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1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

+ + + + +

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

101st MEETING

+ + + + +

WEDNESDAY

SEPTEMBER 17, 2014

+ + + + +

The meeting convened telephonically at 

11:00 a.m., Eastern Daylight Time, James M. 

Melius, Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

JAMES M. MELIUS, Chairman

HENRY ANDERSON, Member

JOSIE BEACH, Member

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member

DAVID KOTELCHUCK, Member

JAMES LOCKEY, Member

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

DAVID B. RICHARDSON, Member

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member

NEAL R. GROSS

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2

LORETTA R. VALERIO, Member

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor

AL-NABULSI, ISAF, DOE

HARTSFIELD, DEKEELY, HHS

HINNEFELD, STU, DCAS

KINMAN, JOSH, DCAS

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A

MCKEEL, DAN

NETON, JIM, DCAS

RUTHERFORD, LAVON, DCAS

STIVER, JOHN, SC&A

NEAL R. GROSS

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3

T-A-B-L-E O-F C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S

Roll Call

Ted Katz ................................. 4

Recording Absentee Votes (General Atomics and 

Simonds Saw and Steel SEC Petitions)

Ted Katz ................................. 4

NIOSH Update on Implementing 10-Year Review 

Recommendations

Stuart Hinnefeld ......................... 6

Special Exposure Cohort (SEC) Petition Status 

Update

LaVon Rutherford ........................ 56

Updates from Work Groups and Subcommittees

WG/SC Chairs

Wanda Munn, Procedures Subcommittee ..... 60

James Melius, SEC Work Group ............ 63

Dave Kotelchuck, Dose Reconstruction 

Subcommittee ............................. 65

Plans for the November 2014 Board Meeting 66

Correspondence ........................... 80

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4

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

2 11:10 a.m.

3 MR. KATZ: This is the Advisory Board 

4 on Radiation and Worker Health. The agenda for 

5 this meeting is posted on the NIOSH website, 

6 under the Board section, under meetings, 

7 today's date. There are no additional 

8 materials posted or to be presented at this 

9 meeting, per se. We have some presentations 

10 but no written materials. And let's do roll 

11 call. In roll call we do not need to address 

12 conflict of interest because we're not dealing 

13 in any specific sites involving any conflicts. 

14 So, we'll do roll call.

15 (Roll call)

16 MR. KATZ: All right. Jim, it's 

17 your agenda. 

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And, Ted, I'll 

19 turn it back over to you for recording absentee 

20 votes.

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5

1 MR. KATZ: Right. Thank you. So 

2 at the last Board meeting in July in Idaho we 

3 had two SEC petition actions, one on General 

4 Atomics for the period '60 to '69 to extend the 

5 Class, and one for Simonds Saw from '58 to 2011, 

6 which is the residual period, with a motion to 

7 decline adding additional Class to Simonds Saw. 

8 And both of those motions passed unanimously. 

9 The last vote was cast by Mr. Griffon on August 

10 18th and that recommendation from the Board, 

11 those two recommendations were received by the 

12 Secretary on September 3rd. So that completes 

13 the actions for the July meeting. 

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

15 you, Ted. At our July meeting actually we had 

16 asked Stu Hinnefeld to give us an update on 

17 implementing the 10-year review 

18 recommendations, and I believe Stu, or actually 

19 Ted forwarded an email from Stu, I think, 

20 earlier this week just pointing us to where some 

NEAL R. GROSS

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6

1 of this information was on the DCAS website.

2 And, Stu, I'll turn it over to you.

3 MEMBER ANDERSON: Hi, Jim. This 

4 is Andy. Just want to let you know that I made 

5 it on.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. 

7 MR. KATZ: Great. Welcome, Andy.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Welcome Andy.

9 MEMBER ANDERSON: Thank you.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. I sent the 

11 email so that Members of the Board could look 

12 at the 10-year review sections. There is also 

13 a document that compiles all the 

14 recommendations from the various chapters of 

15 the 10-year review. And then there's another 

16 document that lists sort of -- it's called 

17 Priority Actions that lists certain priority 

18 actions which are identified as the things to 

19 be focused on at the time for each of the five 

20 sections. 

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7

1 And so, to provide an update. Now, 

2 that particular part of our website hasn't been 

3 updated very religiously lately. We do have 

4 sort of a remodeling our website that's 

5 supposed to roll out I think by the end of the 

6 month. The remodeling is driven by CDC 

7 guidance on what websites should look like. So 

8 it will look a little different but will contain 

9 all the pertinent information. And that's 

10 been a relatively lengthy process to 

11 accomplish. And once we get that out of the 

12 way, then we will take a shot at updating 

13 information in our 10-year review section and 

14 then providing periodic updates after that as 

15 well.

16 But speaking now in terms of where 

17 we are with some of the recommendations from 

18 there, I will follow the pattern in the Priority 

19 Actions document. For some reason the 

20 priority action items for the various factors 

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8

1 are not listed in the same order as they are in 

2 the document that lists the entirety of the 

3 recommendations. So I'll provide a quick 

4 summary -- well, a relatively quick summary on 

5 each of the chapters, and then at the end of the 

6 chapter I'll ask if other people would like 

7 additional information or have questions about 

8 some of those things.

9 So the first chapter that is listed 

10 there, it's called "Concerning Dose 

11 Reconstructions." So these are 

12 recommendations that relate to dose 

13 reconstruction reports. And with respect to

14 those priority actions, there is one item that 

15 is providing an overview of the quality 

16 management system, and that was done. That was 

17 given to the Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee 

18 in 2012. 

19 And the work on quality of dose 

20 reconstructions essentially continues 

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9

1 routinely. It's sort of a routine activity 

2 with the DR Subcommittee. And so, that's one 

3 of the kind of general actions from the 10-year 

4 review that is always subject to continuous 

5 improvement. And so, you don't ever say, okay, 

6 we're done worrying about the quality of dose 

7 reconstruction. It's sort of the thing you 

8 could do from then on.

9 There are also recommendations in 

10 that section about SEC descriptions. Even 

11 though it was in the dose reconstruction 

12 section it talked about how you define SECs, and 

13 so that making sure what can be reconstructed. 

14 We are working on that now. I think we are 

15 doing a good job giving partial dose 

16 reconstructions as good a shake as we can. And 

17 also there's a recommendation about making sure 

18 with DOL that Classes can be administered. 

19 That's a routine part of our process now, is we 

20 provide proposed Classes to DOL and they let us 

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10

1 know about any administration issues as the 

2 Class is proposed. So that's all routine.

3 When you move to the efficiency 

4 measures, issues related to efficiency 

5 measures, we did come out of an investigation 

6 of what it would take to -- with our contractor 

7 to eliminate efficiency measure dose 

8 reconstructions, and it would take just an 

9 extraordinary effort. Sometimes you might 

10 want to call that prohibitively expensive or 

11 prohibitively time consuming. 

12 If you figure you're time limited or 

13 money limited, however you want to figure it, 

14 it would -- because a fair percentage, quite a 

15 high percentage of our dose reconstruction 

16 reports still have some type of overestimating 

17 approach in them, and so it would be really sort 

18 of cost-prohibitive to do with overestimates 

19 completely. We do try to make sure that if 

20 we're doing an overestimate it really does 

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11

1 provide some efficiency and not just do it 

2 because it's available to us.

3 So we've kind of gone down that 

4 path. We think we've done some things and 

5 we'll continue to worry about that, because 

6 that is a communication issue. That was one of 

7 the actions we were going to take also with 

8 about making it clear, trying to make our 

9 communications more clearly about that. And 

10 now the dose reconstructions do clearly state 

11 when an efficiency overestimate has been done, 

12 it also says that if additional information is 

13 provided and this has to be redone, the estimate 

14 of dose could very well go down. That's put out 

15 there right in the dose reconstruction. And 

16 then when we revise the dose reconstruction for 

17 like a rework when it comes back, we do point

18 out what changed from the previous dose 

19 reconstruction to the current one.

20 There are some other 

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12

1 recommendations that don't exactly hit 

2 efficient measures. Well, actually many of 

3 the recommendations from this section do fall 

4 in the category of QA/QC in efficiency 

5 measures. And so the actions that we are doing 

6 in those areas work with the DR Subcommittee in 

7 continuing to try to improve our communications 

8 and the continuation of only using efficiency 

9 measures when they really provide some benefit. 

10 That addresses several of them. 

11 There were recommendations about 

12 making partial dose reconstructions as

13 complete as possible. I think that's going on 

14 quite a bit now, especially -- it's something, 

15 like I said, we continue to work on. The Site 

16 Profiles, recent Site Profile Reviews of Site 

17 Profiles for sites that are SECs is helping to 

18 push that along and we're coming to terms now 

19 with making sure we get in the best shape 

20 possible with partial DRs. 

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13

1 There's an SEC Class Definition 

2 recommendation that goes along those lines. 

3 And there's one recommendation in there that I 

4 had to kind of look back at the context in the 

5 report to figure out what they were talking 

6 about. It has to do with something about 

7 tension in these processes and management 

8 should evaluate that tension. I think it 

9 relates to the PER process section of the 

10 report, I believe. And if I'm not mistaken, 

11 the 10-year report was written after we had gone 

12 through a PER process where every potentially 

13 affected claim was returned to us for rework 

14 regardless of whether the outcome of the claim 

15 was going to change or not. 

16 And that was a very unpopular 

17 approach with claimants because claimants 

18 whose case had been decided and they'd been 

19 denied and then maybe it took them a year to get 

20 over being upset about it and then they get a 

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14

1 letter saying, oh, hey, look, we're going to 

2 look at your report again, your dose 

3 reconstruction again. Then they get hope 

4 again and then we send them another letter 

5 saying, oh, wait, you still don't get paid. 

6 And so we don't do that anymore now we only 

7 rework claims -- we do the evaluation of claims, 

8 find out which ones are going to change and 

9 those are the ones we reworked. And those are 

10 the claims that get notified. So I believe the 

11 process that we do now, we follow now, address 

12 that recommendation.

13 Okay. That's what I have for the 

14 dose reconstruction section. Are there any 

15 questions on that, or comments? 

16 MEMBER MUNN: This is Wanda. 

17 Thank you very much for doing this overview. 

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Thank you.

19 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right. Yes, 

20 Dave Kotelchuck. I have no question. 

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15

1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: This is Jim 

2 Melius. I do have a question, and that's on the 

3 last item, the PER issue. I think that -- and 

4 you may already have incorporated this, but one 

5 can imagine at least a situation where there's 

6 been a change in the dose reconstruction method 

7 that would be dependent to some extent on new 

8 information or additional information from the 

9 claimant that might not have been a part of the 

10 record because it wasn't viewed as being 

11 relevant to the dose reconstruction. So is 

12 something like that taken into account in terms 

13 of the types of information that might be useful 

14 rather than just sort of a blanket policy of, 

15 well, we're just going to recalculate and --

16 MR. HINNEFELD: I'm not quite sure 

17 I completely understand the question. Are you 

18 talking about information by the claimant that 

19 would affect a particular claim?

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: A particular 

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16

1 claim or particular part of the dose 

2 reconstruction, the part of the dose 

3 reconstruction that's being changed. 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So I'm 

5 trying to understand the sequence here. A 

6 claimant would provide us information that 

7 would lead us to conclude that our dose 

8 reconstruction approach should be changed and 

9 therefore we'll do a dose reconstruction?

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No. No, no. 

11 You've already found through some process; a 

12 Site Profile Review, SEC, whatever, there's now 

13 a problem with the dose reconstruction method. 

14 So it's been modified. Okay?

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: But if that 

17 modification or the calculation of the dose 

18 related to that modification were based on --

19 could be dependent on additional information 

20 from the claimant.

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17

1 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. I think I 

2 understand now.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, there would 

4 have been no reason to inquire or obtain that 

5 information before. Now there's new 

6 information.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. I think the 

8 issue would be this: We've decided to do a PER 

9 and we evaluate the cases with the information 

10 we have on hand. The claimant may have new 

11 information, newer information than we have, 

12 but because we don't know that information our 

13 evaluation would say we don't need to rework it.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Or the claimant 

15 may have had older information but you either 

16 didn't inquire or didn't record that 

17 information because it wasn't considered to be 

18 relevant. 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Oh. Oh, okay. 

20 Now I see.

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18

1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I'm saying that 

2 that information was ignored appropriately 

3 before.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: I understand the 

5 question now.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, yes.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't recall an 

8 instance when I would think that would be 

9 relevant. Certainly any information provided 

10 would be in the case file. I think I understand 

11 the question now, but I'm having a hard time 

12 envisioning when that might come into play. 

13 Jim or Bomber, can you envision 

14 anything like that?

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: I can't. This is 

16 Bomber.

17 DR. NETON: This is Jim. I can't 

18 think of one. We evaluate the change in the 

19 process in every case. We only recalculated 

20 doses for cases that it would increase the dose. 

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19

1 In that case the complete dose reconstruction 

2 is redone. If the change would result in a 

3 negative -- decrease the dose, we wouldn't 

4 bother to reconsider it. So I can't envision 

5 a scenario where that might happen.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I don't want to 

7 belabor this, but what if the information 

8 wasn't in the case file because it wasn't 

9 considered important to inquire about earlier? 

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: So you're --

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I mean, it's 

12 hypothetical. And again, I just want to sort 

13 of avoid --

14 MR. HINNEFELD: I understand. I 

15 understand.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The reason to be 

17 efficient about doing this process but at the 

18 same time it may not be just simply a 

19 recalculation. There may need to be some 

20 additional information gathering. 

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20

1 MR. HINNEFELD: I think that would 

2 become apparent to us. If we hit that 

3 situation --

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: -- I think it will 

6 become apparent to us at the time that we make 

7 the dose reconstruction technique change, that 

8 leads to the PER.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. 

10 MR. HINNEFELD: I think that's when 

11 we would identify that. And then the search 

12 for the sufficient information in order to make 

13 the appropriate changes with the new technique 

14 would occur at that point. I guess it could at 

15 times require investigation of claimant 

16 information. I think our tendency though is 

17 to -- if there's questions about a particular 

18 claimant's applicability or not, we tend to say 

19 we can't rule them out. We rule them in.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. 

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21

1 MR. HINNEFELD: So I still have 

2 trouble envisioning exactly when it would 

3 happen, but I think the key actions would be 

4 taken when we investigated the dose 

5 reconstruction technique that led to the 

6 change. I think that's where the 

7 investigation for information would occur.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. 

9 MEMBER MUNN: This is Wanda. Stu, 

10 I wanted to thank you for that report. It seems 

11 to me that this kind of internal review is one 

12 of the most difficult things to make happen. 

13 And when I was looking over the material that 

14 you suggested, I was seized by the item 

15 indicating that we were going to do a cost 

16 benefit analysis on the overestimating DRs. 

17 So I was very pleased to hear you address that 

18 and wanted to thank you for the kind of effort 

19 that has to go into this kind of follow up. 

20 It's helpful for some of us.

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22

1 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Thanks, 

2 Wanda. 

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Hi, this is 

4 David Richardson. Stu, I had a question. I 

5 think you addressed it in part, but I was 

6 wondering if you could speak a little bit more 

7 about it. One of the action items I remember 

8 coming out of the 10-year follow-up was that 

9 DCAS would provide an answer to the question if 

10 the DR Subcommittee's review found an error, 

11 why would that error not bound by the internal 

12 review that happens by DCAS and ORAU for QA/QC?

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, Grady is not 

14 on the phone and Grady of course is our main rep 

15 to the DR Subcommittee now. His report to me 

16 as I was preparing this was that that question 

17 is routinely asked now on these DR findings. 

18 And we in ORAU tried to sort out what happened 

19 here and is there something that can be done to 

20 prevent this error or an error like this from 

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23

1 happening again. 

2 So I don't have a lot of detail on 

3 that, but I think we could certainly put 

4 something together. Since I'm going to make 

5 Grady do it, I don't have to do it. We could 

6 probably put something together for say the 

7 upcoming DR Subcommittee meeting.

8 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, and that 

9 might be useful. There are some sort of errors 

10 where we have -- and I'd put "errors" in quotes 

11 here, if I could -- where there's differences 

12 of perspective or interpretation of technical 

13 issues or interpretation of guidance 

14 documents, and we've had really productive 

15 discussions about how to clarify those. 

16 But there's another class of 

17 recurring errors which are the things that fall 

18 into the category like of data extraction 

19 keypunch issues. And some of them we've talked 

20 about improvements in tools or procedures to 

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24

1 avoid those, and yet I remain kind of struck by 

2 two sets of eyes reviewing information. How is 

3 it that there's a series of years missing, for 

4 example? And like how did that get signed off 

5 that that was correct and that wasn't, and 

6 particularly when there should be multiple 

7 layers of QA/QC? I think that's the category 

8 I'm most interested in. 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. I think I'm 

10 probably not in a position to say much more than 

11 I have at this point, or I'm not prepared to, 

12 but I think we could provide something along 

13 those lines. And maybe it would be a topic for 

14 discussion at a DR Subcommittee meeting.

15 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Well, that 

16 would be helpful. Dave Kotelchuck.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. All right. 

18 Are there other things on that chapter then? 

19 Okay. I think the next chapter that's 

20 addressed in the priority recommendations 

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25

1 things is the quality of service. And this has 

2 kind of divided into issues related to using 

3 customer-supplied information, issues related 

4 to the understandability and quality of 

5 information, issues related to access of 

6 information and issues related to perceived 

7 burden on claimants and petitioners. 

8 Interestingly enough, when you look 

9 at the actions that says related to using 

10 customer-supplied information, really the 

11 action on the priority action item list doesn't 

12 really seem to address that particular topic. 

13 It seems to address clarity of our 

14 communications.

15 But with respect to using 

16 customer-supplied information, we have done a 

17 number of things that I think we're trying to 

18 improve in that area. And this is certainly an 

19 area I would put in the continuous improvement 

20 category. No matter how much we improve our 

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26

1 use of customer-provided information, I don't 

2 know that we're ever done trying to listen 

3 carefully and take the information that we 

4 receive carefully. Seems that probably the 

5 hardest part of communication is listening, and 

6 it's particularly hard when people are telling 

7 you things that don't necessarily align with 

8 what you thought before the conversation 

9 started. But we continue to work on 

10 that. We have made certain concrete steps 

11 about making sure dose reconstructions 

12 specifically address information provided in 

13 the closeout interviews of people that lists 

14 incidents or items that they were involved in 

15 that they felt like was important to their dose 

16 reconstruction. We want to make sure that we 

17 talk to those items, at least in the dose 

18 reconstruction and use that information 

19 appropriately and make sure that the dose 

20 reconstruction is appropriate in light of the 

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27

1 information the customer provided. 

2 We also get communications from 

3 claimants in other arenas like closeout 

4 interviews and we spend a fair amount of effort 

5 trying to answer and respond do that. And not 

6 just the answer, but use information. It's not 

7 that uncommon that we will get information at 

8 a closeout interview that we did not have 

9 beforehand that is relevant to eh dose 

10 reconstruction. And so those dose 

11 reconstructions are revised based on 

12 information we receive at that time. 

13 And so we continue to try to listen 

14 carefully to our customers, you know, claimants 

15 and advocates, whoever is talking to us. And 

16 it's an area that I know we need to continue to 

17 work on and I think we'll always need to 

18 continue to work on throughout the process. We 

19 will never say we are good enough at it.

20 Related to understandability and 

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28

1 quality of information, we have made a number 

2 of concrete steps there. We rewrote a number 

3 of the fact sheets that we have on our website 

4 that provide information about the various 

5 aspects of what we do in order to make those more 

6 understandable. Routinely when we write 

7 communications for the public we are using the 

8 government-wide direction about plain 

9 language. We're trying to use plain language 

10 to the extent that we can for communications to 

11 the public, and we try to do that now in 

12 responding to letters and inquiries from 

13 customers in whatever arena. We try to make 

14 sure our information is written plainly and in 

15 language that people can understand.

16 Issues related to access to 

17 information, we try to put a lot of information 

18 on our website. We hope people can be well 

19 informed by the information on our Website. 

20 Specifically, we are now posting things like 

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29

1 White Papers that are going to be discussed at 

2 Work Group meetings. We now try and get those 

3 posted. In most cases at least, if not all 

4 cases, we get those posted on our website prior 

5 to the Work Group meeting so that participants 

6 can at least follow along in the document that's 

7 being discussed and maybe have a better chance

8 of following the conversation of the Work 

9 Groups since they have the document that's 

10 being discussed in front of them.

11 And with respect to perceived 

12 burdens on claimants and petitioners, we did 

13 modify our cover letter on the CATI when we sent 

14 the CATI questions to the claimants before the 

15 CATI is performed. Computer-assisted 

16 telephone interview. That's what CATI stands 

17 for. We did change that language to try to 

18 reassure the claimant that they were not the 

19 ones that were primarily responsible for 

20 gathering information for the dose 

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30

1 reconstruction. We believe we can do a good 

2 dose reconstruction even if they can't remember 

3 or if they don't know much about their loved 

4 one's work. So we tried to change that 

5 language to make that process seem less of a 

6 burden on the claimant.

7 Now, also aside from those priority 

8 items there were quite a lot of the 

9 recommendations related to accepting and using 

10 customer-provided information. And like I 

11 said, I believe we're improving in that area. 

12 I think quite a bit of the recent Rocky Flats 

13 SEC investigation involved resolving 

14 customer-provided information and I believe 

15 much of the LANL SEC work, if you go back a 

16 couple of years, was petitioner-provided 

17 information.

18 And when we communicate with a 

19 claimant or an advocate in a letter we try to 

20 make sure we are addressing exactly what 

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31

1 they're talking about, speaking to them in 

2 plain English and trying to utilize the 

3 information they provide us and take it 

4 seriously. Again, this is something that we 

5 never say we're done with this. We always will 

6 try to improve in our acceptance of information 

7 provided and use that as much as we can going 

8 forward.

9 There were a number of 

10 recommendations about customer access to 

11 information. Like I said earlier, we try to 

12 put a lot of information on our website. Most 

13 of our information is available. It's not 

14 possible to make all our documents that we hold 

15 available to the public because of Privacy Act 

16 restrictions. Much of it is Privacy Act 

17 information that we have. 

18 We also get a lot of information 

19 from the Department of Energy that they have not 

20 reviewed for public release. And so they 

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32

1 provide it to us more expediently if they don't 

2 review it for public release. And so there's 

3 some information, or quite a lot of our holdings 

4 that just because of the manner in which we 

5 received them or the information they contain 

6 we just can't make everything public. 

7 But we do what we can in terms of 

8 information that's being discussed and is 

9 important for decisions. Most if not all of 

10 the documents that are put up for discussion at 

11 Work Group meetings are referenced. Those 

12 references can be pursued through FOIA, 

13 although I know the FOIA process is not a very 

14 claimant-favorable process. It's not 

15 particularly timely and some information often 

16 shows up as redacted through FOIA as well.

17 A number of recommendations were 

18 about the burden on claimants, and I think I 

19 addressed that earlier. 

20 There was a recommendation about 

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33

1 making process tutorials available to all or 

2 provide independent health physicists for --

3 you know, that have not pursued a staff of 

4 independent HPs for this claimant base. I 

5 believe the Board's contractor acts pretty 

6 effectively as devil's advocate to NIOSH 

7 positions as they go through work and I think 

8 they work pretty effectively to provide a 

9 counterbalancing opinion to the opinion that 

10 might come out of our office. 

11 We do have some videos on our 

12 website that describe what we do and how we do 

13 it. There is some information out there like 

14 that. We do provide workshops, but I wouldn't 

15 say they're available to everybody. We go to 

16 our outreach contractor ATL who sets up a dose 

17 reconstruction workshop for interested parties 

18 that they identify. And we also have done some 

19 workshops through our Ombudsman to interested 

20 parties. So we try to get information out 

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34

1 there to people who are interested in it, but 

2 I couldn't really say it's available to all.

3 Okay. That's what I had to say on 

4 the quality of service. I wonder if there are 

5 any questions on that at this point.

6 Okay. Hearing none, I guess I'll 

7 proceed. 

8 The next section of recommendations 

9 was concerning timeliness, and they are grouped 

10 into issues related to higher priority to 

11 return; that means dose reconstructions that 

12 are returned to us for reworks, issues related 

13 to aggressive time limits for dose 

14 reconstruction, and issues related to 

15 aggressive time limits for the completion of 

16 the review of SEC petitions.

17 With respect to those 

18 recommendations, at least since the time of the 

19 10-year review or shortly following that we 

20 have given a higher priority to reworks, to 

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35

1 cases that have been returned, have been done 

2 once and then returned to us by DOL for some 

3 reason. Usually it's an additional cancer. 

4 And we give that higher priority by 

5 incentivizing our contractor to complete a high 

6 percentage of those within 60 days of the time 

7 they have all the information. Often on a 

8 rework, when a case is reworked the only new 

9 information is that there's an additional 

10 cancer and you have all the information needed 

11 to do it. So we would do those in 60 days.

12 If the additional information was 

13 new verified employment, for instance, we would

14 have to send a request to the Department of 

15 Labor for dose information from that new 

16 employment. And so we wouldn't have all the 

17 information available immediately upon 

18 receiving the rework. So the 60 days wouldn't 

19 start until we received all that information. 

20 So we do have that timeline objective for 

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36

1 timeliness on reworks which is more aggressive 

2 than our objective on dose reconstructions. 

3 Since the time of the 10-year review 

4 we did impose a six-month -- somewhere between 

5 the time of the 10-year review and the review 

6 now we incentivized our contractor, told them 

7 that they should do a high percentage of claims 

8 within six months of having all the available 

9 data. We recently changed that to five months, 

10 shortened that up to five months, and they're 

11 working successfully to that. 

12 There are other recommendations of 

13 being aggressive on dose reconstruction 

14 timeliness. We have not pushed beyond five 

15 months at this point partly because the 

16 resources that would be needed to make this a 

17 shorter period will be taken away from other 

18 work that we consider important like Site 

19 Profile finding resolution and Evaluation 

20 Report Review finding resolution. So at this 

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37

1 time we don't really have any intent to push far 

2 beyond where we are, but because we feel like 

3 there's important work to do elsewhere in the 

4 program. 

5 And timeliness, I didn't really 

6 have many recommendations other than the ones 

7 that were addressed by the priority actions.

8 So any questions or comments on 

9 that?

10 Yes. Did somebody say something or 

11 did somebody say my name?

12 MEMBER MUNN: No, I think it was 

13 "nope."

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Oh, okay. SEC 

15 petitions had a long, long list of 

16 recommendations when you look at the total, but 

17 in the priority actions we had items relating 

18 to separating policy from science issues, 

19 issues related to the definition of "sufficient 

20 accuracy," and issues related to a possible 

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38

1 health physics bias.

2 With respect to policy and science 

3 decisions we have fought with this since the 

4 time of 10-year review and have failed to really 

5 reach common accord even internally in the 

6 office on what the policy or science decisions 

7 that are made as we evaluate an SEC. Some 

8 people will say they're all science decisions. 

9 Other people will say, well, you use science to 

10 inform the decisions, but really they're all 

11 sort of policy decisions. And so I guess it's 

12 our own failing that we just can't really sort 

13 these out, policy from science. 

14 But we do believe there is value in 

15 a particular recommendation to describe why you 

16 reached the decision you reached. And so we 

17 are pursuing that. I think it might be 

18 something of a companion document with an 

19 Evaluation Report. We're still kind of 

20 thinking about how this might be useful. It 

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39

1 might be useful to the Board I think if we 

2 provided it with an Evaluation Report that said 

3 here's what our thinking was as we arrived at 

4 this decision. 

5 So we're messing around. We 

6 started out -- we've been working on this for 

7 years, literally years, writing drafts and 

8 rejecting them and commenting and rethinking 

9 what we might write in these things. And we 

10 didn't work on it every day for years, but 

11 there's been effort on it periodically for 

12 years. 

13 So we're trying to arrive at 

14 something that we think helps to explain why 

15 decisions were made perhaps in better or more 

16 understandable language in an Evaluation 

17 Report. At some point maybe when we come to 

18 something we think is useful that might help 

19 inform us about where in the process it will be 

20 useful, in other words, in our discussions with 

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40

1 the Board or whether it's a summary for public 

2 consumption on our website, something like 

3 that. So we're still struggling with that. I 

4 think if anyone has comments or would like to 

5 assist us on that, we would be receptive of 

6 ideas on that.

7 With respect to a definition of 

8 "sufficient accuracy," there were a number of 

9 recommendations about that in the SEC section. 

10 Part of my reaction to that is if we could do 

11 a better job of defining "sufficient accuracy," 

12 we would have done it when we wrote the 

13 regulation. We have done a bit of work on this 

14 though. We've done sort of some case law 

15 studies that we've presented to the SEC Issues 

16 Work Group where we've described things that 

17 are about decisions that we had made to that 

18 time on various Work Groups. 

19 And so, we didn't ignore this. We 

20 have tried to work on that. I think this 

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41

1 question probably comes into the SEC Issues 

2 Work Group in the indirect exposure method, 

3 part of the quality of science evaluation where 

4 we're talking about coworker models and what 

5 really is sufficiently accurate when you start 

6 down the coworker pathway. So it's something 

7 that of course we continue to work on. The 

8 Board also continues to refine its thoughts on 

9 that. 

10 I think we've made a lot of progress 

11 since 2011 when the report was written in terms 

12 of a common understanding of what might be 

13 sufficiently accurate, but it's something that 

14 I think probably the better definition of 

15 sufficient accuracy will arise from our 

16 continuing work with the Board and a decision 

17 is reached on various SEC Classes. And like I 

18 said, if we could define "sufficient accuracy" 

19 better in words, then we would have done it when 

20 we wrote the regulation on SECs.

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42

1 The final item about health physics 

2 bias, the final in the priority 

3 recommendations, is kind of near to my heart 

4 because I'm confident for a fact that the author 

5 of this report got that from me, from a 

6 conversation that she had with me. And what I 

7 said was that in this program -- this goes back 

8 early. I mean, she talked to us probably in 

9 2009 or there, so it's a long time ago when these 

10 conversations were going on. Maybe it was 

11 2010.

12 But the conversation, what I said 

13 was when you're a health physicist you're given 

14 a problem and told answer the problem. And so, 

15 you write down your assumptions because there 

16 may be information gaps that you don't have 

17 every bit of information needed to solve that 

18 problem, but you can make some reasonable 

19 assumptions. And you say, well, assuming 

20 these things are true, then the answer to the 

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43

1 problem is this. And so, there's sort of this 

2 built-in professional approach or mindset 

3 that, yes, I can solve the problem. So you're 

4 not really presented with a situation where one 

5 of the avenues you can take is there's not 

6 enough information to answer this question. 

7 So that's where that came from. I'm confident 

8 that's where that came from in that report.

9 Now having said that, I think that 

10 today in 2014, having worked with the Board and 

11 having gone through so much activity on SECs, 

12 I think we're far more attuned over here to the 

13 ability to say there's not enough information. 

14 And I think that's reflected in the number of 

15 83.14s that have been brought forward and I 

16 think in a sort of a more receptive give and take 

17 in the conversations with the Board and their 

18 contractor in Work Groups.

19 So I would like to say that we are 

20 addressing any issues related to health physics 

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44

1 bias. Of course bias is always in the eye of 

2 the beholder, and I'm a health physicist. And 

3 so others may have other opinions on this, but 

4 I believe we're doing certainly better than we 

5 were at the time of the 10-year report. 

6 There were a lot of recommendations 

7 in this section other than what are addressed 

8 by the priority actions. I mean, a lot of the 

9 recommendations are addressed by priority 

10 action because they fall in the same 

11 categories. There's a recommendation about 

12 submitting -- for complex SEC evaluations to 

13 submit a work plan, a comprehensive work --

14 petition-specific evaluation plan. We can do 

15 that now. When we aren't going to make the 180 

16 days, we do require an evaluation plan and the 

17 submittal of that. That's when we get a 

18 complex petition.

19 There were several recommendations 

20 about surrogate data. That has been I think 

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45

1 vetted a lot with the -- I think it's the SEC 

2 Issues Work Group. I know the Board has 

3 guidance on when it's acceptable to use 

4 surrogate data. And we have our IG-004, which 

5 is I think very similar to the Board's guidance. 

6 So we think surrogate data has been addressed 

7 quite a lot in the interim time and it's been 

8 given some careful study by the Board and by us.

9 There were several recommendations 

10 about using broadly applicable presumptions in 

11 the SEC evaluation process. And I guess our 

12 reaction to that is that when we look at an SEC 

13 petition in each case you probably have a unique 

14 combination of exposure environment and 

15 available documentation. Those two things 

16 aren't likely to be identical at any two sites, 

17 or maybe even very similar any two sites. And 

18 so, we're not really sure how broadly 

19 applicable presumptions can even be applied in 

20 the SEC process. So I'm not sure if we can do 

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46

1 anything with those or not.

2 There were recommendations that we 

3 expand our efforts to cooperate with 

4 petitioners. And I believe we've made 

5 progress in that area. We have an SEC 

6 counselor; have had for some time now, who 

7 communicates regularly with petitioners and 

8 assists them in preparing petitions or in 

9 gathering information. We have phone calls 

10 with the petitioner at the qualification stage 

11 and try to help get petitions qualified at that 

12 stage. So, I believe we're being more 

13 cooperative with petitioners than we were a 

14 number of years ago. Again, this is something 

15 that we always want to make sure we are working 

16 to improve and making sure petitioners are 

17 getting fair treatment when they deal with us.

18 So I think maybe I'll stop my 

19 comments there on this chapter and I wonder if 

20 there are other questions or comments from the 

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47

1 Board.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Actually; this 

3 is Jim Melius, Stu, I think you're being 

4 somewhat pessimistic or whatever about meeting 

5 some of these, addressing some of these 

6 recommendations, because I actually think 

7 you've gone farther than you may realize in 

8 terms of sort of developing better criteria 

9 that would certainly at least operationalize 

10 some of these difficult issues. 

11 I mean, one thing, back to I think 

12 sort of the policy and science issue 

13 recommendation that you're struggling with, I 

14 think that may be something it would be worth 

15 doing maybe initially within the SEC Issues 

16 Work Group since we'll be doing some meetings 

17 and maybe we can add that on. At least have 

18 some discussion of that and sort of where you 

19 are with it and what's been the problem in terms 

20 of developing even a document on that.

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48

1 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Because I think 

3 that's still worth -- and I have a feeling if 

4 we're going to sort of quote/unquote "solve" 

5 the sufficient accuracy issue and probably the 

6 coworker issue, I think we need to sort of come 

7 to grips to some extent at least with the sort 

8 of science and policy issues. So whether you 

9 need to articulate it in sort of a policy 

10 document or some document, I'm not sure, but I 

11 think it is something that we ought to at least 

12 have some discussion of and then bring that 

13 discussion to the Board also. But it may be 

14 easier if we start it within the Work Group. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. 

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Anybody else 

17 have questions or comments?

18 I would just note I guess for the 

19 record more than anything, recommendation 28, 

20 which basically dealt with sort of the 

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49

1 trade-off between -- in terms of claims that are 

2 awarded between SECs. And yet if you do an SEC 

3 you in some ways are taking away some dose. It 

4 came up at our last Board meeting. I believe 

5 it was Dow SEC where we got into the discussion 

6 of that where there was sort of spotty data from 

7 several different types of exposure monitoring 

8 for that group, but trying to define that within 

9 an SEC we sort of ended up with a fairly long 

10 discussion, although I think we resolved it 

11 okay.

12 So these are sort of real issue that 

13 come up occasionally and I think it's again 

14 worth -- I think we've been addressing them 

15 maybe more than you give yourselves credit for.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, good. 

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Good to hear. I'm 

19 always glad to hear that, yes. Well, they 

20 always say you should under-promise and 

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50

1 over-deliver. 

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right. Anybody 

3 else questions or comments? If not, we'll let 

4 Stu go on.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Hearing

6 none, then we'll move onto the quality of 

7 science chapter. The priority actions here 

8 were issues related to documentation, issues 

9 related to modification of the procedures 

10 database, issues related to indirect exposure 

11 assessments, issues related to better 

12 characterization of claimant favorability, 

13 issues related to review of OTIB-20, and issues 

14 related to surrogate data. 

15 So with the related to 

16 documentation, there has been some work by our 

17 contractor to alter their document control 

18 procedure to include a process that is intended 

19 to ensure that inconsistencies are not being 

20 created. And it's kind of outlined in that 

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51

1 procedure, that it would be served well in that. 

2 There were recommendations about --

3 external peer review I guess is also in that 

4 same priority item. There is a NIOSH policy on 

5 external peer review of intramural projects. 

6 We don't fall into that. We comply with that 

7 because we don't really fall into it very much. 

8 There are certain things that we do that --

9 major changes we get outside peer review on, 

10 major change to program activities. Some of 

11 the recent examples were our CLL model and risk 

12 model and dose model. The paper on DDREF. 

13 That's dose and dose rate effective factor. 

14 And then back when we were looking at changes 

15 to the IREP lung model or when NCI changed their 

16 lung model I think we got external peer review 

17 on several large changes like that.

18 I guess for our individual 

19 documents like TBDs and OTIBs and things like 

20 that we're not entirely sure than an external 

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52

1 review would be more informative or as 

2 informative as the review that those documents 

3 currently get in the program from the Board and 

4 their contractor. 

5 So I guess our reaction to that was 

6 that we're kind of comfortable with the level 

7 of external peer review that we're getting at 

8 this point and we would prefer from our 

9 standpoint to kind of continue along those 

10 lines. We feeling like we're getting peer 

11 review in cases when it's essential and we're 

12 getting pretty thorough second-party review 

13 with the program just by the nature of the way 

14 the program operates.

15 With respect to the procedures 

16 database we believe that recommendation had to 

17 do with the Procedures Subcommittee Tracking 

18 System, which we now call the Board Review 

19 System, and we have made a number of 

20 improvements on that. 

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53

1 We've not really gone down a path of 

2 putting in that data comments on procedures 

3 that we may get from somewhere else. That BRS 

4 has really only been utilized for Board5 generated comments, and I think that's probably 

6 an appropriate use of it. When we get comments 

7 from I'll call them customers, whether they be 

8 claimants or advocates, or any interested 

9 party -- I mean, the word "customer" is kind of 

10 a nice word to use for that group of people. 

11 When we get comments, we respond to those 

12 comments. A lot of those tend to be 

13 claim-specific, though, but to be honest, we 

14 haven't built a system for when people send 

15 comments that might be related to a procedure 

16 rather than claim-specific. 

17 And I think that might be something 

18 that we might look at going forward. I don't 

19 know how often that happens just off the top of 

20 my head, but it might be worth trying to do a 

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54

1 little more and not only rely on the Board's 

2 review of procedures, but also do a little more 

3 to compile comments that are received from 

4 others on those. So we might be able to do 

5 something along those lines going forward. 

6 The indirect exposure assessment 

7 methods is mainly the coworker approach, we 

8 think. I guess surrogate data would fall into 

9 that as well, but it seems to be mainly 

10 coworker. Certainly a lot of work is being 

11 done right now on coworker and what's an 

12 appropriate approach for coworker in the SEC 

13 Work Group. I think that work addresses this 

14 recommendation to look carefully at how we're 

15 doing those indirect exposure assessments. So 

16 I think that's being addressed in that manner.

17 The issues related to better 

18 characterizing claimant favorability are 

19 quantifying really how we favor claimant20 favorable, but really how claimant-favorable 

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55

1 are we? We haven't done a whole lot down that 

2 path. I think there are some opportunities to 

3 do that, because there have been NIOSH dose 

4 assessments of a sort done for health effect

5 studies and those dose assessments or dose 

6 reconstructions would really want to be best 

7 estimates of those. 

8 You wouldn't want to over-estimate 

9 or be particularly claimant favorable, quote, 

10 "claimant favorable" in those cases because if 

11 you inflate the doses in your study, then you 

12 would have the result of minimizing or 

13 artificially deflating the corresponding risk 

14 coefficient. So those are really tried to be 

15 measured and really, really best estimate kinds 

16 of cases. And so, I think the comparison of 

17 some of those to what would our dose 

18 reconstruction be with the same set of data 

19 might be informative along those lines. 

20 Now, once we know that, I don't know 

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56

1 who the audience is for it. So we haven't 

2 really pushed very hard down that pathway 

3 because I don't really know where that 

4 argument, where that demonstration of 

5 favorability needs to be made. So we haven't 

6 pushed very far down that path at all.

7 The OTIB-20 items, we did go back 

8 into OTIB-20 and deleted the comparison that 

9 had been identified in the quality of science 

10 as not being sufficiently rigorous. That is no 

11 longer a part of that process. The section 

12 that was deleted, I don't know that it was ever 

13 utilized even. So anyway, it hasn't been there 

14 for quite some time. That was deleted very 

15 shortly after the 10-year review was completed.

16 And we did review the EPA document. 

17 One of the key action items had to do -- this 

18 was related to surrogate data, this EPA 

19 document that we were supposed to review. We 

20 did obtain a review from that from someone 

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57

1 actually outside of DCAS and it didn't really 

2 seem that there was much in the EPA document 

3 that translated into our program very directly. 

4 The report did kind of look at our IG-004 and 

5 didn't -- findings that would warrant -- or 

6 anyhow, I don't know if the report looked at 

7 IG-004, but the report didn't have any findings 

8 that warrant any changes to our IG-004, which 

9 is our implementation guide for using surrogate 

10 data. So our surrogate data tasks that we are 

11 doing and have done elsewhere I think are 

12 sufficient. The EPA document we didn't find 

13 very instructive or applicable. 

14 And so, there are other specific 

15 recommendations in there. There's a specific 

16 one about when using CDER data specify the 

17 specific files that's used. We tend to shy 

18 away from using CDER data on coworkers. We try 

19 and get the data sets from the sites themselves 

20 rather than trying to get it out of the CDER 

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58

1 database. So that may come up once in a while, 

2 but it's not a common item that we would have 

3 to deal with. 

4 That's sort of the end of my notes. 

5 I've already spoken much longer than I normally 

6 speak, so I'll see if anyone has any questions 

7 on that or any question or comments overall.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Anybody with 

9 questions or comments? 

10 MEMBER ANDERSON: Well, that's a 

11 good update.

12 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, this is 

13 Dave Kotelchuck. Agreed. That was very 

14 useful, Stu. Appreciate it. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Thank you. 

16 And like I said, once our website redesign is 

17 rolled out, we will take a shot at trying to get 

18 some updated discussion on our website and 

19 maybe some periodic updates on things that are 

20 continuing. Some of these it's hard to report 

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59

1 milestones. You know, are you listening to 

2 your customers carefully? And, well, I 

3 certainly hope so. I hope we continue to try 

4 to listen as carefully as we can. 

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thanks 

6 again. 

7 I don't know if we're ready for this 

8 now, but LaVon?

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, this is 

10 LaVon. I'm not sure I can be quite as long as 

11 Stu. 

12 (Laughter)

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, I should be 

14 pretty sort.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: But we may have 

16 lots of questions, though. 

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. Well, 

18 there you go. Yes, we'll make it as long that 

19 way. 

20 As for the next Board meeting, at 

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60

1 this time I do not believe any of the open 

2 petitions will be ready to be closed for the 

3 November Board meeting, nor do I believe any of 

4 the new Petition Evaluations will be ready. We 

5 are actively working on the new Petition 

6 Evaluations and working to make the 180 days; 

7 and we're on schedule, but the 180 days for all 

8 three of those petitions is beyond the November 

9 Board meeting. 

10 It really looks like the March Board 

11 meeting is going to be extremely busy. We 

12 should be presenting new Petition Evaluations 

13 for Dow, Walnut Creek, Westinghouse, 

14 Bloomfield residual period and INL. I also 

15 anticipate a few of the existing open petitions 

16 will be ready for closure for the March meeting. 

17 We should be presenting a Grand Junction 

18 addendum. I believe with the few remaining 

19 items we have at Fernald and some of the reports 

20 we've done with Rocky and the schedule that we 

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61

1 have on Rocky -- I believe Fernald and Rocky may 

2 be ready for a Work Group recommendation in 

3 March. We're working towards closing a number 

4 of the Hanford issues before that March 

5 meeting, and so we may be able to close out at 

6 least some of Hanford by then. And I think a 

7 lot of the SRS issues will be completed by then. 

8 So the March meeting is shaping up to be really 

9 a full meeting.

10 As we get closer to the November 

11 meeting if any of the open items that we have --

12 if it looks like we can expedite them and get 

13 them closed in time for the Board's review prior 

14 to the November meeting, we'll do that. We'll 

15 do everything we can. Otherwise, they're all 

16 going to be pushed to March.

17 And that's all I had.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I guess a 

19 response and a suggestion. The response is I 

20 think you're being pretty optimistic about some 

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62

1 of this for March, but we'll see.

2 One of the things though, if some of 

3 these, or even just one of these petitions is 

4 relatively straightforward in terms of the 

5 recommendation and findings and so forth, 

6 there's no reason we could not do it at our Board 

7 conference call.

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think we've 

10 done that before, usually on the 83.14-type of 

11 petition and some of the older AWE sites which 

12 tend to be less complicated and tend to be less 

13 questions about. So think about that for -- I 

14 can't remember when our call is --

15 Is in January, Ted?

16 MR. KATZ: I think so. I don't 

17 recall exactly, but I think it is.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think I recall 

19 it, sometime in early January, but whatever. 

20 But it might be something we can do and that will 

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63

1 sort of ease some of the congestion for the 

2 March meeting.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. 

4 MEMBER BEACH: Jim, that meeting is 

5 January 6th.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thanks.

7 Anybody with other questions for 

8 LaVon?

9 No? I guess you are going to be 

10 shorter than Stu. Probably just as well. 

11 Keep the boss happy.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: That's right.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, we can do 

14 that.

15 Updates from Work Groups and 

16 Subcommittees? No one is obligated, but if you 

17 have anything to report?

18 MEMBER MUNN: Well, this is Wanda. 

19 Procedures has its usual long-winded agenda, if 

20 you want me to go over that very quickly.

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64

1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, if it could 

2 be quickly.

3 MEMBER MUNN: All right. That's 

4 fine. We met on August the 28th by what we call 

5 a live meeting. We had a full complement of 

6 issues to address and we were able to get 

7 through them in pretty good time. 

8 We closed out OTIB-34. That's 

9 internal dosimetry coworker data for X-10. We 

10 had three outstanding findings which we were 

11 able to close. And the ER-33, which is a pilot 

12 plant, had no findings on it. We were able to 

13 address that pretty easily. We also finished 

14 our discussion which had gone on for a couple 

15 meetings with respect to a distribution method 

16 that was being used in Version 5.7 of IREP. 

17 Continuing we have discussions on 

18 our dissolution models for insoluble 

19 plutonium-238. That's OTIB-83, I believe. 

20 NIOSH is rebuilding the scope and the type and 

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65

1 exposure conditions at Mound which affects this 

2 particular OTIB pretty heavily. So that's 

3 ongoing, as is OTIB-54, which is the fission and 

4 activation product assessment for internal 

5 dose-related gross beta and alpha analyses. 

6 There's a reactor modeling report and other 

7 findings that are still active there.

8 As I have mentioned in earlier 

9 reports, we're spending a great deal of time now 

10 with the PERs. We had more than a half-dozen 

11 on our plate this time in one dimension or 

12 another. We're looking at PER-42, Linde, and 

13 43. I think that's internal and external 

14 dosimetry organ choices for IREP model 559. 

15 There are no findings, but the cases that are 

16 going to be reviewed in-depth are currently 

17 being selected. That's probably already done 

18 and in the hands of SC&A for work now. 

19 The ER-45, which is Aliquippa 

20 Forge, is ongoing, as is 38. Thirty-eight is 

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66

1 Hooker, and the case audits for that are 

2 underway right now. We took look at potential 

3 PERs that are coming up yet and we still have 

4 as yet not addressed completely Ames, K-25 and 

5 LANL. 

6 And our next meeting is set for 

7 November 18th. We're having a significant gap 

8 between our meetings now based on the work load 

9 that key participants have on not just 

10 procedures reviews, but other ongoing 

11 activities as well. And that wraps it up 

12 unless there are any questions.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, 

14 Wanda. 

15 Anybody else with Work Group or 

16 Subcommittee updates?

17 I can give I guess one SEC Group just 

18 to follow up. I know that SC&A has sent in sort 

19 of their comments on sort of the coworker 

20 discussion follow-up to the meeting of the Work 

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67

1 Group we had just before the last Board meeting. 

2 I don't know, Jim Neton, if you're 

3 still on the line, if you have a plan in place 

4 for responding to that in terms of timing?

5 DR. NETON: Yes, Dr. Melius, I've 

6 been working. I've received the 9-5 memo from 

7 SC&A and looked at it and it appears that 

8 there's substantial agreement between us. I 

9 think the trick is going to be of course 

10 deciding where to set the bar in these various 

11 criteria that we're establishing. I'm working 

12 on that. I would hope to have -- well, first 

13 of all, I'd like to respond to the SC&A memo 

14 because they asked for a response. And I could 

15 have that out in the next week or so. I've 

16 reviewed it and it's very straightforward. 

17 But I am working on, as we talked 

18 about at the Work Group meeting in Idaho, 

19 revising Draft Implementation Guide for 

20 Coworker Model to incorporate the timeliness 

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68

1 that was discussed at the meeting, as well as 

2 the information SC&A just provided. And I'm 

3 hoping to have a draft out of that document 

4 sometime around the first full week of October.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

6 DR. NETON: That should give us 

7 enough time to maybe hold a meeting before the 

8 next Board meeting and hash out some of the 

9 details.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Good. 

11 Good. No, you answered the question, because 

12 I wanted to make sure you had enough time but 

13 that we could -- we'll plan on holding a Work 

14 Group meeting and do that in terms of follow-up. 

15 So thank you on that. 

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Dave 

17 Kotelchuck on Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee 

18 just to say to folks on the Committee that the 

19 meeting that was originally scheduled for 

20 tomorrow has been postponed to Wednesday, 

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69

1 October 29th. So you'll get further notices 

2 about that.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. I think 

4 we already got a notice about the 29th, right?

5 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. Any other 

7 Work Group reports?

8 Okay. If not, just I think Ted 

9 circulated an email that since the last meeting 

10 the Santa Susana Work Group added -- Dr. Poston 

11 and Dr. Anderson were both added to the Work 

12 Group. That Work Group was sort of short of 

13 Members. 

14 Ted, plans for the November 

15 meeting?

16 MR. KATZ: Right. Thank you, Jim. 

17 So a couple things I guess just to note. With 

18 respect to Santa Susana, I guess we're still 

19 expecting -- the Work Group has not met yet. 

20 The Work Group is still waiting on the NIOSH 

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70

1 product to be delivered. But the intent is to 

2 have the Work Group meet of course in October 

3 before the Board meeting. And I guess I just 

4 wanted a little clarification from LaVon about 

5 that, because it was his remark that he didn't 

6 expect anything to be completed on any of the 

7 current SECs that are on the Board's plate. 

8 But Santa Susana, I thought our intent was to 

9 get to the end of the issues there. Is that not 

10 still correct? 

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, the 

12 original goal was that -- and Jim's probably got 

13 a little more insight than I do, but I don't 

14 think based on the current schedule we're going 

15 to be able to have everything closed out by 

16 then, and we'll probably be providing an 

17 update. 

18 But, Jim, you might have something 

19 to add.

20 DR. NETON: Well, we're trying to 

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71

1 complete the external dose coworker model for 

2 Santa Susana. That's been the holdup for quite 

3 some time. And specifically we're trying to 

4 evaluate the neutron doses. 

5 We had a data capture at Hanford. 

6 We're expecting documents from them -- not 

7 until the 19th of this month, so that's in a 

8 couple days. Once we get that, we'll review 

9 the data we receive from them. And I don't 

10 think that the -- the coworker model right now 

11 is scheduled for completion until near the end 

12 of October. I'm not sure if that would allow 

13 enough time to have a Working Group meeting. 

14 Maybe a brief one before the Board meeting. 

15 Although if we're only going to focus this one 

16 issue, maybe we could do a telephone call, 

17 because it would be fairly short. 

18 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: This is Phil. 

19 There is one area of concern that's come up from 

20 a number of people from the Santa Susana, and 

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72

1 that's the fact that there is widespread 

2 contamination in the caldera area and it's 

3 possible of people having internal exposures 

4 without being monitored for it. It's 

5 something I think we're really going to have to 

6 look into and see if we can come up with an 

7 answer there.

8 DR. NETON: Well, Phil, are you 

9 speaking specifically of off-site residents 

10 being exposed?

11 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No. No, I'm 

12 actually speaking about some of the people --

13 I mean, there has been contamination found in 

14 Area II. Actually in all the areas there's 

15 been samples taken. Some of them have low16 level contamination, but the water was recycled 

17 up to NASA, whereas some of that water that they 

18 were using from Area I actually was 

19 contaminated that they had. So people who 

20 might have been badged for Area IV but normally 

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73

1 speaking were not monitored for any uptakes, 

2 what kind of coworker data there might be or how 

3 that issue would be addressed and if they can 

4 come up with a bounding estimate or not.

5 DR. NETON: I guess I'm still 

6 confused. These people are exposed off site 

7 though, not on site?

8 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, I mean, 

9 some of them could have been exposed like in 

10 Area II where they had sodium burns. There was 

11 some depleted uranium, my understanding is, 

12 that had been buried at one time that has since 

13 been removed. So some of these people actually 

14 had potential for uptakes. I realize we're 

15 having to limit it to people who were badged for 

16 Area IV, but they could have been actually 

17 exposed in other areas and I'm not sure all of 

18 them were actually monitored for uptakes. I 

19 mean, I haven't found anything yet that says all 

20 personnel who were badged into Area IV were 

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74

1 monitored for internal dosimetry. I may have 

2 missed that. I don't know. 

3 DR. NETON: Yes.

4 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: But that's kind 

5 of one area of concern.

6 DR. NETON: Well, that's something 

7 we need to take up then. I know there are some 

8 issues surrounding the badging of people in 

9 Area IV and whether workers could have come from 

10 other locations and such.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: This is Jim 

12 Melius. I mean, I'd obviously like to get this 

13 site addressed; it's been a long while, but at 

14 the same time part of our reason for holding a 

15 meeting near the site is to get additional 

16 information. And what's probably as important 

17 is to have identified issues that we need 

18 further input on, that where the people that 

19 worked on the site would be able to help address 

20 those in some way. 

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75

1 So if we can at least get to that 

2 point and make some effort to get people to come 

3 to the public comment period to identify them, 

4 I think that would be the reason for holding the 

5 meeting more than trying to essentially have 

6 everything closed out by November. But I think 

7 having at least your Work Group call or 

8 something to make sure everybody's up to date 

9 and understands what's going I think would be 

10 useful just given what's happened, the time 

11 frame work on this.

12 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I think they are 

13 going to have a fair number of people who 

14 actually show up for the public comment period 

15 when we're out there --

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

17 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: -- they would 

18 have liked to have been able for us to have a 

19 meeting before the actual Board meeting since 

20 we're addressing some of their concerns and 

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76

1 documents they have found.

2 MEMBER MUNN: This is Wanda. Jim, 

3 thank you for your observations. I'm on that 

4 Work Group and it's very clear to me from this 

5 current discussion that a great deal of 

6 communication and a great deal of information 

7 is being exchanged at some level that I have not 

8 seen. I don't know whether I've missed the 

9 Work Group's internal discussions or whether 

10 there hasn't been anything available for me to 

11 see. 

12 And due to the fact that we are going 

13 to be meeting in that site and I was looking 

14 forward to a fairly extensive information 

15 gathering and observation opportunity, it 

16 would certainly be helpful for me -- I don't 

17 know about the other Work Group Members, but it 

18 would be very helpful for me if someone were to 

19 put together a more current identification of 

20 documents and materials with which we should be 

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77

1 familiar by now. Because as has been pointed 

2 out, it's been a long time since we've had a 

3 meeting of any sort and Phil has had to take this 

4 up as not having been the original chair. So 

5 it would be very helpful from my perspective 

6 unless I'm the only person in the Work Group who 

7 isn't aware of where we are. I'd really like 

8 to have an update of some sort to give me an 

9 opportunity to review whatever documentation 

10 is available that I should be looking at and 

11 clearly haven't recently.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, and that's a 

13 very good idea. I mean, because again with two 

14 new Members to the Work Group it would be 

15 helpful for them and probably to the entire 

16 Board, but certainly for the Work Group. And 

17 again, having that done and then having a 

18 conference call or meeting of the Work Group 

19 beforehand in order to make sure everybody sort 

20 of understands the issues would be helpful. 

NEAL R. GROSS

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78

1 And if I recall right, we're 

2 planning to do a tour of the work site or the 

3 area?

4 MEMBER MUNN: I hope so. 

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

6 MR. KATZ: So we're planning to do 

7 a tour the day before the Board meeting, 

8 November 5th, and we're making logistical 

9 arrangements for that. And there are some 

10 complications just because the current 

11 operator/owner Boeing is actually -- it's poor 

12 timing. They're relinquishing their role in 

13 October. But anyway, it will come off and 

14 we'll have that tour. 

15 As I understand from Lara who's the 

16 lead for NIOSH on that site a lot of facilities 

17 are no longer there, but we'll certainly get a 

18 tour of the site and sort of meet a lot of Phil's 

19 intent in terms of understanding layout and so 

20 on. And we're trying to get a hold of the 

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79

1 company that's actually sort have actually sort 

2 of handled the bus tours in the past so that the 

3 driver will have experience with that, too. So 

4 that will happen and that will be helpful for 

5 sure.

6 I just want to check on Phil's --

7 what I think I understood Phil, you, to say that 

8 you're already aware that there will be 

9 considerable public participation at the Board 

10 meeting in terms of attendance. Is that 

11 correct what you were --

12 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Correct. 

13 There are a number of large concerns. And 

14 something I wasn't -- I don't know how I missed 

15 them; I assume they're there on the O: drive, 

16 SC&A in the past did a number of interviews with 

17 workers and their experiences there and what 

18 they did and et cetera, et cetera, which I have 

19 not read those. I'll be honest with you. I 

20 honestly was not aware of them until yesterday. 

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80

1 So it's something I've got to look at and 

2 hopefully those are on the O: drive. I assume 

3 they are somewhere. I just had missed them 

4 evidently.

5 MR. KATZ: Right. Well, where I 

6 was just headed with this is -- I mean, so that's 

7 great that there is already some, but I think 

8 we need to -- as we made an effort at INL that 

9 I think was very fruitful, if we could just --

10 between NIOSH's and SC&A's contacts out there 

11 let's reach out to the individuals we know of 

12 just to let them know of the meeting and the date 

13 and try to get them there. 

14 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: We have some 

15 meetings coming up for them to -- people to talk 

16 to and would like to address us.

17 MR. KATZ: Right. 

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Not to 

19 complicate this further, but if there are 

20 people who need to be able to have more 

NEAL R. GROSS

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This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Teleconference Board Meeting, has 

been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and personally identifiable information 

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81

1 information that's not really either 

2 appropriate or would fit the time frame of a 

3 public meeting or public comment period, maybe 

4 we want to have time for them to be interviewed, 

5 or a Work Group to talk to them along with NIOSH 

6 and S&CA or whatever. Whatever would be most 

7 helpful in terms of giving them input as well 

8 as gathering information I think we should try 

9 to do out there.

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Sounds good to 

11 me.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

13 MEMBER MUNN: In the meantime, for 

14 the Work Group, if someone, I don't know who, 

15 would be good enough to put together some 

16 indication of documentation we should be 

17 looking at.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Do I hear LaVon 

19 volunteer? I thought I heard --

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, I was 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Teleconference Board Meeting, has 

been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and personally identifiable information 

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82

1 thinking that would come from my group, so we'll 

2 put something together with myself and Lara.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, okay.

4 MEMBER MUNN: Oh, thank you, LaVon. 

5 I really appreciate --

6 (Simultaneous speaking)

7 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: And, LaVon, one 

8 quick question: This is Phil. One quick 

9 question there: If I could give you some 

10 contacts to get in touch with some of these 

11 people before the Board meeting, I don't know, 

12 maybe they could at least point you to some area 

13 or have some information that you guys could 

14 look at? Like I said, the SC&A interviews, I 

15 was not even aware of those until yesterday. 

16 MR. KATZ: Right. So, Phil, I 

17 mean, certainly SC&A can send LaVon their list 

18 of contacts and then LaVon has their own, 

19 NIOSH's. And certainly they can do that 

20 outreach as part of setting up for the Board 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Teleconference Board Meeting, has 

been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and personally identifiable information 

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83

1 meeting.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, it may be 

3 good to do a conference call with Phil and SC&A. 

4 Lara, or whoever is handling it from DCAS might 

5 get everyone coordinated. 

6 MR. KATZ: Right. Well, I mean, I 

7 think we need a Work Group meeting even though 

8 the group --

9 (Simultaneous speaking)

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, 

11 absolutely. I think that's --

12 MR. KATZ: Right. So I will work 

13 to schedule that for -- I guess later in October 

14 will be more useful for NIOSH because they'll 

15 have gotten more work done at least related --

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

17 MR. KATZ: -- to the coworker model 

18 and be fresh about all the other issues, or 

19 whatever they might be. And I guess the focus 

20 of that meeting can be sort of a dry run of 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

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84

1 bringing everybody up to date because we want 

2 to do some sort of presentation about that at 

3 the Board meeting as well. 

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Anything 

5 else on the Board meeting?

6 MR. KATZ: No, that's what I have. 

7 We don't have a hotel yet, but we're working on 

8 that.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

10 MR. KATZ: And it's pretty clear 

11 that we only need a day for the Board meeting 

12 itself.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: Yes. So that will be 

15 on -- I believe it's the 6th.

16 MEMBER ANDERSON: And did I hear a 

17 January meeting?

18 MR. KATZ: On, no, no. 

19 MEMBER ANDERSON: A January 

20 conference call?

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Teleconference Board Meeting, has 

been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and personally identifiable information 

has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not been reviewed and certified by the 

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85

1 MR. KATZ: January is the 

2 teleconference meeting.

3 MEMBER ANDERSON: And that's on the 

4 6th?

5 MR. KATZ: Yes.

6 MEMBER ANDERSON: Okay. Because I 

7 didn't have that on my --

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: But we're 

9 planning on surprising you.

10 MEMBER ANDERSON: That's okay. 

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. And then 

12 Board correspondence. The only 

13 correspondence I'm aware of since our last 

14 meeting has been a -- I think it's a 

15 continuation -- maybe it was before the last 

16 meeting, I can't remember. But Dr. McKeel was 

17 concerned about the minutes no longer being 

18 produced for the Board meetings. I believe Ted 

19 has responded to him. And then I believe Dr. 

20 Ziemer also responded recently, and I think 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Teleconference Board Meeting, has 

been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and personally identifiable information 

has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not been reviewed and certified by the 

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86

1 this morning Dr. McKeel re-responded again. 

2 So I guess that just will continue.

3 So, any other correspondence I'm 

4 not aware of, Ted?

5 MR. KATZ: No, that covers it.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

7 you, everybody. Unless there's other 

8 business, we will close this meeting. And 

9 thank you, everybody, and we'll see you in 

10 November.

11 MR. KATZ: Okay. Thanks, 

12 everyone.

13 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

14 matter went off the record at 12:40 p.m.)

15

16

17

18

19

20

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433
This transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Teleconference Board Meeting, has 

been reviewed for concerns under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and personally identifiable information 

has been redacted as necessary. The transcript, however, has not been reviewed and certified by the 

Chair of the Advisory Board for accuracy at this time. The reader should be cautioned that this transcript is 

for information only and is subject to change.

87

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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