

1 to go on the record and say that it’s with 

2 deep regret that I learned this morning that 

3 Ed Walker has passed away. 

4 And I’d just like to offer my personal 

5 condolences and hope I can speak for the work 

6 group to his family and to the workers he 

7 represented. Ed was a wonderful man and did a 

8 lot for the process, and he certainly helped 

9 all of us along and kept us on our toes in 

10 standing up and fighting for what he believes 

11 in representing the workers at Bethlehem Steel 

12 and the rest of the claimants. If anyone else 

13 would like to comment. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: He will be missed. He had a 

15 wonderful smile. And you’re right. He did 

16 keep us on the task. 

17 DR. MAKHIJANI: I’d like to make a sort of 

18 personal statement. This is Arjun. He was at 

19 the very first worker outreach meeting when I 

20 was associated with this program. And he 

21 provided this immense amount of very useful 

22 information. He and his wife Joyce escorted 

23 me personally to other workers’ houses, people 

24 who were too ill to come to public meetings. 

25 He was responsible for a worker who actually 
150

1 made that diagram so all of us could 

2 understand what it was actually like in the 

3 ‘50s that we published in one of our reviews. 

4 His wife Joyce was also extremely helpful. I 

5 really want to extend my condolences to her in 

6 my personal behalf, on behalf of all our SC&A 

7 team. She was always very, very gracious and 

8 very helpful to us. 

9 WORKERS, WORKER REPRESENTATIVES/ADVOCATE COMMENTS

10 MR. GIBSON: We’ll move on. Do we have any 

11 workers, worker representatives or worker 

12 representative advocates on the phone that 

13 would like to give comments as far as worker 

14 outreach? 

15 UNIDENTIFIED: Yes. 

16 MR. GIBSON: Could you identify yourself for 

17 the record and go ahead and make your 

18 comments? 

19 DR. MERRITT (ph) (by Telephone): This is 

20 Dr. Maureen Merritt. I’m a physician and 

21 advocate for New Mexico claimants and workers, 

22 generally working with Los Alamos National 

23 Labs’ folks. And we have an organization, New 

24 Mexico Alliance and Nuclear Worker Advocates, 

25 and just to give you a brief background. I 
151

1 have a history of occupational medicine and a 

2 fair amount of expertise in this particular 

3 area though I’m not a health physicist. 

4 In addition, I was instrumental in 

5 setting up the first state Office of Nuclear 

6 Worker Advocacy for, probably the only one in 

7 the United States at this point in time. And 

8 I appreciate you giving me a couple minutes to 

9 make comments. I’ll try and keep them brief, 

10 but I did want to go over a couple of items 

11 that caught my attention as you discussed the 

12 various issues before you. 

13 One of the things is -- and you can 

14 hear me? 

15 DR. BRANCHE: I can hear you. 

16 DR. MERRITT (ph) (by Telephone): I would 

17 question, is when you talked about worker 

18 input, testimonials or meetings where you 

19 gather information. Does every factual 

20 statement by a worker have to be substantiated 

21 by research and/or proof on paper by NIOSH 

22 before being used as part of your information 

23 base? 

24 MR. ELLIOTT: Not necessarily. Again, we 

25 take stock of anything that’s given to us as 
152

1 far as input or information in the full 

2 context of all available information that we 

3 have. So if we hear something from a worker, 

4 it may lead us to at that point, just on the 

5 face of what has been said, we would say, yes, 

6 we understand that. We agree. We see a need 

7 to make a change in our documentation and in 

8 our approach. 

9 Or it may appear to us that we need to 

10 find we may need to examine what has been 

11 provided to us in closer, with closer scrutiny 

12 and more detail to determine whether or not 

13 there are other information sources that 

14 corroborate what we have just heard. So to 

15 answer your question, not necessarily do we 

16 just disregard or need to have more 

17 information to believe the provider of the 

18 information. 

19 DR. MERRITT (ph) (by Telephone): Is this 

20 Larry? 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, this is Larry Elliott.

22 DR. MERRITT (ph) (by Telephone): Thank you 

23 for that. And it occurs to me that the 

24 corroboration could be potentially other 

25 workers’ testimony that correlates with the 
153

1 particular statement as well as just the 

2 written record. Is that correct? 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: Certainly, yes. 

4 DR. MERRITT (ph) (by Telephone): Okay, 

5 because I want to tell you that the perception 

6 out here on the ground, so to speak, is that 

7 the workers’ testimony is discounted. 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: I understand that perception. 

9 DR. MERRITT (ph) (by Telephone): As a 

10 result of that we find that it’s difficult to 

11 get participation at your outreach meetings. 

12 So that’s something that if you don’t already 

13 know, you should be aware of. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you. I am aware of it. 

15 DR. MERRITT (ph) (by Telephone): And the 

16 other question is, what is the threshold of 

17 credibility or proof required for statements 

18 of workers? In other words when does it 

19 become truth and not just anecdotal, verbal 

20 testimony? 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: I don’t have a ready easy 

22 answer for that. Again, I would refer back 

23 and hearken back to what I said earlier this 

24 morning, that whatever information is provided 

25 to us will be accepted and used, providing it 
154

1 is reasonable, and it is supported by 

2 substantial evidence or is not refuted by 

3 other evidence. That’s the -- and it’s 

4 consistent with the information that we have 

5 available. So you have to take all of that 

6 into consideration. 

7 I know that’s not a very, an answer 

8 that’s very easily absorbed and understood. 

9 People would like to think there’s a bright 

10 line that I can give you, but we are required 

11 to take into consideration all information 

12 that is provided to us. 

13 DR. MERRITT (ph) (by Telephone): And I 

14 think the workers’ testimony, if they can come 

15 away with the new perception that the workers’ 

16 testimony is not just opinion but rather is 

17 fact based on the many years that they’ve 

18 worked at a facility and all of the gold mine 

19 of information that they potentially could be, 

20 it would go a long way toward creating, I 

21 believe, a more collegial kind of a 

22 relationship with them. 

23 MR. ELLIOTT: Understood. 

24 DR. MERRITT (ph) (by Telephone): And then 

25 there’s one other comment I want to make. I 
155

1 think Phil -- I believe that’s who it was -- 

2 Schofield brought up the pueblos briefly. And 

3 I wanted to indicate to you that as an example 

4 of this communication problem that we have 

5 here, the native people traditionally teach 

6 their history and culture almost entirely 

7 verbally; and therefore, it’s no less a truth 

8 to them just because it’s verbal rather than a 

9 written record. 

10 And a lot of the same could hold true 

11 for the Hispanic population which is fairly 

12 large here as it happens in New Mexico and 

13 with LANL, and I know you guys are aware of 

14 that. But the point is is this is an example 

15 of a cultural type of bias that is happening 

16 whereby the insistence on a written record 

17 negatively influences NIOSH’s attempt to 

18 gather information. 

19 And I happen to have knowledge of 

20 Native American culture because I’ve worked 

21 with various tribes around the country for a 

22 very long time. And I am currently working 

23 with pueblos to bring them on board more so 

24 that we can have better input from them when 

25 you come out for these outreach worker 
156

1 meetings. 

2 One other little suggestion, you were 

3 wondering how there are other ways to reach 

4 folks out here on the ground. And I believe 

5 that there are many worker groups, some of 

6 them in different states, that are kind of 

7 grass-roots organizations. We have one here, 

8 Los Alamos Workers Group, and they meet every 

9 month. I go there in the line of my duties 

10 here as an advocate and a claimant assistant 

11 to help effect changes. 

12 And so that’s just one that comes to 

13 mind. I know there are others across the 

14 country. And as you’re aware, there are other 

15 advocacy groups around the country, too, that 

16 are quite influential and have many contacts 

17 with workers. Perhaps you could make an 

18 effort to bring the advocacy groups on board 

19 in trying to increase participation. 

20 And that’s pretty much what I have 

21 today. Thank you. 

22 MR. GIBSON: Thank you very much for your 

23 comments, and I’d just like to tell you that 

24 it is the purpose of this working group to, 

25 the reason it was established is to make sure 
157

1 that workers’ comments and input is taken 

2 seriously and incorporated into the process. 

3 And also, this issue of perception is also 

4 important, and we’re looking at that. So 

5 thank you for your comments. 

6 Is there any other worker or worker 

7 advocate on the phone? 

8 DR. McKEEL (by Telephone): This is Dan 

9 McKeel. 

10 MR. GIBSON: Yeah, Dr. McKeel, go ahead. 

11 DR. McKEEL (by Telephone): Well, thank you 

12 very much for this very interesting 

13 discussion. I’ve learned quite a bit today. 

14 As you all know, I’m the SEC petitioner for 

15 two sites currently at Texas City and also at 

16 Dow and have been instrumental in getting the 

17 GSI dose reconstruction moving along which I’m 

18 pleased is happening. And so these comments, 

19 I’ve provided more comments to Kathy DeMers 

20 and so forth, but these are sort of my 

21 reactions to what I’ve heard today and that I 

22 wanted to put on the record today. 

23 The first comment is that there are 

24 different ways that have been used over the 

25 stretch of time to document outreach meetings: 
158

1 summaries, minutes and verbatim transcripts. 

2 My reading, not all of them but of many of 

3 them, is that most of the summaries are 

4 extremely skimpy, and they couldn’t possibly 

5 reflect everything that went on at the 

6 meeting. One in particular was the Weldon 

7 Springs session that Denise Brock mentioned 

8 earlier. 

9 The second point is that at the 

10 meetings that I’ve been to, even though 

11 they’re outreach meetings and a major mission 

12 announced by NIOSH, the focus of the meeting 

13 was to improve the site profile, you know, 

14 number one, Dow and GSI until there was an 

15 Appendix BB, there was no site profile. At 

16 Texas City the same, there is no site profile. 

17 But even the other meetings like 

18 Blockson where there was a site profile, it 

19 seems to me that more could be done to make 

20 sure that number one, the true site experts 

21 are identified, and that they actually get a 

22 copy sent to them of the site profile. Now I 

23 know they’re on the website and so forth, but 

24 I also know that many of those folks have a 

25 big problem with downloading a 60-page 
159

1 document and printing it out. So that’s just 

2 a suggestion. 

3 I have a very strong feeling about the 

4 way that the reports of outreach meetings have 

5 been redacted over time, and I would simply, 

6 you all know it’s a bigger issue. But my 

7 comment would be that they’re highly selective 

8 and inconsistent. Sometimes just names are 

9 omitted. Sometimes the participant lists are 

10 omitted but not in others. And in some cases, 

11 with Dow for example, the workers’ jobs and 

12 the years of employment were redacted out, and 

13 that makes the value of those outreach 

14 transcripts much less. 

15 My suggestion kind of tying all those 

16 three together is I think it’s fine to make a 

17 recording, and I’m very happy -- I think I 

18 heard that those recordings are now being 

19 retained. But what comes out of those 

20 recordings is not a verbatim transcript but 

21 rather in some instances a very short summary 

22 that just summarizes what was said without 

23 giving particular workers’ precise comments. 

24 And more recently there have been 

25 minutes that are better, but they’re still not 
160

1 the same as a verbatim transcript. And since 

2 the Board and work group meetings are 

3 documented by verbatim transcripts, my 

4 suggestion is that y’all consider doing the 

5 same for outreach meetings. 

6 I think those meeting summaries, 

7 minutes, transcripts, whatever, need to be 

8 released in the same timeframe as the Board 

9 and the work group meeting transcripts which 

10 is currently 45 days according to the new 

11 schedule. I think that’d be a great idea. 

12 Right now I’ll mention I’m waiting for minutes 

from the October 9th 13 , 2007 GSI worker meeting. 

14 There was a NIOSH outreach and a satellite 

15 SC&A outreach. I’m also waiting for the 

November 15th 16 , 2007 town hall meeting minutes 

17 at Texas City Chemicals. 

18 I perceive that there is a really 

19 tremendous problem in the process of getting 

20 the outreach minutes released, and that that 

21 is occasioned by the redaction process. I 

22 wish that that process were delineated in 

23 great detail. I’ve tried very hard to figure 

24 out who the decision-makers are, actually 

25 where it’s been done, what the process is, and 
161

1 I have to date not been able to find out how 

2 that’s done. But in any case it needs to move 

3 along much faster. 

4 A personal comment, and this is 

5 probably the most important thing I want to 

6 say today, is as you all know a major issue of 

7 the Dow Madison SEC 79 is whether or not part 

8 of the thorium activities at that site were 

9 related to AEC production of nuclear weapons. 

10 And we made the point -- and I’m talking about 

11 we as a co-petitioner at that site -- I made 

12 the point more than two years ago that there 

13 was testimony from multiple workers that some 

14 of the thorium work was AEC related and 

15 subsequently reproduced four sets of verbatim 

16 transcripts of meetings, all of which we paid 

17 for the court reporter, sent those to NIOSH, 

18 made sure that SC&A had them. And I would say 

19 that the perception was, even though as Larry 

20 Elliott mentioned, that data was accepted, but 

21 we could never get a assurance from NIOSH or 

22 Department of Labor or DOE until very recently 

23 that any of that information was believed and 

24 accepted as fact as Maureen Merritt just 

25 mentioned. 
162

 Now as you know, on January the 8th 1 , 

2 DOE finally did confirm that Dow Madison 

3 thorium was used in nuclear weapons 

4 production, and that will be a major 

5 difference now in the way that SEC is handled. 

6 We’ve not gotten decisional documents which 

7 are said to be from Livermore, from the FBI 

8 and NNSA, so I can’t tell you why it took more 

9 than two years to arrive at this point. 

10 But I do think it raises the point 

11 whether all of that evidence from 11 workers 

12 that Dow shipped thorium to Rocky Flats, that 

13 there may not be something to that. And maybe 

14 the same process that was used to uncover the 

15 Livermore documents and NNSA documents and so 

16 forth, maybe they could be applied at Rocky 

17 Flats. It occurs to me that the problem may 

18 be that those documents are classified. And 

19 so anyway, that’s the comment. 

20 My final point was one that John Mauro 

21 raised, and it was that SC&A has gotten an 

22 avalanche of e-mails regarding GSI operations 

23 related to Appendix BB and the forthcoming 

24 SC&A report on that document. The reason that 

25 that happened is because John Ramspott and I 
163

1 felt that we had already sent the vast 

2 majority of that information to NISOH and that 

3 NIOSH had it before they prepared Appendix BB, 

4 and had either just not used the material we 

5 sent them, or they had in some way 

6 misinterpreted or gotten it distorted. 

7 And so we felt that we needed to 

8 ensure that SC&A was aware of all that 

9 relevant GSI information. And so really it 

10 was overkill. It shouldn’t have been 

11 necessary to send all that in, but our 

12 perception was that it definitely was. So I 

13 guess that’s the end of my thoughts, so I 

14 thank you all for listening to them. 

15 MR. GIBSON: Thank you, Dr. McKeel. 

16 Follow ups for anything? 

17 (no response) 

18 MR. GIBSON: Is there any other workers or 

19 worker representatives or advocates on the 

20 phone? 

21 MS. BARRIE (by Telephone): This is Terrie 

22 Barrie with ANWAG. 

23 MR. GIBSON: Hi, Terri, go ahead. 

24 MS. BARRIE (by Telephone): Thank you, Mike. 

25 I wasn’t able to be on the entire call so if I 
164

1 raise some issues that have been resolved so 

2 please forgive me. 

3 I just hope everyone realizes that 

4 it’s now 2008, a full seven years since this 

5 program has been around. And if I understand 

6 correctly, it is just recently that NIOSH has 

7 decided to contact the metal trades and 

8 steelworkers union. And I just think that’s a 

9 little bit late in the game for this. 

10 The perception of what NIOSH uses for 

11 their site profiles and SEC evaluation reports 

12 is very bad when it comes to the opinions of 

13 the claimants. As you know I’ve been involved 

14 with the Rocky Flats SEC petition, and I know 

15 that workers and advocates have not only 

16 submitted testimony at the Board meetings but 

17 also documents. We have no idea if they were 

18 ignored by NIOSH, discounted or if it was 

19 investigated by NIOSH and found to be 

20 irrelevant. 

21 We need to figure this part out, not 

22 only for the Rocky Flats SEC petition but also 

23 for the other sites. I was surprised, in 

24 fact, when I believe it was Stu stated today 

25 that NIOSH doesn’t look as thoroughly as SC&A 
165

1 does at the evidence. Why is this? Just like 

2 Dr. McKeel said, information is submitted to 

3 NIOSH, but it appears that it’s just 

4 discounted. That needs to be changed. 

5 And I don’t understand what the plan 

6 is. Does NIOSH plan to revisit the sites and 

7 acquire the information that may affect those 

8 reconstructions for, let’s say, Rocky Flats or 

9 is this planned for this worker outreach for 

10 the sites that have not been visited yet? 

11 MR. ELLIOTT: Let me speak first. This is 

12 Larry Elliott, Terrie, and then Stu will make 

13 a comment I’m sure. My comment is in reaction 

14 to the perception that you speak of. 

15 Again, I will say, I think I said this 

16 probably for the fifth or sixth time today, 

17 all information that is given to us is 

18 considered in the full context of information 

19 we have available for consideration. And what 

20 I said earlier also is that we admit and need 

21 that we need to do a better job of responding 

22 back to individuals who provide us information 

23 that has benefit, that does influence the work 

24 we do. 

25 And so we are working on a procedure 
166

1 and a set of processes that will make sure 

2 that we react to this perception as well as 

3 make sure that we get back to the individuals 

4 who have provided us information and give them 

5 an understanding of the benefit derived from 

6 what they have given us. 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu Hinnefeld. What 

8 I tried to say awhile ago was in the lines of 

9 extent and thoroughness or digging in, I 

10 guess, thoroughness of questioning and 

11 focusing of questioning during a site profile 

12 meeting. What I said is I think that you 

13 could argue that SC&A has had better, more 

14 focused questioning during their worker 

15 interaction than perhaps was done during the 

16 site profile development work. So it was 

17 related to the focus of the questions rather 

18 than the extent to which the evidence 

19 available was considered. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: The other thing I’d offer, too 

21 -- this is again Larry Elliott -- you 

22 mentioned the metal trades. This is not just 

23 a new thing we’ve started. We’ve had contact 

24 with organized labor folks and other 

25 representatives, advocates, et cetera, from 
167

1 the very start of this program. 

2 What you heard earlier today is just 

3 that we had recently invited the Metal Trades 

4 Council here to Cincinnati to have a very 

5 special and focused discussion with them. So 

6 this is an ongoing, continuous effort that we 

7 have engaged in talking with various entities 

8 who, and interested parties, about what we do. 

9 MS. BARRIE (by Telephone): Okay, well, 

10 thank you for that. 

11 The other concern I have is I believe 

12 John Mauro, and there was a discussion about 

13 SC&A submitting the actual interviews to 

14 NIOSH. Did I understand that correctly that 

15 NIOSH has not looked at the raw data or the 

16 raw interviews from SC&A? 

17 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): This is John 

18 Mauro. The material that NIOSH receives from 

19 us is after we take our notes and after those 

20 notes are converted into what I call the 

21 appendix that describes our interviews, and in 

22 some cases that has to go through DOE 

23 clearance, that product is what’s published. 

24 The actual handwritten notes 

25 themselves, we provide them only if requested. 
168

1 There have been occasions where we have 

2 received requests from NIOSH to provide the 

3 original -- I’m going to call them handwritten 

4 notes. But, no, typically we do not provide 

5 those documents. 

6 DR. MAKHIJANI: Terrie, this is Arjun. Let 

7 me just explain the process and why SC&A has 

8 the process that we do. You might not have 

9 been on when Kathy DeMers was explaining our 

10 procedure. Typically, we do quite a number of 

11 interviews as you know. And many of these 

12 interviews have the same information in them 

13 and the raw records are very, very voluminous. 

14 And when we compile a summary, we 

15 don’t mean that any issues are omitted. We 

16 try to be very faithful to including all of 

17 the issues that were raised, but we omit the 

18 duplications. And sometimes we will also omit 

19 the personal claim information that people 

20 provide us. You know, when you’re talking to 

21 them, people will talk about their own claims, 

22 and we may include the technical information, 

23 but we exclude the claim information for 

24 privacy purposes. But we do take the 

25 technical lessons from that and whatever is 
169

1 relevant to our SEC or site profile reviews. 

2 And the summary is intended to be 

3 complete so far as all the technical 

4 information is concerned. So it’s not that 

5 anything is being left out. It’s just that we 

6 haven’t been attaching hundreds and hundreds 

7 of pages of raw data, raw interview 

8 information that would contain a lot of 

9 repetition. There has been some movement that 

10 we would actually compile all of these for 

11 each site where they have happened and provide 

12 them to NIOSH so they can have a complete 

13 record of that. And I think the process for 

14 that was begun here today. 

15 MS. BARRIE (by Telephone): Thank you, but 

16 my purpose of this line of questioning, I 

17 guess, is once SC&A has interviewed these 

18 people, does NIOSH follow up with those 

19 individuals or is that left to SC&A? 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: In some cases we do follow up. 

21 In many cases we don’t follow up. Larry 

22 Elliott again. 

23 MS. BARRIE (by Telephone): Well, I have one 

24 last issue then. There’s a new blog on the 

25 NIOSH website, and it’s meant to be a 
170

1 dialogue. Is there a plan to have 

2 representatives from NIOSH or DOL to respond 

3 to the concerns listed there? 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, we won’t have DOL. 

5 DR. BRANCHE: That’s the science blog, 

6 right? 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: It’s a science blog, and OCAS 

8 was featured. The program of dose 

9 reconstruction and SEC petition processing was 

10 featured on a couple, we’re into the second 

11 week, and next week will be some new feature 

12 on the science blog. 

13 And our intent was to engage in a 

14 scientific discussion about what we do and 

15 avoid claimant concerns and complaints on this 

16 because this is really not the place for it 

17 because we’re limited in what we can say and 

18 do with regard to individual, sensitive 

19 information and third party sensitive 

20 information. So, yes, we are preparing 

21 responses to those entries to the blog that we 

22 feel have either an educational opportunity 

23 for us to clarify or give a better 

24 understanding of what is being done under this 

25 program, and more specifically, those entries 
171

1 that lead us to discussing the science that’s 

2 been put in play in this program. 

3 DR. BRANCHE: Excuse me, this is Christine 

4 Branche. 

5 So, Larry, you would still want 

6 workers or their representatives to still use 

7 the other mechanisms that are open to them and 

8 to OCAS to be able to have their individual 

9 issues addressed, not the science blog. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: Right, exactly. 

11 DR. BRANCHE: Because of the sensitivity of 

12 the information that could be shared with an 

13 individual claimant that cannot appear on the 

14 science blog. 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: Does that answer your 

16 question, Terrie? 

17 MS. BARRIE (by Telephone): Yes, it does, 

18 and if I may humbly suggest this, if you could 

19 make that an entry and advise the people who 

20 have already made comments on there, that 

21 would be very helpful. 

22 DR. BRANCHE: It probably would be. 

23 MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, we have been having 

24 numerous discussions here about the blog and 

25 the OCAS feature, and so I know that there’s 
172

1 going to come out some new labeling and stuff 

2 that we will incorporate here. So we thank 

3 you for your suggestions. 

4 DR. MERRITT (by Telephone): This is Dr. 

5 Merritt. I just have one more comment if I 

6 may. 

7 MR. GIBSON: Yeah, go ahead. 

8 DR. MERRITT (by Telephone): I think Larry 

9 Elliott made a comment earlier about not 

10 putting a lot of stock in WISPRS right now, 

11 and I would like some clarification on that. 

12 It has to do with compiling the various 

13 interviews as I understand it, worker input. 

14 And then how many interviews have been 

15 conducted by NIOSH and then separately by SC&A 

16 total? If you have the figure or can obtain 

17 one, that would be helpful. 

18 And then my last impression was that 

19 you’d indicated that you are working on 

20 compiling these so that there’s access on the 

21 O drive after redaction so the public can use 

22 them as well. Is that correct? 

23 MR. ELLIOTT: No, no. This is Larry 

24 Elliott. To answer your last point there, we 

25 were talking about the O drive which is a 
173

1 shared drive that the Advisory Board members 

2 and its contractor can get access to 

3 information that is not Privacy Act reviewed 

4 and redacted. That is not a drive or an 

5 access point for the general public. 

6 If the general public wants 

7 information from us, they need to file a FOIA 

8 request and be specific in what you want, and 

9 then we’ll respond to that request. But the O 

10 drive situation is a place where the Advisory 

11 Board and its contractor can, where we can 

12 post information that’s not redacted that they 

13 can see. 

14 Take me back to your other two points 

15 here? WISPR, why do I feel it’s not worthy of 

16 a lot of study at this point in time? It’s a 

17 very clunky database. It is a snapshot of 

18 time from the start of ORAU’s work in the area 

19 of outreach on site profiles, et cetera. And 

20 I just think there’s bigger and better things 

21 that are coming along that this working group 

22 can spend its time on. But that’s up to their 

23 prerogative as to how they want to pursue the 

24 focus of their review. 

25 The second point you had there that 
174

1 you asked for, numbers of interviews. Well, I 

2 can only ballpark that for you and say 

3 thousands, on the order of thousands upon 

4 thousands. And I say that because we 

5 consider, again, if you heard my early opening 

6 comments today, there are a variety of 

7 outreach efforts. 

8 So when we talk to a claimant on the 

9 phone who is a worker, we enter into the claim 

10 file, into the phone log, the summary of that 

11 interaction, that discussion. That’s one 

12 interview. There are probably 60,000 of 

13 those. 

14 We have a number of interviews that 

15 are conducted as part of our outreach to 

16 either get information to develop a site 

17 profile or review a site profile and improve 

18 upon it. There are probably hundreds to a 

19 thousand or more of those kinds of interviews. 

20 We do interviews of SEC petitioners 

21 and people that they identify for us to talk 

22 to, and I’d say they’re on the order of now 

23 hundreds of those. So that’s just a ballpark 

24 response to your question about NIOSH’s 

25 numbers of interviews. 
175

1 DR. MERRITT (by Telephone): And that’s not 

2 including SC&A’s interviews, right? 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: I can’t speak to SC&A’s 

4 interviews. 

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: SC&A has done hundreds of 

6 interviews, and we will be, at the direction 

7 of the working group, giving that information 

8 and what it will take to compile them all and 

9 pass them on to NIOSH in the next couple of 

10 weeks. 

11 DR. MERRITT (by Telephone): Thank you for 

12 those answers. 

13 MR. GIBSON: Is there any other worker or 

14 worker representative on the phone? 

15 MR. WALBURN (by Telephone): Yes, Jeff 

16 Walburn. 

17 MR. GIBSON: And Jeff could you tell us 

18 where you’re from or who you represent or are 

19 you a claimant? 

20 MR. WALBURN (by Telephone): I’m 

21 representing myself now. I worked at the 

22 Piketon Plant in Ohio. Some of the comments 

23 that were made by the other representatives 

24 throughout the country, Terrie Barrie and Dr. 

25 Merritt, right now there seems to be a 
176

1 clearing house of information for you all. 

2 You get it through SC&A and interviews, and 

3 you get it through the Board’s information 

4 that comes to you. 

5 But for the workers, the advocacy, and 

6 I’ve spoken to so-called worker advocates up 

7 there in your organization, but when I speak 

8 to somebody like Terrie Barrie, I’ll get the 

9 truth right on the ground and the grass roots 

10 point of view. But if you -- by the way, I 

11 testified in the original 2000 Senate hearings 

12 in front of Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman 

13 along with Sam Ray and then the people from 

14 Oak Ridge when the special cohort status was 

15 started. 

16 I also testified in front of the OCAS 

June 14th 17 , 2006 meeting. I gave you 43 hard 

18 documents. I’ve given those documents to John 

19 Howard. I’ve given those documents to Larry 

20 Elliott. Now I’ve given those documents to 

21 SC&A, and those documents show that DOELAP 

22 certified records were falsified at our site. 

23 I don’t know how many times that I have to 

24 prove this. 

25 You give 30 days for an individual who 
177

1 has an illness that has no access to 

2 documents. You don’t even have the access to 

3 the documents. It took me a federal subpoena 

4 under a qui tam court suit to get those 

5 documents. On line 16 of page 132 of your 

hearing on June 14th 6 , Dr. Ziemer says, “I’ll 

7 post those documents. Everyone can look at 

8 them.” And that’s what went out in the 

9 meeting, and everyone went away with a good 

10 feeling. But those documents have not come 

11 out. They’ve not been shown. 

12 Kathy DeMers, I like Kathy. She’s 

13 honest and forthright. She’s doing a good job 

14 for SC&A. And she looked at our documents, 

15 hard documents -- these aren’t allegations. 

16 They’re hard documents that show what I’m 

17 saying, not just about me but about the work 

18 site. She said that they were the smoking gun 

19 for the entire industry in what they showed. 

20 There’s not even been so much as a pin prick 

21 of a noise come back from that. 

22 And I realize SC&A is still compiling 

23 their information, but Larry Elliott had that 

24 information, the POEF report 150-96-dash-L-O8-8 of February 16th 25 , 1996, from Martin-
178

1 Marietta concerning their lab practices. They 

2 admit they were falsifying, that the database 

3 was irrefutably corrupted. But I don’t know 

4 how much more data we’ve got to provide. 

5 I believe it was Wanda that made the 

6 exclamation about vertical and horizontal 

7 investigations. What I see on X and Y axises 

8 (sic) is that you have intersects, and at 

9 points you can see, and if you have the 

10 documents that show it, and that people are 

11 getting sick. Those should be the intersects 

12 that you should be looking at if you have 

13 practices at these sites. 

14 I mean, how could you have such a 

15 difference in information at Portsmouth, the 

16 site profiles went away saying that we had 3.5 

17 assay when, in fact, we were working with 97 

18 percent assay, and we have given them that 

19 information. What I don’t see out of your 

20 groups is you have working groups, but there’s 

21 no clearing of information that once hard 

22 documents or the people from different locales 

23 that represent specific areas like Terrie 

24 Barrie that you set down to clear the 

25 information between information that you have 
179

1 that you can work with, clear it out and to 

2 settle these incidences once and for all. 

3 There’s no effort to clear them. It 

4 just keeps going on and on and on, and it’s 

5 like a go get me another rock. That’s not the 

6 right rock. I can show you -- if you look in 

7 the Senate testimony of 2000, you can see that 

8 I identified that document there. No one has 

9 ever done a proper investigation. From the 

10 Senate, I’ve told Gene Schmidt. I’ve told 

11 Senator Voinovich. I told Governor 

12 Strickland. 

13 No one has done a proper investigation 

14 in behalf of the workers, and that’s what 

15 everyone is expecting of this program. And I 

16 think if that’s what they’re expecting they’re 

17 going to be disappointed because it doesn’t 

18 look like they are directed towards doing any 

19 clearing of information and compiling of 

20 documents that prove the allegations that we 

21 say, hard documents. 

22 Like I said just one comment was made 

23 that SC&A had to go through DOE. We have 

24 documents that show that DOE knew what was 

25 going on at Portsmouth. So SC&A’s going 
180

1 through DOE. How does that work? If they 

2 become a perpetrator of information and 

3 withholding information, how is it that they 

4 are the final say? That’s what I have to say. 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: Jeff, this is Larry Elliott. 

6 I’d like to respond to a couple points you 

7 made there. And for the record the folks 

8 around this table know that we did, in fact, 

9 respond to with our position and our review of 

10 the information that you had provided to us 

11 before, I guess this is back in 2004, I 

12 believe. So we’re on the record with you and 

13 Mr. Boone who was the Guards representative, 

14 union representative -- 

15 MR. WALBURN (by Telephone): Mr. Dave Burrow 

16 (ph) and Mr. Greg Bocook (ph) was at that 

17 meeting. You and Larry Elliott -- excuse me, 

18 you and Dr. Neton were at that meeting. Your 

19 comment was that there was a conspiracy. And 

20 Dr. Neton’s comments was that it was criminal. 

21 I didn’t bait you to say that. Those were the 

22 -- 

23 MR. ELLIOTT: We did say that. We did say 

24 that, but we also said that it’s not within 

25 the purview of this program. We do not have 
181

1 the authority to institute an investigation of 

2 criminal activity, and we advised you such. 

3 We’ve also documented our position of 

4 reviewing the information you provided in a 

5 letter to you all. That’s my comment on that. 

6 The other comment I’d like to offer is 

7 when Dr. Ziemer, I think he misspoke. He made 

8 a commitment that he couldn’t follow through 

9 with. We can’t post all of that information 

10 that you provided on the website just because 

11 you wanted it placed there. And Dr. Ziemer 

12 inadvertently made a commitment to you that it 

13 would be done. That is just not going to 

14 happen and for a variety of reasons. There’s 

15 some information there that cannot be posted. 

16 Some information would have to be reviewed and 

17 redacted for posting, and then it has to be 

18 tied to a specific effort, review effort, 

19 action effort that we have underway, an SEC 

20 petition review or a site profile development 

21 review. So just to clarify that point. 

22 MR. WALBURN (by Telephone): I’d like to 

23 respond to that. That 41-page report, the 

24 POEF report, if you take every name and title 

25 out of it, it still says that the database was 
182

1 irretrievably corrupted. And then the 

2 corresponding documents we provided to SC&A 

3 shows that the very regulatory agencies of DOE 

4 knew that, but they didn’t act on it. 

5 And then the information gets buried 

6 at the site, and it took me -- information 

7 wasn’t given to me by DOE, it was on the site, 

8 and it was in their records file. And when I 

9 filed a third-party subpoena, that’s how I got 

10 to view it. No one had been forthcoming even 

11 when DOE was elected by Senator Thompson in 

12 2000 to do an investigation. They were quite 

13 aware of what had happened in 2000. They’re 

14 aware now. 

15 The fact you don’t have a mission to 

16 find out these criminal things when they are 

17 found out that seems like that casts a shadow 

18 over the investigations and that’s not 

19 followed up on. And, I mean, like I said, I 

20 didn’t make the documents. The documents come 

21 from the site. The allegation when you lay 

22 the documents end to end, the allegation forms 

23 on timeline. It’s not me saying it. They 

24 very documents say it. 

25 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you for your comments. 
183

1 MR. WALBURN (by Telephone): Thank you. 

2 DR. MAKHIJANI: Kathy, do you want to 

3 clarify anything in terms of the status of 

4 SC&A’s review and use of information from 

5 Piketon? 

6 MS. DeMERS (by Telephone): Do you mean as 

7 far as the report? 

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, the report and the use 

9 of the interview information. 

10 MS. DeMERS (by Telephone): The report has, 

11 John knows the status of the report itself. 

12 The summary of the -- 

13 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): The report has 

14 not yet been delivered. It’s been run through 

15 DOE clearance review, and it’s going through, 

16 as we speak, PA review and final editing. So 

17 we’re in the home stretch. But, of course, 

18 your attachment, the interviews, is part of 

19 that report. 

20 MS. DeMERS (by Telephone): Yes. 

21 MR. GIBSON: Will you keep us updated on the 

22 status of that report, John? 

23 DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Oh, we’re very, 

24 very close to delivering it to the entire 

25 Board. I spoke to the technical editor 
184

1 yesterday, and she’s in the home stretch. In 

2 fact, the area that is slowing things down is 

3 the attachment dealing with the interview 

4 notes trying to get that into a form that we 

5 can deliver. 

6 MR. WALBURN (by Telephone): Can I add one 

7 more thing? At Piketon, and this is commonly 

8 done, you all work with the USW, but there was 

9 a police force there, a guard force, and were 

10 commonly left out of the loop. It was done, 

11 you can see evidence of it in the very hard 

12 documents that I gave you. We’re not 

13 considered workers, but we were there 24/7. 

14 When those workers left and went home 

15 or went to lunch or went on break, we stayed 

16 there right around 97 percent assay. And the 

17 question of neutron exposure and the slow 

18 cookers that has come up repeatedly at 

19 Portsmouth, we’ve been working on this and in 

20 pursuit of this since 1996. 

21 We’ve had the documents that have 

22 proven that records were systematically 

23 falsified there since 1996. We went through 

24 OSHA investigations. Everyone stopped short 

25 of doing a proper investigation on this, and 
185

1 they constantly leave the guards out of 

2 discussions. I don’t care how small the group 

3 is there compared to the OCAW workers. If 

4 you’re sick, you’re just as sick. Or if you 

5 are dead, you are just as dead. 

6 MR. GIBSON: Okay, thank you. 

7 Is there any other workers or 

8 representatives on the phone? 

9 (no response) 

10 MR. GIBSON: If not, I’m ready to call this 

11 meeting adjourned, and we’ll post the 

12 information on the next meeting of this work 

13 group. Thank you very much. Meeting’s 

14 adjourned. 

15 (Whereupon, the meeting was adjourned at 

16 1:50 p.m.) 
186

1 CERTIFICATE 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 Feb. 1, 2008; 

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 

24th day of Oct., 2008. 

___________________________________ 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR, CVR-CM, PNSC 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102