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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY 

AND HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION 

 AND WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

WORK GROUP ON FERNALD SITE PROFILE AND 

SPECIAL EXPOSURE COHORT (SEC) PETITION 

+ + + + + 

MONDAY, 

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008 

+ + + + + 

 The Work Group meeting convened 

telephonically at 10:00 a.m. Bradley P. 

Clawson, Work Group Chair, presiding. 

MEMBERS PRESENT: 

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Chair 

MARK GRIFFON 

ROBERT W. PRESLEY 

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD 

PAUL L. ZIEMER 
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ALSO PRESENT: 

NANCY ADAMS, NIOSH Contractor 

SANDRA BALDRIDGE, Petitioner 

MELTON CHEW, ORAU 

HARRY CHMELYNSKI, SC&A 

ZEDA E. HOMOKI-TITUS, HHS 

EMILY HOWELL, HHS 

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official 

ARJUN MAKHIJANI, SC&A 

JOHN MAURO, SC&A 

ROBERT MORRIS, ORAU 

EUGENE POTTER, ORAU 

BRYCE RICH, ORAU 

MARK ROLFES, OCAS 

MUTTY SHARFI, ORAU 
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 T-A-B-L-E O-F C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S 

 Page 

Roll Call 4 

Administrative Matters 9 

SC&A Presentation and Discussion 16 

Adjourn 144 
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 10:02 a.m. 

3 MR. KATZ: I'm going to start with 

4 roll call and then I have a couple of 

5 administrative things to say and then it will 

6 be all you, Brad. 

7 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. Sounds good. 

8 ROLL CALL

9 MR. KATZ: So for roll call, first 

10 myself, this is Ted Katz, and I am the 

11 Designated Federal Official and Executive 

12 Secretary to the Advisory Board of Radiation 

13 Worker Health and this is a meeting of the 

14 Fernald Work Group of that Advisory Board. 

15 And now if the Board members would, 

16 beginning with you, Brad, identify yourself 

17 and speak to conflict of interest. 

18 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. My name is 

19 Brad Clawson. I'm a member of the Advisory 

20 Board. I'm the Work Chair. I'm not 

21 conflicted at Fernald. 

22 MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. 
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1 I'm a member of the Advisory Board, and I'm 

2 not conflicted at Fernald. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: Paul Ziemer, Advisory 

4 Board, not conflicted at Fernald. 

5 MR. SCHOFIELD: Phil Schofield, not 

6 conflicted. 

7 MR. KATZ: Do we have Mark Griffon? 

8 Mark, have you joined us? 

9 (No verbal response.) 

10 Okay. Let's move on. Maybe Mark 

11 will join us before we get through the roll 

12 call. Then same thing for the NIOSH ORAU 

13 team. 

14 MR. ROLFES: All right. This is 

15 Mark Rolfes. I'm a Health Physicist from 

16 NIOSH. I have no conflicts. 

17 MR. CHEW: Mel Chew, ORAU team, no 

18 conflict. 

19 MR. RICH: Bryce Rich, ORAU team, 

20 no conflict. 

21 MR. SHARFI: Mutty Sharfi, ORAU 

22 team, no conflicts. 
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1 MR. MORRIS: Robert Morris, ORAU 

2 team, no conflicts. 

3 MR. POTTER: Gene Potter, ORAU 

4 team, no conflicts. 

5 MR. KATZ: Great. I think that 

6 does it for the NIOSH ORAU team and then 

7 moving on to SC&A. 

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

9 conflicts. 

10 DR. MAKHIJANI: Arjun Makhijani, 

11 SC&A, and I'm in conflict. 

12 MR. CHMELYNSKI: Harry Chmelynski, 

13 SC&A, no conflict. 

14 MR. KATZ: Can you say your name 

15 again? It was hard to hear. 

16 MR. CHMELYNSKI: Chmelynski. 

17 That's spelled C-H-M-E-L-Y-N-S-K-I. 

18 MR. KATZ: Thank you. 

19 And now for other HHS, DOE or DOL 

20 staff on the line. 

21 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Zeda Homoki22 Titus from HHS and no conflict. 
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1 MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS, no 

2 conflict. 

3 MS. ADAMS: Nancy Adams, contractor 

4 NIOSH, no conflict. 

5 MR. KATZ: Anyone from DOL or DOE? 

6 (No verbal response.) 

7 Okay then. Next let's go to either 

8 Fernald petitioners or other site employees or 

9 survivors. 

10 MS. BALDRIDGE: Sandra Baldridge, 

11 Petitioner. 

12 MR. KATZ: Okay. Are there any 

13 others? How about Congressional staff? Any 

14 Congressional staff? 

15 (No verbal response.) 

16 And any other members of the public 

17 who would like to identify themselves? 

18 (No verbal response.) 

19 Okay. Then just checking back for 

20 a second, Mark Griffon, have you joined us? 

21 (No verbal response.) 

22 Okay. No luck with that, but maybe 
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1 he'll join us in a little bit. 

2 And I just want to introduce to 

3 everyone. We have a new court reporter for 

4 this meeting. His name is James Salandro, and 

5 so for this meeting if everyone would be 

6 mindful to identify yourself before you speak 

7 since he's not going to recognize your voices, 

8 that would be great. That way we have a 

9 transcript that people can follow. 

10 And then just lastly let me just 

11 speak, remind, everyone about phone rules. 

12 Everyone who is not speaking please keep your 

13 phone on mute. Use *6 if you don't have a 

14 mute button and please no one put the call on 

15 hold which interferes with the discussion. 

16 Instead if you would just disconnect and 

17 reconnect again, that would be better for 

18 everybody. 

19 Much thanks and it's all yours now, 

20 Brad. 

21 ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS

22 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. Thank you, 
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1 Ted. 

2 First of all, I want to make sure 

3 that all the work group got the information 

4 that was sent out from SC&A on this Fernald 

5 Work Group. What we're actually dealing with 

6 today is the completeness. It's an 

7 investigation on the completeness of the 

8 Fernald data. And what I've asked SC&A to do 

9 is put together a sampling plan and this is 

10 what we're going to discuss today to be able 

11 to make sure that we have completeness of data 

12 and that we have good information out there, 

13 and I just want to make sure that everybody 

14 has got a copy of this as far as the work 

15 group and NIOSH and so forth. Has everybody 

16 got this? 

17 DR. ZIEMER: What's the date and 

18 what's the title of the document? This is 

19 Ziemer. Date and title of the document? 

20 CHAIR CLAWSON: Paul, it was on May 

21 5, 2008. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 
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1 CHAIR CLAWSON: And there were two 

2 of them on there and it has a sampling -- 

3 DR. ZIEMER: I thought maybe there 

4 was something recent. 

5 CHAIR CLAWSON: No. I just want to 

6 make sure that everybody had this. We didn't 

7 have this at Redondo Beach. I wanted to make 

8 sure that everybody did have this. Arjun I 

believe sent this out well on May 5th 9 on this, 

10 and this is what we're going to be going over, 

11 and from SC&A, who is going to be discussing 

12 this sampling plan? Is that going to be you, 

13 Arjun, or John? 

14 DR. MAURO: Brad, this is John. 

15 I'll be presenting it, but because it contains 

16 two fundamental elements, one I call the 

17 design of the strata and the other I call how 

18 many samples do you take from each strata. 

19 That work was done by Harry Chmelynski who is 

20 on the line. He's our statistician. So I 

21 think I'll probably start it off by laying out 

22 the overall approach, and then we'll allow 
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1 Arjun and Harry to develop it further. 

2 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. If there are 

3 no further questions then, John, I'm going to 

4 turn this over to you and let you go from 

5 there. 

6 PRESENTATION

7 DR. MAURO: Thank you. I -- 

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: Brad, before we 

9 start, this is Arjun. I got an email from 

10 Mark saying that he had not received the two 

11 documents even though I had sent them to him 

12 twice. 

13 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. 

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: I sent them to him 

15 again and then in an email he said that he 

16 will not be on the call until approximately 

17 10:40 a.m. I just wanted you to know that. 

18 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. I appreciate 

19 that, Arjun. Did he get the documents? If 

20 not, I was going to forward them from my 

21 computer or whatever. 

22 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, it might be 
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1 good because I sent them to him twice from 

2 Redondo Beach, and he did not get them. I 

3 think all of the rest of you did get them. 

4 CHAIR CLAWSON: Right. 

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: And I sent them 

6 again yesterday for the third time. But I 

7 have not heard from him since. 

8 MR. PRESLEY: Brad, this is Bob 

9 Presley. 

10 CHAIR CLAWSON: Yes, Robert. 

11 MR. PRESLEY: I didn't get anything 

12 from Arjun yesterday either. 

13 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, I didn't send 

14 it to you yesterday, Mr. Presley. I sent it 

15 during the Redondo Beach meeting, and I think 

16 everybody except Mark got them. There were 

17 some, I think, glitch in his email. 

18 CHAIR CLAWSON: Yes, these were 

dated back on May 5th 19 . That's when I got mine. 

20 It was just, I believe, Mark was having 

21 trouble. These are the same ones that were 

sent out on May 5th 22 . 
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1 DR. MAKHIJANI: And then I sent 

2 them again during the Redondo Beach meeting. 

3 I can forward them to you again, Mr. Presley, 

4 if you would like. 

5 MR. PRESLEY: Well, they need to 

6 come to my government address this time. I'm 

7 at work now. 

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. 

9 MR. PRESLEY: Brad, have you got my 

10 government address? 

11 CHAIR CLAWSON: I don't think I do, 

12 Bob. I'm sorry. All I have is your -- let me 

13 go into this one, and I'll see what I can do 

14 for it. 

15 DR. MAKHIJANI: If you give it to 

16 me, Mr. Presley, I can send it to you right 

17 now. I have the document right here. 

18 MR. PRESLEY: I might not be able 

19 to receive it from you, Arjun. 

20 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. Fine. 

21 MR. CHEW: Hey, Mark, this is Mel. 

22 MR. ROLFES: Yes. 
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1 MR. CHEW: None of us on the ORAU 

2 team has received the plan. Is that true? 

3 MR. ROLFES: Okay. I have a copy 

4 of it and I did send it to you as well, Mel. 

5 MR. CHEW: Okay. 

6 MR. ROLFES: During the week of the 

7 Redondo Beach Advisory Board meeting. 

8 MR. CHEW: I'll have to look. 

9 Thanks. 

10 MR. ROLFES: I can resend it to 

11 both Bob and Mel. 

12 MR. PRESLEY: Yes, I was going to 

13 say. Mark, if you don't mind, send it to the 

14 government address. Okay? 

15 CHAIR CLAWSON: That probably would 

16 be best then. 

17 MR. KATZ: Mark, this is Ted. If 

18 you send me a copy at the same time, that 

19 would be great. Thanks. 

20 MR. ROLFES: I will. 

21 MR. SHARFI: And to Mutty too 

22 please. 
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1 MR. ROLFES: Mutty, all right. 

2 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Can you send it 

3 to Liz and Emily as well? 

4 MR. ROLFES: All right. 

5 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Thank you. 

6 MR. ROLFES: All right. We have 

7 Liz, Emily, Mel, Bob. 

8 MR. POTTER: And send one to Bryce 

9 and Gene, too? Sorry about that. 

10 MR. KATZ: All right. Mel, if you 

11 could send that onto Gene for me please. 

12 MR. CHEW: I will do that. 

13 MR. KATZ: Okay. Thank you. 

14 MR. ROLFES: Okay. It should have 

15 been sent to everyone. I don't know how fast 

16 my email will go. 

17 MR. KATZ: I just got it, Mark. 

18 Thank you. 

19 MR. ROLFES: Okay, great. 

20 DR. MAURO: Brad, should I begin? 

21 CHAIR CLAWSON: If everybody has 

22 gotten this, it sounds like without any 
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1 objections I would say yes. I just got Mark's 

2 indication that he would be a little bit late 

3 getting on here. So, John, I'll turn it over 

4 to you. 

5 SC&A PRESENTATION 

6 DR. MAURO: Okay. Thank you. I 

7 would like to set the stage. A good way to 

8 look at this is we have our site profile 

9 review and began our site profile review 

10 process. We have -- by the way, that site 

11 profile review was prepared by Arjun, and then 

12 we have our SEC petition review and that was 

13 delivered. That was prepared by Hans. He led 

14 the effort. 

15 And now what we have is we're 

16 moving on into primarily one particular very 

17 important aspect of the SEC petition review 

18 process, but, of course, it also has 

19 applicability to the site profile and that 

20 aspect is the completeness review. 

21 As we all know, there's a great 

22 deal of data, bioassay data, and external 
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1 dosimetry data at Fernald and the evaluation 

2 report establishes that on the basis of that 

3 dataset there is good reason to believe that 

4 all internal doses can be reconstructed with 

5 sufficient accuracy, and this goes to the 

6 heart of what we're going to be talking about 

7 today. We, SC&A, have prepared a sampling 

8 plan which has a very specific objective, and 

9 that is to evaluate the degree of completeness 

10 of the internal dosimetry records so that we 

11 could put the Board in the position to help 

12 make judgments on whether or not the record 

13 and doses can be reconstructed with sufficient 

14 accuracy. 

15 The report you received is really a 

16 statistical work that's going to require some 

17 explanation and that's why it's important that 

18 both Arjun and Harry Chmelynski be on. But 

19 let me explain to you conceptually what it 

20 does. Using our experience and familiarity 

21 with the Fernald site and with the datasets, 

22 bioassay datasets, characterizing the internal 
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1 exposures for the workers as represented in 

2 the evaluation report site profile, we went 

3 ahead and said, "Well, in order to convince 

4 ourselves or evaluate the degree of 

5 completeness, we broke the activities at the 

6 site up into strata." Strata means different 

7 buildings, different work categories, 

8 different time periods, and the question we 

9 wanted to ask is for all of these different 

10 groups of workers sorted according to these 

11 different strata -- 

12 CHAIR CLAWSON: John, excuse me for 

13 a minute. I don't know if everybody else is 

14 hearing this, but somebody has not gone onto 

15 mute and we're getting a lot of background 

16 noise. If I could just remind everybody to 

17 put their phone onto mute, *6 if you don't 

18 have a mute button, I would greatly appreciate 

19 it. 

20 Go ahead, John. 

21 DR. MAURO: Okay. Thank you. 

22 MR. GRIFFON: Just so you know, 
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1 Mark Griffon. I'm on now. I don't think it 

2 was my phone, but I'm on the call. 

3 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. I appreciate 

4 that. Mark, it's good to hear you. John has 

5 just started into the very beginning of the 

6 sampling plan. So you're just -- we just 

7 barely started, Mark. 

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: Mark, did you get 

9 the documents I sent you this morning or last 

10 night? 

11 MR. GRIFFON: No, I didn't get the 

12 documents, but I'll follow along. I'm sorry. 

13 Something is going on with my email. 

14 DR. MAURO: Okay. Good morning, 

15 Mark. This is John, and I'll pick up. I was 

16 just beginning to explain the concept of 

17 strata. 

18 MR. GRIFFON: Yes, I was listening 

19 in. So go ahead. 

20 DR. MAURO: Okay. Very good. 

21 MR. GRIFFON: Yes, that's fine. 

22 DR. MAURO: So what happened is now 
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1 we developed what we consider to be the groups 

2 of workers that we feel that if we were to go 

3 in and sample the bioassay data from these 

4 different separate groups and download the 

5 data and evaluate it, there will be two 

6 questions we could answer. 

7 One is, first of all, we can get a 

8 sense of how complete the data are. For 

9 example, let's assume. Right now this is 

10 conceptual. We'll actually get into the 

11 specifics. But let's assume we have a group 

12 of workers that work in a given building in a 

13 given year and we are in and we know that 

14 we're concerned or interested. Let's say 

15 there's a lot of workers, 1,000 workers, that 

16 worked in that year in that building, and 

17 NIOSH's position is we believe we can 

18 reconstruct the internal exposures to those 

19 workers because we have bioassay data. We 

20 have, let's say, urine samples that were taken 

21 approximately monthly or quarterly or whatever 

22 the time period as reported and represented in 
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1 their site profile and evaluation report. 

2 Well, the Board has requested SC&A 

3 go and develop a sampling plan to evaluate how 

4 complete is that data for that strata and so 

5 what we did is we go ahead and we design a -- 

6 and say, okay. How many samples do people in 

7 that year for that group of workers do we want 

8 to grab in order to give us a sense of how 

9 complete the data are? For example, let's 

10 say you have 1,000 workers, but it turns out 

11 only ten of them have bioassay samples. Well, 

12 you know, then there would be a problem. But 

13 if you had 1,000 workers and they all had 

14 extensive bioassay samples, then, of course, 

15 we'd be in very good shape. 

16 But the question becomes how do you 

17 -- you don't want to go in and pull all the 

18 bioassay samples from all 1,000 workers in 

19 that strata and download all that data and 

20 look at it all. It's just too time-consuming, 

21 too expensive, and unnecessary in order to 

22 answer the question. 
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1 So what we do is develop a sampling 

2 plan whereby we say how many of those workers 

3 in that year of their records do we want to 

4 pull? And here's where, so the first step in 

5 identifying the strata, that is those worker 

6 groups that we would like to break up the 

7 whole population of workers over the entire 

8 time period of interest into, that first step 

9 is just developing the strata. What we'd like 

10 to -- That was done and it's contained in this 

11 report and that was done primarily by Arjun 

12 who took the lead on that given his 

13 familiarity of the site and identified the 

14 strata of interest. 

15 So I guess question number one that 

16 we're going to be posing to the work group is 

17 do you feel that the strata that's been 

18 selected and the rationale for the selection 

19 of that strata will meet your needs. Once we 

20 accomplish that and I think that's really the 

21 first step in the process. That is agreeing 

22 that we've selected the proper strata that 
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1 need to be sampled. 

2 The next thing, the second part, is 

3 okay, how many samples, let's say, of workers 

4 do we want to pull from the records and 

5 download the data and review? You know, 

6 theoretically if there are 1,000 workers in a 

7 given year, the number you sample, the more 

8 you sample, the more assurance you have, the 

9 more confidence you have, of understanding how 

10 complete that record is. So what our 

11 statistician did for us he said the following, 

12 well, for any given strata if you sample these 

13 many within that strata you could have a 

14 certain level of confidence and make an 

15 expression of what percent of the workers. 

16 See, we're mainly interested in 

17 saying what fraction of the workers had 

18 bioassay samples in that population of 

19 workers. And so our sampling program is 

20 designed to make a statement. That is, if you 

21 sample these many workers within that strata, 

22 depending on how many samples, if you sampled 
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1 them all, then, of course, you have 100 

2 percent confidence in knowing how many workers 

3 were, in fact, bioassayed in that strata. But 

4 we don't want to sample all of them and we 

5 don't think it's necessary to achieve 100 

6 percent confidence that we can make a 

7 statement on that level. 

8 We could actually make a statement 

9 that said, well, we could be 95 percent 

10 confident that this percentage of the workers 

11 were sampled. So now we're talking a little 

12 bit of statistics and I'm going to be turning 

13 it over to both Arjun and Harry in a minute. 

14 But you can almost think about it this way. 

15 If I have 1,000 workers and I say, geez, you 

16 know, I'd like to be able to say with some 

17 level of confidence that at least 50 percent 

18 were sampled. That is, 50 percent had 

19 bioassay samples and I'd like to be able to 

20 know that with a high level of confidence. If 

21 I could walk away from this sampling program 

22 where at the end I could say with a high level 
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1 of confidence that at least 50 percent of the 

2 workers in that population were, in fact, 

3 bioassayed and I could say that and I would 

4 feel that and here's where we're trying to go 

5 with this. I would say, gee, there's 

6 certainly a large fraction of the workers, 

7 based on our sampling we can say with a high 

8 level of confidence that a relatively large 

9 fraction of the workers were, in fact, 

10 sampled, bioassayed, in that strata and if we 

11 would -- and on that basis and here's where 

12 the judgment comes in, on that basis, one 

13 could make a judgment whether a bioassay 

14 program, whether a co-worker program, can in 

15 fact be built. 

16 For example, if I say there are 

17 1,000 workers and based on a sampling plan, I 

18 could say that at least 50 percent of those 

19 workers or 75 percent of those workers were, 

20 in fact, sampled and were, in fact, 

21 bioassayed, then I know the relative 

22 completeness of the bioassay program. 
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1 MR. GRIFFON: Hey, John. 

2 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

3 MR. GRIFFON: Can I just question 

4 one thing? 

5 DR. MAURO: Sure. 

6 MR. GRIFFON: I follow you 

7 completely and that's -- 

8 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry to interpret, 

9 Mark, but just please -- I'm sorry you missed 

10 it. But we have a new court reporter, James 

11 Salandro, and so people need to identify 

12 themselves when they begin to talk. 

13 MR. GRIFFON: Sorry. I knew that, 

14 too. Mark Griffon. I'm sorry. 

15 Yes, John. I had a question on -- 

16 I think you said it at the very end of that. 

17 Everything you're driving toward here is 

18 answering a question of can an adequate co19 worker model be developed or be used to 

20 reconstruct doses. The question I have is is 

21 there a co-worker model on the table for 

22 uranium. I thought, you know, I thought we 
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1 had two questions here. I thought we had a 

2 question of is the -- based on the sampling 

3 are the individual records of sufficient 

4 completeness to reconstruct individual doses 

5 and then the secondary question would be if 

6 they're not are their overall records 

7 sufficient enough to develop a co-worker 

8 model. I don't think we -- Maybe I'm wrong, 

9 but -- 

10 DR. MAURO: Mark, this is John. 

11 You're absolutely right. 

12 MR. GRIFFON: Yes. 

13 DR. MAURO: You're doing a better 

14 job describing conceptually what we're trying 

15 to accomplish. 

16 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. So there's two 

17 parts. I just don't want to lose that in your 

18 up front description. 

19 DR. MAURO: Mark, it's -- 

20 MR. GRIFFON: Is there a uranium 

21 co-worker model on the table? I don't think 

22 so yet or maybe there is. We have so many 
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1 sites that we're dealing with. Can somebody 

2 answer that question? Is there an uranium co3 worker model? 

4 MR. ROLFES: Mark Griffon, this is 

5 Mark Rolfes. Right now, I do not believe the 

6 internal dosimetry technical basis document 

7 for the Fernald site does have -- I don't 

8 believe it has a co-worker model in it. 

9 However, we have the data that would allow us 

10 to develop one as we revise the technical 

11 basis document. 

12 However, if you recall the number 

13 of individuals that were unmonitored for 

14 uranium was very low and so the applicability 

15 and the need for a co-worker model is very 

16 small for Fernald. 

17 CHAIR CLAWSON: Well, Mark, this is 

18 Brad Clawson. One of the things that and one 

19 of the reasons why I was pushing towards this 

20 sampling plan was because one of the things 

21 that NIOSH wanted to put out was that if any 

22 of these employees showed up with uranium in 
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1 their urine samples then they were going to 

2 give them this other host of radionuclides and 

3 this is kind of part of the reason why this is 

4 so important for this strata type deal and 

5 that's one of the reasons why I was interested 

6 in this sampling plan. I guess my question to 

7 John here is is this going to be able to 

8 accomplish that part of it or -- 

9 MR. ROLFES: Before John responds, 

10 this is Mark Rolfes. 

11 CHAIR CLAWSON: Right. 

12 MR. ROLFES: For example, if an 

13 individual has uranium urinanalysis results 

14 then we typically can use that to assign an 

15 intake of uranium. 

16 CHAIR CLAWSON: Right. 

17 MR. ROLFES: And to that intake of 

18 uranium we would also assign other 

19 radionuclides. The number of people who do 

20 not have uranium urinanalyses is very low and 

21 so for those individuals on a case-by-case 

22 basis we would determine an individual's 
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1 potential internal exposure. There have been 

2 some cases that have been completed with co3 worker models essentially using information. 

4 For example, if we had an engineer 

5 or something perhaps that enters the site for 

6 a small amount of time and did not have a 

7 uranium urinanalysis we could use an uranium 

8 urinanalysis result from another engineer. 

9 However, like I said, we do not have a formal 

10 co-worker model that I'm aware of. 

11 But if an individual truly is in a 

12 radiologically controlled area and is not 

13 monitored for internal exposures, we would 

14 assign uranium intakes if that individual had 

15 a potential for internal exposure. Then we 

16 would treat that claim similarly. We would 

17 also assume that the individual was exposed to 

18 recycled uranium. After we estimated the 

19 uranium intakes, we would assign intakes of, 

20 for example, neptunium, plutonium and 

21 technetium-99. 

22 MR. SCHOFIELD: Mark, this is Phil 
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1 Schofield. I have a quick question for you. 

2 On those that do have internal uranium 

3 analysis, was that strictly -- did they look 

4 at that or did they look at to see if there 

5 were other contaminants in there? 

6 MR. ROLFES: Well, the large part 

7 of the information. For the large part of the 

8 operating history, the uranium urinanalyses 

9 were conducted using fluorimetry which 

10 determines a mass amount of uranium in urine. 

11 So they would get information about the mass 

12 of uranium being excreted from the body 

13 following either ingestion, inhalation or some 

14 of other method of entry such as a wound. 

15 In the more recent time period, 

16 they started doing more detailed analyses such 

17 as kPa, kinetic phosphorescence analysis -- I 

18 can't think of it. If there is somebody that 

19 can help me out there. They also did mass 

20 spec of uranium to determine the isotopic 

21 composition of that uranium. 

22 MR. SCHOFIELD: So let me just get 
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1 this clarified. So the early uranium analysis 

2 did not look at anything but uranium, just the 

3 mass of the uranium. 

4 MR. ROLFES: It looked at the mass 

5 of uranium, correct. However, that does not 

6 prevent us from doing dose reconstruction for 

7 other radionuclides and we have described how 

8 we would do the dose reconstruction by 

9 assuming essentially worst case scenarios for 

10 recycled uranium, the concentrations of the 

11 radioactive material that would have existed 

12 in very small quantities. We've assumed the 

13 worst case. 

14 I believe we're assigning, now if 

15 Bryce Rich could help me out, once we have 

16 calculated a uranium intake we would be 

17 assuming that an individual was exposed to 

18 plutonium, neptunium and technetium. I 

19 believe the plutonium concentration that we 

20 were assuming would be on the order of 100 

21 parts per billion. 

22 MR. RICH: That's correct, Mark. 
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1 MR. ROLFES: Okay. All right. 

2 MR. RICH: One thing to add just 

3 briefly, Mark, in the early days they were 

4 aware of the contaminants in recycled uranium, 

5 but they had calculated that the dose would be 

6 a less than 10 percent increase plus the fact 

7 that the analytical capabilities with a more 

8 higher of this material like plutonium and 

9 neptunium were not sufficient to even see. 

10 So in the early days, they did not 

11 do specific contaminant analyses other than on 

12 occasion they did a sample or two but not 

13 routinely. 

14 MR. ROLFES: Right, and we do have 

15 information that shows that the technical 

16 laboratory at Fernald did also do some 

17 analyses to determine if there were any of 

18 these other radioactive materials in with the 

19 uranium. 

20 MR. GRIFFON: This is Mark Griffon 

21 again. I didn't mean to get off the topic of 

22 the plan, but I just wanted to refocus John on 
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1 the, I mean, we have to be careful to answer 

2 the question of can we -- is there sufficient 

3 data in each person's file to reconstruct 

4 internal and external doses especially where 

5 there's not even a co-worker uranium model on 

6 the table right now. So as long as you're 

7 looking at both those phases, I'm okay with 

8 where you're going and I'll turn it back over 

9 to you. But I just wanted to get that point 

10 across. 

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: Mark, this is 

12 Arjun. John and I actually had a discussion 

13 about this this morning and as he said, you're 

14 exactly right. Part of the things that 

15 stratify the sampling by date and plant is to 

16 try to get an idea as to whether if people 

17 were on a monthly sampling plan whether there 

18 were actually samples monthly or annually or 

19 whether years were missed and, for example, 

20 I'm looking at the evaluation report. In 

21 1953, the external monitoring was for 1,739 

22 employees but the internal monitoring was for 
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1 753 employees. 

2 So while the overall number of 

3 records may be comparable, there's a question 

4 for people in particular years perhaps and 

5 this sampling plan has been stratified to 

6 discover where you might need a co-worker 

7 model, if you do need it, and what periods and 

8 workers it might apply to and I hope also 

9 whether to some extent there is sufficient 

10 data in those years or subsequent years 

11 depending on production parallelism to be able 

12 to construct that co-worker model. 

13 MR. ROLFES: This is Mark Rolfes. 

14 The entire reason that we have a co-worker 

15 model is in case anyone did not provide a 

16 bioassay for uranium. To stratify it, I'm 

17 sure there may be one person or one case where 

18 an individual was not monitored routinely or 

19 did not provide a urine sample. That is 

20 exactly why we have a co-worker model to 

21 assign intakes of uranium. 

22 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, exactly. I 
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1 agree with that. The point here is that if 

2 there are very, very few people who don't have 

3 monitoring data that, of course, there's not a 

4 lot of worry about. But if there are 

5 significant gaps or people who are not 

6 monitored and depending on what jobs they were 

7 in or what plants they were in, what periods 

8 they were in, then it will be up to the 

9 working group to make a judgment as to where 

10 we go from there and the sampling plan is 

11 essentially designed to tell you that. 

12 DR. MAURO: Let me, there's a 

13 concept here regarding a co-worker that I'd 

14 like to -- 

15 CHAIR CLAWSON: Sorry, but just to 

16 say that's John Mauro speaking. 

17 DR. MAURO: Yes, John Mauro 

18 speaking again. We've heard a lot of 

19 discussion. I think this was an important 

20 diversion, not diversion, but clarification. 

21 In effect, NIOSH's position is that bioassays, 

22 urine samples, were taken from virtually all 
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1 workers and, of course, but at the same time 

2 they will acknowledge that not all workers do 

3 we know isotopically what the radionuclide mix 

4 might be and what the enrichment might be, 

5 whether or not there was any recycled uranium 

6 with plutonium present. So, in other words, 

7 it's a richer problem the fact that you might 

8 have a urine sample that measures in 

9 milligrams per liter will certainly give you 

10 some information about the amount of uranium 

11 that the person may have taken in at that 

12 point of time and at that location and at that 

13 point in time. 

14 But, of course, in theory the 

15 assumptions regarding the mix of radionuclides 

16 that accompany the uranium, whether it 

17 includes as I mentioned earlier, whether it's 

18 enriched and what degree of enrichment and 

19 whether or not it contains any recycled 

20 uranium. That's a form of a co-worker model 

21 in a way. What's surrogate. In other words, 

22 there's a way to deal with missing 
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1 information. 

2 So our sampling plan really is 

3 designed to not only answer the question, "How 

4 complete is the dataset for any given strata" 

5 and, of course the strata, where we break them 

6 up is a judgment call, where we think by 

7 looking into each window and looking at the 

8 workers in each of those windows we'll get a 

9 good feel for whether or not there is a 

10 complete dataset by sampling a certain 

11 percentage of the workers in any given strata 

12 and seeing if, in fact, they all have some 

13 bioassay samples or maybe we find only 50 

14 percent have bioassay samples. By sampling 

15 within that strata, we'll be able to answer 

16 the first question, I think, and that is how 

17 complete in terms of -- do, in fact, all 

18 workers in that strata -- how sure are we that 

19 all workers or virtually all workers in that 

20 strata have bioassay samples for that year? 

21 By sampling the program the way we 

22 plan to sample, we will be able to make a 
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1 statement at the end that, "Yes, we have a 

2 high level of confidence." We'll be able to 

3 make a statement like this. "We have a high 

4 level of confidence that at least 75 percent 

5 of the workers have annual bioassay samples." 

6 We would be able to make a statement along 

7 those lines. 

8 Now that in itself would mean that 

9 -- it's possible at 100 -- we may find that 

10 when we pull the sample, let's say we sample 

11 100 workers, and we see that out of those 100, 

12 75 have at least one sample per year, let's 

13 say, a urine sample. We will be able to make 

14 a statement regarding completeness there. I 

15 mean in simplest terms we'll be able to make a 

16 statement on that basis alone just common 

17 sense, we know from that sample it looks like 

18 about 75 percent of the workers have at least 

19 one bioassay sample. 

20 But we'll be able to make a more 

21 powerful statement, more powerful in terms of 

22 statistically, what level of confidence can we 
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1 say. Well, we're highly confident that at 

2 least 50 percent. We may be able to walk away 

3 with a statement like that and we will also be 

4 able to say, "We also know that within that 

5 sample not 100 percent of the workers were 

6 sampled. There are workers who don't have 

7 urine samples in that strata in that year." 

8 So the sampling program, we'll be 

9 able to deliver that first, I think, very 

10 important fundamental rock we can stand on. 

11 We'll be able to make a statement of the 

12 degree of completeness in that given strata. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: John. 

14 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

15 DR. ZIEMER: Paul Ziemer here. Let 

16 me ask one question for clarification or maybe 

17 it's more than one question. But as a starter 

18 forgetting about the individual strata, if you 

19 looked at the whole group, everything 

20 combined, and I'm thinking of this as the 

21 classical statistical things where you have 

22 the white marbles and the black marbles in a 
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1 bag and you want to know what the distribution 

2 is. Right? We can do that for the whole 

3 group. We already know that the percentage of 

4 bioassay is what? Ninety percent or something 

5 like that? 

6 MR. ROLFES: Correct. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: Now, knowing that, if 

8 you had someone with still bioassay and there 

9 was a co-worker model, I assume you would use 

10 that. Right? 

11 DR. MAURO: Are you posing that 

12 question to me? I would say that we'd have to 

13 know if there's -- 

14 DR. ZIEMER: Well, yes. What I'm 

15 really trying to get at is do we need to know 

16 the strata. Would there be different co17 worker models for different strata? 

18 DR. MAURO: My answer would be yes. 

19 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. That's what I'm 

20 trying to get at. 

21 DR. MAURO: Or it would reveal -- I 

22 would go a step further. It would reveal 
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1 whether you need separate -- in other words, 

2 by sampling different strata, we may find out 

3 that the differences -- if there is one co4 worker model, we'd be in a position to judge 

5 because we've sampled different strata which 

6 approach to develop a co-worker model -- 

7 DR. ZIEMER: The same one would 

8 apply for everyone. 

9 DR. MAURO: For everyone. That 

10 would apply to everyone or is it possible 

11 there might be by using that, if there was in 

12 fact a co-worker model out there right now, 

13 the sampling program we would propose, that 

14 we're proposing, would help you understand the 

15 degree to which it would be clean and 

16 favorable for all workers in all strata. You 

17 want to be in the position to be able to make 

18 that statement. 

19 DR. ZIEMER: So, for example, if 

20 you found that, let's say, in plant five that 

21 the percent of sampling was very different 

22 from the others and also that either the 
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1 nuclides handled or the work conditions were 

2 such that sort of a general co-worker model 

3 would not apply, then you would propose or 

4 would suggest considering a different co5 worker model for that subset or that strata. 

6 Is that correct? 

7 DR. MAURO: This is John. We 

8 wouldn't suggest that we point out the 

9 weaknesses of the co-worker model -- 

10 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

11 DR. MAURO: -- as applied to that 

12 particular strata. For example, let's say -- 

13 We know there is no co-worker model. But 

14 let's assume for a moment that the assumption 

15 is that we're going to assume that all workers 

16 were exposed to two percent, 2.5 percent, of -

17 - enriched uranium for those samples where we 

18 only have milligram per liter values. 

19 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Mauro. 

20 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: What special project 

22 was that? 
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1 DR. MAURO: I'm sorry. I didn't 

2 say there was. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: On what special 

4 project was the two percent enrichment? 

5 DR. MAURO: Am I correct that 

6 that's your default assumption? 

7 MR. ROLFES: Our default assumption 

8 after 1961 would be two percent. I take that 

9 back. After 1964 I believe. I would have to 

10 check with the technical basis document. You 

11 had talked about the earlier days. 

12 DR. MAURO: We're not there yet in 

13 our discussion. I guess I'm trying to give 

14 conceptually more than explicitly the idea of 

15 why strata, breaking down the operations into 

16 strata has value. I mean, that's really what 

17 I'm going to rather than looking at it as one 

18 large group of workers over all time in all 

19 buildings and all worker categories. Why 

20 there is value into breaking up the population 

21 of worker years into strata because we may 

22 find that there are segments of workers that 
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1 have experienced exposure situations which do 

2 not fall within the envelope or one may not 

3 have been monitored extensively and there may 

4 be a group that is relatively unmonitored and 

5 we need to know. We'd like to know that. 

6 Second, we'd like to know whether 

7 or not there's a group where your approach to 

8 doing those reconstructions, for example, the 

9 two percent enrichment assumption, may not 

10 apply for extended periods of time. So in 

11 effect whether you want to represent it or not 

12 in this way you effectively do have a co13 worker model. The co-worker model basically 

14 is that all workers for all intents and 

15 purposes have bioassay data and we have 

16 sufficient information to be able to place a 

17 plausible upper bound on what the level of 

18 enrichment might have been for those workers 

19 and also to place a plausible upper bound on 

20 what the level of recycled uranium such as 

21 plutonium is in the urine. 

22 DR. MAKHIJANI: Let me jump in here 
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1 a little bit. 

2 DR. MAURO: Sure. 

3 MR. KATZ: Wait. Please identify 

4 yourself. 

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun 

6 Makhijani. I'm not sure that we have a level 

7 of granularity in the sampling that will allow 

8 us to determine the individual enriched 

9 uranium runs. I don't know if those are even 

10 in the worker data. At least, I have not seen 

11 that. Mark might correct me if I'm wrong. 

12 But the point that we had raised in 

13 finding 12 of our site profile review and in 

14 other places was that enriched uranium 

15 processing actually goes back into the 1950s 

16 and did not start in 1964. The materials, the 

17 accounting data, from Fernald do indicate 

18 enriched uranium starting sometime in the 50s. 

19 I forget the exact date, maybe `55. 

20 MR. ROLFES: That's correct. 

21 That's correct, Arjun. 

22 DR. MAKHIJANI: And so we had 
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1 questioned that and as you know, Mark, there 

2 were short campaigns and periods when 

3 enrichment of more than two percent was 

4 handled and the other question that we had 

5 raised is why for most workers, the vast 

6 majority of workers, it's claim and favorable 

7 to assume two percent all the time. We 

8 couldn't see that it had been demonstrated for 

9 those workers who actually dealt with five and 

10 ten percent uranium. 

11 I think that that is a little bit 

12 of a diversion. I do not believe that we're 

13 going to discover that level of -- and perhaps 

14 we will, but certainly I don't want to promise 

15 that to the working group and then come up 

16 short. That's not in the design and I don't 

17 even know that it is there in the worker 

18 record. Mark, you're more familiar with them 

19 than I am. 

20 MR. ROLFES: Yes. This is Mark 

21 Rolfes and I would like to address what you 

22 have stated. In the early days the typical 
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1 enrichment was -- for example, for those of us 

2 on the phone normal uranium is roughly 0.71 

3 percent U-235. Anything that was above 0.71 

4 percent was referred to as enriched. 

5 One of the major products I guess 

6 at Fernald, the enrichment, was 0.95 percent, 

7 still less than one percent U-235. There may 

8 have been a special project. For example, 

9 there were some runs of 1.25 percent 

10 enrichment. That would not have a significant 

11 impact on a person's reconstructed internal 

12 dose and it wouldn't affect someone's external 

13 dose significantly either. 

14 For example, in the years after say 

15 mid 1960 there were some special projects 

16 where they handled three percent or five 

17 percent enriched material and if you do take a 

18 look in the records, for example, there are 

19 some reports for these special projects that 

20 were conducted and there are actually changes 

21 to the mobile in vivo radiation monitoring 

22 laboratory data indicating that these 
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1 individuals were working on a special project 

2 in this plant and these are the results of 

3 their lung counts. So it is documented in 

4 individuals' monitoring records. 

5 MS. BALDRIDGE: This is Sandra. 

6 MR. ROLFES: Yes, Sandra. 

7 MS. BALDRIDGE: I don't know that 

8 the credibility of this data has even been 

9 established based on the Fernald historical 

10 documents that discredit the use of the 

11 urinanalysis record for determining internal 

12 dose. 

13 MR. ROLFES: Okay. This is Mark 

14 Rolfes once again. 

15 The monitoring that was done for 

16 uranium, uranium is different. They were 

17 worried about heavy metal toxicity and renal 

18 damage and so bioassays were collected to 

19 ensure that people were not excreting above a 

20 certain level of uranium in their urine 

21 because they were concerned about the chemical 

22 effects of uranium on the kidney function. 
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1 The purpose of those urine samples being 

2 collected was for chemical toxicity because 

3 that was the threat to a person's health. 

4 For natural uranium and depleted 

5 uranium, they were not concerned about 

6 radiation dose to internal organs. But the 

7 fact that those urine samples were collected, 

8 it does not matter what the purpose of the 

9 collection was. It does not prevent someone 

10 from calculating with sufficient accuracy the 

11 internal dose that was received. 

12 MS. BALDRIDGE: But I think it does 

13 interject a translation issue. I mean you can 

14 have the measurement, but there are certain 

15 factors that may not be known to you in the 

16 use of those that were known by the Fernald 

17 personnel who wrote the documents stating that 

18 those database documents, that information, 

19 could not be used for the determination of 

20 internal dose whether directly or indirectly. 

21 MR. ROLFES: I understand what 

22 you're saying and there was a statement 
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1 because they did not believe that there was a 

2 bioassay model that would allow us to 

3 interpret the results to give a specific and 

4 precise dose estimate to each of the various 

5 organs in the body. Some of the older 

6 biokinetic models that were used to describe 

7 where uranium went in various organs after it 

8 was inhaled or ingested were in their infancy 

9 in the early years. 

10 The bioassay models that we have 

11 now, the ICRP Models 66 and 68, that we use 

12 for calculating internal dose, those are much 

13 more detailed and provide a much better basis 

14 of where uranium is distributed throughout the 

15 body and how long it takes to be excreted from 

16 one compartment into another or out of the 

17 body, etc. 

18 MS. BALDRIDGE: But that doesn't 

19 address the record-keeping accuracy. 

20 MR. ROLFES: I do acknowledge that 

21 that does not. But what NIOSH has done is 

22 done an analysis of the hard-copy data to 
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1 determine whether that hard-copy data was 

2 accurate, complete, etc. and this information 

3 has been provided to the Advisory Board. Let 

4 me see, I have a document comparing the 

5 Fernald hard-copy bioassay records to the 1020 

6 database. 

7 MS. BALRIDGE: So I'm assuming then 

8 that it's a consensus of the Advisory Board 

9 that the uranium urinanalysis records are 

10 credible and useable for dose reconstruction. 

11 MR. ROLFES: Now I'll let the 

12 Advisory Board members speak, but the NIOSH 

13 position is that those uranium urinanalyses 

14 are complete. Where there are incomplete 

15 records, for example, if an individual entered 

16 the site and did not have a bioassay sample 

17 collected, that individual for a dose 

18 reconstruction that NIOSH would complete we 

19 could use a co-worker model and depending on 

20 the individual's operation that he was 

21 involved with we could assign, for example, 

the 50th 22 percentile of the intakes from 
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1 individuals who were monitored for uranium or 

the 95th 2 percentile which would be an upper 

3 bound for the individual's potential internal 

4 exposure. So it's really not necessary for us 

5 to stratify the data. 

6 That was the entire reason we 

7 developed a co-worker model so that if an 

8 individual was unmonitored we could use 

9 individuals who were monitored to bound the 

10 unmonitored individual's dose. 

11 CHAIR CLAWSON: Mark, this is Brad 

12 Clawson. I thought that a little while ago 

13 you mentioned to me that we didn't have a co14 worker model. 

15 MR. ROLFES: Correct. It has not 

16 been formally approved that I'm aware of. Now 

17 I believe Mutty had indicated to me. Let's 

18 see. Did you believe that there was one 

19 developed and I am not sure about the status 

20 of the co-worker model. But Mutty said that -

21 - 

22 MR. GRIFFON: Mark, this is Mark 
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1 Griffon. I just wanted to answer Sandra's 

2 question. The data credibility is still an 

3 action item as far as I know in our matrix and 

4 Mark is correct that NIOSH gave us a response. 

5 But I don't think the work group has looked 

6 at that and dealt with a response. 

7 So we're not at that point yet of 

8 saying we have no issues with the data 

9 credibility. At least, I'm not. We still 

10 have to close that item out on our list of 

11 issues in the matrix. But that is a separate 

12 item, but it's still on the table. 

13 MS. BALDRIDGE: I'm glad you 

14 clarified that because I wasn't aware that 

15 things were being proceeded on the assumption 

16 that everything was -- 

17 MR. GRIFFON: I'm pretty sure 

18 that's the issue or that's an appropriate 

19 response, Brad. If I'm incorrect, you can 

20 correct me. 

21 CHAIR CLAWSON: No, I'm sorry, 

22 Mark. I should have taken care of that with 
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1 Sandra. That's one of our issues that's still 

2 on the Board and we're still trying to 

3 evaluate that in the matrix and so forth and 

4 we were kind of hoping a little bit that this 

5 strata and so forth may bring a little bit of 

6 light to that and that was my impression. 

7 MS. BALDRIDGE: That's what I 

8 understood. 

9 DR. MAURO: Brad, this is John 

10 Mauro again. That goes toward the second 

11 objective. In effect, we've moved into the 

12 conversation on after you can make a statement 

13 regarding the completeness of the record in 

14 any given strata then you go and that 

15 statement is made. That's the easy part. 

16 Now we get to the part where we 

17 actually go in and when we download all these 

18 data, let's say we decide in a given strata 

19 we're going to pick 30 worker years, we're 

20 going to pull the records for those 30 worker 

21 years and we're going to download all that 

22 data, that bioassay data, and put it into a 
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1 table. So we say, "Okay, here are the 

2 measurements in this year for worker number 

3 one, for worker number two, worker number 

4 three." We're going to have the actual data 

5 that were measured. 

6 Now we're getting into the place 

7 where not only can we say something about 

8 completeness, whether or not, yes, all the 

9 workers were -- it appears that most workers 

10 or the large majority were in fact bioassayed. 

11 But we would be able to make a 

12 statement about the frequency of the bioassay 

13 at the beginning in a given year and we'd also 

14 be able to make a statement about the nature 

15 of the bioassay. That is what was done in 

16 terms of the type of measurements made on that 

17 urine for that worker in that year and we 

18 would be able to juxtapose that to te kind of 

19 work he was doing at that location in that 

20 year and the kind of radionuclides he might 

21 have been exposed to under those 

22 circumstances. 
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1 So now is where the richness of the 

2 sampling starts to pay off. That is we would 

3 be in a position to make statements that would 

4 confirm or provide qualifiers to many of the 

5 statements that we've just heard Mark describe 

6 related to enrichment, related to recycled 

7 uranium. So what I'm hoping is that once we 

8 have developed this table and this 

9 characterization and we'll have our 

10 radiochemists look at it. Joyce Lipstein will 

11 be looking at the data as she's doing right 

12 now on a Nevada test site and we'll be able to 

13 make certain observations regarding not only 

14 the completeness of the record, but what I 

15 would say does the information contained here 

16 appear to be of sufficient quality and 

17 completeness that you can reconstruct the 

18 doses for that worker, in place for that 

19 worker. 

20 Now whether or not you have 

21 sufficient data also should emerge from this. 

22 Whether it seems that you have enough workers 
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1 and this is really a judgment call now, not 

2 one to be made by SC&A. But we would provide 

3 a statement regarding whether or not we felt 

4 that the records for a given worker in a given 

5 year can be used to reconstruct his doses 

6 given our understanding of where he worked and 

7 what he was doing at that time. 

8 But also we'll be in a position to 

9 start to talk about whether or not for those 

10 workers that were not monitored or 

11 incompletely monitored whether the co-worker 

12 model that is being proposed and that 

13 theoretically can be developed would work. 

14 That is if it turns out only a very small 

15 fraction of the workers were actually 

16 bioassayed in a given strata, well, of course, 

17 it would start to beg the question whether or 

18 not your co-worker model will work and can be 

19 used for that worker if you feel that they 

20 were -- because they were in that strata, that 

21 means they're in a different circumstance than 

22 other workers. So if any co-worker model that 
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1 would be developed for a group of workers that 

2 may be in the strata that was only monitored 

3 very infrequently, then it would really help 

4 NIOSH, the way I see it, make judgments onto 

5 whether or not the co-worker model that they 

6 may want to entertain would apply to that 

7 particular strata or whether that strata has 

8 certain unique characteristics whereby it 

9 would have to be dealt with in a special way. 

10 And that really in effect concludes 

11 my part of this in terms of trying to 

12 conceptually explain what it is we're trying 

13 to achieve by sampling the way we designed our 

14 sampling program. It is designed for one to 

15 make a statement regarding how complete the 

16 record appears to be or workers in any given 

17 strata and, secondly, a statement should be 

18 able to be made regarding whether or not the 

19 actual bioassay program for the workers in 

20 that strata provides sufficient information 

21 that the doses can not only be reconstructed 

22 for that worker, but also in theory is there 
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1 enough information about the bodies of workers 

2 in that strata for those workers where the 

3 monitoring was incomplete or some workers that 

4 were not monitored at all, whether or not it's 

5 possible to develop a co-worker model from the 

6 data within that strata to build a co-worker 

7 model for that strata. And I think that's 

8 about what we'd be able to accomplish with the 

9 program as we've laid it out right here. 

10 With that, I'd like to sort of get 

11 to the high level of resolution and ask both 

12 Harry and, well, anyone else who had any 

13 questions of course, but both Arjun and Harry 

14 to provide a little more granularity to this 

15 conceptual design. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: A question first. This 

17 is Ziemer. Am I on the line? I can't 

18 remember if I'm muted or not. 

19 DR. MAURO: We hear you. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Good. My 

21 question really is to Sandra because I'm 

22 afraid I don't have the petition opened before 
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1 me. But I was trying to remember for the 

2 petitioners. Was their concern about the 

3 actual quality of the data in terms of either 

4 allegations of people in the system there 

5 fudging data or changing it or anything like 

6 that? 

7 MS. BALDRIDGE: I believe there 

8 were three to four documents that were 

9 historical documents from National out of 

10 Ohio, Fernald, that stated that their data 

11 could not be used to determine internal dose 

12 and this was in response to questions asked 

13 by, I believe, the Department of Energy so 

14 that they knew whether determinations could be 

15 made on exposure to people. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: What were the dates on 

17 them? Were those early documents? 

18 MS. BALDRIDGE: Yes. They're in 

19 the petition. I don't have the specific 

20 numbers. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. That's part of 

22 it and I tend to agree with Mark on that. I 
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1 think if you use the -- if you go back in 

2 time, the biokinetic models for relating urine 

3 output to organ dose were rather crude. But 

4 today's models are quite sophisticated and so 

5 at least on the surface if you have valid 

6 urine data and for uranium all you need is the 

7 mass because the mass in using a specific 

8 activity you can calculate the activity 

9 precisely. 

10 But I think that part of it I'm 

11 pretty comfortable with. I was concerned that 

12 there might have been allegations of tampering 

13 with the data that would render its validity 

14 in question. 

15 MS. BALDRIDGE: I don't know about 

16 the tampering, but I don't think it's been 

17 resolved about the potential renal damage 

18 effect on the accuracy of the excretion levels 

19 and I don't think -- 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. That was an 

21 issue we discussed awhile back, whether the 

22 levels were high enough to cause renal damage 
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1 which in turn might affect the model itself in 

2 terms of output. Yes. 

3 MS. BALDRIDGE: And NIOSH said that 

4 they did not have the records for the 

5 individual workers to be able to identify 

6 those men with renal damage. 

7 CHAIR CLAWSON: Dr. Ziemer, this is 

8 Brad. Also, there were comments made that 

9 we're bringing into question the urinalysis 

10 and so forth, the frequency, how it was 

11 performed. There are some other things. 

12 There were some affidavits and so forth that 

13 were taken that were in questioning the 

14 sampling plan that basically Fernald went 

15 through and so forth like that. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

17 CHAIR CLAWSON: This is kind of 

18 another question. This is why we were looking 

19 at and this is why I proposed this to John 

20 because data integrity is one of our key 

21 issues that we deal with on any of these 

22 sites. 
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1 DR. ZIEMER: Exactly. 

2 CHAIR CLAWSON: Because either one 

3 that's one of the things we're going for. 

4 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. Thank you. 

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. Can 

6 I say a few supplementary things? 

7 DR. MAURO: Arjun, this is John. 

8 Yes, please do. In fact, I was at the point 

9 where I wanted to pass the baton to you. 

10 DR. MAKHIJANI: Just to round out 

11 the enrichment discussion there. I mean it's 

12 for the working group and NIOSH to decide, but 

13 a little quick back of the envelope check and 

14 one percent enrichment would make about a 15 

15 percent difference and a 1.25 percent 

16 enrichment makes about 25-30 percent of the 

17 difference, something like that. So whether 

18 that's significant or not, I mean that's for 

19 you all to judge. 

20 In terms of the sampling plan 

21 itself, there are a couple of other things 

22 that are important to know. As you'll see in 
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1 the sampling stratification plan that I sent 

2 Harry and to the working group, we are trying 

3 to discover who was monitored for thorium and 

4 the in vivo counting that was begun in 1968 

5 and that went until 1986 and that's one of the 

6 reasons to have the flat strata and time 

7 strata that goes up to `67 and then from `68 

8 to the end of the SEC period. I think it was 

9 `89 if I remember correctly. Is that right, 

10 Sandy? 

11 MS. BALDRIDGE: It's through `89. 

12 DR. MAKHIJANI: Through `89, yes. 

13 So since NIOSH plans to rely on in vivo data 

14 for thorium dose reconstruction and it's been 

15 a pretty significant item in the findings and 

16 on the evaluation report review, that's very 

17 important to discover in terms of completeness 

18 and whether there's adequate information, 

19 there for a co-worker model and who was 

20 exposed and who was monitored and so on. 

21 That's the other major thing that we're trying 

22 to discover with this. 
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1 DR. MAURO: Arjun, this is John 

2 Mauro. I'd like to just make one comment and 

3 as part of my review of the sampling plan. 

4 One of the things that did strike me was in 

5 the interim between when we started to 

6 assemble the sampling plan and the various 

7 work group meetings we had it became apparent 

8 that I guess either at least in some of the 

9 time periods that NIOSH would be depending on 

10 air samples, breathing zone air samples. 

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: That's for the 

12 early period and that's a separate 

13 investigation. It's not covered in this 

14 particular completeness investigation. 

15 DR. MAURO: Very good and, Arjun, 

16 that's why I bring it up. I just wanted to 

17 make sure that everyone understood that this 

18 sampling plan is not designed to address the 

19 air sampling of thorium program for doing dose 

20 reconstruction. 

21 DR. MAKHIJANI: That's correct. 

22 DR. MAURO: So it may turn out that 
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1 the working group may want to look at that 

2 separately. But right now that, in 

3 particular, very important subject is not 

4 really explicitly addressed in this sampling 

5 plan. 

6 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, that's 

7 correct. We are not looking at area 

8 monitoring data. This sampling plan will only 

9 look personnel monitoring data. 

10 DR. MAURO: Arjun, this is John 

11 Mauro again. Would you mind just giving us 

12 conceptually the way in which you broke the 

13 strata up and your rationale? 

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: It's described in 

that memorandum which is dated May 5th 15 . There 

16 are periods, 1951 to 1967 and 1968 to 1990. It 

17 goes one year beyond the end of the SEC period 

18 and then there is an oversampling for 1954 to 

19 1957 because one of the plants, Plant 7, where 

20 there was soluble uranium processed, uranium 

21 hexafluoride, operated only for that period 

22 and so that's very important to determine 
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1 because highly soluble uranium could effect 

2 dose calculations materially for systemic 

3 organs and it would reduce lung dose but it 

4 would increase other doses. And that's the 

5 time period. 

6 And then we also have the strata 

7 including the plant, Plants 1-9 and the pilot 

8 plant, and there is thorium and finally we 

9 have the two periods for external dose. I 

10 don't think the external dose stratification 

11 is as important because from the data in the 

12 ER it appears that there wasn't much variation 

13 in how external dose monitoring was done. 

14 There was some variation about how women were 

15 monitored. But other than that I don't think 

16 we're looking to discover a whole lot in 

17 external dose, but it's there. So we do look 

18 at it. 

19 DR. MAURO: Arjun, I'm looking at 

20 Table 1 in the plan which it looks like these 

21 are your strata. 

22 DR. MAKHIJANI: You're looking at a 
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1 different document than I was looking at. 

2 DR. MAURO: Okay. I have the wrong 

3 -- 

4 DR. ZIEMER: I don't have a table 

5 in mine. This is Ziemer. My document doesn't 

6 show a table. 

7 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. John is 

8 looking at a document that was prepared by 

9 Harry Chmelynski which is called, "Sampling 

10 Plan for Fernald Completeness Analysis" in 

11 which he took my strata and turned it into 

12 numbers as to how people would have -- how 

13 many records we'd have to pull. 

14 DR. MAURO: Okay. So this is John 

15 again. I was not aware that the work group 

16 did not see this yet. 

17 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, they have it. 

18 DR. MAURO: They do have it? 

19 DR. MAKHIJANI: They should have 

20 it. 

21 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

22 DR. MAKHIJANI: I sent it out. 
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1 MR. ROLFES: NIOSH has not seen 

2 this. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: Was that sent out 

4 separately, Arjun? This is Ziemer again. 

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, it was sent out 

6 at the same time in the same e-mail. 

7 MR. ROLFES: The only document that 

I have a copy of is the one from May 5th 8 . 

9 DR. ZIEMER: Mine only had one 

10 attachment, but let me ask you this to make 

11 sure I understand it and maybe the table would 

12 be helpful. But, for example, let's take 

13 Plant 1. You would then have -- it appears 

14 for Plant 1 there would be like nine different 

15 strata. There would be the fluorimetry data 

16 for `51 to `67. Well, fluorimetry only goes 

17 through -- yes, it goes in `68 to `90. So 

18 there would be two strata there. Right? 

19 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, that's 

20 correct. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: And there would be for 

22 that same plant, in vivo counter data as 
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1 another strata for `69 through `90 and then 

2 there would also be a fecal sampling strata. 

3 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, the fecal 

4 sampling, whatever is there in the worker 

5 records, we don't have any indication as to 

6 whether there was a particular plan for fecal 

7 sampling. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So that might 

9 not be. 

10 DR. MAKHIJANI: So we're not 

11 stratified for that. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Then am I 

13 understanding what you're saying then and you 

14 would do the same for Plant 2. You would have 

15 a fluorimetry strata, an in vivo strata by 

16 years. Is that right? 

17 DR. MAKHIJANI: No. I don't think 

18 so. 

19 DR. ZIEMER: No. 

20 DR. MAKHIJANI: We have it 

21 stratified by plant and period and because we 

22 know the kinds of work that were being done in 
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1 those plants then we can determine whether 

2 they should have been monitoring or not. For 

3 instance, there was thorium work going on in 

4 certain places and then if thorium workers 

5 were monitored there, then you know that you 

6 have the in vivo data. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: If you don't 

9 monitor in those plants. So the 

10 stratification is primarily by plant and 

11 period. It was only fluorimetrics. So it's 

12 only one stratification. Everybody who was 

13 sampled was sampled by fluorimetry until some 

14 later date. 

15 DR. ZIEMER: Period, yes. 

16 DR. MAKHIJANI: So no 

17 stratification is needed for that. 

18 CHAIR CLAWSON: Arjun, this is 

19 Brad. I have that form that you've got and 

20 you know it's exactly saying exactly what Dr. 

21 Ziemer was saying and so forth like that. But 

22 the subpopulations where you have it pulled 
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1 out in Plant 1, Plants 2 and 3, and so forth 

2 and then like Plant 7 for 1954 to 1957. It 

3 came in two different separate, it came in the 

4 same e-mail, but two separate ones. 

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: That's correct, 

6 Brad. I'm looking at the e-mail that I sent 

7 out on 9/4/2008 at Redondo Beach and it does 

8 have both documents attached to it. I can 

9 open the e-mail. So I think people may not 

10 have noticed that there were two documents 

11 attached. 

12 CHAIR CLAWSON: Even if that's the 

13 case, this is Brad again, if we could -- 

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: I sent it to 

15 everyone. 

16 CHAIR CLAWSON: Yes, I know. If 

17 there's any way that we can send that out 

18 because it does -- 

19 DR. MAKHIJANI: I can send it right 

20 now to everyone again. 

21 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay, because it 

22 does have exactly like what Dr. Ziemer was 
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1 saying and so forth like that. Because what I 

2 really liked in looking into this table is 

3 where you have like the millwrights, the 

4 mechanics, transportation and so forth kind of 

5 broken down in, I guess you would call that, a 

6 subpopulation or whether and so forth like 

7 that. 

8 MS. BALDRIDGE: This is Sandra. 

9 Can I get a copy of that document as well or 

10 has it -- 

11 CHAIR CLAWSON: It has not been 

12 cleared for Privacy Act. I'm sorry, Sandra. 

13 MS. BALDRIDGE: Okay. 

14 CHAIR CLAWSON: But you understand 

15 our issues with the Privacy Act and so forth 

16 like that. We don't want to give out 

17 anything. 

18 MS. BALDRIDGE: Yes, I do. 

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. But I know 

20 that once this starts going through this and 

21 we'll be able to go through the Privacy Act 

22 and so forth they'll be able to -- as soon as 
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1 I get it and it's cleared, I'll be glad to 

2 send it to you. 

3 MS. BALDRIDGE: That's fine. Thank 

4 you. 

5 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. 

6 MR. ROLFES: This is Mark Rolfes. 

7 Since I have a break in the discussion, I'd 

8 like to address something that Arjun said a 

9 few minutes back about the differences between 

10 enrichments and the effect on internal doses. 

11 That would be something that would affect 

12 internal dose if the enrichment was different 

13 because you would have a different specific 

14 activity. 

15 For example, if you have depleted 

16 uranium that's roughly 400 picocuries per 

17 milligram versus natural uranium which is 

18 almost 700 picocuries per milligram, the 

19 effect on internal dose however when we 

20 complete a dose reconstruction we typically 

21 assume a chronic exposure for the individual's 

22 entire employment. We're not trying to do a 
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1 precise estimate of an individual's internal 

2 dose. 

3 If we were doing a precise 

4 estimate, then enrichment information would be 

5 important. However, we are assigning internal 

6 exposures, chronic exposures, rather than 

7 fitted acute intakes and we are not trying to 

8 do in the great majority of cases a best 

9 estimate. We are trying to do a claim and 

10 favorable estimate so that we ensure that we 

11 have assigned the highest internal dose or a 

12 higher internal dose, excuse me, than what the 

13 individual likely received. If we have to 

14 recommend that a claim does not qualify for 

15 compensation, we want to make sure that we 

16 have overestimated the internal dose. 

17 DR. MAKHIJANI: I don't see how you 

18 can overestimate the internal dose by 

19 underestimating the specific activity. I mean 

20 the amount of energy deposited directly 

21 proportional to the specific activity since 

22 you're assuming everything is U-234 you assign 
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1 the specific activity to the U-234 dose 

2 conversion factor. So if you're 

3 systematically underestimating the specific 

4 activity, you're going to be systematically 

5 underestimating the dose. 

6 MR. ROLFES: Yet the intakes are 

7 substantially overestimated by assuming a 

8 chronic exposure. 

9 DR. MAKHIJANI: In my opinion, you 

10 cannot balance specific activity by saying 

11 you're overestimating the intake. Then 

12 enrichment becomes irrelevant whether it's HEU 

13 or at what point do you draw the line? 

14 CHAIR CLAWSON: This is Brad again. 

15 I hate to -- I think this will have to wait 

16 for some of these. My main concern is I want 

17 to be able to see what this sampling plan will 

18 basically get down to because there are issues 

19 on both sides. For one of the things I know 

20 that Idaho actually sent product out to 

21 Fernald that I know is a lot, lot higher 

22 enrichment than what we've been discussing 
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1 here today. They were used into a feed, but I 

2 believe that this would be better served at a 

3 face-to-face where we could sit down and look 

4 at a little bit of the data integrity. 

5 So if we could kind of stay focused 

6 on this one, I don't know if it will be John 

7 or Arjun, but I'd like to be able to proceed 

8 on. 

9 DR. MAKHIJANI: Brad, I think John 

10 and I are done. I just had a little bit of 

11 supplement to John just to say that we're also 

12 sampling the plan between the stratification 

13 with the plants and the stratification of the 

14 period. We should be able to discover the 

15 density frequency of thorium monitoring and 

16 then, of course, it will be up to you to 

17 decide whether that is adequate and what kind 

18 of co-worker model is needed or whether 

19 there's insufficient data and a feasibility 

20 discussion. But that's the only thing I had 

21 to add. 

22 Harry's plan which I have again 
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1 sent out to everyone in the working group and 

2 Mark Rolfes. 

3 MR. ROLFES: I did receive it, 

4 Arjun. Thank you. 

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, I just sent 

6 it. 

7 DR. MAURO: Arjun, could everyone 

8 open up the Table 1 in Harry's writeup? 

9 That's to me the essence of what we're talking 

10 about. 

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: Table 1, let me 

12 just describe it to you for those who don't 

13 have it or maybe Harry can describe it. 

14 Harry, can you describe Table 1 in your 

15 writeup please? 

16 MR. ROLFES: Excuse me. This is 

17 Mark Rolfes. Arjun, if we could just wait a 

18 second so that I can get this to our 

19 contractors as well? 

20 DR. MAKHIJANI: Sure. 

21 MR. ROLFES: So we are all looking 

22 at this. This is the first time we have seen 
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1 this document. We haven't had an opportunity 

2 to review it. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: This is Ziemer. I 

4 just rechecked my May e-mail and we didn't get 

5 our document from Arjun actually. I think 

6 Brad -- 

7 DR. MAKHIJANI: Dr. Ziemer, this 

8 was not in May. The sampling plan I sent out 

9 at Redondo. My memorandum went out in May. 

10 The sampling plan was developed later 

11 internally as a result of that memorandum and 

I sent out Harry's document on November 4th 12 . 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Or September 4th 14 

15 while we were at Redondo Beach because we had 

16 that working group meeting and nobody had the 

17 document. And so I sent it out then. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

19 MR. MORRIS: This is Robert Morris. 

20 Why don't we take a ten minute break so we 

21 can get the e-mails moved to the right place 

22 and open then up? 
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1 CHAIR CLAWSON: Sounds fine with 

2 me. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: Do you want us to stay 

4 on the line? 

5 CHAIR CLAWSON: That or mute it for 

6 just a minute and we can get everything and go 

7 back. But give me a chance also to be able to 

8 make sure because I sent out Arjun's back on 

May 5th 9 to the rest of the work group. But 

10 he's right that these other documents came out 

11 in September. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: The table wasn't with 

that May 5th 13 one, yes. 

 CHAIR CLAWSON: Right, the May 5th 14 

15 one was just basically giving us kind of an 

16 outline of what they were sampling there. 

17 DR. MAKHIJANI: That's correct. 

18 The numbers are in Harry's memo which I sent 

19 out in September and described at the working 

20 group meeting. I gave you all a briefing on 

21 what's in that memo then. 

22 MR. ROLFES: This is Mark Rolfes 
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1 once again. I'm looking at this, and I 

2 haven't had the opportunity to even review 

3 this. This is the first time I've seen this 

4 document. I really can't even respond to the 

5 information that's contained within it. I 

6 don't know what the contents are. 

7 DR. MAKHIJANI: It was prepared 

8 primarily for the working group to decide what 

9 size of completeness investigation, just as 

10 an FYI. 

11 MR. ROLFES: Okay. 

12 CHAIR CLAWSON: Yes, Mark. What 

13 this was prepared for us for, you know, we've 

14 been looking -- as you know, at any site, we 

15 have data integrity issues and so forth and 

16 one of the things that came up in Fernald and 

17 back and forth like that was a question of 

18 some of the sampling plans that they have and 

19 this is why this was prepared and what I've 

20 asked Arjun to do just so that you understand 

21 somewhat and I thought that I'd have you 

22 involved in this is basically give us a sample 
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1 of what the strata and so forth would be able 

2 to do and what they'd be able to cover because 

3 I'll be right honest with you, too. This is 

4 just giving us a basic outline of what they're 

5 proposing to us. They have not gone out and 

6 done a lot of this so far. But I want to be 

7 able to have some way to be able to check and 

8 come to a better resolution of data integrity 

9 and so forth. 

10 If we do this or however we do 

11 this, it's not saying that this is exactly it 

12 or so forth. It's just giving us kind of a 

13 better feel for data integrity and so forth 

14 like that and this is what the sampling plan 

15 was for. 

16 MR. MORRIS: This is Robert Morris. 

17 Let's go back to fundamentals on why you 

18 write a sampling plan. If you can't agree on 

19 what you're trying to sample for then you 

20 won't get the right answer and NIOSH has not 

21 had a chance to look at that. That is step 

22 one on any data quality objective process. 
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1 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. Let's get 

2 back to another one, too. Let's question data 

3 integrity. If we have no questions on data 

4 integrity, then that's a wonderful thing. We 

5 can accept everything there is. But if we 

6 have a question, so what are we supposed to 

7 do? Throw it all out and just say you can't 

8 do it? 

9 MR. MORRIS: Have the conversation 

10 with all parties informed about what the 

11 objective of the sampling plan is. That is 

12 what EPA specifies in all data quality 

13 objective stuff and Harry can speak to that. 

14 DQO is the first step about what you want to 

15 find out. 

16 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. 

17 This is unfortunate. I guess I was under the 

18 assumption that everyone had a chance to look 

19 at basically this, Harry's writeup, especially 

20 Table 1, whereby Table 1 of the strata. It 

21 basically lists the different time periods and 

22 the different plants and the different job 
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1 categories that we plan to sample from and 

2 also identifies the number of samples 

3 expressed in terms of worker years we'd like 

4 to pull. And our objective was if everyone 

5 felt that this was a good starting point, this 

6 is never the end of this. It's just the 

7 beginning of the process. If this was a good 

8 starting point in order to start the graph 

9 samples from this strata, we would start to 

10 collect the data regarding completeness. That 

11 is, how complete are the records for Plant 1? 

12 How complete are the records for millwrights 

13 in 1954 to `67? In 1968 to `90? 

14 And I was hoping that out of this 

15 conversation we get a general sense that, yes, 

16 I guess this is a pretty good starting point 

17 and, by doing this, we would start to get a 

18 good sense of completeness and robustness. 

19 Can you do dose reconstruction with the data? 

20 Unfortunately, it sounds like that 

21 NIOSH has not had a chance to look at this 

22 particular strata table and I agree with Mark. 
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1 It leaves it a little bit short to be able to 

2 -- See, what we're hoping to do is to 

3 collectively agree, yes, this looks like a 

4 pretty good idea, but let's make sure that 

5 everybody agrees it's a good idea before we go 

6 forward with it and start spending money and 

7 time. And if it turns out that right now 

8 SC&A, we, feel that, yes, this is a good place 

9 to start to fulfill the sampling needs for 

10 reviewing an SEC petition. 

11 It sounds like though we would 

12 certainly benefit greatly if NIOSH could also 

13 feedback and let us know whether or not we are 

14 oversampling, whether or not there is some 

15 strata that probably need to be sampled that 

16 we didn't identify here. So I mean that was 

17 my objective of one of the things I was hoping 

18 to accomplish with this call. 

19 DR. MAKHIJANI: It is kind of 

20 unfortunate. I sent it out to the working 

21 group right then, all the members of the 

22 working group, and I was focused on getting it 
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1 to them as they were, basically, the decision 

2 was how many numbers of claims we are to pull 

3 and how much work you want to assign and how 

4 much time and budget you want to assign to 

5 cover a task that you have said you want done 

6 and it was my understanding that that was the 

7 main thing. 

8 Since the memo for stratification 

9 has been with the working group since May and 

10 I understood that from Mark and Brad that it 

11 was okay to go ahead and develop a plan that 

12 translated the strata into you have X-percent 

13 confidence in the results if you sample so 

14 many and Y-percent if you sample so many. And 

15 I saw the main object of Harry's memo as 

16 giving us a number and that the working group 

17 can decide what kind of resources it wants to 

18 devote to this. 

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: That is correct. 

20 In your memorandum basically you're laying it 

21 out and it's like me and Mark said and 

22 unfortunately in Redondo Beach we didn't have 
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1 this information either. The thing was that 

2 before we put anything to it we wanted to SC&A 

3 was to prepare us kind of sampling plan of 

4 what they thought was going to work the best 

5 and so that we'd be able to make our decision 

6 from there. This was Brad. 

7 This is basically what I'm coming 

8 to from what I'm hearing from NIOSH and their 

9 subcontractor that they want to be able to 

10 have time to be able to look at this and 

11 evaluate this more. Before we do anything 

12 more, is that correct, Mark? 

13 MR. ROLFES: Yes, Brad. This is 

14 Mark Rolfes and I don't see how we can have 

15 any kind of meaningful scientific discussion 

16 without having reviewed the information that 

17 we're going to be discussing. 

18 CHAIR CLAWSON: I know the feeling. 

19 I go through this quite often. You guys 

20 bring an awful lot of stuff to us. So I can 

21 understand wholeheartedly on this. But I 

22 guess one thing that I want to find out with 
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1 this call is to make sure that everybody has 

2 gotten both of these documents. You're a 

3 contractor yourself. It consists of two of 

4 them which was the memorandum and then that 

5 was also sent out, the sampling plan for the 

6 small Fernald completeness analysis that was 

7 prepared. 

8 MR. ROLFES: Right. This is Mark 

9 Rolfes. 

10 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. 

11 Let me say something to this. This is 

12 probably important. In the past when SC&A has 

13 been given a mandate to go forward with some 

14 action by the working group or by the Board we 

15 just moved so directly. 

16 However, as a result of experience 

17 we've gained when it comes to sampling plans 

18 whereby we would be accessing all these 

19 records, one of the things we learned from the 

20 NTS site was it was a good idea to collaborate 

21 with NIOSH when we design and implement these 

22 sampling plans because they have so much 
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1 familiarity with the records and therefore 

2 their participation in Board's activities on 

3 this nature would probably add value as we did 

4 on the Nevada test site when we went forward 

5 with sampling certain strata and that work was 

6 completed. It was very useful to have 

7 feedback from NIOSH regarding the nature of 

8 the records in each strata and where it might 

9 work and where it may fail and why. Having 

10 that kind of insight helped us develop a more 

11 effective plan. 

12 Normally, this is something that 

13 really that SC&A implements when the Board or 

14 the work group directs us. But in this case 

15 and I believe this to be true right now I 

16 think everyone would benefit by NIOSH looking 

17 at the strata, not so much the number of 

18 samples. The number of samples you collect 

19 from each strata is really a level of 

20 confidence that you would be able to make some 

21 statement regarding that information in that 

22 strata. But feedback from NIOSH would be 
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1 helpful in terms of whether or not their 

2 perspective on how -- we basically have 24 

3 strata. Whether or not the way we've laid 

4 this out will be insightful in terms of once 

5 we go ahead and start pulling samples from 

6 these strata, that was the reason why I 

7 thought getting some kind of feedback from 

8 NIOSH would be helpful. 

9 Anyway, whether or not we could 

10 hold off until we get some feedback from them 

11 on that, the way we've designed the strata or 

12 proceed at this point with starting to 

13 implement the program as we recommend, that's 

14 certainly the choice of the working group. 

15 CHAIR CLAWSON: Well, I'll have to 

16 talk with the other working group members. 

17 But at this time we're trying to make sure 

18 that also NIOSH is happy, the petitioners are 

19 happy and so forth like that. But as you said 

20 with the Nevada test site, we need to make 

21 sure that we are sampling the right ones and 

22 so forth like that. So I guess I'd asked the 
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1 other Board members what their feelings are on 

2 this. 

3 MR. PRESLEY: Brad. 

4 CHAIR CLAWSON: Yes. 

5 MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. 

6 CHAIR CLAWSON: Yes. 

7 MR. PRESLEY: As the chair of the 

8 NTS working group we had a sampling plan and a 

9 number of samples that SC&A looked at. On 

10 this thing, you're talking plant wide and 50 

11 percent. I mean, I'd like to see this thing 

12 looked into a little bit closer. It sounds to 

13 me like that there's a possibility of three or 

14 four years of work here for somebody before we 

15 could ever say, yes, the information is good, 

16 bad or indifferent. So I'd like to see this 

17 sampling plan looked at a whole lot closer 

18 before we can come back and make a final 

19 decision on it. 

20 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. 

21 What might be helpful is the number of strata 

22 that we've identified and the number of 
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1 samples per strata. Arjun, we made an 

2 estimate of the number of work hours per 

3 sample. 

4 DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. I was just 

5 going to say that. This is quite unlike the 

6 Nevada test site in terms of the amount of 

7 work, Mr. Presley. 

8 MR. PRESLEY: I think so. 

9 DR. MAKHIJANI: The Nevada test 

10 site involves a lot of work for each record 

11 because we had to go into the raw DOE and 

12 contractor files for each worker. In this 

13 case, most of the work with some exceptions 

14 it's very simplified because things have been 

15 compiled into an electronic database. 

16 We did a little sample run with the 

17 permission of Brad Clawson just to give you 

18 this information so you could make a decision. 

19 It thought about an hour or an hour and a 

20 half to compile the data for each worker and 

21 then you analyze it and sort it and do your 

22 analysis, but the data compilation here if we 
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1 do the, for instance, the smaller sampling 

2 plan of 275 workers, it would only be about a 

3 month and a half of person work, well, a month 

4 and a half or two months of person months of 

5 work. So we're certainly not talking years of 

6 work. We're talking a small number of months, 

7 not even one year. 

8 DR. MAURO: Two people working for 

9 a month. 

10 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. About that, I 

11 think is about right. That is what it will 

12 take to do this, maybe less. 

13 MS. BALDRIDGE: This is Sandra. I 

14 do have a concern about the timeliness of this 

15 whole process. I'm not sure if you're hearing 

16 me or not if I've stayed on mute or - 

17 CHAIR CLAWSON: We hear you. 

 MS. BALDRIDGE: At the October 24th 18 

19 meeting, Mr. Elliott announced that we would 

20 have a draft of a revision on part of the site 

21 profile and I was wondering if that's been 

22 received yet. He said three weeks from 
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October 24th 1 and my inquiries have not come up 

2 with a positive response to the presentation 

3 of that draft yet. 

4 MR. ROLFES: Sandra, this is Mark 

5 Rolfes. I would have to check the context of 

6 what he had indicated we would have. We have 

7 provided the working group with everything 

8 that we would use to reconstruct an 

9 individual's dose. These pieces of 

10 information are in white papers that would be 

11 incorporated into the Fernald technical basis 

12 documents. 

13 MS. BALDRIDGE: My concern about 

14 this is because he also said that even with 

15 the addition of exposure data to an 

16 individual's claim that those claims would not 

17 be reconsidered and the additional dose would 

18 not applied until the entire site profile had 

19 been revised. 

20 MR. ROLFES: That is correct. Once 

21 the site profile has been revised, a program 

22 evaluation report would be issued and NIOSH 
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1 would reconsider all claims where an 

2 individual had previously had a probability of 

3 causation equal to or less than, excuse me, 

4 less than 50 percent. 

5 MS. BALDRIDGE: So my concern is if 

6 documents are expected to be presented for 

7 consideration and review by the Board in three 

8 weeks and they haven't been received in 10 

9 months I think this is a real problem with 

10 timeliness being applied to the whole process, 

11 whether it be the SEC or the revision of site 

12 profile. So I don't know if that has been 

13 received at this point or has not, but 

14 possibly some of the Board members could check 

15 and see if they've received it. 

16 CHAIR CLAWSON: Thank you, Sandra. 

17 DR. MAURO: Brad, this is John 

18 Mauro. I think it's important for the work 

19 group and the Board to know that the plan that 

20 we've laid out here is designed to be 

21 completed in under 300 work hours and we would 

22 deliver it before the end of our contract. As 
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you know, our contracts will end December 1st 1 . 

2 So in effect where we are right now 

3 is we have a work plan. It has certain number 

4 of strata, certain number of samples, that we 

5 would pull from each strata and at the end of 

6 the process we'd be able to say something 

7 about the completeness of these strata and 

8 something about the completeness of -- and I 

9 guess you would say the adequacy of the data 

10 for doing dose reconstruction for workers in 

11 that strata. 

12 Right now, our plan would be if we 

13 were so authorized to proceed we would finish 

14 up this paper study and it is a paper study 

15 going into the electronic database before 

December 1st 16 and it would probably cost 

17 something on the order of under 300 work 

18 hours. 

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: My understanding 

20 was it was going to be somewhere between 250 

21 to 300 man hours. 

22 DR. MAURO: Right. 
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1 CHAIR CLAWSON: And I understand 

2 wholeheartedly, John, and I guess this is -- 

3 and please accept my apology. I'm a little 

4 bit frustrated because this is the second time 

5 we've tried to get this data out and 

6 unfortunately we haven't gotten it out. So I 

7 understand some of Sandra's frustration 

8 myself, too, and I'm also a little bit 

9 frustrated because I understand when your 

10 contract is coming due and I wanted to be able 

11 to try to get something put into place if 

12 anything did change before that happened. But 

13 I also understand Mark's issue with being able 

14 to make sure because they've been working on 

15 this technical database and so forth. 

16 So I guess my thing right now is I 

17 guess I need a consensus from the other 

18 working group members of what they would like 

19 to be able to proceed with and how they would 

20 like to be able to do it. So other Board 

21 members, if you could voice in on this, I 

22 would appreciate it because this is not my 
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1 decision to make. This is us as a working 

2 group to be able to make. Paul -- 

3 DR. ZIEMER: This is -- go ahead. 

4 CHAIR CLAWSON: I was going to say 

5 I was going to start off with Dr. Ziemer. 

6 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. I'm trying to 

7 understand the alternatives here because I 

8 just saw this for the first time. For some 

9 reason, I didn't get that earlier mailing at 

10 the time of the Redondo Beach meeting. But 

11 the 275 sample size alternative, does that 

12 correspond to -- how does that correspond to 

13 Table 2 or does it? 

14 CHAIR CLAWSON: That would be one 

15 percent was my understanding. A sample size 

16 of 25 percent cell is required to achieve a 

17 level of precision and I guess, John -- 

18 MR. CHMELYNSKI: This is Harry 

19 Chmelynski. Maybe I should answer that. 

20 CHAIR CLAWSON: Yes. Harry, why 

21 don't you take it? 

22 MR. CHMELYNSKI: Since I made the 
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1 table. John Mauro gave a good background on 

2 what we're trying to do here. So the focus, 

3 there are just two numbers in this table. We 

4 should look at the annual column in the row 

5 that says plus or minus 20 percent, down at 

6 the bottom right portion of the table, and the 

7 way I interpret this is if indeed there was an 

8 annual testing program, then we would have a 

9 frequency of one test per year. And if we 

10 wanted to estimate something at the level of 

11 one per year we would need a sample of 25 work 

12 years. That would give us what I call a plus 

13 or minus 20 percent at one sigma or a plus or 

14 minus 39 percent for a 95 percent confidence 

15 interval. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. I see that. 

17 MR. CHMELYNSKI: That's how you 

18 read that one cell and all the rest of the 

19 cells are the same. As you go to the left of 

20 the table, it gets easier because the counts 

21 are higher for the monthly and the weekly 

22 testing. The easy way to think of this is 
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1 just think of radiation counts. 

2 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. No, I'm just 

3 trying to -- I was trying to correlate the 

4 annual, monthly and weekly parts with what you 

5 had here and wasn't completely clear. I see 

6 now what you're saying. 

7 MR. CHMELYNSKI: So to the extent 

8 that we talked about John's earlier discussion 

9 where he talked about 1,000 worker years in a 

10 population, if we were do this sampling plan, 

11 we would come up with a statement and let's 

12 say it really was the annual frequency 

13 testing. We would come up with a statement 

14 that, roughly we got 400. At a minimum we 

15 have 400 annual tests done out of 1,000, which 

16 would be enough to say that we have a good 

17 coverage there. So we could go much higher on 

18 here and try to estimate that one better, but 

19 we don't need to do that. We just have to 

20 make sure it's well away from zero. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

22 CHAIR CLAWSON: And if I could 
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1 interject something now, too, one of the 

2 things that I wanted to try to do and I don't 

3 think that I have succeeded in this is every 

4 one of the site profiles that we have into and 

5 getting and bringing up to this. We got into 

6 data integrity. We got into several things 

7 and as Mr. Presley says, at the Nevada test 

8 site, we have several of these issues and so 

9 forth and it was coming near the end of 

10 everything and what I was trying to do as I 

11 was trying to bring these issues up at the 

12 front of the work group and to be able to try 

13 to come to a question to be able to get this 

14 taken care of up front. 

15 And I apologize, but it seems like 

16 this hasn't happened and a lot of this is 

17 because of trying to get information back and 

18 forth and that was my issue that I wanted to 

19 be able to do because data integrity and so 

20 forth like that is a big issue at every one of 

21 these sites. This is what I'm looking for for 

22 the work group to be able to do and what I 
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1 asked them to be able to do before we 

2 proceeded on with something and went from 

3 there, I wanted them to bring forth the 

4 information to us to be able to show us what 

5 the sampling plan would basically cover and 

6 how it would do it in these different strata 

7 as John portrayed and so forth like that. 

8 And he basically gave us two 

9 options there and one of them was, I believe, 

10 the 250 and the other one was a little over 

11 600. 

12 DR. MAURO: Right. 

13 CHAIR CLAWSON: He was saying that 

14 -- I believe you said that the 250 was 

15 somewhere between 250 to 300 man hours. 

16 DR. MAURO: Right. In other words, 

17 a little over a work hour per case that we 

18 download and, in effect that would achieve a 

19 level of precision of 25 percent. Bottom line 

20 is what would I feel would work for the strata 

21 we've identified, the 24 strata that we've 

22 identified, the sampling plan that would be 
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1 designed to achieve the 25 percent level of 

2 precision. So, in effect, we're talking about 

3 a 250 to 300 worker years of sample and it 

4 would be about a little under 300 work hours. 

5 We could put this off, the decision 

6 off, until a week. The way I see it is this. 

7 We will need two months to do this and 

8 deliver a draft report, paper study, on your 

9 shelf and that would bring us toward the end 

of November or December 1st 10 and that will be 

11 fine. But if we put off beyond, let's say, 

12 early October we really would not be able to 

13 finish this up before the end of the contract. 

14 So maybe we could put this -- if you'd like, 

15 certainly we could sit tight for a week and 

16 surely it's only a few pages that NIOSH may 

17 want to take a look at. 

18 And maybe we needed this discussion 

19 anyway to sort of get a little oriented. Now 

20 that we're sort of all on the same page you 

21 could see what we did and why we did it, take 

22 a look at the paperwork, there's a lot of 
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1 statistical analysis in here. But the bottom 

2 line is that we have 24 strata. We'd like to 

3 sample, in that 24 strata, a total of about 

4 270 worker years of records and download that 

5 into a database and then be able to make some 

6 statements regarding the percent of 

7 completeness of each of the strata and say 

8 something about the robustness of the data 

9 itself in that strata and prepare a paper 

10 report. 

11 We could sit tight a little bit, 

12 maybe sit for a week or so. Today is, what, 

the 15th 13 . But we would need a decision by the 

14 beginning of next month or else we really 

15 can't do this work. 

16 CHAIR CLAWSON: And I understand 

17 that, John, and this is a question to Ted 

18 there because basically as you know that any 

19 of these phone calls that we have or so forth 

20 or anything else like that are opened up to 

21 the public and so forth like that and I don't 

22 know if we have enough time to be able to get 
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1 that out on the -- to be able to make the 

2 proper notifications. 

3 Now you're right that we don't have 

4 to do this, but the Board is always taking 

5 this thing as having everything open so that 

6 everybody can see what we're doing, you know, 

7 fairly serious and so forth like that. I do 

8 realize that we don't have to do that. 

9 So this is my question. It comes 

10 down to something else, too. With NIOSH, and 

11 I'll ask Mark this, what do you feel that you 

12 need to be able to give us feedback on this 

13 paperwork or so forth? 

14 MR. ROLFES: Well, we would 

15 certainly need time to first off read the 

16 document since we just received it and also 

17 formulate any kind of response, if necessary. 

18 Without knowing the content of the document, 

19 I would be hesitant to say exactly how much 

20 time it would take us. I'd have to take a 

21 look and I know that I am pretty booked for 

22 the rest of the month. So to have the 
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1 opportunity to review this and formulate a 

2 response, it's going to be a matter of weeks 

3 at least. 

4 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. Ted, are you 

5 on the line? 

6 MR. KATZ: Yes, I'm on the line. 

7 CHAIR CLAWSON: Let me ask you this 

8 question. If we have to wait longer than we 

9 needed to on this for this contract and the 

10 contract changes or anything else like that, 

11 do we have a provision that we could still 

12 have SC&A give us a finished product or what 

13 do we need? I guess this is kind of my issue 

14 because I'm torn up with two different things, 

15 timeliness to the petitioners and I'm also 

16 tied up with the possibility of the contract 

17 change coming up in the year. 

18 MR. KATZ: It would be nice to get 

19 this done within the time frame that we 

20 already have for the contract for sure because 

21 then things get dicey after that. But just 

22 some clarification from Mark would be helpful 
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1 because, Mark, you're saying that you're 

2 pretty busy. But you're not the only one, I 

3 would hope, that could possibly review this. 

4 As far as your question, Brad, 

5 about how quickly could we reconstitute the 

6 work group by a phone meeting, I think we 

7 could do that pretty quickly. I mean we could 

8 get notice out on the -- again, we don't do a 

9 Federal Register notice. We just have to get 

10 the notice out on the web and through the 

11 listserv to the people who are interested in 

12 and Sandra is, of course, on the line. So she 

13 would know this is going on. So I think we 

14 could bring it back to work group pretty 

15 quickly for another phone meeting if that's 

16 the way we go. 

17 CHAIR CLAWSON: Right. Well, you 

18 know what. We've gone into this on both sides 

19 and I understand Mark Rolfes' concerns about 

20 it because we've had work groups before when 

21 they've brought brand new information to us 

22 and then it's very hard for us. 
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1 I apologize. I thought that all of 

2 this had been sent out because I had received 

3 it and so forth like that. I guess I should 

4 have followed up and made sure that everybody 

5 had received it, or not. But I wonder to what 

6 extent I have to follow up on a lot of this 

7 information, too. 

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: And I apologize, 

9 Brad. I sent it out to the working group in a 

10 hurry at Redondo Beach and I should have 

11 copied Mark and I didn't do it. 

12 CHAIR CLAWSON: Well, the only 

13 thing that I can say that we can do with this 

14 work group here because I understand Mark's 

15 issue with this because we deal with this, 

16 too, and they have to be able to have an 

17 opportunity to be able to look at this strata 

18 and so forth like that and I guess -- I'm 

19 looking towards my other working group members 

20 to be able to give feedback to me of which way 

21 they'd like to be able to proceed with this, I 

22 guess. And I guess I'd like to start with Dr. 
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1 Ziemer and see what his opinions are. 

2 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I think in 

3 principle I'd like to have SC&A proceed. I'm 

4 a little fuzzy, having seen this also for the 

5 first time in terms of the sample sizes and so 

6 on. 

7 I think as I understand Table 2 

8 that's pretty standard, just if you have the 

9 starting number how many samples you have. 

10 You can -- the precision numbers and the 

11 confidence intervals are pretty well set by 

12 the starting number. So I think those are 

13 probably all right. 

14 I would like some assurance that we 

15 have the right strata and, do these 24 

16 categories cover everything? Has anybody 

17 looked at that? 

18 CHAIR CLAWSON: Well, I have 

19 because I kind of -- in the initial form of 

20 this, one of my issues was, are we sampling 

21 the right people and so forth and in this 

22 Table 1 where they have one portion of it as 
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1 each one of the plants and then like the 

2 millwrights and mechanics, maintenance, 

3 laundry and security and so forth like that. 

4 I couldn't see any other areas that they could 

5 really sample. 

6 DR. ZIEMER: Do we know that those 

7 are the categories? I think, Arjun, you 

8 probably -- you looked at Fernald enough. Do 

9 their records sort by these titles? 

10 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, I actually 

11 haven't manipulated the electronic database. 

12 I think so. Harry actually did that while he 

13 was developing this. So Harry. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: If millwrights is one 

15 of the strata, can we -- I just want some 

16 assurance that (1) we can locate these and (2) 

17 we haven't left anybody out and then I'm 

18 trying to get a feel for -- I think the 275 or 

19 250 is kind of a minimum. I don't think that 

20 that is actually adequate. That's at a bare 

21 minimum to really answer the questions and I 

22 know, Harry or John, are we going to be in a 
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1 place -- after doing 275, are we going to be 

2 at point of saying, we can just barely answer 

3 the question? 

4 DR. MAURO: There is 25 percent 

5 data. Harry, I don't know. I'll give my 

6 common sense answer. Harry, maybe you can 

7 give more of a statistical answer. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: I know doing better is 

9 going to take longer. I don't want us to 

10 waste a lot of money and not be able to answer 

11 any questions. 

12 DR. MAURO: When I look at it, I 

13 look at it from the point of view of a 

14 sampling program where we get 25 percent level 

15 of accuracy. What that means is when we're 

16 through and we see that we pull these samples 

17 and we can make a statement that our best 

18 estimate is that 50 percent of the workers are 

19 -- based on the sample, we can say in terms of 

20 completeness in that strata, 50 percent were 

21 sampled in terms of completeness and we can 

22 say that with an uncertainty of 25 percent 
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1 which means that we can be pretty confident, a 

2 high level of certainty, that at least 40 

3 percent of the workers in that category, at 

4 least 40 percent, were sampled, if not more. 

5 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

6 DR. MAURO: And that's what we'd 

7 get out of the minimal case. That is the 250. 

8 I forget the exact number. 

9 DR. MAKHIJANI: Two seventy-five. 

10 DR. MAURO: Two seventy-five. It 

11 will give us at least 25 percent error. 

12 That's all it really means. It means that 

13 when we are done we're going to come up with 

14 an estimate of the percent of the workers that 

15 were sampled in that strata and we could say 

16 that with a 25 percent uncertainty which means 

17 on the low end. If it turned out to be we 

18 have 50 percent, we could say with a high 

19 degree of confidence well, at least it was 40 

20 percent. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

22 DR. MAURO: Fifty percent is best 
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1 estimate and it may even be higher and that's 

2 what we would get. And in my mind, that ain't 

3 bad. 

4 DR. ZIEMER: I think this probably 

5 is good enough for most of the categories. I 

6 just want to make sure that we reach a point 

7 where we're saying, we should have done it 

8 differently. 

9 DR. MAKHIJANI: Maybe Harry ought 

10 to respond to Dr. Ziemer. 

11 MR. CHMELYNSKI: Yes, I think that 

12 the -- first off, there was a question about 

13 the strata. I did get these by going through 

14 and taking a dump of the database and looking 

15 at the most frequent identifiable -- 

16 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So these are 

17 the job categories sorted by what you're 

18 saying as -- 

19 MR. CHMELYNSKI: Yes. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Very good. Okay. 

21 MR. CHMELYNSKI: Now not everybody 

22 has a plant and not everybody has a job 
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1 category and it's a lot messier than you think 

2 when you get into it. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. Do you think 

4 this covers most of the people? 

5 MR. CHMELYNSKI: Yes. 

6 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. I just wanted 

7 to -- 

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: Dr. Ziemer, in 

9 practice, what I think is going to happen is 

10 because there are people who go from plant to 

11 plant and there are quite a few of them and 

12 because job designations change over time, the 

13 actual stratification in terms of job 

14 designations in plants are not going to be as 

15 dense as being able to give you the flat 

16 numbers, you know, how many worker years did 

17 people work or how many worker weeks did they 

18 work if they were on weekly monitoring or 

19 monthly and what proportion of the time were 

20 they monitored and how confident are we in 

21 that number. I think that's going to be the 

22 most firm number. 
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1 And that in a way allows you -- the 

2 most important determination is, among those, 

3 if you can identify those who had the greatest 

4 worker exposure potential, say, going by the 

5 frequency of monitoring for weekly monitored 

6 workers or monthly monitored workers, you're 

7 in reasonably good shape. 

8 Now if the workers who were on 

9 weekly monitoring were being monitored weekly, 

10 then there may be a kind of different set of 

11 issues that arise. So I think the monitoring 

12 frequency result will be more robust than the 

13 job type results. 

14 CHAIR CLAWSON: I have one question 

15 for Harry here if you don't mind me 

16 interrupting, Dr. Ziemer, and that's this PROD 

17 is that for production workers or what? 

18 MR. CHMELYNSKI: I'm not sure. 

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: That's Number 15. 

20 MR. CHMELYNSKI: That's what the 

21 code was in the database and I couldn't find a 

22 good explanation for what it meant. That's 
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1 why I put a question mark on it. 

2 DR. MAKHIJANI: PROD would be 

3 production. 

4 MR. CHMELYNSKI: I assumed that but 

5 I couldn't verify it. 

6 CHAIR CLAWSON: I just wanted to 

7 make sure because the only question I had on 

8 this that I was going to bring up is we have 

9 everybody in there except the actual 

10 production workers themselves. So I took it 

11 as that was being it. 

12 Also what's this PLP down here that 

13 has an asterisk out by it? I didn't -that's 

14 just the plant labor pool. So that's going to 

15 -- 

16 MR. CHMELYNSKI: On several 

17 records, PLP were identified as plant labor 

18 pool. 

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. 

20 MR. CHMELYNSKI: Anywhere I saw 

21 that that's what I took it to be. 

22 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. I just 
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1 wanted to make sure because in looking at this 

2 to me and understand what they have provided 

3 to you is exactly what I asked them to because 

4 one of our questions is, is that we wanted to 

5 be able to have a spectrum of different job 

6 categories and in a lot of these areas there's 

7 going to be a lot of different groups that are 

8 kind of going to be put under the maintenance 

9 program or so forth. There may be pipe 

10 fitters or whatever else like that. But that 

11 just falls under these categories. 

12 I guess where I'm at now is what do 

13 we want to do. Do we want to postpone this or 

14 do we want to get them going? Because one of 

15 my issues is exactly like what Dr. Ziemer was 

16 saying. They gave me what their minimum of 

17 this would be for a sampling plan because I 

18 don't want to waste time. I don't want to 

19 waste money. But I need to be able to have a 

20 good feeling for what they have and it looks 

21 like what they've suggested to me I've been 

22 satisfied with and I'm happy with. But the 
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1 thing is I need to find out from the rest of 

2 the working group what you'd like to be able 

3 to do because to me this is basically just a 

4 generalized oversized sampling plan and one of 

5 my questions was okay, we get down the road 

6 here a ways and we come to find out that we 

7 have three or four groups that are not going 

8 to work and it's like John has explained to 

9 me. He says, if we get into this and when we 

10 get down the road and it has something that is 

11 calling out saying we have different issues in 

12 two of these strata or whatever we want to 

13 call them, he says then we can reevaluate from 

14 here. But this is going to give you a good 

15 starting point to where it will be able to 

16 give you a better feel for what the data 

17 integrity is on this. 

18 And this was a whole bottom line of 

19 what -- and correct me if I'm wrong, John. 

20 But this is what our starting basis was for 

21 was to be able to perform this. 

22 DR. MAURO: Yes, Brad. In fact, 
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1 this is not meant to be the be-all, end-all. 

2 The idea is we have to start somewhere and we 

3 used our judgment to this is how we dive in. 

4 It's not that. In my opinion, we can get an 

5 awful lot out of it at a relatively small 

6 cost, namely about 200 or 300 work hours in 

7 two months, and unfortunately the real world 

8 is until you dive into the data and start 

9 swimming in it and looking at it and holding 

10 it up and turning it around, you don't really 

11 learn exactly. 

12 And you're right. It may turn out 

13 that we're going to find out a lot of things 

14 when we move through this process and we may 

15 have to shift direction a little bit and that 

16 will unfold in front of us. But in my mind, 

17 this is a very good place to start. 

18 CHAIR CLAWSON: Excuse me. Dr. 

19 Ziemer, go ahead. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Well, the only other 

21 comment I was going to make, I think that in 

22 terms of Table 1, I think perhaps Mark's 
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1 people could evaluate that pretty quickly and 

2 see if they think the subpopulations or 

3 whatever the term is that's going to be used 

4 here are correct. I think Table 2 is a pretty 

5 much straight statistical table. It's the 

6 white marble/black marble in a bag kind of 

7 approach. 

8 CHAIR CLAWSON: Dr. Ziemer, take it 

9 for what it's worth, but when this was sent 

10 out to me, basically I couldn't see any other 

11 areas because this is just a basic overview in 

12 Table 1 of the covered people. You know, we 

13 have the administrative people, the service 

14 people, and it gives an overall and there is 

15 going to be a lot of them that are going to be 

16 lumped into it. 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

18 CHAIR CLAWSON: And I understand 

19 NIOSH. We're not expecting them to respond to 

20 this and say that this is all conclusive or 

21 anything else like this. 

22 My personal feeling is, if we can 
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1 get started on this and be able to have this 

2 to be able to look at I think down the road, 

3 you know, after NIOSH would be able to look at 

4 what the results of this and so forth and out 

5 that they'd be able to say, maybe what we need 

6 to do is break this maybe Number 15 into some 

7 subgroups or something like that to be able to 

8 give us a better idea. I don't think this is 

9 the end of it. 

10 DR. ZIEMER: I'm okay on that part 

11 and I think it would behoove us to move ahead 

12 on it. I think in fairness to NIOSH, like any 

13 other documents, we should allow them an 

14 opportunity to respond to this in the sense 

15 that, do they have any issues with how the 

16 jobs are categorized, do they have any issues 

17 with how one would actually sample this. You 

18 know NIOSH I think could also say, we don't 

19 think that's needed to do this because we 

20 believe our approach will cover all the folks 

21 anyway, and I think that would be a fair 

22 response as well. 
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1 But I think what we're trying to do 

2 is achieve and assure ourselves that there is 

3 not some subgroup in there that is not treated 

4 appropriately and if this helps us get at that 

5 answer then I think that's probably a good 

6 thing. But, in fairness, NIOSH has to have a 

7 chance, I think, to react to this and perhaps 

8 advise us if we are going to pursue this is 

9 there something we've missed. As Arjun said, 

10 they're more familiar with the database anyway 

11 and maybe they could help us streamline this 

12 in some way. 

13 MR. ROLFES: Dr. Ziemer, this is 

14 Mark Rolfes. Yes, we would certainly 

15 appreciate the opportunity to both read and 

16 respond to this. 

17 MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. 

18 I think it needs to be done. I've worked 

19 with sampling plans for the last 40 years and, 

20 as broad as this is and as small a number of 

21 samples that are going to be looked at, the 

22 chance of getting either high samples or low 
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1 samples are I think -- you know you can get 

2 those and that would really make this thing 

3 biased one way or the other. I would rather 

4 have somebody look at this thing and see if 

5 it's really something that's conclusive that 

6 we could use or not before we spend that kind 

7 of time and money. 

8 CHAIR CLAWSON: And I'd agree with 

9 this, too. But also, this is Brad speaking 

10 again, if they come back with this and I would 

11 like them to be able to specifically say, if 

12 this will not work, how are we going to be 

13 able to bring this question to an end. This 

14 is part of the thing. 

15 What I was trying to do with this 

16 sampling plan and I agree with you, Bob, I was 

17 trying to get the bare minimum bang for our 

18 buck to be able to bring some of these 

19 questions to an end and me and you have been 

20 on the Nevada Test Site and we've been trying 

21 to come to conclusions on an awful lot of 

22 stuff. But I do agree that NIOSH has to be 
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1 able to have the opportunity to go forth from 

2 there. I guess what are your feelings on it, 

3 Phil, and then we'll make a decision from 

4 there. 

5 MR. ROLFES: Brad, this is Mark 

6 Rolfes. 

7 CHAIR CLAWSON: Yes. 

8 MR. ROLFES: If we could have maybe 

9 ten minutes for a comfort break, that would be 

10 much appreciated. 

11 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. 

12 MR. ROLFES: Is that okay with 

13 everyone? 

14 CHAIR CLAWSON: That would be 

15 wonderful. 

16 MR. ROLFES: Okay. I guess we'll 

17 stay on the line. 

18 CHAIR CLAWSON: Yes, we'll just 

19 meet it and we'll come back in 10 minutes. 

20 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Great. Thank 

21 you. 

22 CHAIR CLAWSON: Off the record. 
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1 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

2 matter went off the record at 12:06 p.m. and 

3 resumed at 12:17 p.m.) 

4 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. Well, 

5 basically, I think where we last left off I 

6 guess we have to come to a conclusion of what 

7 we want to be able to do with this, if we're 

8 satisfied with what we've got and want to 

9 proceed with this or do we want to wait and 

10 hold off and if that's the case, how much time 

11 are we looking at. I guess I'm looking for 

12 the other Board members to be able to put 

13 their feelings in. 

14 MR. PRESLEY: Brad, I'd like to see 

15 -- go ahead and have NIOSH look at this as 

16 quick as they possibly can and then if we can, 

17 go ahead and do the sampling. That way they 

18 have it sitting in the package in case there's 

19 an exchange in contractors. 

20 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. Well, it's 

21 kind of a consensus in the respect that 

22 everybody -- 
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1 DR. ZIEMER: This is Ziemer. I 

2 think that this is part of the ongoing and 

3 part of the closure package for the Fernald 

4 work. I believe that SC&A will have, 

5 possibly, some extension. John told us last 

6 time up through December to close out things 

7 in any event. Is that still okay, John? 

8 DR. MAURO: Yes, we're good right 

up to December 1st 9 and as I indicated, if we 

10 begin work on this next week or the week 

11 after, we'll still be okay and be able to 

12 deliver the report. So certainly we have a 

13 week or so where we could sort of sit tight 

14 until we hear back from any feedback from 

15 NIOSH. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: But Mark said he 

17 might, this is Ziemer again, need a little 

18 more time than that. 

19 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

20 MR. ROLFES: That's correct. Like 

21 I said earlier, this is Mark Rolfes, I am 

22 pretty much booked for the rest of the month. 
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1 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. So basically 

2 I guess what I need from you is I need to get 

3 a tentative lead date of when do we think we 

4 could receive something. 

5 MR. ROLFES: Well, I couldn't even 

6 guess. I don't know what's in the document 

7 yet. So I haven't had the opportunity to even 

8 review what has been sent. So I can try to 

9 get back to you in a couple of days to give 

10 you an idea of how long it will take for us to 

11 do something. 

12 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. I guess if 

13 you could courtesy call the working group on 

14 that and the only thing that I can see that we 

15 can do is until we hear back from NIOSH and 

16 gives us basically a date, then we'll have to 

17 reconvene from there. We do have a Fernald 

work group scheduled for October 28th, 18 I 

19 believe, coming up and so I hope it's before 

20 then but we can give the go-ahead or whatever. 

21 But, Mark, if you could give us, 

22 the working group and so forth, a heads-up of 
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1 the time frame that you could request from us 

2 and look at that and if there are any areas 

3 that you feel that need to be changed or so 

4 forth like that. How would you like to 

5 proceed with this? Would you like to just get 

6 a conference call together again or just, 

7 what? 

8 MR. KATZ: Brad, this is Ted Katz. 

9 Can I just interject here? 

10 CHAIR CLAWSON: Sure. 

11 MR. KATZ: Can I make just a 

12 suggestion that we -- why don't we book a 

13 conference call, try to book one, within the 

14 time frame that John Mauro specified, in other 

15 words, before the end of the month? If we 

16 could just book a conference call for an hour 

17 or two hours or what have you, that will give 

18 -- Mark will have a chance to look at this and 

19 see how much work it's really going to take 

20 for him and others in that team to develop a 

21 response and it may be that they find that it 

22 doesn't take that much and they will be able 
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1 to fit it in and we could get this done within 

2 time and not -- 

3 CHAIR CLAWSON: I guess, yes. I'm 

4 looking at the calendar and I'm wondering what 

would -- it's the 15th 5 today and I'm looking at 

26th 6 is a Friday morning. That would kind of 

7 work best for me. That would give them two 

8 weeks. Could we tentatively shoot for that or 

9 do we have other people that have problems 

10 with that date? 

11 MR. ROLFES: I may be conflicted 

the week of 21st through the 30th 12 of September. 

13 MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. 

 I have a problem from the 25th, 26th or 24th 14 , 

25th, 26th 15 . I'm already pre-committed those 

16 days. 

17 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. 

18 MR. PRESLEY: Now the next Monday, 

the 29th and the 30th 19 , I'm free. I'm back at 

20 work. 

 MR. KATZ: Mark, was the 30th 21 a 

22 possibility? 
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1 MR. ROLFES: I will be conflicted 

2 during that day. 

 MR. KATZ: Or October 1st 3 ? 

 MR. ROLFES: The 1st 4 would likely 

5 be the earliest that I would be able to have a 

6 meaningful discussion unless it's possible, 

7 this is wishful thinking, that we could do 

8 something by the end of this week. However, I 

9 would be hesitant to offer that without having 

10 the opportunity to -- 

11 MR. KATZ: It may be that you're 

12 looking to -- you said you have a lot of work. 

13 But on the other hand, if you don't have a 

lot of work, then the 19th 14 , does that work for 

15 other members of the work group? 

16 CHAIR CLAWSON: What did you say 

17 now? 

18 MR. KATZ: That would be this 

19 Friday. Mark's suggesting he might have -- be 

able to -- this Friday is the 19th 20 of 

21 September. 

22 CHAIR CLAWSON: That would be fine 
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1 with me. 

2 MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. 

3 I'll try to be there. 

4 DR. ZIEMER: We're talking about 

Friday morning, the 19th 5 because I'm going to 

6 be on the road most of the day Friday, but 

7 maybe in the morning I might be okay. 

8 CHAIR CLAWSON: I understand what 

9 we're trying to do here, Ted, but let me 

10 interject something here, too. If we -- is 

11 any of the working group that has a serious 

12 issue with this besides being able to allow 

13 NIOSH to be able to review it and so forth? 

14 Because one of my questions is if we're all 

15 fine with the sampling plan and want to 

16 proceed on and if NIOSH doesn't have a serious 

17 issue with it, why couldn't we just, with 

18 their recommendation back or so forth, if we 

19 got the consensus of the work group, could we 

20 not proceed on with the sampling plan? 

21 MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. 

22 I have no problem with that, once NIOSH has 
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1 had a chance to look at it. If they okay it 

2 and say that we can, then I'll say let her 

3 rip. 

4 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. What about 

5 you, Phil? 

6 MR. SCHOFIELD: That sounds like a 

7 good idea to me. 

8 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. Dr. Ziemer. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: I didn't understand 

10 what Bob Presley said. If NIOSH says it's 

11 okay, then let her rip. I think you're saying 

12 to go ahead before NIOSH -- 

13 MR. PRESLEY: No. 

14 CHAIR CLAWSON: What I'm saying, 

15 Dr. Ziemer, is if NIOSH doesn't have any 

16 serious issues or so forth like that or any 

17 serious changes or anything else like that. 

18 What I'm trying to do is get all the working 

19 group to be able to say yea or nay if they 

20 want to be able to go ahead, after NIOSH has 

21 had their opportunity to review it. If they 

22 don't have any serious issues, I see no reason 
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1 that we really have to do another Board call 

2 to find out the consensus with it. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: If there are no 

4 issues, no. I'm okay with that. 

5 CHAIR CLAWSON: Right. So I was 

6 trying to make this so we're not tying up so 

7 many different people's work. If that's all 

8 right with -- do you understand what I'm 

9 trying to say there, Ted? 

10 MR. KATZ: Yes. No, that was 

11 actually an alternative I was going to spit 

12 out, exactly what you suggested. If that 

13 works, that seems fine. 

14 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay, and what I'd 

15 like to -- 

16 DR. ZIEMER: Excuse me. 

17 CHAIR CLAWSON: I would just like 

18 to be able to get a consensus from you, from 

19 the members of the working group, because I 

20 have a message from Mark that he had a couple 

21 of little questions but they weren't anything 

22 serious with the sampling plan and he had no 
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1 problem with it. But if I could get the 

2 consensus from the rest of the work group, 

3 then we could just contend with me to be able 

4 to give the approval to be able to proceed on. 

5 But it comes down to NIOSH will still have 

6 the opportunity to be able to go through this 

7 and so forth. And if they do have some 

8 serious issues, then we could reschedule 

9 another conference call or whatever we needed 

10 to be able to do to have them bring up what 

11 their issues where and so forth. 

12 MR. KATZ: Brad, this is Ted. And 

13 what we need then is we do need sort of date 

14 certain for when we will know from NIOSH 

15 whether they will have substantial issues or 

16 not or when they'll have a response so SC&A 

17 can go forward with benefit of whatever it is 

18 that they might have. 

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: Right, and that's 

20 the thing. I guess I was going to give Mark 

21 as much opportunity. What I was looking at is 

22 if Mark was able to come back to us and say, 
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1 well, you know what? We've looked at this. We 

2 don't see any real big issues and so forth. 

3 There may be a need to be a tweak down the 

4 line, then we wouldn't have to go to get the 

5 whole work group back together and SC&A and so 

6 forth. We could just proceed from there. 

7 What's NIOSH's feeling on this? I 

8 guess Mark. 

9 MR. ROLFES: I can't commit us to 

10 anything without knowing what the document 

11 says unfortunately. Like I said, I will do my 

12 best to get back to you within two days and we 

13 will plan from there. 

14 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. So, Ted, how 

15 do you feel we should proceed with this? 

16 MR. KATZ: If we hear back from 

17 Mark in two days, that will give us a general 

18 sense of whether there are large issues or 

19 whether there is just tweaking and 

20 contributions to be made and, if it's the 

21 latter, then maybe in two days, we'll also get 

22 from Mark, I assume then, a date for when that 
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1 information will come. If they are big 

2 issues, then we'll know we'll need to book 

3 another work group meeting. 

4 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. 

5 MR. KATZ: We'll start on that as 

6 soon as we know. 

7 CHAIR CLAWSON: Let me ask SC&A. 

8 Is that all right with you, John? 

9 DR. MAURO: This is John. Yes, 

10 that's fine. We'll just sit tight for a few 

11 days and wait to hear back from you by the end 

12 of the week. I presume we don't do anything 

13 until we do hear back, though. 

14 CHAIR CLAWSON: I would hold off 

15 until we hear back from NIOSH. 

16 DR. MAURO: You would. So in 

17 effect we either will be given the green light 

18 to at least begin work by Friday or by Monday. 

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: We can't guarantee 

20 that. That's up to NIOSH, what issues they 

21 have. If Friday or whatever Mark says, you 

22 know, we have real large issues or we need 
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1 more time, we'll just have to decide from 

2 there, John. I can't give you the green light 

3 until NIOSH has the opportunity to be able to 

4 have their responses and so forth. 

5 DR. MAURO: No problem. We'll just 

6 sit tight and wait to hear back. 

7 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. So I guess, 

8 Ted and other members of the working group and 

9 everybody that's on this phone call, my thing 

10 is that we're going to wait for NIOSH to be 

11 able to respond to it if possible as soon as 

12 they can. If they do get back to us in a few 

13 days and they have issues or they don't have 

14 issues, then we'll deem another working group 

15 and I'll send out an email going forth on that 

16 if that's all right with everybody. 

17 MR. PRESLEY: Bob Presley. Sounds 

18 good to me. 

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: I'm good. This is 

21 Ziemer. 

22 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. Phil. 
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1 MR. SCHOFIELD: That sounds good to 

2 me. 

3 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. So I'll keep 

4 in contact with you, Ted, and, Mark, when you 

5 do get an opportunity to respond to us and so 

6 forth like that, I'll be waiting for your 

7 comments and I understand you can't comment or 

8 give us a date until you've had an opportunity 

9 to be able to look down at it and go from 

10 there. 

11 MR. ROLFES: I'll make sure that I 

12 get everything that I can to you as soon as 

13 possible. I certainly do acknowledge that the 

14 timeliness issue is an important issue to 

15 NIOSH and also to members of the Advisory 

16 Board. I want to make sure that that's 

17 expressed, that we are trying to address 

18 things the best we can in a timely manner. 

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: I understand. We 

20 get into this quite often and so forth. 

21 Sandra, we'll try to keep you 

22 apprised of what's going on with this and let 
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1 you know what comes forth from this. Also, 

2 too, as soon as we do get a copy of this that 

3 has cleared the Privacy Act, we'll try to send 

4 you a copy of that, too. 

5 MR. KATZ: One other question that 

6 I did have. It's more of an administrative 

7 thing. Do the Advisory Board members -- I 

8 know you have access to the O: drive to review 

9 documents. Do you have the ability to add 

10 documents to the O: drive? 

11 CHAIR CLAWSON: No. 

12 MR. KATZ: No, you don't. 

13 CHAIR CLAWSON: No. 

14 MR. KATZ: Okay. I was just going 

15 to possibly propose that as an alternate 

16 method, so that we ensure that everyone is 

17 getting the same documents for discussion for 

18 future working group meetings. 

19 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. This is 

20 nothing critical but I still have a heck of a 

21 time with the O: drive. I get kicked out 

22 occasionally back and forth. It's kind of a 
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1 continuous thing going on there. So that 

2 one's kind of a hard one and I understand 

3 that. 

4 MR. KATZ: This is Ted speaking. 

5 Certainly if people can provide me with 

6 documents we can get things on the O: drive. 

7 So please do. Whenever you want to use the O: 

8 drive, certainly provide the documents. I'll 

9 get those to OCAS and they can mount them on 

10 the O: drive and also just going forward, 

11 please if you have documents that a work group 

12 needs and all the related parties involved 

13 with the work group, if you would get them to 

14 me, I can also help make certain that 

15 everybody has these documents in advance and 

16 we don't run into this kind of sort of snafu 

17 at the last moment. 

18 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. Well, I 

19 guess at this point we'll wait for NIOSH to 

20 respond to us and, are there any other 

21 questions that need to brought forth or 

22 anything that needs to be aired while we have 
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1 everybody on the phone? 

2 John, do you understand kind of 

3 where we're going for sure? 

4 DR. MAURO: Yes. Absolutely. I 

5 understand. We're just going to not take any 

6 actions until we hear back from you. 

7 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. 

8 MR. PRESLEY: I'll wait on your 

9 thing. This is Bob Presley. 

10 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. But I want 

11 to make sure with the group that if NIOSH does 

12 respond to me and that they say they don't 

13 have any major issues with this that I'm given 

14 consensus as the working group chair to be 

15 able to authorize SC&A to be able to proceed 

16 on. Do any of you have a problem with that? 

17 DR. ZIEMER: No objection. Ziemer. 

18 MR. PRESLEY: Just let us know. 

19 This is Bob Presley. Just let us know what 

20 you're doing. 

21 CHAIR CLAWSON: I'll send you a 

22 copy of the letters and so forth and also what 
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1 I send to John and so forth. 

2 MR. PRESLEY: Thank you. 

3 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay? 

4 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

5 MR. SCHOFIELD: Sounds good, Brad. 

6 CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. I guess that 

7 ends this Fernald work group. I appreciate 

8 everybody's participation. I apologize for 

9 the confusion that we had. I thought it was 

10 all taken care of before we got there and 

11 we'll just wait to hear and go from there if 

12 that's all right, Ted? 

13 MR. KATZ: Right. Thank you, 

14 everybody. 

15 CHAIR CLAWSON: We'll be ending 

16 this conference call then. Thank you. 

17 (Whereupon, at 12:34 p.m., the 

18 above-entitled matter was concluded.) 

19 

20 

21 

22