THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 


PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 


CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 


NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 


convenes the 


WORKING GROUP MEETING 


ADVISORY BOARD ON 


RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 


DAY ONE 


ABRWH WORKING GROUP MEETING
 

The verbatim transcript of the Working Group 


Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 


Worker Health held at the Logan Airport Marriott, 


Boston, Massachusetts, on February 27, 2006. 

 

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C O N T E N T S
 

February 27, 2006 


WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 


DR. LEW WADE, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 


ROCKY FLATS DISCUSSION 


ISSUE ONE: MDA VALUES 15 


ISSUE TWO: SUPER-S 17 


ISSUE NINE: DATA INTEGRITY 63 


COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 120 

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TRANSCRIPT LEGEND
 

The following transcript contains quoted material. Such 


material is reproduced as read or spoken. 


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


an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 


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


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


word(s) when reading written material. 


-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 


of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 


reported. 


-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 


the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 


available. 


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


"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 


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


without reference available. 


-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 


failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 

 

 

4

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


(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 


BOARD MEMBERS
 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
 

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D. 


Senior Science Advisor 


National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 


Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 


Washington, DC 


MEMBERSHIP
 

GIBSON, Michael H. 


President 


Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union 


Local 5-4200 


Miamisburg, Ohio 


GRIFFON, Mark A. 


President 


Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc. 


Salem, New Hampshire 


MUNN, Wanda I. 


Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired) 


Richland, Washington 


PRESLEY, Robert W. 


Special Projects Engineer 


BWXT Y12 National Security Complex 


Clinton, Tennessee 

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PARTICIPANTS
 

ALBERG, JEANETTE, SEN. ALLARD 


BEHLING, HANS, SC&A 


BOLLOR, CAROLYN, CONG. UDALL 


BUCHANAN, RON, SC&A 


BURNS, JOHN, ORAU 


DEMAIORI, TONY, USW 


FALK, ROGER, ORAU 


FITZGERALD, JOSEPH, SC&A 


GLOVER, SAM, NIOSH 


HILLER, DAVID, SEN. SALAZAR 


HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS 


HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 


JESSEN, KARIN, ORAU 


KATZ, TED, NIOSH 


KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL 


LANGSTED, JIM, ROCKY FLATS 


LIPSZTEIN, JOYCE, SC&A 


LITTLE, CRAIG, MFG, INC. 


LOPEZ, TERESA, ORAU 


MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A 


MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 


MCDOWELL-BOYER, LAURA, ORAU 


MEYER, BOB, MFG, INC. 


NETON, JIM, NIOSH 


ROBINSON, AL, ORAU 


RUTHERFORD, LAVON, OCAS 


SHARFI, MUTTY, MJW CORP. 


STEMPFLEY, DAN, ORAU 


SUNDIN, DAVE, NIOSH 


THOMPSON, JENNIFER, USW 


ULSH, BRANT, NIOSH 


WORDER, AMY, CONG. BEAUPREZ 

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P R O C E E D I N G S
 

(1:45 p.m.) 


WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS
 

DR. LEWIS WADE
 

MR. GRIFFON: Lew, we’re ready to begin if you wanted to 


say a few words first. 


DR. WADE (by telephone): Yes, thank you. We’re just 


resuming a working group call. This is a working group 


of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health. My 


name is Lew Wade, and I generally serve as the Designated 


Federal Official for the Advisory Board. As I’m not able 


to be in Boston for this meeting of the working group, 


I’ve asked Liz Homoki-Titus to take on the roles and 


responsibilities of the designated federal official, and 


she’s graciously agreed. 


Just to set the tone this is a working group that looks 


at issues related to site profile reviews as well as 


individual dose reconstruction reviews and procedures 


reviews. Today, the working group is addressing itself 


to two site profile reviews. This morning they worked 


very hard, and I think made a great deal of progress 


concerning the Y-12 site profile and its review, and this 


afternoon is devoted to the Rocky Flats site profile and 


its review. 


What makes these two discussions of site profiles 

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particularly important and timely is in both cases we’re 


looking at SEC petitions that are active concerning the 


sites. It’s the Board’s desire to see issues raised in 


the site profiles resolved to the degree possible before 


the Board has to take up and vote on an SEC petition. 


It is certainly NIOSH’s intention to present the Rocky 


Flats SEC petition recommendation to the Board prior to 


its April 25th, 26th and 27th face-to-face Board meeting 


scheduled for Denver, Colorado. The Board has also 


scheduled a call of the full Board for 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 


p.m. on March 14th . So this working group that normally 


looks at site profile issues is continuing to do that but 


with special emphasis on those issues that can be 


identified as being particularly pertinent to the Board’s 


deliberations on the SEC petition. 


There’s been work done already towards this end, and I’ll 


turn it over to Liz to make any comments she might and 


then to the able Chair of the working group, Mark 


Griffon. But that’s what we’re here to do. The working 


group will continue tomorrow, but tomorrow starting at 


9:00 o’clock it will be dealing with issues related to 


individual dose reconstruction reviews and possibly 


procedures reviews. So just to set the stage, Liz, 


anything you would like to say? 


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I just want to remind everyone again 

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that if you have legal questions, they should be 


addressed to Emily as I’m here in the position of DFO; 


otherwise, I’ll turn it over to Mark, who I believe wants 


to give a summary of the Y-12 discussion briefly. 


MR. GRIFFON: Or try. Yeah, I’ll start off and try to be 


brief with this because I know we want to get right into 


Rocky, but I thought it would be useful to go through Y12, sort of the action items from what we discussed this 


morning. And if I miss any, certainly feel free to chime 


in, those who are still here. 


Going through this in order, with regard to the data 


validation question, I think we had an action that 


NIOSH/ORAU are going to pursue this question of bioassay 


logbooks further and see as to whether they can obtain 


any and how best to use that to check the reliability of 


the CER database with the Y-12 database. 


Action two is to look at the broader data view -- am I 


using the right term here? Data view image capture -- or 


Delta view, I’m sorry, Delta view, to look at the broader 


set of Delta view images to consider all the uranium data 


or to see if there’s other, are there more uranium data 


since that was a source based on other nuclides other 


than uranium. So they were going to consider other 


uranium data in there and to see whether it fits into the 


current coworker model, whether the current coworker 

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model is bounding of that data. 


Item three, action three is the 6,000 page -- and I’m not 


sure I specifically listed this or mentioned this as an 


action, but Mel Chew presented a spreadsheet analysis for 


the 6,000 pages that he had put together. I think it was 


mainly for the internal side of things. And I was 


wondering if that could be made available to the Board or 


SC&A or both. It seems like it, I guess with the 


understanding that it’s total draft form. 


DR. NETON: Yes, it’s 90 percent complete or something at 


this point. 


MR. GRIFFON: Right. And the fourth item along those 


same lines, Mel had some documents that he used related 


to the production history, and George said that he had 


other, George Kerr mentioned he had other documents 


related to the Calutron/cyclotron production history, and 


if we can get those posted. Some of them I think might 


be already, but if we can get sort of a listing of what 


was used and posted on that board drive it’d be easy to 


find. 


DR. NETON: That special subdirectory, the Advisory 


Board. If people provide them to me, I’ll make sure they 


get into the right location. 


MR. GRIFFON: Action five, this is one that Mel 


mentioned, was to confirm by looking at the names in the 

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Delta view database for lack of a better term that the Y12 people did the maintenance. I guess that’s something 


that you already have done, right? 


DR. NETON: Right. 


MR. GRIFFON: So that’s probably not an action item, 


sorry about that. 


The next action item, action item five, Oak Ridge, ORAU 


will give a production history for the Calutron/cyclotron 


or look into filling in some of those documents to give a 


better production history of different campaigns that 


went on through there. I think that’d be useful for all 


of us. 


No specific action related to this, but I think it was 


mentioned that this question of the U-233, the plutonium 


and the thorium, other nuclides outside the 


cyclotron/Calutron still needs to be addressed, but 


that’s been on the table before. 


Also, another action, and I guess this is currently being 


worked on, just wanted to make sure we got it on the 


record that there’s a new model being developed for 


extrapolation of beta dose at Y-12. And I’m not sure if 


that is an action within the site profile review or I 


know that came up today. 


DR. NETON: Yeah, this has come up before where we need 


to have some shower-dose models, skin dose. 

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MR. GRIFFON: So that’s -- and George seemed to think it 


was in final draft form or close to completion so that’s 


another action. 


Item eight, a question as to whether the highest classed 


individuals were monitored for external radiation. And I 


discussed with George Kerr some of the concerns or 


questions I had about the assembly work specifically, and 


George said that he would work with Bill Tankersley on 


responding to that question. Some of it delves into some 


classified questions so I didn’t want to go into it too 


far here. 


Item nine is SC&A agreed, and I think this would also go 


for NIOSH, to identify types of sample cases that we 


might want to consider in our final part of this SEC 


review process. So whether we want to look at a case 


with a neutron exposure or a polonium exposure, what 


types of cases do we want and let’s try to outline some 


cases so we can get some sample cases out there. 


And that’s all I had. Do other people have, did I miss 


any actions? 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Mark, the external dose sort of Delta 


view database comparison with the CER database, if we 


could see the compilation of that analysis, the 60 that 


you started with. 


MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, if we could see that. 

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DR. MAKHIJANI: It would be useful to have that. 


MR. GRIFFON: Let me just get that down. I think that’s 


it. Is that everything? 


(no response) 


MR. GRIFFON: I think we’re on to Rocky then, and if it 


makes sense to work from this matrix. We’re going to 


work from a matrix that we used at the last meeting 


actually dated December 6th, 2005. So if people have 


access to that document, they might want to look for it 


now. And before we start, maybe we should just go around 


the table and have everyone introduce themselves because 


there’s new people on the phone, and there’s some new 


people around the table. So I’ll start. I’m Mark 


Griffon chairing this working group, a member of the 


Advisory Board. 


MS. MUNN: Wanda Munn, Advisory Board. 


MR. GIBSON: Mike Gibson, Advisory Board. 


MR. FITZGERALD: Joe Fitzgerald, SC&A, support contractor 


to the Advisory Board. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Arjun Makijani, SC&A. 


MR. LITTLE: Craig Little of the ORAU team. 


MR. LANGSTED: Jim Langsted of the ORAU team. 


DR. FALK: And I’m Roger Falk, and I’m part of the ORAU 


team. 


MR. MEYER: Bob Meyer also with ORAU. 

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DR. ULSH: I’m Brant Ulsh with NIOSH. 


DR. NETON: Jim Neton with NIOSH. 


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Liz Homoki-Titus with HHS. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: LaVon Rutherford, NIOSH. 


MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell with HHS. 


MR. SHARFI: Mutty Sharfi, MJW. 


MR. GRIFFON: And on the phone, if we could have people 


introduce themselves. Are there members of the 


petitioning class on the phone? 


MS. McDOWELL-BOYER (by telephone): Laura McDowell-Boyer, 


I’m with the ORAU team. 


MR. PRESLEY (by telephone): This is Bob Presley with the 


Advisory Board. 


MR. BURN (by telephone): John Burn, with the ORAU team. 


MS. WORDER (by telephone): Amy Worder with Congressman 


Bob Beauprez. 


MS. LOPEZ (by telephone): Teresa Lopez with the ORAU 


team. 


MR. ROBINSON (by telephone): Al Robinson with the ORAU 


team. 

MS. BOLLOR (by telephone): Carolyn Bollor with 

Congressman Udall’s office. 

MR. HILLER (by telephone): David Hiller with Senator 

Salazar’s office. 

MS. ALBERG (by telephone): Jeanette Alberg with Senator 
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Allard’s office. 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): Tony DeMaiori and Jennifer 


Thompson with United Steel Workers. 


MR. KOTSCH (by telephone): Jeff Kotsch with the 


Department of Labor. 


DR. WADE (by telephone): Lew Wade with NIOSH. 


MR. KATZ (by telephone): Ted Katz, NIOSH. 


MR. SUNDIN (by telephone): Dave Sundin, NIOSH. 


MR. STEMPFLEY (by telephone): Dan Stempfley, ORAU team. 


MR. BUCHANAN (by telephone): Ron Buchanan, SC&A. 


DR. BEHLING: Hans Behling, SC&A. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): John Mauro, SC&A. 


DR. GLOVER (by telephone): Sam Glover, NIOSH. 

MS. JESSEN (by telephone): Karin Jessen and Tim Vitcus*, 

ORAU team. 

DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): Joyce Lipsztein, SC&A. 


MS. (unintelligible) (by telephone): Ruth 


(unintelligible), SC&A. 


MS. MUNN: Sorry, who, I didn’t hear that last one. 


MS. (unintelligible) (by telephone): Ruth 


(unintelligible). 


MS. MUNN: Thank you. 


MR. GRIFFON: Okay, I think that’s it. We’ve got a lot 


of folks in the room and a lot of folks on the phone. If 


you could make sure on the phone that you speak up loudly 

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so our transcriber here can hear everything, and I’ll try 


to do the same, actually. 


ISSUE ONE: MDA VALUES
 

And like I said, we’re going to try to work from this 


matrix from December 6th, and I guess I’ll start with 


issue number one, and this is the question of mda. And 

I’ll turn it over to Brant. 

DR. ULSH: Issue number one is an important issue. It’s 

the mda issue that SC&A has raised about plutonium and 


americium. However, this has not been presented as an 


SEC issue so I don’t know if we want to discuss it today. 


MR. GRIFFON: No, we’re not going to go there. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Is that of high-fired oxides? 


DR. ULSH: That’s issue number two. 


DR. NETON: That’s high-fired oxides, but the mda issue 


in general I think we’ve agreed that it’s --


DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, sorry, Hans is on the phone so maybe 


he should --


MR. GRIFFON: Hans, are you there? Can you speak to this 


first issue? 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): Yes, we reviewed the mda 


values and realized that the median value makes certain 


assumptions that are somewhat unrealistic with regard to 


certain parameter values regarding time, efficiency, 


self-absorption, et cetera. And we felt that perhaps a 

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more appropriate value might consider at least two out of 


the four as extreme values which would raise the MD value 


by perhaps several fold. And I think we raised that as 


an issue in our review, and I think we feel that that 


NIOSH may want to re-evaluate their position on mda 


values. 


MR. GRIFFON: John Mauro, are you on there? 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Yes, I am, and perhaps I can 


help a little bit on this. 


MR. GRIFFON: Is this something you still consider an SEC 


issue, that’s the --


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Not as a standalone, but when 


we get into the super-S issue --


MR. GRIFFON: That’s where it comes in. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): -- what happens is that brings 


in questions related to mda because the starting point 


for the super-S issue has to do with what the mda level 


is that you’re going to start with and what the 


implication of that is with regard to super-S and the 


doses not only to the respiratory tract but to the other 


organs. So I think that we can certainly move on to 


number two but keep in mind that I think the issue of mda 


is probably going to re-emerge as we talk about that. 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): May I comment a bit? The 


mda is important because if you start with bioassay 

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information then the missed dose, the size of the missed 


dose, is directly related to the mda. So the higher the 


mda, the higher the missed dose. 


DR. NETON: Right, we understand that and acknowledge 


that. It’s just that I think we all agree that it’s what 


John would call a tractable problem in the sense that 


SC&A’s position was that we would use some combination of 


these five parameters to come up with a much higher mda. 


Our position is it’s somewhere in the middle, and then 


it’s just a matter of not being able to bound these doses 


but where do we land on the missed dose issue. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Yeah, Jim, I agree. Item 


number one as a standalone item is certainly a tractable 


issue, and I think we can move on to item number two and 


see what happens as we move through that and the role 


that mda may play there. 


ITEM TWO: SUPER-S
 

MR. GRIFFON: All right, item two. 


DR. ULSH: Item two is the infamous super-S issue. And 


this has to do with forms of plutonium at Rocky Flats 


that may be less soluble than type-S. And this came up 


both in the SEC petition that we received from the United 


Steel Workers and also in SC&A’s review. So we are 


prepared to talk about that today. 


We have a TIB underway, a Technical Information Bulletin, 

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that’s TIB-0049 that’s being developed. It’s not yet 


been issued. Jim Neton is going to talk about the 


approaches that we’re taking there, and I think the other 


thing to emphasize is that we are bouncing our approach 


in TIB-0049 against actual autopsy measurements from the 


Trans-uranium Registry, for Rocky Flats employees. 


So I think that’s about as good as the data can get. So 


I’ll turn it over to Jim and let him tell you what we’re 


going to do in this regard. 


DR. NETON: Just to give a little summary, we believe 


this is an issue, I mean, it’s a major issue because if 


material doesn’t leave the lung then the current ICRP 


models as they exist are not applicable or relevant to 


doing dose reconstructions. There are three scenarios 


that are affected here in our thinking. 


One is the issue of how does one calculate a lung dose 


given that the material clears the lung much more slowly 


than the current ICRP model. The second issue is how 


would one calculate a systemic organ dose, that is, once 


it leaves a lung and gets into the bloodstream and 


deposits in the systemic organs? And then the third 


issue is related to how would one calculate a 


gastrointestinal tract dose because if the material are 


in the lungs and they clear more slowly to the GI tract, 


then clearly the standard ICRP models might not apply. 

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We’ve spent a lot of time, and there’s a team that Roger 


Falk was a member of who’s at the table today, looking at 


this issue. There was a team put together with Roger 


Falk, Don Bihl and Tom LaBone, three fairly well-known 


internal dosimetrists who looked at what they call design 


cases. There are ten cases that have been fairly well 


studied. I think, Roger, nine of them were from Rocky 


Flats? 


DR. FALK: That’s correct. 


DR. NETON: There were nine Rocky Flats cases where there 


were existing autopsy data and --


DR. FALK: Jim, excuse me. 


DR. NETON: -- no, not autopsy data. 


DR. FALK: No, all of those, most of those are currently 


living, but they are well-documented, high-level cases 


with lots of data. 


DR. NETON: I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself with 


the autopsy data. I didn’t mean to speak improperly 


there. 


So there are well-documented cases with multiple lung 


counts, chest counts, to determine the slow clearance of 


the activity in the lung. In addition, there are 


bioassay samples available. One of the cases that was 


looked at was also from Hanford which, I guess, Don Bihl 


was aware of. 

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In looking at these ten cases, and this is the basis for 


this TIB-0049 that we’ll talk about, there were a number 


of different types of clearances. One could clearly see 


that the material left the lung with a much, much longer 


half life than super, than class Y, type Y, and in fact, 


exhibited these super-S clearance characteristics. Of 


the ten cases that were reviewed, the team decided to 


take the one that exhibited the most tenaciously retained 


plutonium. That is, the one that had the longest 


clearance half time, and there were two very similar. 


This so-called Rocky Flats case 872 as well as the 


Hanford one, also known as HAN-1. Since they were both 


similar, they picked one, and that was the HAN-1 case 


that was used to model this. 


I wish I had the TIB available. Its release is imminent, 


but I’ll give you the basics. 


MR. GRIFFON: Do you have a TIB number for that? 


DR. NETON: TIB-0049, it’s in draft form. It’s in 


internal review by NIOSH currently, so it’s there. It’s 


in fairly good shape. In fact, I expect it to come 


across my desk. I’ve seen draft copies. I expect the 


final to come across my desk for signature very shortly. 


What they’ve done with this design case is take the 


available urine and bioassay data for the lung and come 


up with its own, what they would call, a custom model. 

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It would give you the observed clearance in the lung for 


this particular design case which had the most 


tenaciously retained plutonium of the ten design cases. 


And that model was used to construct, well, you have a 


model that shows the differential clearance, and I would 


say that -- Roger, correct me. I think it was somewhere 


around an effective half life of around 80 years in the 


lung. It was a pretty long half clearance time. 


So if one takes that model and then per becquerel unit 


intake comes up with an intake and then clears the 


plutonium from the lung with this new custom model one 


can develop those factors that will correct for the 


differential dose at any time post-intake for this super-


S material. That’s essentially the basis of this TIB. 


It has a number of look-up tables that include scenarios 


anywhere from food exposure one to 65 years post-intake 


and chronic exposures in a similar timeframe. 


We’ve been looking at that and we feel that it adequately 


bounds these lung exposures. Now remember, the lung 


exposures, most of the lung cancer cases at Rocky Flats 


are compensable based on just purely looking at type-S 


because if you have any bioassay or we’re on a bioassay 


and your plutonium and your urine was non-detectible, and 


you end up with some fairly large doses. There are some 


cases out there that were not compensable based on the 

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model, so we would propose to use this additional dose 


factors and apply that to the super-S material. That’s 


the basis of 49. 


But we’ve gone a little bit beyond just looking at 


developing this model. We’ve actually put in place a 


contract with U.S. (unintelligible) to obtain cases of 


plutonium from a number of locations around the country 


and look at super-S cases. We have 123 autopsy cases 


available at our disposal to evaluate this super-S issue. 


And what we’re currently doing are taking this TIB-0049 


and comparing it to what we’re actually seeing in 


autopsies analyses of cases from the Trans-uranic 


Registry. 


And what I have here are a few slides to show where we 


are with that. And I apologize for the folks on the 


telephone. You won’t have these slides because they’re 


fairly late breaking, but I’ll try to explain what’s on 


the graphs as I go, talk about what super-S is and what 


(unintelligible) is, and where we are. We’ve seen a lot 


of issues at other places like the Mayak worker where 


we’re seeing this tenaciously bound plutonium. 


MR. PRESLEY (by telephone): Hey, Jim, this is Bob 


Presley. Can you speak up just a little bit more? 


DR. NETON: I’m sorry, I need to speak into the 


microphone. I’m trying to look at the slide and talk at 

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the same time. 


MR. PRESLEY (by telephone): Jim, this is Bob Presley 


again. Do you have any type of a worker breakdown for 


these people in job classifications? 


DR. NETON: I don’t think so, Bob. I think these were 


mostly anyone who was working with plutonium who would 


have been on the bioassay program itself. 


We talked about how the fact that the current lung model 


is not applicable. We need to have some additional 


models. We developed this TIB-0049. I talked about how 


we were using this Hanford one case to correct for the 


activity expected to be in the lung at any time post-


intake as compared to what the traditional S clearance 


factor would be. 


Now we not only increased the lung dose, but it’s also 


applicable to the lymph node dose. What happens is you 


come up with an intake of type-S and then increase the 


dose to any of the current lung compartments based on 


these factors. So here’s what I’m getting to. We’re 


taking a few test cases and looking at them to see how 


they apply. And what I’m showing here in the graph is 


how do we identify which of these 123 trans-uranic cases 


are actually super-S. 


And what we believe is a great indication is looking at 


the ratio of the lung to the liver at any time post­
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intake, if you look at the clearance graphs I have here, 


we mapped out what the ratio would look like for a 


chronic type-S and type-M intakes, acute and chronic. 


And this one shows a chronic intake of 50 years, and of 


course, you can see the other two lines are for the 


acute. 


Notice that the ratio drops off fairly well, and in fact, 


you’re down to around five to one or so further out on 


the graph. I have more of these. This is the same 


graph. It shows what happens when you have a shorter 


chronic intake. This would be a ten-year chronic intake. 


My point here though is to show these are the graphs that 


one would expect, but what you end up with is these three 


little dots on the graph here. 


You can’t quite see, but there’s two here. This case 


here is an actual autopsy case well, well above the line 


which would be very indicative of super-S material. In 


other words, the amount of material in the lung relative 


to the liver is way elevated compared to what we’re 


seeing for these other two cases. So we’re using this as 


a screening tool to pull out cases that have been exposed 


to super-S material. 


We managed to take one case thus far out of these and 


compare it to the TIB-0049 model. Remember, the TIB-0049 


model is already based on real human data. I mean, these 

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were ten folks, nine of whom had work histories at Rocky 


Flats working with the same material we’re trying to 


reconstruct. We’re just taking this one step further and 


looking at autopsy analyses. 


Here we have a test case one from the Trans-uranic 


Registry whose employment began in ’52 who had no 


positive urine samples in his early career when the mda 


was fairly high. In ’65 when the mda went down, you’re 


starting to see positive urine. Had been involved in a 


couple incidents with high air concentrations, was there 


during the fire, but not near it necessarily, and had a 


slight positive americium peak in his lung count after 


the fire in 1965. 


This slide just shows the urine data showing that there 


were non-detectibles up until 1963 and ’65. I think, 


graphically, I’ve got on the next slide it shows what 


happens here is early on these are the non-detects, and 


then we’ve got the two positive samples. 


If one were to model this with a standard-type-S model, 


you’d actually get a pretty good fit, and then we would 


project after that intake is over it would drop off using 


either S or M. But we know if this were type-S, super-S, 


that this clearance curve would not be anywhere near what 


is shown on that graph. 


MR. GRIFFON: Jim, is that red line is that 

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(unintelligible)? 


DR. NETON: That looks to me like the reporting level. 


It’s .8 (unintelligible). It sounds to me like the 


reporting level at that time period. 


MR. GRIFFON: So the detection limits would have been 


below .2? 


DR. NETON: No, not below .2 in the early years. That 


may actually even be detection limits. I’m not quite 


clear to be honest with you. 


DR. FALK: Point nine is the reporting level in the early 


years based on what they called ten percent of the 


tolerance limit based on some very (unintelligible) 


models that were essentially in place at that time. 


DR. NETON: So whether it’s a detection limit or a 


reporting level, we don’t have, you know, this would be 


reported as zero essentially. But anyways it’s quite 


interesting how this curve fits. But let me show you 


what happens when we evaluate it against the super-S 


model. Remember, this is an autopsy case. We have real 


data. 


Here’s what the super-S curve looked like I showed on 


that previous graph. And here’s where his autopsy result 


falls on our super-S model. Now, I’ll grant you N = 1 is 


not a robust statistical test, but remembering that the 


original analyses were based on real human data, now 

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we’re taking some autopsy data with real analyses of the 


combined lung and lymph nodes, we’re very close to the 


right ballpark here with this model is the way it looks 


to me. 


I’m just showing you this as an, I’m going, again, we had 


123 cases of which to screen. Not all of them, of 


course, are going to be applicable, but we believe that 


we can show that this model is fairly good for these 


particular scenarios. 


This again is just the graph on what the projected 


difference in the doses are for using the custom model 


for super-S versus what the type-S model would be. And 


so what you’ll see in TIB-0049 is a bunch of factors. 


Let’s say what is the difference per year in dose to the 


lung? What factor do I apply as I go out recognizing 


that this material clears with a very long half life on 


the order of 80 years. 


That’s what we’ve done, so I think this takes care of the 


lung, I think this is a great step towards resolving the 


dose to the lung recognizing that most of the lung 


cancers are already (unintelligible), we’re going to 


apply these other factors to make sure we’re not 


underestimating the lung doses to the super insoluble 


material. 


MS. MUNN: It should be an adequate overdose for anyone. 

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DR. NETON: They’re fairly hefty doses. You can get some 


pretty good adjustment factors because even though S is 


insoluble, super-S, again, is not going very far. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Jim, did I hear you correct? 


That is, the long component for clearance from the lung 


under your super-S was an 80 year half life? 


DR. NETON: Well, you know, you’ve got to be careful. I 


say that. It looks as if it’s in that ballpark, but the 


ICRP 66 model is much more complicated than that. It’s 


not, you can’t put a time on any of the compartments like 


you could in the old 30 model. It’s just much more 


complicated than that, but let’s suffice it to say if you 


plot out these data points, it looks like the lung counts 


over time are clearing on average with a somewhere in the 


vicinity of an 80 year half life. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Now that being the case, and 


if you want to just look at it very simply from the point 


of view from the dose to the lung, couldn’t you simply 


say that, well, let me see, if you’re looking that data, 


you’re saying that you’re looking at what’s in the urine, 


and you’re looking at what was measured in the urine. 


And I’m not looking at the graph, of course. And then 


you’re looking at what the autopsy data show is in the 


lung. 


So you’re getting a relationship between, I guess, 

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activity in the lung as compared to, you could almost say 


becquerels(unintelligible) in the lung or becquerel per 


day excreted in the urine. In other words, some kind of 


simple relationship. I’m not quite sure, you know, 


what’s the relationship that you’re establishing here? 


Is it some factor that gives you --


DR. NETON: Yes, it’s a dose factor, the difference in 


the dose to the lung if it were type super-S versus if it 


were type-S. So these are dose factors that are applied 


to each case. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): And you’re seeing factors that 


are how much larger than that when you’re --


DR. NETON: It varies well over time but in some years I 


think it’s approaching -- I don’t recall -- around 100 


maybe. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): About a hundred-fold higher, 


okay. 


DR. NETON: In some years. If you could see the graph, 


25 years out it’s peaking at around 100. It climbs 


fairly rapidly from fairly close in the early years up 


through to about 100 and then it drops off to where 30 


years out or so you’re maybe a factor of, it could be a 


factor of five to ten. But there’s a factor of 100 in 


the tables. I’m not sure exactly what... 


DR. FALK: What the tables are is the ratio of the lung 

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deposition for the cases HAN-1 and also Rocky Flats 872 


relative to the deposition calculated from using the 


assumption of the regular type S for the same intake. So 


it’s basically ratios of the observed very avid 


retentions for our design cases versus standard type-S 


per calendar year. Now the main reason why the ratios go 


up over time is the fact that there is very little 


retention predicted by the type-S at the long-term 


basically, even though the actual deposition may be flat 


over 30 to 40 or 50 years. 


DR. NETON: This is a fairly complex analysis, and I’m 


probably not doing it justice by talking about it. I 


think if we can get this TIB-0049 in front of you in the 


next week maybe. I don’t want to promise that but it’s 


about ready to go, then you can certainly have a go at it 


and take a look at the appendix and see where there’s 


actually the design of the model and what it looks like. 


But that’s what we’re proposing that we’re going to have 


these adjustment factors based on real data to account 


for the fact that site-type super-S clears more slowly. 


I think that, and when you’re going to take a look at it, 


we’d appreciate any comments you might have. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Jim, this is John. I think we 


also are convinced that at the NDL, this is where the NDL 


comes in, at the NDL whatever you pick for one-half the 

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NDL whatever you pick, the doses to the lung, whether 


it’s S or super-S, whatever kinetics you assume for 


super-S, even for S, the dose to the lung, I guess, and 


the lymph nodes are going to be off the charts. That is, 


you’re going to have POC that’s greater than 50 percent. 


The dose is going to be very large. 


And I think that we’re fairly, I mean, we’ve done enough 


calculations ourselves to convince ourselves of that. 


The place that we start to run into a little bit of 


trouble, that we’re struggling with also is other organs 


like the liver and the bone. 


DR. NETON: That’s what I’m going to get into next. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Yeah, how to come to grips 


with that. 


DR. NETON: I would put a caveat on the, their all going 


to be off the charts, because you’ve got latency issues 


here --


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Yes, yes, I agree. I agree 


completely. 


DR. NETON: -- where if a person develops lung cancer 


within one year, you can give them very large doses and 


it won’t get the 50 percent. 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): Jim, this is Hans. Can I 


just interrupt for a second? The issue that you just 


discussed with John we agree, but there is an issue now 

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that comes into play when we talk about perhaps and 


exposure that is less than the 250-day requirement to be 


eligible to submit a claim. If you do have super-S and 


the doses to the lung are excessively high, a person who 


may be employed for a period of less than 250 days may, 


under the old system, be denied a chance to submit a 


claim when in fact for super-type-S the lung dose for 


even a very brief exposure may be such where the exposure 


may result in a POC greater than 50 percent. 


DR. NETON: I’m not following you, Hans. 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): The question that I have is 


I agree with everything you said about chronic exposures 


in excess of 250 days if, in fact, it is super-type-S or 


F either one would inevitably result in a POC value 


greater than 50 percent. But given the much higher lung 


dose for super-S perhaps an exposure that well below the 


250-day requirement may nevertheless result in a dose to 


the lung that far exceeds 50 percent, and yet we would 


say you haven’t worked long enough to even qualify for 


submitting a claim. 


DR. ULSH: So the logical extension of what you’re 


saying, Hans, I think is that if we adopt this new 


procedure that we’re talking about for super-S, there are 


certain lung cancer cases that may be better off under 


this procedure than under SEC for which they may not 

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qualify because of their 250 days. Is that what you’re 


saying? 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): Yes. 


MR. GRIFFON: Or the question of that definitely is going 


to help (unintelligible). 


DR. NETON: But we’re not really discussing here whether 


or not it’s more or better a merit to be SEC or not. 


We’re trying to discuss technically can we do these dose 


reconstructions. And I don’t disagree with what Hans 


said, but I’m not sure that’s for this working group to 


discuss. 


MS. THOMPSON (be telephone): This is Jennifer Thompson 


with the Steel Workers. I’m wondering if we are going to 


have an opportunity to ask questions during this or if we 


need to submit our questions via a different avenue. 


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: If it’s a petitioner, they can ask 


questions. 


MR. GRIFFON: This is Mark Griffon. You’re welcome to 


ask questions during the presentations like we’re all 


doing so do you have something now? 


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): Great, yeah, we have a few. 


We’re wondering under the new technical direction how 


will you know which form of plutonium a worker was 


exposed to? So how will you know which model to apply? 


Are you going to use the super-S for all Rocky Flats 

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workers? 


DR. NETON: The standard answer for that usually is that 


we’ll do whatever we believe to be the case for the 


worker, and when we don’t know, we would pick the most 


favorable for the worker. 


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): So you would base that then 


on where the worker worked? If they worked in the 


building with the potential for high-fired oxides 


exposure then you would use the super-S model? 


DR. NETON: Yes. 


DR. ULSH: Well, there’s a caveat there. Using super-S 


is not always going to be claimant favorable. It depends 


on where the cancer is located. Certainly, if it’s lung 


cancer or respiratory tract cancer it’s claimant 


favorable to apply super-S. If it’s a systematic, I’m 


sorry, a systemic, cancer in a systemic organ, it would 


not be claimant favorable to apply super-S. And then 


there’s a point that we need to discuss further is GI. 


DR. NETON: Right, but we would play through all those 


scenarios or work through those scenarios and if we 


didn’t know, if we truly didn’t know what the chemical 


form was, we would pick the one that gave the highest 


dose. 


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): Okay. And then I’m 


wondering, when you’re looking at these like Rocky Flats­
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872 and Hanford one, how are you knowing how much 


plutonium is in their lungs? 


DR. NETON: The Hanford-872 or the Hanford one and the 


Rocky 872 had a lot of lung counting data, chest 


measurements, to determine the actual quantity that was 


in the lung itself at any given time. And then many of 


these were followed up thousands of days after exposures. 


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): And how did that data take 


into account the ceramified particles from high-fired 


oxides? 


DR. NETON: Well, what it shows is if you sequentially 


measure these people over a long period of time, it will 


show that -- sorry, Roger has his hand waving here. 


DR. FALK: Let me answer that because case 872 was a case 


the 1965 plutonium high-fired oxide so his case does 


actually represent the more, does represent the most 


extreme situation, and in fact, six of the nine Rocky 


Flats cases were cases from the 1965 plutonium fire. 


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): Right, and that’s great, 


but my point is I believe I understood that case number 


872 is still alive, and so my question --


DR. FALK: I don’t think case 872 is, but case 872 did 


not participate in the Trans-uranic Registry Program; and 


therefore, we do not have autopsy data. 


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): Right, and so this gets 

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back to my question of how would you know how much 


plutonium was in that person’s lungs based on the fact 


that plutonium particles from high-fired oxides are 


ceramified and have self-shielding properties that lead 


to a less than accurate depiction in lung count in terms 


of the quantity of plutonium present in the lungs? 


DR. ULSH: If I could just jump in before Roger gives you 


the technical answer. Jennifer, I think you’re referring 


to one of the questions that was raised in the SEC 


petition. This is actually in one of the seven bases 


where the assertion is made that these high-fired 


plutonium oxide particles exhibit some kind of self-


shielding so that it would not be, it would be under-


detected in a lung count. Am I correct in that? 


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): Correct. 


DR. ULSH: Okay, now I’ll let Roger talk about that if he 


would like to. 


DR. FALK: Yes. The measurement of the plutonium 


deposition in lungs and based on the measurement of the 


60 keV gamma from the americium. And the americium is a 


reasonably penetrating-type of a gamma photon. And we 


are dealing with reasonably small particles; therefore, 


there should be very minimal self absorption of the 60 


keV gamma by the particle itself. That is more of an 


issue for the alpha radiation which is actually what 

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gives the dose to the lungs. So that is not a big issue. 


It is not an issue at all with regard to lung 


(unintelligible) for 60 keV gamma. 


DR. ULSH: And if you take this question to its logical 


conclusion, if there’s self-shielding by the particle so 


that you can’t detect it in a lung counter, it’s also not 


going to irradiating a lung. It’s not going to be 

delivering dose to the lung. 

MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): That’s not necessarily 

true. The lung counter is much further away from the 


lung than the lung itself from the particles so you can’t 


make that direct assumption. And there is a case, and in 


talking to Dr. Bob Fieswine* in the one specific case at 


Rocky Flats where a worker’s exposure went undetected by 


lung count. And then decades after this person left the 


site, all of a sudden his urinalysis started showing 


spikes of plutonium. So that’s what we’re basing in part 


that assertion on. And so that would still support the 


idea that lung count in instances of high-fired oxides 


might not be the most accurate way to determine the 


content of plutonium in somebody’s lungs. 


DR. FALK: I think there is basic misunderstanding about 


the case that Dr. Feiswine* has mentioned. 


MR. GRIFFON: Is there a case number for that case by the 


way? That one that she’s referencing? 

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DR. FALK: I’m trying to actually recall it. I can’t 


give you the actual case number. But this was a case for 


a worker who actually did not receive a lung count at 


Rocky Flats, and then when he came back in 1994 under 


Bob’s program for the medical monitoring program, we did 


lung counts and did urine sampling, and yes indeed, we 


did detect high levels of the americium count in the 


lungs at that time as well as elevated plutonium count in 


this person’s urine sample. So that was the issue that, 


yes indeed, we did measure americium in his lungs at a 


fairly significant level about 40 years after his actual 


exposure which was in the mid-‘50s. 


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): And was that a case of --


I’m unsure whether we’re talking about the same 


individual so we’d have to follow up on that. 


MR. GRIFFON: Well, at least we have this issue on the 


table. Is there a third question you had and then maybe 


we can, because I think that’s going to come up again the 


in vivo detection limits and things like that we’re going 


to discuss further. 


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): Right, and I might like to 


get an e-mail address to submit some of these other 


questions because I only asked one that I think is of 


high significance just in the interest of time, but I 


have several others. 

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MR. GRIFFON: Sure, I’m sure we can make arrangements 


through NIOSH so that any questions you have can be --


DR. NETON: Any questions you have you can send to OCAS, 


O-C-A-S at C-D-C.gov. We have an e-mail address, and 


we’ll receive it. We’ll try to answer these questions 


within a day or --


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): Would you repeat that, 


please? 


DR. NETON: It’s OCAS, O-C-A-S. That stands for Office 


of Compensation, Analysis and Support. OCAS@C-D-C.G-O-V. 


MR. GRIFFON: Should they put Rocky SEC Petition or 


something? 


DR. NETON: Yeah, Rocky SEC Petition in the subject or 


something to that effect, but we do monitor --


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): The last one for right now. 


I want to know how many case studies or autopsy data 


you’re using that are from D&D workers. Workers who 


worked at the site during the last ten years because D&D 


work in buildings where high-fired oxides are present 


from (unintelligible) fires and high temperature 


processes are substantially different than past 


production work in that the work was done in known 


airborne contamination environments. 


And we know from the Building 771 incident that some 


exposures can go undetected by workplace monitoring 

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equipment and may not show up in bioassay right away and 


then show up later. And that was the conclusion of the 


771 investigation. So I want to know how that’s being 


accounted for in this process. 


DR. NETON: I don’t know if any of the D&D workers are in 


these studies. Since they’re fairly contemporaneous 


exposures, I don’t imagine they are and they’re fairly 


young folks. But I think our position here would be 


though that the behavior of these super-type-S materials 


would not be different in a D&D environment than they 


would be, for instance, in the fire. Of the ten cases 


we’ve looked at, we took the tenaciously retained type-S 


material and modeled it. And I don’t see why the D&D 


environment would lead to more insoluble plutonium than 


what we’ve observed in these cases. I’m not aware of any 


physical mechanism that would make the D&D environment 


plutonium more insoluble than, say, the plutonium that 


was generated during the fire. 


MR. GRIFFON: I think there’s some of us that we really 


need to see TIB-0049 to sort of gel all this stuff 


together. I mean, I myself have some questions about how 


you used the autopsy data in the modeling from that 


because I think you had to rely not only on autopsy data, 


but on intakes estimated by the sites, so we’re going to 


back to --

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DR. NETON: Well, no, the model, TIB-0049 is based on 


bioassay data from the lung counter themselves and the 


urinalysis data. To that extent we do need to rely on 


the site’s bioassay data. 


MR. GRIFFON: Then you’re using the autopsy to confirm? 


DR. NETON: The autopsy is confirmatory only. You won’t 


see any of these autopsy samples in TIB-0049. 


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: When the people on the phone start 


speaking, please identify yourself for the court 


reporter. 


MR. GRIFFON: And just one other thing before you move 


on, Jim. As the petitioner just raised some questions, I 


realized when, I think, the Rocky Petition actually got 


amended after we got the initial copy of the petition --


and I’m not sure all of the Board has the full petition. 


I understand it’s a very large document. I just wanted 


to make sure that if it wasn’t sent to us originally, if 


we can get the entire thing provided to the Board and 


SC&A. I think that’s pretty important. 


DR. NETON: Do you think that the petition was amended 


and you don’t have the amended language? 


MR. GRIFFON: I don’t think we got the amended portions. 


DR. NETON: We can check into that and make sure that 


everyone has the most current. 


MR. FITZGERALD: Does the petition include the request 

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for additional information (unintelligible) TIB process 


of information being collected for petitioners being 


added to the (unintelligible) as clarifying information? 


I’m just trying (unintelligible). 


DR. NETON: Well, that’s certainly part of the entire 


petition package. Now I guess what you’re asking is that 


all on our website? 


MR. SUNDIN (by telephone): This is Dave Sundin with 


NIOSH. We did send both portions of the petition out to 


all Board members. There was an initial petition and 


then a supplemental, fairly large petition to deal with 


questions that were raised during our development. 


MR. GRIFFON: Okay, I just wanted to check on that 


because I haven’t opened the supplemental yet, so I just 


wanted to make sure we got, before the next meeting we 


had all of it. 


DR. ULSH: If I can ask you to maybe take a look at what 


you got and make sure, and if you still have questions 


let us know, and we’ll get it to you. 


MS. MUNN: I’m unfamiliar with what the 7-7-7 report is. 


What was that? 


MR. GRIFFON: Seven-seven-one. 


MS. MUNN: Seven-seven-one? 


MR. GRIFFON: Building 771 investigation report, was that 


-- Roger, you can probably --

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DR. FALK: All I know is what I read in the petition, and 


it was in the (unintelligible), probably in the last 


three or four years where there were some workers that 


had positive fecal samples. But I was not privy to that 


investigation, and so I don’t know the details of it. 


MS. MUNN: But it was recent? 

DR. FALK: Yeah. 

MS. MUNN: We’re talking about recent workers? 

DR. FALK: Yeah, it was since 1995 and probably since 

2000. 

MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): This is Tony DeMaiori with 


the Steel Workers. The 771 incident was in I believe 


2000, and we had 11 workers that came up high in bioassay 


sampling that the body counters didn’t detect with no 


known incidents. And so there was a complete 


investigation done by the employer, Kaiser-Hill. 


DR. NETON: These were fecal samples? 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): No, they were urinalysis, 


and then they followed up with fecal, but the initial 


catching of it was the urinalysis. 


DR. NETON: I’ve got two other conditions to talk about 


if we’re ready to move forward. I don’t want to rush 


anyone, but my sense is we’ve concluded that part of the 


plot. 


The second issue I’d like to talk about is the systemic 

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organ dose issue. And that’s related to what happens to 


the organs such as the liver and the kidneys and those 


organs that are connected to the blood system after the 


material that is deposited in the lung leaves there and 


becomes systemic. You know, one sort of (unintelligible) 


we can think about this and say, well, if the material’s 


staying in the lungs with an effective half life of 80 


years, there’s not much getting into the system and so 


those doses are low. That doesn’t necessarily give us an 


answer to what the doses are. 


So in looking at this we believe that if we apply our 


normal chronic exposure models, that is, these workers 


are monitored and we have bioassay data for these workers 


over time, the integration of the amount of plutonium 


that is in the urine is a very good indicator of the 


total systemic deposition because it can only get to the 


organs in the system if it’s in the blood and gets there 


in a certain fraction, known fraction, of material that’s 


in the blood comes out in the urine. So the urine is a 


good integrator over time of the amount of plutonium 


that’s become systemic. 


We believe that to be the case. We’ve looked at this 


with some of these autopsy cases, and what I have on the 


graph here is one of the Trans-uranic Registry cases 


where this is what one would predict is the amount in the 

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liver if it were type-S or type-M and the dot well below 


the line shows that the autopsy liver result is well 


below what would predict to be the liver based on either 


S or M. 


So in this sense, we believe that if we use type-S or M 


clearance parameters from the lung and model the doses 


for this person, and indeed any of the claimants, we will 


be assigning systemic organ doses that are above what one 


would have experienced if this were truly super-S. 


MR. GRIFFON: See, this is where my question comes in on 


the autopsy data because somehow you have a measurement 


in the liver in your autopsy. 


DR. NETON: In 1980, started employment in, and this 


would assume a chronic exposure scenario. 


MR. GRIFFON: And you assume some intake though, right? 


DR. NETON: Yeah. 


MR. GRIFFON: So the intake came from data, I mean --


DR. NETON: I don’t know whether this would be, I’m not 


quite clear on this. This is late breaking, but let’s 


say a person had no positive bioassay results in their 


entire employment history. They’ve had an annual urine 


sample from 1950 through here. We would use that mda as 


an indication of what their chronic intake was for the 


history of their work and come up with a value of how 


much was being deposited in the liver systemically. And 

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what this shows is if we do something like that, we end 


up with an overestimate of what was actually observed in 


autopsy cases. 


Now this is N = 1(unintelligible), I’ll grant you that 


again, but I think this is going to hold for many of 


these cases. 


DR. GLOVER (by telephone): Jim Neton, this is Sam 


Glover. That is the same case, Jim. That is the first, 


that is the same case you’re looking at for the lung 


data. This is his systemic components for the same 


inhalation. You saw the urinalysis results before and 


his lung counting results, so this is what they found in 


his liver. 


DR. NETON: Okay, so this is this same case. It’s 


(unintelligible) saying that he was all mda, and so if we 


model this as a type-S base on a fit to the data, and 


then we go down and look at where his liver result is, is 


well below what we would have projected based on the 


model S or M. 


MR. GRIFFON: So that’s one person. I though that was a 


hypothetical autopsy. 


DR. NETON: No, this is actually a person. This is that 


case that we had just shown. So it gives us some comfort 


that what we’re saying is true. I mean, you don’t see a 


lot of plutonium in the liver which is what you’d 

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intuitively expect if it’s hanging out in the lungs so 


that maybe you’re at half life. It just can’t be in two 


places at once. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: How frequently was this person 


bioassayed? 


DR. NETON: It looks like he was sampled on an annual 


basis or so down in (unintelligible) ’55 to ’60-ish. Got 


a couple samples here. So our best reconstructed dose, 


this would be a traditional dose reconstruction if there 


were no super-S, we would have predicted this person had 


a type-S intake and given him this dose. Now we showed 


earlier the lung dose is going to be way up in here, but 


the liver dose, as we show with that autopsy sample, is 


down in here somewhere. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Now how do we know that the liver 


accumulation wasn’t due to a type-M or some more soluble 


form of uranium because it could be a mixture of intakes 


and that you kind of mixed? 


DR. NETON: But it could only be lower then. It’s never 


going to be higher than F or S. The more soluble it is, 


the higher the liver value’s going to be over time with a 


chronic exposure. It just has to be. It’s leaving the 


lung, becoming systemic, depositing in the liver. The 


liver has a very long clearance time so the liver is a 


very good integrator of what your systemic burden had 

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been. 


So I don’t see any physical mechanism where, as the 


material becomes more soluble, that this value could 


actually go up higher. The more tenaciously it’s 


retained in the lung, the less is going to get to the 


liver, and that’s what this autopsy point shows. So if 


we model it as an S or an M, we’re going to end up with 


an overestimate of the dose. 


And if there were S or M, we’re okay. We’ve done the 


right thing because it’s at least that. If it’s super-S, 


it’s going to be lower than that. So that’s our position 


on this. I think Sam Glover who’s on the phone is 


looking through these Trans-uranic Registry cases to find 


more examples that fits this analysis. 


MR. GRIFFON: I think that, for me anyway, some things 


are a little hard to do in real time. I’m looking at 


that graph and saying, all those non-detects, where is 


that detection, I mean, I agree with you completely, but 


I like to do the graphs. 


DR. NETON: Over time, if you’re giving a person the mda 


and it’s inconsistent constantly, the only way it can get 


to the liver is from the bloodstream. So whatever’s 


coming out in the urine is a good indicator of what’s in 


the bloodstream. That’s all I’m really saying here. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: But the dose conversion factor for liver 

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for type-M is bigger than the dose conversion factor for 


lung type-S. 


DR. NETON: It’s the same. Once it gets in the liver it 


doesn’t matter whether it was S, M. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Don’t you have re-circulation between the 


organs? 


DR. NETON: But once it becomes systemic, they all behave 


identically. The metabolic model is independent of the 


lung model. If it becomes in the bloodstream, it doesn’t 


matter how it got there, it behaves the same. Once it’s 


in solution in the blood there is no chemical difference 


in the body. It’s how it dribbles into the bloodstream 


that’s important, but once it becomes systemic it’s 


irrelevant. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Jim, are you saying that if we 


have, if we can establish a relationship between the 


integrated total amount of becquerels excreted in the 


urine, let’s say over a 30-year period, and the dose to 


any organ? 


DR. NETON: Yes. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): That’s the key, so we could 


bypass the whole IMBA concept of models and simply have a 


relationship whether the IMBA-based or empirically-based, 


I guess I’m not quite sure, but you feel that the 


integrated release excretion in the urine is directly 

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proportional to the dose of any organ other than the 


lung? And I guess, and the lung and the lymph nodes, but 


if you are concerned about a dose to the liver, let’s 


say, bone, kidney you could actually develop such a 


relationship? 


DR. NETON: We don’t really have to though, John. 


Because all you have to do is feed the system, and if you 


can’t make it type M, and you’re feeding the system over 


a period of ten years, it’s a reservoir that’s feeding 


into the bloodstream, and let’s say they’re all below the 


mda, and you just have to feed enough material in there 


to be at the mda over time, and IMBA will calculate a 


dose for it. I mean, it really -- Roger has something --


DR. FALK: It probably is fairly important to think about 


the probability of the causation rather than total dose 


because for the optimum probability of causation you want 


to get the plutonium into the organ quickly and basically 


type-M does that, whereas, type-S and type-SS dribbles in 


there slowly. Therefore, even though you may have the 


same organ dose, the probability of the causation depends 


upon when prior to the onset of the cancer. So that is 


something we really to be thinking about also. 


DR. NETON: I think probably type-M would be the better 


solution where you would, it would clear the lung fairly 


rapidly, maintain the systemic burden or if you have a 

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chronic scenario over time, you’re systemic burden is at 


a constant level being fed by this chronic inhalation. 


So then you’re just taking the material from the lung, 


transferring it to the systemic compartment, and you’re 


excreting a certain portion which is what you’d be using 


to base your dose on in the urine, but there’s a known 


partitioning between the blood and the organ. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Sorry, I mean, I’m doing real-time 


questioning here. We obviously need to look at TIB-0049. 


DR. NETON: Well, this is not in TIB-0049 by the way. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay, maybe slides. If you go backward, 


and Hans has raised this question before and Joyce is on 


so maybe they can correct me or amplify or whatever. I 


just want to put it on the table and maybe let the others 


take it up. 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): Arjun, I can’t hear you. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: If you have type-S and are starting from 


bioassay or super-S and are starting from bioassay, 


you’re inferred lung burden is going to be very, very 


high compared to if you assume it was type-M. And then 


with that much, much higher lung burden and a slower rate 


of leakage from the lung, first of all, you won’t get a 


steady state elsewhere because other organs are all the 


time accumulating this especially bone, for instance. 


And so you will never get to a steady state in any organ 

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in the body. And so the whole idea of modeling it as a 


steady state would appear to be not right. And you may 


get a higher dose because of the higher lung burden. 


DR. NETON: I disagree with you. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Is that right, Joyce? 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): Yes, that’s right, 


absolutely. 


DR. NETON: Joyce, would you agree with me that up until 


the last bioassay sample the person leaves though, it 


doesn’t matter. 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): I’m sorry; can you repeat 


again? 


DR. NETON: If you have bioassay sample for, let’s say 


every year, as long as that person’s leaving bioassay 


samples, you have bounded the amount of plutonium in the 


system. The bioassay samples are directly correlated to 


how much is in the bloodstream. (unintelligible) is 


irrelevant. You would exceed the mda at some point, 


yeah, I’ll grant you that. But as long as you have ---


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): No, no, no, no. It’s not 


directly correlated, the urine samples are not directly 


correlated to what is in the systemic. 


DR. NETON: Why not? 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): That’s the problem. The 


urine, going out in the urine is not directly correlated 

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to what is in the systemic. There is some correlation, 


but it’s not perfect. 


DR. NETON: What I’m saying is that -- you have to 


believe, Joyce. I can’t believe you just made that 


statement that with the amount that’s in the urine is not 


correlated to how much is in the bloodstream. All the 


ICRP models are based on that basic premise that there is 


a certain amount in the blood that is excreted through 


the urine. 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): No, what happens is 


because you have values (unintelligible) blood then it’s 


very difficult to -- let me rephrase it. What you see in 


the urine is correlated to what is in the systemic 


organs, but it’s not a direct, well, it’s direct, but 


it’s not to be a perfect correlation coefficient. So 


depending on the day you measure the samples, the 


correlation coefficient will be different. That’s one of 


the problems that we have with urine samples. 


DR. NETON: Joyce, what I’m saying though is that in 


worse case, let’s say that all of the amount measured in 


the blood is what came from the feeder compartment of the 


lung going into the organs. What you’re saying is, yes, 


there’s recycling between the organs, but that would just 


make the dose lower. If we assume --


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): The telephone is terrible. 

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I can’t hear you well. Hello? 


DR. NETON: What I’m saying is if we assume that all of 


the material that’s in the systemic compartment, in the 


system, is coming from the lung and remembering that 


fraction in the urine, then that will be an overly 


conservative estimate of what’s going into the organs. I 


know what you’re saying. You’re saying that there is a 


certain amount in the blood that’s related to recycling 


from the systemic organs. 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): Exactly, yes. 


DR. NETON: We’re assuming that it’s all coming directly 


from the lung and depositing into the organs. 


MR. GRIFFON: So recycling, only lower. 


DR. NETON: Recycling, only lower the dose. 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): Recycling will -- no, 


because it (unintelligible) back to the organs again. 


MR. GRIFFON: I think what Jim’s saying is his assumption 


would be bounding. 


DR. NETON: Yeah, it’s bounding. Whatever’s coming out 


there’s a certain fraction that’s leaving the blood, and 


we’re inferring how much is in the system at that time, 


time X. How much is available to be deposited in the 


systemic organs at some time post-intake. That’s all 


we’re saying. 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): But Jim, recycling will not 

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lower the organ dose, in fact, it raises it. Consider 


the option that nothing in from the blood to the urine 


and it’s totally recycled. You wouldn’t obviously 


maximize your doses to non-metabolic organ or metabolic 


organs. 


DR. NETON: There is a known excretion fraction coming 


into the urine at all times post-intake for plutonium. 


The systemic compartment clears for the urine. That’s 


how you can do bioassay --


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): Yeah, the compartments 


they clear to the urine, but they clear to the blood 


also. (unintelligible) again to the blood will come back 


to the organs --


DR. NETON: I understand that. 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): And a (unintelligible) to 


the urine also. 


DR. NETON: Let’s put our arguments on paper. We’re not 


obviously going to get past this. 


MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think we need to see TIB-0049 and 


the supporting documents we’ve got here, and then maybe 


we can move the ball after that, but we can’t do it this 


way. 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): I think the only bottom 


line that I would like to see is that when you, what I 


agree with you is that when you calculate the lung dose 

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if you take the (unintelligible) retained from time, 


that’s the best thing. But when you were talking about 


systemic this is not the case, and I think you said that, 


right? 


DR. NETON: Well, I’m not sure. 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): So for example, if you are 


calculating the dose to the bone, for example, and you 


are, let’s say, coming back from urine, okay? You have 


bioassay results from urine. If you use those 18 years 


that you were talking about for calculating the dose to 


the lungs, the dose to the lung for the 80 years half 


life is much higher than if you calculated with 


(unintelligible). But if you are calculating the dose to 


the bone, for example, or to the liver, if you take type-


S coming back from urine samples, you will find a higher 


dose than if you used these 18 years. 


DR. NETON: Well, I find that incredible to believe, but 


we’ll talk about it, Joyce. I mean, you can’t have a 


higher dose in a lung and a higher dose in the systemic 


organs at the same time. It’s virtually impossible. 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): Yes, that’s what I’m 


talking about. That’s exactly what I’m saying. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Jim, what I think I heard was 


type-S for systemic organs is more limiting than super-S. 


DR. NETON: That’s all we’re saying. That’s what I 

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started off with my conversation saying. 


MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, we’re in agreement there, I think. 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): We’re in agreement, yes. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): But there is one --


DR. NETON: And there’s even more (unintelligible) and 


that’s all I was saying the whole time. I think we’re in 


agreement here. 


MR. GRIFFON: On that one, on that part anyway, yeah. 


DR. NETON: Well, but that’s our basis. Our basis is 


that S is more favorable to the claimant than S for 


systemic organs. That’s all I said originally. 


MR. GRIFFON: M is more favorable. 


DR. NETON: And M is more favorable than S because it 


clears much more quickly. You know, you’ve got that lead 


time. There’s a reservoir (unintelligible) the lung and 


clearing. 


MS. MUNN: Can NIOSH and SC&A resolve single issue on a 


single phone call elsewhere? 


MR. GRIFFON: We will. There was some documents to 


provide us. We’ll go from there. I think we need to 


move on. Anything else on this topic because this calls 


for a break, too, so --


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Mark, before we break --


MR. GRIFFON: Hold on, John. Arjun’s got a point and 


then you. 

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DR. MAKHIJANI: Jim’s obviously put not only a lot of 


thought but done a lot of numbers with real bioassay 


data, and if we could just have these calculations which 


are not part of TIB-0049, but if we could just see the 


cases and the underlying data, I think this discussion 


will be just simplified. 


DR. NETON: I think possibly we could schedule on of 


these technical conference calls among ourselves where 


were could take minutes and notes --


MR. GRIFFON: Is that data available? Do you know where 


that data would be, that kind of data? 


DR. NETON: Autopsy case data would be available. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I mean, a conference call would really be 


productive. If we could see this in advance though, we 


need to see the numbers in advance. 


MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, okay. 


And John, you wanted to comment? 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Yeah, that’s what I was going 


to say. It sounds like we need a subdivision of the 


working group because we’ve got a hot item here, and 


we’re going to need a very, very tight, we’re going to 


have to sit down and really roll up our sleeves and zero 


right in on this one. 


DR. NETON: It sounds like we have a basic agreement. 


We’re just coming at it from two different prospectives 

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so I think we can deal with that. 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): The steelworkers have a 


question. Tony DeMaiori. How many years does it take to 


refine a model before you can have confidence in its 


ability to accurately predict? 


DR. NETON: That’s a really good question. I think that 


the time required to refine the model is directly related 


to how close your subjects are to the data at hand. And 


we’re using Rocky Flats workers for this model. Now 


we’ve had nine cases at Rocky Flats. We have 123 cases 


of plutonium autopsy data. 


I think we can refine the model, and let me say what we 


do is we create the model, but then since we don’t have 


time to refine it to the nth degree, we end up picking 


the most conservative case among the design cases to 


apply. So you end up being very conservative in your 


models. That is, pick the model that gives you the 


highest dose. 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): So what are we looking at, 


one year, five years, ten years to refine this model? 


DR. NETON: TIB-0049 model is basically done. It’s ready 


to go. 


MR. GRIFFON: But, Tony, I think the other -- this is 


Mark Griffon, the other part of maybe the answer to your 


question is part of what we consider in this petition 

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process is the feasibility. And NIOSH is looking at that 


and the Board is also looking at that feasibility. It 


has a time element. So we will be considering that as we 


look as we go along here certainly. 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): Great, thank you. 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): And there’s one more 


thing. We’re doing a whole model it’s just one parameter 


or two in the (unintelligible) sometime in the lung. 


DR. NETON: Right, we’re not developing an entire new 


lung model, Joyce, we’re modifying a few parameters based 


on the data that we have, and that’s clearly called out 


in the ICRP that allows you to evaluate case-specific 


data and develop a custom (unintelligible). It depends 


on how far you take that is where the litmus test is. 


The last thing I want to talk about and move on --


MR. GRIFFON: We’re being called to a break so I don’t 


know if this is --


DR. NETON: This will take just five minutes. 


Just this concept of the GI tract dose. That’s a 


separate issue because if you think about it, we have, 


now you have a bolus of super insoluble material in the 


lung. It’s not clearing very fast. Why it’s not 


clearing is sort of a mystery almost because there are 


some people arguing that the chemical solubility is 


driving it to be slow or it’s not as chemically soluble. 

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Some argue, and there’s some good data to support this, 


that there is mechanical issues, mechanical clearance 


isn’t there. This has been the case for workers like at 


Mayak where you have large lung doses, develop scarring 


of parenchymal tissue and it’s just not, it’s lodged in 


there. It’s not moving out. 


So again, one could sort of intuitively figure that any 


material that’s deposited will clear more slowly in the 


GI tract and give a small dose, but the question remains 


what is the lung burden. We propose to use the urine 


data, the ratio of what’s in the urine data for these 


test cases to the lung burden data and figure out, 


develop the additional amount of intake that is there 


based on urine data that we’ve seen from design cases, 


estimate that intake for super-S -- and then clear it 


with the standard ICRP clearance rate. 


Right now, the ICRP model has no differential clearance 


for mechanical purposes. If it’s D or S, W or whatever, 


it all mechanically clears it the same way. We propose 


to mechanically clear it with the standard default model 


which is probably an overestimate but we don’t know how 


much to reduce it. We’ll just leave it at the standard 


default. So we’ll increase the intake based on the urine 


and then clear it with the standard mechanical clearance 


of the ICRP model. And then that will deliver --

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MR. GRIFFON: The results are conservative you said. 


DR. NETON: -- which is also conservative. So we believe 


we can do that. We don’t have TIB on this 


(unintelligible) document, but that’s our conceptual 


model. 


MR. GRIFFON: Are you going to provide --


DR. NETON: Yeah, we’ll provide documentation on all of 


this. 


MR. FITZGERALD: Did you actually do the same kind of 


comparison using some fecal data of (unintelligible) 


Rocky to get to the same kind of --


DR. NETON: We need to do that. We haven’t done that. 


We need to caucus with our internal dosimetry expert to 


see what fecal data may be available to do that. To my 


knowledge that has not been done for this project. 


MR. FITZGERALD: I think what you’re saying is that you 


feel the ICRP model, the default model, will be bounding. 


DR. NETON: In the sense that the ICRP mechanical 


clearance model is independent solubility type. 


Mechanical clearance is mechanical clearance. It just 


clears like it does. The only difference in the ICRP 


model is that the chemical dissolution of the material is 


different. So we’re going to use the default clearance 


model, the independent solubility type, to develop the 


(unintelligible). It’s a reasonable approach. I don’t 

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know any other way we can do it. We could slow down 


clearance. In fact, I think that the custom model, the 


mechanical clearance had to be slowed down to a certain 


degree to account for the long-term retention in the 


lung. But now knowing exactly how that works, we’d just 


be more comfortable (unintelligible). 


MR. GRIFFON: Let’s take a ten-minute break. And keep it 


short because we’re going to try to adjourn 4:00, 4:30­

ish, a short ten minutes. 


(Whereupon a break was taken from 3:10 p.m. until 3:20 


p.m.) 


ISSUE NINE: DATA INTEGRITY
 

MR. GRIFFON: At this point I wanted to skip to, in the 


matrix, skip ahead to number nine, I’m being told. This 


is the Chair’s prerogative. Is that what you’re supposed 


to say? Because I have to leave a little early at four 


o’clock, and I want to cover nine which involves data 


integrity issues and ask NIOSH if maybe they can give us 


a report back on that to start. 


DR. ULSH: Sure, we made a lot of progress on most of 


these issues. Comment number nine actually consists of 


about six -- the way I count them -- six separate issues 


and Joe Fitzgerald presented a slide at the I think it 


was the Oak Ridge meeting that laid out I think quite a 


few bullets, five or six or so, of programmatic issues 

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that they had questions about the reliability of the 


data. And those are laid out here in our comment 


responses. I might ask some of the ORAU team to go 


through and talk about what we’ve found so far on these 


issues. 


Just to give you a feel for what kinds of questions are 


being asked after 1964 I believe it was dosimetry badges 


were incorporated with the security badges. And so there 


were questions about why there should be blanks or zeros 


in the record after that time if every was, in fact, 


monitored. Those are some issues that we’re prepared to 


talk about. And there were a few other issues. So I’m 


going to turn it over to Jim Langsted to begin walking 


through this. 


MR. LANGSTED: First of all there were a couple of 


comments that talked about the neutron dose 


reconstruction project needs to be documented in a tech 


basis document. And the sequence of this was that 


technical basis document was originally written while the 


neutron dose reconstruction project was still in 


progress. And since then the dose reconstruction 


project, neutron dose reconstruction project has finished 


up, they have published a document, and they have turned 


data for all of the claimants over to the Department of 


Energy that’s turned it over to ORAU. So the results of 

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their work are now into the dose reconstruction project. 


I have written some sections that will go into the 


revision of the tech basis document that describe in 


general what the neutron dose reconstruction project was. 


And the dose reconstruction organization has written a 


technical basis or an OTIB that instructs the dose 


reconstructors how to use that data in the dose 


reconstructions. 


What the file formats are that they’re getting; what 


those numbers mean, and how to put that together. So 


that whole package wraps up now to give the dose 


reconstructors significantly more data than they had 


before in terms of neutron detail for those individuals 


the neutron dose reconstruction project did their work 


for. 


MR. GRIFFON: Can you refresh my memory? Who did the 


neutron dose reconstruction? 


MR. LANGSTED: The neutron dose reconstruction project 


was done by ORAU, another arm of ORAU, (unintelligible) 


and this guy here was the chief health physicist on that 


project, Roger Falk. 


MS. MUNN: And the OTIB number you referred to? 


MR. LANGSTED: Is number 50. And it has been approved 


and is out in, I assume it’s probably in the packet 


that’s gone to these guys or they’ll be reviewing. 

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DR. NETON: SC&A? 


MR. LANGSTED: I don’t know if SC&A has seen that. No, 


this is the NDRP(unintelligible) TIB. 


(unintelligible): No, we haven’t seen it, but --


DR. NETON: It’s out there on the standard drive. It was 


not specifically forwarded to you guys upon signing so I 


don’t know whether you would need it or not. It’s 


available on the standard network drive. 


MR. GRIFFON: SC&A should review that. That’ll be an 


action, I think. 


MR. BUCHANAN (by telephone): Yes, this is Ron Buchanan. 


Yes, SC&A has reviewed OTIB-0050. 


MR. GRIFFON: I’m sorry to interrupt, one more question 


on that. Did the supporting documents that you just 


mentioned, are those on the O drive as well, the report 


and all the, I mean, they’re outside of OTIB-0050. 


MR. LANGSTED: Yes, the neutron dose reconstruction 


project protocol which is (unintelligible) report --


DR. FALK: Is part of the Rocky Flats site profile 


documents. 


MR. GRIFFON: Is this part of the site profile documents? 


DR. FALK: Well, not the site profile, but the supporting 


documentation for Rocky Flats (unintelligible). 


MR. GRIFFON: So it would, I just want to be able to find 


it. 

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MR. BUCHANAN (by telephone): This is Ron Buchanan again, 


yes, it was posted on the O drive February 7th, ’05 is 


this date. 


MR. GRIFFON: Okay, thank you, sorry to interrupt. 


MR. LANGSTED: Completeness of the external exposure data 


unmonitored personnel. As we’ve discussed earlier I 


believe the dosimetry at Rocky Flats was not a hundred or 


not all employees were monitored initially at Rocky 


Flats. They did only monitor those that they felt would 


exceed ten percent of the radiological protection guide 


at the time. So that does create a challenge for the 


dose reconstructors to go back and reconstruct the dose 


for those individuals that weren’t monitored. 


But they have put together a program that does a bunch of 


maximizing assumptions initially to see if a person 


reaches the compensation limit or not. And then 


conversely, they’ve got some minimizing assumptions that 


they use to see if a compensateable person falls below 


the line. And if neither one of those, well, if they do 


fall above or below, thank you very much, they’re either 


compensated or they’re not. And if they’re in the 


middle, then they go to a more rigorous and exacting dose 


reconstruction. It does require that they use the 


neutron or use coworker data and a neutron-to-gamma 


ratios in some cases. 

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One of the things that, the byproducts that came out of 


this neutron dose reconstruction project is a carefully 


evaluated set of neutron-to-gamma ratios for the early 


years, and the years through which the neutron dose 


reconstruction project analyzed data, another tool that’s 


of value to the dose reconstructors. 


MR. GRIFFON: Let’s return to one for a second. It 


mentions in there the Ruttenberg data. Did NIOSH 


consider the Ruttenberg at all? 


DR. ULSH: We’re still attempting to get that. 


MR. GRIFFON: He hasn’t released that. 


Sorry once again. Go ahead. 


MR. LANGSTED: Let’s see, there was a question about 


missed extremity dose. The neutron dose reconstruction 


project recognized that there were a group of workers, 


well, there have been a number of workers at or lots of 


workers at Rocky Flats that were not monitored for 


extremity dose. And again, the plant did not recognize 


or did not -- or not recognize, but these individuals 


were not likely to get significantly greater dose than to 


the extremities than to the rest of the body and so they 


did not put extremity monitoring on them. However, there 


were many individuals that were monitored for extremity 


dose if they were hands-on workers. So there is a good 


set of coworker data that can be used to estimate the 

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dose for those individuals, extremity dose to those 


individuals where it’s needed. 


And this frankly, is not, does not happen in a lot of 


cases because there’s only a few cases where there are, 


and actually the dose reconstructors can tell you this, 


but there’s only a few cases where there are really 


extremity cancers that need to be, where the extremity 


dose needs to be evaluated differently than the body 


dose. 


Another issue that was recognized was the missing 


quarterly results. Even though Rocky Flats monitored 


everyone on plant site from 1964 through about 1991, the 


records show missing dose in some quarters of 


individuals’ files. My experience at Rocky Flats, and I 


was there from ’77 through ’90, was that it was very 


unusual, in fact, it was an oddity to see someone on 


plant site that did not have a dosimetry badge on. 


Now I was in the dosimetry business so I probably paid 


more attention to this than most people did. But I’ll 


tell you what, if you didn’t have a security badge on you 


weren’t going to get very far on plant site, and the 


dosimetry badge was an integral part along with the 


security badge. So it was very unlikely that somebody 


walked around without a dosimeter on. 


What happened, Rocky Flats did not have an extremely 

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tight exchange enforcement program. In other words, if a 


person was asked to exchange their badge on the badge 


board this following week, and they did not do that, 


Rocky Flats often did not follow up on that. Now workers 


that were monitored on a biweekly or a monthly basis 


their management was much tighter on that than 


individuals that wore a badge for a quarter. In fact, 


many of the people who wore badges on a quarterly basis 


in today’s day and age would not need to be monitored and 


would not have a badge on. 


However, what would happen then is the individual would 


end up wearing the badge for two exchange periods and so 


when the badges were processed and that individual’s 


badge was not on the badge board, actually their new 


badge was still hanging on the badge board, did they 


recognize that, that badge would not get processed, and 


either a zero or a blank would go into that individual’s 


file for that month or that period. 


Then the next period when they exchanged the badge, the 


badge would now have two quarters worth of dose on it. 


What they would do is read out the badge, and all of that 


dose would be credited to that second exchange period. I 


never saw an example where they tried to prorate the dose 


and put it into the two exchange periods, obviously 


because you don’t know for sure how that’s done. 

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DR. ULSH: And if I could interrupt just briefly. If you 


think about what would happen in terms of how we would 


handle the dose reconstruction methods. It would 


actually, if they missed an exchange cycle and all of 


their dose that they accumulated over those two cycles 


were piled into one, we would then assign in addition to 


that, missed dose for that other exchange cycle. So it 


would actually be higher than if they had exchanged their 


badges. 


MR. FITZGERALD: So you could (unintelligible) if it were 


a legitimate dose for that one period. 


MR. LANGSTED: Exactly right. 


MS. MUNN: That’s such a problem. That’s a real problem. 


MR. LANGSTED: Now this was back in the days at Rocky 


Flats where people took their badges home every night. 


One thing when you connect the security badge with the 


dosimetry badge, they would check people to make sure 


they had their security badge as they left the plant 


site. They ended up having to take their dosimeter home 


with them. So there was not, when you went to exchange 


the badges, if a person was sick, if a person was working 


in a different building or something like that, it was 


tougher to do the exchange. So all of that added up to a 


lot of doses. 


And we have looked at a number of cases specifically when 

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we were looking at this, and you’d see, I mean, for 


example, you’d see a worker that had a badge on a month, 


month, month, month, month, month, month basis. And then 


all of a sudden you’d see them with a quarter badge and a 


one-quarter badge and a couple of blanks, then a quarter 


badge then a blank, then a couple of quarter badges. 


That was looked like the case where the individual was a 


production worker originally on a monthly badge. 


Then they went to a management position where they, or a 


planner or something where they were not working the 


production areas, went on to a quarterly badge and then 


they just kind of fell from the routine of changing their 


badges from every exchange. So it created some holes. 


But we did have a continuous badging situation and we do 


have a continuous badge record if the data or when the 


data was recorded as it was. 


Okay, zeros versus blanks. This depends on the period 


that you are looking at. When computer databases first 


came into being, a field would be designated as a numeric 


field and dang it, you had to have a number in that 


field. So if they had a non-exchange situation, a zero 


would get placed in that field for an individual. Later 


on it was recognized that there’s a difference between a 


zero and a blank so let’s put a blank in that field in 


place of a zero and the databases were updated to be able 

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to do that. 


And that’s where the genesis of the term no current data 


available came from. If a blank was available or a blank 


was in that field, we then go to run out a report for 


that individual, they recognize that rather than putting 


a zero there, they put a term like no current data 


available. So workers would see that and go, hey, what’s 


the situation. 


In fact, I had some situations where they’d come up and 


they’d say, wait a minute. And we’d go back and look in 


the records lo and behold, you didn’t exchange your badge 


last period. Is that correct? Well, maybe. Let’s see 


the badge you’re wearing. Oh, it has last month’s tag on 


it. So --

MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): This is Tony DeMaiori with 

the steelworkers. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yes, sir. 

MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): We had several criminal 

investigations at Rocky Flats over exceedingly high doses 


that were ended up reported no current data available. 


I’m making a statement of fact here. Sort of tell the 


Board that always a missed badge with no current data 


available and that’s where it came from. I don’t believe 


that’s correct. 


MR. LANGSTED: What was the time period this occurred? 

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MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): Oh, this time period 


occurred from the early ‘80s we were getting no current 


data available. When I worked in Building 771, the time 


period during the Gable lawsuit when what they had wasn’t 


considered an extremity. 


MR. LANGSTED: I’m sorry, how does the had not considered 


an extremity --


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): Let’s stick to the no 


current data available. There were several 


investigations at Rocky Flats as to why individuals’ dose 


for the quarter or for the month exceeded their 


coworkers. And when I mean investigations, I mean 


criminal investigations that’s for the internal dosimetry 


department to produce a no current data available. So to 


say that that was used strictly for a badge that wasn’t 


turned in during a monthly or quarterly I believe is very 


inaccurate. I believe that those investigations will 


prove that to be true. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Could I ask a question about that? Is 


the paperwork from these investigations available? 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): Not to us. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Who would have it? If there were 


criminal investigations, presumably there’s some 


paperwork to go with it. 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): Absolutely, and I’m sure 

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that you have a better ability to obtain than we do. 


MS. MUNN: Who’s the plaintiff? 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): There were several 


individuals who were investigated onsite for having too 


high of doses. 


MS. MUNN: Who investigated them? 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): Internal security out at 


Rocky Flats, those would be Security records. 


MS. MUNN: And the legal proceeding was brought as a 


result? 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): I don’t know if a legal 


proceeding was brought, but the investigations were 


conducted. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Could you provide us with the names of 


the workers who were investigated? Because obviously a 


very important point of difference that’s necessary to 


resolve. 


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Don’t provide those on the transcript, 


please. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay, yes. 


MR. GRIFFON: We should follow up on this issue offline 


but and see when this investigation was and try to get 


some details out of this because it’s, is that okay, 


Tony? 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): Yeah, that’s okay. 

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MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): Another point of 


clarification, and you guys probably know this, and it 


might not be clear on the phone, but --


MS. MUNN: Who’s speaking please? 


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I’m sorry, you need to identify 


yourself before you start speaking. 


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): Jennifer Thompson. And you 


keep saying that the security badges and dosimetry badge 


were one. I’m assuming that you know that was only for a 


certain specified period of time because at least in the 


last 15 years that wasn’t the case. 


MR. LANGSTED: You’re absolutely correct. In about 1991, 


the badges were separated and dosimetry for those that 


were not expected to exceed 100 millirem per year were 


discontinued. 


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): Right, and that’s how you 


ran into those problems with the (unintelligible) workers 


in 371 and some of the other buildings where people 


actually got dose above the 100 millirem and did not have 


dosimeters including a pregnant person in Building 371, 


and there was an investigation into that because in the 


later years not everybody had a dosimeter. 


MR. LANGSTED: That’s correct. 


MR. FITZGERALD: So from at least ’64 then to ’91 is the 


span where you had the integrated security 

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(unintelligible). 


MR. LANGSTED: Well, let’s see, I’m marching through my 


list of item, issue nine. One of the issues that was 


brought up during the review that’s cited in number nine 


is the fact that in 1968, 1967 and 1968, several workers, 


several, 85, 86 and 87 people exceeded the five rem per 


year number. 


And the question was how can you use that limit then as 


an indicator of what dose an individual might have 


received without tripping alarms and using it as an 


(unintelligible) estimator for a missed dose. And if you 


look at the, back in history, 1968 is when the Atomic 


Energy Commission implemented the five rem per year limit 


for occupational workers. Prior to that it was three rem 


per quarter or 12 rem per year. 


And if you look at the Rocky Flats records, there were 


workers, there were many workers that were above five rem 


per year but less than 12 rem per year in the years just 


prior to 1968. And then in 1968 when the five rem per 


year limit was put in place, there were no workers that 


were over five rem per year. So the plant control 


systems were put in place then to monitor workers and 


keep those doses down to less than five rem per year. 


So that break is very important to recognize when you 


look at that the table of workers or of doses for workers 

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at Rocky Flats. And in fact, the dose limits that the 


Task Five group uses when they’re doing their estimations 


recognizes this limit dropping from 12 to five rem per 


year. And that table is in the technical basis document, 


the tool available for the dose reconstruction. 


Exposures to low energy photons, neutron exposures to low 


energy photons, a technical basis document does recognize 


the fact that the film is relatively insensitive to 


neutrons below about 800 keV. And a bias correction 


factor is developed based on spectrum measurements that 


were taken at Rocky Flats and a worker or a claimant-


favorable bias correction factor is identified and put 


into the dose reconstruction process to take credit for 


any dose that would be missed from neutrons with lower 


energies. 


And this is quite claimant favorable because, in fact, 


the spectrum that were used to calibrate the dosimeters 


back in that time period were designed to be 


approximately the same or as close to as they could the 


neutron spectra that they were exposed to, the plutonium 


workers were exposed to. And taking credit for missed 


dose is actually probably not needed, but it is claimant 


favorable to do that. 


MR. BUCHANAN (by telephone): This is Ron Buchanan. I 


had a question before you move on on that. When the 

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NDRP(unintelligible) was finished, are they going to use 


the table 618 in the TBD on page 34 of the original TBD, 


are they going to use that table on top of the NDRP data 


or will that eliminate that table 618? 


MR. ROBINSON (by telephone): This is Al Robinson with 


the ORAU team. For what we’ve set it up and it’s talked 


about in OTIB-0050 is that for non-compensable cases, 


well, the both compensable and non-compensable cases, we 


apply the 2.5 factor only to the portion of the dose that 


is original unchanged dose. The NDRP re-read dose and 


the notional dose do not get that 2.5 factor. So a 


portion of the dose does get the 2.5 factor. 


MR. BUCHANAN (by telephone): Okay, thank you for that. 


Now a second question on the same line. It says it had 


some new neutron energy measurements. Now are they still 


talking about the P&L measurements or is this some new 


data from real time when the processes were taking place? 


MR. LANGSTED: It is the P&L data. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I have a question about the low energy 


neutrons. I noticed in the (unintelligible) report that 


the moderated plutonium fluoride neutron had an average 


energy of .15 meV so that it almost the entire 


distribution of neutron energies would be below the NTA 


detectible. I don’t understand how the dose for 


plutonium fluoride moderated neutrons is to be assigned 

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for that period. 


DR. FALK: What you would have is, when you have the 


average energy for a neutron spectrum it’s probably 


closer to a log normal distribution; whereas, you still 


have a significant portion of the energy carried by the 


higher energy neutrons that are not or maybe minimally 


moderated. So you still have a part of the neutron 


spectrum above the threshold that’s going to give a three 


or four grain track. And then when you calibrate the 


film to film exposed to a moderate plutonium-fluoride 


source, which is what we did, then you have calibrated to 


a moderated spectrum and that tends to compensate for the 


neutrons less than the threshold which is needed to 


generate the photon ionization track of three and twofour(unintelligible) grains which is then readable. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I didn’t see any distribution, I read, I 


didn’t read (unintelligible) report. I kind of scanned 


it quickly but I did not see any distribution of neutron 


energies that would have provided for the moderated 


neutrons. Because (unintelligible) pretty low if you 


take 700 keV as the detection limit, you know, that’s 


almost a factor of five above your average energy. The 


average energy would be above the median energy, so 


you’re already, I don’t know how long a tail you’ve got 


there. 

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DR. FALK: Well, what I will share with you is that when 


you expose neutron film to a moderated plutonium-fluoride 


source, you find tracks, and you find a fairly 


significant track density essentially even relative to 


the unmoderated sources. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I trust you, what you’re saying. It just 


would be useful to have (unintelligible) so that it will 


register. Sorry, even though you’re across from me. So 


that it would be useful to see the neutron energy 


spectrum for moderated neutrons. 


DR. FALK: I’m not sure we have the spectrum, however. 


MR. GRIFFON: But you have the calibration data. Maybe 


that would be --


DR. FALK: -- but we have the calibration data. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I don’t get it. If you don’t have the 


spectrum, how can you calibrate, how can you calculate --


DR. NETON: You just don’t have the measured spectrum, I 


mean, you generate the spectrum of moderated neutrons, 


but you don’t capture the exact distribution of the 


energies of the spectrum. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I guess I have to think about this in not 


real time. 


DR. NETON: It’s common practice. When you calibrate 


something, you don’t necessarily generate the spectrum. 


DR. FALK: But you do know what the dose rate is. 

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MR. BUCHANAN (by telephone): Yeah, this is Ron Buchanan. 


How do you know that dose? How was that dose rate 


determined? 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I think we have to look at the 


information in more detail. 


DR. FALK: The way we did it back in the ‘60s was that 


the plutonium-fluoride source was calibrated down at the 


Los Alamos graphite pile so that we knew the source for 


(unintelligible), the neutrons per second. And then we 


calibrated one of the neutron survey instruments which 


was the Hankins ten-inch (unintelligible) around the 


VF3(unintelligible) tube which is a pretty good dose rate 


meter for that type of the neutrons. And then we used 


that to basically calibrate (unintelligible) source 


(unintelligible), which is calculated out through the 


center of that VF3(unintelligible) tube. And then once 


you had that calibrated, then you put your moderator 


around the source and they were spherical shells that we 


put around the actual spherical source. And then use 


your calibrated survey meter, the Hankins 


sphere(unintelligible) to then measure the dose rate at 


the distance that you’re going to calibrate the 


(unintelligible). That is the method. 


MR. BUCHANAN (by telephone): Okay, thank you. 


MR. GRIFFON: I just put that as an action, maybe you 

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can, if there’s some document describing that method or ­

-


DR. FALK: There is a paper captured for the Rocky Flats 


onsite data which is Mann(unintelligible) and 


Voss(unintelligible), I believe, 1964, a Rocky Flats 


document. 


MR. LANGSTED: And that’s referenced in the basis 


document. 


MR. GRIFFON: We should follow up on that. Maybe you can 


DR. FALK: It shows the polyethylene shells that were 


used to moderate the source. Actually, there was a set 


of them going from about two and a half centimeters 


(unintelligible) the angle of radius out to seven 


centimeters. And then we made another one out to nine 


and a half centimeters. So we had a complete set there. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: This is obviously something we have to 


look at. 


MR. LANGSTED: Okay, a couple more items out of this 


issue nine. In 1993, the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety 


Board inspector was told about a potential problem with 


the algorithm where the low energy chip in the Panasonic 


dosimeter may not have had the correct factor applied to 


it. We’re in the process of researching that now and see 


if we can find the managers that dealt with that. 

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This was during the time when the DOELAP accreditation 


process was coming into play. Sites were scrambling to 


get their systems so that they would respond correctly to 


the DOELAP standards that had been designed. We were 


sending Rocky Flats dosimeters up to PNL(unintelligible) 


to be exposed to these standard exposures and then 


reading them out. So during this process it’s not 


surprising that the algorithm was under refinement to 


bring it in line with the DOELAP process at the time. 


We’re researching that now and don’t have the 


documentation on that at this point. 


The final issue had to do with some House Committee on 


Energy and Commerce testimony that was given by the GAO. 


And the senior GAO manager that was testifying was 


talking about a clearly convoluted discussion talking 


about instrumentation at Rocky Flats, air sampling at 


Rocky Flats, and dosimetry at Rocky Flats. Reading 


through all of the testimony that was presented and the 


written testimony that was presented with it we can’t 


make good sense out of what he was saying. It was clear 


that he was a senior manager that had been fed data by 


his other folks. 


We’re looking at that to see if we can make sense out of 


it. But the question that SC&A asked -- let me look at 


my notes here. Well, no, I’m sorry, I’m thinking about a 

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different thing, but it’s not clear that the calibration 


of the dosimeters was the issue there or if it was 


calibration of the instruments. Again, this was about 


the time that standards were being promulgated by the 


national standards organizations that DOE was adopting 


and having to do with calibrating instruments to more 


rigorous standards than they had before. So this very 


well may have been the issue. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I actually raised this issue having read 


the testimony and my main question about that relates 


actually to the pre-’64 period. I don’t know, the 


testimony itself doesn’t relate to the pre-’64 period, 


but there are zeros and blanks in the pre-’64 period that 


we’ve observed in our review (unintelligible). And those 


are obviously of a different nature than the ones you 


described when people were wearing badges and didn’t turn 


it in for one period and the badge was read in the next 


period where you could fill in the gap relatively easily. 


The question of the zero entry when a badge is not turned 


in or not worn and whether it relates to something like 


what we discovered at Nevada Test Site where people would 


take off their badges when they went into forward areas 


because they didn’t want to be bumped from employment or 


overtime pay or not overtime, hazardous duty pay. 


I don’t know whether this kind of situation arose at 

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Rocky Flats or whether there’s some other explanation for 


the zeros and blanks in the pre-’64 period. So my 


question didn’t relate to the calibration side of the 


testimony, but to the zero side. I think there was a 


congressman who actually asked this question. 


DR. ULSH: I think we might be mixing a couple of issues. 


The one that Jim is speaking about, the testimony by the 


GAO before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, it 


was actually Mr. Schaffer(unintelligible), I believe, 


probably Bob Schaffer from the Fort Collins area, was 


asking about calibration of air monitors and the GAO 


person, Mr. Wells, was talking about how there were 


problems with calibrations in those instruments. 


And I think what Jim was saying is interchangeably he was 


using questions about the air sampling equipment and the 


dosimetry. So it’s not clear that which was actually 


being referred to. The issue of blanks and zeros is a 


separate issue. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I don’t have the (unintelligible) 


testimony in front of me and it’s not in the part that 


Joe just handed to me, but this is from memory. But 


there is a portion in the testimony when Congressman 


Schaffer(unintelligible) and Mr. Wells are discussing the 


question of zero being entered when badges were not 


handed in. And so it’s not clear to me that it’s in the, 

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just in the post-’64 period or whether it applies to the 


pre-’64 period. There wasn’t a time discussion there, 


but clearly since there are blanks and zeros, I think 


more in the pre-’64 period. 


Here’s the exchange. It’s on page 107 of our review. 


Mr. Shaffer: If a dosimeter was not returned should an 


estimate of the (unintelligible) radiation have been 


made? What’s the result of not making that? Well, we 


think perhaps an estimate would have been included would 


certainly have been better than to report zero exposure. 


So that’s the piece. So he was clearly saying that there 


was zero exposure reported when badges were not being 


turned in, and so I think clearly it’s not a question 


that delimited, at least it’s not obvious that it was 


delimited to the post-’64 period. So I don’t know what 


we do about the --


MR. GRIFFON: And it may not be. I mean, I think the way 


you answered the question earlier was that if that, in 


fact, happened, then the person would have still have 


that badge, and it would have been carried through in the 


next analysis, correct? But that’s on clear Arjun’s 


saying. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: It’s not clear that’s what happened in 


the pre-’64 period because in the pre-’64 period the 


badge and the security identification were not 

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integrated. And with the same problem, the reason it 


kind of raised an eyebrow on my part was I finished the 


NPS(unintelligible) interview. And when I talked to Mr. 


Brady who was involved with Health Physics there for 


decades, he had indicated that a lot of this problem of 


taking off the badges and so on was solved to a large 


extent in his opinion, was solved when the integrated 


badge was introduced. And so I wondered obviously 


whether the same problem arose at Rocky Flats when there 


wasn’t an integrated badge. 


MR. LANGSTED: Well, first of all the testimony there is 


1994 testimony so it’s very likely that they were talking 


about post-’64 activities. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Post-’90 actually. Possible. 


MR. GRIFFON: But it doesn’t negate his question. 


MR. LANGSTED: Correct. No, the question if valid. And 


a pre-1964 zero could be from just the, you know, as I 


was explaining earlier, the non-exchange of the badge. 


Or it could be from a badge that, he’s implying a badge 


that was lost. 


DR. FALK: Can I jump in with two feet here? 


MR. LANGSTED: You bet. 


DR. FALK: As part of the neutron dose reconstruction 


project we actually reconstructed both the neutron and 


the gamma timelines essentially through 1989, about 

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through 1969. Nineteen seventy was not a well-behaved 


year, and we weren’t able to successfully do that. Back 


in the pre-‘70s, I did not see a practice where there 


were zeros without having a film there to be read. And 


they would read the density in the film areas for the 


gamma, and they would have a neutron film. The timelines 


that we reconstructed had blanks, and, in fact, blanks 


were then, if they were blanks for the timeline for the 


neutron monitoring in a plutonium-related area, we 


actually assigned neutron doses to those blanks. And 


there were a lot of blanks. And for the beta-gamma there 


was never --


MR. GRIFFON: I was just going to ask there. You said 


you assigned the neutron dose. How did you assign it, 


just based on (unintelligible). 


DR. FALK: That’s based on --


MR. GRIFFON: It’s in your report, right? 


DR. FALK: That is in chapter 11 in the neutron dose 


reconstruction project protocol of which you have a copy. 


MR. GRIFFON: But it was based on minimum effectual limit 


or --


DR. FALK: It was based on gamma ratios. You have to 


have a gamma, also there’s a combination method. If 


there were monitored neutron doses, they used average 


neutron dose per day or whatever and then they used a 

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combination method. It is stated in the protocol. 


And also looking at the beta-gamma worksheets, about the 


only time there was a zero was when there was a red film 


and they had (unintelligible) readings of basically zero. 


So that wasn’t an issue back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: So I guess you don’t have the same 


problem of employment practices at Rocky Flats that they 


have at Nevada Test Site. I mean, when I came across 


this at Nevada Test Site, I went back and looked at the 


history. And they did have employment practices that 


sort of essentially encouraged people to minimize their 


dose by not wearing their badges, things like that. 


DR. FALK: I’m not able to testify for all periods, but 


for periods that I know about that was not done. 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): I would like to speak on 


behalf of the United Steelworkers. This is Tony 


DeMaiori. Absolutely, we had the same incentives and de-


incentives to us. We paid (unintelligible) pay. We paid 


area allowance. We paid respirator pay, and if you were 


burned out, you were moved to the south side of the plant 


or to the waste treatment operations, and you earned less 


money, no premium pay, overtime. 


We saw it when we had to clean out the duct systems. 


Chemical operators would put screwdrivers through filters 


when the filters were plugged so that they could keep 

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operating their lines. This is something that I think’s 


pretty universal in the nuclear industry as individual’s 


doing things that weren’t necessarily correct for 


different reasons. 


And so that’s not correct. I don’t believe that’s a 


correct statement at all. We saw it in the D&D 


operations. I can’t tell you how many safety items we 


fixed that really weren’t what the problem was. And the 


money has always been an issue, absolutely, the money’s 


an issue. So that is not a correct statement. 


MR. GRIFFON: Tony, to you’re the best of your knowledge, 


do you know if people have told you or in the petition 


itself have alleged that they didn’t wear their badge at 


certain periods or put down their badge when they were 


working on hot jobs, anything like that? 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): You know, I know during the 


lawsuit with Don Gable and his family, that’s when he got 


brain cancer and died. I was a young chemical operator 


in 771 and there was a lot of talk over is his dosimetry 


correctly showing dose. Line one where people were being 


burnt out sent over to Waste Treatment. I saw an 


individual throw a badge into a salt can. Fifteen 


minutes later pulled it out. Everybody said, hey, let’s 


see if it’s going to show a higher increase and sure as 


heck it didn’t, no current data available. 

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You know, when you work on the floor and processes, 


people do a lot of things that aren’t procedurally 


correct for their own purposes. During the D&D 


operations a lot of short cuts were taken for financial 


gain by the individuals on the crews. I mean, you see a 


lot of this sort of things, and it’s really hard, really, 


really hard to keep a handle on. 


So what you saw in Nevada you’ll see at any nuclear site 


in the country. That’s absolutely the truth because of 


the incentives, because of the rewards. Myself as a 


chemical operator in 771, I picked up my paycheck every 


Thursday. With that I would sign my weekly dosimetery 


report; I would initial it. 


And the weeks that I didn’t have high dose my manager, 


George Stapleton, would tell me, hey, Ton, you’re going 


to have to back in this office for your paycheck. And 


I’d tell him, what do you mean, George? He say, well, 


you didn’t do nothing last week. Look at these low 


readings. So you know, this is not correct, absolutely 

not. 

DR. ULSH: This is Brant Ulsh with NIOSH. We’ve actually 

heard similar statements at a number of different sites, 


not just at Rocky Flats, about, you know, I was getting 


close to my limit so I left my badge in my locker, things 


like that. We do have ways for handling situations like 

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that. Number one, if a claimant can identify when that 


happens that’s one situation. But that’s not very 


common. We’re talking decades after the fact, in some 


cases even survivors. 


But we also have technical methods. I don’t want to get 


too far down in the weeds here, but the methods of 


(unintelligible) where we can look at Z plots of badge 


reads, and we can see an abnormal behavior of the dose 


over time. And we can go back and adjust those doses 


because that could reflect either exactly what the 


worker’s alleging, that I left my badge in my locker. Or 


it can reflect they were getting close to the limit so 


they were pulled out of the area. In either case we can 


go back in and adjust those doses that are assigned in 


situations like that. 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): Well, and I understand what 


you’re saying, but when we’re talking about dose 


reconstruction, we’re talking about a perfect world with 


all the facts. And so for us to say, I mean, I’ve got a 


lot of things I could say. You know, we didn’t certify, 


what year did we certify our dosimetry lab? 


DR. ULSH: Nineteen ninety-one. 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): Okay, so from ’91 forward 


we knew we had a certified lab. And then I could talk 


about the practices at Rocky Flats when one of the female 

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workers would get pregnant. Where did we send them to 


work? Internal dosimetry lab. 


MR. GRIFFON: Tony, just for the record, we need the 


spelling of your last name. I’m sorry. 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): D-E capital M-A-I-O-R-I. 

MR. GRIFFON: Thank you. 

MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): But in the internal 

dosimetry lab, that’s where we dumped all the pregnant 


workers. We gave them a two-week crash course on how to 


do their job, and it didn’t matter if they came from 


janitorial staff. It didn’t matter where they came from. 


Didn’t matter what their skill level was. They ended up 


in the dosimetry lab. So you know, we can talk this 


until we’re blue in the face. Hello? 


MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, we’re still here. I just want to 


get, I think we’ve touched on most of these issues now 


anyway. I know that we haven’t resolved every one of 


them, but and the pre-’64 zeroing question, I think I’d 


like to see your report. I don’t think we’ve all looked 


at it. And TIB-0050, I’m not sure. I think you have 


looked at that, but --


DR. MAKHIJANI: Ron’s looked at it. 


MR. GRIFFON: But the supporting full dose neutron dose 


reconstruction report, have you looked at that? 


MR. FITZGERALD: (unintelligible) these issues were 

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matters of substantiation which just begins. We did see 


these anecdotal references. We did get this from 


interviews, and it wasn’t the ability to take it to 


ground the (unintelligible) we got. So I think this is 


the beginning of the process of trying to make some sense 


of what we’re seeing, to try and establish whether this 


is pervasive, systematic or whether, in fact, these were 


explainable aberrations based on the operational history 


of the plant. 


So this is helpful. I think if we get more documentation 


of this sort -- and Tony, I guess I would say if there’s 


documentation or substantiation to some of the issues 


you’re raising as well, that would help us understand 


where there were investigations, where there were 


additional corroborating pieces of information. That 


would help take this from an anecdotal stage to one where 


there’s actually some basis. 


MR. GRIFFON: Let me also ask before I have to go, which 


is 15 minutes ago, if the, I’m trying to understand if 


there’s a coworker model for Rocky, and if, this is sort 


of the same question that we went down with Y-12, how 


many of the current petitioners would require coworker 


data for their case to be reconstructed? That sort of 


question and for internal and external, I’m talking. And 


then the question becomes has that coworker model been, 

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you know, it’s the validation question there. 


DR. ULSH: It’s a little different situation at Rocky 


Flats than at some other sites like maybe Y-12 where we 


relied to a great extent on CER data. At Rocky Flats we 


do have CER data, but we have access to original data as 


well. So you may not run into a lot of these validation 


issues that popped up for the CER data. 


DR. NETON: It’s a similar situation, I think, because if 


we do use the electronic Rocky Flats data, then you’re in 


an analogous situation to Y-12 which is do we --


MR. LITTLE: We have some, for example, 1965 to 1970 we 


have PDFs of original data, handwritten data. 


DR. NETON: Oh, no, I agree. I agree, but what we’re 


saying is let’s say that if we go and use the Rocky Flats 


electronic data to develop coworker models, then we still 


would need to go back and take these handwritten sheets 


and compare them against the electronic data to make sure 


that we have, you know, that the data agree. 


MR. LANGSTED: We have an interim step there that Kaiser-


Hill did for us. When Kaiser-Hill was requested by DOE 


to provide a claimant file for the NIOSH process, they 


would pull the paper Health Physics file for that 


individual. And Rocky Flats was good at putting the 


information in that paper file. 


And then they compared that with their electronic 

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database that they had online at the time. And that 


included data that they had brought up from previous 


databases and one of the gentlemen that works on the 


NIOSH project actually worked at Rocky Flats and spent 


five or more years of his career maintaining that 


database or improving that database. And what Kaiser-


Hill did was a QC check where they would put down the 


paper file, and then they would look at the electronic 


results. 


And they would put those on a sheet together and score 


those and QC them. And if they found a problem, they 


would dig into it. You know, maybe a portion of the guys 


file didn’t come over because he was actually a 


contractor for somebody else prior to that. And they 


would pull that together. And they provided that QC 


sheet along with the, usually the first couple pages in 


the external dosimetry file for that individual. So that 


gave us some pretty good information on the validity of 


that information. 


MR. FITZGERALD: This is a searchable database by 


identifier. You could actually use that to corroborate 


then your actual --


MR. LANGSTED: Correct, correct. 


DR. NETON: So it sounds like we’re one step closer. 


MR. GRIFFON: Might be a step closer, yes. 

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DR. NETON: I think to have that written up somehow in 


shape or form would probably be a good thing. 


MR. GRIFFON: That’d be useful. 


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): But actually -- this is 


Jennifer Thompson -- he brings up a very interesting 


point in that when Rocky Flats was there, and you had 


access to the Kaiser-Hill folks, you could that. You 


can’t get that anymore. Steve Baker was the person who 


used to do that, and he’s obviously not there anymore. 


So for people that file after today, you’re not going to 


necessarily have that level of accuracy coming from 


anywhere because the records have all been filed away 


now. 


MR. LANGSTED: That’s not exactly true because the 


records the records are still at the Denver federal 


center, and there is, DOE Legacy Management has taken 


over the records for Rocky Flats. 


MS. THOMPSON (by telephone): Yup, I’m just saying that I 


don’t think you’re going to get the same service you got 


before because there’s not going to be a dosimetry expert 


interpreting those records for you and doing any kind of 


QC on them. 


MR. LANGSTED: Well, right now Legacy Management does 


have people in place to pull the records and assemble 


them for transfer over to Rocky Flats. Ken 

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Sabbatz(unintelligible), the guy who I was talking about 


who did work on this before is still under contract with 


Legacy Management to assemble that data. And so we are 


still seeing access to all of those records, and we’re 


seeing personnel available to pull them together. 


MR. GRIFFON: It’s like Jim said, we might be one step 


closer here. I think, and of course, (unintelligible) we 


have in those kind of cases as QC was done on an 


individual level, but I doubt that any, well, I don’t 


know whether that QC effort would have modified the 


database at all. So if you’re going to use some coworker 


model from the database, you may have all this QC 


information never even gets considered when you’re 


looking at the electronic CER database. So there’s some 


information out there I think. 


MR. SMITH (by telephone): This is Matt Smith on the 


line. For the record I’m the author on OTIB-0050, and 


I’m currently working on the external. 


MR. GRIFFON: We can’t hear you. 


MR. SMITH (by telephone): How’s this? Does that sound a 


little better? 


MR. GRIFFON: Yes, much better. 


MR. SMITH (by telephone): Just for the record I’m author 


on OTIB-0050, and then I’m also working --


MR. GRIFFON: Matt Smith? Is that --

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MR. SMITH (by telephone): Matthew Smith, yes, with ORAU 


team. I’m also working on the external Rocky Flats data. 


Just to let everyone know with the coworker datasets that 


have already been processed through, it’s been our 


standard procedure to go ahead and cross-check any 


(unintelligible) data against actual dosimetry records 


that we have on hand, and that procedure will be followed 


for this effort as well. 


MR. GRIFFON: Thank you. I’m talking about coworker 


uses, but that’s great. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: A week or so ago, that’s the 21st of 


February, we sent, Joe sent a memo to Jim and Brant and 


raising, a lot of the neutron dose issues have been 


addressed applicable to the (unintelligible) and 


rechecking, but there was a whole set of issues related 


to the gamma doses pre-1976. And so we are a step 


closer, but I wondered if they probably overlap with your 


preparation of the document you sent us a few days later. 


So maybe there’ll be a supplemental response to some of 


those things to the extent they haven’t been answered 


for. 


DR. ULSH: We do intend to cover all the issues in the 


document that you sent over six days ago. You’re right; 


it’s not reflected currently completely. We’ve hit a 


couple of points in there. We haven’t gone through 

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(unintelligible) point. 


MR. LANGSTED: Was that the additional two issues? 


DR. ULSH: Yes. 


MR. LANGSTED: They’re answered in the last pages of this 


thing you handed out today. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Did we get all the issues? 


MR. LANGSTED: Yeah,(unintelligible) issue one and two, 


and there is the answer for each of them. That was an 


attempt to answer both the issues that you brought up in 


that memo. 


DR. ULSH: We’re have a change in --


MS. MUNN: I think we have all the action items that are 


necessary on the discussion here. The only other item 


that I have that was open for discussion was from our 


item four on the matrix regarding the americium 


calculations. We were going to do something about that. 


DR. ULSH: Yes, for this issue we initially misunderstood 


the comment. We interpreted it as is it really valid to 


use americium as a surrogate for plutonium in lung 


counting. And after discussions with SC&A we realized 


that that wasn’t really what they were asking at all. It 


had more to do with what about situations where we were 


dealing ultra-pure plutonium where the americium had been 


separated from it and how would we go about bounding the 


dose or calculating the dose in those situations. And 

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Roger Falk has provided a pretty good write up on this 


issue so I’m going to turn it over to Roger and let him 


explain. 


MS. MUNN: So this wasn’t in vivo assumptions about 


americium calculations? 


DR. ULSH: I don’t think. I hesitate to speak for SC&A, 


but I don’t think you were questioning that measuring 


americium gammas is, that’s an okay thing to do to count 


the plutonium. It was what about situations where you 


have an inhalation of fresh plutonium. 


MR. FITZGERALD: Or recycled plutonium 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): This is John Mauro. You’re 


correct. A concern that we expressed the last time we 


met and discussed this matter and in our recent write ups 


had to do with there are, there might be classes of 


workers where the plutonium that’s inhaled may have very 


little, if any, americium associated with it. And 


therefore, the chest counts won’t reveal the presence of 


that plutonium. 


DR. ULSH: Now that we have a handle on what you’re 


really asking, I’ll let Roger maybe go into some of the 


details. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Just to more fully explain the concern, 


there are two levels in this concern. The one level is 


how fresh is the plutonium. The other level is the same 

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plutonium run through Rocky Flats a number of times. So 


each time you remove the americium, you’re essentially 


removing what used to be Plutonium-241 so when you send 


it back out, the amount of Plutonium-241 is less than in 


freshly made, weapons-grade plutonium where you have a 


certain ratio. 


You have six percent Plutonium-240 and send them out 


Plutonium-241, but you don’t, if you send it back after 


15 years, purify it and take out the americium, you don’t 


have the same amount of Plutonium-241. It’s reduced by a 


factor of two. So the second time around you don’t have 


the same starting point for Plutonium-241. So there are 


the two levels of concern regarding pure plutonium and 


how much americium is generated, what the algorithm for 


it is. 


DR. FALK: This is something that we were actually aware 


of in the real time, and so we put into place, I think 


around 1972, a process -- well now, actually we started 


in 1969 to measure or to have radiation monitors give a 


representative sample of the exposure material for all 


known possible inhalation accidents. And then that was 


sent to a counting lab to then calculate the parts per 


million of the americium in that sample by using the 


ratio of the 60 keV to the L X-rays(unintelligible). And 


also starting in 1972 if we got situation in the part of 

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the operation that we knew was essentially pure plutonium 


and we know where that was starting at line 15 where on 


the ion(unintelligible) exchange columns in Building 71 


they had separated out the pure plutonium and then later 


on separated out the americium, and then that went to 


line one. And we heard people say that line one was a 


very high gamma field. Yes, it was. That’s where the 


purified americium went. And then line 15 was actually 


where they had the actual precipitation of the purified 


plutonium. It went through the (unintelligible) lines 17 


and then went through the (unintelligible) line 17 and 


then went to --


MS. MUNN: Hello? This is a conference call. You were 


spliced into our conference. 


UNIDENTIFIED CALLER (by telephone): I’m sorry. 


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Lew, are you all still there? 


DR. WADE (by telephone): I can still hear you. 


DR. FALK: -- and so if we had a possible exposure in the 


operations where first of all we knew it was likely 


purified (unintelligible) americium, we did not rely only 


on the lung count, but we also did urine sampling, and we 


also did fecal sampling. Also, for situations that had 


the initial parts per million less than 200, which is 


fairly low, we put that worker on a quarterly recount for 


his lung count for the next four quarters, exactly one 

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year afterwards. 


Whereas, at that point there would be americium have 


built in that was starting to have sensitivity. So, yes, 


there are circumstances where there were purified 


plutonium. And then that button was then put in the 


vaults and probably wasn’t used for maybe three or four 


months. So then you’d had some more americium built in 


and we built in at a rate of about 20 parts per million 


per month. So you had the (unintelligible). 


Now the second part about the Plutonium-241 content. One 


of the things that Rocky Flats did was to meet weapons-


grade specifications they blended old and new plutonium. 


The new plutonium came from Hanford and also the Savannah 


River but wasn’t used as such. It as blended with the 


(unintelligible) plutonium to maintain the certain spec. 


Now also our technical basis document, we noted that 


although the spec for the Plutonium-241 seemed to be a 


fairly constant at around .5 percent of 


body(unintelligible) weight, in 1976 based on the 


environmental impact statement studies, they were down to 


.36; and therefore, we have specified in the technical 


basis document that from 1976 forward you should use the 


lower number. 


Now once we get to the end of the production in 1989, 


then of course, see Rocky Flats Technical Basis Document 

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which was the site basically aged that from that point 


forward. So those issues have been covered. 


MS. MUNN: Happy with that? Those are the only issues 


that we had on the table today. Are we all on the same 


page? 


DR. ULSH: Were there any other SEC issues that we’re 


missing? 


MR. FITZGERALD: No, those were the four plus one at this 


point in time. I think the key ones were clearly the 


high-fired issues for the internal side, the data 


integrity issues which I think we clearly need some more 


of the documentation that was referred to, but I think 


this takes us further along. I think we’re pretty 


satisfied with the further explanation of the americium 


and then we didn’t really spend time with the NDRP, but I 


think there again, looking at ’50 and looking at how 


that’s going to be implemented will go a long ways to 


telling us how that neutron-photon(unintelligible) as 


well the NDRP works. 


I think that where it leaves us on Rocky is we’ve got a 


fair amount of homework to do on the high-fired. I think 


we’ve already referred to the fact we’re going to look at 


the OTIB and then have a, I think it’s a real good idea 


to have a technical conference call and just really have 


time to hash this out. Clearly, (unintelligible) 

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internal dosimeters around stand back and see what 


happens. Hopefully, we’ll be on the same page by the 


time --


DR. NETON: It might be better to even get a face-to-face 


meeting of the dosimetry folks because as you can see 


talking about graphs and figures and tables over 


telephones --


MR. FITZGERALD: Just to put this one to bed I think it’s 


almost worth it. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Jim, this is John. During the 


break I was sort of thinking about trying to, what’s the 


single question I would like answered that would sort of 


answer the question for me is on this whole internal 


dosimetry is are there any circumstances where the 


assumption that it’s type-S would not give you the 


highest dose to the system organs? That is, in effect 


what you were saying, and I know I’m re-opening a little 


bit, but I’m trying to simplify it because it got awful 


complicated. 


In effect what you’re saying is if you assume, if a 


person’s exposed to high-fired plutonium but you assume 


it’s type-S, under all circumstances you’re going to come 


up with a higher dose to his systemic organs than if you 


assume it was super-S. Is that, I mean, when it all 


boils down, that’s my understanding of what your position 

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is. 


DR. NETON: Actually, I think I would say that if it were 


M, you’d end up with a higher dose. 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): Does that apply to starting 


with a urine sample though? 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Yes, I’m sorry, Hans. I 


didn’t make myself clear. Starting with a urine sample, 


whatever the mda is. You can pick any mda you want. I 


know that’s an issue. Starting with that and then you’re 


saying whatever the organ is I want to count, you know, 


starting with the mda, I want to come up with a dose to 


some systemic organ, the kidneys, bone. 


If you assume it’s type-S, you get the highest dose as 


opposed to assuming it’s super-S. That’s what I 


understand your position is. And it sounds to me it’s 


very easy to determine that by running a number of IMBA 


runs where you vary the kinetics of the super-S to see if 


there’s any circumstances where the half-time of the 


clearance, changing that, whether or not that would give, 


you could find the situation where, no, super-S will give 


you a higher dose. 


If you can’t find one of those, that is, you’re searching 


for it but you can’t, I think you’ve put the question to 


bed. 


DR. NETON: Well, I don’t think you need to do that 

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though because all I’m really saying is we need to bleed 


the amount of plutonium out of the lung into the blood to 


get the urine sample to be at the detection limit. Let’s 


say there’s never a positive uranium. All I’m saying is 


every single sample has been at the mda. It really 


doesn’t matter whether it’s S, super-S. All I’m saying 


is it’s right at the detection limit for the entire 


history of the worker’s exposure. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Yeah, and I’m okay with that, 


but see, one of the things I realize is that as you make 


the clearance -- let’s say you’re talking super-S. As 


you make it lower and lower and lower, what that means in 


order to get a detectable level or just at the mda, the 


amount that has to be inhaled starts to go up. So 


therefore, it might be a non-linear thing, that is --


DR. NETON: No, no, John, what I think happens, and 


that’s what I was trying to get at with Joyce, is it’s 


very true up until the point of the last bioassay sample 


that the urine is being fed by, it doesn’t matter how 


much is in the lung, it’s just saturating the system and 


you’re getting at the mda levels. What happens is after 


the last sample and the guy retired, then you start still 


having that compartment feeding. 


And it’s true what Joyce said that the value could go up 


after the last sample. That’s where we’re going to rely 

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on this autopsy data to show that that indeed has not 


happened. We need to have another meeting I think. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Yeah, that’s for sure. 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): Jim, I’m not so sure I agree 


with that because I’ve run IMBA for several cases that 


I’ve audited and substituted M for S and found that that 


S actually gives you a higher dose to a specific organ 


than type M. 


DR. LIPSZTEIN (by telephone): That’s right. 


MS. MUNN: Let’s have another meeting and talk about it. 


DR. NETON: But are you doing acute or chronic intakes, 


Hans? 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): Well, I used whatever they 


assumed in their particular model which sometimes 


involved both. There were periods of chronic and then 


there was discrete acute intakes et cetera, and I just 


basically kept as they had assumed without knowing, and 


they didn’t know whether it was type M or S either. I 


just made the assumptions that they used but substituted 


S for M and I came up with a higher dose. 


DR. NETON: Well, I think we’re comparing apples to 


oranges here. We need to sit down. I think we’re 


probably going to end up in the same place but --


MR. FITZGERALD: I think that’s where we are, yeah. 


DR. NETON: -- we need to meet. 

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MS. MUNN: It’s pretty clear we have to have another 


meeting. I hesitate to even talk about calendars without 


Mark here, and he will be back tomorrow. 


MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think it’s going to be 


conditional, OTIB-0049. 


MS. MUNN: Primarily it’s the technical people who need 


to agree on a date. 


DR. NETON: I think what we’ll do with that if it’s okay 


with the subcommittee is that we will agree to meet among 


ourselves, and we’ll make sure that everyone on the 


subcommittee is aware of those dates and times and 


certainly available to sit in and listen, but we’ll be 


under the pretense of a technical discussion among 


ourselves with minutes to follow. 


MR. PRESLEY (by telephone): This is Bob Presley. I 


think that’s a good idea, Jim. 


DR. NETON: And that way we can work with our own 


schedules and try to accommodate the subcommittee but --


MS. MUNN: Good, I’m sure that one or two of us can 


probably make it. 


DR. WADE (by telephone): Just for the record, it’s a 


working group not a subcommittee. 


DR. NETON: I’m sorry, working group, yeah. I think I 


would like to do this before the conference call on the 


14th of the month. 

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MR. FITZGERALD: I think what you’re saying is a TBD in 


about a week or two. I think that’d be --


DR. NETON: Yeah, in a week or so or ten days maybe we 


can have, we’ll get you the documents that you need and 


then maybe in the middle of the week before the 


conference call. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: So you’ll get us the dose reconstruction 


that you’ve done and the TIB-0049 in a week or so? 


DR. NETON: We will try. Let’s, I’ll go back and confer 


with our technical folks and make sure we can meet these 


schedules. 


DR. MAURO (by telephone): Jim, even if it’s only TIB0049, that’ll get us going, and if we could schedule 


something shortly thereafter, if you could also find an 


example, that’s even better. But TIB-0049 would 


certainly be the trigger. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Jim, it would help if TIB-0049 is 


essentially at the stage of signature, release that in a 


day or two and then give us these numbers. A little bit 


down the line maybe we could have a meeting on the 13th or 


something. 


DR. NETON: And I think I might be able to come up with 


some examples to illustrate what we’ve been talking about 


here in a better form. And maybe when Hans and Joyce and 


I and others can sit down, we’ll just have a chat. I 

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mean, and I think maybe face-to-face isn’t the way to go. 


I don’t know. I don’t want to make people travel more 


than necessary, but this is an important issue. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: This is a very important issue. It has 


huge implications not only for --


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): Arjun, can I ask a question? 


This is Hans. And it seems like you may have addressed 


this issue earlier, but you and I had talked about the 


issue of the pre-1976 merging of deep 


dose(unintelligible) between photons and neutrons and the 


complexity that it might create especially also with item 


number nine that you discussed regarding missed doses or 


zero doses. Has that been resolved, Arjun? 


MR. FITZGERALD: That’s the new issue. 


MS. MUNN: That’s the new issue apparently as Joe says so 


maybe you need to talk offline to Arjun and Joe about 


that Hans because we’re really rapidly winding down here. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Brant, you had a quick response to that. 


DR. ULSH: Are you talking about separating gamma from 


neutron before --


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): Yeah, and it ties into the 


issue in comment number nine about zero or blank doses. 


It basically focuses on the pre-1976 data was blended 


between neutrons and photons into quarterly doses. In 


other words they were collated if you were monitored 

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monthly or even bimonthly, then you only get a quarterly 


dose, and of course, you would never know how many missed 


doses there were or below mda values et cetera. And it 


ties into comment number nine. 


MR. SMITH (by telephone): This is Matthew Smith. I know 


everybody wants to go, but I’ll direct you Hans toward 


OTIB-0050, and we have an approach for the situation 


written up in OTIB-0050. 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): And that was my final 


comment was in addition to TIB-0049, I guess TIB-0050 


would also provide us with some insight and perhaps 


answer some of those questions. 


MS. MUNN: Fifty is out there. 


MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, it does. It does. 


MS. MUNN: Unless there’s something that we just 


absolutely cannot wait --


MR. LANGSTED: One item and just reiterate, we just 


covered it, this notion, since it’s important from the 


standpoint of the coworker validation, I think Mark 


touched it just as he was going out the door, which is if 


we can get anything to substantiate this CH2N 


Hill(unintelligible) database and how that can basically 


characterize the distribution, the validation of 


distribution, that would be helpful. But I think it’s 


the only handle. 

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It does get us a step closer, but it’s not clear how that 


would be used at this point between the CER database and 


the raw data. I think this is an interesting tool. We 


don’t it at Y-12, but certainly here we actually do. And 


I guess the question is can that really help answer that 


question or not. I guess we’ve heard some questions 


about whether we can get to it. I think you indicated 


you can. 


MR. FITZGERALD: I’m sorry, I missed your point about the 


CER database. 


MR. LANGSTED: No, I’m just saying that the discussion we 


had at the CH2N Hill(unintelligible) database which can 


be used to link or certainly demonstrate validity of the 


electronic database with the raw data. CH2N 


Hill(unintelligible) apparently compiled this, used it. 


They applied it on an individual basis. Is it still 


available maybe on a database-wide-type characterization 


not just individually? Can it be used? 


MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it’s available, and it’s up and 


running and we’ve got --


MR. LANGSTED: If you can provide something, you know, 


this is the first time we’ve heard it. Can you provide 


anything that would give us some background or 


understanding of that I think that would be helpful to 


the Board, work group and (unintelligible) as well 

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because it certainly answers the question that’s been 


there which is whether you can actually do the same thing 


we’re trying to do at Y-12 which is validate the 


electronic version of this which will be used. 


MS. MUNN: I’m not going to ask if there’s anything else 


for the good of the order. The good of the order is 


done. 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): Wanda, Wanda, Wanda, don’t 


say that to me because I need to ask you one final 


question here. And that is tomorrow morning are we going 


to start on doing the audits of individual dose 


reconstructions starting first thing in the morning? 


MS. MUNN: It was my understanding that we were going to 


do procedures first, but I could be incorrect about that. 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): Okay, well, I listen to that 


anyway. What time do we intend to start? 


MS. MUNN: Nine a.m. Same time, same number, same 


station. 


DR. NETON: Well, we’re certainly not going to start with 


Y-12 or Rocky Flats tomorrow that’s a done issue. Stu 


will be here tomorrow and I don’t know whether they’re 


starting with procedures or dose reconstructions, 


wherever you guys left off in Cincinnati. 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): I won’t be there, Jim, so 


I’m going to be talking to you over the phone. 

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DR. MAKHIJANI: Wait a minute, Hans, you’re not going to 


be here? 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): No. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Kathy’s not going to be here? 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): No. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Who’s going to represent SC&A here 


because I’m not here. 


DR. BEHLING (by telephone): I’m going to be on the phone 


talking to you. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay, fine. 


MS. MUNN: All right that’s fine. We’ll talk to you 


tomorrow at nine o’clock. 


MR. HILLER (by telephone): Before we split this is David 


Hiller, Senator Salazar’s office 


MS. MUNN: Yes. 


MR. HILLER (by telephone): Lew, are you still on the 


line? 


DR. WADE (by telephone): Yes, I am. 


MR. HILLER (by telephone): Lew, can we get just a couple 


of minutes? Can you stay on the line so we can sort of 


get a little de-briefing for those of us who are not 


technical experts? 


DR. WADE (by telephone): Sure. 


MR. HILLER (by telephone): Thank you. 


MS. MUNN: We’re on our way. 

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DR. NETON: I don’t know whether the NIOSH folks 


(unintelligible) stay on the line or do you just want to 


speak to Lew? Is that --


MR. HILLER (by telephone): Actually, my own personal 


interest is just to make sure that I understand what was 


accomplished today and what the next steps are that are 


going to lead us toward the April meeting. 


MR. PRESLEY (by telephone): This is Bob Presley. I make 

a recommendation. Hello? 

MS. MUNN: Yes? 

MR. PRESLEY (by telephone): Can Lew call him back so we 

don’t have a bunch of people on listening? 


DR. WADE (by telephone): Okay, if you give me your 


number, I’ll call you. 


MR. HILLER (by telephone): Okay, ready? 


DR. NETON: We’re going to sign off here from Boston. 


MS. MUNN: Lew, hold on. 


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Lew, this is Liz. When you get done 


with --


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): Hey David, this is Tony. 


MS. ALBERG(unintelligible) (by telephone): This is 


Jeannette, too. 


MR. DeMAIORI (by telephone): We’d all like to hear this. 


DR. WADE (by telephone): Okay, why don’t we stay on the 


line. 

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Liz, what were you going to say? 


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Just when you get done de-briefing 


them, if you could give me a call on a totally different 


issue and let me give you my cell phone number. 


DR. WADE (by telephone): Okay. 


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: If other people promise not to call me 


too much on it, [information redacted]. 


DR. WADE (by telephone): I’ll call you when I’m done. 


MS. MUNN: We’ll speak with most of you tomorrow morning 


I assume at about nine o’clock. Thank you and goodbye. 


(Whereupon, the Working Group concluded at 4:50 p.m.) 

______________________________ 

120 

1 CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER 


STATE OF GEORGIA 


COUNTY OF FULTON 


 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 


Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 


above and foregoing on the day of February 27, 


2006; and it is a true and accurate transcript 


of the testimony captioned herein. 


 I further certify that I am neither kin 


nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 


have any interest in the cause named herein. 


 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 


4th day of April, 2006. 


STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 


CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 


CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102