Centers for Disease Control 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health (ABRWH) 

137th Meeting

Tuesday, December 8, and Wednesday December 9, 2020 

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Summary Proceedings

The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health meeting convened via teleconference at 1:15 p.m. 

Eastern Standard Time (EST), Dr. Rashaun Roberts, Designated Federal Official, presiding.

Attendees

Members

Rashaun Roberts, Designated Federal Official

Henry Anderson, Member

Josie Beach, Member

Bradley P. Clawson, Member

R. William Field, Member

David Kotelchuck, Member

James E. Lockey, Member

David B. Richardson, Member

Genevieve S. Roessler, Member

Phillip Schofield, Member

Loretta R. Valerio, Member

Paul L. Ziemer, Member

Non-Members, Registered and/or Public Comment Participants:

Adams, Nancy, NIOSH Contractor

Barrett, Andy, Savannah River Site

Barrie, Terrie, ANWAG

Barton, Bob, SC&A

Blaze, D'lanie, Petitioner

Buchanan, Ron, SC&A

Burgos, Zaida, NIOSH

Calhoun, Grady, NIOSH ORAU

Cardarelli, John, NIOSH ORAU

Crawford, Chris, DOL

Davy, Brad, DOE

Fitzgerald, Joe, SC&A

Frowiss, Albert, Petitioner

Gogliotti, Rose, SC&A

Gorden, Milton, SC&A
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Halsey, Roger, ORAU Team

Harrison-maples, Monica, ORAU Team

Hicks, Stephen, Petitioner

Hughes, Lara, DCAS

Lewis, Greg, DOE

Naylor, Jenny, HHS OGC

Nelson, Chuck, NIOSH ORAU

Rutherford, Lavon, NIOSH ORAU

Sisko, Jeannie

Taulbee, Tim, NIOSH ORAU

Vinson, Kathleen

Roll Call/Welcome - Dr. Rashaun Roberts, DFO

Dr. Rashaun Roberts called to order the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health at 1:15 pm EST

on December 8, 2020, via teleconference. A roll call of all ABRWH members confirmed that a quorum was 

present. The quorum was maintained throughout the meeting. Dr. Roberts noted that Dr. Lockey has a 

conflict of interest with respect to the Y-12 plant, so she asked him to disconnect from the call for the Y-12 

discussion.

Program Updates: NIOSH, DOL, and DOE

Grady Calhoun (NIOSH), Chris Crawford (DOL), and Greg Lewis (DOE) gave updates of each 

organization’s activities for the EEOICPA Program and responded to questions from Board Members.

Update on Y-12 Plant SEC Petition 250 (Oak Ridge, Tennessee; 1987-

1994) – Bob Barton, SC&A

Dr. Field, the chair of the Y-12 Work Group introduced Bob Barton of SC&A to present the update on the 

petition. Much of the report concerned efforts to determine if the available personnel monitoring data for 

thorium and uranium were sufficiently complete, adequate, and representative to form the basis for coexposure models. Such models are necessary to account for exposures to workers who were not monitored 

or whose monitoring records were lost. The Board has recently adopted an Implementation Guide that 

provides criteria for co-exposure models. Those criteria include completeness, adequacy, and 

representativeness. NIOSH is in the process of evaluating Y-12 data to determine if it satisfies the 

Implementation Guide criteria. Additionally, at a recent Y-12 Work Group meeting, the SEC petitioner raised 

a number of concerns about the feasibility of dose reconstruction and asked that a number of former Y-12 

workers be interviewed as part of the SEC evaluation process. Not all the interviews could be arranged, but 

the ones that could were completed recently. The notes from those interviews must still be reviewed by 

DOE for classification, then reviewed by the interviewees for correctness before the information can be 

considered by the program. Going forward, NIOSH will complete co-exposure models, provided the data 

meet the Implementation Guide criteria; address issues raised by the petitioner in the Work Group meeting 

and in the recent former worker interviews; and complete an addendum to SEC-250 Evaluation Report in 

order to address the years 1987-1994. Those years were reserved for future consideration when NIOSH 

published the SEC-250 Evaluation Report.

Board Work Session

Dr. Roberts reminded Board members of the dates for the next several meetings: telephone meeting 

February 25; virtual meeting April 14 & 15; telephone meeting June 23; planned in-person meeting August 

18 & 19, with the expectation that COVID restrictions would be lifted because of the availability of a vaccine. 
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Work Group chairs reported on issues under consideration, recent progress, and planned investigations 

and meetings.

Update on Area IV Santa Susanna Field Laboratory SEC Petition 235 

(Ventura County, California; 1991-1993) and DeSoto Avenue SEC 

Petition 246 – Bob Barton, SC&A

Phillip Schofield, chair of the Santa Susanna Field Laboratory Work Group noted that CORE Advocacy had 

submitted a good deal of information to the Work Group in October that was being evaluated by NIOSH 

and SC&A, then introduced Bob Barton of SC&A to present the update. Recently SC&A has investigated 

the possibility that there were actinide (neptunium, plutonium, americium) exposures at Santa Susanna 

after 1988, the final year of the SEC class that had previously been added for that facility. The investigation 

centered on whether a program called Transuranic Waste Management by Pyropartitioning Separation

(TRUMP-S) was conducted at Santa Susanna after 1988. SC&A concluded that, while Santa Susanna 

originally planned to perform that work, it never received approval from DOE to perform it, so the work was 

performed at the University of Missouri reactor facility instead. While SC&A found no evidence that the site 

worked with actinides after 1988, it will likely be necessary to reconstruct doses from actinide exposure 

during the site remediation period. NIOSH intends to develop a method using air sampling data. A good 

deal of air sampling data is available in DOE records, but COVID restrictions have prevented NIOSH from 

capturing that data. Interviews and documents provide no evidence that there were significant amounts of 

thorium or americium at DeSoto, but americium contamination was found in a drain in the mass 

spectrometry lab. SC&A also reviewed hundreds of incidents in the Boeing incident database and found 

two related to DeSoto that may prompt additional investigation to ensure that NIOSH’s current 

understanding of the types of materials that were present at DeSoto is correct.

Public Comment

Members of the public provided comments related to the Y-12 Plant, Savannah River, Area IV of Santa 

Susanna Field Laboratory, and DeSoto. Following public comment, Dr. Roberts adjourned for the day at 

5:53 pm EST.
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Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Summary Proceedings

The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health meeting convened via teleconference at 1:15 p.m. 

Eastern Standard Time (EST), Dr. Rashaun Roberts, Designated Federal Official, presiding.

Attendees

Members

Rashaun Roberts, Designated Federal Official

Henry Anderson, Member

Josie Beach, Member

Bradley P. Clawson, Member

R. William Field, Member

David Kotelchuck, Member

James E. Lockey, Member

David B. Richardson, Member

Genevieve S. Roessler, Member

Phillip Schofield, Member

Loretta R. Valerio, Member

Paul L. Ziemer, Member

Non-Members, Registered and/or Public Comment Participants:

Adams, Nancy, NIOSH Contractor 

Barrie, Terrie, ANWAG 

Barton, Bob, SC&A 

Buchanan, Ron, SC&A 

Burgos, Zaida, NIOSH 

Calhoun, Grady, DCAS 

Cardarelli, John, DCAS 

Fester, Joshua, On behalf of Petitioner 

Fitzgerald, Joe, SC&A 

Gogliotti, Rose, SC&A 

Lewis, Greg, DOE 

Naylor, Jenny, HHS OGC 

Nelson, Charles, DCAS 

Rutherford, Lavon, DCAS 

Sisko, Jeannie 

Taulbee, Tim, DCAS 

Roll Call/Welcome – Dr. Rashaun Roberts, DFO

Dr. Rashaun Roberts called to order the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health at 1:15 pm EST 

on December 9, 2020 via teleconference. A roll call of all ABRWH members confirmed that a quorum was 

present. The quorum was maintained throughout the meeting. Dr. Roberts noted that the Savannah River 

Site was the only site on the day’s agenda, and no members have conflicts of interest with respect to that 

site.
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SEC Petition Status Update & SEC Qualification Process – LaVon 

Rutherford, DCAS

Mr. Rutherford reported that DCAS is in the process of determining if SEC petitions from the Rocky Flats 

and Pantex plants qualified for evaluation; DCAS is completing the evaluation report for a petition from the 

Pinellas plant; DCAS is preparing addenda to previously completed evaluation reports for Lawrence 

Livermore National Lab and the Y-12 Plant; and DCAS and SC&A are continuing work on SEC petitions 

from Hanford, Savannah River, Los Alamos National Lab, Sandia National Lab, Idaho National Lab, 

Argonne National Lab-West, Area IV Santa Susanna, Metals & Controls, DeSoto Avenue Facility, and

Reduction Pilot Plant. He also reported that DCAS has identified that it may forward an 83.14 SEC 

Evaluation Report for West Valley Demonstration Project but has not yet completed the evaluation. Finally,

he presented a description of the SEC Petition qualification process and responded to questions from Board 

members.

Savannah River Site SEC Petition 103 (Aiken, South Carolina; October 

1972 – 2017) – Brad Clawson, SRS Work Group Chair

Mr. Clawson presented a summary of the documents prepared by SC&A and DCAS during consideration 

of the petition, and the Work Groups reasons for concluding at its meetings on November 17 and 20, 2020 

that it should recommend the addition of an SEC class for Savannah River Site subcontractor construction 

trades workers for the period October 1, 1972 to December 31, 1990.

Next Dr. Timothy Taulbee, DCAS, presented the results of the investigations by DCAS and its contractor 

that led DCAS to the conclusion that dose reconstruction was feasible for all Savannah River workers, as 

had been DCAS’s determination in the Petition 103 Evaluation Report. Dr. Taulbee presented the 

information contained in Reports RPRT-92 and RPRT-94, which had been provided to the Savannah River 

Work Group members before the Work Group meetings in November, and an additional analysis of 

subcontractor monitoring based on evaluation of the data in Savannah River’s plutonium bioassay 

logbooks. Following his presentation, he responded to questions from Board members.

Next Joe Fitzgerald, SC&A, presented the critique of RPRT-92 that had previously been discussed by the 

Savannah River Site Work Group, and focused on job-specific bioassay sampling, rather than routine 

sampling or incident sampling. Subcontractor construction trades workers, due to the nature of their work, 

would likely be monitoring by job-specific sampling rather than routine sampling, and the Savannah River 

Site had demonstrated poor compliance with job-specific sampling as late as 1997.

Board members then discussed the information presented. During Board discussions, Warren Johnson, 

attorney for the petitioner, commented, focusing on the length of time that the Board has been considering 

Petition 103. Board discussion continued until the required meeting ending time of 5:30, so the Board voted 

to table the motion to recommend adding a class until its February telephone meeting.

Meeting Adjourned

The meeting was adjourned at 5:35 pm EST.