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1 THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

2 PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

3 CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

4 NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

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convenes the 

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13 TWENTY-FIFTH MEETING 

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16 ADVISORY BOARD ON 

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18 RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

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22 VOL. II 

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34 The verbatim transcript of the Meeting of 

the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health 

36 held at the Hyatt Regency Buffalo, Two Fountain 

37 Plaza, Buffalo, New York, on June 3, 2004. 

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C O N T E N T S 

June 3, 2004 

REGISTRATION AND WELCOME 

Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 

Mr. Larry Elliott, Executive Secretary . . . . . . 8 

SITE PROFILE STATUS REPORT 

Dr. Jim Neton, NIOSH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 8 

ADMINISTRATIVE HOUSEKEEPING 

Ms. Cori Homer, NIOSH; Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair;

Mr. Larry Elliott, Executive Secretary . . . . . .47 

SANFORD, COHEN & ASSOCIATES

Dr. Joe Fitzgerald, SC&A . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 

BOARD DISCUSSION/WORKING SESSION . . . . . . . . . .91 

REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF DRAFT MINUTES, MEETING 23

Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 

BOARD DISCUSSION/WORKING SESSION. . . . . . . . . .136 

PUBLIC COMMENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153 

ADJOURN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 

COURT REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE. . . . . . . . . . . .164 

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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. 

In the following transcript (sic) denotes an incorrect 

usage or pronunciation of a word which is transcribed in 

its original form as reported. 

In the following transcript (phonetically) indicates a 

phonetic spelling of the word if no confirmation of the 

correct spelling is available. 

In the following transcript "uh-huh" represents an 

affirmative response, and "uh-uh" represents a negative 

response. 

In the following transcript "*" denotes a spelling 

based on phonetics, without reference available. 

In the following transcript (inaudible) signifies 

speaker failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 

In the following transcript (off microphone) refers to 

microphone malfunction or speaker's neglect to depress "on" 

button. 

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

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

 BOARD MEMBERS 

CHAIR 

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

School of Health Sciences 

Purdue University

Lafayette, Indiana 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

ELLIOTT, Larry J.

Director, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Cincinnati, Ohio 

MEMBERSHIP 

ANDRADE, Antonio, Ph.D.

Group Leader

Radiation Protection Services Group

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos, New Mexico 

DeHART, Roy Lynch, M.D., M.P.H.

Director 

The Vanderbilt Center for Occupational and

Environmental Medicine 

Professor of Medicine 

Nashville, Tennessee 

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ESPINOSA, Richard Lee

Sheet Metal Workers Union Local #49 

Johnson Controls 

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Espanola, New Mexico 

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 

MELIUS, James Malcom, M.D., Ph.D.

Director 

New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund

Albany, New York 

MUNN, Wanda I.

Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired)

Richland, Washington 

OWENS, Charles Leon

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union

Local 5-550 

Paducah, Kentucky 

PRESLEY, Robert W.

Special Projects Engineer

BWXT Y12 National Security Complex

Clinton, Tennessee 

ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

University of Florida

Elysian, Minnesota 

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AGENDA SPEAKERS
 

(in order of appearance) 

Dr. Jim Neton, NIOSH 

Dr. Joe Fitzgerald, SC&A 

STAFF/VENDORS 

CORI HOMER, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH

STEVEN RAY GREEN, Certified Merit Court Reporter 

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AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS
 

ALLEMAN, STEPHANIE

BARTOSYEK, J.

DEHART, JULIA

DOOLEY, DAVE

ELLISON, CHRIS

FIGIEL, J.

HEISTER, MELANIE

HENSHAW, RUSS

KATZ, TED

KOCHER, DAVID C.

KOTSCH, JEFF

LIMA, CECILIA

MAURO, JOHN

MAIER, HILDA

NAIMON, DAVID

ROBERTSON-DEMEIRS, KATHRYN

SCHAEFFER, D. MICHAEL

SWEENEY, THERESA

TENFORDE, THOMAS S.

TITUS, LIZ

TOOHEY, DICK

VONDERPHE, NANCY J.

WALKER, EDWIN C.

WALKER, JOYCE A. 

PUBLIC COMMENT 

BARTOSYEK, JANICE

KRIEGER, RALPH N.

WALKER, ED 

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P R O C E E D I N G S

 (8:30 a.m.) 

REGISTRATION AND WELCOME 

DR. ZIEMER: Good morning, everyone. We're 

beginning -- we're ready to begin the second day 

of this Board meeting. I have a couple of 

reminders for you. First of all, I would like to 

remind all present that we would like you to 

register your attendance. And even though you 

may say well, I did that yesterday, we keep a 

separate registration for each day, so we ask all 

Board members, all staff, all members of the 

public to register today's attendance on the 

registration book that's there at the table near 

the entryway. 

And again, we will have a public comment 

period late morning, just before the lunch break, 

and we ask that if you do wish to address the 

Board that you register in the booklet there that 

-- your intent to make public comment. 

SITE PROFILE STATUS 

We have set aside a little bit of time for 

administrative housekeeping on the schedule, but 

before we do that, I would like to complete 

yesterday's agenda. And you may recall that we 

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heard only a portion of Dr. Neton's presentation, 

that portion that was given during the public 

comment period. So will turn first then today to 

the site profile status part of the agenda for 

Jim to complete that presentation. 

DR. NETON: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. Good 

morning, everyone. I -- this has sort of been a 

-- is a tradition now for the last several 

meetings that I go through and update the status 

of where we are with the site profile, so I 

intend to do that and go over where we are, what 

progress we've made since the April Board meeting 

in Richland. And I talked briefly about the 

changes we made to the site profile at 

Mallinckrodt, and I'd also like to discuss a 

little bit about the -- how we're handling 

construction workers, particularly at the 

Savannah River Site. I have a couple of slides 

on that. 

This is an updated slide from the last 

meeting. The only new piece of information on 

here is that we have approved the Fernald site 

profile that has exactly 500 cases in the hoppers 

right now to be reconstructed. I think that was 

approved just about a week ago, so that -- when 

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we say approved, that means all six Technical 

Basis Documents or chapters that make up the 

profile have been reviewed by OCAS and approved 

for use in dose reconstruction. That does not 

mean -- I'll caution folks -- that all of -- all 

the details have been fleshed out. For the 

Fernald site, for example, there may be sections 

in there marked reserved for certain periods of 

time or certain modes of exposure that we don't 

have sufficient information at this time to 

proceed with confidence in a dose reconstruction, 

and those provisos are well-indicated in the 

document so the dose reconstructor is forbidden 

from using the profile for those certain specific 

conditions. 

So with the addition of Fernald site 

profile, we now -- this is the number of cases 

that we received -- been referred to us from the 

Department of Labor by each of these sites. That 

brings the total number of cases under that site 

profile to about 7,400. That represents roughly 

45 percent of the number of cases that we have in 

house, so we're at about the halfway mark with 

covering cases with site profiles. Although, 

again, not -- the site profile is not necessarily 

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applicable to all cases. 

For example, when we were talking about 

construction workers, it would not cover workers 

that had no monitoring information at all. This 

primarily covers monitored workers. 

This is a graphical depiction of where we 

are with what we call the big 15. These are the 

15 sites that ORAU -- Oak Ridge Associated 

Universities has been working on for some time 

now. The green blocks indicate that that chapter 

of the site profile has been reviewed and 

approved for use. So we have six or seven of 

those. Fernald is completed now, Hanford is 

complete. Iowa Ordnance is complete, 

Mallinckrodt, Rocky Flats, Savannah River and Y12 are all -- are -- all the chapters have at 

least been approved for use -- partial use, at 

least. 

The blue dots indicate that profiles are in 

comment resolution, meaning that they are in some 

state of review. The chapter has been drafted. 

OCAS has at least seen it once. There's some 

further indicators here that, you know, we've got 

a few for first-time review, so some of these 

have been passed back several times. We do a 

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fairly thorough review. This is an iterative 

process, as ORAU well knows. We take our time to 

make sure that things are correct, and oftentimes 

these things can go back and forth two, three, 

sometimes four times until both sides of the 

fence are comfortable with what we're portraying 

in these profiles. 

It's interesting to note that if you look at 

the green and blue, then virtually -- not 

virtually, but 100 percent of the chapters have 

at least a draft. There is not one site that 

does not have at least some rough draft out there 

being reviewed. So in some sense, we've 

accomplished a major milestone in getting at 

least something on paper for each of the chapters 

that we're trying to finish. 

The double asterisks here indicate a gaseous 

diffusion plant working group. This is just an 

internal indication to designate that we're 

trying to make sure that those sites are handled 

in a consistent fashion, since they did very 

similar work with very similar exposure 

potentials. So we just want to make doubly sure 

that we're -- we're internally consistent at the 

gaseous diffusion plants, particularly since 

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those are Special Exposure Cohort sites, as we 

discussed yesterday. 

There's additional DOE site profiles under 

development that are listed here. This list 

hasn't changed since the last Board meeting. As 

you can see, the number of cases that those would 

allow us to proceed with becomes smaller and 

smaller as we -- as we get the larger ones done. 

And as we discussed at the last Board meeting, at 

some point we're going to have to make a 

decision, at -- for an economy of scale, at what 

point do we stop doing a site profile and either 

make addenda to previous ones where exposures 

were similar, or act-- in some cases actually 

just do what would essentially amount to handcrafted dose reconstructions that included 

virtually all the information you need that would 

be in a site profile. We're not at that point 

yet where we stop because there's still a lot of 

ongoing work, but we will be looking at that. 

AWE site profiles, there's no change on the 

number released there. This is the same list 

that I presented last time, so we're still 

proceeding with the AWEs. Primarily the Atomic 

Weapons Employers that do not have completed site 

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profiles, if we are doing some dose 

reconstruction, are covered under this complexwide approach, which is a maximizing approach for 

some of the Atomic Weapons Employers that we 

believe had fairly lower level exposures that we 

can use some fairly claimant-favorable 

assumptions, for cancers that are not -- where 

the organ does not concentrate uranium, to 

process the cases. 

We have a number of site profiles under 

development. These listed here -- Linde Ceramics 

is of interest to those in the New York State 

area, as well as Simonds Saw and Steel. We are 

working on these. There's active working groups 

out there developing these site profiles. Then 

we have nine additional that I didn't list here 

that total up to 132 cases. At that point, 

again, we're going to have to make a decision, do 

we stop at the profile level and start doing 

something else besides the profile. I think when 

we get below here, we're down into sites that 

have fewer than 40 -- 30 or 40 cases, and that 

becomes a -- you know, an issue to write a 50, 

60-page document for maybe 20 dose 

reconstructions. 

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A little bit about the worker outreach. 

That's moving forward and we're starting to get 

some really good feedback, as we talked about at 

Hanford. We've had a number of meetings so far. 

In fact, Grady Calhoun left yesterday afternoon 

to go to Pantex to participate in a worker 

outreach briefing on the site profile there in 

Amarillo, so that's happening sometime today. 

And Bethlehem Steel, as we talked about in 

the public meeting, we've made -- we're making 

arrangements to visit the Bethlehem Steel 

workers. There was -- at the work-- town hall 

meeting that we had, a number of workers 

expressed some issues that they wanted to be able 

to tell us their particular exposure scenarios. 

We heard that loud and clearly and we fully 

intend to come out here in the near future to 

meet with the workers and capture their -- their 

history of what occurred at the site during the 

1949 through '52 period. 

There's a number of additional outreach 

meetings planned. I think we have Rocky Flats 

scheduled for later this month, June 23rd -- I 

just got an e-mail this morning -- so this is a 

very active, ongoing effort. Larry indicated 

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Vern McDougal* from ATL is the lead on this as a 

subcontractor to Oak Ridge Associated 

Universities. And we just -- they just brought 

on board a new person by the name of Mark Lewis, 

who is a former union representative at the 

Portsmouth gaseous diffusion plant site, who is 

very aggressive and has very good contacts. And 

we're seeing a lot of good movement out of Mark 

in his contacts with the unions. 

Okay. I talked about the Bethlehem Steel 

profile yesterday and I'd be happy to -- I'm not 

going to go over the details again. I think it 

was pretty straightforward, but did want to take 

the opportunity to just address a few issues that 

came up at the -- at the meeting, at the public 

comment session yesterday regarding the model. 

For clarity, I know the Board has heard 

about this model a long time ago. It was the 

first one that we published and we presented at 

the Board meeting, but like myself, I tend to 

forget very readily -- easily what the 

particulars are, so I just want to cover a few 

things about the Bethlehem Steel profile. 

The covered exposure period is 1949 to '52. 

That's four years. NIOSH does not set that 

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covered exposure period, so if in fact there were 

rollings in 1955, as some workers have asserted, 

we could do nothing with those rollings because, 

by law, it's -- '49 to '52 is the period that we 

deal with. 

So if -- if there were additional rollings 

and we discovered them in our data capture 

efforts, we certainly would communicate that to 

the Department of Energy, Department of Labor for 

consideration to extend the covered employment 

period. And in fact we've done that. I think in 

Bethlehem Steel we actually ended up adding a 

year or so because we found some records that 

indicated that -- that there were some rollings 

in periods that were not originally covered. 

So again, you know, we -- we develop an 

exposure model to specifically address the 

covered exposure period, '49, '50, '51, '52. In 

those four years, we -- we did a fairly extensive 

search. We went to Environmental Measurements 

Laboratory and captured records. We went to the 

Fernald site, a lot of which this work was done 

under -- not under contract, but for the future 

development of the rolling mill operations there. 

We could only find 13 documented rollings in 

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those four years, and in fact the -- only in '51 

and '52 could we find these rollings had 

occurred. They appeared to occur on a periodicy* 

about once per month. All but the first and last 

rollings were done on the weekend, Saturdays and 

Sundays. In fact, the first rolling in 1951 was 

labeled experimental rolling number one, which 

could lead you to believe that that may be the 

first rolling. In fact, the experimental rolling 

number one was a continuation of the experimental 

rolling number one at Simonds Saw and Steel. 

What happened there was Simonds Saw and 

Steel was developing the process -- not in 

parallel, I guess in a linear fashion -- and 

there were some very large exposures measured 

there, a large air concentrations. That's where 

this 1,000 maximum allowable air concentration 

value came from. There was a lot of concern, so 

in fact the first rolling at Bethlehem Steel was 

done in a lead or salt bath to try to minimize 

the oxidation of the product and the generation 

of airborne, and in fact it was successful at 

doing so. 

And we had air samples from Bethlehem Steel. 

We did not use just Simonds Saw. In fact, one of 

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the claimants' exposure -- one of the claimants' 

records we received from the Department of Labor 

had air sampling data in it. These were taken 

and processed by the Environmental Measurements 

Laboratory in New York, which is a fairly 

credible laboratory for doing measurements, and 

the best estimate that we obtained from those air 

sample measurements was it was about two times 

the maximum allowable air concentration, up to 

the highest value that we observed at the 

Bethlehem Steel facility of 70. That was the 

highest recorded air concentration there. But we 

were not comfortable that we had all the air 

data, so in searching the records we found 

Simonds Saw and Steel had this 1,000 times the 

maximum air concentration value, and so we 

incorporated that into our model as the upper 

limit. So that was more than ten times the 

highest value that we saw at Bethlehem Steel. 

So I think there was a little confusion 

yesterday about we didn't have air monitoring at 

Bethlehem. We did. The Simonds Saw and Steel 

was added to be more generous. And in fact 

there's every indication that the air 

concentrations at Bethlehem were lower than 

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Simonds Saw and Steel. 

One other thing I think is the issue of 

coworker data. We assumed for this model that 

all 500 claimants received the same exposure. It 

was an exposure model, so whether a person was a 

brick -- brick layer, a parking lot paver, a 

secretary, a security guard, it was assumed that 

every worker was at the mill in the highest air 

concentration value for ten hours a day for 48 

rollings. So it's -- there was -- in a sense, 

everybody was a coworker because we picked the 

highest possible person and assigned that same 

exposure to all people. So in that sense, there 

was no real need to go back and interview 

coworkers because the Department of Labor could 

not ascertain who worked where in the plant. 

It's a huge plant. And again, this exposure only 

occurred at the rolling mill area, the ten inch 

bar mill. 

Just a few notes for clarification there. I 

hope that clears up some of the issues that were 

raised yesterday. 

I'm not going to go through this. I'll be 

happy to answer any questions, though, if the 

Board has any additional questions on the 

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ingestion model. 

I'm just briefly going to go over what we're 

doing with the Savannah River Site and the 

building trades. As you all know, early on in 

the process, the building trades were very 

concerned that we were not addressing their 

exposures adequately. It was discussed with them 

that exposure models for workers in the plant 

working routine operations are not necessarily 

applicable to construction building trades who 

have a very different exposure scenario profile. 

We met with the Savannah River people. It was 

the first worker outreach meeting we did. And we 

agreed, there -- there are major -- major 

differences in doing so. So we've identified 

seven different areas that we're going to try to 

address to flesh out -- and this will be added as 

a chapter to the Savannah River Site profile. 

And what I speak about here is more than likely 

going to be applicable to a number of sites, not 

just Savannah River. But this is the first one 

that we're going through and working out the 

details. 

These are somewhat self-evident, but the 

trade makes a huge difference whether a person is 

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a sheet metal worker, an electrician, a painter, 

a carpenter. You know, we're going to have to 

determine fairly specifically for each of those 

trades, you know, what the exposure conditions 

may have been based on the type of work and the 

specific task. There are a lot of different 

tasks have been done out there. We actually have 

been working with the Center to Protect Workers 

Rights, who are involved in the medical worker 

screening program at the Savannah River Site. 

Under contract to us they've actually compiled a 

document evaluating, based on the interviews with 

the workers, what was done at the site by the 

trades, the tasks, and a compendium of incident 

reports. And this covers somewhere in the 

vicinity of about 1,800 different worker 

interviews, so it's a pretty nice thick 

compilation and it's a very useful document for 

us to try to develop this chapter. So under the 

type of work being performed, we've got an 

indicat-- you know, there's all kinds of work the 

construction trades do, whether you're talking 

about grinding, concrete cutting, welding, 

building demolition is a big one that's extremely 

different, so we have to develop and cover the 

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different tasks, the type of work, and of course 

the duration. 

The facility and the area, is this a rad 

area or not a rad area. If a person is in a new 

construction area where there is no rad 

materials, it's very different than -- than if it 

wasn't. And then not only if they were in the 

area, but what the process was if it was a rad 

area. Was there a potential for airborne and 

were they working in vicinities where other 

production or routine workers were there and were 

being monitored, and could we use those pieces of 

information as coworker data for the work force. 

And then not only exposure time, but 

exposure period of course is specific, and the 

duration. So these are the seven highlights of 

the chapter that we'll try to flesh out in the 

Savannah River profile. 

The exposure details are actually not that 

different than what you'd expect for a normal 

worker, but given those -- you know, given --

given these parameters that are under 

consideration, we need to uniquely identify the 

exposure details for the construction building 

trades. And type of exposure, radionuclides, 

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chemical form. 

Other characteristics can be somewhat 

different. Particle size is a normal 

consideration that we look at, but outside 

weather conditions could play a huge role, 

whether a person was doing a demolition and 

there's windy environment -- I think shoveling of 

dirt, those sort of things, digging operations, 

very different. The coverage for engineering 

controls is very different in an outside 

operation. Having worked at the Fernald site, 

I'm pretty familiar with -- with how those type 

activities are very different than a routine 

operation. 

And what is the release fraction, that's not 

well-established for these -- these trades. And 

again, what -- what quantity, what quantity is 

there in that outside operation or construction 

operation. 

Sources of information we've identified so 

far to date. We have information that OCAS has 

obtained of course from our requests for exposure 

records from the Department of Energy. It's true 

that a large number of construction workers 

weren't monitored, but it's also true that a 

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large number were, so we're trying to compile 

that and look at that to see how useful it may be 

for the unmonitored portion. 

The Health-related Energy Research Branch 

within NIOSH also has been doing epidemiologic 

studies on these workers for a number of years 

and has compiled a database that we're taking 

advantage of. 

Of course the site profile that is in 

existence we're going to try to use to the extent 

possible. We have worker interviews -- that is 

the Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview -- but 

also we are planning on interviewing and are 

interviewing worker -- construction workers at 

the sites. At the Hanford meeting I was handed a 

list of -- a page of names of people, 

construction trades workers, who were willing to 

discuss their exposure situations with us. We 

have made contact with those folks and we are 

sending some people to interview those workers. 

So as we do these worker outreach meetings 

and make contacts, I talked about the Bethlehem 

Steel contacts we've made, we are going out and -

- and addressing -- capturing the workers' 

concerns and attempting to address them in the 

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best fashion we can. 

A lot of interest has been expressed in 

these incident reports. They are valuable pieces 

of information. They are not contained in the 

current site profile. We are going back at the 

Savannah River Site in particular. We are 

pulling out the occurrence reports that have been 

there. We do recognize that there may be some --

some contractor and DOE bias in these reports and 

we'll try to account for that. 

Another source is the Department of Energy 

Radiation and Exposure Management System, which 

is the internal DOE reporting mechanism for 

monitoring workers. Those are useful to a 

certain extent. They put workers in profiles of 

categories that we should be able to use to 

develop some type of distributions. The Medical 

Surveillance Program Database, peer-reviewed 

publications, and I mentioned the Center to 

Protect Workers Rights at Savannah River Site in 

particular, although we have a contract with CPWR 

for five sites that have medical screening 

programs. That's Savannah River, Oak Ridge, 

Nevada Test Site, Amchitka Island and Hanford. 

Savannah River's the first one we're looking at, 

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but they have actually -- CPWR has actually 

compiled this information from all five of those 

sites for us and we'll be using that to the 

extent possible. 

That's it in a nutshell with what we're 

doing with construction trades. I don't have a 

draft chapter to present to you, unfortunately, 

but this is our thinking. We have a team of 

eight people that have been assembled from the 

current site profile teams, eight people who have 

some experience in working at sites where 

construction building trades exist. Judson 

Kenoyer, the profile task manager, is heading up 

that -- that effort and we're looking forward to 

getting a product out the door as soon as we can. 

I think that's it. I'll answer any 

questions that --

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Mark, then Gen, then 

Jim. 

MR. GRIFFON: Jim, just a follow-up on the 

Bethlehem Steel site profile. The -- you 

mentioned that the 1,000 times the MAC -- and 

I've seen it, I didn't have it with me, 

unfortunately, but 1,000 times the MAC as the 

upper boundary. Just to follow up on some of the 

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discussion from yesterday, when you're doing the 

individual dose reconstructions, are you using 

the 1,000 times MAC exposure or are you using --

DR. NETON: It's a distribution. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- a distribution? 

DR. NETON: It's a triangular distribution. 

The mode is two, which is our best estimate based 

on the actual air monitoring data at the site --

MR. GRIFFON: Two times the MAC? 

DR. NETON: Two times the MAC, and it goes 

up -- there's actually -- it's a little more 

complicated than that. You'll see there's two 

distributions in there, a low exposure matrix and 

a high exposure matrix. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, I remember that. 

DR. NETON: It's a -- the reality is that if 

a person is compensable under the low exposure 

matrix, then one stops because it's just a 

reasonable estimate. But if they are noncompensable under the low exposure matrix, we'll 

run it through the high to make sure that they 

really are non-compensable, and if they 

are/aren't* compensable on the high, then they're 

done. Probably in retrospect, you know, it would 

have been more efficient just to do the high 

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exposure matrix, but that's the way we did it. 

MR. GRIFFON: The reason I bring this up is 

it's something to think about. My theoretical 

example from yesterday was zero to 1,000 with a 

mode, and your two may not be so theoretical, you 

know. It's a --

DR. NETON: Well, I'd like to sit down --

MR. GRIFFON: It's something to consider. 

I'm not saying this is wrong, but --

DR. NETON: Well, I'd like to sit down and -

- and I heard -- I've heard a lot of discussion 

about the uncertainty in dose distributions 

yesterday and I'd like to at some point address 

this issue because I think -- I think -- it's not 

intuitive how that works with when you start 

doing all these uncertainties, because remember, 

there's -- there's many sources of uncertainty in 

IREP. The input of a dose reconstruction is one 

of them. Now if you think about it, if the -- if 

there were no other errors in any of the exposure 

models and the only uncertainty was in the dose 

model, what would be used -- what would the 

result be based on, the 99th percentile of the 

dose estimate, right? So I'd like to be able to 

show how it broadens out from there, given all 

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these other uncertainties, and what share of the 

total uncertainty is based on the risk model --

risk model uncertainties versus the exposure 

model. That's quite variable depending upon the 

cancer type. 

MR. GRIFFON: I know, we looked --

DR. NETON: Cancer models that are less 

certain in some cases, it has dwarfed the --

total uncertainty is dwarfed by the uncertainty 

in the exposure. Or the other way around, the 

cancer model uncertainty is huge and the exposure 

-- so I'd like to be able to present that 'cause 

I think we -- myself included, we want -- I'd 

like to get a better grip on where this all plays 

out and --

MR. GRIFFON: I know, and we looked at that 

-- a lot of that earlier on when Charles Lamb 

presented and stuff --

DR. NETON: Charles did a lot with the 

uncertainty in the risk models, but we never 

really coupled it to the uncertainty in the dose 

estimates. 

MR. GRIFFON: That's correct. 

DR. NETON: And I think it'd be very 

instructive to go through a few examples, 

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Bethlehem Steel included. If you think about 

that, that uncertainty spans over three orders of 

magnitude. That's going to be a big driver in 

the overall PC value at the upper end. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me insert here, Jim, is 

that something that perhaps could be on the 

agenda for the next meeting, or is that too soon 

to --

DR. NETON: I think it could be. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- from your point of view. 

DR. NETON: From my perspective, it wouldn't 

be --

DR. ZIEMER: I assume that you're sort of 

volunteering to present that. 

DR. NETON: After I said that, then I 

realized that I --

DR. ZIEMER: Or were you volunteering Mark -

-

DR. NETON: -- probably will have to do 

that. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- to do that? 

DR. NETON: Yeah. No, I'd be very happy to 

do it at the next meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: I think it would be very 

instructive for us. 

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DR. NETON: I think it would be something we 

really -- in light of what we're talking about 

with the Special Exposure Cohort and how that all 

plays out, I think this would be a really --

MR. GRIFFON: I think we've looked at -- I 

played a bunch of what-if games, but I'm sure you 

guys have done a lot more with that than I have 

so --

DR. NETON: We've done a lot of that, but 

it'd be nice to formalize it and present it to 

the Board and the general public. 

MR. GRIFFON: And just one more question. 

On the -- there's been some questions about 

exposures between these trial runs. Have -- did 

the site profile consider that at all or are you 

assuming that --

DR. NETON: Between the trial runs. Well, 

again --

MR. GRIFFON: Between the experimental 

whatever they were --

DR. ZIEMER: Between the rollings. 

DR. NETON: We identified 13 runs starting 

in '51 and extending into '52, and they -- they 

appeared to happen every month. It was about --

about a period of about a month. So we just took 

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the entire 48 month contract period and said we 

don't have any indication of any more than 13, 

but we gave one every month for 48 straight 

months, so it was pretty generous. 

MR. GRIFFON: But the -- okay, but I thought 

it was only -- the exposure -- the intakes were 

only calculated for those two-day periods. 

DR. NETON: Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, yeah, for 

48 rollings. 

MR. GRIFFON: My question is, between those 

-- you know, those other 28 days in the month --

DR. NETON: Oh, was there any exposure 

assigned based on residual contamination? 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: No. 

MR. GRIFFON: No. 

DR. NETON: We have a document from -- we 

have several documents that we based this opinion 

on. One is that -- there was a lot of evidence 

and uranium was a fairly valuable commodity back 

then, and there was every effort to bring back 

the Fernald -- contrary to what we heard 

yesterday that there was tons of loss --

MR. GRIFFON: Lot of losses, yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- but I'd like to hear more 

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about that. I hadn't seen that before. And 

there were also cleanups done after every run. 

We have a survey at the next to the last rolling 

in 1952 that was done by the Environmental 

Measurements Laboratory actually signed by Naiomi 

Halden*, who became Naiomi Harley, my -- one of 

my graduate student advisors at NYU -- indicating 

that they did a -- the floor cleanup survey and 

an after-cleanup survey. Both of those surveys 

had results below what would be releasable 

contamination levels to the general public by 

today's standards in Department of Energy. In 

fact, they did a fairly -- thorough is probably 

not the best word to use -- a number of surveys, 

including at the shear area, around the floor and 

general environments of the rolling mill, which 

indicated that there was a pretty good control on 

at least the general vicinity. 

Now we heard yesterday some sort of 

discussion about the crane beams. And honestly, 

I can't address that. There were two separate 

contamination surveys done, one in 1976 by the 

FOOS RAP folks, and a follow-up survey done in 

1980 by Oak Ridge National Laboratory Health and 

Safety division. Both surveys came back and 

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found -- they did smears and all that and 

detected no detectable alpha contamination. 

I can't ascertain from that report that we 

have whether they went up and looked at the crane 

beams, so that -- that is an open issue at this 

time. But we have two surveys from fairly 

reputable --

MR. GRIFFON: I guess what it raised was the 

level -- potential level of airborne that was 

discussed and also there was the losses that we 

heard from the public comment yesterday or -- you 

know. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, we need to follow up on 

that a little more, whether they were losses or 

just losses in the production process and they 

were fine-tuning how much they had to feed in 

there is not clear to me. 

MR. GRIFFON: Thank you. 

DR. ROESSLER: I had a comment and a 

question and you've answered by question so I'll 

just make the comment. I think -- when we did 

our trip and meeting in Hanford, it -- two things 

that are of value to Board members were 

reconfirmed to me. One was -- and both of them 

are -- thanks to Wanda for setting this up. One 

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was the visit at the museum where we had the 

opportunity to actually be taken on a tour by 

people who had worked at the plant during the 

years of the highest releases and so on. And 

then the other one was being able to take the 

tour of the whole site the day after the meeting. 

I think for Board members, we get a feeling for 

what you are doing on your site profile by 

interviewing people or talking to people who knew 

what was going on at the time. It's very 

valuable. And then I think for me to actually 

understand rather in-depth what really took place 

at Hanford gives me the reassurance that we're 

putting a whole package together. So I'd I think 

encourage, wherever we can, to have those tours. 

I think Bob and Roy will agree with me, they're 

very valuable. 

The question was going to be did you followup on that list of people that I think I helped 

generate at the meeting, and you did, and I think 

that's very valuable. 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim. 

DR. MELIUS: A few comments and questions. 

The first one, seems to me some of the issues 

that have come up at Bethlehem is that the 

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process sort of worked backward. You did the 

site profile and then started to do the outreach 

for the site profile, so a lot of questions come 

up and concerns and so we're sort of working 

backwards to address those. And particularly for 

these atomic weapons sites, older sites which are 

no longer -- you know, didn't keep going, many of 

them are, what, 40, 50 years ago that they were 

last involved in this effort. And I would urge 

you -- I mean I think we had an offer yesterday 

from a gentleman for -- certainly for -- to Linde 

Ceramics and Simonds Saw that you -- you know, as 

part of developing the site profile -- set up 

some meetings with some of the people before the 

report comes out. I mean the -- and that way get 

some of that input so -- and questions and 

concerns and so those can be addressed in the 

report 'cause I know certainly Linde's a 

complicated site and I suspect Simonds Saw is, 

too. And I think it just would be extremely 

helpful to do that up front rather than -- than 

this sort of after-the-fact concerns and trying 

to scramble around and address a lot of the 

questions that people -- people have, and they 

certainly can -- you know, as we've seen with the 

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Bethlehem -- really raise some very good 

questions and very valuable concerns. 

My other -- I have a similar comment on the 

-- this construction workers -- this working 

group you have and I certainly think it's --

would be very helpful for you to do that. I 

think it's a -- is a good effort. But one 

possibility would also be -- again, before this 

chapter comes out or as you're about ready to get 

this chapter out is to get together with a group 

of -- of people familiar with, you know, 

construction work at these sites and from -- some 

of the labor unions and so forth and sit down and 

go through what you're doing and explaining it 

and, you know, if questions are raised and 

comments, I think it would be -- would be 

helpful, particularly since this is going to --

what you do in Savannah River is going to set the 

pattern for a number -- number of other sites. 

The other issue that was raised from going 

through your slides on construction workers is to 

what extent information from interviews with the 

workers, their survivors, you know, may -- may or 

may not be helpful for doing their dose 

reconstructions. It seems to me that some of the 

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questions you might ask or want to ask may differ 

and, you know, how you would -- types of 

information you would want to obtain might --

might be very different. And I think it would be 

worth evaluating that. 

I think similarly what we heard from Dick 

Toohey's presentation yesterday, some of our 

other questions we had was that the -- this whole 

issue of how the content of the interviews is 

being -- is used -- to what extent it's useful in 

doing dose reconstructions under what 

circumstances. It may be a time to start really 

looking at -- at that. I think we had the 

comment yesterday that the -- for survivors, the 

information that was obtained from the interviews 

was often not very helpful. Well, maybe we need 

a different interview -- I mean in fact I think 

we're seeing to some extent it's being counterproductive. It's upsetting people more than --

you know, to a much greater extent than you're 

getting useful information from it, at least for 

some individuals, and they're confusing people. 

And I don't -- I don't think you're necessarily 

doing a bad job of, you know -- I think there's 

just a limit to what you can do and then the 

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process is so complicated and -- and difficult 

for people. So you know, maybe this is the time 

to start looking at well, maybe we need a 

different type of interview. And again, you 

can't have an individual interview for ev-- you 

know, individual questionnaire or whatever for 

every person, but I think there are some groups 

and maybe, you know, for -- you know, 

construction workers, maybe for survivors, there 

ought to be a different, you know, questionnaire 

or different -- different parts of the interview, 

or maybe you can eliminate parts of it that just 

really aren't being helpful in doing that. And I 

really think taking a good look, you know, at 

that would be I think useful over the -- you 

know, the longer term for the -- for this -- for 

our program. 

Finally, the -- I'm not going to -- I was 

going to ask you about the incidents in the 

database and so forth, but maybe -- it would be 

helpful for me and I hope for the other members 

of the Board if you could maybe at the next 

meeting do a short presentation, maybe it's two 

or three, you know, slides or whatever, just 

explaining this additional database that you --

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where you keep these other reports and that are 

not part of the site profiles, how you're 

connecting information on incidents that come up 

in individual interviews at a site, how you're 

connecting that in so that other dose 

reconstructors, you know, can -- can get -- have 

access or at least are knowledgeable about that 

and so forth. Again, I don't think --

necessarily trying to, you know -- the approach 

you have may be fine. I mean I -- to me -- the 

natural tendency everybody has when they're 

reviewing the site prof-- well, why aren't the 

incidents in there? Well, there may be a good 

rationale for that, but I guess I'd like to hear 

it and hear it in an organized way rather than 

trying to put you on the spot here and --

DR. NETON: Sure. 

DR. MELIUS: -- and presenting... 

DR. NETON: That's fair. We can do that. 

Good comments. I agree with a lot of what you 

said. The difficult thing with construction 

workers, though, is they're not always selfidentified by looking at the Energy Employees --

the EE-2 form, or EE-1 form, even. You can see 

it as a subcontractor, but you know, is that 

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really a construction trade or not is not always 

obvious at the -- so... 

DR. MELIUS: But it would also seem to me 

that you're trying to get information on what 

buildings they worked in or whatever, and they're 

not -- maybe not know the build-- you know, who's 

the useful coworkers, the other carpenter that 

worked with him or is it the production worker 

that they were working around in that building? 

I mean it's -- it's --

DR. NETON: And that's exactly what we're 

struggling with right now. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, and so to whatever extent 

that comes from the interview or what are the 

ways of identifying that would be -- that. And 

again, my past experience dealing with workers at 

Fernald is -- but the older workers, we actually 

did all these pictures and diagrams of the 

buildings and so forth -- even -- these were 

production worker -- just to, you know, refresh 

memories as to, you know, what kind of work you 

did and so forth. It's not always as 

straightforward as... 

DR. NETON: That's why the CPWR report is 

very useful. It outlines all the buildings they 

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worked and what they did in these buildings, what 

tasks and incidents, so where we can, we're going 

to use that type of information. 

DR. ZIEMER: Additional comments or 

questions? 

MR. GRIFFON: Just --

DR. ZIEMER: Mark. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- to follow up on Jim's, if -

- you know, I think -- I think it might be 

covered in the same thing Jim asked for, the 

presentation of the incident database, is this --

this new -- I think newly-established coworker 

database? 

DR. NETON: Well, right, yeah. There is no 

real incident database, per se. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, yeah. 

DR. NETON: This alleged incident database 

isn't out there. 

MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

DR. NETON: But we have incident reports and 

they're interspersed among our general site --

site image database, if you will, and I'd be more 

than happy to talk about what extent we have and 

how they're treated. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, and isn't the issue 

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really how are we assured that they get taken 

into consideration --

DR. NETON: Right, exactly. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- in a given dose 

reconstruction, and I --

DR. MELIUS: And also when you go out doing 

these meetings with unions, work groups and so 

forth, how are you -- you know, they're looking 

for it in a site profile. I mean it comes up all 

the time, and I think there's some way of 

describing that process would be --

DR. NETON: Sure. 

DR. MELIUS: -- be useful in other sites, 

not just for the Board. 

DR. NETON: The coworker data is a little 

different issue, but I'd be more than happy to 

talk, you know, about that, as well. I mean it's 

-- it's all related to the same thing. We're 

talking about how does -- how does NIOSH do dose 

reconstructions for unmonitored workers is really 

what we're talking about here. If you have 

monitoring data and we believe it's good 

monitoring data, the incident reports are not 

crucial. They're nice to have, but not 

essential. You know, that kind of thing, 'cause 

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data. If you have no monitoring data, how do you 

tie that monitored (sic) person to a monitored 

worker or an exposure scenario, and then how do 

you deal with incidents that may have occurred 

that weren't monitored, and so they are kind of 

the same issue. And we're working very hard with 

ORAU right now to flesh this out and I'm more 

than happy to talk about where we're at with that 

in the next meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim, I like the approach you're 

taking in terms of these trade worker --

construction and building trades workers. One of 

the areas that seems to me is of great concern is 

-- with all these variables, is identifying the 

issues of duration of tasks and locations. I 

think -- I think we've heard pretty repetitively 

from a number of individuals that they really 

have been so many places and they couldn't tell 

you how long they were there. How -- is there a 

methodology starting to emerge as to how you'll 

sort of bound that? You're talking about 

bounding it in some way --

DR. NETON: Yeah, I think so. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- and what, taking the worst 

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DR. NETON: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- for the maximum time or --

DR. NETON: Yeah, like -- like everything --

DR. ZIEMER: -- partitioning it out in some 

way? 

DR. NETON: Right, like everything we do, 

it's an iterative process, and we start with some 

worst-case assumptions and -- and pick the --

maybe the highest exposed coworker. And this 

question came up yesterday, what is a coworker? 

Well, a coworker can be anything from the highest 

exposed person on the site down to someone who 

stood right next to the person as a chemical 

operator and the spectrum in between. So we'll 

start at that extreme, take the highest exposed 

worker at some process, and if we can tie that to 

the construction worker, the trades person in 

relation to where that person was and what the 

exposure environment was for him, and we believe 

that it is -- adequately represents or 

overestimates the potential dose to that trade 

worker, then we will use that. And particularly 

for these cancers that are -- are non-- what we 

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call non-metabolic, which means that, you know, 

the internal exposure doesn't concentrate in 

those organs. So we'll start there and then 

we'll start working our way down until we get 

closer and closer and then eventually, you know, 

we may have to say I don't know. We either can't 

do this, which is a possibility -- with 

sufficient accuracy -- or -- so I don't know, but 

you know, that's what's going to happen. It's a 

continually iterative process that we use. 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim, thank you very much for 

your presentation. 

ADMINISTRATIVE HOUSEKEEPING 

Let's move now to our administrative 

housekeeping procedures. First let me see if 

Cori is in the room. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Is Cori here? There she is. 

DR. ZIEMER: Ah -- and now, ladies and 

gentlemen, Cori. 

While Cori is pulling her things together, a 

reminder to the Board members not only to process 

your travel forms but also to provide your 

additional preparation hours to Larry -- and to 

Cori, both, or --

MR. ELLIOTT: Just me. 

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DR. ZIEMER: Just to Larry, okay. 

MR. ELLIOTT: By e-mail. 

DR. ZIEMER: By e-mail is fine. 

MS. HOMER: I don't have much, mostly what 

Dr. Ziemer has requested. If you could just send 

Larry an e-mail identifying your time, with a 

copy to me, that would be helpful. We'd like to 

get you paid as quickly as possible. If you 

don't have the voucher forms or envelopes, see me 

and I have extras. 

And I guess we can move on to scheduling the 

next meeting. We are currently scheduled to meet 

in Idaho Falls next in late August. We have the 

23rd set aside for a subcommittee meeting if the 

subcommittee has been established by that time. 

The 24th and 25th will be the full meeting of the 

Board and the 26th we have scheduled for a tour 

of the Idaho National Engineering and 

Environmental Lab, for those who are interested. 

And I'll need to know that information as quickly 

as you can get it to me if you plan on attending 

the tour so that I can pass the information on to 

the site. 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) 

show of hands right now? 

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DR. ZIEMER: You want a tentative show of 

hands and --

MS. HOMER: Sure, absolutely. 

DR. ZIEMER: The number of individuals who 

are interested in the site tour at Idaho. One --

MR. ELLIOTT: Let me just offer this while 

you're considering this. INEEL lab is a very 

large facility. It's what, I think --

MR. GRIFFON: An hour. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- 900 --

MR. GRIFFON: Oh. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- square miles or something 

like that, I don't know, it's huge. There are --

it takes you a day for a driving tour to really 

see it. So that's what you're looking at, and 

you'll see Argon West in that, you'll see the 

chem processing plant, you'll see where they 

developed the nuclear airplane engine, the 

reactor and where they tested other reactors. 

MS. MUNN: (Off microphone) Is SL-1 still 

(Inaudible)? 

MR. ELLIOTT: SL-1 is not there. You might 

see where it was buried, but that's it. 

DR. ZIEMER: The -- we'll be staying in 

Idaho Falls, I assume. 

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MS. HOMER: We will be at the Shiloh Inn. 

DR. ZIEMER: It's approximately 60 miles 

from the town to the site, so you've got an hour 

coming and going --

MS. HOMER: (Inaudible) the morning. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- to start with, yeah, but 

it's a nice drive. You want a show of hands 

again? Wanda was a yes, one --

MS. HOMER: Wanda, Gen, Bob. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- two, three, four -- what 

about staff? 

MS. HOMER: I can get that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, they'll collect that 

information separately. Thank you. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. The meeting following the 

August meeting, if you could take a look at your 

schedules, I guess first we can determine a 

location. 

DR. ZIEMER: Since we're toward the end of 

August, probably the earliest we would want to be 

meeting would be October, I assume. 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: And let's take a look at the 

October time frames just to see -- identify the -

- the bad times, beginning with the week of 

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October 4th. People who have bad -- or 

unavailable days that week, anybody? Tony, 

particular days? 

DR. MELIUS: I have -- Tuesday's bad for me, 

the 5th. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Entire week. 

DR. ZIEMER: Entire week's bad. Any others? 

MS. MUNN: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) at 

the end of the week. 

DR. ZIEMER: What was your bad day? 

DR. MELIUS: Tuesday the 5th. 

DR. ZIEMER: 5th, okay. For Idaho you're --

many of you will need a full day for travel time, 

close to it. For their -- subcommittee's -- may 

or may not meet, but we need to allow a day for 

that, also. 

MS. HOMER: Okay, 6th, 7th, and 8th? 

DR. ZIEMER: So no matter how you cut it, it 

pretty well takes a good portion of the week, so 

there -- looks like two people would have 

difficulties. 

MR. GRIFFON: Well, this -- we're not 

talking Idaho here, but I agree, anyway. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, I'm sorry, yes. You're 

not, but I was. 

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MR. GRIFFON: We're not going to Idaho 

twice. 

DR. ZIEMER: No. 

DR. MELIUS: I wouldn't be available the --

I'm in Chicago on the 5th, so I can get anyplace 

fairly quickly. 

DR. ZIEMER: So for example 6, 7, 8, we 

would have one person missing. Let's look --

Larry? 

MR. ELLIOTT: I was just going to anticipate 

your need to go into the next week, and the next 

week would not be good for me. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We couldn't do it on the 12th, 

13th or 14th. 

DR. ZIEMER: Week of the 18th? 

MS. MUNN: Good. 

DR. ZIEMER: Any -- bad for anybody? 

DR. DEHART: Friday's bad. 

DR. ZIEMER: Friday's bad, earlier in the 

week's okay. Anyone else? So 18 through 21 

looks like an open window. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let's check the following week, 

as well, October 25 through 29. 

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MR. ELLIOTT: That week wouldn't be good for 

us, either. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Let's go back then, the 

week of October 18th and --

MS. HOMER: Okay. I'll need a --

DR. ZIEMER: Location. Did we have 

something in reserve that we were --

MR. PRESLEY: Do we want to go back into 

Washington? 

MS. HOMER: There's a number of places we 

haven't been. 

DR. ZIEMER: Washington, D.C.? 

MS. HOMER: Washington, D.C. 

MR. ELLIOTT: In your past discussions, last 

meeting you mentioned San Francisco, Amarillo, 

Washington, D.C. 

MR. PRESLEY: There wouldn't be anything 

going on in D.C. in October. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Could we decide whether it's 

the week of the 18th or the week of the 5th? 

DR. ZIEMER: I think --

MS. HOMER: Did we decide the week of the 

18th? 

MR. ELLIOTT: It's going to be the 18th? 

Okay. I missed that, I'm sorry. 

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DR. ZIEMER: If we went to Amarillo, there 

is a site there. Well, San Francisco, same 

thing. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You should not anticipate a 

tour of the Pantex site, though. 

MR. PRESLEY: No. Although they do give --

they do give... 

MR. ELLIOTT: You won't see much, is all I'm 

going to say. 

MR. PRESLEY: No, you won't. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You can get a tour, but it's 

all (Inaudible). 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) It'll be like 

a Y-12 tour, you don't see (Inaudible). 

DR. ZIEMER: Any preferences? 

DR. ROESSLER: Washington, D.C. 

DR. ZIEMER: Washington? 

MS. HOMER: D.C.? 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. Can I have an 

alternative? 

MR. GIBSON: Congress won't be in session. 

I mean as far as... 

DR. ZIEMER: Is that good or bad? 

MS. HOMER: Be good for availability. 

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MR. PRESLEY: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Washington, D.C., is that --

MS. HOMER: Okay. An alternate, just in 

case? 

MR. PRESLEY: What'd you say, Pantex first? 

Or what'd you say first? 

MS. HOMER: D.C. 

DR. ZIEMER: San Francisco is another 

location. 

MR. PRESLEY: D.C. first, then San 

Francisco? 

MS. HOMER: San Francisco? 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm sure D.C. probably could be 

arranged. Shall we plan that? 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

MR. PRESLEY: D.C. first then, San Francisco 

second? 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. As soon as I have 

something confirmed, I'll let you know. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You said which second? 

DR. ZIEMER: San Francisco. 

MR. ELLIOTT: San Francisco second? 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, I didn't -- that was 

Bob's choice. I didn't hear from the rest of 

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DR. ROESSLER: San Francisco. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MR. PRESLEY: It's pretty out there in 

October. 

DR. MELIUS: I'm there the week before. I 

can just stay. 

DR. ZIEMER: We didn't set a date. Do we 

want to do that? 

DR. MELIUS: What date -- we -- specific 

days or... 

MS. HOMER: I'll check availability, try to 

keep the 18th through the --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, keep the 18th through the 

what, 20th available. 

MS. HOMER: 18th through 21st. 

DR. ZIEMER: Or through the 21st. 22nd was 

bad for somebody, right. 

MS. MUNN: Texas, right? 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm sorry? 

MS. MUNN: I said we decided I can't get you 

to Texas? 

DR. ZIEMER: No. Well, maybe later. 

MS. MUNN: So we're going to Washington, 

D.C.? 

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DR. ZIEMER: D.C. 

MS. HOMER: D.C. or San Francisco. Most 

likely Washington. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Cori. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Other items? 

MS. HOMER: I have no other items. 

DR. ZIEMER: One other administrative item 

we need to take care of and that is some Privacy 

Act information, and I guess Liz is going to --

Liz or David -- Liz is going to present that to 

us. Okay, thank you. Liz. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: This is my first time 

with one of these, so we'll see. 

(Pause) 

Good morning, and thank you for letting me 

slip into your schedule. We wanted to do a quick 

--and I hope that it will be quick, which is hard 

for an attorney -- review of the Privacy Act for 

you since you all are gearing up to really get 

into dose reconstructions and also start 

reviewing the SEC petitions. So this is just a 

short reminder, and then hopefully I'm going to 

do a presentation at the next Board meeting for 

you that's a full discussion of the Privacy Act 

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or bring in one of the Privacy Act expert 

attorneys that we have on staff. 

So once again, just a reminder that the 

Privacy Act applies to not only dose 

reconstruction reviews that you all are doing, 

but also to the SEC petitions that you'll be 

reviewing. And if you have any questions, like 

John said yesterday, if there's a wart on your 

end of your nose, give us a call. And here's a 

phone number that the General Counsel's Office 

can be reached at, and you can reach us for 

Privacy Act questions or if you have any 

questions regarding John's presentation 

yesterday, this is also the number to reach us 

at. 

Just a reminder for you that the Privacy Act 

prohibits the disclosure of information to third 

parties unless you have a specific written 

authorization from the party that the information 

is about to disclose the information to the 

specific third party. A general waiver won't 

work. HHS doesn't allow it. And a reminder that 

it's the policy of HHS to protect the privacy the 

best that we can. There are some statutory 

exceptions that I'll go over with you next time 

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that allow us to share information, but our 

general rule is to protect it as best we can. 

On this slide I just want you to note that 

there are civil and criminal penalties that can 

be brought against you if you violate the Privacy 

Act, and the Department won't necessarily defend 

you in those actions if there's a violation of 

the Privacy Act -- which could make it even more 

expensive than just a penalty fine. 

These are the Privacy Act rules. I know 

you've seen these before but I just wanted to go 

over them one more time. When you're speaking to 

the public, don't speak on behalf of the agency 

or the Board, but you can share public 

information that have been Board decisions. 

Please avoid discussing the merits of 

individual cases that you'll be reviewing. You 

will be reviewing a great deal of Privacy Act 

information and you can't go and share that with 

outside people. 

Stick to public information. Please avoid 

speculating about the identity of either 

petitioners, claimants or who may be a member of 

a class. 

Avoid speculation about dose reconstruction 

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or petition issues. This is very important 

because people look at you and they look to you 

for leadership because you are on the Board, and 

they may assume that something that's a private 

opinion of you own is something of the Board. So 

if you are going to speak about these issues, be 

sure that when it's your personal opinion it's 

very clear that it's your personal opinion. 

Please don't try to predict future agency or 

Board actions. I know it's easy to do. You're 

sitting around, you may be chatting about 

something that's coming up for Board 

consideration. Please don't predict to outside 

people what you think the Board is going to do 

about it. 

Please avoid assisting individuals with 

their claims or petitions. It would obviously 

look like a conflict of interest for you to be 

doing so, and it may also be a violation of the 

Privacy Act. 

But please remember that if you do have 

information specific to a claim or petition, you 

can be a fact witness. We don't want to keep you 

from doing that because we know that you have the 

expertise and we know that you all have worked in 

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these areas. 

And that's all of my quick reminder 

presentation for you. Does anyone have any 

questions right now? 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Jim. 

DR. MELIUS: I have a procedural question --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Okay. 

DR. MELIUS: -- not for you but actually for 

Larry. It came up with the ethics presentation 

yesterday also. The counsel's office was telling 

us to call counsel's office. I guess as the 

Board, do you want us to go through you or 

through Cor-- I mean when these issues come up, 

should we be contacting counsel's office directly 

or should we be -- how do we -- how do we involve 

the --

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I --

DR. MELIUS: -- staff? 

MR. ELLIOTT: There's two answers to your 

question, depending upon what the issue is. If 

the issue is something on ethics that you have a 

question about, that's what was offered yesterday 

by Mr. Condray, to call him or call the -- Liz or 

David or Rob, who are the legal team assigned to 

this program. And they'll help get an answer to 

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your question, and I assure you they'll keep me 

informed of that kind of contact. 

I think here in Liz's presentation today on 

Privacy Act, there's another answer to your 

question, and that is if you're dealing with, you 

know, a claimant or a -- you know, hearing 

individual concerns, refer them to me. Refer 

them to OCAS so that we can assist the claimant 

with that. 

If you have a question about how you serve 

as a special government employee and a member of 

this Advisory Board with regard to protecting 

confidential information in a Privacy Act, I 

think that's a question you want to pose to Liz 

or the legal team. And again, I think they're 

going to keep me informed of those kind of 

contacts. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: We'll definitely let him 

know. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Does that -- does that --

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Any other questions for Liz? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: You can also call both of 

us and we'll make sure you get in touch with the 

right person. 

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DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Liz. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Thank you. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I know these kinds of 

presentations can be onerous or perhaps not as 

stimulating as some of the other things we bring 

before you, but just to remind you, we have to 

provide ethics training on an annual basis. It's 

a FACA and a Department policy that we do this. 

And because, as Liz said, we're about to see you 

embark upon reviewing individual dose 

reconstructions and SEC petitions, we felt it was 

necessary to remind you of the Privacy Act 

concerns. This is something that we do, as you 

know, with our staff, we -- and you heard Dr. 

Toohey remind you yesterday of his -- this is a 

bee in his bonnet, as well. He and I both share 

the concern that we have a lot of Privacy Actrelated information in our hands, our staff deals 

with them, and we are constantly reminding 

everybody of their responsibilities to maintain 

the confidentiality of this information. 

SANFORD, COHEN & ASSOCIATES 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Next we're going to 

hear from the Board's contractor, Sanford Cohen & 

Associates. We're pleased to have -- both John 

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meetings this time, and Joe's going to make a 

presentation just to update the Board on the 

status of the site profile reviews. 

MR. FITZGERALD: Good morning. Yes, good 

morning, I'm going to briefly go through the 

approach and process that we're taking. I know 

we've covered this in the past, but for the 

benefit of the members of the public that 

actually had some questions about our role, I'd 

like to go through that again. And also this 

role has been evolving, to some extent, as we've 

gotten into the site profile reviews. I thought 

it'd be useful just to touch on those relatively 

quickly. Also to give you some sense of where we 

are. This is, again, sort of a D-Day plus 60 

days, it seems like. So you know, I think this 

is sort of reminiscent of where certainly NIOSH 

and ORAU might have been a year or year and a 

half ago. We're just -- just know enough to get 

in trouble at this point in terms of the process, 

but we're just getting into that --

DR. ZIEMER: Joe, could you move your mike 

up a little? 

MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Is that better? 

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Okay. 

And also some observations going into this 

thing early on I think would be just useful 

feedback on what we're learning in terms of the 

process, and then some sense of priorities and 

schedule. Of course, you know, we're a support 

mechanism for this Board and we take our lead 

from your direction. And certainly our 

priorities in the profiles that we're looking at 

are based on -- on -- on that direction. 

Again, the specific purpose for our role is 

to support this Advisory Board in doing a 

independent evaluation of the NIOSH site 

profiles. And you know, there was a -- sort of a 

comment last night during the public comment 

period about, you know, our -- our positioning in 

terms of conflicts. And let me just reaffirm 

that to fulfill this role in a adequate way, we 

do not have any organizational or personal 

conflicts of interest relative to having contract 

relationships with DOE, NIOSH or ORAU. I think 

that was a question that came up last night, just 

to put that to rest. 

And again, I think the -- our -- our 

perspective, just to reiterate from what we 

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talked about last time, is the -- you know, the 

site profiles, quite frankly, have assumed a 

level of importance in the dose reconstruction 

process, probably much more than envisioned in 

the very early days of the Act and of the 

implementation. So we take this role very 

seriously I think, providing a feedback mechanism 

to this Board and to NIOSH. 

This came right from the procedures that 

were approved by the Board, and essentially, very 

quickly, in terms of the functions and purposes 

of what this site profile review process is 

directed at, the first one is completeness. And 

from the standpoint of completeness, we're 

looking at what the basis -- the building blocks 

of the site profiles are. The models are only as 

good as those building blocks in terms of the 

information and the data which is reflected in 

those models. And what we want to do is look at 

those bases, provide certainly a critique and 

provide information back to the Board and NIOSH 

on that. 

Technical accuracy, again, looking at the 

data. The adequacy of the data sources, looking 

at what data sources are being used and whether 

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or not they're complete or not. Consistency of 

how worker groups are treated from site profile 

to site profile, again, I think is an important 

aspect. And of course compliance with the -- not 

only the laws and the -- and the rules, but also 

the procedures which guide site profiles. 

So this is essentially our -- our marching 

orders in terms of the bases that we're touching 

in terms of the site profile reviews. 

Our function is basically a sampling one. 

Okay? Given the resources, given the intent of 

this thing, we are looking at how we can frankly 

sample the site profile performance, how we can 

actually look at them in a way that will allow us 

to -- to evaluate and determine the validity and 

the bases for these site profiles. We're going 

to rely on the expertise of the team, the site 

knowledge within that team, secondary 

documentation and site expert interviews. These 

are all mechanisms that will allow us to, I 

think, do the kind of sampling that we have to do 

and really come up with some kind of sense of the 

basis for these site profiles and whether or not 

they are -- are valid. 

Generic and site-specific perspectives I 

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think is very important at this point. You know, 

we're playing catch-up, and we're getting into a 

process that's already under way. I think NIOSH 

is moving smartly ahead in terms of the site 

profiles. What we're looking at is to -- even 

with the very first site profile, Savannah River, 

that we're looking for, we're not only looking 

site-specific issues, but also looking at 

systematic questions -- systemic questions that 

would have influence across different site 

profiles. I think it's important to look at 

those aspects, as well. 

And I think there's an important aspect that 

has become more apparent over the last month, 

which is, you know, the need to certainly have 

discussions and dialogue with NIOSH and ORAU to 

understand and to calibrate our review against 

certainly what their objectives in their process 

is. You know, our interest, and I think 

everyone's interest in this room, is to come up 

with the best representative and definitive site 

profile. And what we're trying to do is find a 

way to, you know, make sure that we fully 

understand what has gone into these site 

profiles, what the strategy in fact has been, and 

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what in fact has been the approach taken so that 

we can give a very representative critique. 

Just wanted to sort of touch on some of the 

qualifications. You know, to some extent a 

sampling exercise is not 100 percent verification 

for sure, and so there are some limitations to 

what we can do. We're not going to be able to 

certainly run more than a handful of dose 

reconstructions sort of as a means to actually 

see how site profile information is applied. I 

think that's a very critical aspect of our 

review, but obviously we can only, you know, take 

a few datapoints and follow the way the 

information is actually applied in that context. 

I think that context is very important. I don't 

think we can look at the site profile information 

independent of how the information is used, so I 

think it would be our intent to actually go 

through some sampling, you know, of that and to 

understand better how that -- that information is 

applied in these cases. 

The site profile reviews themselves I think 

are clearly snapshots -- our reviews are 

snapshots at the time that we look at the site 

profiles. In a lot of cases -- this has come 

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from our discussions I think with NIOSH and ORAU 

-- it's clear that some of the issues that are of 

concern to us were ones that had been picked up 

in successive site profile reviews. So if we 

looked at the very first one, Savannah River, 

some of the issues -- construction workers I 

think was mentioned -- you know, we picked -- you 

know, certainly we're concerned about the 

transient worker/construction worker issues in 

that particular site profile. And in fact, 

that's something that was in the pipeline as far 

as being a consideration that was going to be 

supplementing that site profile. 

So you know, we're trying to reflect that 

this is a moving target. These are improving as 

we go. And you know, we're sort of looking 

backwards, to some extent, but we're trying to, 

in our discussions with NIOSH and ORAU, again, 

make sure that we have a full picture so what 

we're bringing back to you is a update 

perspective, even if the site profile is become a 

bit historic from that standpoint. 

In any case -- and again, given the 

limitations of time and resources, our objective 

would frankly develop these issues to the point 

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that, you know, we can feel confident that, you 

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bring to the Board's attention and hence to 

NIOSH's from the standpoint of issues that would 

bear further review, further follow-up. You 

know, we're not here to provide the answer to 

you, a recommendation to you. But certainly we 

want to provide a issue with sufficient basis 

that certainly further follow-up can be performed 

by NIOSH and the contractor. So that -- that 

kind of balancing of, you know, sampling 

sufficiently enough, working it up as an issue 

sufficiently enough, having a -- I think a robust 

dialogue with NIOSH and ORAU sufficient so that 

when we come back to you we can honestly say and 

they will have full knowledge that here's 

something that could bear further discussion or 

maybe further workup. 

This is a refinement on, you know, a process 

that has come about in our look at Savannah 

River. We recognize that, you know, the first 

thing we're going to be doing is going into a 

large body of information and data. And 

secondly, the only way we can frankly validate 

some of these issues is to look at secondary 

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sources, and perhaps even probe in a more 

vertical way information that we feel will 

provide, you know, further corroboration of the 

approach that was taken in the site profile. 

Well, as we discussed at the last meeting, 

sometimes that will require access to data and 

people that, quite honestly, aren't going to be 

forthcoming about some, you know, requests and 

cooperation by the Department of Energy and other 

resources. But we didn't want to certainly hold 

up our review waiting for a lot of this access to 

be resolved. So certainly what we're trying to 

do in this so-called phase one review is to look 

at the documentation, look at the site profile, 

look at the Technical Basis Documents, available 

public resources, technical reports, to talk to 

the authors and the resource people that frankly 

put these profiles together, who have thought 

about these models that are in fact reflected in 

these profiles, and to look at how this 

information's being used in the site profile. In 

other words, everything we can possibly do short 

of necessarily having to access information that 

may not be readily available in the public 

domain. We feel that's something we can do in 

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this so-called phase one, and we can get to a 

point where we can certainly identify issues that 

we would feel are ones that would certainly be 

ones we would want to pursue in a second phase 

that would look at these other sources of 

information, ones that would validate that in 

fact these are legitimate issues, ones that we 

would feel deserve further attention. And that's 

why we're calling this vertical, so we're going 

to do some probing on some of these issues, but 

you know, sort of recognizing that we're looking 

at 50 years of history at Savannah and certainly 

a very comprehensive set of TBDs. You know, I 

think the first process is to screen through and 

actually figure out where some potential 

questions or what issues may come about, to -- to 

certainly open up a dialogue with the site 

profile authors, with NIOSH and ORAU; to 

understand better what was behind the decisions 

on how this profile was put together, and get to 

a point where we feel pretty comfortable that we 

can then focus in on the handful of particularly 

influential questions -- not just, you know, 

glitches, issues, but ones that would truly have 

some potential influence on the answer that the 

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profile would contribute to. And that's what 

we're trying to do. We're trying to focus energy 

and resources on that which would make a 

difference, that which would contribute to the 

process. 

In terms of status, we have pretty much 

completed what I would call this first phase of 

review of the Savannah River site profile. We 

have of course at the last session compiled a 

list of -- of datasource needs and access needs 

for that profile. And again, we're going to 

certainly need to get to the additional sources 

of information in order to continue with 

Savannah. 

We had a very productive meeting, and I'd 

like to thank NIOSH and ORAU for -- you know, for 

taking the time, and it was over three days, to 

walk through more generically the site profile 

process as it stands today, and also more 

specifically to spend time talking to the 

technical people and the site profile authors for 

Savannah to, again, understand the thinking, 

understand the technical basis, and to truly 

appreciate what I think is a difficult balancing 

of the technical accuracy and the questions of 

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efficiency which I know this group has looked at 

very -- very hard, and to understand how that 

balancing was struck. And I think that was a 

very useful way to get to that point. 

We have since put together a preliminary --

and this is preliminary. This is sort of our 

thinking at this point of issues that we'd want 

to pursue further and have made that -- you know, 

again, have -- are raising those to the site 

profile authors and ORAU and NIOSH to basically 

get some, again, calibration as to the 

representation on those issues and to understand 

better what the implications are in terms of 

validating those in phase two. 

We have started a first phase review of the 

Hanford site profile. We're getting into the 

documentation. We're getting feedback from site 

experts for Hanford. So we're not going to sort 

of wait till Savannah River is, you know, baked 

in the oven and completely done. We know we've 

gone probably as far as we can go at this point 

without having access to the additional on-site 

information, so -- but we're going to go ahead 

and move on and begin to collect the same 

information for Hanford. And I think that's 

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probably the kind of sequence we're going to go 

through. We're going to go as far as we can, as 

fast and hard as we can, but then go ahead and 

document that, put it in a form that captures 

where we came out, and then keep moving. And as 

we get access to additional information, we'll 

return and complete the validation and then we'll 

come back to the Board and report what I think 

would be fairly mature and well-validated 

findings that we would then forward. And again, 

these would be ones that we would have had a -- I 

think a fairly good chance of -- a fairly good 

chance of evaluating with the technical input of 

NIOSH and ORAU. 

This is some observations. Okay? Again, 

these are observations of the last 60 days, even 

less, so they're pretty early observations. As 

everybody else has probably pointed out, the 

start-up process is -- is fairly tough. It's 

ugly, in a sense, because you're -- you're 

catching up, you're trying to learn. Again, the 

-- the orientation discussions on the site 

profile process with NIOSH and ORAU I think was 

very helpful. But you know, again, we're 

bringing in new staff. We're trying to orient 

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the staff, make sure that the context of review -

- this is kind of a unique review -- is well 

understood. And we talked about precision versus 

accuracy, efficiency versus adequacy. You know, 

these are kind of issues that -- coming from 

different aspects of health physics and 

different, you know, careers, I think this is 

pretty unprecedented. It's one that requires a 

fairly good understanding of what the context of 

this -- this review is. And you know, again, we 

have to accommodate this question of having some 

but not all of the information. 

From my past lives, this is a difficult 

position to be in. It's a humbling position to 

be in. My former position, I had access to 

anything I wanted in DOE, so you can imagine 

trying to ask DOE for information. It's the 

height of irony for me. But anyway --

MR. ELLIOTT: Welcome to the real world. 

MR. FITZGERALD: You sort of can say well, 

we own this place, you know, so don't tell me 

that can't happen. 

But anyway, it is a particular challenge and 

I certainly -- as someone said, I certainly 

appreciate the real world of trying to extract 

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information and knowledge from the Department, 

having been inside the Department for decades. 

It's not easy. 

We're going to be sort of going single file 

for Savannah and Hanford. I think partly because 

we're new, the people are new and I think we need 

to make sure that everyone is calibrated well on 

these first couple before we start doing things 

in parallel. I think ultimately the answer is 

we're going to have to do these things in 

parallel, maybe have two teams working side by 

side going through the site profiles. And I --

but I don't -- I certainly don't want to propose 

that be done until there's a sense of surety that 

everybody gets it, that everybody understands the 

context of these reviews and has a chance to be 

clear on where we're going with it. 

And you know, the timely access issue, the 

security clearances, we talked about that last 

time. They're going to be essential to getting 

to this validation phase. The interaction with 

NIOSH and ORAU I think is very important for the 

Board's sake because I think when we bring these 

issues to you I think the expectation is that 

there's -- at least from a technical standpoint, 

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there's a meeting of the minds as far as at least 

knowing where one disagrees, but you know, 

certainly to have that perspective pretty clean 

when we come to you. 

And what I also would throw in, I think it 

would be very helpful -- and this wasn't a 

mechanism that we discussed in great detail --

very helpful if there was a way where you could 

convey -- provide direction to us on issues -- we 

go to these meetings and hear these issues coming 

back and forth within the discussions, but a 

means by which the Board itself can provide 

input, suggestions, recommendations on issues 

that we should address as we go. You know, 

certainly we're in the throes of this in terms of 

technical reviews within the site profiles, and 

we can certainly incorporate issues or questions 

or things that would be useful to get a 

perspective from the -- being your support 

contractor from our -- from our work. So 

certainly that's another avenue of -- of guidance 

that we can respond to in addition to identifying 

the priorities and the profiles and what have 

you. Certainly anything -- and this is more of a 

real-time thing where certainly we can also 

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respond to that. 

Schedule -- and again, this is sort of 

looking forward and -- and within the constraints 

of the resources that we do have and the 

approach, this is what seems to be the sequence, 

based on the sites that were identified last 

month. And this is kind of roughly where we 

expect to be. Now this is, you know, not 

reflecting additional tasks or whatever, but this 

certainly reflects the priorities that were set. 

And again, these priorities are your priorities. 

And I guess I would, you know, want to revisit 

this at each meeting to say that, you know, if 

there's a need to reorder these to some -- some 

extent, to maybe get some place first or --

before some other place, that's fine. I mean 

this is fluid beyond the ones that we're actually 

involved with at this point. And again, this 

reflects the fact that we're doing a sampling and 

some of -- and quite frankly, the largest 

Departmental sites in terms of history and size 

are in the first group, so this is going to be a 

bit slow going at first, given the enormity of 

the sites and the site profiles that we're 

looking at. And also the fact that we're just 

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starting this thing up. But again, this would 

seem to be the sequence. 

And again, this is a -- just a -- again, a 

chart representation. I know you can't really 

read all these little -- little milestones, but 

essentially, again, they just reflect the twophased approach and reflects when we would expect 

to brief you more formally on the findings and 

where we stand. And that's pretty much the slice 

of life at this time. If there's any questions, 

I'd certainly be glad to answer them. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Joe. Are there 

questions for Joe at this time? Roy? 

DR. DEHART: Joe, I fully expect that you 

will be reviewing the source material used by the 

site experts in developing. Are you going to be 

seeking out additional site information? 

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Yeah, my -- you know, 

certainly our intent is to seek out site experts, 

to seek out secondary -- when I say secondary 

information, I think of that as information which 

isn't the prime basis for the models used in the 

site profiles -- to further validate that the 

basic building blocks for the models are sound, 

are reflective and, again, it's -- it's looking 

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at the completeness from that standpoint and 

looking at what is understandably a necessary 

balancing of, you know, how much of that versus 

the need to have that, you know, curve fitted. 

And you know, we're going to be looking at that, 

and I think that came up yesterday in terms of 

the so-called sufficiency -- sufficient accuracy 

issue. And you know, we certainly appreciate 

that issue, as well, that -- establishing that 

judgment call, looking at that balancing. I 

would say that what we're hopefully going to 

bring back to you is some perspectives on 

balancing vis a vis what additional sources of 

information we can bring into the process with --

again, with the intent of informing the 

discussion, informing the process. It's a 

difficult issue, and I don't envy the position 

that Larry and his people are in. It's a 

difficult issue to strike that balance and what 

we would hope to be doing is constructively 

raising areas that this group can address in 

further discussions that might lead to further 

refinement, further improvements, and to move 

this thing forward in a very solid way so it's --

it's serving the worker -- former workers and 

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serving the process as effectively as possible. 

I think that's -- that makes for a very robust 

system, and I like to think my years in the 

Department of Energy even -- you know, probably 

the toughest thing is to be audited. I was 

always on the giving side. But I know -- I know 

it's a tough position to be in and -- but the 20 

years that I was involved in trying to do that, I 

like to think that the Department of Energy, in 

terms of the safety operations, did move forward 

-- sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but moved 

forward and I think it does have a very laudatory 

effect and it's a healthy -- a healthy thing to 

have in the process, so... 

DR. ZIEMER: Gen. 

DR. ROESSLER: I want to pick up on the site 

experts. You mentioned, as part of the site 

experts, former workers --

MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

DR. ROESSLER: -- which I think should be a 

part of it. Are you planning to talk to the same 

site experts that the NIOSH and ORAU people have 

talked to, or do you have means for identifying 

some of your own that might add additional 

information or different information? 

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MR. FITZGERALD: I would lean more toward 

trying to bring in new information, not so much 

to second-guess, but to get some confidence that 

the picture is a representative picture. And I 

think we certainly are already identifying people 

that, you know, have I think very good knowledge. 

And I think in many cases it's going to serve to 

make us feel more confident, collectively, that 

the picture we have is a pretty good picture. In 

some cases what we're going to find out -- and 

this has been my experience over decades of 

dealing with DOE sites -- that you're going to 

find out that what was on paper and what was 

represented is not anywhere near what was 

actually going on. And it's just that sort of 

back in those times, practices didn't match, 

procedures did not match, management 

proclamations did not match what's in the 

documentation. So I think very much so we want 

to talk to individuals that can validate that 

what's -- you know, what's in primary sources of 

documents, what's in, you know, these reports and 

profiles, reflects what they would say is the 

actual practice. And to the extent that we can 

continue going back to that and marrying that up, 

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I think that increases the confidence that, you 

know, we have a representative site profile. I 

think this came up last night in the public 

discussions that -- it's amazing, you know, 

people will come up and, you know, say that, you 

know, even though that was what was written up, I 

can tell you that, you know, these other things 

were happening, as well. Or one of -- some of my 

favorite ones, it took us a long time at Savannah 

River, for example, to establish that the -- a 

large group of workers were systematically taking 

their breaks in the -- in the B* line, you know, 

and being irradiated while they were having 

smokes, and that wasn't in the procedures. That 

wasn't documented and it wasn't part of the 

record. And it was investigated while I was 

there and it just turned out that yeah, this sort 

of ad hoc thing was happening. And of course it 

was against the rules and wasn't reflected in any 

documentation, but yet for years apparently this 

was a practice that was going on. And those are 

the kind of things I think that there's hardly 

any other way to pick it up except to get that 

feedback from workers that can account for what 

practices had existed, and to some extent where 

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some documentation may exist that just isn't, you 

know, obvious. They -- they may actually say 

yeah, Joe Blow actually has all the records for 

that. And that -- that's happened to me at 

numbers of sites where it turns out, between 

contract switches and what have you, you know, 

the records went over here, and you don't know 

they went over here because, you know, that was 

sort of a tribal, you know, legacy and the only 

way you can find out is to talk to the workers. 

So -- but I think that would be something that we 

would like to do, certainly, is make sure that, 

you know, we can maybe bring in a different group 

of -- of workers in terms of feedback. And I 

think it would be very useful to -- to see how 

that all corroborates certainly what our 

understanding and picture of the site is. And I 

think it certainly adds to the confidence level 

on the -- on the site profiles. 

DR. ROESSLER: I didn't mean to ask such a 

long question. I do have one other suggestion, 

and that's I think as we get into the SEC 

evaluation, we're going to be dealing with terms 

like sufficient accuracy, and we've been talking 

about precision. And I come from the old school 

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of having studied radioisotope methodology from a 

book called Rabinowitz* or something like that --

and Paul probably knows this. I have a very -- I 

have a definition of precision and a definition 

of accuracy, and in our very early meetings here 

I think my definition is not what's -- the 

definition that's being used now. So perhaps at 

the next meeting I'd like to have somebody give 

us a little tutorial on what is meant by 

sufficient accuracy, what -- what is that 

definition. That's a suggestion. 

DR. ZIEMER: There is -- there is in the SEC 

rule the working definition for what that means 

in this case, and it's not from Chase and 

Rabinowitz, I can assure you. 

DR. ROESSLER: I know. 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim. 

DR. MELIUS: Are all of the issues of access 

and getting records and all that stuff, are they 

getting appropriately resolved, are they on their 

way to being resolved? I... 

MR. FITZGERALD: The way we left it -- and 

again, I think the Board authored a letter and I 

quite frankly don't know what the --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, there's been a memo sent 

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to the Secretary of Energy through Secretary 

Thompson, and that's somewhere en route. That 

left -- well, I signed it May 5th and it's in 

process somewhere. I don't know if we know 

exactly where it is or -- or do we? 

MR. ELLIOTT: No, we don't know if it's made 

its way all the way to the Department of --

DR. ZIEMER: But that's --

MR. ELLIOTT: -- Energy Secretary, but you 

have Tom Rollow's commitment at your last meeting 

that he would stand up and support the access, 

that the sites would be given authority to 

provide access. We are working on making sure 

that the folks that you need to have Q clearances 

reinstated or new clearances provided, that's --

that's -- if we get those names, we can get that 

into play and we'll bird-dog it all the way. 

DR. ZIEMER: Any other questions for Joe? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Joe. We 

appreciate that status report. 

While we're on the subject of our 

contractor, two things. Number one, task number 

four, which was the task for conducting 

individual dose reconstructions, an approved 

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task, that was awarded for a six-month period. 

And they recognize now that, because of the role 

the site profiles play in that and also 

availability of actual final dose 

reconstructions, the task hasn't actually 

started. But the clock is going. And if -- if 

we want to be able to continue this, we need to 

extend the task. That requires a modification of 

the task, and we can do that -- a no-cost 

extension -- but it does require action of this 

Board. And for modifications of this year's 

tasks, those have to be done by June 14th. 

MR. GRIFFON: Does this require executive 

session? 

DR. ZIEMER: No, this can be done in open 

session. All that is required is that the Board, 

by motion, agree to extend that task for -- for 

example, by six months. So that it would be in 

order to consider a motion to extend task four by 

six months -- no-cost extension. That's task 

four, individual dose reconstruction reviews. 

MR. ESPINOSA: So moved. 

DR. ZIEMER: And seconded? 

MS. MUNN: Second. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Wanda, did you have a 

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comment, or were you going to make the motion? 

MS. MUNN: No, going to make the motion. 

DR. ZIEMER: Is there discussion on 

extending task four by six months? Cost would 

remain the same. Are you ready to vote? And 

this would put in motion the necessary wheels to 

get that underway. 

All in favor say aye. 

 (Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: And any opposed say no. 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: And any abstentions? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Motion carries and we will 

instruct staff -- I guess Martha will handle 

this? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, and we'll put it into the 

procurement hands as soon as I'm back in the 

office tomorrow. Whenever Martha's back in the 

office, it'll happen. 

DR. ZIEMER: One other open session item 

dealing with our contractor, and maybe for the 

benefit of the contractor, remind SC&A that one 

of the deliverables, according to their original 

proposal, is a conflict of interest plan which is 

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required under the proposal to be approved by 

this Board. And although we've talked about the 

conflict of interest yesterday, Martha reminds me 

that the actual plan has not been submitted to 

the Board for our action, so we do need 

apparently an official conflict of interest plan, 

John, and we will need to act on that at our next 

meeting. 

DR. MAURO: I'll take care of that and 

that'll be in your hands prior to the next 

meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right, thank you. Also I'll 

remind you that today in closed session we will 

review the technical proposal for modification of 

task three, which is the actual review of the 

procedures. And that has to be done in closed 

session. 

I think that completes the items for SC&A at 

this point. 

BOARD DISCUSSION/WORKING SESSION 

Let's move into the Board working session 

portion. There is one item that's a carry-over 

from the last meeting, and that is the charter --

I think that's the proper term -- for our 

subcommittee on dose reconstruction. I think --

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Cori, did you have some comments on this? 

In the packet under Board discussion 

documents you will find the revised draft of the 

charter. This revised draft reflects the changes 

that were agreed to at the last meeting, and if 

you'd like, I will step through that, using my 

red-line copy, and tell you exactly what those 

changes were -- in case you want to lay this 

side-by-side with the earlier draft. 

Does everybody have the copy of the draft? 

This is called Subcommittee for Dose 

Reconstruction and Site Profile Reviews. 

Under "Structure" a second sentence was 

added in the first paragraph that says now 

(reading) The membership shall reflect an 

appropriate balance of Board perspectives. 

You remember that was an addition that we 

talked about. (Reading) Members will be 

appointed or replaced from time to time as deemed 

necessary by the Board Chair. 

That issue was also agreed to. And then it 

was also suggested that we insert information 

about conflict of interest and here's that 

sentence, (reading) Conflict of interest 

requirements shall apply to all Board members in 

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conducting Subcommittee activities. 

So those are the basically additions to the 

first paragraph. In the second paragraph there 

was a question as to whether or not subcommittee 

members could call a meeting, as opposed to the 

Board Chair or the Subcommittee Chair. So the 

second sentence now reads (reading) Meetings may 

be called by the Board Chair or the Subcommittee 

Chair, either at their own volition or upon 

request of a Subcommittee member. 

So the clarification now is the meeting 

still has to be called by either the Board Chair 

or the Subcommittee Chair, to make it clear that 

the Subcommittee member on their own cannot call 

a meeting. Okay? That is the change there. 

The third paragraph -- the whole first 

sentence is new, to remind everyone that 

(reading) The Subcommittee is subject to FACA 

requirements, including open meetings and 

appropriate announcements in the Federal 

Register. 

Then the wording in the second sentence was 

modified a little bit to make it clear that 

Privacy Act issues -- where Privacy Act issues 

are involved, the Subcommittee may meet in closed 

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session, and this follows the same rules, FACA 

rules, that apply to the full Board, so that was 

inserted just for clarification as to the privacy 

issue matters. 

Under "Charges", it was suggested that in 

item five, again, we add the statement taking in 

-- or the phrase, "taking into consideration 

conflict of interest matters", so that is an 

addition to item five. 

And then in item eight, inserted after the 

words "prepare responses", the phrase "for the 

Board's Chair's -- Board Chair's signature" was 

inserted. And then the very last word was 

changed from "policies" to "practices", "in 

accordance with Board practices". 

So those were the changes that it was the 

Chair's understanding that we agreed to and are 

precisely my handwritten mark-up from the last 

meeting. But if you have mark-ups that disagree 

with that, this will be the opportunity now. I 

will ask for a motion to accept this draft -- or 

revised draft as the structure and charges for 

the Subcommittee on Dose Reconstruction. 

UNIDENTIFIED: So moved. 

DR. ZIEMER: And seconded? 

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MS. HOMER: Dr. Ziemer --

DR. ZIEMER: And then we will have 

discussion, right. Cori? 

MS. HOMER: Before you get started on that, 

can I go through the structure section and make 

some suggestions? 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

MS. HOMER: Under the first paragraph, with 

the way that you have this written -- and I think 

I approached this a little bit at the last 

meeting -- the way that we have to submit the 

establishment of the charter or establishment of 

this subcommittee, we identify the specific 

members. If we identify the Chair and three 

members at a time, every time the rotation 

changes, we will have to resubmit the 

establishment. Administratively, we could be 

submitting three or four, five or six 

subcommittee establishments or re-establishments 

a year if the rotation changes often. 

I'd like to suggest we go ahead and put the 

entire committee on as the Subcommittee, 

identifying specifically at each meeting, or 

prior to each Subcommittee meeting with a 

separate attachment or some form or fashion 

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identifying separately who will serve each time. 

That way administratively we wouldn't have to 

resubmit an establishment, or change the 

establishment. 

DR. ZIEMER: So what you're saying is that 

under -- under FACA rules, every change in the 

subcommittee --

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- has to go through -- who has 

to approve that? 

MS. HOMER: It goes through committee 

management. 

DR. ZIEMER: Committee management? 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: It keeps committee management 

in business. 

MR. ELLIOTT: If I could help with some 

clarity here--

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, but -- but would not --

would you not have to also submit to them the 

current names or --

MS. HOMER: No --

DR. ZIEMER: -- once you do the whole 

committee? 

MS. HOMER: No. 

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DR. ZIEMER: And that's permissible to have 

the whole committee --

MS. HOMER: Absolutely. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- as the subcommittee? 

MS. HOMER: Sure. It's been done. 

MR. ELLIOTT: If I could help with some 

clarity here. The issue is to -- the 

establishment is the charter, and a charter has 

to accompany a roster, a roster who have been 

appointed to that subcommittee. Cori's solution 

is simply to have the charter that is the Board 

charter go along with -- or the roster of the 

Board members go along with this charter so that 

then you could pick and choose who are going to 

represent -- be represented on that subcommittee 

at any given point in time. 

MS. HOMER: Exactly. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Otherwise, each time you 

change the roster of who's on the subcommittee, 

you have to reinitiate the establishment by 

submitting the charter and the new roster each 

time. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Let me ask a related 

question then. This immediately raises the issue 

of what constitutes a quorum. 

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MS. HOMER: Well, you have identified that 

it will be three members plus the Chair. We're 

still back to the one more than one-half. You 

would actually need the full Board -- or your 

full Subcommittee to have one more than one-half. 

Half is 1.5 of three members. If you're 

including the Chair of the Subcommittee, it would 

be four members. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, I guess I'm asking --

maybe I'm asking multiple questions. If we state 

that the Subcommittee consists of a Chair and 

three members and the roster is 12 people --

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- something looks out of 

whack, so --

MS. HOMER: And if we -- but if we're 

identifying in the establishment that we will be 

selecting out of this roster, for each 

Subcommittee meeting we'll be identifying three 

members plus the Chair -- have we identified 

whether the Chair is voting? 

DR. ZIEMER: In this we haven't --

MS. HOMER: In this, okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- but our practice here is 

that the Chair votes. 

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MS. HOMER: Has been that the Chair does 

vote. 

DR. ZIEMER: But aside from that, can anyone 

-- can any of the staff speak to the quorum 

issue? Does the quorum --

MR. ELLIOTT: The quorum of the 

Subcommittee? You mean to have a Subcom--

DR. ZIEMER: If we say the Subcommittee is 

the Chair plus three and we have this roster 

attached --

MR. ELLIOTT: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- is it understood then that -

-

MR. ELLIOTT: The quorum of the subcommittee 

must be at least three members --

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, so it's --

MR. ELLIOTT: -- of the subcommittee 

meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- understood that --

MR. ELLIOTT: One more than half, so you've 

got four people. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- that any one of the -- any 

one of the roster can be used. 

MS. HOMER: Yes. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think it takes another tweak 

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here to say that -- somewhere here to say that 

members will be rotated through the Subcommittee, 

and we tie that to the conflict of interest 

issue. Some -- some meetings you're going to 

establish the need for the Subcommittee to meet 

and some people on the whole Board may not be 

eligible to meet in the Subcommittee because 

they're conflicted. 

DR. ZIEMER: That's right, that's why we had 

this --

MR. ELLIOTT: So we're trying to get at two 

things here. One, not have to re-establish the 

Subcommittee each time you change a member on it, 

and at the same time being able to accommodate 

the conflict of interest concern and put people 

into the Subcommittee to do the work that they 

can do -- if I -- if I made myself clear. 

DR. ZIEMER: Then it appears that this 

problem could be solved then by saying that --

that they'll be selected and they'll reflect an 

appropriate balance and so on and will be 

selected from the attached roster. 

MS. HOMER: Yes, perfect. 

DR. ZIEMER: We don't even have to say that 

the Subcommittee is the Board, we just attach a 

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roster --

MS. HOMER: That they will --

DR. ZIEMER: -- which is the Board. 

MS. HOMER: -- be selected from members of 

the full Board on a rotating basis. 

DR. ZIEMER: Or members... 

MR. ELLIOTT: We don't have to do this. We 

can -- you can give us three names --

DR. ZIEMER: No, no, understood --

MR. ELLIOTT: -- but -- and we'll put in --

we have to do a Federal Register notice. It just 

adds to our workload, it adds to our burden --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, it adds to everyone's 

burden, that's --

MR. ELLIOTT: It adds to everyone's burden, 

so if we can avoid it, that's what we're 

proposing and suggesting, if we --

DR. ZIEMER: And it appears to me that the 

simple way is simply to add a phrase then. 

MS. HOMER: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: So it would be at the end of 

the first sentence, to be three -- three members 

and a non-voting government representative, to be 

selected from the attached roster? 

MS. HOMER: Yes. 

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DR. ZIEMER: Would that do it? 

MS. MUNN: Wouldn't it fit better at the end 

of the second sentence rather than the first one? 

DR. ZIEMER: Or it could -- yes, it could 

come after the second sentence, reflect -- well -

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DR. ROESSLER: Right after "membership" in 

the second sentence, "The membership will be 

selected from the attached roster and shall 

reflect". 

MS. MUNN: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, the membership shall be 

selected from the attached roster --

MS. MUNN: And will reflect --

MR. PRESLEY: Reflecting an appropriate 

balance of the Board. 

DR. ZIEMER: If I -- okay. And then we 

don't have to say anything about members will be 

appointed or replaced from time to time as deemed 

necessary --

MS. HOMER: Absolutely. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- since now everybody is --

MS. HOMER: Just remove that. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- is a member. 

MS. MUNN: Well, no, you really do. 

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MR. PRESLEY: You still do. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, they're already members. 

MS. MUNN: But you said the membership will 

be selected from the attached roster. 

MR. GRIFFON: So you still need that, yeah. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, I think you still need -

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MS. MUNN: And shall reflect an appropriate 

balance. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I know that part. The --

MS. MUNN: And then you still --

DR. ZIEMER: -- next sentence --

MS. MUNN: -- you still need to say --

DR. ZIEMER: -- members will be appointed or 

replaced --

MS. MUNN: You still need to say they will 

be appointed or replaced from time to time, as 

deemed necessary. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: That would -- that would be 

membership on the committee, which is that roster 

that becomes part -- if the Board membership 

changed, we would have to go through this --

MR. ELLIOTT: I think you need this 

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sentence. It also establishes who makes the 

appointment. Without that, you'd need to add a 

new sentence, I think, but I think this sentence 

needs to stay. 

DR. ZIEMER: So would -- based on Cori's 

recommendation, would someone wish to move to 

amend by inserting the phrase "to be selected 

from the attached -- or from the --

MR. ELLIOTT: You want to take these each --

one at a time? 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I want to get them --

MR. ELLIOTT: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- from the attached roster, 

the best word? 

MS. HOMER: Or the below-identified members, 

because the structure of the --

DR. ZIEMER: How about the attached roster 

of Board members? 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: How's that? Who moved that? 

MR. PRESLEY: Roy. 

DR. ZIEMER: Roy did. Seconded? 

MR. PRESLEY: I did. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MR. GRIFFON: Bob seconded. 

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DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we're going to vote on 

this as an amendment. All in favor of amending, 

say aye. 

 (Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Opposed? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Now we're back to the 

motion as now amended. You have some additional 

suggestions, Cori? 

MS. HOMER: I do. Paragraph two, the way 

this paragraph reads, it lends itself to the 

impression that the Subcommittee can call the 

meeting without the government representative 

being involved. And I'd like to suggest that we 

add a slight revision to identify that it goes 

through the government representative, the 

request to call a meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: How about a phrase such as 

"with the concurrence of the government"? 

MS. HOMER: Absolutely. 

DR. ZIEMER: Meetings may be called by the 

Board Chair or Subcommittee Chair, either at 

their own volition or upon request of 

Subcommittee member, and with the concurrence of 

the -- of the -- what's the proper -- Federal --

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MR. ELLIOTT: Federal representative. 

DR. MELIUS: Designated. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Designated, DFO. 

DR. ZIEMER: Federal representative or --

Federal Officer. 

Motion to insert that? 

MS. MUNN: So moved. 

DR. ZIEMER: Seconded? 

DR. MELIUS: I second. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, this is a motion to amend 

to add that phrase in the second paragraph. All 

in favor, aye? 

 (Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any opposed, no? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Motion carries. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You have additional... 

MS. HOMER: Going back to the first 

paragraph, if you're going to identify the 

government rep as a DFO in paragraph two, you 

might want to revise paragraph one. You have 

identified a non-voting government representative 

in paragraph one. 

MS. MUNN: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: But he is on the roster of 

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Board members. 

MR. ELLIOTT: If you simply say Designated 

Federal Official, then that -- in FACA that 

implies that he can't vote -- he or she cannot 

vote. They are there as the Designated Federal 

Official to assist the Board, but not -- they're 

not a voting member, so it's implied. 

DR. ZIEMER: Do we need to insert in the --

well, let me ask you this. Does the Designated 

Federal Official need to be present at these 

meetings? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes. Therefore, the 

Subcommittee consists of the Chair, a Designated 

Federal Official, plus members. That --

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: That would have to be the case. 

Right? 

MS. HOMER: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: Can I take it by consent that 

we would simply add that in the first paragraph? 

That's more of a technical change. Without 

objection, we'll add the phrase "Designated 

Federal Official" after -- minimum of a Chair 

plus three members and the Designated Federal 

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Official. 

DR. ROESSLER: And take out that non-voting 

MR. PRESLEY: Yes. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, I -- I missed -- yeah, it's 

already there, isn't it? Yeah. I'm just going 

to move that out. Okay. 

So we'll -- that deletes that other phrase. 

I missed the fact that it was actually -- the 

other phrase already referred to the non-voting -

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MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Are you -- I'm confused here, 

Dr. Ziemer, are you saying "and the Designated 

Federal Official" or are you just dropping 

everything after the parenthetical? 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, I had already inserted it 

-- we can insert it in place of what was there. 

That's the -- and -- "and the Designated Federal 

Official" will replace the phrase that was there 

so it's more consistent, yes. 

Okay, Cori. 

MS. HOMER: Okay, paragraph three, second 

para-- second sentence. It's written (reading) 

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When Privacy Act issues are involved, the 

Subcommittee may meet in closed session. 

I'd like to suggest an addition to that 

clarifying or -- or adding that -- Privacy Act 

issues are not the only things that you might be 

meeting in closed session about. If you're going 

to be acting as a point of contact between the 

Board's audit contractor and the Board, as 

identified in charge one, and in charge two you 

have "Track audit contractor performance", you 

could be doing independent government cost 

estimates. 

DR. ZIEMER: So what are the words -- what 

we want then is when Privacy Act issues or other 

-- or issues involving confidential matters? 

What --

DR. ANDRADE: When Privacy Act or other 

confidential --

MS. HOMER: That sounds good. Well, we have 

very specific reasons that --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, confidential matters are 

Privacy Act matters. 

MS. HOMER: Well, we have very specific 

reasons in the Government in the Sunshine Act for 

why we can meet in closed session. Maybe we 

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ought not to define this at all very specifically 

and just go with, you know, what FACA dictates. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. MELIUS: Yes, take out that --

MR. GRIFFON: Delete the first part of the 

sentence, yeah. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, take out When Privacy Act 

-- say The Subcommittee may meet in closed 

session in accordance with --

MR. GRIFFON: FACA requirements. 

MS. HOMER: Yeah, FACA requirements. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: So we'd just eliminate Privacy 

Act issues, since that's not the only thing. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: And the phrase "in accordance 

with FACA" would take care of it. 

Okay, without objection, we'll just delete 

that phrase. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: That will handle it. 

MS. HOMER: All right. Okay, now moving 

down to "Charges", in charge three it reads 

"Review, approve and disapprove audit contractor 

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procedures." The Subcommittee can't approve or 

disapprove for the Board. They can recommend to 

the Board. They can review and recommend, but 

they can't approve or disapprove. 

DR. ZIEMER: So what you're saying here is 

technically -- can -- can the Board authorize --

no, it still would have to come back to the full 

Board. 

MS. HOMER: Yes, uh-huh, it has to come back 

to the Board. 

DR. ZIEMER: So it could say review and 

recommend Board action. 

MS. HOMER: Yes, that's -- that's good. 

DR. ZIEMER: Review -- I'll take this by 

consent since this is a legal issue and we don't 

have any choice on it. Review and recommend for 

Board action contractor procedures. Okay. Thank 

you. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. On number four, it reads 

"Clarify Board direction regarding technical 

scope of tasks assigned to the audit contractor." 

I'd like for you to I guess define for me 

"clarify". 

DR. ZIEMER: I think when we wrote this it 

was anticipated that there might be questions 

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about what some Board action meant and that the 

Subcommittee would try to help the contractor 

understand what the Board's intent was so that --

I guess the question would be can the 

Subcommittee do that on behalf of the Board. But 

that was -- that's -- was my understanding of 

what was -- Mark --

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, that --

DR. ZIEMER: -- or --

MR. GRIFFON: I guess that was --

DR. ZIEMER: -- Tony, that -- wasn't that 

the... 

MS. HOMER: We could -- we could do this --

was a suggested -- that we insert "clarify intent 

of the Board direction". 

DR. ZIEMER: Clarify intent? 

MS. HOMER: Intent. Or the Board's intent 

regarding direction. Clarify Board's intent 

regarding technical scope of tasks assigned --

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I think what you're 

really suggesting is to replace the word 

"direction" with "intent" --

MS. HOMER: Intent, uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- because that's -- we were 

using the word "direction" I think to --

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MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- in the way that you're using 

"intent", but --

MS. HOMER: Intent. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- if that -- if that makes it 

clearer, I think -- any objection to that? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Clarify Board intent regarding 

technical scope. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. On number five, it reads 

"Select cases for individual dose reconstruction 

review consistent with Board procedures". The 

Board doesn't have written procedures regarding 

this. That leaves things kind of open for 

interpretation. 

DR. ZIEMER: But in fact the Board is going 

to have to develop those --

MS. HOMER: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- procedures, so they're -- I 

think we anticipated the Board would give some 

direction on that, how -- how we're going to 

select cases. It's not going to be up to the 

Subcommittee to do that on their own. The Board 

will have to have approved procedures. 

MS. HOMER: Will the Board do that prior to 

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the first Subcommittee meeting? 

DR. ZIEMER: Maybe not, but it -- but we 

can't -- we can't do the selection of cases --

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- without the procedures. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. I mean I -- I was 

actually thinking that the Subcommittee may take 

a first crack at these procedures --

DR. ZIEMER: Perhaps -- perhaps --

MR. GRIFFON: -- but I'm getting ahead of 

the game. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- drafting something for the 

Board to act on, right. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MS. HOMER: And I -- Liz has made a good 

point, that number five does read select cases 

for individual dose reconstruction. We would 

have -- you would, again, have to do that based 

on Board procedures because they can't select --

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MS. HOMER: -- they can't act for the Board. 

It would have to come in the Board procedures. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

MR. GRIFFON: Along with number five, I'm 

not sure -- I know, Paul, you added "taking into 

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consideration conflict of interest matters". I 

think that's applicable more to number six than 

number five. I don't -- I don't really 

understand what that means for number five. I 

think it was really panel membership, wasn't it, 

that we were -- where we were concerned about 

conflict of interest matters? 

DR. ZIEMER: Well --

MR. GRIFFON: I don't know. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- it's going to depend a bit -

- I don't honestly remember, either. I think 

this has been in there --

MR. GRIFFON: When I re-read --

DR. ZIEMER: -- for quite a while. You 

probably authored it, but I -- I think that we 

don't want one particular Subcommittee member 

advocating review of mainly cases from their 

site, for example. 

MR. GRIFFON: That's fine, leave it in 

there, then. 

DR. ZIEMER: So there could be that kind of 

thing, well, I want all the Savannah River Site 

cases audited or something like that. 

MR. GRIFFON: Maybe that was why, yeah. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think it also --

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DR. ZIEMER: An individual can't be an 

advocate in some way for something relating to 

their site. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think that's certainly one 

way this passage could be interpreted. I think 

another way it could be interpreted is to say 

that the Subcommittee, when selecting cases for 

review, has to consider the panel -- the other 

panel that's going to be assigned those cases and 

make sure that they don't put the case in front 

of a panel member that's got a conflict. 

DR. ZIEMER: To select the panel to --

MR. GRIFFON: I thought that was in number 

six, but -- and it's fine, it's fine, leave it 

in. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I think they're tied 

together, but... 

MS. MUNN: Could we resolve the question 

with number five by using the word "priorities" 

rather than "procedures" at this point, because 

the Board would have had to establish some level 

of concern with regard to what type of cases we -

-

DR. ZIEMER: Well, I think --

MS. MUNN: -- want, whether we have the 

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procedures down or not. 

DR. ZIEMER: I think the Subcommittee's not 

going to be in a position to select cases until 

the Board -- whether it's priorities or 

procedures, the Board will have to identify --

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

MS. MUNN: My thinking --

DR. ZIEMER: -- in either case. 

MS. MUNN: My thinking was being the Board 

would be able to identify priorities prior to the 

time we had developed the procedures. 

MS. HOMER: We really need to do that by 

procedure --

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

MS. HOMER: -- not by policy. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

MS. HOMER: I guess moving on to number 

eight, it reads "Review correspondence to the 

Board related to site profiles and dose 

reconstruction reviews and prepare responses for 

the Board Chair's signature in accordance with 

Board practices." I suggest that we -- that the 

Subcommittee can prepare drafts for the Board's 

review and discussion during the meetings, but 

they cannot prepare the letter for Dr. Ziemer's 

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signature without deliberation or at least 

putting it in an open session 'cause we want to 

make sure we consider the transparency of 

everything done. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, this would be in open 

session anyway. This -- the Subcommittee would 

be in open session. 

MS. HOMER: Yes, but again, it has to be 

deliberated by the Board in full session. 

DR. ZIEMER: But they could prepare a draft. 

MS. HOMER: Absolutely. What we could put 

is replace the word "responses" with "draft". 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let -- there was a 

question -- two questions on this. Wanda? 

MS. MUNN: Well, I was just going to suggest 

"issues" rather than "responses", but that's... 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim. 

DR. MELIUS: Seems to me that if we have the 

Subcommittee only do draft letters, it sort of 

defeats the purpose of having a Subcommittee. 

MR. GRIFFON: I mean --

DR. MELIUS: What it means is that all this 

correspondence is going to have to wait at least 

two months until we have a full meeting, or 

whenever the meetings are scheduled, before they 

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can be responded, and I think the intent of 

number eight was to move some of this along a 

little bit faster so we can give timely 

responses. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Cori, does this go to making 

decisions on behalf of the Board? 

MS. HOMER: Yes, I think it does. 

MR. GRIFFON: That's the same with the 

intent in number three. That was our intent, was 

to move some of this work so that it didn't have 

to wait, you know, the full two months for Board 

meetings to come back. You know, some things 

that all the Board agreed could be delegated to 

the Subcommittee authority, but... 

MS. HOMER: If there -- and I hesitate to 

even go here, but if the Board gives the 

Subcommittee written authority to do this, they 

can. 

MR. GRIFFON: Well, isn't this the written 

authority? 

MS. HOMER: Well, not necessarily. If -- if 

-- it is but it isn't, and there's some gray area 

here. I'm really concerned that the 

correspondence will be developed in a 

Subcommittee session and handed over or mailed 

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out prior to the Board going over or even looking 

at it in some form or fashion. It's kind of on 

the line for deciding for the Board. It could be 

put in procedures, if you want to do this. 

DR. ZIEMER: What could be put in 

procedures? 

MS. HOMER: Reviewing the correspondence, 

whatever the correspondence is, whether it's 

letters, memos, reports. 

DR. MELIUS: What if the Subcommittee Chair 

signed the letter? 

MS. HOMER: It still has to be --

DR. ZIEMER: Subcommittee Chair I don't 

think can --

MS. HOMER: I don't think they can. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- sign on behalf of the Board 

unless it's the same person, but --

MS. HOMER: We're back to --

DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) 

MS. HOMER: We could change the word 

"practices" to "procedures", as we discussed in 

number five, that the Board is going to -- or the 

Subcommittee is going to have to operate on 

written procedures. 

DR. ZIEMER: One of the -- see, one of the 

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issues here would be -- this might look very 

different to the Board if this is a memo or a 

letter from a Congressman about a site profile 

versus an inquiry from -- and I've gotten some of 

these -- where an individual writes and says I 

have a concern that somebody worked on this site 

profile that may have a conflict of interest and 

I -- I would typically write a letter and say 

thank you for your letter, that we will ask NIOSH 

to look at this, and so on. The Board -- this 

says in accordance with Board practices, and the 

Board practice is that certain letters come to 

the Board --

MS. HOMER: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- and -- particularly 

Congressional inquiries. 

MS. HOMER: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: The Board has already made a 

decision that certain kinds of letters which are 

sort of routine -- and I have some now, and I 

simply acknowledge thank you for the letter, I 

will transmit this information to NIOSH or 

whatever. I think the intent here was that those 

kind of letters dealing with this can be just 

handled by the Subcommittee 'cause the Board 

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ordinarily is not going to handle them anyway. 

And we -- we had put this phrase, "in accordance 

with Board practices", so that it was clear that 

certain letters had to come to the full Board in 

any event. That -- that was the quote -- what we 

called before "policy" and then we said well, 

it's not a policy, it's a practice. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Dr. Ziemer, I think --

DR. ZIEMER: That's the -- that's the 

framework for this last thing, it's letters that 

wouldn't ordinarily come to the Board anyway. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I think you need to 

change "practices" to "procedures" and have 

written procedures approved by the Board that 

appropriately spell out and limit what letters --

DR. ZIEMER: What letters go to the Board. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- or correspondence that 

the Subcommittee will deal with. 

DR. ZIEMER: So what you're saying here is 

if we have the word "procedures" here and then 

spell out what kind of letters --

MS. HOMER: Exactly. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, well --

MS. HOMER: If you're just talking about 

routine correspondence or reports... 

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DR. ZIEMER: Okay, I want to get a clear 

sense of the Board on this issue as to whether 

you want then the Subcommittee to do this or not, 

so let's get a motion for changing "practices" to 

"procedures", and then we would have to at some 

point develop procedures. 

DR. MELIUS: I so move. 

DR. ZIEMER: It's moved. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Second. 

DR. ZIEMER: Seconded. Now, any discussion 

on that? Everyone understand the implication? 

The implication means that there would be a 

procedure that we would develop on how 

correspondence to the Board is to be handled, and 

that's probably a good thing. This includes 

correspondence to the Chair and to other members. 

If you get a letter, how are you going to handle 

it, and we would formalize that. And then at 

some point if the procedure is that anyone can 

answer certain types of letters on their own, 

then the Subcommittee could also handle those 

types. And any letters that we said always have 

to come to the full Board, they would still have 

to come to the full Board. 

MS. MUNN: I would urge that we formalize 

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that in 200 words or less. 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm not proposing that we do 

that today. That's... 

Okay, the motion is to change "practices" to 

"procedures". And that's been seconded. Further 

discussion? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: All in favor, aye? 

 (Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Opposed? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MS. HOMER: I only have one more. Under 

"Changes in Subcommittee Responsibilities" it 

reads "The Board may -- the Board may at any time 

add to, limit or remove any of the charges noted 

above." I'd like to request that you add a 

statement similar to "Additions, limitations or 

removal of responsibilities will be made in 

writing." 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me ask if these -- such --

such changes would have to be submitted as a --

MS. HOMER: Reapproved, yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: So all we're saying here is 

then that such changes would be made in writing 

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and submitted... 

MS. HOMER: For committee management 

approval. 

MS. MUNN: Can't we just say in open Board 

session? 

MS. HOMER: It still has to be submitted to 

committee management as a change to the 

Subcommittee charter. 

DR. ZIEMER: This is one of those -- it 

becomes a charter change, that's what --

MS. MUNN: All right. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- just as that rotation of 

members would. All right, such changes would be 

made in writing and submitted for appropriate 

approval to --

MR. ELLIOTT: That's all you have to say. 

DR. ZIEMER: For appropriate approval? Is 

that agency approval? 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think if you just say -- if 

you just say appropriate approval, it implies 

that -- who we have to direct it to. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Without objection, we'll 

add that as sort of a legal issue. Thank you. 

Cori, thank you. 

You now have the opportunity -- we're back 

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to the amended motion which has been multipally 

(sic) amended so we now act on approval of the 

document as amended. Ready to vote? Any 

questions? 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) So moved. 

DR. ZIEMER: So moved? No, we already --

the motion's already on the floor. We've had a 

number of amendments. We're now getting back to 

the original motion, which is the document as 

amended. 

All in favor, say aye. 

 (Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any opposed, say no. 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: And any abstentions? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: The motion carries. Thank you. 

Thank you, Cori, for your input. 

MR. ELLIOTT: And my apologies for all of 

this, but we need to be very clear in what we 

take to committee management office and they're 

going to ask questions about what does this 

particular passage mean in this charter, how do 

they intend to act under this, so this helps us. 

DR. ZIEMER: Now -- and this still now has 

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to go forward and get approved before --

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- we can actually have the 

Subcommittee meet. 

MR. ELLIOTT: That's relatively a short 

process, and it'll be in place before your next 

meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

DR. MELIUS: So the Subcommittee can meet on 

whatever it's -- the 23rd or... 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. I think -- don't you 

agree, Cori, that we will have no trouble moving 

this through now? 

MS. HOMER: The only -- the only thing that 

may cause a delay is a lack of procedures. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You mean they may ask to see 

the procedures before --

MS. HOMER: They may ask to see the 

procedures --

MR. ELLIOTT: -- they sign the charter? 

MS. HOMER: -- before they approve it. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You see how easy it is to fall 

in a bureaucratic trap? 

MS. HOMER: I'm sorry. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I'm not shooting the 

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messenger, but --

MS. HOMER: No, I -- you are, but... 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, we'll see what develops. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We'll do our level best to 

sell this without the procedures in hand, and 

I'll --

DR. ZIEMER: And let them know that we won't 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- we won't do those items that 

require --

MR. ELLIOTT: I'll let them know that you 

need the Subcommittee to help develop the 

procedures. 

MS. MUNN: Or at least a working group to 

develop them. 

DR. ZIEMER: We're overdue for a break. 

MS. MUNN: We certainly are. 

DR. ROESSLER: Agreed. 

DR. ZIEMER: Fifteen minutes. 

(Whereupon, a recess was taken.) 

REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF DRAFT MINUTES, MEETING 23 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we have a carry-over item 

from yesterday. That is the minutes of the 23rd 

meeting. I'd like to ask for corrections or 

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additions to those minutes. Roy? 

DR. DEHART: On page 2 of the minutes, 

members attending, I was inadvertently omitted --

or purposely omitted, whatever. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we'll add Roy DeHart to 

the list of attendees. Thank you, Roy. Other 

corrections? 

MS. MUNN: On page 50. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Wanda, 15 or 50? 

MS. MUNN: Fifty, 5-0. 

DR. ZIEMER: Fifty. 

MS. MUNN: That second paragraph begins with 

the sentence that obviously has something omitted 

from it. 

DR. ZIEMER: The sentence is Ms. Oglesbee 

said she didn't think she'd mentioned she was the 

site --

MS. MUNN: Uh-huh, I -- my --

DR. ZIEMER: -- and facility at large at 

Hanford. 

MS. MUNN: My memory is that she was 

identifying herself as some sort of liaison or 

representative of some sort on site for some 

group at that time, but --

DR. ZIEMER: It may be she was the site 

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facility representative at large or something, 

it's -- it's right after the word "facility" her 

title is missing and maybe, Ray, you can go back 

into the -- Ray will go back and insert the 

proper word there. Thank you for picking that 

up. 

Other corrections? Yes, Jim. 

DR. MELIUS: One thing I'd like to point 

out. On page 31, next to last paragraph, is Mr. 

Henshaw presented graphic demonstrations of 

compensability from a number of perspectives. 

Unless you were there, I think this could be --

future generations might easily misinterpret this 

and think that our meeting was much more exciting 

than it was. 

DR. ZIEMER: Graphic demonstrations. I 

think Mr. Henshaw presented graphs demonstrating 

compensability. 

MR. ELLIOTT: He does have a dry sense of 

humor, but I'm not sure it's that wry. 

DR. ZIEMER: We'll change that to graphs 

demonstrating compensability. Any others? 

DR. ROESSLER: I have a comment on the 

minutes. It's not a change. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

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DR. ROESSLER: I'd like to reiterate what 

Dr. DeHart said last time, and it's in the 

minutes here, even though he wasn't here, that he 

likes the format of the minutes. I think that 

our court recorder and Paul or whoever's working 

on these minutes is doing an excellent job. It's 

really easy to read and I think they capture very 

accurately our meeting proceedings. 

DR. MELIUS: Sufficient accuracy. 

DR. ZIEMER: This is primarily Ray's work. 

Other corrections? 

I'm going to suggest a -- on page 3, under 

Dr. James Neton's presentation, the sentence that 

says at least one interview has been conducted in 

13,000 cases. Actually there's been quite a few 

interviews conducted and I think the wording that 

you have in the body of the report on page 12, 

which is the same information, it says (reading) 

To date, 13,000 case have had at least one 

interview conducted -- which means there have 

been at least 13,000 interviews. This might lead 

one to believe there was an interview. So Ray, 

I'm going to suggest you use the same words as 

you used in the body of it on page 12. 

And then I want to ask on that same page, on 

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Neton's report, it's the fourth paragraph dealing 

with 40 new appointments. Is -- is it physician 

panels or panel? Is there -- is it considered to 

be one panel? 

DR. DEHART: A panel. 

DR. ZIEMER: A panel, so everybody that's 

appointed is appointed to the panel. 

DR. DEHART: Correct. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, I just want -- there's 

another place where it talks about physician 

panels, and we weren't consistent in here, so I 

wasn't sure which was the proper -- so it is --

this is correct as given here. 

DR. ROESSLER: They break down into 

different panels later. 

DR. ZIEMER: And then the very next 

paragraph that says site profiles continue to be 

developed. Four sites are now covered. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Completed. 

DR. ZIEMER: Is that -- completed is what 

was meant there? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, I believe it was 

completed. 

DR. ZIEMER: If no one objects can we 

substitute the word "completed" there, that --

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little more clear intent. 

And Tom -- on page four in Tom Rollow's 

report in the second paragraph there, efforts 

underway to improve physician pay and scheduled 

to attract more physicians, I believe Tom there 

is also referring to the physician panel and not 

to DOE. Is it -- that would be correct? 

UNIDENTIFIED: That's correct. 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm going to suggest we add the 

phrase "to the physician panel" there just for 

clarity. This is page four, Department of Energy 

status report, second paragraph. Just add the 

phrase "to the physician panel" so it's clear who 

-- what DOE (Inaudible). 

MS. MUNN: That leaves them with three 

physicians in that whole sentence. You have a 

15-word sentence, three words are physician. 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm sorry, did you have a 

comment? 

MS. MUNN: I'm just commenting on all the 

physicians. 

DR. ZIEMER: In the -- on page eight, and 

this is -- this is part of the Executive Summary, 

and sometimes in the Executive Summary, when 

we're trying to be brief and be concise, I think 

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it's entirely possible for the reader not to 

understand really what -- what is being said, and 

at the bottom of page eight the Board discussed 

and approved the draft of a memorandum to the 

Secretary of Energy. The Chair was authorized to 

polish and send the memo. I don't think a reader 

reading the Executive Summary would have much 

idea of what that memo was about, and so I'm 

going to suggest adding a sentence in the 

Executive Summary that says "The memorandum was 

intended to alert the Secretary of Energy of the 

need for Advisory -- of -- for the Advisory Board 

contractor to have access to DOE sites and 

records." And then at the top of page nine, 

after "authorized to polish and send the memo", 

add "through Secretary Tommy Thompson to the 

Secretary of Energy". 

DR. ROESSLER: I have a comment on page 50. 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm sorry? 

DR. ROESSLER: I have a comment on page 15. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

DR. ROESSLER: It might be just a typo, but 

I noticed Dr. Melius has a little sort of square 

bullet by his name. It probably is just an 

error, but it makes you wonder if there's some 

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special action item or sort of special reason for 

-- for that little square there. 

DR. ZIEMER: It looks like a little bullet 

thing. Probably just a -- extraneous mark, is 

it? 

THE COURT REPORTER: Yes, uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, we'll remove that. I 

would point out that on page 14, the item of the 

four -- same item that was in the Executive 

Summary, four DOE sites now covered then would be 

"completed" on site profiles. It's the third 

paragraph on page 14. 

DR. MELIUS: Ray, you're doing a great job 

except for these hundreds of little things that 

we're going to be picking apart over the next few 

hours. 

DR. ZIEMER: Any others? Motion to approve 

with these changes? 

MS. MUNN: So moved. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Wanda moved. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Seconded, was it? 

DR. DEHART: Second. 

DR. ZIEMER: All in favor, aye? 

 (Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any opposed? 

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DR. ZIEMER: Motion carries. Thank you. I 

believe that we have completed the open session 

items for today. 

BOARD DISCUSSION/WORKING SESSION 

Let me, though, ask -- does anyone have any 

other items that we may need to discuss? 

DR. MELIUS: I just have one -- is it your 

intent to appoint the Subcommittee? I mean I 

don't know what sort of the steps are with this -

-

DR. ZIEMER: Yes --

DR. MELIUS: -- we have the charter --

DR. ZIEMER: The Subcommittee under this new 

charter -- the charter has to be approved, and 

then every member of the Board will be on the 

Subcommittee. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

DR. MELIUS: And then is your intention to 

select members --

DR. ZIEMER: That's a very easy selection 

process. 

DR. MELIUS: Well --

DR. ZIEMER: But then we will select the --

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whoever's going to meet the first time and so on, 

we will have to do that. 

DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: I will. That's --

MR. GRIFFON: First meeting is supposed to 

be at the next Board meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right, and that will be 

dependent on the approval of the charter. 

MR. GRIFFON: Okay, but will everybody go 

then until we know the -- the appoint--

DR. ROESSLER: In other words, do all of us 

have to be there on the 23rd? No. Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: We don't all have to be there 

on the 23rd and it would be the Chair's task to 

appoint those. I would like to get an indication 

-- see, since everybody's on, we can -- can move 

things around as needed, but I would like to get 

an indication of those who have a specific 

interest in being on that subcommittee. But --

DR. ROESSLER: The whole Board. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Well, let's do it the 

easy way. Who's not interested in being on the 

subcommittee? 

DR. MELIUS: For the next meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: For the next meeting. 

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DR. MELIUS: Next meeting I wouldn't be. 

DR. ZIEMER: Next meeting Jim, Roy --

everyone else is available to participate. Okay. 

Thank you. 

Other items that need to come before us in 

open session? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Just so I have some clarity 

here, what's the intent here of the Board for 

their Subcommittee meeting in Idaho? Do you --

are you going to wait until we see the charter 

approved and then appoint the Chair for the 

Subcommittee and the three members for the next 

meeting? Do you want to do it today? You can do 

it today. What do you want -- what's your 

pleasure? 

DR. MELIUS: Can I just -- I think -- I 

don't -- just general spirit of doing things in 

open session and so forth, I think we ought to at 

least try to get that finalized today in open 

session and make a decision, are we going to do a 

meeting -- you know, obviously pending approval 

of the charter, you know, who's -- and who's 

going to be at the meeting, you know, for the 

next -- and probably ought to be some discussion 

of the --

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MR. ELLIOTT: Charge for that --

DR. MELIUS: Charge and --

MR. ELLIOTT: -- working session of that 

Subcommittee. 

DR. MELIUS: -- yeah, and agenda kinds of 

issues. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me also ask, in terms of 

that charter, and since the whole group is listed 

on the roster, are we restricted to the -- are 

the numbers a minimum for operating the 

Subcommittee and can more attend if they're 

desirous of attending? Is Cori --

MR. ELLIOTT: Did -- we need -- perhaps 

revisit the charter language that you just agreed 

upon. Does it say a minimum of three members and 

a Subcommittee Chair? 

MS. MUNN: Yes, it does. 

MR. ELLIOTT: It does say minimum. Okay, 

then --

MS. MUNN: It does say minimum. 

MS. HOMER: Keeping in mind that this is an 

open meeting. 

MR. ELLIOTT: It is an open meeting. 

MS. HOMER: So anybody can attend. If one 

of the members of the full Board wishes to attend 

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and is not a member of the Subcommittee, I'm not 

sure how we would approach that. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We have to be careful of how 

they participate. 

MS. HOMER: Yes. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We have to be careful of if we 

have more than six members of the Board or more 

in the room, then we've got a quorum of the full 

Board and it's not a Subcommittee meeting now, 

it's a meeting of the full Board. 

MS. HOMER: There's a number of issues that 

we have to deal with. 

MR. ELLIOTT: So you are somewhat 

constrained. 

MS. HOMER: Do you want to increase the 

membership? 

DR. ZIEMER: No. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. Well, here's a 

suggestion. If you have preliminary work that 

has to be done before the Subcommittee can meet, 

you can build a workgroup to address specific 

issues. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right, and -- and really what 

has to be done -- one thing we don't know is 

whether those procedures are going to be required 

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for the approval --

MS. HOMER: That's true. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- of this document. And one 

of the first things that will have to occur is 

the development of those procedures. 

MS. HOMER: Yes. 

MR. GRIFFON: I was -- I was just going to 

suggest that if we can appoint a Subcommittee 

today, then prior to the next meeting that those 

same individuals could act as a working group and 

develop some --

DR. ZIEMER: Well --

MR. GRIFFON: -- you know, flesh out those 

drafts for that meeting so we'd have something in 

place. 

MS. HOMER: And you can certainly add more 

individuals if more are interested in 

participating on that workgroup. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Up to six. 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

MR. ELLIOTT: No more than six. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

DR. MELIUS: Can I -- I -- I think for the -

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- I mean the idea -- part of the idea with the 

Subcommittee was we'd have a smaller group that 

would -- would meet and would delineate their 

tasks. I'm assuming we're not going to change 

the membership of that Subcommittee for every 

meeting, and particularly not for -- the changes 

in membership may have more to do with conflict 

of interest issues and so forth as things being 

considered, so for the first few meetings there 

should be, I would hope, a consistent membership. 

You know, people willing to spend that time, you 

know, recognizing there'll be more meetings. One 

of the reasons I didn't want to get on initially 

is I, you know -- or volunteer to be on it 

initially is I've got a very busy schedule for 

the next few months and wouldn't be available. 

So I think, one, if we could establish that 

Subcommittee, however we need to do that. 

Secondly is then define these workgroups to get 

some product that they can, you know, work on and 

review since we're in this sort of awkward stage 

until our charter is in place so that -- then 

coming into the meeting -- the next meeting of 

the full Board, after the Subcommittee meeting, 

then we could approve those and get --

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MR. GRIFFON: Keep things moving. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, keep things moving. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. Okay. So I -- I think 

the consensus is the Board would like to have 

identified an initial Subcommittee that might 

work as a working group at the next meeting to 

develop procedures. 

Let me see the hands again -- all of you 

raised your hands along here --

MR. GRIFFON: Interested or not interested? 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm going to ask Mike if he'll 

serve. 

MR. GIBSON: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: Got to get some -- some spread 

of -- medical, is --

DR. DEHART: If you're desperate. 

DR. ZIEMER: Is Henry the on--

DR. DEHART: Henry's -- Jim and I and Henry 

are the three physicians. 

MS. MUNN: Henry's not here, put him on. 

DR. DEHART: I leave for Africa the day 

after the Board meeting, so I'm trying not to 

commit too many days there. 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm going to tentatively ask 

Henry to be on this. Mark, Tony -- one, two, 

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three, four. We're not over-weighted. I think I 

would like to put myself on this initially. 

We're perhaps heavy on the health physics side, 

but we do have -- is the -- would the committee 

be comfortable with that kind of a mix? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I actually think more of 

the tasks early are going to be health physics 

and -- and review procedures -- not that 

physicians can't contribute, but... 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, I want to be mindful of 

the need for some balance here, as well --

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. No, I know, I'm not 

being -- but... I think more health physicists 

is better than more physicians, anyway, but... 

DR. ZIEMER: So to get underway I will 

designate those five individuals --

MS. HOMER: Okay, I have those names. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- we're okay doing five -- as 

the Subcommittee, and the Chair --

MS. HOMER: Five as the Subcommittee or the 

workgroup? 

DR. ZIEMER: This will serve as a workgroup 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- at the initial meeting, but 

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will become the Subcommittee once we're 

chartered. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: And the Chair will exercise the 

prerogative of chairing this group initially, and 

Larry will be there as the Federal guy. The 

Federal guy, doesn't that have a certain ring to 

it? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Looking forward to the extra 

travel, thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: If we meet as a workgroup, 

Larry, we don't need any Federal guys, I think. 

MS. HOMER: We still need a technical 

person. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We'll still have a --

DR. ZIEMER: Need somebody there. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- technical representative 

for you, if not me --

DR. ZIEMER: Got to have a Federal guy. 

MR. GRIFFON: I was going to recommend that 

if -- if it's possible if we can meet before the 

August meeting in Cincinnati where we had access 

to the database and we could talk more about our 

selection process and the matrix and --

DR. ZIEMER: As opposed to meeting the day 

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MR. GRIFFON: Well --

MR. ELLIOTT: You want that, too? 

MR. GRIFFON: -- the day before, in Idaho, 

we wouldn't have access to that -- that material, 

so I don't know, it's just an option. It's a lot 

more travel, I know, I understand. 

DR. MELIUS: What if the workgroup did some 

sort of a meeting -- I don't know whether it'd 

have to be in person or on phone -- ahead of 

time, then if possible do a Subcommittee meeting 

in --

MR. GRIFFON: Idaho. 

DR. MELIUS: -- Idaho. I'm just concerned 

that this case selection -- some of these issues 

are going to have to be -- we have to really get 

moving on them 'cause --

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. MELIUS: -- then we have to go into this 

task order issue and that just takes time, and 

again, we've lost the deadline for this fiscal 

year, but we're going to have to get stuff ready 

to get going next fiscal year. 

DR. ZIEMER: How critical is access to the 

actual database as --

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MR. GRIFFON: Well, I just -- before Russ 

left I talked to him and he -- he's pulling the -

- you know, he's -- he's going to query and pull 

together some of the stuff that I requested, but 

DR. ZIEMER: But that's --

MR. GRIFFON: -- if we were there and asked 

DR. ZIEMER: -- that's summary data. Right? 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, right, right. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

MR. GRIFFON: But if we were there and asked 

them -- like for instance, the -- if we select a 

parameter that's impossible for NIOSH to sample 

against in the database, we're not going to get 

anywhere, you know. So I think it -- maybe we --

you know, as long as we had a good description of 

all the parameters, maybe we can --

MR. ELLIOTT: I think there is merit to 

meeting in Cincinnati for the Subcommittee or the 

working group, and certainly Russ is working on 

the parameters that you spoke to him about. He 

told me this morning before he left that he 

anticipated he would have that all prepared and 

ready by the end of the month -- end of June 

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MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MR. ELLIOTT: And as you sit down and look 

at that, I think if you had additional queries or 

additional con-- you know, thing-- variables you 

wanted to -- to have drilled down into in the 

dataset --

MR. GRIFFON: Exactly. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- you could do that there, 

whereas --

MR. GRIFFON: We could do that on -- onsite, right? That's what --

MR. ELLIOTT: You could do that on-site. 

MR. GRIFFON: Then we can... 

MR. ELLIOTT: Additionally, you could -- as 

a working group, you know, you don't have to have 

a -- it's not a public meeting, so you can do 

that in our shop --

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- right there with NOCTS and 

see, you know, live, final cases, too, if you 

wanted to examine the content of a dose 

reconstruction case file. 

DR. ZIEMER: And we can work on a date 

separately and let's go ahead and plan that then, 

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a Cincinnati meeting for the workgroup. And Roy, 

if Henry is not available -- and this meeting 

would be earlier than the Idaho meeting -- can we 

put you down as a backup, sort of the medical 

end? 

DR. DEHART: Fine. 

MR. GRIFFON: Could we -- I don't know if we 

-- are we -- do we need to wait and see where 

Russ is at or can we pick a tentative date for 

that -- I mean I think it's going to be the end 

of July probably, or... 

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I think you --

MR. GRIFFON: Or the end of August? 

MR. ELLIOTT: The end of August is when 

you're going to be in Idaho --

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- and I think you should try 

to pick a date today, if you could, so that --

MR. GRIFFON: That's what I mean, I --

MR. ELLIOTT: -- we could -- I'm sure Russ 

will have his piece together by the end of the 

month here and we'll have the DOL input to that 

so we'll know what the set of final adjudicated 

cases are. 

MR. GRIFFON: That's what I'd like to --

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MR. ELLIOTT: And if you could identify a 

date that doesn't, you know, present a conflict 

for us, we could put that on the calendar and get 

it set. 

DR. ZIEMER: We're going to have to get 

Henry on the phone, though, separately, so I 

think -- we don't have to do that necessarily in 

open session, do we --

MR. ELLIOTT: No. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- pick that date? We just 

need to find a mutually agreeable date amongst 

the individuals who will do that. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You don't have to set the date 

today. I didn't mean that. But you should --

I'd like for you to do it soon, if you could. 

MS. MUNN: And isn't the working group also 

going to put together a draft of a procedure, 

too, for us? 

DR. ZIEMER: That will be part of the task -

- basically be working on procedures in this 

process, right -- procedures called for in the 

charter. 

Okay. Thank you. Any other items that we 

need to deal with today? If not, I'll declare --

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MR. GRIFFON: Can I -- one more -- one more 

item. I just wanted to -- to get on our action 

items, I guess, for our Board that at some point 

down the line we work with NIOSH or have a 

discussion or get a chance to comment on the 

procedures for SEC --

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, in fact --

MR. GRIFFON: -- tied to the SEC rule --

DR. ZIEMER: -- I think that is actually a 

requirement in -- in the -- is it in the rule 

itself mentions that we will --

MR. GRIFFON: Review and approve? Does it 

say -- I don't know if it says that. 

MS. MUNN: That we will what? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, the procedures are what 

they are as approved all the way through OMB, so 

you can certainly comment on it. We'll consider 

those, and as we need to, we will make the 

changes. 

DR. MELIUS: I think we're referring to the 

guidelines, though. 

MR. ELLIOTT: There is no such thing as 

guidelines. 

DR. MELIUS: Guidance, what --

MR. ELLIOTT: Guidelines. What -- we're 

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talking procedures. Procedures is a term. 

Guidelines leaves us too open to be flexible. 

Procedures will be followed, so these are --

these are administrative procedures or 

implementing procedures for the SEC. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, actually I think in the -

- the preface, what's the proper term for --

MR. ELLIOTT: Preamble. 

DR. ZIEMER: Preamble -- the preamble 

actually mentioned that there would be that 

approval process, but then went on to point out 

that these procedures have become a part of the 

document itself. But we certainly want to see 

those and have an opportunity to react to them. 

MR. ELLIOTT: And I apologize for them not 

being provided here at this meeting, or not being 

on our web site. We fully intended to load the 

Federal Register notice of the rule on the web 

site and, companion to that, these procedures. 

And we had some final scrubbing to make sure we 

had attended to all comments on those within the 

review and comment that we receive from other 

departments in administration, as well as OMB, 

and so we didn't get that done in time. They 

were busy working on it last night/this morning 

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and I was hoping to be able to present a copy to 

you before we left here today, but I can't do 

that just yet, so... 

PUBLIC COMMENT 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. We have the 

public comment period. I only have one request 

for comment today, which is from Ralph Krieger 

from PACE. Ralph? 

MR. KRIEGER: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) 

but I think it's most important that all of you 

understand what you're doing. 

THE COURT REPORTER: Could you use the mike? 

MR. KRIEGER: (Off microphone) It's not a 

joking --

MR. ELLIOTT: Use the mike, please. 

MR. KRIEGER: It's not a joking matter that 

you were assigned to do this -- this purpose of 

dose reconstruction. You are representing your 

American workers. That's who you're 

representing, make no mistake. They're 

taxpayers, all of them. Many of them were World 

War II and veterans on other wars. They 

sacrificed their lives. Yours is a daunting 

task. It really is. As are we to you in the 

Federal connection. You're charged with the duty 

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of finding out what the doses, what causes the 

cancer, what types of cancer. That's what your 

task is, so you can get it to the proper people 

in Washington who are administrating (sic) this 

program. That's a daunting task. Do not take it 

lightly. 

I'm an elected official. I'm vice president 

of the amalgamated groups. I've got 

environmental groups. My duty is to my 

membership. That's why I stand before you today. 

Do not take your task lightly. 

I would recommend to the Board that you send 

some people to Albany and you get -- go through 

the files down in Albany, and this is --

(reading) the State Assembly -- the Assembly, 

State of New York. Federal Connection, a History 

of the U.S. Military Involvement in the Toxic 

Contamination of Love Canal and the Niagara 

Frontier Region, January 29th, 1981. An interim 

report to New York State Senate, Assembly Speaker 

Stanley Fink, New York State Assembly, Toxic 

Tests -- Test Work on Toxic Substances, Volume I. 

Forgive me, I forgot my glasses. It's page 

151. 

(Reading) Finding: Survey of workers at 

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various Manhattan Project and Atomic Energy 

Commission plants in the Niagara Frontier region 

were, due to the primitive Federal standards and 

inaccurate protection, exposed to excessive 

levels of radiation. Introduction: Over the 

years of the Manhattan Project and the early 

Atomic Energy Commission operations, many New 

York workers were exposed to excess levels of 

radiation. In many cases the workers were not 

made fully aware of the hazards involved with the 

radiation -- radioactive substances, particularly 

due to the secrecy of the projects, particularly 

because of the research on radiation effects had 

not significantly considered the long term 

effects on human beings. In 19-- in the -- in 

the '40's especially radiation effects were 

judged largely on the basis of immediate 

toxicity, not on the basis of latent, long-term 

effects. Exposures of workers to large sudden 

doses was avoided, not always successfully. But 

little consideration was given to the extended 

exposure to low-level radiation. Governmentfinanced independent studies conducted since 

World War II have called increased attention to 

the latent effects of exposure to low-level 

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radiation, particularly in the work place. 

Leukemia and cancers incidence as a result of 

exposure to radiation is now accepted premise of 

every licensed health physics program. Even 

though the studies have resulted in better worker 

protection, little is known about the health 

histories of the workers who were exposed during 

World War II and after in western New York. Men 

and women who worked at Linde Air Products, 

Electromag-- (Inaudible) Company and later Lake 

Ontario Ordnance Works, Simonds Saw and Steel, 

Bethlehem Steel and other locations may have been 

the unwitting casualties of Hiroshima, Nagasaki 

and Bikini Atoll and the Cold War arms race. 

Whatever their sacrifice may have been, it has 

gone unacknowledged by Federal authorities. 

There is no evidence that officials have ever 

looked into the health histories of these 

workers. Records made available to the task 

force investigator indicate that many workers 

were exposed to radiation which exceeded even 

primitive standards of the time. At the point --

at one point the permissible exposure limits were 

raised in order to spur the war effort, and 

that's a fact. The discussions that follow will 

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focus on the first -- will focus first on the 

exposure standards, safety procedures used by the 

Manhattan Engineering District and Atomic Energy 

Commission (AEC). Document indi-- documented 

indi-- indications of workers' overexposure will 

then be set forth by discussion of the recent 

studies which have given new meaning to radiation 

effects. 

That's your charge. You are the first 

independent organization and committee who will 

be charged with looking into this, aside from 

Stanley Fink and the State Assembly. These 

records are on our web site. We have this full 

volume, volume one and two. I don't even want to 

read you what the wells -- the injection wells, 

what they say about the injection wells. I still 

have not received that report from the EPA. 

That's why building 14 is coming down. Wasn't 

because the Corps of Engineers wanted it down, 

wasn't because Breck's Air* wanted it down, and 

it wasn't because the predecessor wanted it down. 

They didn't. The EPA says you will take it down. 

Some of those counts are down there that they 

tell us about are 160,000 disintegrations per 

minute 50 years later in the sewers. That 

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contamination is going into the drinking water of 

millions of western New Yorkers. I know this for 

a fact. I have the documentation. And the EPA 

has already indicated that there is surface 

contamination. Also the Bechtel study in 1973 

and the study the Oak Ridge did is '78. 

You have a daunting and awesome task, and I 

trust all of you will take it very seriously 

'cause my members are dying and their families 

are suffering. I wish you all well. Thank you 

for coming to western New York. I hope you 

enjoyed it. If you had a few minutes you could 

go over to Linde and watch them tear down the 

building and see what they're doing over there, 

'cause they're working today. Maybe, if they 

really run into something that they weren't 

suspecting. Thank you very much. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Ralph, for very 

challenging words to us today. 

MS. BARTOSYEK: Sir, may I? 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

MS. BARTOSYEK: Thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: You'll have to identify 

yourself for the record. 

MS. BARTOSYEK: Janice Bartosyek. I also 

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encourage you to go down to Bethlehem Steel, 

which is a ten-minute drive from here along the 

lake. You could maybe get a superficial view of 

the bar mill ten, which still exists, but maybe 

none -- there might be some of you who'll never 

have that opportunity again to come to western 

New York and just might help you to, you know, 

put a building with a site number. 

Also, I understand that four members might -

- their terms might be up in August, and I just 

would like to say that it's of concern to us I 

think as a group that now there's such momentum 

building here with this whole program and I hope 

that there will be some continuity here of all of 

the people who are on the Board. 

And one last thing, I really do thank you 

for being here in western New York, but I hope 

our confidence isn't misplaced in any of you. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. Yes, Mr. 

Walker. 

MR. WALKER: Ed Walker, and I didn't sign 

the paper because yesterday it didn't make any 

difference, so I didn't know if Larry would allow 

me to talk today or not, but I want to thank you 

all, Dr. Ziemer and the Board and the support 

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group. It's been very informative. It was very 

interesting. I've never been involved in 

anything like this before and I really feel 

confident that you're all working for our 

interests. I really feel you're all sincere, and 

that's very assuring to me and the group. And 

I'll take this back to the group when I go back. 

And I'd like to thank Mr. Elliott and Jim 

Keaton --

DR. ZIEMER: Neton. 

MR. WALKER: -- for coming up to our meeting 

on the 4th and for inviting me down to Cincinnati 

to the dose reconstruction. It was very, very 

informative and -- obviously I'm not a technical 

person, and I'm going to bring back everything I 

learned to the group, except it's going to be in 

a much condensed version -- very condensed. And 

I'm looking forward to meeting with Mr. Elliott 

and we're going to go through the site. I've got 

some people lined up that worked with -- down 

there that worked during that period. And I want 

to thank you all again for a great job. 

And last night -- and the last thing -- I 

had the pleasure of talking with Mr. Elliott and 

Dr. Ziemer after the meeting was, and we were 

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talking and they both -- they're so -- you people 

are so sincere and I just felt so good that 

you're trying to help and -- and Mr. Elliott said 

to me, he says we want to make sure that 

everybody that deserves it is compensated, and I 

truly believe that all you people are working for 

that. Down in Cincinnati it's just -- it's 

unbelievable. I was just awed by it. 

But I want to say one thing in closing, that 

the people that I'm working with -- and I told 

you this yesterday -- are up in their 70's and 

80's. Their husbands worked down there -- again, 

and one of the members told me this morning that 

he wasn't aware, that we weren't aware of what we 

were working with. We weren't. I was there. I 

carried that lunch box down there. There was no 

idea. For 50 years the government deni-- didn't 

tell us. You can call it lied, you can say 

deceived, you can say what you want. But to use 

us for guinea pigs, these people that worked down 

there, for 50 years deny it and then turn around 

and admit it, and -- and then bring it -- I --

now I don't believe it was misinterpreted because 

too many people believed and even said that it 

wasn't -- that we were going to receive the 

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compensation. And to do that to these 70-yearold women that lost their husband, that went down 

there without the knowledge of knowing, many of 

them -- and one of them is Terry's husband that I 

worked with -- never knew that he was exposed to 

uranium. And I think -- you talk about somebody 

deserving it, and I hope you all take this back 

with you, think about if that was your 

grandmother or your mother that was treated like 

that, I think you'd be furious, and this group is 

furious. And I'm going to support them as long 

as God lets me stay here. I'm going to fight for 

them and for their right, and I know dose 

reconstruction and I know what you're saying. 

And as I told Larry last night, I can't say 

whether I got my cancer down there and it's 

probably likely maybe I didn't, but to be put 

there by our own government, that these -- these 

guys come back from war and fought and not told 

any more than if they had opened a door and throw 

a bomb in here now without telling you, I think -

- I think is horrible and it wasn't your fault. 

It wasn't any of you people here, you're just 

trying to do what you can do. But I think our 

government owes it to these people in Bethlehem -

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- I don't know about the other sites and a dose 

reconstruction on it might work, but I do know 

that the Bethlehem Steel people deserve it. And 

I know we're old, but we're going to fight, as 

hard and as long as we can to try and get this 

justified. And again, I want to thank you all. 

It's been -- it's been very nice to have you up 

here. 

DR. ZIEMER: Again, thank you very much for 

your comments. We appreciate hearing from you. 

This completes the business of the Board in 

open session. I do want to announce again that 

the Board meets this afternoon in closed session 

for purposes of review and discussion of the task 

order proposal and the independent government 

cost estimate for the Board's task order 

contract. That is the only item of business that 

comes before the Board. There will be no other 

items discussed in the closed session. 

With that, we are recessed for the morning 

session and the Board will reconvene at 1:30. 

(Whereupon, the public proceedings were 

concluded at 12:00 p.m.) 

163 
 

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2 C E R T I F I C A T E 

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6 STATE OF GEORGIA )

7 )

8 COUNTY OF FULTON )

9 

10 

11 I, STEVEN RAY GREEN, being a Certified Merit 

12 Court Reporter in and for the State of Georgia, do 

13 hereby certify that the foregoing transcript was 

14 reduced to typewriting by me personally or under my 

15 direct supervision, and is a true, complete, and 

16 correct transcript of the aforesaid proceedings 

17 reported by me. 

18 I further certify that I am not related to, 

19 employed by, counsel to, or attorney for any parties, 

20 attorneys, or counsel involved herein; nor am I 

21 financially interested in this matter. 

22 WITNESS MY HAND AND OFFICIAL SEAL this _____ day 

23 of June, 2004.

24 

25 

26 

27 

28 ________________________

29 ___

30 STEVEN RAY GREEN, CVR-CM

31 GA CCR No. A-2102 

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