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Subcommittee, has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and 

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not been reviewed and certified by the Chair of the Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee accuracy 

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to change.

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

Centers for Disease Control

National Institute for Occupational Safety and 

Health

Subcommittee on Dose Reconstruction Reviews

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

The Subcommittee convened via Teleconference at 

11:00 a.m. EDT, David Kotelchuck, Chair, presiding.
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2 

Members Present: 

David Kotelchuck, Chair

Josie Beach, Member

Bradley P. Clawson, Member

James E. Lockey, Member

Loretta R. Valerio, Member

Also Present: 

Rashaun Roberts, Designated Federal Official

Nancy Adams, NIOSH Contractor

Bob Barton, SC&A

Kathy Behling, SC&A

Finn Black, SC&A

Grady Calhoun, DCAS

Rose Gogliotti, SC&A

Michael Rafky, HHS

Beth Rolfes, DCAS

Scott Siebert, ORAU Team
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Subcommittee, has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and 

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to change.

3 

Contents

Centers for Disease Control National Institute for 

Occupational Safety and Health Subcommittee on 

Dose Reconstruction Reviews Wednesday, April 20, 

2022 1

Roll Call/Welcome 4

Blinds Review Cases from Set 30 5

SC&A "Summary Dose Reconstruction 

Information" 32

Discussion 53

Adjourn 65
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4

Proceedings

(11:03 a.m.)

Roll Call/Welcome

Dr. Roberts: Welcome, everyone. Good morning. I'm 

Rashaun Roberts. I'm the Designated Federal Official 

for the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

Health. This is a meeting of the Board's 

Subcommittee on Dose Reconstruction Review. And 

of course there's an agenda available for today. You 

can find it on the NIOSH website under scheduled 

meetings for April 2022.

It's now time for roll call. Now, since this 

Subcommittee will be discussing dose reconstruction 

cases pertaining to specific sites today, 

Subcommittee Members and others do need to 

acknowledge conflicts of interest and to recuse 

themselves from the discussion where the conflict 

may be present.

So as we move through the roll call, please state your 

conflicts. And I'll go ahead and start with you, Dave. 

(Roll call.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay, great. All right, well, with that, I 

didn't hear anyone from the public wanting to 

register, which is fine. 

Again, thank you, welcome. To keep everything 

moving smoothly today, I just want to remind you to 

please make sure you're on mute when not speaking. 

If you don't have a mute button on your phone, press 

*6 to mute. And to take yourself off, press *6. 

And as I mentioned earlier, the agenda for the 

meeting can be found on the DCAS/NIOSH website 

under April 2022. Access to other materials was 
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5

provided to the Board Members and to staff prior to 

this meeting. 

So with that, let's go ahead and get started, and I'll 

turn the meeting over to our chair, Dave Kotelchuck.

Blinds Review Cases from Set 30

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay, fine, thank you. So, we have 

two blinds cases, both from Hanford by the way. So, 

Josie, you have a conflict I know at Hanford, but --

and then we will follow with a discussion of the 

summary dose reconstruction information from 

March 22. And I hope folks -- we had, as was 

indicated previously, the original draft of this from 

SC&A from Rose Gogliotti on behalf of SC&A, was 

issued on 12/20/21, but then -- and that's what we 

turned in for the schedule. 

But at a later date, she got more information and was 

able to update it, and I had a chance to review it with 

her, and so -- and that was the March 22 Rev 1 

version. So we will start, as we have on the screen, 

we will start with one of the blinds. 

Rose, who is it? Rose, are you leading that part of the 

discussion?

Ms. Gogliotti: Yes, you guys are stuck with me all day 

today.

Chair Kotelchuck: All right. Well, we're happy to have 

you. And this is the relevant background, relevant 

information is on my screen. But which of the blinds? 

Is that D-45 or D-49?

Ms. Gogliotti: This is D-45. I figured we'd start with 

it, if that's okay with everyone?

Chair Kotelchuck: That's fine.
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6

Ms. Gogliotti: This one was authored, actually, by 

Ron Buchanan. However, he is on vacation in Hawaii, 

so I will be presenting on behalf of him today. 

This was a case, obviously, from Hanford, that had a 

number of cancers, you'll see here on the screen. And 

this one is a little unusual. Normally, I would not 

bring up the cancer types. Obviously, we try to not 

release any Privacy Act information. But this one has 

a fairly unique cancer that I'm not sure we've 

discussed as a Subcommittee in the past. 

It had an unknown primary cancer, and when that 

happens, it's fairly complicated in how you have to 

treat that cancer. And that guidance comes from 

OTIB-5. And this particular ICD-9/ICD-10 code has 

five separate cancers that you need to model, and 

then you end up assigning the higher model or the 

model that gives you the highest PoC overall.

So, both SC&A and NIOSH went about that in the 

same way, and we ended up selecting the same 

primary cancer to assign. But I did want to point out 

that it is a lot of additional work, because you end up 

having to do five dose reconstructions for this single 

cancer. Because of that, I will point out that it was 

important to note the EE's smoking history, and that 

is highlighted on the screen for you there, as well as 

their ethnic background, which I have highlighted on 

the screen also.

These cancers were diagnosed from the late '90s all 

the way through the late 2010s. Both NIOSH and 

SC&A derived a PoC of less than 50 percent. Our 

doses were fairly close as you can see here from 

Table 1-2 on page eight, fairly close. Most of the 

different types differ only by a few millirem, and our 

individual PoCs are very close. 

Rolling through here, you see it's fairly constant with 
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7

the exception of one organ, and NIOSH ended up with 

a PoC of very close to 50 percent, but below 50 

percent. And SC&A was slightly lower, also close to 

50 percent, but they differ by approximately .3 PoC. 

So, very close overall.

Chair Kotelchuck: Very close overall, and also both of 

them just under 50 percent. So again, that was, in 

my opinion, a challenge to us, that they were both 

near 50 percent but below and they agreed. So, 

good, good. Sorry to interrupt.

Ms. Gogliotti: No problem. This individual ends up 

working close to 30 years, beginning in the late '80s 

and into the 2010s, as you can see here in Table 2-

1. He had a profession related to being an operator 

and an engineer. Their exact specifics are on the 

screen. Here you'll see just a summary of the 

documents that we reviewed as part of this 

evaluation, and on Table 2-2 you'll see on page 13 is 

just a comparison of the doses that were assigned by 

NIOSH and SC&A.

And here you'll see overall there's not a lot of 

differences as a reminder. The dash just means that 

we did it the same. We made mostly the same 

assumptions. There's some differences in the 

distributions and how it was assigned in IREP, a few 

small differences in the number of zeroes assigned. 

But overall these were very close dose 

reconstructions.

Moving on to external dose. This EE was monitored 

for external exposures, on both penetrating and nonpenetrating doses and here's just a summary of the 

energy distributions and dose -- or DCF that were 

assigned by both NIOSH and SC&A, as well as LODs. 

For recorded photon doses, both NIOSH and SC&A 

assigned dose using the dosimetry. Our doses were 

close. 
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8

Really, the only difference between the two was that 

for non-skin cancers, NIOSH uses Monte Carlogenerated dose correction factors, which causes 

some slightly different doses. Still in the same 

ballpark but slightly different, as well as slightly 

different distributions. Recorded shallow dose, both 

SC&A and NIOSH did not assign shallow doses.

Chair Kotelchuck: Either way -- pardon me for 

interrupting. Your voice is low. I tried to raise my --

raise the level on the screen for hearing you. Are 

other people having that problem? Is your voice 

fading, or is that just me?

Ms. Gogliotti: I get in trouble a lot for not talking loud 

enough. I can talk louder, sorry.

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay. I'd appreciate that. Thank 

you.

Ms. Gogliotti: Okay, so neither NIOSH or SC&A 

assigned recorded shallow dose in this case, and that 

just is based on the dosimetry records. But we did 

both assign recorded neutron dose. Here, both SC&A 

and NIOSH assigned approximately a year of neutron 

dose. Our skin doses do match; however, the other 

organs differ slightly and that's because NIOSH used 

a Weibull distribution and SC&A just doesn't have the 

ability to completely match those doses.

For missed photon doses, NIOSH assigned two more 

zeroes than SC&A, which resulted in NIOSH assigning 

slightly more missed photon doses than SC&A. If you 

remember, that's fairly common that we see slightly 

different numbers, especially for Hanford. There's a 

rather complex guidance for determining the number 

of zeroes, and a lot of records end up handwritten 

and it's just too difficult to come to a certain value.

So, in one particular year, NIOSH assigned two more 

zeroes than SC&A and that's the main difference, 
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9

which is again a very small dose. And then also the 

Monte Carlo dose correction factors again. Okay. 

Moving on to missed shallow doses, a single zero was 

identified by both NIOSH and SC&A, and for most 

cancers, SC&A and NIOSH came up with exactly the 

same number.

The difference was on certain cancers, NIOSH chose 

to apply a clothing attenuation factor. Basically that 

just covers attenuation that's caused by clothing 

being between the source and the actual cancer in 

these three particular locations. SC&A, however, did 

not assign a clothing attenuation factor, which 

resulted in SC&A finding slightly larger doses to those 

cancers. 

Those cancers are located here. I can't get it to 

highlight for whatever reason, but it's up on the 

screen to show you exactly where they were located. 

But they could reasonably be interpreted by being 

covered by clothing or not. So that will come up in 

the professional judgment section of the review.

With regard to missed neutron dose, both SC&A and 

NIOSH assigned 61 zeros. The log normal distribution 

was a CST of 1.52, and the only difference there 

again was the Monte Carlo-generated dose correction 

factors. These were very close. Both SC&A and 

NIOSH did not assign unmonitored dose, because we 

found there was no need to in this case, so that's 

great.

Moving on, NIOSH and SC&A also identified 19 PA 

chest examinations and assigned dose using the TBD, 

and assigned that as a normal distribution with a 

standard deviation of 30 percent. Again, those were 

the same. For ambient dose, both SC&A and NIOSH 

modeled similar doses, but there were some modest 

differences in the time period that we selected.
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10

I'll get those highlighted here for you. If can see my 

mouse, these are the years NIOSH selected versus 

the years that SC&A selected. They're similar but not 

identical, and that's the main difference there that 

resulted in NIOSH assigning a slightly larger dose.

Okay. Moving on to internal doses on page 21, this 

EE was monitored by urine bioassay, as well as chest 

count and whole body count for plutonium, uranium 

and strontium, and all the results were below the 

MDA. For plutonium dose, NIOSH modeled their 

doses first based on the urinalysis dose, assuming a 

10 year aged 12 percent plutonium mixture, and then 

they also modeled the chest count data using 10-year 

aged six percent Pu mixture. 

Those were modeled in IMBA, and then they selected 

the highest dose that remained consistent overall. So 

that ended up being a Type S six percent Pu. SC&A 

followed a very similar modeling technique, but we 

ended up assigning a 12 percent Pu mixture. And 

then SC&A also assigned missed dose to the year 

2017. That's based on some dosimetry records that 

were available.

NIOSH did not assign missed plutonium dose to that 

time period. They instead assigned co-exposure dose 

to that time period. So a little bit different, but the 

plutonium doses end up differing by only about one 

or two millirems for most of the cancers.

For uranium dose, there were six urinalysis results 

for uranium. However, only three of them were, had 

results associated with them. One had insufficient 

volume and two were lost. So both NIOSH and SC&A 

did what we could with the results that were 

available, and we both modeled approximately a year 

of uranium intake, and then assigned doses used the 

Chronic Annual Dose workbook.
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11

The difference here is NIOSH chose to extend the 

dose through the end of monitoring. So this particular 

EE had a record that indicated that they were 

monitored through a certain time period. SC&A 

instead ended the uranium dose at the last actual 

urinalysis result. So NIOSH ended up defining five 

more months of uranium intake than SC&A.

There was a fairly small difference in dose that was 

assigned, but that was a difference in assumption 

and professional judgment. 

For fission product dose, the EE was monitored for 

strontium, and that was by urinalysis as well as whole 

body count. And these were performed through the 

majority of their employment. All of those were, 

again, below the detection limits. 

Both NIOSH and SC&A used OTIB-54 to assign fission 

product doses. The difference in our modeling is 

NIOSH used the changing MDA over time, while SC&A 

assumed a continuous MDA. And that resulted in 

SC&A, I believe, assigning a slightly larger dose. No, 

NIOSH assigned a slightly greater dose. I apologize.

And, moving on to co-exposures, both NIOSH and 

SC&A assigned co-exposure intakes using the TBD 

and OTIB-54 for approximately four years of 

employment. Here, NIOSH additionally assigned the 

2017 doses that we discussed earlier, whereas SC&A 

assigned that as missed plutonium rather than a coexposure intake.

Here, SC&A did make an error. When we were 

assigning our fission dose using the TBD. To iodine131 intake rate, we assigned -- we accidentally 

moved the decimal place one over, so instead of 

using 3.4 E to the 3, we used 3.4 E to the 4 picocuries 

per day, which resulted in us assigning a larger iodine 

intake than NIOSH. But that ended up being a fairly 
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12

small dose, around eight millirem for the later 

diagnosed cancers, so that was an error that was 

made.

Moving on to environmental intakes. Both SC&A and 

NIOSH modeled environmental intakes using the TBD 

guidance. NIOSH calculated doses of under a millirem 

to each of the cancers. They went ahead and 

assigned dose anyway as a log-normal distribution 

with the GSD of three. SC&A came up with very 

similar under one millirem doses. However, we 

decided not to assign dose because doses under a 

millirem annually do not need to be assigned. That is 

another difference.

So, moving forward, then, to page 28, no CR 

(phonetic) discussion of decision points that required 

professional judgment in this case. And we did note 

two areas, the first being the clothing attenuation 

factor. NIOSH assumed that certain cancers, based 

on the location, were covered by clothing all the time, 

and using the guidance from OTIB-17 used the 

clothing attenuation factor of .855.

SC&A assumed that those same areas could 

potentially not have been exposed -- or not have 

been covered, and thus did not apply a clothing 

attenuation factor, resulting in SC&A finding slightly 

greater missed electron doses. 

There was also a difference in co-exposure in this 

plutonium for the year 2017. In this particular 

instance, the EE had a baseline and termination 

plutonium urinalysis was in the same year. Because 

of that, NIOSH chose to assign co-exposure intakes, 

and SC&A instead assigned missed dose. Both ended 

up with doses of less than a millirem per year. Both 

reasonably could've been omitted from this.

And then the other difference we noted was the end 
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13

of uranium exposure risk. The difference was fairly 

mild. NIOSH extended the uranium dose out through 

the end of when the EE was on uranium monitoring 

frequency, whereas SC&A ended it at the last 

bioassay monitoring. So a five month difference 

there. It had a fairly small impact on dose, other than 

one particular organ which has some different 

biokinetics.

And that takes us to our summary on page 30. Here 

in Table 6-1 you'll see the doses that were assigned 

by both SC&A and NIOSH, as well as the PSEs for the 

individual cancers, and the combined PoCs. You'll see 

overall they're very close. Main PoCs differed by less 

than .3 percent so we're very close, and then again 

here, there's a summary of the main differences. 

Were there any questions?

Chair Kotelchuck: Questions folks? 

Member Clawson: This is Brad. I just, I'm really 

impressed with how both of you did this so close. It's 

really a good job on both sites.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Ms. Gogliotti: Thank you. 

Mr. Siebert: Yeah, this is Scott Siebert. I mean, yeah, 

there were small differences. I don't think we need 

to go through all of them. Actually, unless there's 

questions, I don't really see a reason for any of them. 

But I want to exactly agree with Brad, Ron, and Rose 

for the next one. You did a great job on both of these 

with how closely they matched up, so I just wanted 

to give kudos on that. That's great.

Chair Kotelchuck: Great, very good. Yes. I agree. I 

do wonder if we go back to the method that people 

used, there were a couple of cases where some folks 

used the Weibull and the other, one group uses the 
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14

Weibull and the others didn't. So that in one case, 

there was one distribution, I think it was a normal 

distribution. Could we go back to that by the way on 

the screen? 

Ms. Gogliotti: Yes. Let me get it pulled up here for 

you.

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay. 

(Pause.)

Ms. Gogliotti: There you go.

Chair Kotelchuck: Right, okay. One was right, 

constant, and the other was constant in Weibull. 

Could somebody who does this, can you explain why, 

technically why you could use two distributions for 

one and the one, in this one three, and for the other 

just one for the --

Ms. Gogliotti: It's real complicated, but I can try. So 

at SC&A, we use constants for our dose, our DCF 

values. 

Chair Kotelchuck: Uh-huh.

Ms. Gogliotti: We pull them directly out of IG-001. 

NIOSH on the other hand gets their values other than 

for skin cancers from IG-001, but they're generated 

by Monte Carlo distributions. So for every single year, 

they're assigning a slightly different DCF value.

Chair Kotelchuck: Ah.

Ms. Gogliotti: And because of the additional modeling 

that they're doing, they're able to assign other 

distributions. Whereas we just use the constant 

distribution or whatever else is assigned or stipulated 

in the TBDs.

Chair Kotelchuck: Oh okay, thank you. That makes 
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15

sense. Good, good.

Ms. Gogliotti: We just don't have the capability of 

generating the Monte Carlo values in the same way 

that they do.

Chair Kotelchuck: Right, right. Okay, good. That 

certainly answers that question for me. Any other 

questions or comments? 

Member Valerio: Dave, this is Loretta. I have a 

question and a comment.

Chair Kotelchuck: Go ahead.

Member Valerio: So the comment is, you know, the 

time review they did an excellent job, I mean as far 

as, you know, detailing everything and how close the 

percentages were. My question is, and it's not really 

about the blind review but it's just a question that 

was raised in my mind, was the cancer of the tonsil.

I was just -- and I don't know if now is the time to 

look back, please tell me. But I was just wondering if 

maybe that wasn't sent back to NIOSH and awarded 

under the Hanford SEC.

Chair Kotelchuck: I didn't quite understand that, but 

if others did.

Mr. Siebert: Well I can, I can -- honestly I can save -

- this is Scott. I can save us a little bit of trouble on 

that. I mean I don't know off the top of my head if 

that's an SEC cancer or not. 

I don't believe it is off the top of my head, but it's 

kind of a moot point because this claim has actually 

come back for rework since then with an additional 

cancer, and as a full rework it went over 50 percent. 

So it's been taken care of regardless.
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16

Member Valerio: Okay.

Ms. Gogliotti: And that particular cancer is not part of 

the 22 SEC cancers.

Mr. Siebert: Right, right.

Member Valerio: Okay. I thought it was. I'll go back 

and I'll look at the list. But I thought it was. Okay. All 

right, thank you.

Mr. Siebert: Okay.

Member Clawson: Hey Dave, this is Brad. 

Chair Kotelchuck: Uh-huh.

Member Clawson: Dave, this is Brad. So you and 

Rose and Scott, like you guys -- both the way you 

guys did it was correct. It was, it's just a different 

approach; is that correct?

Mr. Siebert: For the professional judgment portions 

yeah. I mean I'd agree with that, such as the clothing 

attenuation factor. I think those are both reasonable 

assumptions for, you know, something that's on the 

neck and arm. We went back into the CATIs and I 

think we have a little bit more evidence for actually 

applying it. But that's a pretty good professional 

judgment.

Member Clawson: Oh yeah. I'm just, I'm just 

concerned that, you know, there is a judgment in 

there on that. But you're both doing it the same, you 

know, per what our requirements are, but I do realize 

that sometimes professional judgment comes into it. 

But it is, it is both correct.

Mr. Siebert: Right.

Member Lockey: This is Jim Lockey.
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17

Mr. Siebert: Yes, yes. We hear you, we hear you.

Member Lockey: I have one, one question with, and 

this is probably not significant, but I just didn't quite 

understand it. Rose, when you were looking at the 

plutonium mixture, NIOSH had it at six percent and 

you found it at 12 percent. I just was curious as to 

where you give an explanation of that, because I was 

unable to find it. Is there -- where was that?

Ms. Gogliotti: So the NIOSH models, their plutonium 

intakes, they look for internal consistency. So with 

their -- they did the urinalysis as well as the whole 

body count modeling separately, and they check to 

see if they're internally consistency. So does the 

urinalysis over or under-predict the results from the 

whole body count and vice-versa.

That's why they ended up choosing the lower 

percentage than SC&A, because SC&A did not make 

that comparison. And so SC&A's would be slightly 

more client-favorable, but is internally inconsistent. 

Member Lockey: It's internally what? I missed that 

last statement.

Ms. Gogliotti: Inconsistent. So none of the results 

could over-predict what the MDA values were for the 

other. Does that make sense?

Member Lockey: It does. It didn't make a big 

difference here, but it could make a difference in 

certain circumstances, at a different percentage, 

couldn't it?

Ms. Gogliotti: Yes, it could.

Mr. Siebert: This is Scott. I can kind of jump in. I'm 

sorry. Go ahead and finish your question. I didn't 

mean to interrupt you.
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18

Member Lockey: So I'm just trying to -- which was -

- was either approach appropriate, or is one more 

appropriate than another? I guess I'm trying to figure 

that out.

Mr. Siebert: Yeah, I have a question. OTIB-60 does 

cover this portion, and as Rose was saying, it's -- it 

needs to be consistent between the two. You don't 

want to over-predict one or the other. OTIB-60 is 

pretty clear. We from urine, you start off from one of 

the mixtures, and if you're starting from chest 

counts, you start with the other mixture because 

they're more claimant-favorable.

And then we validate that it's consistent with the 

other type of analysis, such as the chest is consistent 

with the urine or vice-versa, from whatever you're 

starting with. So doing it that way, it follows OTIB60's prescription to deal with it that way. 

Member Lockey: Okay. So going forward, which 

approach would you take then?

Mr. Siebert: We would always follow the direction we 

did.

Member Lockey: Okay, and SC&A followed a different 

direction. So I guess my question is which is most 

claimant-favorable and scientifically sound?

Ms. Gogliotti: SC&A's would be more claimantfavorable. NIOSH's would be more scientifically 

sound.

Member Lockey: Okay.

Chair Kotelchuck: Well, that would speak to SC&A as 

being the one to be chosen.

Mr. Siebert: I would agree -- I would disagree with 

that. 
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19

Chair Kotelchuck: Right.

Mr. Siebert: We do have a specific procedure that 

lays out how to deal with it, and we need to ensure 

that it is consistent between both sets of monitoring. 

That is -- I mean if you want to say that -- well, I 

mean that's just the bottom line, is we have a 

procedure on how to do it that is the process for doing 

the comparisons and it is, as was said, it's the more 

scientifically valid way of doing it.

Mr. Barton: This is Bob. If I could just weigh in here. 

I tend to agree with Scott here. When you have two 

sets of measurements they have to agree, because 

we're making some assumptions about what the 

intake was and how we reconstructed dose. But if you 

have two different sets of measurements and both 

are valid, and we're making assumptions on what the 

mix is that could have been taken into the EE's body, 

then those two sets of measurements should agree.

If we're making conservative assumptions on one set 

of measurements but they just don't agree with the 

whole body count, then you have to take into account 

that maybe the assumptions aren't reflecting what 

we're trying to reconstruct here. 

So I think in this case, when you have -- and it's 

somewhat rare that you have bioassay and in vivo 

that you can compare against each other, you have 

to make sure that both sets agree with the model of 

the intake that we're trying to apply.

So SC&A's analysis was more claimant-favorable. 

However, I think that in this case, when you can --

when you have the data to compare for the same 

individual, in vivo measurements and bioassays, then 

that has to be taken into account.

Member Lockey: Brad, Jim Lockey. You're saying 

then the scientific -- that's the more scientific 
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20

approach then, correct, in this case?

Mr. Siebert: Correct. I guess we're --

Mr. Barton: Right, Dr. Lockey. I would agree with 

that.

Mr. Siebert: We're inaccurately using the word 

"claimant-favorable" really. If you don't compare 

them, it potentially is an overestimate rather than 

just claimant-favorable. Claimant-favorable would be 

if you're not sure and both are accurate. 

So I would have a tendency to say that SC&A's is a 

slight -- and I'm putting heavy emphasis on the word 

"slight," over-emphasis. But yes, doing the 

scientifically comparison route is what our 

procedures require us to do in a best estimate case. 

Ms. Gogliotti: I also want to point out that these are 

-- all of the results were below the MDA. So we're 

talking low doses either way.

Chair Kotelchuck: Sure.

Member Lockey: I understand it was low dose. I was 

just -- I think, under certain circumstances, the 

higher doses could make a difference. But I was just 

-- to me, six percent versus 12 percent seemed to be 

significantly different percentages, and I was just 

trying to figure out the rationale. All right, thank you 

Rose. I appreciate it.

Chair Kotelchuck: Well actually Jim, since you've 

raised it, I'm -- I'm a little troubled by the fact that 

the SEC -- that Rose said well, it could make a, it 

could make a significant difference at times, or and 

that's -- there's a part of me wouldn't mind if the, if 

Scott and Rose or the organizations talked a little bit 

and came back with what might be appropriate.
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21

I understand that NIOSH has procedures. It follows 

those procedures, and this is an unusual case where 

we have, you know, chest and other bioassays. But 

would it be appropriate to talk, for you folks to talk 

further technically about that, and come back to the 

Committee with --

Ms. Gogliotti: I don't think that's necessary.

Mr. Calhoun: Yeah. Dave, this is Grady. I don't think 

that's necessary, because I think that everybody has 

come to the conclusion here that we use what's most 

technically valid. If we didn't have the two estimates 

like Scott said or two readings, we would obviously 

go with whichever one yielded the highest result. But 

one actually negates the other. So we used the 

correct one, so I don't think there's any further 

discussion needed. 

Chair Kotelchuck: I see. Well okay. That's, that's a 

good argument, and that makes sense.

Member Lockey: So Dave I -- Dave, this is Jim 

Lockey.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yes.

Member Lockey: I would think that if you had two 

different approaches and they were both equally 

technically scientifically valid, then you would always 

chose the more claimant-friendly results. 

At least that would be my approach. So if you have 

one -- if you have one approach that scientifically is 

more technically valid than another approach, then 

that would be the approach I would take, is just 

based on our mandate so --

Chair Kotelchuck: Right. Okay, right, reinforcing what 

was just said. Sure, okay. I'm satisfied on that. Thank 

you both for that. So I think unless there are further 
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22

questions or comments, I think this would probably 

be the time that we should -- I'm not sure if we say 

approve or we accept the -- that both results are --

both works are scientifically valid. They're consistent, 

and that to my mind concludes the debate. 

I'm not -- the discussion, I'm not sure. Do we say 

that this is accepted or approved? What is the proper 

determination that we have to make.

Member Clawson: I think, I think accepted --

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Member Clawson: But there's -- we're not approving 

anything or accepting what was brought before us, 

and the blind being done like this and the levels of 

professionalism that was done with it, and I think it's 

just more accept. But that's my take.

Chair Kotelchuck: Well let's do it. That's good. So and 

I'm -- we haven't done this in a while. So basically 

we are saying we accept that both, both the NIOSH 

and SC&A works are professionally were valid, are 

professionally valid and appropriate. So okay. Are 

there any objections to that?

Hearing none, we accept. We accept both. All right, 

fine. Shall we go on now to the next blind, the D-49, 

right?

Ms. Gogliotti: Sure, and everybody can still see my 

screen?

Chair Kotelchuck: Uh-huh.

Ms. Gogliotti: Okay, we're here. So this is also a 

Hanford case, and this particular case has under 15 

years of employment, and it's again in the 2000's. 

I'm hearing a lot of feedback on my end; I don't know 

if it's just me. Mr. Siebert: Yeah, I'm hearing it.
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23

Mr. Barton: I'm hearing that too.

Member Clawson: Yeah.

Dr. Roberts: If everyone could go mute.

Ms. Gogliotti: That sounds a little better. In this case, 

there were fewer cancers than the last one. You'll see 

that listed here in Table 1-1, and these cancers were 

all diagnosed in the late 2010's, and here SC&A and 

NIOSH did their dose reconstructions and we both 

came to a PoC or combined PoC of less than 50 

percent, and thus we both came to the conclusion 

that this case was not compensable.

On Table 8, you'll see our comparison of doses. The 

doses were close, not quite as close as they were in 

the last case, but still fairly consistent, and our PoCs 

were also fairly consistent. Here, NIOSH had a PoC of 

roughly 45 percent. SC&A was slightly lower, but still 

very close. 

They differ again by hardly anything. Here on page 

nine, you'll see the summary of EE's employment 

history. You'll see that they did have multiple periods 

of employment, and there's a little bit more 

information here for you.

Here's just a list of documents that were reviewed as 

a result of this evaluation. Here on Table 2-2 you'll 

see a summary of the differences. When you see a 

dash, that is an agreement, meaning we do it the 

same. There are some differences here. I'll point out 

that for one organ, our less than 30 keV dose 

correction factors differ.

There's a reason for that that we can get into, as well 

as NIOSH used some apron correction factors that 

SC&A did not use. Those are the main differences 

throughout this report, and they repeat over and over 

again. All right. So for recorded photon dose, the EE 
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24

was monitored. Both NIOSH and SC&A used the 

dosimetry records to assign dose, and that's where 

we'll get into our first difference.

In two years in the CATI report, the EE recalled 

maybe wearing a lead apron once or twice in either 

year. They weren't really sure when, and they 

weren't really sure if they were wearing their 

dosimeter under their lead apron or not. They 

thought they were wearing it under.

Now the Hanford TBD does not have any guidance 

about apron correction factors. The Pantex TBD does 

however have guidance on that. So NIOSH went 

ahead and assigned an apron correction factor of 1.5 

to those cancers. SC&A did not, and NIOSH only 

assigned those to the highest dosimeter in two years, 

which I assume was a claimant-favorable assumption 

based on the EE's recollections.

There is also a difference in the thyroid, oh I'm sorry, 

a dose correction factor of four, less than 30 keV

photons. NIOSH used a special DCF value, and that 

comes from IG-001 in Table 4-1a. SC&A, however, 

used the standard DCF from the appendices in IG001, the difference being that the NIOSH values are 

designed to use with plutonium, which the EE was 

exposed to. SC&A missed that, and we just used the 

standard HP-10 values. 

They're very close. They differ by approximately .05, 

but since the NIOSH values are higher, they did 

calculate a higher dose because of that. 

For missed photon dose, both SC&A and NIOSH 

identified 72 zeros. Here really the only difference is, 

is that specific DCF value was different, as well as the 

Monte Carlo-generated dose correction factors. For 

recorded shallow dose, both SC&A and NIOSH 

assigned it using a single dosimeter. It was assigned 
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25

as less than 30 keV photons, and again the difference 

here is that same DCF value, as well as the Monte 

Carlo DCF values.

And moving on to missed shallow dose on page 15, 

both SC&A and NIOSH calculated 34 zeros and used 

the same method to assign this shallow dose. The 

difference, the same thing over again, fairly close 

overall. For a recorded neutron dose, both SC&A and 

NIOSH made the same assumptions about the EE's 

work location, which resulted in using the same 

neutron energy distributions, and we identified 

similar dosimetry results.

The difference here is that NIOSH applied their ICRP 

correction factors to neutron doses prior to January 

1st of 2011. SC&A on the other hand assigned them 

prior to January 2010, so that is a difference. NIOSH 

also used an apron dose correction factor again, or 

the apron correction factor for certain organs that 

SC&A did not apply. And then of course we have the 

same Monte Carlo-generated DCFs, differences that 

we see throughout the report.

For missed neutron dose, the EE had a single zero. 

Nope, I'm sorry, not single. We differ by a single one. 

NIOSH assigned 66 zeros; SC&A calculated 65, but 

overall we had very similar doses, the differences 

again being the end date of the ICRP correction 

factor, 2010 versus 2011; the Monte Carlo DCFs and 

NIOSH used a Weibull distribution in there, which 

SC&A did not use.

Moving on to occupational medical doses, both SC&A 

and NIOSH identified 21 examinations in the EE's 

records, but we differ on how we treated one of 

those. NIOSH assigned 11 PA scans and 10 lap scans, 

whereas SC&A assigned one AP, 10 PA and 10 laps. 

So we did interpret one of those records differently. 

I'm getting a lot of feedback again.
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26

That one scan happened in the year 2000, and AP 

doses are larger for each of the cancers and the PA 

doses. So that did result in SC&A assigning a larger 

dose to that result. We also differed slightly on the 

location that was assigned for one of the cancers. 

SC&A picked the location I have highlighted, and 

NIOSH picked something similar but here we go. 

This, which I also have highlighted. 

The difference is about 9 millirem per scan. When we 

did go back and look at the record, NIOSH did 

actually contact DOL about this particular record, and 

DOL came back and said that that was the more 

appropriate location. Based on the ICD-10 code that 

was assigned, SC&A just missed that record of 

communication when we were going through this, but 

that is the difference.

For ambient dose, we came to a different conclusion. 

NIOSH ended up assigning eight days of the ambient 

dose for a particular year of employment. The EE had 

a medical injection, which we don't see a lot of. It is 

well-documented in their records. That was a medical 

X-ray incident, so it had nothing to do with their 

occupational exposures. But after their injection, 

they wore their dosimeter, so their dosimeter was 

potentially exposed to non-occupational exposures.

They reported it fairly quickly, and the results were 

investigated by Site personnel. The personnel ended 

up not changing the dosimetry record at all, but 

NIOSH went ahead and assigned additional ambient 

dose for those eight days. It was a dose much less 

than a millirem, but they went ahead and added it 

anyway.

SC&A did not assign ambient doses. We did discuss 

that incident in the records, but we felt that no 

change was necessary based on the conclusion that 

were of the Site personnel. But that is a difference 
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27

nonetheless. 

Okay, moving on to internal doses on page 19. The 

EE was monitored for plutonium, americium and 

uranium. They had urinalysis, chest and fecal results 

in their records. They were all below the MDA with 

the exception of there was one count that was higher 

than the MDA. However, it was deemed to be a false 

positive. Later on that day, a second result was -- a 

second test was done and essentially negated the 

first test.

Both SC&A and NIOSH came to the conclusion that 

that was likely a false positive, and did not assign 

positive dose as a result of that. Okay. So for 

plutonium, EE was monitored for plutonium, as well 

as americium-241, which is a progeny of that. NIOSH 

assigned this plutonium using 20 year aged 12 

percent material from the start of employment 

through the end of monitoring.

They also monitored a lung count and found that 

Type M, using the urinalysis results, was the best in 

that it did not over-predict the sampling and they 

ended up with fairly small doses. SC&A instead 

actually modeled isotopic Pu and uranium using 

IMBA, and we also came with small doses, but slightly 

larger than the NIOSH values.

Both SC&A and NIOSH found model doses less than 

a millirem, so they reasonably could have been 

omitted from the dose reconstruction. For uranium 

intakes, NIOSH did not acknowledge EE's uranium 

monitoring. 

SC&A, however, did identify there were some routine 

chest counts that were analyzed for uranium and 

thorium, and so SC&A did model those in IMBA and 

ended up adjusting also for recycled uranium and we 

ended up calculating a dose of approximately 80 
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28

millirem, depending on the date of diagnosis and the 

type of cancer. So that was a little bit of a difference 

in how we did things.

Okay, and then for environmental intakes, NIOSH 

assigned the maximum Hanford intakes while the EE 

was unmonitored. It ended up being less than a 

millirem. NIOSH went ahead and assigned that in 

IREP as a lognormal distribution with the GSD-3. 

SC&A on the other hand did not model environmental 

doses, because we deemed that the EE was 

monitored throughout their employment.

So really moving on to decision points regarding 

professional judgment, the biggest difference here 

was the need for an apron correction factor for the 

EE's limited applications working with a leaded apron. 

The exact quote from the CATI was one or two times 

around the years that are highlighted there, and they 

did not recall wearing a dosimeter but assumed it was 

covered by a Tyvek suit and the leaded apron.

The Hanford TBD doesn't acknowledge any 

adjustments for apron correction factors, so NIOSH 

applied the apron correction factors from the Pantex 

TBD, and that's just a correction factor of 1.5 to a 

single dosimeter result in both of those years. SC&A 

did not acknowledge that, because it was an isolated 

incident. That was the biggest professional judgment 

difference that we saw.

So in summary, you'll see there on page 23 is our 

comparison of total dose estimates and PoCs. 

Overall, they're fairly close. The biggest difference 

was how SC&A treated the uranium, which is the 

majority of the differences you'll see here. But our 

PoCs again, and overall doses were very close, and if 

you go through here, there's just a summary of the 

differences that we discussed. Are there any 

questions?
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29

Chair Kotelchuck: Questions? 

Member Lockey: Hi Rose, Jim Lockey. How are you?

Ms. Gogliotti: Great.

Member Lockey: So my only question was the SC&A. 

So you just stated that there was internal, ongoing 

internal monitoring going on, but NIOSH assigned the 

constant exposure rather than using internal 

monitoring for the time. So I just didn't understand 

that. 

Why would one do -- if there was, if there was 

continuous, if the person had internal exposure 

monitoring going on ongoing, why wasn't that used? 

Why didn't NIOSH use that? This is for plutonium and 

strontium, I think, and cesium.

Ms. Gogliotti: I'm a little confused about what you're 

asking. With regard to the environmental intakes or 

--

Member Lockey: No. This was internal exposure. 

NIOSH assigned a constant exposure to 

environmental levels, to environmental levels of 

cesium, plutonium and strontium, and you used 

actual internal monitoring data I think. 

Ms. Gogliotti: Oh, for this? That's the environmental. 

No, we -- we just used the monitoring that was 

available for the EE. So they were not monitored for 

cesium directly or strontium directly, though they did 

have whole body counts. 

Member Lockey: So that's how NIOSH assigned that 

--

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Ms. Gogliotti: Yes. We came to the conclusion that if 
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30

the EE was at an exposure risk of those radionuclides, 

they would have been monitored specifically for 

them. Since they had monitoring records throughout 

their employment, we determined that they were 

adequately monitored. NIOSH just assigned site-wide 

maximums. In either case, especially in this case late 

time period, it --

Member Lockey: There's no difference.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Ms. Gogliotti: -- physical doses, mm-hmm.

Member Lockey: Yeah. I understood that the doses 

would have been smaller in the late period, but why 

did NIOSH take their approach and why did you take 

your approach? I guess that's what I'm trying to 

understand.

Ms. Gogliotti: I guess you could call it a professional 

judgment. When my dose reconstructor was doing 

this, they looked at the records and saw that the EE 

was monitored consistently throughout their 

employment. So we thought there was no need to 

account for any environmental intakes, because they 

were monitored consistently.

NIOSH determined that, they adopted the conclusion 

that they might not have been monitored for cesium 

or strontium, so they went ahead and assigned it. As 

someone who looks at these regularly, I think we 

knew also that the doses would be insignificant at this 

time period, which probably played a factor in coming 

to that conclusion. 

Member Lockey: So it has been more like --

Mr. Barton: The total doses are less than one 

millirem, which are generally left off of the IREP 

input. So in this case, NIOSH took the extra step and 
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31

put those very small doses in there. I agree with 

Rose. I mean in this case, it is a professional 

judgment and since the doses were less than 8 

millirem, those are generally discarded within the 

program.

Member Lockey: Right, right. So the judgment is 

merely based on the time period they were being 

monitored and the very low exposure levels. So that 

I understand. That means if I was sitting there, it's 

not going to make any difference one way or the 

other. So whatever happened, whichever pathway 

you choose is not going to make, it's going to make 

a difference.

So if I -- so if I understand it, this is, this is the type 

of approach you would use in the latter type of years, 

where the exposures are low and make potential 

differences minimal at best. Is that reasonable?

Mr. Barton: I think that's accurate.

Ms. Gogliotti: I think that's reasonable, unless Scott 

would disagree for some other reason.

Member Lockey: Okay.

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay. 

Mr. Siebert: Well, we're just following our normal 

process. So, yes, it is less than one millirem and 

could go either way. We have tools that automatically 

assign things quickly, so it doesn't add anything to us 

to actually put that in there. So that's why we include 

it.

Member Lockey: Okay. I understand. Thanks.

Chair Kotelchuck: Good, good. So fine. I don't have 

any questions there. Excellent agreement again. So 

other comments or concerns or questions?
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32

Hearing none, I think we should accept both dose 

reconstructions as scientifically valid and claimantfavorable. Do others agree with that?

Member Clawson: I agree.

Member Lockey: Yeah, I agree. This is Jim Lockey.

Member Valerio: This is Loretta, I agree.

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay, fine. So I think we're 

finished with this one. And the only question I have 

is, Rose, does it seem okay to start discussing your 

report, the SC&A report? We clearly will not finish it 

before lunch. Well, we may not finish it before lunch, 

but you're -- you're on all day today, so how are you 

feeling? Do you feel like you need a rest or a tenminute break or something? I would -- normally, 

we'd have lunch. 

Ms. Gogliotti: I don't know that we need to break for 

lunch. 

Chair Kotelchuck: It's early. Normally, we'd break 

around 1:00, so we have a couple of hours. But again 

this -- I'm asking because you happen to have --

you're the rapporteur for today, so you ready to go 

on?

Ms. Gogliotti: I'm fine to keep going.

SC&A "Summary Dose Reconstruction Information"

Chair Kotelchuck: All right, wonderful. All right. Let's 

talk about the Summary Dose Reconstruction 

Information from March '22.

Ms. Gogliotti: Okay. So, just as a refresher, in our 

September meeting, at the end of the meeting, we 

discussed SC&A giving some summary statistics to 

help with the selection of the 31st set of claims, and 
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33

at that time we requested some information from 

NIOSH. Due to all the cybersecurity things going on, 

NIOSH was not at the time able to provide us with 

updated statistics.

So we went ahead and used the most recent 

information that we had, which came from 2015. So 

it's fairly old but just as a way of summarizing the 

population of claims that NIOSH reviewed and 

comparing that to what SC&A had reviewed, and we 

did discuss that memo in the January meeting. The 

Subcommittee came to the conclusion that they 

weren't ready to adopt any of the recommendations, 

but they wanted to talk about it a little bit more.

So you selected the 31st set of cases without taking 

these into account. Since then, we did get some 

additional information from NIOSH. Not updated 

information on everything, but updated information. 

So I went ahead and updated our recommendations 

and figures based on the newest available 

information that was, came from NIOSH. 

So that memo is what you see on this screen here. It 

came out in March of this year, and Dave plans to 

discuss this at the upcoming Board meeting. So this 

is just kind of a preview of the slides that he plans to 

present, but I think it might make it easier for 

everyone to see if I just pull it up this way.

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay, sounds fine. Let me ask you 

just informal, is this -- to the extent this is a public 

meeting, it hasn't come through the approval 

process.

Ms. Gogliotti: This has been PA-cleared and is posted 

on the website, or will be posted on the website --

Chair Kotelchuck: On wonderful. It's already PAcleared. Terrific. I didn't -- I'm glad to hear that. Then 

it's fine. Move on, that's excellent.
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34

Ms. Gogliotti: Yes. I had to work overtime yesterday 

and got it through PA clearance and --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay, very good. Give them a 

thank you from me.

Ms. Gogliotti: I will. Okay. So the Subcommittee 

doesn't have any formal criteria per se. Their goal has 

always been to review, is currently to review 

approximately one percent of the data evaluated by 

NIOSH. Historically, that number was higher but at 

some point in time --

Chair Kotelchuck: May I just at this point just 

interrupt to say no, at least one percent.

Ms. Gogliotti: Yes.

Chair Kotelchuck: At least one percent review. Okay. 

Do go. Do go ahead please.

Ms. Gogliotti: So that's been really the only goal. 

However, the Subcommittee has focused 

predominantly on cases that were 45 to 52 percent 

PoC, and that was because they were most likely to 

contain best estimate assumptions. We've also made 

an effort to be representative of the types of cases 

that NIOSH sees, so adequate representation of DOE 

and AWE facilities.

We've looked at making sure that employment dates 

covered a range of (audio interference) that an 

individual might work at these facilities, and making 

sure that we're looking at all career durations. So, 

the length of time that a person was employed, 

making sure that we're looking at all sorts of 

occupations.

Fairly recently, the Subcommittee also added gender 
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35

to the things that we consider when we're selecting 

cases. It's just something the Subcommittee wanted, 

to factor gender in. We didn't have any criteria on 

how many females versus males we selected, but 

gender was -- decided to include it.

And then we also considered cancer diagnoses. So 

the types of cancers that were experienced by the 

individuals that were applying. And so here is the first 

figure that I did a comparison of. That's the PoCs. As 

I mentioned, the Subcommittee has been focusing on 

close to the best estimates.

So you'll see in the light blue here on the screen the 

Subcommittee is definitely over-representing the 

number of cases that we look at that fall into that 

window of best estimates. At the same time, we're 

not reviewing as many cases that have the lower 

PoCs, especially those less than 20 percent. 

Historically, that's been a conscious decision, and 

that's because these lower PoC claims we feel that, 

or the Subcommittee in general, have identified that 

if there's an error in those cases, it's less likely to 

impact the overall compensation decision.

So in looking at that table, we did come to a 

recommendation that we would recommend 

expanding the cases that the Subcommittee looks at, 

from the range of 45 to 52 percent instead of going 

lower, closer to 40 percent to 55 percent. That way 

you're still seeing cases that are using best estimate 

assumptions, which is widening the pool that we 

select from. 

I will say that I was little surprised with the 31st set 

cases. We did look at some wider PoCs, and we ended 

up with a lot more compensated claims than we 

usually look at, and those tend to use 

underestimating assumptions and they're more 
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36

partial dose reconstructions. 

So if the Subcommittee is worried about this, I would 

suggest focusing specifically on the best estimate 

claims, or making some sort of criteria regarding 

that, just to make sure you're still seeing the best 

estimates rather than the underestimates.

Okay. We also looked at the decade of first 

employment, and here you'll see that the 

Subcommittee has looked at --

Chair Kotelchuck: Excuse me, Rose. Excuse me, 

Rose. Ms. Gogliotti: Sure.

Chair Kotelchuck: I wondered if it wouldn't make 

sense to talk about, for the group to talk about the 

recommendations that come and in particular that 

one.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Ms. Gogliotti: You know what? I think that's a great 

idea, actually.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Ms. Gogliotti: Let's do that.

Chair Kotelchuck: So why don't we just go back to it, 

and have a discussion? And I believe that that's 

something that we need to get approval for, and --

Ms. Gogliotti: Okay.

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay, great. I would say 

expanding the range -- also, remember, we're trying 

to make sure that we get -- that we do sampling from 

a wide range of facilities, both the small -- well, the 

large facilities, but also the small facilities. And that 

(audio interference) the smallest facilities ignored.
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37

Member Beach: Dave, this is Josie. You broke up 

quite a bit so we only caught, or at least I only 

caught, part of what you were saying.

Chair Kotelchuck: Oh, okay, all right. Thank you for 

saying that. I'm on -- I'm on wireless. Let me, let me 

bring this -- can folks hear me now better? Okay, 

great.

Member Lockey: Yes.

Chair Kotelchuck: Good. Well, what I'm saying was 

by widening the range of PoCs that we're looking at, 

we also have a better chance of making sure that we 

have a good distribution of both large and small 

facilities with larger and smaller numbers of claims. 

Particularly, I want to make sure that we don't miss 

the smaller facilities as we go on, and we'll talk about 

that a little later, too. That will come up.

So I think there's a lot of good reason to expand, and 

I do also agree with Rose, that when you start to get 

up near 55 percent PoCs, oftentimes once it's clear 

that the person who's -- the claimant whose PoCs are 

above 50 percent for efficiency for the NIOSH folks, 

they will often cut off the review because once you're 

above 50 percent, if it's further above 50 percent it 

doesn't matter. They're compensated.

So when we go into the 55 percent range, we will get 

a number of them that will not -- the two will not 

necessarily -- the NIOSH and SC&A will not 

necessarily agree because one of them, particularly 

the NIOSH people, cut off early.

Ms. Gogliotti: Dave?

Chair Kotelchuck: Yes.

Ms. Gogliotti: I just want to point out that, this is for 

normal blind or not blind reconstructions. It's for our 
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38

standard dose reconstructions. So we're just 

evaluating what NIOSH did and SC&A doesn't do our 

own dose reconstructions.

Chair Kotelchuck: Right, right, okay, true. Oh you're 

right, you're right. No, no, you're right, that if we're 

doing the blinds, we have to worry about incomplete 

dose reconstructions, and that's not the case here. 

But this will give us a larger, a larger scope of cases 

that we're going to look at, the 40 to 55 percent.

Ms. Gogliotti: And this is just for targeting. I don't 

think that --

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Ms. Gogliotti: --it would be wise to not look at any 

low PoC or any high PoC cases, because they are a 

significant part of the claims that are filed. But I think 

it's important that we target these closer to 50 

percent.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yes, yes, I agree, I agree. 

Comments from Board, from Subcommittee 

Members, or the truth is comments from anyone, 

staff, anyone who's on the line? Is that something? 

How do people feel about this?

Member Lockey: Jim Lockey. I think we should 

explain the dose recommendation. I think it's a good 

approach.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah, yeah.

Member Beach: This is Josie. I agree with that. I think 

after this, like Rose pointed out, the Set 30, you can 

see that we do have a need to expand.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah. That sounds good, and then 

also this will come in also under gender later, 

because as we expand, I'm hoping that we'll get a 
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39

better gender balance, and we'll come to this in a 

later part of the discussion. 

So, others, other folks if they want to make 

comments or -- people, are all the other 

Subcommittee Members ready to make that, make 

this and expand the range and of course we'll get 

approval from the Board?

Member Valerio: Dave, this is Loretta. I would agree 

that we need to expand a little bit.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah, okay good, good. Brad? 

Brad? He may be having a little trouble.

(Pause.)

Chair Kotelchuck: Have we missed anyone? I think 

that's -- there are five of us and four of us have 

spoken. Brad, are you on the line?

Member Clawson: Yes, I'm sorry. I went unmute and 

hit hung up. I was trying to tell you that I think -- I 

wanted to tell you that I agreed with what was being 

said, and I think it's a good idea to expand our checks 

and I appreciate this information because it kind of 

shows us what I'm doing. I apologize. The buttons 

are right next to each other there.

Chair Kotelchuck: Oh, that's -- no apologies needed. 

We just want to get your input. So I think we're all in 

agreement on this, and we should -- we approve, we 

should approve and then ask the Board. I'm not so 

much sure that we need to ask the Board's 

permission, but we want the Board to be informed 

and consent, if you will, to this.

Member Clawson: Dave, I think the thing with the 

Board is we just need to let the Board know what we 

are doing and why we are doing it and what we're 

expecting to get out of the results is about it. It's 
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40

basically up to us as a subcommittee to be able to 

make these decisions. But it's just informing the 

Board more of where we're centering our looks.

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay, that sounds good. That 

sounds good. All right. So I sense we all are in 

agreement about expanding. Are there any other 

concerns or any staff folks online, in addition to Rose, 

who want to make comments on this? Grady or Scott, 

you know, seems reasonable to you?

Mr. Calhoun: Yeah, this is Grady. It seems completely 

reasonable to me, yes.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah, okay, good.

Mr. Siebert: I agree with Grady in every way, shape, 

and form.

Chair Kotelchuck: All right. 

(Laughter.)

Mr. Calhoun: Now that's a good contractor right 

there. 

Chair Kotelchuck: Right, right. Okay, fine. Thank you. 

So it's now, we have approved. And now let's go on 

to the next recommendation. Rose?

Ms. Gogliotti: Okay. So although we don't generally 

target the decade that the claimant was first 

employed, we do look at it and we do report it to the 

Secretary when we make our recommendations and 

report back to the Secretary, the decade that an EE 

was employed.

So I did pull that up here. NIOSH did not provide 

updated statistics for this figure. I think we can 

assume that claims have been filed in the last ten 

years. Both of the claims that we looked at today 
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41

were filed in that time period. So these numbers 

would be expected to shift a little bit. I would 

probably expect the table to shift down a little bit if I 

had to guess.

In any event, this is the most recent data that we had 

available from NIOSH, and so I've broken down the 

cases that we evaluated. You'll see here that we're 

doing a great job of representing claims that were 

filed in the 1960's and earlier, but as a result of that, 

we haven't looked at an adequate number of claims 

where the initial employment dates began in the 70's 

and later. 

So our second recommendation was just to target 

these later claims, just to make sure we're evaluating 

the broad scope of claims.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah, very good. 

Ms. Gogliotti: Did you want to talk about this one 

further, or do you want me to talk about --

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah. I mean I -- yeah. If we can 

go back to the, to the graph, the chart. This was, this 

was really very nice and it's no surprise that, you 

know, as we were working, we often, we started and 

we looked to people who had many, many years of 

work in the industry. So we were, we compensated. 

We evaluated folks that were from the 40's, 50's, 

60's.

Now we're, you know, we are sliding back now on the 

more recent claimants, and this is a good 

recommendation and something we should look at, 

pardon me. So I don't know that, if there's any other 

-- I appreciate Rose bringing this to our attention, 

and then we will try to choose a little bit more from 

the more recent claims that have been filed. It's good 

advice to us. Any reason that anybody -- any further 

comments about it or are --
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42

Member Clawson: This is Brad.

Member Beach: So since we're going to the later 

cases, we still will be seeing some of the earlier ones 

if those are available and if it's pertinent to what 

we're discussing; correct?

Chair Kotelchuck: Oh sure, sure.

Ms. Gogliotti: Yes, and I think that we need to keep 

evaluating representatives, but I think we just need 

to try to make it a little more representative by 

selecting claims with employment that begin later.

Member Beach: Yeah. That makes perfect sense to 

me, thanks.

Chair Kotelchuck: Right, and I think it's just -- it gives 

us -- it gives us something to consider as we do our 

individual selections for cases from the different sets. 

I appreciate and I would say personally I appreciate 

Rose your bringing this to our attention. It's a good 

and we will -- it will help influence our selections, to 

make this a more appropriate sampling of the cases 

that NIOSH has evaluated. 

Is there any other -- this is not hard and fast, but this 

is a suggestion to us. Any other comments or --

Member Clawson: This is Brad. I think this is good 

information for us to be able to -- be able to evaluate, 

and also for NIOSH to be able to, when they pull 

these for us, to review. It gives us a little bit better 

view of what we've already kind of hit pretty heavy. 

So I think this is good information.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah, agreed, agreed. So, folks, 

unless somebody -- would somebody -- unless 

somebody would like to have a further comment, 

maybe we should go on.
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43

Okay. Rose?

Ms. Gogliotti: Okay. I also looked at the duration of 

an EE's employment. So the population of claimants 

that NIOSH has evaluated versus what we have look 

at so far, and here NIOSH is the dark blue and we are 

the light blue, and you'll see that we're doing a great 

job of looking at cases with longer employment 

periods. So 30 years plus, actually 20 years plus 

even, which in a sense makes sense. 

You'd expect case with longer employment to have 

more exposure, thus to have higher PoCs, and so I 

think that this was not an intentional selection but it 

just sort of happened. But we are falling short of the 

shorter claims. So I would just recommend that we 

attempt to target some shorter employment period 

cases going forward.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Ms. Gogliotti: So that is our recommendation.

Chair Kotelchuck: Sure. Shorter employment. Also 

shorter employment from, often from decades, one 

or two decades back because of, because of the 

latency period of cancers from exposure, or the 

latency period of cancers from any exposures on the 

job. So good, good. 

Again, makes fine, good sense. It's somewhat related 

to what we were doing in the Recommendation 2. 

Those two are related. So is there any comment or 

people, any further comment about that?

Hearing none, let's go on.

Ms. Gogliotti: Okay. So, as we mentioned, the 

Subcommittee has been making a more concerted 

effort to select more female claims. We weren't 

looking at that initially and we realized that we were 
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44

being -- under-representing the female claimants. So 

the Subcommittee started looking at gender when

they were selecting cases. 

However, this chart will just show you the percentage 

of claims that have been female, based on file dates, 

and here you'll see it progressively increases, and 

that kind of makes sense based on what we know 

about our population of claimants. More women were 

entering the workforce, so you'd expect more women 

to be filing the later we go on in the program.

Here now, since 2015 roughly a quarter of claims 

have come from female employees. Even though the 

average number is still low, the 14.3 percent, we're 

seeing more female claims come through on NIOSH's 

end. Based on that, SC&A is recommending that the 

Subcommittee pick a target number of claims 

involving a female going forward.

I know the very first set only has four female 

claimants, and we do recommend going up to eight 

because the Subcommittee's only looked at --

currently 62 of our 588 claims that we've looked at 

have been female. So we are under-representing 

them thus far. So we do recommending increasing 

the number of female claims that are selected for 30 

cases to eight, and that's to get closer to the numbers 

that NIOSH is seeing.

Chair Kotelchuck: Now eight out -- right. I had this 

and I've had a little bit more thoughts about, even 

though I know you and I, Rose, talked about this. But 

eight out of 30 represents I think it is, what is it 20, 

about 26.7 percent does it not? I didn't, I didn't put 

the percentage down.

Ms. Gogliotti: Yeah. It's about 27 percent.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah, and 27 percent is the 

percent of female claimants that are current in this 
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45

graph. So we actually have to move ahead beyond 

that if we want to know -- we don't -- also it's not 

clear that the number of female claimants has 

peaked. It may still be going up. 

So we don't want to pick -- I mean if we pick eight 

out of 30, then we're just picking the same 

percentage that we have currently, and that may 

rise. Plus we're behind from the past. So actually I've 

been thinking it might make sense to say nine or 

more, at least nine. That is, we need to start selecting 

at a rate greater than 26.6 percent, to make up for 

the past and possibly plan for the future.

I mean at some, at some point this percentage will 

level off, percentage of females will level off. But we 

don't know what level it will level off at in the future. 

So I'm sort of thinking that we might consider nine, 

even ten rather than eight, which is at least a -- is 

certainly a proper and conservative number. 

What do you think? What do folks think? And also 

what do you think, Rose? I mean we've talked about 

this and eight seemed fine. But I'm actually thinking 

now maybe we should say nine or ten per set of 30. 

Folks, what do you think, and also what do others 

think of that?

Member Lockey: Well, this is Jim Lockey.

Ms. Gogliotti: Let me -- go ahead.

Chair Kotelchuck: Jim, yes.

Member Lockey: Rose, let me ask you, let me ask 

you a question. I agree we should be increasing the 

female participation. You know, maybe Brad or Josie 

can pipe in here. 

I know the female participation has probably 

increased in actual production jobs out in the --
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46

rather than office jobs. So I want to make sure that 

the cases we get are predominantly females that are 

working in a production job task. Is that, is that a 

concern or is that -- that will happen just 

automatically?

Ms. Gogliotti: I think that's a valid concern.

Member Beach: Yeah, and I was going to say with --

oh sorry Rose, go ahead.

Ms. Gogliotti: Oh, I was just going to say that it's not, 

it's not going to happen automatically. But when 

NIOSH provides us with their claim information, they 

do also provide us with the occupation. So that can 

be factored in. We didn't make a specific 

recommendation regarding employment types. We 

certainly could add something like that if that's 

something you're interested in, to make sure that 

you're getting someone more in an operational 

profession, if that's what you're interested in.

Member Lockey: No. I want to make sure that Josie 

and Brad think that's appropriate.

Chair Kotelchuck: Josie.

Member Beach: This is Josie. I was going to say that 

I agree that that is appropriate. I also think that with 

going to the labor years, when it was pointed out 

more females were in those types of jobs and in the 

workforce, I think we may see that automatically that 

there's more women included. 

So I agree, it needs to be people that are on the shop 

floor, not just the secretarial staff. So any way we 

can make that happen I think it's a good point.

Member Lockey: Right.

Member Clawson: I agree with that. You know, we 
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47

can't exclude some of the office ones, either, which 

is we've had several claims of these people have been 

compensated in that situation, too. So I think I agree 

that -- I think it will work out in the end, but I would 

like to know, like you said, put a little emphasis on 

the production side of it, too.

Chair Kotelchuck: Right, right. Can we put that in the 

statement? If you'll go down to the next slide, Rose. 

That's it, your recommendation. A minimum of eight 

females to increase female representation, like 

something like "comma, with emphasis on female 

claimants who are working," how do we put it? "Who 

are, whose occupation, who are in the industrial 

occupations," something like that.

Member Lockey: Brad and Jose called it operational, 

operational job tasks, right Josie?

Member Beach: Yeah, correct.

Chair Kotelchuck: Operational job, okay, okay.

Ms. Gogliotti: You can certainly add that to what you 

want to adopt. If you remember, based on the 

posting deadlines that we ran into, we agreed that 

we were just going to leave it with the SC&A 

recommendations and you were just going to verbally 

convey the Subcommittee's --

Chair Kotelchuck: Right. Well, right. That's exactly 

right. We, I had to prepare, I thought that it would 

take, might take up to two weeks or a week and a 

half, to get slides prepared for next Thursday. 

And so I put in and we talked about this, the SC&A 

recommendations. In fact, we are now in the process 

of looking over and approving these and moving 

some things toward the Board or informing the Board 

about this.
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48

So we can -- since these are approved, I'll use them 

and I can just talk verbally. Since we're getting, we're 

just getting a report, informing the Board that we will 

seek to -- we will seek to have industrial, more 

industrial occupations among the female claimants, 

or seek to select them. 

Do we want -- folks, do we want to stick with eight, 

at least a minimum of eight females? And that's 

certainly proper. Or do we want to just say nine or 

ten or something like that, moving ahead of the 

current percentage of female claimants?

Member Beach: Dave, I don't -- I think it's okay to 

stick with a minimum of eight, but shooting for a 

higher representation. 

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah, yeah.

Member Beach: If that number is nine or ten, that's 

fine.

Chair Kotelchuck: You know what? Again, I'm not 

going to change the slide because I have to get it 

approved and, you know, go through the process, 

and so why don't I just say that verbally in my report, 

okay, to the Board? So we don't need to change 

anything. I can just say it, and I agree with you Josie. 

We'll say a minimum of eight and we're looking for in 

fact perhaps nine or ten. That sounds good.

Member Beach: That makes sense.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah. Further thoughts or 

anything, comments?

Member Lockey: Yeah, I'm good with that. Jim 

Lockey.

Member Valerio: Dave, this is Loretta --
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49

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay, go ahead.

Member Lockey: I just said I'm good with it. I'm good 

with it, David.

Chair Kotelchuck: Good, good, good. And Loretta, 

what did you say?

Member Valerio: I agree that we should have a 

minimum of eight, but push for more. I'm thinking 

about, you know, the reviews that we didn't have to 

choose from. I don't recall that we have a lot of 

female claims, but I think eight as a minimum is very 

appropriate, it's reasonable. But if we can get at least 

nine or ten to have that representativeness, that 

would be a good thing.

Chair Kotelchuck: Sounds good.

Member Valerio: So I'm fine with a minimum of eight.

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay, sounds good, all right. And 

then I think we're, we're approved, you know, with 

this, and I will -- for the report to the Board, I will 

incorporate both of these focus on the industrial jobs 

and seeking a minimum of eight, seeking more, nine 

or ten or whatever is appropriate.

Member Lockey: Dave, Jim Lockey.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yes.

Member Lockey: I just thought of one potential 

problem.

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay.

Member Lockey: It's a minimum of eight per site; is 

that what we're saying?

Chair Kotelchuck: Per set, per set.
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50

Ms. Gogliotti: No.

Member Lockey: Per set.

Chair Kotelchuck: We choose, we select sets of 30 

cases.

Member Lockey: Right. I think that's fine. I was just 

thinking, that's fine. Okay, gotcha. Thank you.

Chair Kotelchuck: All right, good. Hey, we're moving 

right along on this. This is Recommendation 4, we're 

in agreement. So let's go on.

Ms. Gogliotti: Okay. So this is not something that the 

Board has ever consciously discussed, but with the 

27th and 29th sets, which are the most recent sets 

of non-blind DRs that we've reviewed, and that was 

done in 2018 and 2019, we had a lot of fairly older 

cases come up. Actually, seven of them were around 

a decade old.

And so I thought it was important that the 

Subcommittee going forward focus on newer claims. 

Those are claims that were completed by NIOSH 

fairly recently, within the past few years. I think 

those are the most important for the Subcommittee 

to focus on, because those are the cases that are 

going to see the current procedures and the current 

guidance.

And we really can't do those cases. I'm not saying 

that there's no value in it, but they're using older 

procedures and older guidance. A lot of the time the 

guidance in them that's used is no longer the 

appropriate guidance to use. And especially with the 

smaller claims or the smaller sites that we see, and 

thus any case that we're going to look at for that 

particular site, it's important that we're seeing the 

most current guidance available.
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51

And that way if there's a problem with the guidance 

or a problem with the TBD, that problem is being 

identified quickly and that way NIOSH can get these 

things fixed. So our recommendation was to focus on 

claims that were completed within several years --

Chair Kotelchuck: Right. Point well taken. Right, and 

I appreciate your thinking about that and giving us 

information that will do a better job, and not have 

issues that come up where we are talking about one 

person, one group doing dose reconstruction and 

then our review of the dose reconstruction that was 

from years ago, put where protocols have changed, 

where guidance has changed. So, to me, excellent 

idea and a thoughtful suggestion to us. Others?

Member Beach: I absolutely agree with that Dave. 

This is Josie.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah, yeah. 

Member Lockey: Jim Lockey. I do, too.

Member Clawson: This is Brad. I'm good with it.

Chair Kotelchuck: All right.

Member Valerio: Loretta, I'm good with it.

Chair Kotelchuck: All right, and we're all good with it 

and excellent, okay. Well, let's go on to this last part. 

We may be finishing a little early folks, so let's, let's 

do it. Rose, go ahead.

Ms. Gogliotti: Okay. Again, while it's not something 

that the Subcommittee has put in their exact criteria, 

we've made an effort to be representative of the AWE 

facilities as well as the DOE facilities, and our goal is 

to represent at least one percent of the claims that 

NIOSH is evaluating.
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52

And so in order to get a representative sample, we 

do also look at the number of cases that have been 

reviewed for each site, and here we selected on all 

the sites that had at least 100 claims. So one percent 

would be one claim evaluated by the Subcommittee. 

And then we looked at the ones that were underrepresented thus far.

So if sites that needed at least one Subcommittee 

review in order to, for the Subcommittee to have 

reviewed one percent of the DRs from that facility. 

From that list, we came up with six sites that were 

currently under-represented by our reviews. Those 

were the Kansas City plant, Portsmouth Gaseous 

Diffusion Plant, Bethlehem Steel, Wah Chang, Iowa 

Ordnance Plant and Tonopah Test Range.

I can say that the most recent set did have cases 

selected from Kansas City Plant and Portsmouth, but 

we're still under-representing them. So our 

recommendation was simply to, when possible, 

select from these sites, just to get a more 

representative pool of claims that we've evaluated.

Chair Kotelchuck: Right, and if I may now add Rose, 

if we go back to the -- to the last slide, the numbers 

that we are, and there is a really detailed table by 

plant of all of the facilities that are covered, and you 

have that in the full report. 

I'm not going to go over it here. We are not going to 

go over here, nor put it out because clearly it has 

material for when you have only a few, a few reviews 

we -- I think there are issues about confidentiality.

So but that table is really quite useful, that's printed 

in full. These are now profiles of that table. I wanted 

to note that for all six of the facilities with at least 

100 claims, what we're talking about are range from 

-- that we are two, we need anywhere from two to 
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53

seven reviews for each, for these six plants. 

So we're not talking a large number of reviews that 

we are under, have under, a large number of reviews 

that we need to make to get up to one percent for 

that plant.

So these are small numbers but important, and of 

course our overall goal, as we said, as we've always 

said, is one percent of all facilities. Some may 

actually have to, you know, we have to do more work 

and it may be over one percent. But if we want to get 

one percent overall, then clearly if we have one 

percent by each individual facility then we certainly 

have one percent overall.

So these are, this is a summary of the points in the 

table, not the previous slide but the table in the 

report, and those are -- those are marked off. They're 

colorized. So this was really interesting. It's really 

interesting to me and I'm sure it would be really 

interesting to you, and to get an idea about how well 

we're doing plant by plant over these many years.

Grady, I'm sure you and Scott will be, are interested 

and have been -- were interested in looking at this, I 

hope. So I certainly, this is useful and when we make 

selections, when we see any one of these six plants 

or six facilities I should say, and when making our 

next set of selections let's try to incorporate them for, 

for our Subcommittee review. So okay. I've talked a 

long time on this.

Discussion

Mr. Calhoun: Dave, this is Grady, and I think that the 

fact that you're going to expand the range of the 

PoCs you're going to be looking at, that will probably 

offer us up more availability of these smaller sites, 

too. I mean, in general, all sites, but I think that'll 

help that, too.
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54

Chair Kotelchuck: Yes, yes, exactly what I -- what we 

-- what I'm, what I was hoping and referring to when 

we talked about expanding the range early today. 

Yep, agreed. Further comment anyone?

Member Lockey: Rose, Jim Lockey. When I looked 

your tables of all the facilities and I look at the slides, 

I mean just is this to inform me about the thinking 

process here. If a facility has greater than 100 claims 

and we're looking at at least doing greater than one 

or greater in regard to review, what about the 

facilities that have less than 100 and had more 

review?

Chair Kotelchuck: Next slide.

Member Lockey: Is that because -- is that because of 

confidentiality issues or is that --

Chair Kotelchuck: No, no, no. Jim, we're -- let's go to 

the next slide, because we exactly looked at that. 

How about the people who are under 100?

Member Lockey: Right.

Ms. Gogliotti: Yes. Well, obviously, if the site hasn't 

had 100 claims, then one percent wouldn't be a full 

employee, and so the Subcommittee wouldn't be 

looking at those claims, which I don't think is 

appropriate obviously also. I think that no claim or 

site should be off limits to the Subcommittee or 

outside of the realm that the Subcommittee looks at.

But because they're the smaller facilities, we can't 

limit it to that. So David thought it was important to 

also kind of group them all together to see where we 

fell. The Subcommittee thus far has reviewed in the 

smaller claims, so sites with less than 100 claims 

we've reviewed 72 of the roughly 3,100 claims that 

have been filed.
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55

So that's roughly 2.3 percent of the smaller facility 

claims. I think that we do need to continue to select 

from those, even though we are over-representing 

them, just because these smaller sites do need to be 

seen still. So it kind of falls outside of the one percent 

that we normally use for the larger facilities.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah, and I am -- I mean, I was 

particularly pleased with this. We commented about 

this in our last two reports to the Secretary, and that 

is I want to assure people who file claims from small 

facilities that we are taking a look and reviewing 

them also at the one percent level. 

In fact, we've exceeded that and I'm very happy to 

say that, because it would have been easy to 

overlook these, because we get relatively few claims, 

that we haven't, we haven't overlooked them. We've 

done a good job, beating my own drum.

Member Lockey: David, Jim Lockey. I'm good. I'm 

glad you asked that question, but if you were to 

stratify that less than 100 claims and look at those 

facilities that have ten or less, if I remember looking 

at the chart there were a lot of facilities with -- that 

had no, no representation. I was wondering whether, 

whether there should be at least one representative, 

one review at each facility at a minimum. But maybe 

not. Maybe that's a confidentiality issue because 

they're so small everybody would know who that case 

is. 

Chair Kotelchuck: No.

Member Lockey: But if you stratify that less than 100, 

you're going to get some facilities that if you stratified 

at 20 or 10, you're going to get a lot of facilities that's 

had no reviews. 

Chair Kotelchuck: By the way, and that is absolutely 

correct. I mean there will, there are plenty that have 
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56

had no reviews. So if we go back to -- could we go 

back to the last slide?

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Chair Kotelchuck: There will be, and we can start -- I 

think you raise an interesting question, and we can 

apply this further. Any one of us can simply go over 

this, or Rose you and I should take a look at this. But 

I wanted to make sure, just in the bigger picture, that 

we haven't -- we're trying to keep up. When will we 

ever get to the point that there will be a smaller 

number of claims, a small number of claims and 

we've never reviewed them, let's say ten claims. 

You know, who knows how long that will take. And I 

mean, I guess there's a question of should we --

should we at some point in the future say to 

ourselves that we want to make sure that there's one 

review from every single facility that's covered? And 

that may be --

Member Lockey: Yeah, that was sort of -- that was 

sort of my thinking, you know but --

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah, yeah. 

Member Lockey: It might a confidentiality issue in 

small populations about who's being reviewed, so 

that's an issue.

Chair Kotelchuck: No, I don't --

Ms. Gogliotti: Yep, it could be a minor confidentiality 

issue, but I think the bigger problem with focusing, if 

you were make that a long-term goal, is simply that 

we're looking for a broad range of cases. We're only 

looking at a very small number of cases, so we're 

hoping to get cases that if there's an error in one, it's 

not an isolated error. It's a -- if we're finding errors, 

we're finding something that's impacting lots of 
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57

cases. 

And when you get down to these smaller facilities, 

you have a much smaller pool that you're looking at. 

Chair Kotelchuck: Right.

Ms. Gogliotti: And not to say there's not value in that, 

but it's -- it's just trying to get the most bang for your 

buck as a subcommittee.

Chair Kotelchuck: Well, yeah. If we really did all -- if 

we made a rule that we have to do one for every 

single site that has any claims, first in my -- from my 

perspective, there is no confidentiality issue in the 

sense that claimants, claimants do not know that 

they happened, that their dose reconstruction done 

by NIOSH will sometime in the future be looked at by 

our committee.

Our committee, the people who are being reviewed 

in the one percent don't know it, and there's --

there's no mechanism or need to inform them. It's an 

internal -- I mean what we're doing is an internal 

check within our own efforts, to make sure that we're 

doing the right thing and the results of it is certainly 

public and that's --

But we could consider that, but as I -- the other part 

of it is that I think that if we do try to cover all those 

small facilities and make sure we do one, we will fall 

under one percent for an overall, our overall goal of 

one percent of all claims, because it will take an 

enormous amount of time.

I mean, we've only done 588 claims in all our years, 

which I reviewed 588 claims, which comes to about 

one percent of 50,000 plus claims reviewed. So I 

think it may not be feasible, but it's certainly -- you 

raise an interesting point, and I would like to ask 

Rose if, or I will stratify this to 20, to 10, and see 
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58

what we get, and see where that might guide us. We 

could do that for our next meeting.

Ms. Gogliotti: I can certainly do that for you and give 

you some summary information if you were 

interested.

Chair Kotelchuck: Why don't we do that? Yeah, it 

would help. It would be good. 

Ms. Gogliotti: Okay.

Chair Kotelchuck: What do other people think about 

this, about stratifying? I think it's a good idea Jim, 

and good. Anybody have any further? We're going 

over one o'clock, but we're coming to an end, so any 

other comments?

Ms. Behling: This is Kathy Behling. I'm wondering if I 

might be able to comment?

Chair Kotelchuck: Yes, yeah. Please do. 

Ms. Behling: Okay. One --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Clawson: How are these smaller --

Ms. Behling: I'm sorry.

Member Clawson: The smaller facilities, the smaller 

facilities, some of them are, you know, they're just -

- there's not that much reconstruction. A lot of them 

are uranium facilities. We didn't go through that. I 

understand what we're saying, but I -- my personal 

feeling is not to get tied in it that bad, because it's 

the bigger ones that, you know, are going to get most 

of the attention. I realize that.

But we do need to look at them, and it would be best 

-- and you know, I just don't want to hold us to a --
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59

that we have to do this. I think when we get an 

opportunity to be able to bring one in or something 

like that, we should look at it. But that's just my 

opinion on it.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah, yeah. Other thoughts, 

comments? By the way I agree, Brad.

Ms. Behling: And again, this is Kathy Behling. If I can 

make a comment.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yes.

Ms. Behling: One of the things that we do focus on is 

the dose reconstruction methodology for the bigger 

sites, and sometimes we don't get to see maybe 

some of the methodologies that are used on these 

smaller sites. So by selecting some cases from these 

smaller sites to have less cases involved with them, 

it may be -- give us an opportunity to look at the 

methodology that NIOSH is using --

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah.

Member Lockey: This is Jim Lockey. That's what I was 

thinking, is that I'd like to see what methodology is 

used where the data is sparse, and how is it handled, 

you know.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a thought 

because often there is very little data and we are 

making pretty broad assumptions on these little AWE 

facilities. And that's, that speaks to looking. That 

speaks to not necessarily doing every single one, but 

looking at some or more of them than we do now.

Member Lockey: Right, yeah.

Chair Kotelchuck: Yeah, and I think that sounds --

that may be the right way, it seems to me, the right 

way to go. Take a few of them, probably some of 
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60

them under 20 percent, you know. Good, good. 

Further thoughts, folks?

Okay. Let's go -- I mean, we're near an end, so I 

think if I may -- it's eight minutes after 1:00 and it's 

about time to break up. But let's go to the first slide, 

which, Rose, you did a moment ago, summarizing or 

the summary slide, I forget, on the 

recommendations. There we go.

Ms. Gogliotti: So, overall, we had six 

recommendations: to expand the targeted PoC 

range, and that was to 40 to 55 percent; increase the 

sampling of claims beginning in the 1970's and later; 

the increased sampling of cases with shorter 

employment periods, so less than 20 years; select at 

least eight female claims per 30 set of cases; and 

select cases completed within several years of NIOSH 

review; and when possible target under-represented 

sites.

Chair Kotelchuck: That sounds good, and right. 

Sorry.

Member Lockey: Sounds good.

Chair Kotelchuck: Sounds good and --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Ms. Gogliotti: -- we'll talk about the stratification, 

and see if the Subcommittee wants to do anything 

with that. 

Chair Kotelchuck: Right, right. That sounds good, and 

I hope you'll be here to do it. I'm referring to the fact 

that Rose is going to go on maternal leave soon, so 

however, Kathy Behling, I should tell other folks. 

Kathy Behling will be working with us with this 

Subcommittee while Rose is on leave. 
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61

But so, anyhow, I will embellish these, if you will, in 

terms of things that we've said and comments about 

expanding, and also I will include in the discussion 

before the Board next week the targeting upon the 

representative sites and the fact that we, we are 

going to take a look at the smaller, the stratification, 

the smaller sites and think about how we might even 

better target them.

Okay. Is there I think -- so folks, this is what we're 

going to present, and I think this is what we basically 

decided with some not so much modification as 

clarification and expansion. So are we all -- we're all 

on board on this?

Member Clawson: Yeah, I think -- I think we're 

headed in the right direction.

Ms. Gogliotti: Yes.

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay. 

Member Lockey: Yeah, Jim Lockey. Me too.

Chair Kotelchuck: Good, good, good.

Member Beach: Josie. I agree with that. We are 

headed in the right direction here.

Chair Kotelchuck: Great, great. Okay. That sounds 

good and Loretta --

Member Valerio: I'm on board, Dave.

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay. So we're in agreement, and 

let me just thank Rose from SC&A for a terrific job. 

It's, this is the first time we've actually looked at our 

sampling procedure since we adopted the 45 to 52 a 

number of years ago. And so thank you Rose very 

much, and I think we're ready to just decide on a 

future date of our meeting, and then I can say we will 
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62

conclude. Rashaun, is that -- sounds okay?

Dr. Roberts: Sure. That sounds fine. So in terms of 

the next meeting, you know, there needs to be 

sufficient space between this meeting and that 

meeting, and also enough time before the next full 

Board meeting to get presentations and everything 

together and circulate it. My thoughts are sometime 

in July, perhaps. Maybe mid-July.

Ms. Gogliotti: If I could jump in? As a Subcommittee, 

we're pretty much caught up in terms of what we 

have to discuss. You recently tasked us with the very 

first set, which won't be completed until early 

October, and then we'll have to do one on ones and 

then give NIOSH a chance to respond before we're 

ready to discuss that case set.

We also are waiting on the DR tools for the final blind 

from the 30th set. So we don't really have anything 

to discuss that soon for a full meeting, unless you 

want --

Dr. Roberts: Okay.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Ms. Gogliotti: We also don't have the BRS, so we 

don't have a lot of historical things that are still open. 

We don't have access to those files, and I don't know 

when that will change.

Chair Kotelchuck: So it may suggest a meeting in the 

early fall, which would be after our August Board 

meeting. 

Dr. Roberts: Okay. Yeah, that's fine. 

Chair Kotelchuck: Let's see.

Dr. Roberts: So you have a recommendation for 
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Subcommittee, has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and 

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63

about when?

Chair Kotelchuck: September, October, September. I 

sort of, I'm anxious that there not be too many 

months between now and the next time we get 

together. On the other hand we're doing our work, 

and we're doing it, I think, well. 

Member Clawson: Dave, this is Brad. I think we've 

got to give NIOSH and SC&A an opportunity to be 

able to get all this put together for us. I think we'd 

be lucky if we're into the November-October 

timeframe before we'd be having --

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay. 

Member Clawson: What do you think Rose? Am I 

talking wrong or --

Ms. Gogliotti: I think Brad you're on the right track. 

Well, until we have -- the next set comes in or we 

complete the next set, I just don't know what we 

would be discussing or what we would be putting on 

the agenda.

Member Clawson: I just -- yeah. What I was going to 

throw out is, this really comes down to SC&A and 

NIOSH. And I think that once they get the materials 

and they understand what tools they have to be able 

to work with, because we're still dealing with that, I 

think, for our next meeting we'll have to wait for 

them to give us kind of a time period of where we'd 

be at.

Chair Kotelchuck: I think you're right. I think you're 

right. May I --

Member Clawson: We can set it, but just cancel. We 

could cancel it, but we've got too many variables out 

there right now that we really don't know about, and 

we're caught up. So my suggestion would be to with 
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Subcommittee, has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and 

personally identifiable information has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has 

not been reviewed and certified by the Chair of the Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee accuracy 

at this time. The reader should be cautioned that this transcript is for information only and is subject 

to change.

64

SC&A and NIOSH, to once they get into it, they can 

give us a time period and it's going to now give us 

our, what do we need Rashaun, three months to post 

it?

Dr. Roberts: Yeah, yeah, to develop the agenda and 

everything. I try to do a three month buffer, yes.

Member Clawson: So that would be my suggestion is, 

but there's -- we really, we really don't know what 

we're going to get into with this. With all the security, 

you know, to get access to everything, I think that -

- I think that we ought to put it into NIOSH and 

SC&A's hands and when they --

When they get ahold of this, they know what they've 

got. I think they can give us a three month leeway 

and then we can set up the meeting then.

Chair Kotelchuck: So really Rose or whomever or 

Kathy and Grady, would they keep Rashaun and me 

informed or -- about when they're ready, and at 

worst we'll discuss this at the August Board meeting? 

Well, we'll certainly discuss it at the August Board 

meeting where we are --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Ms. Gogliotti: I think that's reasonable, and again the 

next set we don't plan on delivering it until early 

October, and we'll still have to go through the one on 

ones, and NIOSH will need time to respond following 

the one on ones.

Chair Kotelchuck: Right.

Ms. Gogliotti: So we're probably looking at very late 

in this year, if not early 2023 before we have 

material.

Chair Kotelchuck: Okay. Then let's just say we'll talk 
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Subcommittee, has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and 

personally identifiable information has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has 

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65

about it at the Board meeting in August, and set a 

date. We'll all be there I hope. 

Mr. Calhoun: This is Grady. Can you make sure that 

you or somebody, just to refresh my memory, sends 

me an email or something about what I owe you, 

because I don't want to hold you guys up. You 

mentioned something about tools or whatever, so 

just -- and I'll bet Lori knows already what's going 

on, but just to remind me. When you get a chance, 

shoot me an email just so I'm not holding you guys 

up.

Chair Kotelchuck: Sounds good, sounds good. In fact, 

actually I think Rose, you were the one who raised it, 

right, on behalf of SC&A?

Ms. Gogliotti: Yes. We're just waiting on, I believe it's 

a tritium tool for SRS, to finish one of our blinds. 

Mr. Calhoun: Oh, I thought it was going to be much 

more than that. So I'll, I'll make sure that at least --

Ms. Gogliotti: It might be more than that. Let me 

confirm that, but I think it's at least that.

Chair Kotelchuck: So you'll have --

Mr. Calhoun: Just shoot me an email, yeah.

Adjourn

Chair Kotelchuck: Very good, and cc me. Okay, folks. 

I think we're finished, and I know some people are 

waiting on lunch, while others are waiting on a late 

breakfast. So thanks. Thank you all. It's a short 

meeting but a productive one I hope. Okay. Do I hear 

--

Member Clawson: Take care, everybody.

Chair Kotelchuck: See you, see you. Bye-bye, 
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Dose Reconstruction 

Subcommittee, has been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and 

personally identifiable information has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has 

not been reviewed and certified by the Chair of the Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee accuracy 

at this time. The reader should be cautioned that this transcript is for information only and is subject 

to change.

66

everyone.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 1:19 p.m.)