. 

1 

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COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

JOINT MEETING OF THE

SAVANNAH RIVER SITE (SRS) WORK GROUP

AND THE SPECIAL EXPOSURE COHORT (SEC)

ISSUES WORK GROUP

+ + + + +

WEDNESDAY

AUGUST 16, 2017

+ + + + +

The Work Group convened via 

teleconference at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time, 

Bradley Clawson and Jim Melius, Co-Chairs, 

presiding.

PRESENT:

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Co-Chair

JAMES M. MELIUS, Co-Chair

JOSIE BEACH, Member 

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member
. 

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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

NANCY ADAMS, NIOSH Contractor

MATT ARNO, ORAU Team

BOB BARTON, SC&A

RON BUCHANAN, SC&A

NANCY CHALMERS, ORAU Team

JOSHUA FESTER

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

WARREN JOHNSON

TOM LABONE, ORAU Team

MICHAEL MAHATHY, ORAU Team

JIM NETON, DCAS

MICHAEL RAFKY, HHS

JOHN STIVER, SC&A 

TIM TAULBEE, ORAU Team

BOB WARREN 
. 

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Contents

Welcome and Roll Call............................. 4

SC&A Review of SRS Subcontractor Bioassay......... 7

Data Completeness................................. 8

NIOSH Evaluation of Construction Worker.......... 54

Monitoring in High Level Cave Job Plans.......... 54

Lunch............................................ 98

NIOSH SRS Internal Coworker Dosimetry Data Report 

and SC&A Review................................. 104

NIOSH Report on Assessing Exposure to Thorium... 126

232 from 1972-1989.............................. 126

Petitioner Comments............................. 217

WG SEC Recommendations and/or Path Forward on... 232

Discussion Items; Plans for August.............. 232

Board Meeting................................... 232

Adjourn......................................... 233

 
. 

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

2 (10:30 a.m.)

3 Welcome and Roll Call 

4 MR. KATZ: Welcome, everyone. This is 

5 Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health. 

6 It is an unusual joint meeting at the SEC Issues 

7 Work Group and the Savannah River Site Work 

8 Group.

9 And just to explain that a little bit, 

10 we're having a joint meeting because we're 

11 discussing both coworker modeling, and 

12 specifically the coworker models that have been 

13 developed for SRS and other material for SRS.

14 SRS had sort of been chosen as one of 

15 the sites where they'd be sort of a field trial 

16 of approach, the methods that the Board and NIOSH 

17 agrees upon for using for developing coworker 

18 models going forward. So that's why it's a joint 

19 meeting.

20 The materials for the Board for this 

21 meeting are posted on the NIOSH website under 

22 this program, the Board section, scheduled 
. 

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1 meetings and today's date. So if you go there 

2 you can see all the background reading materials 

3 that are going to be discussed.

4 The agenda's there as well, and you'll 

5 see it's a long agenda. It seems unlikely to me 

6 that we'll get through it all, but it's good to 

7 have it anyway to see what's on our plate. And 

8 there's even more material than is showed on the 

9 agenda on our plate, at least with SRS. So you 

10 have that there to follow along with the 

11 discussion of the Work Groups.

12 The Work Groups also have access to 

13 Skype if people want to show anything to each 

14 other or present slides or what have you. That's 

15 not available to the public because it has to be 

16 that way for Privacy Act matters, but anyway 

17 that's there too.

18 And last thing, just to note, for 

19 everybody, except when you're speaking to the 

20 group, please keep your phones on mute and if you 

21 don't have a mute button, press *6. *6 will mute 

22 your phone for this conference line and then *6 
. 

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1 would unmute your phone as well. Please don't 

2 put the call on hold at any point because that 

3 causes problems for everyone.

4 So that takes care of preliminaries. 

5 We'll do roll call. Well, first of all, for the 

6 Board Members, I know we have both our Chairs, 

7 that's Jim Melius, who's also Chair of the full 

8 Board. Dr. Melius is Chair of SEC Issues Work 

9 group. And for SRS, we have Brad Clawson, who is 

10 Chair of SRS.

11 We also have, for SRS, Dr. Lockey, Jim 

12 Lockey, who's present already. Josie Beach, 

13 present already. And let's see. For SRS, who 

14 are we missing? And Dave Richardson, I don't 

15 believe is on the line yet. Or Phil Schofield, 

16 are you on line? 

17 (No response.)

18 MR. KATZ: Okay, we're still awaiting 

19 David and Phil from SRS. From the SEC Issues 

20 Work Group, we already have, as well as the Chair, 

21 Paul Ziemer and Gen Roessler, who are on the line.

22 So that takes care of any -- and 
. 

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1 there's no conflicts of interest for the Board 

2 Members for SRS, with respect to SRS, and it's 

3 not an issue to SEC Issues Work Group. But please 

4 speak to SRS conflicts, for the rest of the folks, 

5 as we go through roll call. And let's start with 

6 NIOSH/ORAU Team.

7 (Roll call.)

8 MR. KATZ: Okay. Very good, thanks. 

9 Okay, then. Again, reminder to mute your phones, 

10 press *6 to mute your phone if you do not have a 

11 mute button. And Jim and Brad, it's your meeting. 

12 

13 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Hey Ted, this is 

14 Phil.

15 MR. KATZ: Alright, Phil.

16 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No conflicts.

17 MR. KATZ: And then let me just check 

18 one last time, David Richardson, you on the line? 

19 (No response.)

20 MR. KATZ: Okay, no. Here we go.

21 SC&A Review of SRS Subcontractor Bioassay 
. 

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1 Data Completeness 

2 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: This is Jim Melius. 

3 Brad, why don't you chair the first two items, 

4 which are relevant to the SRS and the SEC, or 

5 more relevant, maybe more specific for it, and 

6 then I take over for the coworker.

7 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: That sounds good. 

8 I appreciate that. Well, I'd like to welcome 

9 everybody here today and I appreciate you getting 

10 together with us. 

11 The first thing that we've got on the 

12 agenda today is the review of SRS subcontractor 

13 bioassay completeness. It was done by SC&A. So, 

14 Joe, I'm going to turn this one to you and let 

15 you go from there.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. Thank you, 

17 Brad. Good morning. I think everybody has the 

18 report and the details. I'm just going to walk 

19 through the highlights.

20 As you know, the Board tasked SC&A 

21 back in September 2016, I think it was, to conduct 

22 what essentially is a broad-based review of 
. 

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1 bioassay data completeness for subcontractor 

2 trade workers, the subcontractor CTWs.

3 And essentially the goal was to look 

4 at that in terms of completeness given that that 

5 database and other databases are the cornerstone 

6 of the dose reconstruction when you're talking 

7 about coworker models.

8 And, again, that's the context of the 

9 discussion today. This is an open question. 

10 Subcontractor data completeness has been around 

11 for a few years. You know, Tim and I had 

12 interviewed a senior HP at Savannah River a few 

13 years ago where it became pretty clear that they 

14 had maintained subcontractor records in a 

15 separate file. They called them 

16 company files and they were eventually merged 

17 into the overall current electronic database. 

18 But, again, the question was, well, how complete 

19 were these separate files and were they merged in 

20 a complete manner?

21 So, anyway, without going into some of 

22 the history, I know certainly Tim and his folks 
. 

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1 have looked at this question and have looked at 

2 several possibilities. 

3 Our approach, after we were tasked, 

4 was to frankly take an approach that was fairly 

5 analogous with what Tim and his team were doing 

6 with the Building 773 high level caves.

7 Instead of looking at a construction 

8 job plans, per se, we made it a broader review of 

9 available RWPs. And as we quickly learned, they 

10 come in a variety of flavors in this timeframe at 

11 Savannah River, so we looked at a number of those 

12 different RWPs for individual CTWs, subcontractor 

13 CTWs to be specific.

14 And it's basically a means to 

15 ascertain whether one could find a corresponding 

16 job-specific bioassay result in the SRS internal 

17 dosimetry records. So that was the approach.

18 And our objective, I think we briefed 

19 the Board and NIOSH on this going back to some 

20 earlier Board meetings, was the survey for RWPs 

21 across a wide variety of facilities, operations, 

22 and timeframes.
. 

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1 We wanted to try to expand the scope 

2 of this review and we tried to find as many RWPs 

3 as we could for the period of '72 through '95. 

4 As it turns out, what we did locate were 

5 predominantly RWPs for the early '80s through '95 

6 with the vast majority of records for '89 through 

7 '95, which, you know, happens to correspond to 

8 Westinghouse's early tenure at Savannah River. 

9 They took over from DuPont in that timeframe of 

10 '89. 

11 And I guess it's not too surprising 

12 that we were looking at more RWPs, more entries, 

13 in that timeframe. I think it's pretty clear 

14 that Westinghouse expanded or increased the 

15 formality of the SRS safety program, including 

16 the radiation protection program and the RWPs so 

17 that certainly you had more expanded use of RWPs.

18 And at the same time, that coincided 

19 with things like K Reactor restart and D&D. And 

20 so there was a much greater outsourcing of work, 

21 much greater use of subcontractors onsite. So 

22 there was a lot of that going on in the early and 
. 

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1 mid-'90s. 

2 In any case, our review commenced in 

3 January of 2017 after, you know, arranging access 

4 through Savannah River. We had two onsite data 

5 captures in February and the review was 

6 essentially completed in the May-June timeframe.

7 So it was a fairly expedited review after SRS 

8 cleared the information for use. 

9 So the idea was to do a basic sampling 

10 but one that was a pretty simplified process, one 

11 that would not take -- was not a research 

12 exercise, was something that could be done 

13 certainly in several months. And that was also 

14 because, again, Savannah River really was facing 

15 some burdens on their EEOICPA program and we 

16 wanted to facilitate the reviews so that burden 

17 would be minimized on them. So, essentially, we 

18 had two onsite opportunities to look at records 

19 and to match some of those records accordingly. 

20 And I guess the other thing I want to 

21 mention, and I do so in the report, was a 

22 particular challenge in conducting the sampling. 
. 

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1 This is something we had not foreseen, was the 

2 relative scarcity of RWPs and the lack of uniform 

3 RWPs.

4 You know, you go in on something like 

5 this and you sort of expect to see more or less 

6 your traditional RWPs with, you know, timeframes, 

7 nuclides, jobs, hazards, and everything pretty 

8 well defined. That wasn't the case here. 

9 We found a variety of RWPs in 

10 different levels of detail, some of which 

11 included explicit bioassay -- shift bioassay 

12 requirements, some that were silent on that even 

13 though it was the same kind of work and involving 

14 the same kind of workers.

15 So, in any case, we located for the 

16 timeframe of '72 through '95, we located only 13 

17 permits. This included some rather extensive 

18 check -- I guess they call them sign-up sheets, 

19 involving thousands of names, but nonetheless, 

20 given the breadth of operations, it was 

21 surprising that we could only locate those, and 

22 those few numbers.
. 

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1 And we don't really have an answer for 

2 that. I think we discussed this with Savannah 

3 River that there's a possibility that a number of 

4 the RWPs were discarded. I think we mentioned a 

5 report, there were some reports, at least on the 

6 subcontractors' side, of records being destroyed 

7 after DuPont left. Or, you know, possibly they 

8 were filed in locations that we're just not aware 

9 of, that they were either at the operations or 

10 elsewhere, but certainly were not available to 

11 the EDWS searches that we conducted and the 

12 discussions we had at the site.

13 So in any case, that was a pretty 

14 significant limitation, but one that we worked 

15 through. And I'll get into that. In any case, 

16 there were a variety of RWP forms and some of 

17 these were extensive, some of these were just 

18 sign-up sheets.

19 And the sign-up sheets were a 

20 challenge because they, I think, came into vogue 

21 at a time when you had a large influx of workers 

22 and workers were standing by for radiological 
. 

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1 work. They do not indicate a specific job, a 

2 specific date, where that job was done, or a 

3 specific hazard. They were just sign-up sheets. 

4 We wrestled with that and decided to 

5 include them, but to offer results for ones that 

6 were only explicitly having -- explicitly 

7 reported bioassays as a requirement, just to 

8 distinguish that we had a large number of these 

9 entries that were not specific but embodied 

10 radiological work. And apparently it did entail 

11 some degree of follow-up, but there was just not 

12 that specificity or clarity on those.

13 So, again, it was a challenge. It 

14 turned out there wasn't a one-to-one relation 

15 where you could actually do a clear tracking 

16 between all the RWPs and job-specific bioassays 

17 that would have been conducted. And that 

18 certainly hampered some of the review.

19 Once RWPs were identified, the likely 

20 subcontractor CTWs on those RWPs were identified 

21 and sampled. For the large standing RWPs, we did 

22 that in a random way and tried to match them, all 
. 

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1 of them onsite with the SRS bioassay records.

2 And these came in either electronic, 

3 on fiche, or in physical files. So there was a 

4 variety of sources of where this information 

5 would be. And we looked at all of them. We had 

6 the help of the Savannah River internal dosimetry 

7 staff, excellent staff, worked closely with us to 

8 make sure that we were able to match what we could 

9 match.

10 We started with about 360 

11 subcontractors CTWs. And that's a number we 

12 successively culled down as duplicates were found 

13 or where it was determined that in fact they 

14 weren't subcontractors.

15 The coding system that's used at 

16 Savannah River, that enabled us to try to 

17 distinguish between subcontractors and prime 

18 workers or employees. And I think that was the 

19 process that we used to do that.

20 And we also culled out any RWPs where 

21 the job dates were not clearly recorded, just to 

22 make sure that we had some clear matchups. And 
. 

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1 that got us down to about 300, 306 thereabout, 

2 entries.

3 For those that could not be found at 

4 all -- and at first that was a relatively high 

5 number. I think we reported to the Board last 

6 year that, at that point in time, we were looking 

7 at 18 to 19 that we could not locate at all in 

8 the dosimetry system.

9 We went back to Savannah River, as we 

10 said we would, and went back and forth, and they 

11 ran various permutations. You know, one of the 

12 challenges on these RWPs is these were 

13 handwritten and the numbers and the names are 

14 often not as legible as you'd like to think. And 

15 abbreviations are used, incorrect numbers were 

16 actually written down. And with the help of 

17 Savannah River and using the various 

18 permutations, they were able to identify, I 

19 think, 13 or 14 of them. Ultimately, we only had 

20 five in the end that we could not find. They 

21 were unaccounted for. This was out of the 300-

22 some. 
. 

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1 As far as the bioassay matching 

2 process, we chose a simplified process, and I 

3 think it essentially reflects the scope of the 

4 review that we were taking. And frankly, the 

5 disparity of the RWPs themselves, as well as the 

6 limited time that we had onsite.

7 And essentially we focused on just the 

8 question, is there a job-specific bioassay result 

9 on record that corresponds to a RWP for a 

10 subcontractor CTW within the 30-day or 90-day 

11 grace period following that specific job, that 

12 specific RWP?

13 And, again, we simplified this in the 

14 sense that we did not consider the specific 

15 nuclides involved in trying to marry up the -- if 

16 the RWP happened to mention a nuclide, we then 

17 tried to marry that up with a corresponding 

18 bioassay.

19 I think we had some concerns about the 

20 RWPs in terms of their completeness, whether or 

21 not they were including all the nuclides in the 

22 first place. So, without going through and 
. 

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1 trying to delineate that, we just looked for any 

2 bioassays and provided, I think, a fair amount of 

3 leeway. And we simplified again that, because 

4 the RWPs were not uniformly explicit about an 

5 end-of-shift or follow-on bioassay, we provided 

6 two sets of information.

7 One that reflects or recognized the 

8 fact that even if the check-off wasn't there, a 

9 bioassay could have been very well expected in 

10 the process. And this was borne out, I think, in 

11 the body of the Notice of Violation that came 

12 later, that a lot of the forms lacked a check13 off even though, certainly, for example, in 

14 tritium work areas, you would be expected to 

15 provide urinalyses and what have you.

16 So, because of the ambiguity, we 

17 wanted to provide both sets of data and provide 

18 at least a measure of what that would tell us 

19 both ways.

20 In terms of the thoughts on matching, 

21 as far as numbers, as far as looking at the total 

22 RWPs, this is both those that were somewhat more 
. 

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1 ambiguous, those that had explicit bioassay 

2 follow-ons. At a 30-day point, we found 105 of 

3 the 306 total lacked a bioassay result in the 

4 records, which would be 66 percent, if you want 

5 to call it a success rate or completion rate.

6 At 90 days, that was 62 out of 306, 

7 and that would 80 percent complete, if you want 

8 to again use that term. Focusing only on those 

9 RWPs that were unambiguous, had a clear bioassay 

10 requirement upon completion of work, we found, 

11 again, the denominator drops down to 197. So 

12 it's about 200, or two-thirds of the total, were 

13 ones with the more explicit follow on bioassay. 

14 We found a 71 percent success rate, 57 out of 

15 197. Where at 90 days, 84 percent.

16 At any rate, I mentioned the Notice of 

17 Violation only because it was something that --

18 it wasn't something I was aware of, and something 

19 that I had been aware of that Board or NIOSH had 

20 discussed previously.

21 And in the course of looking at 

22 documentation of Savannah River, certainly there 
. 

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1 was a fair amount of documentation on that issue. 

2 And certainly, from our standpoint, we thought it 

3 had some pretty important implications for this 

4 discussion.

5 And in some respects, frankly, it 

6 overrides them, or possibly even renders moot 

7 some of the limited sampling we were able to 

8 accomplish. However, you know, again, I won't go 

9 into all of the details of the NOV, the violation.

10 I think all that's covered and quoted 

11 and cited in the reports on the -- we call it the 

12 NTS, Noncompliance Tracking System, that the DOE 

13 has, and it has a fair amount of details on the 

14 findings as well as the history as well as the 

15 corrective actions.

16 But just to summarize, Westinghouse 

17 was cited by DOE's Office of Enforcement in 1998, 

18 and I'm quoting, for deficient work processes 

19 with respect to full worker adherence to 

20 established WSRC -- that's Westinghouse Savannah 

21 River Company -- bioassay requirements.

22 DOE found that up to 79 percent of all 
. 

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1 -- and this is not a sample -- of all workers 

2 with job-specific bioassay requirements did not 

3 participate over a quarter, a three-month period 

4 in '97.

5 This was on top of an earlier 

6 Westinghouse self-assessment in 1995. That was 

7 the first assessment they did, that found that 67 

8 percent, two-thirds, of a more limited sample 

9 lacked participation by workers. And this was 

10 something, as I suggested or indicated in a 

11 report, this followed a 1990 Tiger Team finding 

12 that focused on delinquent bioassay samples 

13 looking at the follow-up program for those 

14 delinquent bioassay samples as being deficient.

15 So, anyway, the corrective actions 

16 that were completed toward the end of 1998, I 

17 think it was December of 1998, addressed the 

18 various issues or gap or needs in the procedures 

19 and the tracking system. The RWP formed manager 

20 and worker training programs and a self21 assessment program for job-specific bioassay.

22 So it's pretty much soup-to-nuts in 
. 

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1 terms of upgrading the program that was 

2 responsible for administering the job-specific 

3 bioassays at Savannah River.

4 In any case, we closed in our report 

5 with some discussion regarding an appropriate 

6 success rate. I'm not sure it's the best word, 

7 but maybe completion rate.

8 And this was a key issue that was 

9 raised, as I recall, at one of the earlier Work 

10 Group meetings on the subject. I think Jim, Jim 

11 Neton raised it initially. And certainly the 

12 question was, you know, we can do all this work, 

13 but in the end, what's the certain acceptance 

14 criteria, what's the success rate that would be 

15 a determining consideration?

16 And at the last Work Group meeting, we 

17 had, I think, it was in September this past year, 

18 Tim also broached the subject. And I included 

19 the exchange by Tim with Brad on this topic in 

20 the report. Because I thought actually it was a 

21 pretty reasoned attempt to find a basis for a 

22 metric. You know, we haven't had much discussion 
. 

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1 on that, but certainly it was one discussion that 

2 got into that.

3 And I think that discussion actually 

4 illustrated that it's not just the percentage but 

5 also the considerations that go into making a 

6 judgment. You know, considerations go into

7 making a judgment on how complete it is, sort of 

8 like how adequate is adequate in terms of 

9 coworker model development.

10 I guess, I've got to say, I'm not 

11 comfortable with 25 percent incompleteness in a 

12 key database in this way, but in the end I think 

13 what we point out in the report, the apparent 

14 incompleteness that we found and practically all 

15 of these surveys -- and I, in looking at Tim's 

16 report, and Tim will speak more specifically 

17 about it, the percentages are still pretty, I 

18 think, pretty telling that you don't really have 

19 a complete database when it comes to job-specific 

20 bioassays.

21 And certainly, in the end, I hope we 

22 can all agree that, you know, 79 percent of non-
. 

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1 participation equates to, from our advantage 

2 point, in terms of coworker model development, 

3 you know, a pretty high level of incompleteness. 

4 So if the question that the Work Group 

5 had tasked us with was, you know, whether the 

6 subcontractor CTW bioassay database was complete 

7 or not, I think, if nothing else, this would be 

8 a punctuation point on the conclusion that it's 

9 not complete.

10 So, in any case, given the simplifying 

11 assumptions we had to make and the uncertainties 

12 imposed by the disparate and pretty incomplete 

13 RWPs, again, I hope we don't spend a lot of time 

14 wrestling over the mechanics or the statistics of 

15 the sampling exercise.

16 I think we'll be the first to admit 

17 that, given the limitations, it was a rough 

18 sampling exercise, but I think we can focus on 

19 the obvious bottom line result. Certainly, 

20 beyond that, I think it's going to be up to NIOSH 

21 and the Board to determine how that data gap 

22 should be addressed going forward.
.

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1 Let me just finish by saying that, and 

2 we don't do this very often, but I think we got 

3 a considerable amount of work appreciation in 

4 terms of work that was done by DOE and the 

5 Savannah River folks that host us at the site. 

6 And I want to make this clear next week, as well, 

7 that we had full access to the internal dosimetry 

8 staff at Savannah River and I doubt we could have 

9 gotten as far as we did without that very close 

10 coordination on their part, and that was a big 

11 help.

12 And also I think, particularly since 

13 we have the NIOSH staff here on this line, I thank 

14 Tim and his team because, again, he provided, his 

15 team provided the early data capture records that 

16 jump-started the review in the first place.

17 They had gotten a leg up on this issue 

18 and were able to give us information that was 

19 able to facilitate our review as well. He and 

20 his team attended both onsite reviews with us, 

21 and ORAU basically scanned all the documentation 

22 for uploading to SRDB in realtime at the site. 
.

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1 So, you know, again, there was a 

2 considerable amount of help and collaboration in 

3 terms of getting this thing to happen in 

4 realtime, and I just want to say I appreciate all 

5 that. It was a very open review and I think that 

6 helped a great deal. That's it.

7 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Good. Sorry, I was 

8 talking on mute there for a little while. Are 

9 there any questions from the Work Group?

10 MEMBER LOCKEY: Joe, Jim Lockey. In 

11 your summary you said at least from '89 forward, 

12 what about before '89?

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, we definitely 

14 find some RWPs with entries before '89, but we 

15 were, I think, surprised that there weren't more. 

16 We did find some relatively small ones with 

17 relatively small numbers of entries, I think in 

18 '86 and a few in '82. But in terms of the 300, 

19 that's a small minority, you know, of the total. 

20 And I don't have a good explanation 

21 for that, and neither does Savannah River, why 

22 outside of really the construction of the job 
.

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1 plans that, I think, Tim and his team found for 

2 773, we just didn't really find very many before 

3 about '88. We did find some for '88. 

4 So, again, there is no clear 

5 explanation for that except they're either in a 

6 location that nobody knows about, maybe Tom 

7 LaBone might know about it, but those records 

8 just weren't accessible through the search 

9 mechanism that we were using in conjunction with 

10 the dosimetry program at SRS.

11 MEMBER LOCKEY: So, just so I 

12 understand, so before '89, you had no data, so 

13 you had nothing to rely on before --

14 MR. FITZGERALD: We do have data but 

15 the vast majority of it is '89 and beyond, almost 

16 coinciding with, as I indicated, the Westinghouse 

17 Savannah River tenure.

18 We do have some data points, as does 

19 obviously NIOSH, for 773-A, but when queried, 

20 Savannah River, when queried about that first 

21 specific topic, "Where are the 1980s in terms of 

22 RWPs?", they could not answer that, and we could 
.

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1 not locate them after a number of searches.

2 We did search physically at the site 

3 through the document control facility. That was 

4 done in conjunction with NIOSH, and we just 

5 weren't successful in finding RWPs for the --

6 more RWPs for the 80s. We do have some limited 

7 number.

8 Certainly, there were a larger number 

9 of RWPs once Westinghouse came onboard, because 

10 I think they instilled a more formal set of 

11 procedures, more requirements for RWPs. But I 

12 don't think that alone answers the question of 

13 why so few RWPs before '88/'89.

14 MEMBER LOCKEY: Thanks.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Joe, this is Paul 

16 Ziemer. Can I ask a question even though I'm not 

17 I'm on the SRS Work Group?

18 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Sure, go ahead, 

19 Paul. Yes.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: Joe, do you recall 

21 whether or not the Tiger Team review of 1990 

22 listed the work permits or not? Did they have 
.

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1 any statements on that? You listed the Tiger 

2 Team reports, right?

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I did. And 

4 actually, their focus was more on following up on 

5 delinquent bioassays, whether or not, you know -

6 - I think the report itself cites some -- let's 

7 me just go back and take a look real quick.

8 The report cites the Tiger Teams as 

9 saying that basically there was a number of 

10 delinquent -- let me just see if I can find this 

11 exactly here. Yeah, they were cited -- oh, here 

12 it is.

13 They were cited for noncompliance with 

14 DOE Order 5480.11 because -- and I'm going to 

15 quote you this: "the mechanism for follow-up and 

16 collection of delinquent bioassay samples is not 

17 working," and also that not all positive bioassay 

18 results are investigated and many investigations 

19 are incomplete because of the problem with 

20 delinquent bioassay samples.

21 So they didn't look per se at RWP 

22 follow-up. They looked at whether or not the 
.

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1 program had addressed bioassay samples and making 

2 sure that there were no delinquent samples, that 

3 wasn't working as far as they were saying.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay. Thanks. I 

5 didn't recall. It's been many years since I saw 

6 that report.

7 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: This is Phil, I've 

8 got just one question. On a lot of these samples, 

9 how many were taken at the completion of job, you 

10 know, within a day or two after completion? Or 

11 was there a real time-lag of three months, six 

12 months before they had them submit samples?

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Actually, in most 

14 cases, we found the bioassay the day of or the 

15 day after. Obviously, the grace period that we 

16 were providing, we were picking up others that 

17 came later, but particularly with the tritium 

18 bioassays, they were happening in realtime. 

19 So, no, we didn't see too much of a 

20 lag. Now, I recognize in looking at the RWP 

21 breakout. about three-quarters involved tritium, 

22 which if you think about the outsourcing at 
.

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1 Savannah River in the early '90s, it makes some 

2 sense because you're bringing in workers into 

3 places like K Reactor or in the K Area.

4 So, you know, you're talking about 

5 potential tritium exposure, and so there 

6 certainly would have been a fairly large scope of 

7 tritium sampling being done. But by and large, 

8 we found that sampling, when it was done, was 

9 done pretty promptly.

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay, thanks.

11 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Hey, Joe, this is 

12 Brad. I just wanted to make a clarification here 

13 in stuff like this. Now, NIOSH, because I was 

14 looking at your data on this, and basically both 

15 you and Tim came in pretty close to one another 

16 on percentages when you did your investigation. 

17 But NIOSH, basically, and Tim you can chime in on 

18 this, you mentioned basically looking at 773, 

19 correct?

20 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct. We 

21 looked at the job --

22 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay.
.

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1 DR. TAULBEE: -- on 773.

2 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. And SC&A's 

3 was kind of a more broader spectrum of, you 

4 basically took all these RWPs and looked at them 

5 from there. You weren't restricting it down to 

6 a certain facility or area, were you?

7 MR. FITZGERALD: There was relatively 

8 a few RWPs so in a sense, we just took all we 

9 could find. I think originally we were thinking 

10 about statistical sampling but that became a 

11 little bit beside the point once we found out how 

12 few we could actually locate.

13 I also might add that, in terms of 

14 comparison, keep in mind that we did make that 

15 distinction on those that had very explicit 

16 bioassay follow-up. So, certainly the second set 

17 of percentages, if you want to call it that, would 

18 be more appropriate, where we had about 197, I 

19 think it was 197 that we had a clear bioassay 

20 tag.

21 Again, what made this thing difficult 

22 was the -- even though you had radiological work 
.

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1 by subcontractor CTWs, the actual RWP forms 

2 varied in content. And some had very clear 

3 bioassay requirements, some had less clear 

4 bioassay requirements, some had none. The sign5 up sheets had none, even though it was the same 

6 kind of work.

7 I think this was -- if you look at the 

8 Notice of Violation of '98, that was one of the 

9 key findings, was a need to make the RWP system 

10 uniform and have a uniform bioassay check-off, 

11 and which I suspect the investigators were seeing 

12 as contributing to this ambiguity about whether 

13 or not bioassays should have been left.

14 In any case, but that's certainly the 

15 reason.

16 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Well, this is what 

17 I found interesting, because 835 had been 

18 implemented in '96, and you know, we're getting 

19 into this area of '98 and we're still into this 

20 situation.

21 But this Notice of Violation, to me, 

22 they did a 100 percent check, isn't that correct?
.

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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, yeah. The 

2 history on this is in the NTS, but this is all 

3 kind of interesting. I didn't know this history 

4 and I was actually at DOE when this was all going 

5 on.

6 But there was a fairly significant 

7 Notice of Violation, a Level I Notice of 

8 Violation at Mound Laboratory in, I think it was 

9 '96 or '97. And that's where they found a similar 

10 issue where you had RWP required bioassays that 

11 were not being done.

12 And once that, again, civil penalty 

13 and violation was levied by DOE, apparently 

14 Savannah River took notice and began doing their 

15 own self-assessments. And Westinghouse did a 

16 self-assessment in, I think it was '95, to 

17 frankly review its own program and see where 

18 things stood.

19 And that's where the result of, I 

20 think, essentially two-thirds non-participation 

21 by workers in job-specific bioassays was a 

22 finding. That, frankly, precipitated a self-
.

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1 reporting under Price-Anderson, and I think 

2 eventually led Westinghouse to go back and 

3 actually do what appears to be a 100 percent 

4 verification where they actually looked at, for 

5 one quarter, all job-specific bioassays in terms 

6 of completeness. And that's where they found 79 

7 percent, almost 80 percent non-participation. 

8 And that was what actually cited in 

9 the Notice of Violation when that was levied in 

10 '98. So all this was engendered from self11 assessments done by Westinghouse but it was sort 

12 of on the onus of how Price-Anderson was being 

13 implemented, where if one was aware of an issue, 

14 one was responsible for, you know, ascertaining 

15 the degree of that issue, self-assessing, and 

16 self-reporting.

17 And certainly that was what happened 

18 by, well, for the mid-'90s. Certainly, the 835 

19 was promulgated January 1st. This all took place 

20 in '97/'98, so it was on the heels of that.

21 So I guess it's fair to say that even 

22 though 835 was implemented in January 1st of '96, 
.

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1 there was a lag to some extent on the actual 

2 implementation of that aspect of the program 

3 until the corrective actions were taken by the 

4 end of '98.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Brad?

6 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay, go ahead.

7 DR. TAULBEE: Can I make a comment on 

8 this?

9 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Sure.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. I popped up what 

11 I think is on the presenter screen here the actual 

12 Notice of Violation. I do want to point out in 

13 the report that my DOE 1998a is not the correct 

14 link for this particular Notice of Violation.

15 I can send everybody the link for 

16 that, for the particular report. The second, the 

17 1998b, has a different Notice of Violation, as 

18 well, but the correct report would be EA-98-09R1.

19 When we're preparing a response to the 

20 SC&As reports here because -- well, before I get 

21 into that, I will say that up to section 3.3 in 

22 the results of the SC&A, they did what I consider 
.

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1 a really good job of analysis with the data that 

2 they had. And I don't have any concerns with 

3 what they really presented, you know, from that 

4 initial part.

5 I do have some issues with the sign6 in sheets, but that's okay. Where I have my major 

7 concern is with section 3.4 of the report on the 

8 chronic problems with bioassay. Because I feel 

9 there's a couple of big omissions on their report 

10 and I'm -- can everybody see the screen that I've 

11 got up?

12 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: I can't, but that's 

13 fine.

14 MEMBER BEACH: Yeah, I got it. Tim, 

15 can you make the screen bigger?

16 DR. TAULBEE: Make it bigger?

17 MEMBER BEACH: On your end? 

18 DR. TAULBEE: Let's see. How about 

19 this?

20 MEMBER BEACH: Yeah, that looks good. 

21 That helps.

22 DR. TAULBEE: The green parts that 
.

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1 I've highlighted here is what's from SC&A 

2 reports. But the first one that I feel is 

3 something that requires some follow-up here is 

4 that they talk about, you know -- I'm going to 

5 start with the last sentence from the first green 

6 block.

7 DOE-SR identified bioassay sample 

8 submittal deficiencies for the job-specific 

9 portion of the bioassay program to Westinghouse 

10 Savannah River Company as early as November 1995.

11 So there had to have been some kind of an 

12 assessment to have known that. 

13 The next part, which in the SC&A 

14 report is just dot-dot-dot. It says internal 

15 WSRC audits and assessments during '96 and '97 

16 confirm that these deficiencies still existed as 

17 late as mid-1997 when WSRC conducted the self18 assessment that Joe was talking about.

19 So we know there's at least three 

20 assessments that were done: '95, '96, and '97. 

21 We've requested those assessments from the 

22 Savannah River Site. We made that request July 
.

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1 27th after we saw SC&A's report.

2 They go on, and I'm strolling down 

3 here, because the last sentence is the green 

4 portion here, is the part that SC&A emphasized, 

5 it says, "as a consequence, the job-specific 

6 bioassay non-participation level rose to 79 

7 percent in the second quarter of 1997."

8 However, the next sentence states, 

9 however, in late 1997 and 1998, WSRC identified 

10 that, for 1997 -- I'm assuming this is the whole 

11 year but we won't know until we get the assessment 

12 -- 256 workers failed to submit job-specific 

13 bioassays as required. Westinghouse Savannah 

14 River Company undertook corrective action to 

15 resample these individuals and the results of 

16 which indicated that none of these workers had 

17 had an identifiable uptake of radioactive 

18 material.

19 So while they had people that were not 

20 submitting bioassay at the end of the RWP job21 specific bioassay, it appears that they did 

22 follow-up on these particular workers and they 
.

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1 got bioassay results for them.

2 Now, what ends up happening here, and 

3 Brad you mentioned 10 CFR 835 violation. This 

4 Notice of Violation was not 10 CFR 835. This was 

5 10 CFR 830 under quality assurance programs. So

6 that's where the violation was. This is not a 

7 violation of 835. 

8 I'm going back, it appears, while 

9 doing these resampling of these workers, I don't 

10 know for sure, but if they got bioassays for 256, 

11 then they got bioassay for everybody there at 

12 that site.

13 Another point that I want to mention 

14 here that is really critical, is if you look at 

15 -- let me pull up the report and make it bigger 

16 here -- in the report, and I've highlighted here, 

17 that the NTS report points out that when they did 

18 their assessment in that first part of 1997, they 

19 looked at 3200 bioassays that were reviewed. 

20 Ninety-five percent of the workers were covered 

21 by a routine bioassay program and had submitted 

22 bioassay samples as required. Five percent of 
.

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1 the workers were requested to submit job-specific 

2 bioassay samples and only 33 percent complied.

3 So they had a 33 percent success rate, 

4 and that's what dropped down to 21 percent by 

5 that second quarter of 1997. So there's a large 

6 number of workers, construction trades workers as 

7 well as, obviously, the operations workers, that 

8 were on a routine bioassay program.

9 And so I think these are important 

10 points to identify here with regards to this 

11 Notice of Violation, that, one, it was not an 835 

12 compliant issue. It was an 830 of them not 

13 following procedures and having to go and get 

14 follow-up bioassay because the workers were not 

15 leaving the samples as directed by the RWP.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: I'd like to 

17 interject, if I could. I think, if you look at 

18 the NTS information, though, it was a discretion 

19 by the enforcement staff to base this on 830 

20 versus 835. I don't think it was any declaration 

21 that this had little to do with 835. I think it 

22 was, again, when you're talking about a 
.

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1 regulatory or legal process it's certainly at the 

2 discretion of the enforcement staff to decide 

3 what the basis for the violation would be.

4 So I just wanted to clarify that. On 

5 the other point, we do provide information on the 

6 3200, and this is a quote from the NTS. The 3200 

7 bioassay requirements reviewed, 90 percent of the 

8 workers were covered by the routine bioassay 

9 program. That's on page 17 of our report.

10 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct. That's 

11 what ---

12 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm just -- we were 

13 very clear that, you know, there's some 

14 qualifying issues. We want to make that clear 

15 where it came from. And, again, we're not making 

16 a judgment so much as to, you know, the ins and 

17 outs of this, and there's more documentation that 

18 could be had on this, but just to report that as 

19 far as a survey of completeness, this stands as 

20 a pretty important one, and one that was 

21 contemporary with the 1990s as opposed to sort of 

22 limited backward-looking sampling that we were 
.

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1 forced to do.

2 So that's why this is included, 

3 because it is relevant, because it speaks to a 

4 question of participation because it was 

5 significant enough that it was the basis of an 

6 enforcement action.

7 And I think one has to keep in mind, 

8 if we're keeping try to, you know, ascertain 

9 completeness, this may very well be one of the 

10 few Notices of Violations we'll look at that 

11 focuses on that subject, the completeness of 

12 bioassays being done for what effectively is a 

13 CTW class. So this is very relevant.

14 DR. TAULBEE: I don't disagree that 

15 this is relevant to look at, Joe. But I believe 

16 that the impression that only 21 percent of the 

17 people ended up in the database is incorrect. 

18 That from the 1997 evaluation with the follow19 up, it appears -- and I don't know until I get 

20 the report back from Savannah River -- that 100 

21 percent of those people who did not submit the 

22 job-specific bioassay were followed up, they got 
.

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1 bioassay.

2 And so from that standpoint, that 

3 would be complete. So did they have issues with 

4 collecting samples? Clearly they did. They 

5 would not have been fined or a Notice of Violation 

6 would not have taken place.

7 But, again, from the ORPS report, if 

8 you look at the conclusion there, I popped this 

9 up on the screen, it says, to date, there is no 

10 evidence that workers have received an intake 

11 that has previously gone undetected due to the 

12 problems identified above. Doses not assigned by 

13 job-specific bioassays. Radiological controls at 

14 SRS exist to monitor levels of radiation, 

15 contamination, and airborne radioactivity. If 

16 unanticipated elevated levels are measured, work 

17 is stopped until corrective action is taken. Any 

18 concern that a worker intake of radioactive 

19 material may have occurred is assessed as part of 

20 the special bioassay program.

21 Now, I would like some more 

22 clarification on this, and I would like to 
.

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1 propose that as part of our follow-up, when we 

2 get these reports back from Savannah River, that 

3 we interview some of the folks at the site to get 

4 more details about this particular event, and 

5 then we got a better understanding of what was 

6 going on in '95, '96, and '97.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. One comment 

8 I'd like to make on that. And I certainly don't 

9 disagree with that. I think the more information 

10 the better on that. But, you know, they did a 

11 validation. They went back, and certainly given 

12 the implications of these findings under the 

13 regulatory body, they had to go back and 

14 ascertain whether there was any real impact. 

15 But by the same token, one could not 

16 speak to the results, the lack of bioassay 

17 results, going back in time. I mean, you can't 

18 speak to 1993, 1994, you know, whether or not the 

19 lack of participation of those bioassay programs 

20 resulted in any exposures that were missed. I 

21 mean, this certainly validates for the exact 

22 current time.
.

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1 I mean for the survey done in quarter 

2 of '97 perhaps that, you know, there were no 

3 apparent exposures missed, but how does one --

4 when you have a system that is not working, which 

5 is what the basis for the NOV is, how does one 

6 ascertain whether that's the case going backwards 

7 in time?

8 So that's kind of the question that 

9 we're sort of raising is, if you don't have a 

10 system that's working, how does one have that 

11 information going back other than to surmise that 

12 we checked it in '97 in this one instance and 

13 we're going back-extrapolate that level of 

14 assurity.

15 And beyond, you know, this piece of 

16 information, I think I want to bring us back a 

17 little bit and, you know, certainly our 

18 conclusions are based on the extent of the 

19 surveys, not just simply one survey.

20 This one was pretty pronounced because 

21 it certainly caught us by surprise, certainly, 

22 the lack of participation in the program. But 
.

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1 certainly the Westinghouse surveys as well as the 

2 limited survey that we were able to conduct, and 

3 we're still talking about a fairly high 

4 percentage of results not being there, whether 

5 they're because of non-participation or for other 

6 reasons.

7 I think, and I would say the Work 

8 Group would need to grapple with that question, 

9 you know, quite apart from the source of the 

10 results being lacking, what does one do with a 

11 level of incompleteness such as what we're 

12 looking at, whether it's 70 percent, 50 percent, 

13 60, 40?

14 I mean, I don't believe, in the course 

15 of our discussions for other sites, we have ever 

16 gotten into percentages like that. I mean, as I 

17 recall, we were debating, you know, 5 percent 

18 maybe, you know, was that good enough or not.

19 But here we're debating whether 25, 30 

20 percent is that adequate, and can we somehow

21 ameliorate a report of 80 percent by looking 

22 whether or not they had validated the actual 
.

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1 bioassays as not being positive.

2 So I think that, you know, that 

3 perspective, I think keeping one's focus on the 

4 bottom line which is the completeness question is 

5 also an important imperative as well as getting 

6 additional information regarding this particular 

7 NOV.

8 I don't want the NOV to distract from 

9 the overall question that was tasked by the Work 

10 Group, actually to both NIOSH and as well as SC&A.

11 DR. TAULBEE: I would like to, I 

12 guess, follow up on that comment. Again, we're 

13 talking about the job-specific bioassay and 

14 subcontractor bioassay here. And so, you know, 

15 I just want to make sure the Work Group is clear 

16 from that standpoint. That, you know, even from 

17 SC&A's report, I think it's page 17, where they 

18 talk about the routine bioassay that was going 

19 on, I would like to again point out that a 

20 significant number of people, of construction 

21 trades workers, follow under that routine 

22 methodology, under that routine monitoring.
.

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1 So, in this particular case, you know, 

2 we're looking at 5 percent, which would be 160 

3 people from that 1997 evaluation. And you know, 

4 as I pointed out, of the remainder of that Notice 

5 of Violation, they indicated they went back and 

6 sampled 236, so I believe they looked at the whole 

7 year.

8 But your point is taken there, Joe. 

9 You know, we shouldn't be using, really, the 

10 Notice of Violation as a distraction here, 

11 although I do think we need to get to the bottom 

12 of this, because this does have implications for 

13 some of the discussion that went on yesterday 

14 during the Los Alamos component where you pointed 

15 out Savannah River had this serious problem. And 

16 so this does play a role, you know, into this 

17 latter time period where we are assuming the 100 

18 millirem cycle limit.

19 And the data that we've seen so far is 

20 consistent with that but we do need to track this 

21 down further.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. I agree. And 
.

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1 I think we're in the same boat with Los Alamos in 

2 terms of -- and what's interesting, again, I 

3 think I pointed out in the Los Alamos discussion, 

4 is that they actually in 1999 brought in Savannah 

5 River health physics staff and MJW, which I would 

6 assume came from Mound, to frankly do an external 

7 review of their bioassay program, I think, for 

8 similar issues. And it's certainly a question of 

9 self-assessment to assure themselves that the 

10 program was adequate.

11 And some of the findings were, I would 

12 say, pretty reminiscent of what was found at 

13 Mound and Savannah River. So there seems to be 

14 a lot of connectedness at this time in terms of 

15 trying to grapple with the question of enrollment 

16 and participation in bioassay programs. It seems 

17 to be a broader issue than just one site.

18 DR. TAULBEE: That is correct. So as 

19 I indicated at the beginning of my comments here, 

20 we are preparing a response to SC&A's report. I 

21 would love to get that out to you next month, but 

22 since the site hasn't responded yet, I'm 
.

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1 expecting that we would get it to the Work Group 

2 sometime in, hopefully, mid-October.

3 But like I said, we do have some 

4 concerns with the conclusions from this report. 

5 Kind of going back to what Joe was talking about 

6 in the results of what they found, you know, from 

7 the 90-day standpoint, you're looking at 80 and 

8 84 percent success rate. And I find that that 

9 falls within the guidance that we started 

10 discussing. Because 75 percent is not a hard and 

11 fast, by no means. And I'll get to some of that 

12 in my talk on the next topic in just a minute.

13 But I think that, from this 

14 standpoint, in the use of the coworker model, 80 

15 to 84 percent is reasonable and we could apply 

16 the 95th percentile dose from that particular 

17 coworker model for any unmonitored workers.

18 Back to you, Brad, unless there's more 

19 questions for Joe.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: So, frankly, we're 

21 expecting more documentation and an expanded 

22 review on the Notices of Violation aspect of 
.

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1 these.

2 DR. TAULBEE: That is correct.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Alright.

4 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: By what time? You 

5 said mid-October?

6 DR. TAULBEE: Well, we made the 

7 request to the site on July 27th, is when we sent 

8 the request to the site for all of these 

9 assessments. We know there is one in '95, '96, 

10 and '97. So we requested that particular 

11 information and have not received it yet. We do 

12 know the site is working on it. We do know it's 

13 their number one priority of deliverables back to 

14 us. So that is where we're apparently sitting 

15 with that.

16 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: And when you get a 

17 copy of those, I'm sure that SC&A is going to be 

18 able to get them at the same time, correct?

19 DR. TAULBEE: Oh, absolutely. We'll 

20 be posting everything to the SRDB.

21 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. Is there any 

22 more questions for Joe, Work Group Members? 
. 

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1 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I don't have any, Brad.

2 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. Well, that 

3 being said, Tim, the next one is up to you then, 

4 evaluation of construction worker monitoring in 

5 high level caves jobs. Hello?

6 DR. TAULBEE: Sorry, I was on mute.

7 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: I understand. I've 

8 done that numerous times.

9 NIOSH Evaluation of Construction Worker 

10 Monitoring in High Level Cave Job Plans 

11 DR. TAULBEE: Just a second here. I'm 

12 pulling up the report. There's a few places that 

13 I want to kind of highlight a little bit of what 

14 we've done, and what we did. So I'm pulling 

15 directly from the report and I popped it up here 

16 on the screen. 

17 To give an overview, we specifically 

18 went to look at subcontractor bioassay -- or 

19 subcontractor monitoring, actually, not just 

20 bioassay. We looked at the external, too, based 

21 upon the job plan. 

22 And to give a little bit of 
.

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1 background, again, to everybody on the call, as 

2 Joe pointed out, we'd heard some concerns from a 

3 former HP that there were company files versus 

4 individual bioassay records, but the individual 

5 who we had interviewed indicated that he felt all 

6 of those records had been moved into individual 

7 files and the databases.

8 So he didn't feel that it was a 

9 continued issue, but we decided we needed to 

10 verify this. So that was why we were looking for 

11 ways to try and do that and tried multiple 

12 different assessments looking at some of the 

13 records provided by CPWR, the links that they had 

14 been using and had been sending to the Department 

15 of Labor, and none of that really gave us a 

16 population that we can go follow up on.

17 And at the last, I believe, it was 

18 June of 2016, it was over a year ago, during the 

19 data capture out at the site, we ran across what 

20 we believed to be a pretty comprehensive set of 

21 job plans for one area, the high level caves on 

22 that 773-A, that identified workers and 
.

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1 identified the work that was going on, and 

2 whether respiratory protection was required.

3 And so we took that grouping and 

4 decided to try and evaluate it. Okay, how were 

5 these workers monitored, both externally and 

6 internally?

7 For the external results, as you can 

8 see here on the screen that I've popped up on the 

9 Skype here, we got really good agreement overall. 

10 The total number that were monitored between 

11 DuPont construction trades workers and 

12 subcontractors, DuPont was 99.5 percent and the 

13 subcontractor construction trades 96.8 percent.

14 So those were both very good. 

15 So what I really want to focus on here 

16 is the internal monitoring. And so a key point 

17 here is that DuPont construction trades workers, 

18 these would be your electronics and 

19 instrumentation technicians, your mechanics, are 

20 the two main job categories within that group. 

21 They were part of a routine monitoring program in 

22 accordance with the bioassay control procedures. 
.

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1 For other worker that were 

2 intermittently present in the controlled area, 

3 these would be some subcontractor CTW, bioassay 

4 monitoring was based upon the job plan. And so 

5 that was how these individuals were monitored. 

6 And so what we did was we went through 

7 and, let's see, we looked at all of the job 

8 pairings that we had within the group. And what 

9 we found was there were 550 subcontractor CTW job 

10 pairings. This is not all CTWs, this is just the 

11 subcontractor CTW job pairing. But we could not 

12 find bioassay results in any of the logbooks that 

13 we had.

14 It came up to a total of 255 unique 

15 subcontractors that we could evaluate and can 

16 look at what their bioassay monitoring was. And 

17 so we performed an analysis of these job 

18 pairings. And we originally selected ten workers 

19 from the 255 to try and get a feel for collecting 

20 their personal monitoring data during the data 

21 capture and what level of effort it was.

22 But in total we selected an additional 
.

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1 100 workers at random from this particular group. 

2 Both of these are random samples, we just did 

3 them in two different permutations. The main 

4 reason was that the ten workers we were supposed 

5 to get the data before we got onsite to do the 

6 data capture so we could do some better planning. 

7 But in reality, all the results came through at 

8 the same time, so we had 110 workers.

9 Some of the workers were paired in 

10 jobs with multiple use so it resulted in 133 

11 distinct subcontractor CTW job pairings with no 

12 bioassay records that we had in-house.

13 So, from this, we looked at the 133 

14 job pairings with no bioassay records and then we 

15 looked at the ones where respirators were 

16 required. And so we had 88 of these job pairings 

17 where respirators were required.

18 And so in November of 2016, we went 

19 down to Savannah River and we searched the 

20 bioassay data for these 110 workers in the given 

21 years and collected the records.

22 And of the 110, we found bioassay 
.

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1 records on 105 of them. The graph that I've got 

2 populated right now is showing the breakdown of 

3 the job trades of these workers. And you can see 

4 the majority of them were pipefitters, 

5 electricians, and carpenters.

6 You do have a pretty good mix. You've 

7 got iron workers, painters, boilermakers, 

8 laborers, and millwrights, and even some 

9 concrete. And as I said, I'm scrolling down here, 

10 I'm on page 13 now of Report-83, and the very 

11 top.

12 During the data capture, we found 

13 bioassay data for 105 of the 110 workers we were 

14 looking for. 

15 Moving on to our results here on page 

16 14, we found bioassay records for some of the 

17 workers who were not required by the job plan to 

18 use respiratory protection. So we really just 

19 focused on, again, these 88 CTW job pairings 

20 where workers were required to use respiratory 

21 protection. 

22 And I'll get to the results here on 
.

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1 Table 4-2, but before I get to that, I really 

2 want to show a couple of indications of where 

3 somebody might wear, at least one, of where 

4 somebody might wear a respirator but not be 

5 required to leave a bioassay sample.

6 So our indication of respiratory 

7 protection being a requirement for bioassay isn't 

8 always a one-to-one type of correlation. And 

9 forgive me just a second here to get to that 

10 particular graph I want to show. Here we go.

11 And for those who have access, can you 

12 see this particular radiation survey log sheet? 

13 I'll read it out, but who's on the line can see 

14 the presentation, can you --

15 MR. MAHATHY: I can.

16 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. This is a 

17 radiation survey log sheet from January of 1986. 

18 And it states, surveys for construction 

19 pipefitters to complete jobs started yesterday on 

20 the off-gas exhaust line was bagged up and cut 

21 into -- I believe that's two sections, it might 

22 be more than that, but it's hard to read.
.

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1 No problems were encountered during 

2 the job. Construction and operational health 

3 physics wore two pairs of coveralls out of cloth, 

4 and plastic shoe covers, cloth hood, rubber 

5 gloves, and full face respirator for the job. No 

6 transferrable contamination was detected during 

7 the job. Impactor air samples taken during the 

8 job calculated to less than .2 times ten to the 

9 minus 12 microcuries per cc. So that's less than 

10 a tenth of the DAC, is what the job stated. And 

11 the last line there is, job was completed at this 

12 stage. 

13 So here's a case where construction 

14 pipefitters were wearing respirators, they didn't 

15 run into any contamination issues, health physics 

16 was there, they took air samples, and there was 

17 no indication of an exposure.

18 So, in this particular case, these 

19 pipefitters may or may not had been monitored for 

20 bioassay. So this is part of that discussion 

21 where Joe was talking about, you know, needing a 

22 high percentage of follow-up bioassay in order to 
.

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1 have a valid coworker.

2 In this particular case, I don't 

3 believe that we would need to have a super high 

4 efficiency, something like 70 to 75 percent, or 

5 maybe even 60 percent would be reasonable from 

6 this standpoint. And that's for the Work Group 

7 here to discuss. 

8 So I wanted to point this particular 

9 issue out to you all. The other thing that I 

10 want to point out before we get to our results is 

11 you're going to have some instances where 

12 construction trades workers won't leave a 

13 bioassay sample.

14 And to give an example of that, here 

15 we go. Here's another example from the radiation 

16 survey log sheets at the Savannah River Site. 

17 And I won't read out the name here, but this is 

18 from the 321-M Area in April of 1986. And it 

19 says per, I believe this would be the supervisor, 

20 two employees of a particular company, which is 

21 a subcontracting company, of Wilmington, 

22 Delaware, refused to leave bioassay samples as 
.

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1 requested.

2 They identified who these two 

3 individuals were and one stated as his reason 

4 that he was exercising his rights to not leave a 

5 bioassay sample. And the other one stated time 

6 is money.

7 So you're never going to get 100 

8 percent compliance with these bioassay 

9 monitoring, especially amongst subcontractors. 

10 So, you know, these are just two quick examples 

11 that I wanted to point out to the Work Group when 

12 considering these results and the response of how 

13 many people we were able to find bioassay.

14 By and large, I would say the two 

15 examples that I just gave you -- well, the second 

16 example, is probably rare. I will acknowledge 

17 that most people probably conformed with -- if 

18 requested to leave a bioassay sample, they did 

19 so.

20 In the first example that I showed you 

21 where there wasn't a need to leave a bioassay 

22 sample, that's what I'm probably -- that's what 
.

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1 I'm believing to be the main reason why we have 

2 a lower participation rate based upon our 

3 methodology of saying, if you wore a respirator 

4 you had to leave a bioassay sample. Because if 

5 there wasn't an indication on the job, and there 

6 was no contamination, then did they really need 

7 to leave a bioassay sample? And so that, again, 

8 is for the Work Group to consider.

9 So when we did our evaluation, we did 

10 this over the entire time period, there were 88 

11 subcontractor CTW job pairings where workers were 

12 required to wear a respirator. And we found 59 

13 of those, 59 of the 88 subcontractors, did leave 

14 a bioassay sample from wearing a respirator.

15 And it's also important to point out 

16 that a significant fraction of those people were 

17 actually on a routine bioassay. Again, 

18 construction trades workers, even if they were 

19 subcontractors, some of them were on routine 

20 bioassay. They weren't all job-specific. They 

21 were a mixture of people who were there kind of, 

22 you know, jumping from one job in 773 and going 
.

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1 to K Reactor or going to the canyons and so forth.

2 Some of the people that kind of 

3 routinely worked there, even though they are a 

4 subcontractor, were on a routine type of 

5 bioassay. So the CTWs, the bioassay for 

6 subcontractors, is a mixed bag of both job7 specific requirements from the job plan, if an 

8 event happened where there is an indicator and 

9 health physics required it, and routine. You've 

10 got all three associated with the subcontractors.

11 And so those are the main things here 

12 that I wanted to point out with our report, that 

13 we got 67 percent, which this is the '81 to '86 

14 time period, based upon our evaluation of one 

15 area where we had an comprehensive listing of job 

16 plans.

17 So, in our conclusions, 97 percent of 

18 the subcontractors evaluated were monitored for 

19 external dose. In relation to monitoring for 

20 internal radionuclides, bioassay data showed 67 

21 percent of the randomly selected CTWs wearing 

22 respiratory protection were monitored for intake 
.

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1 radionuclides from 1980 to 1986. Almost 38 

2 percent of these were on a routine monitoring for 

3 one or more radionuclides according to DuPont 

4 procedures. 

5 So that's kind of a conclusion of our 

6 report in that we have a population where we just 

7 looked at the subcontractor CTWs. Again, we did 

8 not look at the DuPont CTWs which we are combining 

9 in the coworker model, because they were 

10 monitored from that standpoint. And we'll get 

11 into the coworker discussion hopefully later.

12 I've got examples showing the 

13 difference between DuPont's construction trades 

14 workers and the subcontractor contraction trades 

15 worker type of jobs. And you can see that they 

16 were doing very similar work. The difference was 

17 really scale of work more than anything. 

18 And so our conclusion is that when you 

19 develop a coworker model and combining the DuPont 

20 construction trades with the subcontractor 

21 contractor trades, we are seeing 57 percent based 

22 upon a random model which appears to coincide and 
.

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1 agree with what Jim was seeing, as well as what 

2 some of these assessments, with the exception of 

3 that 1997 Notice of Violation they we're going to 

4 go look at.

5 It appears that three-quarters --

6 excuse me, not three-quarters -- two-thirds of 

7 the subcontractors CTWs were in fact monitored. 

8 So, with that, I'll be happy to answer any 

9 questions.

10 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Tim, this is Brad. 

11 You made a comment back there that you gave your 

12 example of where you didn't feel like the 

13 construction people were going to have to leave 

14 a bioassay. And my question to you, because 

15 something you said kind of struck me a little 

16 bit, that you believe this is why we see this 

17 difference. Do we have anything positively 

18 telling us this is what the difference is? Do we 

19 have any documentation of it?

20 DR. TAULBEE: No, we don't. We did 

21 an evaluation of workers on the job plans and 

22 looking at, you know, the same job plan had four 
.

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1 workers on there, and so, you know, we looked at 

2 each individual person.

3 And we did find, and this is in our 

4 report, that -- I'm looking for where that 

5 particular -- but we did find that, of the people 

6 who did not have bioassay, one of their coworkers 

7 did.

8 So, Mike, can you help me out, what 

9 page was that on?

10 MR. MAHATHY: I don't have --

11 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Because I'm just -

12 --

13 DR. TAULBEE: Yeah, we don't have 

14 that, Brad.

15 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: I'm just, you know, 

16 I know that you've made it very clear to me in 

17 some points and I am surmising something that, 

18 you know, we need to have something to kind of 

19 document that, what you're feeling on that 

20 somehow.

21 I understand what you're saying, and 

22 that's a fine example, but you can also take the 
.

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1 other example where people that weren't wearing 

2 respiratory that should have been and so forth 

3 like that.

4 I just, if we could come up with 

5 something, it would be very good to be able to 

6 put that in there, but I appreciate what you've 

7 done on that. Is there any questions for Tim 

8 from any of the Board Members?

9 DR. TAULBEE: Before we get to 

10 questions, Brad, I want to note in Section 6 we 

11 speak exactly to what you just talked about, 

12 people who were not wearing respiratory 

13 protection and should have been. And if you look 

14 at Section 6 we've got a whole listing of 

15 incidents that we found.

16 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Tim, this is Brad. 

17 I'm sorry, you were cutting out on that. What 

18 section was that?

19 DR. TAULBEE: Section 6 of our report.

20 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay.

21 DR. TAULBEE: And to give an example 

22 that I can read here is that in February of 1980, 
.

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1 a subcontractor CTW working on a multi-week 

2 project to dismantle equipment in B-147 was found 

3 to be working with high airborne alpha 

4 radioactivity without a respirator by health 

5 physics, which was monitoring for work 

6 intermittently. Results of fecal, urine, and in 

7 vivo bioassay indicated the worker received an 

8 intake of less than 10 percent of the maximum 

9 permissible body burden.

10 So here's an individual that was 

11 working in an area, was not supposed to be working 

12 in the area without a respirator, and was found 

13 and they did follow-up bioassay. His data would 

14 be included in the coworker data set and it would 

15 not be excluded, and this is what comprises that 

16 upper 95th percentile that we would be assigning 

17 to all coworker models.

18 And again, we've got one, two, three, 

19 four, five, six examples -- I'm sorry, five 

20 examples here of construction trades workers that 

21 got contaminated and talking about the follow-up 

22 of them with regards to bioassay.
.

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1 So, clearly, accidents and incidents 

2 happened. I'm not saying it's foolproof, by no 

3 means, but these results would end up in the 

4 coworker model and typically comprised these 

5 incidents are the highest results, that's what we 

6 would end up assigning into the coworker model 

7 for an unmonitored worker. Does that help?

8 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: I appreciate that. 

9 Are you done or are there questions ---

10 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: This is Jim Melius. 

11 I have a question for both Tim and Joe. I'm just 

12 trying to make sure I understand the two reports.

13 Tim, you covered an earlier time 

14 period that has very little overlap with Joe's. 

15 I mean, you're up to '86.

16 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct.

17 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: And I think Joe said 

18 that most of his data was from '87 and on, from 

19 Westinghouse.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: That's pretty much 

21 correct. We did get some RWPs that were in the 

22 early '80s -- one for '82, for example -- but as 
.

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1 far as the entries, number of actual 

2 subcontractor CTWs, predominantly '88 and beyond.

3 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah. And just to 

4 make sure I understand, I guess this is a question 

5 is for Tim, why was your data only up to '86?

6 DR. TAULBEE: That was the set of job 

7 plans that we have that we felt were 

8 comprehensive for that area such that we can grab 

9 a random sample.

10 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: So there weren't job 

11 plans after '86 or --

12 DR. TAULBEE: No, there were. Well, 

13 in going through what Joe did in trying to find 

14 them, they weren't readily available.

15 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

16 DR. TAULBEE: These were readily 

17 available in November -- of not November, but 

18 June of 2016 when we captured them.

19 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Right. Okay. 

20 DR. TAULBEE: So basically we found a 

21 whole set of job plans intermixed with radiation 

22 survey log sheets, is how these were identified. 
.

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1 So, you know, from that standpoint, they weren't 

2 really labeled in the EDWS system easily. And 

3 that is one of the things, you know, Joe's task 

4 was very hard because the job plans, RWPs are 

5 filed with radiation survey log sheets, you could 

6 be looking through hundreds of boxes for, you 

7 know, one folder of RWPs type of scenario.

8 So it's not something that can easily 

9 be retrieved based upon the EDWS system. It would 

10 take significant effort to go through and pull 

11 the RSL box for all of those areas and those time 

12 periods and look. And that's very tedious.

13 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: And then again, 

14 there are '87, '86/'87 is sort of when 

15 Westinghouse came in? 

16 DR. TAULBEE: Westinghouse came in in 

17 1989.

18 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: '89, okay. And so 

19 then -- and I think to understand what Joe said, 

20 was there were more use of subcontractors then, 

21 mainly due to, you know, differences of 

22 procedures as much as difference in the type of 
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1 work that was being done, is that --

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I think it's 

3 fair to say that the DuPont system versus the 

4 Westinghouse system was pretty different. I 

5 mean, I think DuPont did make use of in-house 

6 contractors, and chosen subcontractors were much 

7 more unified and much more controlled from a 

8 contractual standpoint, whereas Westinghouse --

9 and this is not just Westinghouse, this is across 

10 DOE -- went to a system where more use of outside 

11 subs came into being, more outsourcing of work.

12 This also coincided with the K Reactor 

13 restart. There was a lot of work being done then 

14 on restart, '90, '91, '92, that kind of thing. 

15 And so there was a number of things that were 

16 happening that led to both the influx of outside

17 contractors, but also because Westinghouse 

18 brought in its own approach which was more formal 

19 and disciplined in terms of procedures and RWPs.

20 You know, it was an expansion certainly of all 

21 that. So there were a couple of things happening 

22 at the same time.
.

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1 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

2 MEMBER BEACH: Brad, this is Josie, 

3 can I ask a question of Tim?

4 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Yeah. After 

5 talking I muted. Brad.

6 MEMBER BEACH: There's been some 

7 discussion on the criteria for the sample rates, 

8 Tim. Seventy five percent was what I think I've 

9 heard in some of your presentation. But in this 

10 one you kind of said maybe 60 percent, I think 

11 you said 75, 70, 60 would be okay. And I just 

12 wanted to know if you could expand on that and 

13 what your thought is there.

14 DR. TAULBEE: My thought on it is that 

15 we saw 67 percent of the subcontractors, from our 

16 analysis. When you combine in all of the, what 

17 I would call DuPont construction, those E&I 

18 technicians, which are really electricians, 

19 mechanics who did a lot of pipefitting work as 

20 well as sheet metal work. Then that number is 

21 going to increase quite a bit, such that I feel 

22 the combination of the subcontractor population 
.

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1 with what I'm calling DuPont construction trades 

2 workers would provide a sufficiently robust 

3 worker model such that when we take the 95th 

4 percentile of that on a given year, or in 

5 combination of a couple of years, that the end 

6 result would be bounding for any unmonitored 

7 construction trades worker.

8 Keeping in mind that whenever an 

9 incident happened, these construction trades 

10 workers were included in the coworker model, 

11 that's these follow-up bioassays, and some of 

12 them were very high.

13 One individual, as we pointed out in 

14 our report, ended up in the Transuranic Registry 

15 for such a high intake. So these are significant 

16 events that were monitored. And the thing that 

17 you notice through virtually all of the job plans 

18 that I hope I can get to this afternoon -- or 

19 shortly, it is afternoon now -- is that health

20 physics had a presence at these job plans, and 

21 that there was either intermittent coverage or 

22 continuous coverage depending upon the risk of 
.

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1 potential for exposure. 

2 And so the workers were checked in the 

3 workplace. Subcontractors were checked. And if 

4 there was contamination found, then they did 

5 follow-ups from that standpoint.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Tim, this is Joe. 

7 Just to follow on Josie's question. Again, the 

8 773-A review, this has come up in, I think, four 

9 discussions in the past, focuses on the high 

10 level caves, a very specific operation I think 

11 involving transuranics and what have you. Is 

12 that subcontractor milieu transferrable, I mean, 

13 in terms of site-wide practice, site-wide 

14 experience? I guess I would wonder if one could

15 draw a conclusion just based on that one 

16 facility.

17 DR. TAULBEE: I believe it could be 

18 but that's just my belief. You know, I don't 

19 have data to support that, from that standpoint. 

20 I don't have sampling of all of the, you know, 

21 job plans in other areas in order to do that.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, the reason that 
.

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1 I raise that, because, you know, other sites, 

2 you're dealing with vaults, high level caves, the 

3 radium cave at Mound comes to mind.

4 I mean, these were fairly high 

5 exposure potential facilities and locations, so 

6 I was wondering if there might be some kind of a 

7 possible bias as far as the monitoring regime or 

8 the degree of stringency applied. I don't know. 

9 I'm just speculating, you know, whether one could 

10 actually extrapolate from that one facility for 

11 that one time period.

12 DR. TAULBEE: Well, one other things 

13 that you'll see, I think, with the examples that 

14 I've got, and in fact I can actually pull some of 

15 those up now if you would like, is that it wasn't 

16 just inside the caves.

17 And that's an important point here to 

18 make, that it wasn't just inside of those high 

19 level caves. It was other areas in the general 

20 vicinity. And to give the example here, I just 

21 pulled it up here on the screen, this is, example 

22 one, is the fan motor where it was millwrights 
.

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1 and electricians, these would be the maintenance 

2 mechanics and the electronic instrumentation 

3 mechanics. And this is an example of the job 

4 plan. And it says installed motor and fan 

5 housing on air sampling fan. 

6 So this would be -- this is a DuPont 

7 construction trades worker job plan, and it talks 

8 about coveralls, two pairs, and a respirator for 

9 protective clothing. HP monitoring at the start 

10 of the job and intermittent monitoring during the 

11 job. 

12 And then if you look at another job 

13 plan, very similar, and this would be the next 

14 day where they continued on with this particular 

15 job. Let's see. And then we got for construction 

16 here that is check out fan motors for motor 

17 control station of startup in the basement of the 

18 area.

19 So it's not just the high level cave 

20 areas. You've got the basement of 773 and some 

21 of the labs and corridors. And so, again, this 

22 would be a construction trades job. And again, 
.

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1 they're wearing an assault mask and two pairs of 

2 coveralls. And these particular individuals that 

3 I'm showing up here on the screen, these are all 

4 electricians. 

5 So it's the exact -- it's very similar 

6 work that is going on. One, they worked on one 

7 motor and here they're checking out multiple 

8 motor control centers, fan motors.

9 So, now, I don't actually know the 

10 percentage of work that would have been inside of 

11 those high level caves versus the outer 

12 surrounding areas. The examples that I've got 

13 generally are in the surrounding areas, not 

14 inside the actual cave themselves, although there 

15 is some penetration work that I talk about in 

16 these examples with both.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I guess my 

18 question, because of the fact that it's just one 

19 facility, even though, as you say, there's some 

20 diverse operations at that one facility; if you 

21 were to go to the waste management operations, 

22 tank farm or whatever, and look at the CTW 
.

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1 bioassay results there, you know, would one 

2 expect to see at least 67 or whatever percent one 

3 can come up with there? Or, you know, given the 

4 questions that we've raised earlier about 

5 participation and some of the issues you've 

6 mentioned about maybe reluctance to leave 

7 samples, whatever, what's the confidence level 

8 that, you know, going someplace, say, not a high 

9 level cave operation, but going to the tank farm, 

10 you would see maybe only 50 percent or even maybe 

11 perhaps less in terms of actual bioassay result?

12 I think that's the only question 

13 regarding the scope, the scoping issue, of how 

14 could one extrapolate the experience.

15 DR. TAULBEE: I understand, and I 

16 don't have the answer to that. But I could also 

17 speculate, just like you did, a 50 percent or 

18 less of 85 percent or more.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I mean, it's an 

20 unknown. I guess that's the question when you 

21 don't have a lot of data points, it's sort of an 

22 unknown.
.

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1 And the other thing I'd like to 

2 mention is, you know, I think it's clear DuPont 

3 had a pretty centralized management system, as 

4 you point out. You can, you know, treat the in5 house CTWs and add the subcontractor CTWs because 

6 the management, DuPont management was pretty well 

7 known as a fairly strong centralized management 

8 system.

9 That obviously changes in '89. And I 

10 was wondering if -- I think it sounds like your 

11 approach of conclusions sort of focuses on the 

12 DuPont era, given the information you have. 

13 Would that be something you would take forward 

14 past '89?

15 DR. TAULBEE: No. I guess I really 

16 wouldn't, because I really want to see what's 

17 coming out of this request that we've got here 

18 from the site, you know, from these internal 

19 assessments that were done. You know, looking at 

20 the 3200 bioassay samples from 1995, did they 

21 look at, you know, this larger fraction of the 

22 whole site and did they see differences in 
.

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1 amongst areas, was there one area more compliant 

2 than others? I don't know the answers to any of 

3 that at this time.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah. But clearly I 

5 think what you're saying is that you can speak to 

6 '81 through '86, I guess.

7 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct. That is 

8 correct, which was the sampling period that we 

9 had readily available that we could assess. 

10 Yeah.

11 I will say, from the interviews that 

12 we conducted in worker outreach at the beginning 

13 of the SEC, one of the clear messages from the 

14 construction trades workers that we interviewed 

15 at the time indicated that, under DuPont, they 

16 said that they actually felt pretty well covered.

17 Their biggest complaint was their 

18 monitoring was based upon OJT, and that the 

19 problems with it were they weren't really taught 

20 and they didn't do the rad training that they had 

21 to do under Westinghouse. And so they were more 

22 uncomfortable with that particular aspect of the 
.

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1 radiological control.

2 But they said that the rad techs at 

3 that time who had been around DuPont for years 

4 and years, and when they'd go into an area, they 

5 would point to this area, stay away from there, 

6 don't drill into this wall. You know, as long as 

7 you stay over here, you're not going to get 

8 contaminated, you know, things aren't going to 

9 happen. 

10 And then they indicated that when 

11 Westinghouse came in, these old DuPont rad techs 

12 that were covering them well went away, they got 

13 younger folks in that didn't know the areas as 

14 well, and they found that while they had more 

15 training of activities at the time, that they 

16 were potentially getting into areas and problems, 

17 more contamination, more than what they should 

18 have been due to that change.

19 So that's been documented in our 

20 interviews that we conducted with workers.

21 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: This is Jim Melius, 

22 I have sort of a follow-up question, trying to 
.

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1 again to understand some of these time periods 

2 involved.

3 But, Tim, for your questions, I guess, 

4 about the compliance and evaluations that were 

5 done, this sort of covers a time period of '95 to 

6 '98, sort of the end of this time period that the 

7 SC&A report covered.

8 But my question is, does it say 

9 anything about the previous, '89 to '95, or 

10 whatever the cut off is for here? Because to me 

11 this would be, again, you know, anecdotally, a 

12 time when new contractors coming in and new 

13 procedures and new implementation and so forth, 

14 and to me would be a more critical period in terms 

15 of at least potential for problems.

16 Now, a lot of that can also obviously 

17 depend on other factors like what kind of work 

18 was being done and so forth. But I guess, in 

19 terms of your follow-up review of the SC&A 

20 report, you appear to be focusing only on the 

21 later, at least what you've told us, on the later 

22 time period.
.

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1 DR. TAULBEE: That was what we focused 

2 on immediately when we read that, but if you 

3 desire, after seeing our report up to '86, that 

4 we follow up on that other time period, what I 

5 suspect is that in the rollout of 5480.11 in '89, 

6 and then the Rad Con Manual, is that there was 

7 probably some internal assessments that were 

8 conducted that we don't know about. But we have 

9 not asked that question yet of that site. Maybe 

10 Joe has, I haven't.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: I was going to add 

12 that, actually, as I said earlier, the timeframe 

13 for what RWPs with multiple entries that we could 

14 find falls in that time period, '89 to '95. And 

15 again, we came up with roughly the same 

16 percentage that Tim came up with for -- and this 

17 was not preplanned -- about two-thirds. And that 

18 can be improved somewhat if one looks at the RWPs 

19 per say and tries to clarify the follow-on 

20 bioassay.

21 But roughly two-thirds seem to be the 

22 completion, completeness rate for that time 
.

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1 period for the RWPs that we did look at as well. 

2 So, 60 percent, 65 percent, you know, 70 percent. 

3 Given the error margin, I think that's what we're 

4 talking about, 60 to 70, 75, somewhere around 

5 there.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Of subcontractors.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Of subcontractors 

8 CTWs, exactly.

9 MR. BARTON: Tim, this is Bob Barton. 

10 I have, well, two questions really. The first, 

11 you had mentioned that example of the worker who 

12 did not wear respiratory protection but was in a 

13 high alpha air concentration, and indicated that 

14 while, you know, it was discovered, that sort of, 

15 I guess, we'll qualify it as an incident and that 

16 person was followed up on, and that person's 

17 record would likely be on the high end.

18 You mentioned one was even on the 

19 Transuranic Registry, and that would be included 

20 in the upper tails of the coworker model. But 

21 isn't it, you know, common practice or a 

22 guideline that when you have those known 
.

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1 incidents and documented uptakes, those are 

2 actually removed from the coworker distribution, 

3 isn't that correct?

4 DR. TAULBEE: It depends upon the 

5 situation. You know, if there's chelation 

6 involved, absolutely, because that really messes 

7 up to the bioassay requirements. But in general 

8 incidents, no. We don't remove them.

9 Now, we will go through with the time10 weighted OPOS that we are doing, where we will 

11 kind of back-extrapolate to the date of the 

12 incident. But we don't remove them. 

13 The chelation ones, absolutely. Those 

14 have to be removed because excretion patterns are 

15 all different. You know, the chelating agent 

16 really messes with the ICRP models, if you will. 

17 So those are the only ones that we actually 

18 remove, Bob.

19 MR. BARTON: The reason I ask, and I 

20 know maybe these individuals were chelated too, 

21 but when you look at the transuranics, the 

22 americium, californium, curium coworker model, it 
.

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1 talks about three individuals that were removed 

2 because their bioassay results were a lot larger 

3 than the rest of the coworker model.

4 It doesn't exactly say they were 

5 chelated, but I guess we can assume they probably 

6 were, that's the reason why ---

7 DR. TAULBEE: It came out of the 

8 comments from SC&A in the past where we had 

9 included them. And it was discussed and agreed 

10 upon that they really shouldn't be in there, so 

11 that was why.

12 DR. NETON: Bob, this is Jim. I think 

13 a number of those coworker models were developed 

14 before the weighted OPOS technique came into 

15 play. And that technique kind of obviates the 

16 need for really scrutinizing a lot of these 

17 incidents, because you do get a time-weighted 

18 exposure for a less period of time.

19 And you're absolutely right. The 

20 chelating people are taken out and others 

21 evaluated on a case by case basis, but the bottom 

22 line is we don't know the great lengths to parse 
.

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1 out incident results. Many times it's not even 

2 possible. I mean, you have a whole set of 

3 bioassays and you don't know the individual 

4 sample.

5 MR. BARTON: Okay, I understand. The 

6 other question, I think it's probably in there 

7 somewhere, you know, I guess we're talking about 

8 completeness, a positive match after the job was 

9 completed in some timeframe. I know SC&A did one 

10 month and then three months. 

11 Did we sort of parse that out by what 

12 the actual bioassay was looking for? Because

13 obviously that's important. If you're in an area 

14 where plutonium is the hazard, you want to make 

15 sure that you have a plutonium bioassay as 

16 opposed to, you know, maybe a tritium bioassay 

17 from another area somewhere down the line.

18 So I guess that's my second question. 

19 When we're matching these up and saying, well, 

20 this person was monitored internally, it's not as 

21 simple as the external component where they were 

22 wearing a badge, so they're going to catch all 
.

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1 the external radiation.

2 I guess when we say we have a positive 

3 or a covered match, that it is for the correct 

4 contaminant that we should have been looking for 

5 based on whatever job they were doing.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, Bob, that was 

7 our report. And Ron, you can jump in too, but we 

8 explained in there that once we found the RWPs 

9 were in a variety of forms, let's put it that 

10 way, in terms of specificity and whether they 

11 listed at all the nuclides -- and sometimes they 

12 did list a primary nuclide -- at that point we 

13 just decided it just wasn't really feasible to 

14 pin that down in the kind of review we were doing.

15 It would have required a lot more 

16 research and time onsite which we weren't able to 

17 have, frankly, in terms of SRS workload. So, at 

18 that point, we decided, yes, there would be some 

19 leeway provided clearly by just using the 30 and 

20 90 days. But that's an artifact of how we would 

21 have to do this review, this sampling review.

22 It was probably more liberal from that 
.

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1 standpoint because there are credits being given 

2 where maybe credit wasn't due. But I don't think 

3 -- and Ron jump in, you looked at these numbers 

4 as well -- I don't the numbers are that great. 

5 It wouldn't sway it that much.

6 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron Buchanan 

7 with SC&A. No, Bob, we started to do that at 

8 first and we'd seen that that was going to take 

9 up too much time. And I don't know that you could 

10 really do it because the RWPs did not specify the 

11 radionuclide. And if it had been, you know, in 

12 the 95 range, we maybe would have pursued it 

13 further, but when we were down in the 60s and 70 

14 percent compliance range, whether it was for a 

15 particular isotope might have made it change a 

16 few percent, but we didn't think it was worth the 

17 resources to chase that down.

18 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim at NIOSH. 

19 We did not parse it down at that level either.

20 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Bob, do you have 

21 any more comments or is that it?

22 MR. BARTON: No, I guess I just wanted 
.

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1 to point that out, that that's one more sort of 

2 element of uncertainty when we're talking about 

3 numbers or percentages. But I kind of want to 

4 make it clear what those percentages really 

5 represent and what we can actually infer from 

6 them. And that's one complicating factor, again.

7 And I understand absolutely why it 

8 didn't make sense to try to match a specific job 

9 to, whether it be fission products, you know, 

10 your transuranics, or tritium. I understand why 

11 we went the path that we did. I just wanted to 

12 pointed out that added uncertainties.

13 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: I understand.

14 DR. TAULBEE: With regards to our 

15 analysis, we did not look at tritium. Ours is 

16 all the other radionuclides, everything except 

17 for tritium.

18 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Tim, when you were 

19 talking to Josie just a little while ago, you 

20 were throwing out the 75th percentile and 65. 

21 Now, that is not cut in stone anywhere; these are 

22 just your personal feelings on it, is that 
.

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1 correct?

2 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct. This is 

3 from our discussion last September, Brad, of ---

4 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Right. Well, and 

5 I just want to make that because sometimes it 

6 comes up, oh, we've already agreed on that, but 

7 that is not the case. I don't want to be put in 

8 a situation that this is what we said it was.

9 This is what your feelings are on it, 

10 because basically it comes down to the Board to

11 make that determination and also this is why part 

12 of the SEC group is here with us too.

13 I do have one question on the 

14 bioassay. And this is for Tim or Joe. Because 

15 I'm going back to my other knowledge of what we 

16 got into with Hanford up there. How were these 

17 bioassays, were these bioassays delivered to 

18 people that worked at Savannah River or did they 

19 have to stop in and pick them up?

20 How were they done? Because I'll tell 

21 you the reason why. Because at Hanford, they 

22 would deliver the bioassay samples to your home. 
.

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1 And if you were outside of the area, out of the 

2 Richland or Pasco area, they would not deliver 

3 them to you. So a lot of construction trades 

4 people out of Portland or Seattle and stuff like 

5 that would not get them delivered to them.

6 So I'm just wondering, because this 

7 was kind of an eye-opening thing to me at Hanford 

8 on this. So I was just wondering how these were 

9 delivered. Does anybody know how this was 

10 handled? Did they have to go in and pick them up 

11 or any of that?

12 DR. TAULBEE: I don't know. But this 

13 is something that we are wanting to try and follow 

14 up as well with doing some interviews with people 

15 who are involved in this. Because my 

16 understanding is that that was one of the 

17 contributing issues with regards to the Notice of 

18 Violation, in that where people were to leave 

19 samples and whether there was a control 

20 associated with that. And it was that part is 

21 what actually resulted in the Notice of 

22 Violation, that was a contributing cause here.
.

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1 So we don't know the answer to that -

2 - at least I don't; maybe Jim does -- yet, but 

3 that is something we do want to follow up on.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, in my 

5 experience, Hanford was, it was a pretty unique 

6 situation where they actually brought the, you 

7 know, brought the sampling to the workers 

8 themselves. That's pretty rare. I don't think 

9 I've seen it anywhere else. And I don't think we 

10 have the explicit information on this, but I 

11 think we can find out through some interviews.

12 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Well, I know that 

13 we've got a subject matter expert was on this, so 

14 if you could look that up, I would appreciate it.

15 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, we will.

16 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay. That being 

17 said, do we want to continue or do we want to 

18 break for lunch? I'm good, but I just wanted 

19 other people to get a feeling. What's the census 

20 of everybody?

21 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Brad, since we're 

22 changing topic, so to speak, a little bit, about 
.

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1 to go into the coworker model issues, it's 

2 probably a good time for a break.

3 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: I could sure use a 

4 comfort break right now. So would it be all right 

5 then, Ted, if we go for an hour? I'm trying to 

6 think what your time would be, it'd be 1:30?

7 MR. KATZ: Yeah. I mean, that's fine 

8 here. Let's take a quick survey of our Board 

9 Members and see. Does that work for all of you, 

10 breaking for an hour? I know we're losing Lockey 

11 at 2:00, maybe -- or maybe that was 4 o'clock our 

12 time so we're all right.

13 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: How about a half 

14 hour? Is that a problem?

15 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: No, I could do 

16 that.

17 DR. NETON: Half hour would be good.

18 MR. KATZ: Okay, so how about we if we 

19 reassemble at 1:00 Eastern Time?

20 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah.

21 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: That'd be fine.

22 MR. KATZ: Okay, see you all then.
. 

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1 Lunch 

2 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

3 went off the record at 12:27 p.m. and resumed at 

4 1:04 p.m.)

5 MR. KATZ: Okay, well, why don't we go 

6 ahead and get started. And we can catch Gen up 

7 if we need to when she joins. So I think I'll 

8 turn it back to you, Dr. Melius.

9 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: You're all caught up 

10 in attendance and everything?

11 MR. KATZ: Yeah. The NIOSH folks and 

12 SC&A folks are all online.

13 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

14 MR. KATZ: And we have most of the 

15 Board Members.

16 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Hey, Jim?

17 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Yes?

18 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Jim, this is just 

19 Brad. Could I just make one comment before we go 

20 on to the next phase? Because, you know, we spent 

21 a lot of time this morning on this data 

22 completeness and stuff, and I just want to make 
.

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1 sure that everybody understands that we ran into 

2 a lot of different things in there.

3 But the bottom question that we have 

4 got to come up with is, is this data complete? 

5 And that's our main concern, is if we've got 

6 enough data to be able to do what we need to be 

7 able to do. And, you know, we're checking for 

8 completeness, and that's what we're down to the 

9 wire on with this.

10 And I just want people to realize 

11 that, because these reports come out and stuff 

12 like that, we cover a lot of different stuff. 

13 But is it complete? Is it enough to be able to 

14 do a coworker bioassay program and stuff?

15 I just wanted to say that because I 

16 know we've covered a lot of different stuff. So, 

17 with that being said, I'll turn it back over to 

18 you, Jim.

19 NIOSH SRS Internal Coworker Dosimetry Data

20 Report and SC&A Review

21 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, thanks, Brad. 

22 So we'll start on the coworker model issues. And 
.

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1 I just want to say Ted and I have talked, and 

2 Brad and I talked about this a little bit, but I 

3 guess, given the number of reports here, we're 

4 not going to attempt to cover everything during 

5 this phone call. I just don't think it would be 

6 efficient or wise.

7 So we'll see how far we get for a 

8 period of time, and see. And we'll still have to 

9 leave time for the petitioner comments and some 

10 wrap-up on this. But we are planning on, if the 

11 two Work Groups are agreeable, to holding an in12 person meeting, at least a full-day meeting to 

13 sort of deal with these issues, because I think 

14 that's probably a much more efficient way of 

15 dealing with these.

16 I think we can make progress today, 

17 particularly on what still needs to be done or 

18 what's happening in terms of comments and review 

19 and so forth. But I think we'll be planning a 

20 full-day meeting, in-person meeting to, I don't 

21 want to say to finish things up ,but to at least 

22 give a more, you know, try to get through all the 
.

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1 reports that need to be addressed, and 

2 particularly the coworker issues.

3 So, with that, I don't know who's 

4 planning on presenting from NIOSH on Item 3?

5 DR. TAULBEE: I certainly can. This 

6 is Tim Taulbee. We have prepared -- SC&A had a 

7 number of findings in their report on the 

8 coworker models. There was a total of six 

9 findings and eight observations.

10 And we have populated the Board Review 

11 System with each of the findings and our 

12 responses to them. Actually, not all of them. 

13 Findings 3 and 5 we are still working on. So we've 

14 got 12 into 14 total. We've got responses out 

15 there on the Board Review System.

16 And what I was going to proposed that 

17 we do is SC&A to kind of go through their review 

18 and their findings. And then we could address 

19 each of the findings individually and walk 

20 through those, and hopefully close some of them 

21 out. And some of them I think we'll be able to 

22 put into abeyance, and trying to work it through 
.

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1 that way.

2 This is kind of new in using the Board 

3 Review System, especially with the SRS Work 

4 Group. And I'm not sure how much the SEC Issues 

5 Work Group has used it in the past. I know we 

6 haven't yet, but with the large number of 

7 findings, I think that we really need to have 

8 something to track it. And the Board Review 

9 System actually works quite well for that.

10 MR. KATZ: Can I just interject here, 

11 Tim? It's great to use the BRS system for exactly 

12 that reason. So I think that's standard. The one 

13 issue which I try to, as each Work Group picks it 

14 up, let folks know is that some Board Members 

15 have access, some Board Members do not.

16 So whenever we do populate the BRS 

17 with responses, for example, we also, at the same 

18 time in parallel, you can copy stuff out of the 

19 BRS if that's where you're putting it originally.

20 But we need to send those out to the Work Group 

21 in an email or what have you so that they get 

22 that too.
.

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1 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

2 MR. BARTON: And this is Bob. As you 

3 were kind of saying there, one of the things I 

4 did in sort of prepping for this meeting is I put 

5 some slides together. They're nothing new, 

6 really just stuff pulled out from our report from 

7 the OTIB-81, the Implementation Guide, and also 

8 the Board Review System responses that you had 

9 provided on those Findings 1, 2, and 4.

10 So, if it's amenable to the Work 

11 Group, as Tim indicated, I can kind of lead us 

12 through that discussion of what our review 

13 findings and observations were and we can talk 

14 about them as we go. 

15 And like I said, I do have some 

16 slides. It's not an official presentation, but 

17 again I'm just sort of pulling out discussion 

18 points from our reports to kind of -- well, to 

19 keep me focused anyway, but hopefully it's 

20 helpful for everybody else.

21 So, as a suggestion, if that's 

22 amenable, I can put those up on Skype and go from 
. 

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1 there.

2 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, let's get 

3 going then.

4 MR. BARTON: Alright. Let me just 

5 quick put my PowerPoints up here. Okay, can 

6 everybody, the people who do have Skype, can they 

7 see? This should be the title slide.

8 MR. KATZ: Yeah, it shows.

9 NIOSH SRS Internal Coworker Dosimetry Data Report 

10 and SC&A Review

11 MR. BARTON: Okay, great. Alright, so 

12 we're talking about, for those of you who don't 

13 have Skype, we were talking about the review of 

14 OTIB-81, which is the internal coworker dosimetry 

15 data for the Savannah River Site in its Revision 

16 3.

17 Both that report and SC&A's review are 

18 up on the website. And I'll try to refer directly 

19 to page numbers as we go along so that people on 

20 the phone can also see what we're looking at.

21 I guess as sort of a preamble, I note 

22 that other coworker models have been developed 
.

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1 that use the time-weighted, one person one sample 

2 method. But I believe this is the first, I think 

3 you could call it a test drive of the draft 

4 coworker implementation criteria, which I think 

5 the most recent revision is, I believe, Rev 4 

6 which is dated in 2015.

7 It was sort of approved on a trial 

8 basis to see how that criteria could really be 

9 addressed when developing a coworker model. So 

10 our review of OTIB-81 really focused on how that 

11 document and the discussion contained therein met 

12 the criteria as laid out in what we kind of call 

13 the Implementation Guide.

14 So that guidance is really split into 

15 four main criteria. You have the data adequacy, 

16 completeness, you have characterization of the 

17 monitoring program, and you have stratification. 

18 And that's really how we structured our report, 

19 so that's how I'm sort of going to be presenting 

20 it here. It'll jump around a little bit, but for 

21 the most part it just goes in order of those four 

22 main criteria. 
.

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1 As a quick refresher, when we talk 

2 about adequacy we're talking about did the actual 

3 measurements we have, the data that forms the 

4 basis of the model, whether that be bioassay or 

5 in vivo measurements, did it effectively measure 

6 the contaminant of interest?

7 And to follow under that is, do any 

8 adjustments to the numbers that we have have to 

9 be made, for various reasons, which will vary 

10 depending on what type of measurement we're 

11 talking about and what contaminant, et cetera.

12 Completeness we're really talking 

13 about -- usually we're talking about the temporal 

14 spread of the data; does that actually represent 

15 the operations and exposure potential at a site?

16 For example, if you saw a gap for a 

17 number of years, that could be because data is 

18 missing or because that particular project was 

19 shut down and that is reflected in the exposure 

20 records. Besides temporal concerns with 

21 completeness, you also have were critical job 

22 categories or areas missing from the data we have 
.

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1 in hand?

2 As a follow-on to that you have 

3 characterization of the monitoring program, 

4 whereas when we talk about completeness we're 

5 really just talking about what data we have in 

6 our hands. The characterization really looks at 

7 the monitoring program as a whole to see were 

8 they actually monitoring the correct people, 

9 locations, was that program effective as planned, 

10 et cetera.

11 And then the last criteria is 

12 stratification, which is simply is there the need 

13 to parse coworker intake analysis by a particular 

14 job type or area based on exposure potential?

15 So, our review, we had six findings 

16 and eight observations, as Tim pointed out. And 

17 the BRS contains responses to Findings 1, 2, and 

18 4. At least the last time I checked it yesterday 

19 that's what was up there.

20 So we'll move on from there. And, 

21 again, I'm going to go in order of these 

22 categories of adequacy, completeness, review of 
.

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1 the monitoring program, and then stratification.

2 Okay. Does everybody see a different 

3 slide now? It should say "Adequacy: findings and 

4 observations."

5 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, we see it.

6 MR. BARTON: Okay, great. Alright, so 

7 Observation 1 really related to variation in the 

8 sample results that we saw. And this issue goes 

9 back, and there were a number of discussions at 

10 previous meetings.

11 Essentially, what you have here is the 

12 americium, curium, and californium bioassay data. 

13 It's urinalysis data. And what they did is they 

14 would take a sample of voiding and break it out 

15 into several disks or aliquots. And then they 

16 would measure each disk and then the site would 

17 average the results. And they would either 

18 report that result, or if it was less than the 

19 reporting level or MDA they would report that.

20 And what we noticed is that there were 

21 very large variations in the measurements of the 

22 same voiding among different aliquots of 
.

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1 essentially the same samples. And these were 

2 even at levels that were far above the MDA.

3 OTIB-81 had concluded that these 

4 observed variations is due to the effective 

5 chelation treatment, which causes a heterogeneity 

6 among portions of the same voiding. And that was 

7 something that I hadn't heard of, but that's 

8 nothing new.

9 But that forms the basis of 

10 Observation 1. What we're really requesting is 

11 clarification or documentation that, you know, 

12 when you have that single voiding -- we're not 

13 talking about different urine samples, we're 

14 talking about different portions of the same 

15 urine sample -- you would have a significant 

16 variation again among the same voiding.

17 So we're asking for maybe a little bit 

18 more discussion or some references to sort of 

19 back that up. Because, again, it's something 

20 that I certainly was not aware of. But, you know, 

21 if that can be backed up, then that certainly 

22 would explain some of the variations that we did 
.

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1 see. And that's for -- again, this is for the 

2 trivalents. And also thorium because those 

3 bioassay data are used for, at least in part of 

4 the current thorium coworker methodology.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Can I interrupt here to 

6 ask you how you -- or how the Work Group wants to 

7 handle this. Because we have a response for this 

8 one and we could discuss that now, or we could 

9 move on to the next one. And I guess I'm just 

10 asking for what process do you guys want to use?

11 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: If you want to 

12 respond, let's do the response now.

13 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

14 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: I think it would be 

15 easier. Good idea.

16 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Our response is 

17 that -- the hypothesis that the heterogeneity 

18 occurs as a biochemical process, not analytical 

19 chemistry process. And it is just simply a 

20 hypothesis.

21 These data are not used because they 

22 are not representing the normal worker's exposure 
.

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1 and cannot be used to calculate an intake, the 

2 chelation. The heterogeneity observed in some of 

3 these samples is, in our opinion, really not 

4 relevant.

5 So we would like to propose just 

6 closing this. These chelation data are not used 

7 in our coworker model.

8 MR. BARTON: Well, I guess my 

9 immediate thought on that is the point of the 

10 original finding way back in, I believe, 2013 was 

11 it called into question if the sampling 

12 techniques are really all that accurate for 

13 measuring the contaminants that we want.

14 Now, if the variation that we're 

15 seeing is solely because of chelation, then I 

16 think you're right, those are going to be taken 

17 out anyway. But if it's not and it's some other, 

18 you know, mechanism at work, then, to my mind, 

19 that would still keep the issue open because it 

20 does call into question the effectiveness of the 

21 measurement technique.

22 DR. TAULBEE: Well, from the 2013 
.

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1 finding, you know, that was our big -- in that we 

2 removed those chelation data points, and we also 

3 switched to a time-weighted OPOS. Both of those 

4 took place in this latest model from the initial 

5 finding.

6 Now, do you still see the variation in

7 there? I don't believe that we do. But as I've 

8 gone through and looked at all of the 

9 observations that Joyce had pointed out before, 

10 I believe -- Matt Arno, please tell me if I'm 

11 wrong here, but it was all dominated by the 

12 chelation. Isn't that correct?

13 MR. ARNO: Yes, the vast majority.

14 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

15 MR. BARTON: Well, I think part of the 

16 reason for that is those examples stood out to us 

17 just because they were so far above the detection 

18 limit. So you wouldn't have a lot of noise in 

19 any sort of measurement that might explain such 

20 variations.

21 Again, it doesn't sound like all of 

22 them were chelated. So, again, I think we need 
.

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1 to have an actual, you know, reference to back up 

2 the assertion that that variation we're seeing is 

3 simply due to chelation effects.

4 I mean, just thinking about it myself, 

5 I mean, you're talking about a single voiding, 

6 the act of which I would think would help to 

7 homogenize the sample anyway.

8 So I'm not sure this closes the issue 

9 simply because of the chelated samples are out of 

10 there unless we can firmly establish that that 

11 variation that we saw was because of chelation.

12 DR. TAULBEE: Let me put this in. Why 

13 don't we go back to the 2013 evaluation and look 

14 at which ones are still in the data set, and then 

15 look and see whether there is a variation.

16 (Simultaneous speaking.)

17 MR. ARNO: Can you hear me all right?

18 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, we can hear you.

19 MR. ARNO: Oh, good. Okay.

20 DR. TAULBEE: So, you know, whether 

21 you want us to go through and figure out which 

22 ones we've excluded due to chelation, or if you 
.

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1 want to go through Joyce's initial list and 

2 figure out which ones are still in it, I don't 

3 care. Whichever way, it doesn't matter.

4 MR. BARTON: Well, again, I'm not sure 

5 that the point is whether those samples with the 

6 observed variation are removed or not. I think 

7 the question is whether the technique is sound. 

8 I mean, if we take out the chelation the issue is 

9 -- simply removing the sample doesn't really 

10 answer the question of what the mechanism is 

11 behind the variation that was observed.

12 DR. TAULBEE: Well, okay. If we look 

13 at -- if there are any remaining, then what is 

14 your basis that there is an issue?

15 MR. BARTON: Well, you're measuring 

16 different portions of the same sample and still 

17 getting significantly different results that 

18 aren't the result of chelation. Or if we can't 

19 find any reference to this phenomenon, then I 

20 would say there's still questions about how 

21 effective the measurement technique is.

22 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. I'm trying to 
.

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1 figure out, how do we test it? What would satisfy 

2 SC&A here? What do you propose that we do to 

3 demonstrate that the analytical chemistry process 

4 was reasonable here? The observations that you 

5 saw of the large variation, and we are saying 

6 that the vast majority of them are a result of 

7 chelation.

8 So we take those out. Do you want us 

9 to look at the other ones, the ones that remain? 

10 Which I think there's just a handful. You're not 

11 going to get any major statistical power out of 

12 it, but we can do that.

13 MR. BARTON: I think that would 

14 certainly be helpful. Really, what we were 

15 looking for was any sort of research that was 

16 done to support the hypothesis that it is the 

17 chelation that's causing that.

18 I mean, yeah, a lot of the samples 

19 that we gave for examples were chelated because 

20 they were just so high and above the MDA. So 

21 that's really why those were the examples we 

22 pointed to.
.

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1 The fact that a lot of them turned out 

2 to be chelated samples may explain it or it may 

3 not, but I'm not sure that we can simply say, 

4 well, it's probably because they were chelation 

5 samples and the chelating agent causes 

6 heterogeneity -- that's a mouthful -- in the same 

7 voiding.

8 We're not talking about one sample 

9 that was in the morning and then one sample that 

10 was a few hours later, and then one sample that 

11 was the next day. This is a single voiding.

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Do we know if the 

13 chelating agent is excreted, I assume that, in 

14 those urine samples or would affect the chemistry 

15 of how they're prepared?

16 DR. TAULBEE: That I don't know, 

17 whether it would or wouldn't.

18 MR. ARNO: This is Matt Arno. I think 

19 the point is that there's little value obtained 

20 from evaluating what's going on with chelated 

21 samples. We don't use them because they're 

22 chelated, because you can't, the models aren't 
.

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1 valid anymore.

2 The only applicable question is, what 

3 variation is there in samples that are actually 

4 usable? So I would say we would need to exclude 

5 chelated samples from any review we do to see if 

6 they're still an issue simply on those grounds. 

7 Why would we look at a variability in samples in 

8 non-usable data?

9 MR. BARTON: I can agree with that. 

10 But, again, that's sort of assuming that the 

11 effect we're seeing is from chelation.

12 MR. ARNO: Actually it's not making 

13 that assumption at all at that point. It's just 

14 simply excluding irrelevant data and focusing on 

15 what is going on with the actual usable data. 

16 Maybe there's an effect, maybe it's not, but why 

17 would we look at that data if it's not usable?

18 MR. STIVER: Bob, this is John. I 

19 would say that I agree that that's probably a 

20 good way to approach this, look at the data that's 

21 still being used. If you still see there are a 

22 lot of variations on aliquots from the same 
.

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1 voiding, then the problem still exists. But I 

2 kind of agree that you certainly need to look at 

3 the data that actually are going to be going into 

4 the model.

5 MR. BARTON: That's certainly 

6 acceptable to me. Again, I was pointing out that 

7 -- Tim kind of threw it out there that the reason 

8 is because they were chelated samples. It sounds 

9 like that was a hypothesis.

10 (Simultaneous speaking.)

11 MR. STIVER: If you take out the 

12 chelated samples and still see the problem, then 

13 you can't use the chelation as the explanation. 

14 MR. BARTON: Right, right. I agree 

15 with that.

16 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, I've taken the 

17 action item here that we will remove the 

18 chelation samples and evaluate what variation --

19 well, we'll look at the situation where we remove 

20 the chelated samples and evaluate if any are 

21 remaining, the variation amongst them, and report 

22 back. Is that acceptable?
.

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1 MR. BARTON: Certainly is to me.

2 MR. KATZ: That sounds like a go, Tim.

3 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

4 MR. BARTON: Okay, moving on to 

5 observation two, this was strictly for tritium. 

6 We noticed that 1958 doses showed a marked 

7 increase. And 1958 is significant because that 

8 was the year where the site changed from -- or 

9 changed to liquid scintillation counting, whereas 

10 before they were using ion chambers.

11 So we're really wondering what is the 

12 cause of the increase in tritium doses. Is it 

13 actually related to site activities, is it 

14 related directly to the measurement technique?

15 It seems like something, when you had 

16 such a marked change in 1958, you know, what's 

17 causing that and what effect might that have on 

18 any derived coworker doses?

19 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, this is Tim again. 

20 Can I, I guess, interrupt your presentation and 

21 put up a graph that we're talking about here, 

22 with regards to this one?
.

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1 MR. BARTON: Sure.

2 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. This is the Board 

3 Review System. Can people see that?

4 MR. BARTON: Yes, I can see it.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. And so we'll 

6 click down here in our response. Basically in 

7 our opinion there's no substantial increase in 

8 the derived worker doses beginning in 1958.

9 Both non-construction trades and 

10 construction trades workers data indicate an 

11 annual increase in dose each year from 1954 to 

12 1964, followed by a gradual decline from '64 to 

13 the early 1980s, with a substantial drop in 1986 

14 when the bioassay method changed again.

15 The CTW dose increases more from 1956 

16 to '57 than it does from '57 to '58. We don't 

17 really see a step change associated with the 

18 change in bioassay methods. Therefore there's no 

19 reason to think that the method prior to '58 was 

20 insufficient. The data appear to be more 

21 indicative of a gradual increase in contamination 

22 levels and thus uptakes during the period than 
.

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1 anything associated with the bioassay method.

2 And I'm going to click here on the 

3 graph, and hopefully you all can see this. But 

4 the annual tritium doses. I'm not seeing a big 

5 step increase from '57 to '58 there in this 

6 particular graph.

7 MR. BARTON: So any increases are 

8 essentially -- I mean, it's a site ramp-up in 

9 activity or in exposure potential. And so 

10 there's really no difference in the MDA between 

11 liquid scintillation and ion chamber counting?

12 Again, this is an observation because 

13 we thought we had seen a difference, and so we 

14 noted it as an observation. And based on that, 

15 it sounds like there was maybe a ramp-up in site 

16 activity but not, nothing to do with the actual 

17 measurement technique.

18 DR. TAULBEE: There was a big ramp-up 

19 of activity as they began to really run all the 

20 reactors hard. And so you're going to have the 

21 heavy water, you're going to have a lot more 

22 tritium being produced. And so more, greater 
.

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1 exposure potential, yeah.

2 MR. BARTON: Okay. Again, it's one of 

3 those things that, when you look at it, you know, 

4 you want to ask questions about the measurement 

5 technique changing. And that seems like a 

6 reasonable explanation.

7 So during that period in the late 

8 '50s, early '60s it was basically because of the 

9 site, as you just said, the reactors were really 

10 ramping up and so you're just going to have a lot 

11 more of it around. And so your annual doses are 

12 going to go up.

13 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct.

14 MR. BARTON: Okay. I don't know if 

15 anyone has any --

16 DR. TAULBEE: So is this particular 

17 issue or observation closed?

18 MR. BARTON: I'm fine with closing it, 

19 yeah.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Dr. Melius? I think 

21 you're on mute, Dr. Melius.

22 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: I'm sorry. I'm fine 
.

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1 with it.

2 MR. BARTON: I guess I'd just ask Ron 

3 Buchanan, if you're on the line, I know you had 

4 looked into some of the tritium stuff. Did you 

5 have any other comments on this? Or else we can 

6 move on.

7 DR. BUCHANAN: No, I'm fine with that 

8 explanation.

9 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, then I will close 

10 this item. Alright, I'll stop presenting here 

11 and kick it back to you, Bob.

12 MR. BARTON: Okay. I'll just take 

13 this over again. Okay, let's see here. Put this 

14 in full screen. Okay. I believe we are back. 

15 Let me move on to the next slide.

16 Okay, now, these weren't actually any 

17 observations or findings, they're just something 

18 we discuss in the report. And so what we just 

19 note here is that results below the reporting 

20 level for tritium were found in the 1980s. And 

21 NIOSH had concluded in the report that that's 

22 likely indicative of the true MDA and that what 
.

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1 we were seeing before was really the reporting 

2 level.

3 And we just point out that, you know, 

4 if we could document that this was the site 

5 practice at the time, and a discussion of what 

6 the true MDAs were for tritium, it would be 

7 beneficial to the document. And, again, that's 

8 not really a finding or an observation, but we 

9 wanted to point it out.

10 And also the TIB references the 1990 

11 Technical Basis Document, which describes quality 

12 control and assurance activities. But, again, 

13 that's in 1999. So it would be, again, beneficial 

14 if we could find earlier references which 

15 describe that QA/QC procedure, if those are 

16 available at the site or if those have been 

17 captured or if they're even available to capture.

18 So, again, that's just a note. That's 

19 one of the things that the implementation 

20 criteria talked about is documenting those QA/QC 

21 procedures that were used for the bioassay 

22 program.
.

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1 And there's discussion of it for 

2 tritium, but again it references a 1990 Technical 

3 Basis Document. So it would be beneficial to 

4 find earlier references, if that's at all 

5 possible. I don't know if NIOSH wants to comment 

6 on that. Again, it's not a finding or an 

7 observation. Again, just a suggestion, I guess.

8 DR. TAULBEE: If we find them, we will 

9 include them and take your suggestion. But I 

10 don't know that we're going to be digging hard to 

11 try and find them.

12 MR. BARTON: No, I understand. It's 

13 certainly a lower priority. And again, that's 

14 not a finding or an observation, but we wanted to 

15 note it since we do discuss it in our report. 

16 And it is sort of part of the coworker 

17 Implementation Guide.

18 So we can move on. That really took 

19 care of -- we only had two observations about 

20 data adequacy issues. So the next section deals 

21 with completeness. And I want to change slides 

22 here.
. 

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1 NIOSH Report on Assessing Exposure to Thorium 

2 232 from 1972-1989 

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3 Okay. Observation 3, and this is 

4 related to the trivalents and thorium. We 

5 couldn't figure out, based on the report, what 

6 was going to happen post-1989 as far as 

7 unmonitored intake assignments. At the time I 

8 was kind of preparing this, we hadn't had a 

9 response. I don't know if NIOSH has a response.

10 I would note that, at least for 

11 thorium, their method has changed a little bit. 

12 But, again, it's the method described Report-70, 

13 which came out fairly recently, where urinalysis 

14 data can be used from '73 to '80 and then a 

15 fraction of the derived air concentration from 

16 '81 to '89. But I don't believe it describes 

17 anything after 1989. 

18 So that's Observation 3. I don't know 

19 if NIOSH has a response on that one.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, we do. And this 

21 is basically the coworker intake rates after 1988 

22 -- or after 1989, will be evaluated at a later 
.

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1 date. I guess that would be Rev 5, if you will.

2 And the reason for this is we're 

3 switching kind of databases at this time period, 

4 from we'll most likely be using the HPRED data 

5 that Joe definitely got to see a part of when he 

6 was doing his subcontractor review.

7 And then we have not used that in 

8 OTIB-81, even for Rev 4 yet. Rev 2 did use the 

9 data from 1991 on forward time period, and it 

10 showed a reduction in the calculated intake rates 

11 for all radionuclides.

12 Although some of the methodologies 

13 used in the coworker study have changed, we're 

14 not anticipating that any of these changes will 

15 result in a significant change in the relative 

16 magnitudes of the intake. This is calculated 

17 with HPRED from data sources we're using for 1990 

18 and earlier.

19 The issue of why we cut it in 1989 for 

20 Rev 4 right now has to do with being able to 

21 identify construction trades workers. Under the 

22 DuPont era, it's really easy for us to identify 
.

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1 a construction trades worker. We have complete 

2 worker histories, and the external dosimetry 

3 delineates subcontractor construction trades 

4 from construction -- I'm sorry, from DuPont 

5 construction trades workers.

6 What we have to use for this latter 

7 time period, which is what's causing the delay, 

8 is -- and Joe saw some of this database as well, 

9 where, if you recall, we could go and look up 

10 some people's name and they could identify who 

11 their contractor -- which contract they worked 

12 for, whether they worked for Westinghouse or 

13 whether they worked for Bechtel, who was the 

14 prime construction trades worker contractor at 

15 that time period.

16 We haven't done that yet, we're trying 

17 to get Rev 4 out the door right now. But that is 

18 kind of our next step. So that is why we didn't 

19 address post-1989. And so what I would like to 

20 recommend to the Work Group is that we put this 

21 in abeyance until we get Rev 4 out the door. And 

22 then we will be issuing a Rev 5 that has just the 
.

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1 1990 or '89 -- yeah, it would be the 1990 through 

2 1994 time period.

3 So is it okay if we put this one in 

4 abeyance for now?

5 MR. KATZ: Just to be technical, Tim, 

6 you wouldn't put it in abeyance, because it's not 

7 been done yet, but you'd just put it in progress.

8 DR. TAULBEE: Oh, okay. I thought 

9 abeyance meant --

10 MR. KATZ: Abeyance means that 

11 everybody agrees that everything's good and they 

12 just want to see the final paperwork, basically.

13 DR. TAULBEE: Say again, Ted. I'm 

14 sorry.

15 MR. KATZ: So when you put them in 

16 abeyance it's because the Work Group has decided 

17 it's all good, they just want to see it written 

18 up.

19 DR. TAULBEE: Oh, okay. Got it.

20 MR. KATZ: That's what abeyance means, 

21 the issue's resolved and they just want to see it 

22 written up.
.

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1 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. I'll put this in 

2 progress. And when we get Rev 4, or Rev 5 out, 

3 then the Work Group will have the opportunity to 

4 review the '90 to '94 time period.

5 MR. BARTON: Okay. Moving on to 

6 Finding 1. And this was, when we looked at a 

7 comparison of the reported samples, to what, 

8 basically what I call it is the samples you have 

9 in hand. So, basically we have the data that's 

10 going to form the basis of the coworker model. 

11 And to see to what extent it's complete it was 

12 compared against health physics reports 

13 essentially saying how many samples we should 

14 have.

15 And we noticed that the analysis in 

16 OTIB-81 had ended in 1981 as far as comparing the 

17 two. But, obviously, the proposed coworker model 

18 extends through 1989. And so we were asking, 

19 well, we should probably look at the completeness 

20 for those later years, especially because one of 

21 the things we have seen is that the number of 

22 samples we had in hand was less than what was 
.

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1 being reported in that latter period.

2 So Finding 1, 2, and Observation 4 are 

3 really all sort of interrelated and all sort of 

4 relate back to a response in the BRS. So if it's 

5 okay, I would like to move on to Finding 2 and 

6 Observation 4. And then on to NIOSH's response 

7 to those items, if that's okay, since the 

8 response really relates to all three of them.

9 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. I'll try and keep 

10 my responses tied to each of the findings and 

11 observations. Go ahead.

12 MR. BARTON: One of the things, when 

13 we noticed those later years that you had less 

14 data in hand than what was reported, in OTIB-81 

15 it had said that that was likely due to the 

16 inclusion of fecal sampling in the Works 

17 Technical Report totals.

18 So even though you have -- assuming we 

19 have less data, if you added in the fecal samples 

20 they should more closely match. We didn't think 

21 that was really credible for, you know -- and 

22 you'll see why in a moment.
.

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1 And then Observation 4, this is just 

2 dealing with the earlier period where actually 

3 you have a lot more data in hand than what was 

4 reported in the Works Technical. And even though 

5 that's obviously a lot better, you always want 

6 more, more data than what was reported, we just 

7 wondered why that was the case. And that's why 

8 we made that observation.

9 One possibility that we talk about in 

10 our report is that perhaps they weren't putting 

11 construction trade workers in those totals. That 

12 was based on a single example, we can't say that 

13 that's actually the reason.

14 But, again, it's an observation 

15 because we actually have more data, just on the 

16 basis of the coworker models and what they have 

17 in those Works Technical Reports. And so we're 

18 going to move to NIOSH response here for Findings 

19 1 and 2.

20 Okay, and here's the chart sort of 

21 showing the red line is the number of reports 

22 that were listed in the Works Technical versus 
.

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1 the amount that we have in hand. And you can see, 

2 you know, sort of later years, you've got some 

3 years where it's significantly less and then the 

4 earlier years you generally have more.

5 And then the next slide, this one is 

6 sort of dealing with the notion that the fecal 

7 samples were included in the totals, but then 

8 here's a table that shows that they were actually 

9 broken out separately.

10 So again, that's why -- and it talks 

11 about the fecal sampling being the reason why we 

12 see a discrepancy where the Works Technical 

13 Report has one value that's significantly higher 

14 than what we have in hand, but that turns out to 

15 not be the case. And Tim will talk about it.

16 And what you have in front of you is 

17 the entry, at least as of yesterday, on the 

18 response to Findings 1 and 2. So everybody can 

19 see that. Tim, I'll let you take it from here.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Yeah, as you see 

21 here on the slide here, we agree it would be 

22 beneficial to extend the completeness analysis. 
.

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1 Bioassays we've received that cover most of the 

2 1980 and provide similar information are 

3 available. And we've updated Table 4-1 and we've 

4 got it reproduced. Did you provide that table on 

5 your next slide?

6 MR. BARTON: Yes, I did.

7 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. You can see, if 

8 you go to that particular one, and you can see 

9 we've got, you know, typically in the '90s --

10 (Telephonic interference.)

11 DR. TAULBEE: Generally we have more 

12 bioassay folks than what the Works Technical 

13 reported. So we have extended this through 1987 

14 here, as you can see in the revised Table 4-1.

15 MR. BARTON: Right. And everyone, 

16 remember, the original concerns was more, A, we 

17 didn't see the data past 1981. Now that has been 

18 provided. And also those numbers between 1969 

19 and 1981 certainly improve when even the unusable 

20 samples were included in the totals, which is 

21 obviously the more correct comparison.

22 When you say unusable, those unusable, 
.

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1 they would have been included in the Works 

2 Technical total. We're not talking about 

3 unusable as in, like, a not submitted sample or 

4 something like that.

5 DR. TAULBEE: No. In the Works 

6 Technical Report they're more reporting what the 

7 bioassay lab saw. And so if the sample volume 

8 was too low, that would be unusable. And some 

9 samples are lost in processing and you do a 

10 follow-up. So, you know, that occurs as well. 

11 And so you see that within the logbooks. You'll 

12 see routine monitoring, special monitoring, 

13 follow-ups, that kind of thing as a designation.

14 And, you know, what all went into the 

15 actual Works Technical Report value, we're really 

16 speculating from that standpoint. The logbook 

17 for americium, that was that data that we were 

18 using. And those, you can see, it generally over19 reports what was found in those summary tables.

20 I would also like to point out that in 

21 some cases, the number of samples for americium 

22 are really limited to bioassays. They don't 
.

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1 correspond well on a month-by-month basis either. 

2 It depends upon, I guess, when they considered 

3 samples -- or when it was actually analyzed. And 

4 so we do see some variation from that standpoint. 

5 Sometimes those samples were held for a quarter 

6 or so. And so you'll see that in there as well. 

7 Definitely month-to-month and year-to-year.

8 But we feel that this matches pretty 

9 good, you know, from what we're seeing here in 

10 that post-'81 time period. That one year, '82 

11 where there's less in the logbooks than what 

12 they're sampling.

13 MR. BARTON: Given the history of --

14 (Telephonic interference.)

15 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Somebody here needs 

16 to put their phone on mute.

17 MR. KATZ: Right, right. Bob, are you 

18 still there?

19 MR. BARTON: Yes, I'm here.

20 (Telephonic interference.)

21 MR. BARTON: Is it safe?

22 MR. KATZ: I don't know if it's safe.
.

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1 (Simultaneous speaking)

2 (Telephonic interference.)

3 MR. KATZ: We'll give it another shot, 

4 Bob.

5 MR. BARTON: Okay.

6 (Telephonic interference.)

7 MS. ADAMS: Ted, it's Nancy. I --

8 MR. KATZ: Nancy, I can't call Zaida 

9 without getting off this line. Will you just 

10 please call her and get her to cut the line?

11 MS. ADAMS: Yeah, I dialed zero but 

12 nobody picked up. But I will do that.

13 MR. BARTON: Okay, tentatively, I'll 

14 continue the discussion here --

15 (Telephonic interference.)

16 MEMBER ROESSLER: Hi, this is Gen. Is 

17 anybody on the line?

18 MR. KATZ: I'm on the line. I sent 

19 Zaida an email, too, so one way or another, 

20 hopefully she'll -- if she hasn't cut that line 

21 she'll be cutting it.

22 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay. I missed roll 
.

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1 call earlier, I think.

2 MR. KATZ: No, yeah, glad you could 

3 join us.

4 MEMBER ROESSLER: I didn't want to 

5 butt in on things before, but now I'm back on.

6 MR. KATZ: Okay, good. Yeah, and we 

7 have Paul back on, too. Or we had him on. Okay, 

8 Bob, you want to give it another shot?

9 MR. BARTON: Okay. So, again, the 

10 concerns were, one, that the comparison and 

11 completeness between the Works Technical and 

12 totals that we had in hand only went to 1981. 

13 That's been expanded to 1987.

14 And also the counting of only -- the 

15 inclusion of the samples that wouldn't actually 

16 go into the coworker model but would have been 

17 included in the Works Technical certainly improve 

18 the percentages that we see here in front.

19 I guess the only question and/or 

20 comment I would have left is, based on the 

21 operational history of the site, do we have any 

22 reason to believe, or any reason why in, for 
.

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1 example, the 1980 and 1969 were down in the 70s 

2 where other years were either above 100 or in the 

3 90s, or really above 100 or in the 90s it looks 

4 like.

5 (Telephonic interference.)

6 MR. KATZ: Okay. I think they cut 

7 that line. Bob, are you still there?

8 MR. BARTON: Yes, I'm still here.

9 MR. KATZ: Okay. It sounds like they 

10 just cut the line. I got an email from Zaida 

11 that they were working on it. 

12 MR. BARTON: Alright.

13 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Come on, Bob. You 

14 can do it, Bob, this time.

15 MR. BARTON: I'll just talk really 

16 loudly. My question, remaining question was, for 

17 the three years there where the totals are more 

18 into the 70s -- 70 percent, not the 1970s -- 1969 

19 at 77 percent, '80 is 70 percent, and '82 is 74 

20 percent. Do we know anything specific about 

21 those years as far as operationally and the 

22 exposure potential to the trivalents that would 
.

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1 give us pause? 

2 And/or is that information available 

3 that we could say, well, you know, it looks like 

4 maybe we don't have as many samples in hand as 

5 what's reported, but there's no reason to think 

6 that the potentially missing samples would unduly 

7 affect any sort of derived coworker values.

8 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. The only 

9 thing -- and I'm going to kick this to Matt Arno 

10 in just a second here for his opinion on it. The 

11 only thing that I know of from an analysis 

12 standpoint would be the 1969 type of era where 

13 they began to change their bioassay technique 

14 with regards to how they did some of the 

15 separations. But that's the only thing that I 

16 know of, and that happened in the '69 to '70 type 

17 of timeframe. 

18 But the other years, no, I'm not aware 

19 of any other operational type of changes that 

20 would affect that. Matt, are you aware of 

21 anything?

22 MR. ARNO: No, I'm not.
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1 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

2 MR. BARTON: I'll take myself off mute 

3 there. Obviously the question of what is an 

4 adequate percentage to have is sort of a matter 

5 of professional judgement.

6 Like I said, most years it looks 

7 really good in that we have, for most of the 

8 years, we have more samples than what was being 

9 reported, and it's just those sort of three 

10 outlier years where you're down in the 70 

11 percent.

12 You know, there's really no reason to 

13 think that those years were any different than 

14 the other ones. There's no reason to think that 

15 missing data points would change, effectively, 

16 what your time-weighted OPOS values end up being 

17 for that timeframe.

18 I'm not sure what else there is to do 

19 except ask the Work Group what their opinion is 

20 as far as the percentages we're seeing right now 

21 and whether that's sufficient to close those two 

22 findings.
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1 And really Observation 4 is just 

2 noting that we saw, like there was a number of 

3 years prior to 1969, we have a lot more samples 

4 than were being reported. You see in 1963 there's 

5 173 percent; 1968, 160 percent.

6 MR. ARNO: There's only 19 samples in 

7 1963. I don't think you can say much about a 

8 percentage on such a small number of samples. 

9 But one thing to keep in mind with these 

10 percentages is that, more than a particular 

11 percentage, the real key thing to think about is, 

12 is there enough data to do a statistical analysis 

13 for your cohort or your strata?

14 If you have enough data to do that 

15 analysis, even if perhaps the percentage is not 

16 as high, you should still consider that you have 

17 enough data to do a coworker study.

18 MR. KATZ: Whoever was just speaking, 

19 can you just please identify yourself for the 

20 court reporter?

21 MR. ARNO: Matt Arno.

22 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Matt. I thought 
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1 so, I just wanted to be sure.

2 MR. BARTON: I understand that point 

3 of view. But when we're talking about 

4 completeness, we're talking about do we have all 

5 the data in hand, or do we have sufficient data 

6 in hand? And that's not just so we can meet 

7 statistical requirements such as, you know, the 

8 recommended 30 OPOS results in a year or what 

9 not.

10 I mean, if there's a significant 

11 portion missing, you have to ask yourself, what 

12 could that be from and how might that effect your 

13 end value? So while I agree, you need to be able 

14 to have enough data to fit your distributions, I 

15 don't think just saying, well, we have enough 

16 data to perform a statistical analysis is the 

17 same as the data is complete.

18 MR. ARNO: Well, we've never said that 

19 the data has to be complete. It has to be 

20 representative.

21 (Simultaneous speaking)

22 MR. ARNO: -- would be relevant that 
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1 there's a bias in why there's data missing.

2 DR. NETON: Right. This is Jim. I 

3 think that's a good point. Is there a 

4 differential bias in those samples that we don't 

5 have? Is there some database of incident reports 

6 or something that we're missing? And then if we 

7 can't, if that doesn't happen, or that doesn't 

8 exist, then I think we're okay. But I'd be 

9 interested to hear more discussion on that.

10 MR. BARTON: Well, I think we're sort 

11 of at a point -- again, we're only talking about 

12 those three years where it sounds like we don't 

13 have any information really at all to say what 

14 those missing samples might have been.

15 So there's no reason to think they 

16 were all the high one, and then there's no reason 

17 -- really we just don't know for those years. 

18 And I guess in the end game, if the surrounding 

19 years are similar in process and there was 

20 nothing special going on during those years to 

21 make us worry about the missing records, then 

22 that's sort of where we're left and it's really 
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1 a professional judgement or sort of a policy 

2 decision.

3 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. If you 

4 look at the intake model that Matt has developed 

5 for these particular radionuclides, you don't see 

6 any big drops or increases in those years.

7 So, you know, from our standpoint, you 

8 know, we do the intake modeling, we're combining 

9 workflow, we've got individual data points but 

10 we're actually doing a modeling of a chronic 

11 intake over that time period. So, you know, I 

12 don't think that this really has much of an impact 

13 on the final coworker model.

14 MR. BARTON: I agree with that. And 

15 that's the only reason I brought it up again is 

16 to see if there was anything special happening in 

17 those years that would make us think that there 

18 might be a problem with completeness there.

19 And what I'm hearing is that all the 

20 values look pretty similar, and we really don't 

21 know why they were a little bit lower in those 

22 years. But it doesn't -- we have no reason to 
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1 think it will actually impact the resulting 

2 coworker model.

3 I mean, I'd like to hear the Work 

4 Group's thoughts on that, but I'm not sure what 

5 else we can do other than to say we don't have 

6 any information to suggest that those years are 

7 problematic.

8 PARTICIPANT: Hello?

9 MR. BARTON: Hello. Is everybody 

10 still with me?

11 MR. KATZ: Yes.

12 DR. TAULBEE: I guess I would ask the 

13 Work Group, what do you feel --

14 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: This is Jim Melius.

15 (Telephonic interference.)

16 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: There's a foghorn on 

17 Ted's boat, you can ignore it. The yacht. 

18 No, I think the question is did we 

19 adequately investigate that, and document it?

20 DR. TAULBEE: Do you think we have 

21 here?

22 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Well, I'm asking. I 
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1 think that was Bob's question, too. And I sort 

2 of hear, you know, speculation around the 

3 numbers. But it's also, you know, what was 

4 happening at the facility in those areas at that 

5 particular point in time, or those three years.

6 Again, it may not be a big deal in 

7 terms of the overall, you know, coworker model, 

8 but for people working in those years, it makes 

9 a difference.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Well, when we modeled 

11 the intake, we actually, for those particular 

12 years, we're smoothing over the intake model. So 

13 for a block of time we assign a particular intake, 

14 daily intake, as pointed out in our coworker 

15 model report.

16 So, people who worked in those years 

17 would get the same as the people in the adjacent 

18 years, basically. Whatever that intake model 

19 predicted.

20 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: We can come back to 

21 that.

22 MR. BARTON: If I might, maybe one 
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1 possible way to sort of put this to bed is to 

2 have some sort of an official response about what 

3 we see in the data. Where we are right now is 

4 we're not seeing a large change in magnitude of 

5 bioassay results in those three years.

6 And off the top of our heads, we don't 

7 have any reason to believe that anything was 

8 different in those three years. Maybe it would 

9 be beneficial to sort of officially put this to 

10 bed, to have a discussion of what activities were 

11 ongoing, and why there's no reason to think that 

12 those years would be problematic. No special 

13 campaigns or anything like that, is what I mean.

14 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, I guess we could 

15 do that. That is certainly something we could 

16 do. Alright. I will mark this one then in 

17 progress as well.

18 MR. KATZ: Right. Thanks, Tim.

19 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

20 MR. BARTON: Okay. And then obviously 

21 we were saying this trivalent, these data were 

22 also used for thorium. At least in 1969 this 
.

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1 data would have been used for thorium.

2 In the 1980s, I just wanted to note 

3 that currently NIOSH is not -- I believe a change 

4 occurs in 1981, is that correct, Tim, for 

5 thorium?

6 DR. TAULBEE: Actually, these would 

7 not be used for thorium, because the site is 

8 already an SEC due to thorium through October 

9 1972. So we are not using those values for 

10 thorium. If you look at the thorium coworker 

11 model, it starts in '72. So '69 doesn't effect 

12 it. We only use the coworker model through May 

13 of 1980.

14 MR. BARTON: Okay. I just wanted to 

15 note that there was sort of a change in 

16 methodology there. Prior to this, intakes were 

17 using urinalysis all the way through the '80s. 

18 But that method has recently changed. So I just 

19 wanted to note that for the Work Group's benefit.

20 But I think we can move on. Let me 

21 go to the next slide here. This is Finding 3, 

22 and again we're still talking about the 
.

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1 trivalents. And this was the combination of 

2 multiple years of bioassay data for the purpose 

3 of coming up with your OPOS result which then 

4 gets modeled to an intake.

5 And I just wanted to read specifically 

6 from the Implementation Guide. It says, "if 

7 because of data limitations it is necessary to 

8 consider time intervals beyond one year in the 

9 coworker model, any changes in site practices or 

10 operations should be evaluated to ensure that 

11 data can be validly combined. In general, group 

12 time intervals should not exceed a three-year 

13 period unless there is stringent justification to 

14 do so." 

15 So, during the 1980s there were a 

16 couple years that were grouped together, but they 

17 weren't really discussed in the context of, 

18 again, what operations were going on that would 

19 allow for the combination of data? Simply 

20 because we don't have enough statistically is 

21 only part of the equation. But when you do 

22 combined longer periods like that, there should 
.

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1 be some discussion of what the operations were 

2 occurring at the site to say that the combination 

3 of those years is technically appropriate.

4 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. Findings 

5 3 and 5 are the two responses that we are 

6 currently working on. And we are trying to gather 

7 that information that you pointed out there. So 

8 we are still working on those two responses for 

9 Finding 3 and Finding 5.

10 MR. BARTON: So for those two we would 

11 have those be in progress.

12 DR. TAULBEE: Actually, Ted, correct 

13 me here. There's an open status, what is that 

14 for?

15 MR. KATZ: Well, that's for before 

16 it's discussed. So actually it doesn't matter. 

17 You can say in progress because you guys are 

18 following up on it. It's open generally before 

19 the issue's been raised in a Work Groups.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. I was going to 

21 leave it open since we hadn't responded yet.

22 MR. KATZ: In progress is fine. It's 
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1 fine, because you're acting on it.

2 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, alright.

3 MR. BARTON: Okay, moving along to the 

4 next slide. This is Observation 5. I'll just 

5 read it. It is not clear to SC&A why the date of 

6 the bioassay sample is not considered a critical 

7 field for the purpose of performing QA tests on 

8 transcribed datasets for trivalent actinides as 

9 well as tritium, because the date of the sample 

10 is a crucial component to correctly performing 

11 the time-weighted OPOS calculation for the 

12 trivalents. And obviously the calculation of the 

13 annual tritium dose also depends on what the 

14 sample date is.

15 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. And this is Tim. 

16 And if I can pull up my desktop I can share our 

17 response to this.

18 MR. BARTON: Okay, I'll hand it over 

19 to you.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Alright. And basically 

21 we want to point out to the Work Group that all 

22 fields relevant to calculating the time-weighted 
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1 OPOS result are subject to quality assurance, 

2 including the bioassay sample date. A 

3 qualitative judgement was made regarding the 

4 field as to which to subject the one percent 

5 criteria to in which to evaluate to a five percent 

6 acceptance criteria. So, all of the data have to 

7 meet the five percent error acceptance criteria. 

8 I mean they've got to be 95 percent accurate.

9 When evaluating censored data, which 

10 is the majority of this particular data, the 

11 variability of precise date has less of an impact 

12 on the time-weighted OPOS result than the 

13 magnitude of the bioassay results.

14 The date is a single value impacting 

15 only part of the time weighting determination of 

16 the time-weighted OPOS result, because if a 

17 person's got four bioassay samples in a 

18 particular year, and, you know, one of the dates 

19 is off, it really doesn't have a huge impact on 

20 that particular time-weighted OPOS result. It 

21 just kind of shifts a little bit within that year.

22 So, that result is then only, you 
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1 know, like I said, only one value in 

2 determination of the distribution of results for 

3 a given year. That date, then, is just one person 

4 within a given year. We have typically 30 or 

5 more people within that year that are making up 

6 the distribution.

7 The geometric mean and geometric 

8 standard deviation of the distribution are in 

9 turn one data point that's used in the 

10 calculation of the intake rate where look at over 

11 a larger interval.

12 So this impact of the maximum five 

13 percent error -- and typically, if you look at 

14 all of our results, the results or the actual 

15 error is less than three percent, even with a 

16 five percent criteria because we have a 

17 confidence interval about it, we don't think that 

18 it has a significant impact on the final 

19 calculated intake result, because of all of the 

20 averaging that's going on. And the critical 

21 fields to us were the bioassay value, the 

22 individual magnitude of the result.
.

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1 MR. BARTON: Okay. Obviously, I'm 

2 just seeing this today. It's not immediately 

3 clear to me that it doesn't have an impact. I 

4 mean, if you weight the magnitude of a bioassay 

5 sample by one day instead of 60 days, or a week

6 instead of 90 days, I mean, that's going to 

7 significantly decrease that value's impact on the 

8 time-weighted OPOS.

9 Or if you had a wrong year in the date, 

10 they you have a bioassay sample that's not even 

11 being applied to the correct year. So I'm not 

12 sure --- like you said, it's a qualitative 

13 decision, not necessarily a quantitative one.

14 DR. TAULBEE: But also keep in mind 

15 that it is subjected to acceptance criteria. The 

16 error rate in the sample date has to be less than 

17 five percent, otherwise we go back and recode 

18 part of the data and fix it. And then subject it 

19 to -- you know, find out if it's a systematic 

20 error. There's a lot of things that we do. So, 

21 95 percent of those dates are absolutely correct.

22 MR. BARTON: Okay, I understand what 
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1 you're saying. I guess my feeling is that, based 

2 on how the date factors into weighting the 

3 bioassay results, it seemed, at least to me, at 

4 least as though -- it seems important, just like 

5 the actual bioassay results itself, because it's 

6 a multiplier to that bioassay result. Again, I 

7 guess it's a qualitative judgement, and I would 

8 like to hear others' thoughts on that.

9 MR. ARNO: This is Matt Arno. One of 

10 the points we're making regarding the censored 

11 data is that, for most of these individuals, 

12 their bioassay consists of a string of less than 

13 MDA, or less than reported level results. 

14 And if you have a string of those, and 

15 you're off on the date of one of those by a week 

16 or three months or however long, it actually has 

17 no impact on the time-weighted OPOS calculation 

18 being done.

19 So obviously if it's greater than MDA, 

20 it does have more impact. But for a string of 

21 less than MDA data, the date really being off by 

22 weeks or months doesn't really change it.
.

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1 MR. BARTON: Now hold on a second 

2 because yes, most of the data is below the 

3 censoring level, but we're using those data as 

4 is. The numerical results that are below the 

5 detection limit are being averaged and fed into 

6 the coworker model. So it does have an effect.

7 If we were just going to say that it's 

8 less than the MDA and everyone's less than three, 

9 then I agree with you, there's no effect. But 

10 since we are using the numerical results that are 

11 less than the MDA ---

12 MR. ARNO: What I'm saying is most of 

13 that data is censored, you have a string of 

14 censored results. 

15 MR. BARTON: And I'm saying that the 

16 way, at least I understand the data is being used, 

17 you're not actually using the censored result. 

18 You're using the actual numerical value reported 

19 which is below the censoring level.

20 MR. ARNO: It's available. It's not 

21 always available.

22 MR. BARTON: Well, for the trivalent 
.

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1 database, and correct me if I'm wrong, that 

2 information is available.

3 MR. ARNO: It's available for a number 

4 of years for that data set. But this same process 

5 is being used for all the data sets.

6 MR. BARTON: So, wait. It is relevant 

7 for trivalents then, correct?

8 MR. ARNO: You're still dealing with 

9 numbers over a small interval of values. It has 

10 an impact, it just doesn't have much impact. We 

11 were never making an argument that it has no 

12 impact, we're just making the argument it has a 

13 very small impact, and therefore not worthy of a 

14 higher degree of rigor.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron Buchanan. 

16 I would like to make a clarification here and say 

17 that the dates can't be off by more than five 

18 percent, well, okay the individual date can be 

19 off more than five percent. It's just the overall 

20 error, typo error cannot be off by over five 

21 percent.

22 But any certain date can be off a year 
.

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1 or ten years. It's not limited to five percent 

2 variance in the actual date.

3 DR. TAULBEE: That is correct. But 

4 again, 95 percent of that data, the sample dates, 

5 are correct.

6 DR. NETON: And we're using the 95th 

7 percentile of the distribution.

8 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron again. 

9 Yes, on some instances the date is very 

10 important, some instances it -- so it's hard to 

11 make a blanket statement of whether a date is 

12 going to impact the results --

13 DR. NETON: What I'm trying to say, 

14 Ron, is that if five percent of the data are wrong 

15 and they're biased low, the 95th percentile is 

16 still okay. Right?

17 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, okay. What I'm 

18 saying just as a general rule is that on an 

19 individual dose reconstruction, a date is usually 

20 fairly important. When you're doing coworker 

21 where you have a lot, or you're mingling a lot of 

22 data, then it depends on whether the date is 
.

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1 important or not.

2 DR. NETON: Well, I think 95 percent 

3 rides a pretty good degree of importance to it. 

4 You have to make a value judgment, like was said, 

5 whether you pick 95, 99. Ninety five percent is 

6 a very good acceptance criteria. I mean, it's a 

7 very rigorous acceptance criteria. It's not like 

8 we're at, say, 50 percent.

9 MR. BARTON: Well, I certainly don't 

10 want to beat this to death. I just -- my point 

11 was that given the way, due to the OPOS 

12 calculation where the date really could be fed in 

13 anywhere from, you know, one day to the full year. 

14 But it appears to me numerically it would be at 

15 least as important as the actual sample result, 

16 which is held to the one percent criteria.

17 We can disagree on that point, and I 

18 would certainly like to hear the Work Group 

19 weighing in on that.

20 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: To be honest with 

21 you -- this is Brad --- I'm totally confused on 

22 where we're at --- on everything. So just, maybe 
.

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1 in laymen's terms, just rough it up for me here 

2 because I am under the impression that the dates 

3 do matter, myself. But also, too, I'm 

4 understanding that if there's a small variance, 

5 okay, it's not that critical. But I'm a little 

6 bit --- what the issue is here, so.

7 MR. BARTON: Alright, I'll try to take 

8 a crack at it. When you do the time-weighted 

9 OPOS, let's just say for a certain value, you 

10 weight it by the number of days in between 

11 samples.

12 So if you think about it, if the date 

13 was off by, say the samples are two weeks apart, 

14 but the date says --- was input incorrectly and 

15 now they're only a week apart. That sample is 

16 going to be -- have a weight that's essentially 

17 one half what it should be. I guess you're only 

18 weighting it over a one week period versus where 

19 it should be weighted over a two week period.

20 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: This is Jim Melius. 

21 I mean, I think I tend to agree with NIOSH. I 

22 think it's yes, from the individual calculation 
.

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1 it may be important. But you know, given the 

2 five percent criteria and given the 95 percent 

3 utilization of this, you know, 95th percentile.

4 I just can't see where it makes a 

5 significant difference unless you have a very, 

6 you know, weird set of data. And somehow I think 

7 that would be picked up by, you know, other means.

8 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. The 

9 question I had, were there any Work Group Members 

10 that care to share their opinion of it?

11 (Telephonic interference.)

12 MR. KATZ: Jim, I don't know if others 

13 can hear you, but, Jim Lockey, but you were very 

14 hard to listen to for me. You weren't coming 

15 through. Jim Lockey?

16 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Okay, way to make 

17 him feel bad. Now he's not going to talk.

18 MR. KATZ: Now he doesn't want to play 

19 at all.

20 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: No. Hello.

21 (Simultaneous speaking.)

22 MR. KATZ: Jim Lockey, you want to 
.

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1 repeat what you were trying to say?

2 MEMBER LOCKEY: Can you hear me now?

3 MR. KATZ: Yes.

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay. So I know I 

5 haven't done any research that relates just to 

6 these types of databases' relationship to 

7 radiation exposure. But in relationship to other 

8 occupational circumstances. The outline that Jim 

9 sort of eluded to, 95 percentile and one week 

10 difference or two weeks. It's not going to make 

11 a big difference from what I currently 

12 understand. So I sort of agree with Jim, in that 

13 I don't think it's going to make a --- this type 

14 of date is not going to --- fluctuation in date 

15 is not going to make a big difference in this 

16 particular database.

17 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, can we consider 

18 this one closed then?

19 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, yes you can.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Thank you.

21 MR. BARTON: Okay. Should I take back 

22 over here?
.

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1 (Simultaneous speaking.)

2 MR. BARTON: Yes, Tim, I think you're 

3 going to have to either give me control or stop 

4 or something.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Sorry about that, I 

6 apologize.

7 MR. BARTON: No problem at all. Just 

8 get this loaded back up here. So that was again, 

9 that was Observation 5. Okay, in a similar vein, 

10 Observation 6 we're requesting a little bit of 

11 clarification on what aspects of the tritium 

12 coworker model were subjected to the QA criteria.

13 When we looked at the appendix where 

14 that information is contained, it appeared to us 

15 that the only thing that was subject to a QA 

16 process was the delineation between construction 

17 and non-construction workers.

18 This one is a little bit unique. 

19 Again, this is an observation, it's unique 

20 because we're basing it on claimant records. But 

21 I was wondering things like the transcription of 

22 those data from the -- their claimant dose 
.

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1 reconstructions, you know, how were those 

2 transcribed and what QA criteria did the 

3 compilation of that data which originally went 

4 into a dose reconstruction undergo, and how does 

5 that really relate back to the QA criteria we're 

6 talking about when we formulate a coworker model.

7 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. This is Tim. And 

8 basically the result is checked as a critical 

9 field, the construction trades worker 

10 designation, the date, and the area were checked 

11 as non-critical fields.

12 The result was checked at the one 

13 percent criteria. The designation, the date, and 

14 the area were checked as non-critical or five 

15 percent criteria.

16 The results for QA checks for fields 

17 other than the CTW designation were inadvertently 

18 admitted from Revision 3 that will be included in 

19 Revision 4. And so I guess my question to Ted 

20 then, would this one then fall into the in 

21 abeyance scenario?

22 MR. KATZ: Yes. It sounds like that's 
.

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1 exactly what that would be.

2 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Does that answer 

3 your question, Bob?

4 MR. BARTON: It does. And I guess, a 

5 sneak peek, I'm assuming that it passed the QA 

6 criteria.

7 DR. TAULBEE: Yes it did.

8 MR. BARTON: Okay. So we can place 

9 that one in abeyance. Okay, here again these are 

10 not really findings or observations, but just 

11 some suggestions or issues that we sort of 

12 discuss in the report so I didn't want to omit 

13 them here.

14 And we just discussed the tritium 

15 coworker dose based on claimant records. So, by 

16 definition it's not complete. But how do you get 

17 around --- get your head around whether it is 

18 truly representative. I mean, one would think 

19 that it would be a cross section, but how do you 

20 really know.

21 One of the things that was presented 

22 was a table, Table 81. And I put this into visual 
.

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1 form here, this appears in our report on Page 16. 

2 And this is one way you can try to get around --

3 like, figure out if what you have when you use a 

4 claimant population is truly representative.

5 One thing you want to look for, first 

6 off, is how do the -- what is the comparison 

7 between construction trade workers and non8 construction trade workers. And what you want to 

9 really look for is how do those trends on a yearly 

10 basis follow.

11 And as you can see in this figure, 

12 they actually follow quite well. So it doesn't 

13 appear that for certain time periods you don't 

14 have a representative sample of construction 

15 trade workers and the proportions between who was 

16 monitored as a non-construction trade and a 

17 construction trade, the relative magnitude of 

18 each, and the variation year by year is pretty 

19 good. So that's one way to do it.

20 The second figure, we'll go to the 

21 next slide. So this is one we put together. And 

22 what we did is just to put it visually out there 
.

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1 was to compare the total tritium samples 

2 reportedly taken by year versus the total tritium 

3 workers we have in the claimant population which 

4 we're using as a representative sample.

5 And really what you want to look for 

6 here is the trends. So for example if you had a 

7 situation where the total site-wide tritium 

8 samples was going way up, but our worker 

9 population is going way down, that might be 

10 problematic.

11 But here, the trend that is sort of 

12 the delta between years looks pretty consistent 

13 except for when you get into I guess the late 

14 '70s here.

15 Another thing that might, you know, be 

16 suggested -- again, these are not findings nor 

17 observations --- but if you could compare the 

18 total site-wide tritium samples to the total 

19 claimant tritium samples, that would provide an 

20 even more meaningful comparison.

21 Or if it was possible, to compare the 

22 number of site-wide monitored tritium workers to 
.

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1 the number of monitored claimants we have, and 

2 again compare the temporal trends.

3 I know we, when we talked about this 

4 in the report we had found at least one report 

5 from 1968 that listed there was approximately 

6 1,400 tritium workers at SRS. We have about 250 

7 claimants who have tritium monitoring data in 

8 that year. So that's eight percent of the total 

9 site.

10 So I mean, if it was possible, if we 

11 could do that on a year-by-year basis and see how 

12 that 18 percent holds up, you know, for example 

13 if it stays right around that 18, 20 percent,

14 whatever it is, you could say well, by proportion 

15 we have a consistent proportion of claimants 

16 relative to the number of workers who were 

17 monitored.

18 Again, we only found that one report, 

19 so I don't know to what extent that could be done 

20 for other years. But since this is a claimant 

21 coworker data set and not a site-wide data set, 

22 these are just some things that could be done to 
.

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1 show that the use of the claimant data set is 

2 truly representative.

3 And again, these are just suggestions.

4 I don't know if anyone has any comments on that 

5 or if NIOSH knows whether those sorts of 

6 comparisons are possible, whether -- I would 

7 imagine that the total site-wide samples, not 

8 workers but samples, could be compared against 

9 the claimants, but we didn't have information as 

10 to the total number of tritium samples by year 

11 that were used.

12 And I assume that's because really we 

13 started with annual doses that had already been 

14 calculated via the dose reconstruction process. 

15 So again, these are some things we discuss in the 

16 report about how, when you're trying to establish 

17 that the data set you have is representative of 

18 the exposure potential to all workers, these are 

19 some ways you can go about building a case for 

20 that. And so we just wanted to point that out.

21 If there are no comments or questions, 

22 I can move on to --
.

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1 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: I just have one 

2 comment. Steve Melius. So I would just reiterate 

3 that sort of request from Bob. I think that would 

4 be helpful in sort of at least make some of us 

5 like me, who is uncomfortable with using the 

6 claimant's database as being representative, feel 

7 better about it.

8 And I think there's enough data at 

9 this site that -- enough workers that it could be 

10 done. Whether --- how accessible the NOCTS data 

11 is for doing this kind of analysis, I don't know. 

12 So I'm not sure how feasible it would be.

13 DR. TAULBEE: I guess let me ask you 

14 for a clarification. Are you wanting us to 

15 compare the number of samples in the NOCTS data 

16 set to the total number on site for trends? Is 

17 that what you're asking?

18 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Are they parallel. 

19 Do the lines -- they're obviously going to have 

20 different numbers, I mean, but if it's 

21 representative then it should parallel the 

22 overall samples.
.

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1 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, we'll look into

2 this and get back to you as to whether it's 

3 something that we can easily do, or if it's going 

4 to take a significant effort. Is that okay?

5 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, that's fine. I 

6 don't expect you to be able to answer that. But 

7 I think it would be supporting what Bob was 

8 suggesting.

9 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

10 MR. BARTON: Okay, moving on to --

11 that ends the findings and observations about 

12 completeness, so we'll be moving on to monitoring 

13 practices.

14 And so for monitoring practices we 

15 have two findings and an observation. Here we 

16 have Finding 4, and I'll just read that, in the 

17 SRS bioassay procedures the routinely monitored 

18 workers during the early periods -- so that would 

19 be 1954 to 1970 for tritium and '64 to '67 for 

20 exotic trivalents --- are not addressed, SC&A's 

21 review of the bioassay control reports referenced 

22 to this period.
.

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1 They didn't provide any sampling 

2 schedules or bioassay, I guess protocol is 

3 probably a better word than procedures. 

4 Therefore, it would be advantageous to have that 

5 additional information concerning the bioassay 

6 requirements for the earlier period. And we do 

7 have a response from NIOSH on that, so I'm going 

8 to quick skip ahead to that and let Tim talk about 

9 it.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Once I get off of mute 

11 and finish making a note from the last finding. 

12 Okay, just a second here, I'm sorry. Okay, we're 

13 basically, as Bob's pointed out here, we 

14 acknowledge it would be advantageous to have more 

15 information, as always, I mean that kind of goes 

16 without --- however, no additional information 

17 has been found.

18 Summary reports in the americium 

19 logbooks don't indicate an increase in the number 

20 of samples collected in 1969, which is consistent 

21 with americium being added to the list of 

22 radionuclides addressed in the bioassay control 
.

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1 procedures in the time period.

2 And, also, as I pointed out earlier, 

3 keep in mind that this is when kind of the 

4 methodology that the sequential type of 

5 extraction began as well.

6 The fact that the samples were 

7 collected, analyzed, and were reported in the 

8 summary reports prior to this time period, that 

9 indicates the sample was, in fact, occurring and 

10 was routine enough to be included in the summary 

11 reports.

12 And this will conclude that the 

13 monitoring program did exist even if not formally 

14 documented in the bioassay control procedures as 

15 to, required as to who was sampled and when.

16 I would also indicate that, and, Mike, 

17 please speak up here whenever I -- if I am 

18 misspeaking here, but I believe that the major 

19 campaign with producing americium, curium and 

20 californium really began to kick in in the late 

21 1960s, which is part of why you see this large 

22 increase from that particular time period.
.

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1 Mike, is that correct or not? Oh, 

2 wait a minute, I don't see Mike Mahathy's name on 

3 the --

4 MR. MAHATHY: Oh, yes, I'm here. I 

5 got kicked off the list and I can't get back in, 

6 but that is correct.

7 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

8 MR. MAHATHY: It was the curium 1 and 

9 curium 2 programs.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, that's -- I wasn't 

11 sure if that was in that exact time period or 

12 not. I just wanted to make sure.

13 MR. BARTON: Okay, and I understand, 

14 you know, like you said you always want to have 

15 that documentation, again, we're talking about 

16 the overall monitoring practices of a site and

17 characterizing those to assure that you're 

18 looking at the right people.

19 That information doesn't exist, or 

20 hasn't been discovered to date so that sort of, 

21 it is what it is. I guess I would say one thing 

22 that might help us put it to bed is documenting 
.

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1 that response that we just heard that, you know, 

2 it wasn't maybe a formal procedure about who was 

3 going to get monitored, well that's because the 

4 use of the isotopes was maybe, you know, bench 

5 scale or something like that and there really 

6 wasn't a need for documentation of a formal 

7 program.

8 I think that argument could be made 

9 and I think it would be helpful to make that 

10 argument when we don't have a formal 

11 documentation about who was supposed to be 

12 monitored and for what reasons.

13 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. So you're 

14 suggesting we kind of incorporate this into the, 

15 a revision of a worker report, is that what you 

16 are proposing?

17 MR. BARTON: I think so. I think when 

18 you look at the coworker implementation 

19 guidelines, these are sort of the aspects that 

20 should be discussed to really round out that this 

21 coworker model, you know, we touched on all the 

22 issues within, you know, maybe the reference 
.

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1 documenting who was supposed to be monitored 

2 isn't for the entire period we are interested in, 

3 but for reasons A, B, and C, you know, it's not 

4 really an issue because the program, or the 

5 operations at the site really just didn't warrant 

6 it and that's why we don't see any discussion of 

7 it and that's the reason why we are okay using 

8 later procedures which really delineate who is 

9 supposed to get bioassayed and when.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. We can certainly 

11 do that. So I guess then, sorry to keep bugging 

12 you on this particular thing here, Ted, but I'm 

13 trying to -- this is the first time I have really 

14 used this, so then we would put this one then in 

15 abeyance until it's incorporated into REV-4?

16 MR. KATZ: Yes, if that sounds good to 

17 the Work Group then that's what you would do.

18 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

19 MR. BARTON: So I guess the only thing 

20 I would add is we really haven't seen the full 

21 rationale for it yet, so --

22 DR. TAULBEE: Oh, okay.
.

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1 MR. BARTON: Yes.

2 DR. TAULBEE: We'll put it as in 

3 progress and we will -- well, we'll incorporate 

4 it in there and then you guys will be able to see 

5 it. Okay.

6 MR. BARTON: Okay, I'm going to jump 

7 back a slide because I kind of glossed over 

8 Observation 7, and this is really quick. This is 

9 about the V&V activities for construction trade 

10 workers.

11 Now I think we can just probably wait 

12 on that one since, obviously, there was a lot of 

13 discussion and some action to move forward on 

14 that about to what extent the construction trade 

15 workers, especially subcontractors, are 

16 adequately represented.

17 So that's definitely an issue. It's 

18 an observation here because we know that activity 

19 was ongoing when we wrote those reports and it 

20 appears that it is still ongoing.

21 So if anyone has any further comments 

22 on that we can move ahead.
.

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1 DR. TAULBEE: Give me just a second 

2 here to catch up. Just a second, please.

3 MR. BARTON: No problem.

4 DR. TAULBEE: This is Observation 7.

5 MR. KATZ: Yes, so that's in progress.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, okay. Alright.

7 MR. BARTON: Okay. Moving along, we 

8 are at Finding 5, which relates only to thorium, 

9 and I'll read this in.

10 While evaluating monitoring practices 

11 related directly to thorium it is not possible 

12 because SRF did not directly monitor for thorium. 

13 A discussion of a relationship between trivalent 

14 actinide monitoring practices and thorium 

15 exposure potential is warranted to establish that 

16 the trivalent urinalysis is appropriate for 

17 thorium.

18 And this is something that was 

19 discussed at a Work Group meeting back in 2014 

20 and one thing we had suggested is if we have a 

21 known list of people who were really involved 

22 with thorium work and then we could take that 
.

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1 list of people and look to see if they are 

2 included in the trivalent coworker database and 

3 that would be one, again, piece of evidence that, 

4 since we are using these trivalent actinide 

5 urinalysis that it is appropriate for those 

6 thorium workers.

7 On the other hand, if we have a list 

8 of thorium workers and none of them appear to be 

9 in this bioassay program, I don't think that's 

10 likely, but if that's what we found then 

11 obviously that would be problematic.

12 And, Tim, you had indicated that this 

13 one you all are still working on formulating a 

14 response to.

15 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. That is 

16 correct. This is one that we are still working 

17 on and doing that comparison that you were just 

18 now mentioning.

19 The harder part is establishing the 

20 people who were working on the thorium projects 

21 and then going and jerking them up for the 

22 americium curium californium.
.

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1 So we are in the process of working on 

2 this particular finding.

3 MR. BARTON: Okay, very good. Unless 

4 anyone has any other comments on this one we can 

5 keep moving forward.

6 Hearing none, onto the final criteria, 

7 which is stratification, and this is Finding 6, 

8 and it's derived coworker intakes for stratified 

9 into construction and non-construction workers 

10 for each of the three revised coworker models.

11 It says three, I separated out thorium 

12 from the trivalent but really it's the same data 

13 set.

14 However, we did not see the 

15 statistical basis in OTIB-81 that stratification

16 was necessary, as is detailed, how you do it in 

17 Report 53, and is also talked about in the 

18 Implementation Guide, which is Neton 2015.

19 Now there was an analysis that was 

20 done, I believe it was in 2012, and that is in 

21 Report 55 where a comparison of the data sets 

22 were made, but I believe that was before we had 
.

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1 accepted the time-weighted OPOS methods for 

2 analyzing bioassay data, so I'm not sure if that 

3 comparison really still has a lot of meaning in 

4 the current way we derive coworker models.

5 So, again, the stratification was done 

6 and it might be necessary but we didn't see any 

7 statistical basis for that, so I open that one up 

8 for discussion.

9 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. And if I 

10 can grab the screen here, because I mean it's --

11 our response is rather lengthy and I want to read 

12 it here.

13 MR. BARTON: Okay.

14 DR. TAULBEE: If I can get it here. 

15 Okay. For the coworker models for a priori 

16 stratification, we base it on either differences 

17 and similarities in the radiological work being 

18 conducted, exposure potential, if you will, or 

19 known differences or similarities in the 

20 radiological monitoring methodology.

21 At Savannah River there were three 

22 main groups of radiological workers. There was 
.

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1 operations, which I am going to call production, 

2 there was maintenance, which was DuPont 

3 construction, and then you had the construction 

4 workers.

5 For stratification of the coworker 

6 models NIOSH chose to stratify based upon the 

7 type of radiological work being conducted as all 

8 three groups have a variety, or a hybrid, if you 

9 will, of health physics monitoring, as I will 

10 discuss here a little bit below.

11 The main difference in exposure for 

12 different types of radiological work is based on 

13 normal operations versus off-normal operations, 

14 if you will.

15 With operations you get people who are 

16 routinely processing material inside the glove 

17 box or a hood or on a fence top type of scenario 

18 are working with the material, but you've got a 

19 different exposure potential, as has been pointed 

20 out by this Work Group and at other times 

21 throughout the past few years.

22 The construction trades workers 
.

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1 exposures are different. That's when they are 

2 getting into the non-controlled type of 

3 environment.

4 And so that was why we primarily a 

5 priori stratified here, and as I said in the case 

6 of Savannah River there is significant exposure 

7 potential differences between CTWs, maintenance 

8 and construction, and the operations.

9 That warranted considering them in two 

10 different distinct cohorts or strata regardless 

11 -- with regards to coworker models. And so to 

12 elaborate a little bit on that, as I said the 

13 operations and production workers, chemists, 

14 physicists and operators, initially the material 

15 handlers, generally work with larger quantities 

16 of radioactive materials.

17 And the materials were also well 

18 controlled in glove boxes, fume hoods, to prevent 

19 or minimize worker exposure. Radiological work 

20 conducted by construction trades workers on the 

21 other hand typically involved contaminated 

22 equipment.
.

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1 So they are not working with raw or, 

2 you know, bulk quantities of materials, so they 

3 are dealing with smaller quantities, but the 

4 engineered controls in the glove boxes, cabinets, 

5 fume hoods or duct work that contain the 

6 radioactive materials are sometimes 

7 intentionally compromised to conduct a renovation 

8 or repair. So you've got a tradeoff of two 

9 different mechanisms for both groups.

10 As a result the CTW exposure potential 

11 could, one, be less than the operations workers, 

12 especially dealing with smaller quantities and if 

13 they weren't working with much contaminated 

14 material.

15 It could be equal to the operations 

16 workers. You've got that balance going back and 

17 forth, they are more exposed to it, or it could 

18 be greater than the operations workers, depending 

19 upon the work being conducted.

20 And further complicating the total 

21 exposure is the duration of a specific job. In 

22 some cases the magnitude of the exposure for 
.

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1 construction trades workers could be greater due 

2 to the duration, that the duration, you know, is 

3 -- the magnitude of exposure for CTWs would be 

4 greater, but the duration is shorter.

5 This could result in a similar total 

6 intake experience by operations, but the delivery 

7 is different. In general the exposure potential 

8 for CTWs is viewed as being potentially greater 

9 but of shorter duration.

10 The difference in exposure potential 

11 from the type of work they have conducted is the 

12 main justification for the stratification. Based 

13 on the past reports comparing operations versus 

14 construction, and, again, as Bob pointed out, 

15 this was before the time-weighted OPOS 

16 methodology, there do not appear to be a 

17 significant difference in the total intake 

18 between the stratified models, documented in the 

19 ORAU Report 39, Report 50, Report 55, Report 56, 

20 and Report 58.

21 As Bob pointed out this was all before 

22 time-weighted OPOS. However, you know, NIOSH 
.

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1 recognizes the limitation with the statistical 

2 test conducted, and we discussed that in past 

3 Work Group meetings and the Advisory Board SEC 

4 issues Work Group also opined that the power was 

5 insufficient to observe any differences in the 

6 models.

7 So we have kind of, you know, scrapped 

8 that particular statistical approach, because 

9 when we did it the power was too low. As a result 

10 we can tell you the a priori stratify operations 

11 from construction trades workers models for the 

12 Savannah River Site.

13 The decision was simplified. There is 

14 an abundance of data available for both strata 

15 for most radionuclides, including in the coworker 

16 study.

17 So stratification is also viewed as 

18 more timely compared to herding additional data 

19 and conducting additional statistical tests, so 

20 we didn't conduct additional tests.

21 We a priori stratified the two groups 

22 based upon exposure potential. With that I will 
.

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1 leave it open to discussion.

2 MR. BARTON: This is Bob. I think 

3 from my own point of view that sort of discussion 

4 and the rationale for why, as you said, a priori, 

5 the two groups were stratified. I think that is 

6 something that is quite helpful and probably 

7 should be included.

8 When we are looking at these coworker 

9 models through the view of satisfying the 

10 implementation guidelines, I mean it's almost --

11 I almost see it as sort of going through a 

12 checklist, you know, okay, we're going to 

13 stratify here and these are the reasons why we 

14 are stratifying, whether it be statistical or, 

15 you know, more judgements based on the different 

16 exposure potentials between different groups as 

17 you just said and I think that sort of 

18 justification is warranted whenever you are 

19 developing the coworker model.

20 DR. TAULBEE: But -- so you're 

21 suggesting our rationale that I just discussed be 

22 incorporated into the coworker model into REV-4, 
.

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1 correct?

2 MR. BARTON: Yes, but I'd certainly 

3 like to hear the Work Group weigh in a little bit 

4 on it and see how they feel about it.

5 I think it's a fairly reasonable 

6 approach that, you know, you don't have to always 

7 perform the statistical analysis but if you don't 

8 and you are still stratifying you should probably 

9 explain and document why that's the case. But I 

10 would like to hear the Work Group weigh in.

11 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: This is Jim Melius. 

12 I mean I think it can, it ought to be referenced. 

13 I don't think it needs to be as lengthy as what 

14 Tim just read to us for each report.

15 So, I mean, I think you refer back to 

16 other reports and so forth, so it doesn't need to 

17 be a lengthy discussion item for comment.

18 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: This is Brad. I 

19 agree with Jim on this, you know, in dose 

20 reconstruction we are always been wanting to know 

21 the terminology as to why this was done, and I 

22 agree it doesn't have to be that lengthy, but 
.

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1 just so that we could better understand what was 

2 done with it.

3 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

4 MR. BARTON: The only thing I would 

5 point out is I believe those reports that Tim 

6 talked about during the 50 series reports those 

7 were a statistical analysis, correct?

8 DR. TAULBEE: They were, but the SEC 

9 issues Work Group had pointed out, and, you know, 

10 there is a lot of discussion of power, including 

11 observe an actual difference if there was, and 

12 so, yes, they were statistical analyses, but 

13 they're not being used anymore.

14 MR. BARTON: Alright. So I guess my 

15 main point there was that I think currently the 

16 rationale for stratification is not necessarily 

17 the statistics that went on in those reports but 

18 really the more qualitative analysis of the 

19 different job types and what those people were 

20 out there doing.

21 DR. TAULBEE: That is correct. What 

22 we were trying to do with those reports was to 
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1 demonstrate that there really wasn't a major 

2 difference so we could combine them, but it just 

3 basically didn't have the power, so, therefore, 

4 we were just going to keep them separate, that's 

5 all. That's fine.

6 So Dr. Melius, if I understand 

7 correctly the -- some of the responses here for 

8 Finding 6 that's up here on the screen, basically 

9 I can take out kind of most of that last 

10 paragraph, really shorten this down, and just 

11 incorporate that into the REV-4. You okay with 

12 that?

13 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. And if it's 

14 easier to just to cut and paste what you have 

15 already written that's fine, too.

16 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

17 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: But for future 

18 reports or whatever it doesn't need to be as --

19 DR. TAULBEE: Less detailed, okay.

20 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

21 DR. TAULBEE: Alright. So then can we 

22 mark this finding in abeyance?
.

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1 MR. KATZ: Yes.

2 DR. TAULBEE: Thank you.

3 MR. BARTON: Alright. If I can steal 

4 control from you, Tim, again, and if you need a 

5 minute I can hold off.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Thank you.

7 MR. BARTON: Okay, moving along if we 

8 are ready to. Okay, this goes to our last 

9 observation and basically we felt that there was 

10 sort of contradiction in the language and we felt 

11 it warranted a little bit of discussion and this 

12 goes back to sort of the stratification issue and 

13 what we are talking about in sort of different 

14 monitoring protocols.

15 So I have two quotes up here that are 

16 both from OTIB-81, and I'll read the first one. 

17 That SRS construction trade workers were deployed 

18 temporarily but frequently for short periods to 

19 perform specific tasks usually pertaining to 

20 facility construction and modification, system 

21 maintenance, and decontamination.

22 These types of jobs were performed by 
.

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1 workers in both categories, prime construction 

2 trade workers and subcontractor construction 

3 trade workers.

4 Workers from both categories, worked 

5 around the site, while production and operations 

6 staff normally worked at six locations. That's 

7 the first quote.

8 And then the second quote is both of 

9 these types of monitoring programs can be 

10 considered to be variations on routine 

11 representative sampling.

12 Coworkers normally present in an area, 

13 i.e., non-construction trade workers and Roll 2 

14 construction trade workers, which are prime 

15 workers, the monitoring was specified on an 

16 annual basis in bioassay control procedures.

17 For workers intermittently present in 

18 an area, i.e. some construction trade workers, 

19 the monitoring was based on job plans.

20 And I'm just going to move to the next 

21 slide, here is Observation 8. OTIB-81 appears to 

22 contradict itself on whether prime construction 
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1 trade workers represent a similar monitoring 

2 protocol as the subcontracted construction trade 

3 workers.

4 Prime construction workers are 

5 described as being exposed temporarily but 

6 frequently for short periods, but they are also 

7 on an annual bioassay schedule that was specified 

8 by the control procedures.

9 Meanwhile, the subcontract workers 

10 were monitored on a case-by-case basis depending 

11 on the local requirement of the job.

12 So I guess this is -- again, this is 

13 Observation 8. It's really a question of if a 

14 combination of those two groups of workers, if 

15 the subcontract workers were really on a, on sort 

16 of an intermittent monitoring schedule, or even 

17 more extreme, more of an incident-based if 

18 something happened during the job then they were 

19 going to submit a bioassay sample, is that really 

20 comparable to the regular prime construction 

21 trade workers which were actually on a routine 

22 schedule the entire time.
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1 Then again I pointed out those two 

2 statements because at least they appear to be a 

3 little bit contradictory. But, again, this is a 

4 question of the monitoring protocol when you 

5 combine groups of workers.

6 In this case we are talking about the 

7 prime and the subcontract construction trade 

8 workers.

9 Are those prime construction workers, 

10 even though they are doing similar tasks, and 

11 more frequently and are routinely monitored, are 

12 they reflective of the subcontractors which may 

13 be monitored on just a case-by-case basis, which 

14 is really more analogous to a sort of incident15 based monitoring protocol. So that's why we 

16 brought this up for discussion.

17 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. There is 

18 -- You're looking at mixture of the actual 

19 monitoring at the Savannah River Site, but really 

20 what the bottom line is, the fundamental part is, 

21 you know, and we put some of this out this 

22 morning, let me back up here a little bit.
.

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1 With the subcontractor construction 

2 trades worker evaluation we did in the early 

3 1980s that we reported on this morning, some of 

4 those subcontractor CTWs were on a routine 

5 monitoring. Not a huge number of them, but some 

6 of them were.

7 So you've got some that are on routine 

8 monitoring, you've got some that are on 

9 incidents, where radiological conditions changed 

10 and the health physics folks required them to 

11 leave bioassay samples, and then you've got some 

12 that are specified from just the job plan, so 

13 it's a mixture.

14 But it's also a mixture for the prime 

15 construction trades workers as well if they are 

16 all routine bioassay for the most part. However, 

17 if an incident happened they were on an incident 

18 sampling as well from that standpoint.

19 They have their routine and then an 

20 incident happened and the did follow up bioassay 

21 to see if they got an intake. So from that, you 

22 know, dual monitoring, what we don't see a great 
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1 deal is of the prime CTWs being on kind of just 

2 a job-specific type of monitoring.

3 You do see a little bit of it, but 

4 most of, if they were on a routine monitoring 

5 then they isn't a job-specific associated with 

6 them if the routine would be picking that up.

7 So the workplace monitoring is really 

8 a hybrid amongst both groups, you know - or, I'm 

9 sorry, with regards to the personal monitoring, 

10 not the workplace monitoring.

11 The workplace monitoring for both 

12 subcontractors construction trades and the prime 

13 construction trades weren't the same, and this 

14 was the examples that I alluded to some this 

15 morning that we can go through as to how often, 

16 how physics was covering, and I'd like to try and 

17 walk through some of these examples if that's 

18 okay with the Work Group. Is that acceptable?

19 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Yes.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Okay, then I will 

21 -- Let me get to where I have, that screen again. 

22 And, like I said, I started to go through some of 
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1 this this morning a little bit, but as you can 

2 see the different types of work is being done by 

3 the prime construction trades workers and I guess 

4 the subcontractor construction trades workers.

5 So we talked a little bit about the 

6 fan motors example this morning where they are 

7 both wearing two pairs of coveralls and 

8 respirators.

9 Let me jump to kind of Example Number 

10 2 here, because this one here we hadn't, and this 

11 would be work on a high level drain, and this is 

12 pipefitters.

13 In this particular example 

14 maintenance workers were, or DuPont construction, 

15 if you will, were cutting a 4-inch section of the 

16 high level drain, and I'm showing this here in 

17 Figure 6, the pipe ends were to be plugged and 

18 taped and the workers wore two pair of coveralls 

19 and a respirator and had continuous coverage from 

20 health physics.

21 And you've got here on the screen, 

22 those of you who are able to see it, you'll see 
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1 the two DuPont construction trades workers here. 

2 These were mechanics.

3 In a similar job, subcontractor 

4 construction trades pipefitters, B.F. Shaw, were 

5 connecting a cell line to the high level drain in 

6 laboratory. Like the maintenance workers, the 

7 pipefitters were required to wear two pair of 

8 coveralls, respirators, when the line is being 

9 connected, and health physics also covered this 

10 job in a continuous manner. And here you can see 

11 that radiation control permit and the 

12 prescription here associated with it Continuous 

13 monitoring I've highlighted, and the individual 

14 subcontractor construction trades workers.

15 The example illustrates that similar 

16 work with similar exposure potential is being 

17 conducted by both DuPont construction, the 

18 maintenance guys, and the subcontractor 

19 pipefitters on the highly contaminated drain 

20 lines from the cells in radiological areas.

21 The workplace protective clothing 

22 requirements and workplace monitoring were 
.

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1 similar. So we believe these two groups should 

2 be in the same coworker model and so they should 

3 be combined.

4 Example 3 is ceiling tile work. This 

5 would be electricians and these would be the 

6 DuPont maintenance workers and they are removing 

7 contaminated ceiling tile. They were to wear two 

8 pair of coveralls and respirators to clean the 

9 overhead area. And there was monitoring at the 

10 beginning of the job and intermittent health 

11 physics monitoring throughout the job.

12 Now if we look at similar 

13 subcontractor construction trades workers, these 

14 would be the electricians from Miller-Dunn, also 

15 removed ceiling tiles to install electrical 

16 conduit. In this example the electricians wear 

17 a single pair of coveralls and the respirators 

18 when working with ceiling and drilling holes. 

19 Health physics coverage was at the start of the 

20 job and intermittent except when drilling holes 

21 in the cell walls.

22 During the drilling operations health 
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1 physics provided continuous coverage 

2 illustrating additional coverage based on the 

3 risk of the potential for exposure. And here you 

4 can see on the job plan where this is highlighted 

5 with an asterisk, the respirator to be used while 

6 working in ceiling and drilling holes.

7 So, again, these two examples 

8 illustrate that the type of work being conducted 

9 was similar, working with contaminated materials. 

10 And we feel they should be part of the same 

11 coworker model.

12 Example 4 is work with master-slave 

13 manipulators. This would be on the hot cells 

14 that Joe was talking about earlier. And this is 

15 to remove the end and repair the master-slave 

16 manipulator. And it indicates from the job plan 

17 that radiation control survey required when 

18 disturbing any part of the slave end. This would 

19 be the part that's connected to the hot cell. 

20 And at that time period masks would be required 

21 as dictated by the Rad Control survey, which is 

22 DuPont maintenance.
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1 When you look at -- actually, in 

2 general, I note here that very few construction 

3 operations mention the MSM. One job did note the 

4 removal of MSM covers, thus exposing the workers 

5 to the cell. This would be a similar exposure to 

6 maintenance workers that were working on the 

7 slave end. In this instance pipefitters, sheet 

8 metal workers, and laborers all participated in 

9 the same job, they wore two pair of coveralls and 

10 respirators. In addition, the health physics 

11 provided coverage throughout the job. 

12 And this kind of speaks to another 

13 issue here of, you know, they all wore two pair 

14 of coveralls and respirators, in addition health 

15 physics provided monitoring. The continuous 

16 coverage was likely due to the cell contaminant 

17 being breached. Stratification by craft in this 

18 example would not be appropriate as all the 

19 workers had the same potential for exposure.

20 They were all exposed to this open 

21 cell when they were doing this work. They've got 

22 pipe, sheet metal, and laborers. Again, we've 
.

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1 got the individuals listed there. And so, you 

2 know, the multiple crafts involved were monitored 

3 similarly and we believe they should all be part 

4 of that same coworker model.

5 Example 5 is the low-level drain, very 

6 similar to the high level drain. This is all in 

7 the Board Review System.

8 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Tim, can I interrupt 

9 you a second, though, because I think the issue 

10 wasn't whether they anecdotally did similar work. 

11 I think the question is sort of the distribution 

12 of work and the distribution of exposures and 

13 were those similar, you know, or should the 

14 overall model be stratified by two types of 

15 construction workers or more.

16 And then how has that changed over 

17 time in terms of how subcontractors were used and 

18 so forth? I don't think it's a very easy question 

19 to answer and it may be that, you know, sort of 

20 a construction worker coworker model may, you 

21 know, address it fine with the appropriate limits 

22 of the 95 percentile or whatever.
.

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1 But I guess I'm a little concerned 

2 that we're trying to address it just through sort 

3 of anecdotal data of, you know, groups of 

4 workers, unless you are taking a sample of all 

5 the work that was done over a period of time by 

6 the different groups of workers.

7 DR. TAULBEE: What I tried to do here 

8 is to look at multiple examples of different 

9 types of trades. And, you know, I've got seven 

10 examples here of similar work being conducted 

11 between the DuPont construction trade and the 

12 subcontractor construction trade to try and give 

13 a feel, because you are absolutely right, you 

14 know, to try and do a robust analysis I don't 

15 really view as possible. 

16 So it's kind of a weight of evidence. 

17 And so when you look at these -- I mean, you can 

18 certainly look at others, and I mention that on 

19 the Board Review System here, you know, you are 

20 welcome to go through all of these job plans and 

21 look at them.

22 I was trying to point out where the 
.

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1 work was similar such that why we believe that we 

2 can combine these two particular groups, keeping 

3 in mind that they have similar exposure potential 

4 as well as similar monitoring.

5 The workplace monitoring was 

6 definitely the same. The major difference would

7 be the personnel monitoring of some of the 

8 maintenance guys were more on a routine schedule, 

9 whereas the subcontractor construction trades who 

10 were not there all the time were more on a job11 specific monitoring.

12 Both of them were on incident-based 

13 monitoring. When an incident happened both were 

14 monitored. That's what I wanted to try and relay 

15 to the Work Group.

16 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: But I just don't 

17 think a sample of seven examples, you know, is 

18 going to address that issue in a satisfactory 

19 way.

20 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. How many more 

21 examples would you like then? I mean --

22 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: No, no, Tim --
.

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1 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: 7,000 examples, Tim.

2 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Part of the thing 

3 that I want to make clear, too, is you told us 

4 how electricians are going to do electrician's 

5 work, pipefitters are going to do pipefitter 

6 work, but the difference between the construction 

7 trades and the construction trades with Savannah 

8 River might see a lot of difference.

9 I mean, if you talk to any of them, a 

10 lot of the construction, not the Savannah River 

11 construction, but the construction trades, they 

12 use them to turn and burn them, too. They'd bring 

13 them in to, if you remember right, in some of the 

14 interviews and stuff like this as we've been 

15 through, that they'd bring them in for the tanks 

16 and be able to pull out the pumps and everything 

17 else like that, and those guys are burnt up for 

18 the year.

19 And so I understand what you're trying 

20 to do there, but I don't think that you can really 

21 do that, because from what I have seen and in the 

22 interviews and everything else, there is quite a 
.

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1 bit of difference. I don't think you can just 

2 lump them all into one thing. I really don't. 

3 But, you know what, that's just my opinion. This 

4 is Brad.

5 DR. TAULBEE: You know, Brad, I do 

6 understand, you know, what you are saying. And 

7 do we have evidence of some areas where they did 

8 bring in construction trades for some of the 

9 hotter jobs and do what you just said, burn them 

10 out and move them on? Yes.

11 And we also have examples of them 

12 using maintenance on high level jobs because of 

13 the potential risks. So we've got both 

14 counteracting there going on.

15 And I believe that combining the 

16 DuPont construction and the subcontractor 

17 construction is appropriate. And I'm kind of at 

18 a loss as to what it's going to take for me to, 

19 I guess, in a sense demonstrate or prove this to 

20 you. Do you want to see more examples of --

21 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: You know what, you 

22 could go on like that for hours and stuff and 
.

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1 then we could go on up there and turn around and 

2 do the same on the opposite direction.

3 I don't think that we can really put 

4 this -- well, I'm at a loss, too. I don't know 

5 how to be able to prove to you that we can't, so 

6 I guess we just need to keep going.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: This is Joe. Just a 

8 comment. You know, we had a similar discussion, 

9 if you recall, and this is going back into ancient 

10 EEOICPA history, but we were discussing whether 

11 or not the D&D workers at Rocky Flats represented 

12 a different group, a different cohort base, based 

13 on their exposure potential and their operations, 

14 versus the line workers.

15 My perspective was, at the time I 

16 recall, that, you know, it just appeared D&D 

17 workers were doing just radically different work.

18 They were going into hotter spots tearing down 

19 buildings, so we were pretty skeptical at the 

20 time. And I think the resolution was to look at 

21 the dose distribution of both groups. And I think 

22 NIOSH at the time demonstrated that the 
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1 distributions were very similar, and that's how 

2 that issue was resolved, you know, with some 

3 finality. And, frankly, it was a tough one up 

4 until then.

5 I don't know if that's possible here, 

6 but that was the tack that was taken back then.

7 DR. TAULBEE: We can certainly show 

8 from an external standpoint that type of 

9 comparison, if that would be helpful. I don't 

10 know that we can for an internal, as most of the 

11 results are zero.

12 I mean, we could break them out and do 

13 a comparison of the, you know, 95th percentile, 

14 I guess, of the internal, if that would be 

15 helpful. But I'm actually not sure that we've 

16 got enough positive data in order to do that. 

17 But we definitely could compare the external 

18 dose, that can be done.

19 MEMBER BEACH: I don't think comparing 

20 the external is going to be helpful in this case, 

21 though.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah. But just going 
.

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1 back to what Jim was saying, to get beyond the 

2 subjective anecdotal, really what you have is 

3 either I think dose distribution or something a 

4 little harder than that, maybe -- I don't know if 

5 we actually have interviewed both sets of 

6 workers, but, you know, something that would give 

7 you some I guess better sense of the operational 

8 history than looking at work, you know, job 

9 profiles basically.

10 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah. This is Jim. 

11 I think it would be -- problem one is 3the 

12 statistical analysis and are the distributions 

13 similar and so forth.

14 And I think the other piece of 

15 evidence is, you know, to what extent has work 

16 changed over time for the two groups of workers? 

17 You know, sort of the distribution work. And to 

18 what extent that's available I don't know.

19 That may require a lot of digging to 

20 the extent it is there, because it's going to 

21 differ by type of work and so forth. But I think 

22 those are what would be needed to be looked into.
.

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1 MEMBER BEACH: What about the large 

2 data gaps, does that play into this at all?

3 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah, that's 

4 another. It could. And, you know, what changes 

5 over time? I mean, there's lots of variables, 

6 which makes this a very hard issue to get at.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, certainly, in 

8 the '89/'90 timeframe I would think the use of 

9 the outside contractors, the subcontractors, the 

10 outside CTWs, changes radically. And I think 

11 DuPont did have a pretty unified system where the 

12 CTWs, DuPont CTWs, were doing similar work. I 

13 don't think that persists, though, into the '90s.

14 DR. TAULBEE: I would kill to agree 

15 with you on that, Joe, but I think the differences 

16 I've looked at here from these job plans, there's 

17 virtually very little difference I see between 

18 DuPont construction and subcontractor 

19 construction during the DuPont era.

20 When you get into the Westinghouse 

21 era, really, kind of all bets are off. I really 

22 don't have a feel for that.
.

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1 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Well, I mean, the 

2 one thing you can do on the earlier time period, 

3 the DuPont time period, is see what is possible 

4 to do with any of the internal exposure.

5 DR. NETON: This is Jim. I think we've 

6 got a couple issues here. One is the one at hand, 

7 which is, you know, do we need to stratify or 

8 consider stratifying the different, the prime 

9 versus the subcontractors? But we talked earlier 

10 about were the construction trades adequately 

11 monitored to begin with?

12 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah.

13 DR. NETON: And I'm not sure which one 

14 takes precedence. I mean, this whole debate may 

15 be moot if the other one determines that they 

16 weren't monitored adequately to begin with. We 

17 just need to prioritize.

18 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Right, right. And 

19 I think the one is, yeah, what time periods are 

20 involved, which overlap with the 

21 DuPont/Westinghouse issue.

22 DR. NETON: Right. It almost feels as 
.

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1 we should solve the first issue -- or the issue 

2 we talked about earlier today before we invest a 

3 lot of statistical analysis time in this second 

4 issue, but maybe I'm wrong.

5 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah, I think that's 

6 fair.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: No, that's right.

8 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: I was going to get 

9 back to where we go with that issue, because I 

10 guess I'm concerned that -- to me, that's the 

11 critical issue, in terms of SEC issues, because 

12 if they weren't adequately monitored then I'm not 

13 sure that -- and we know that, you know, sort of 

14 operations changed. I'm not sure that our 

15 current -- you know, that a coworker model will 

16 address that adequately. At least there would 

17 certainly be more concern about that.

18 So we're going on at a little over two 

19 hours. I don't know where people stand in terms 

20 of fatigue and wanting to go on.

21 I would suggest on these two issues, 

22 particularly the one we just talked about. 
.

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1 whether there's adequate monitoring, you know, 

2 during at least the earlier years or the initial 

3 years of the Westinghouse era, you know, that we 

4 think about that and maybe just sort of revisit 

5 it when we have the presentations at the meeting 

6 next week. I assume we're not going to have time 

7 to address it between now and then.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: While we're on that 

9 subject, I guess we have an hour and a half next 

10 week. How would you like to handle this and give 

11 yourself enough time, you know, for the Board to 

12 discuss it?

13 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Well, I think we 

14 need Tim's presentation of his report -- the two 

15 reports, yours and the other, NIOSH and the SC&A 

16 report, we need presented.

17 That's going to take some time. And 

18 then probably Tim's ought to include an update on 

19 the coworkers models and sort of where we stand 

20 overall at the site.

21 And I think we have to leave plenty of 

22 time for Board discussion of where do we go from 
.

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1 here? You know, again, it's been over ten years 

2 on this SEC request, and I think I would be 

3 careful about, hesitant about committing to lots 

4 of long term projects or evaluations that may or 

5 may not yield data relevant to that SEC decision.

6 And so we'll see what the Board 

7 Members think. And as I said, I want to regroup, 

8 we probably should anyway, and have a better 

9 discussion of the coworker issue and some of 

10 these other reports that we probably are not 

11 going to get to today. Is that reasonable with 

12 the other -- Brad and other --

13 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Yes. This is Brad. 

14 I agree with you on that.

15 MEMBER BEACH: Yeah, I do, too, Brad 

16 -- Jim.

17 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah. You can agree 

18 with Brad, too, that's okay.

19 (Laughter.)

20 MEMBER BEACH: Jim, thanks, and Brad.

21 MR. KATZ: Jim, my suggestion on that 

22 is that I'm not sure -- I mean, we should still 
.

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1 give an opportunity for the petitioner to speak 

2 -- I'm not sure you want to go on with the other 

3 documents at all today, then, give we have the 

4 Board meeting coming up and Tim and Joe have to 

5 prepare something.

6 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah. I was not --

7 I had not forgotten the petitioners.

8 MR. KATZ: No, no, no, I didn't think 

9 that. 

10 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: But I guess I didn't 

11 want to make a unilateral decision on stopping 

12 further evaluation. But I think both Tim and Bob 

13 are probably talked out. 

14 MR. BARTON: So, really, that was the 

15 last observation. I had a couple of comments, 

16 but they really were related to implementation 

17 about, you know, who are we going to assign our 

18 monitored doses to and at what level? But that's 

19 not really an SEC-related issue.

20 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Well, then 

21 let me open up for -- are the petitioners still 

22 on the line or --
. 

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1 MR. JOHNSON: Yes, sir, we are.

2 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, fine. You 

3 deserve something for endurance.

4 (Laughter.)

5 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: So, whoever wants to 

6 speak first can go ahead.

7 Petitioner Comments 

8 MR. JOHNSON: This is Warren Johnson. 

9 I thank you all for the opportunity to speak. As 

10 was noted earlier, we're approaching a decade on 

11 this petition and certainly we hope a decision 

12 will be reached soon. As I mentioned earlier, 

13 I'm quite frankly somewhat concerned at how 

14 adversarial NIOSH appears to be relative to the 

15 petition.

16 Rather than state the facts and a 

17 scientific position, it seems to have morphed 

18 into an advocate against the workers. The 

19 decision seems to be to ignore the lost and 

20 incomplete records, ignore the inaccurate 

21 records, ignore the 294 violations and safety 

22 concerns noted in the Tiger Team reports, ignore 
.

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1 the fact that the culture that had developed is 

2 what prompted the Tiger Team investigation 

3 process, which, obviously, pre-dates 1990, and 

4 ignore the fact that records have been destroyed 

5 by SRS. And so is assume compliance and starts 

6 there, assuming the accuracy of all the records 

7 that are present. 

8 And I don't think that's appropriate.

9 I think that's exactly why we have the vehicle of 

10 the SEC. And I don't think it's what Congress 

11 intended. If you look at the history of the 

12 Energy Act, Congress recognized that the workers 

13 that supported our Cold War effort were put at 

14 risk without their knowledge or consent for 

15 reasons that, documents reveal, were driven by 

16 fears of adverse publicity, liability, and 

17 employee demands for hazardous duty pay.

18 It further recognizes that secret 

19 records have since shown documented unmonitored 

20 exposures. From there, it says they're going to 

21 create efficient, uniform, and adequate 

22 compensation for these workers. DOE and the 
.

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1 contractors broke that basic promise to their 

2 workers, which was to provide a safe environment 

3 and workplace.

4 Because they broke their promise 

5 Congress just wants to essentially step in. And 

6 they made a promise to the workers that they're 

7 going to provide compensation to at least make 

8 the remainder of your life easier, and that 

9 included home healthcare, it included the ability 

10 to, since they had lost their dignity, not to 

11 rely on their children to provide, changing of 

12 diapers and so on.

13 That's what these people are going 

14 through and they're now 10 years past. You're 

15 talking about people who are given success in 

16 cancer treatment on a 10-year survival rate. 

17 They're past that. We're losing people every day 

18 that you don't make this decision. And, quite 

19 frankly, as I listened to the discussion today it 

20 still needs looking at records that can't be 

21 recreated. You can't go back and force people 

22 provide bioassay samples. 
.

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1 You can't recreate that, so you're 

2 left with assumptions. Well, as I understand it, 

3 the assumptions that were made in the proposed 

4 models are still going to be assumptions that 

5 everything was done correctly, they just didn't 

6 document it well enough.

7 And that's just simply not 

8 appropriate. It's still a guess, it's 

9 speculative, it doesn't get us to sufficient 

10 accuracy, and it certainly is not claimant11 favorable. 

12 In addition, you have to look at 

13 feasibility. Feasibility is generally viewed in 

14 terms of how long is going to take and how much 

15 is going to cost? Now, I don't know what it 

16 costs, but I know how long it's taking. It's 

17 taken over ten years and we still don't have an 

18 end in sight.

19 What I heard was there will be a 

20 rebuttal from NIOSH to SC&A's report that we'll 

21 get sometime in October, if we get the 

22 information from the site. And then from there 
.

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1 we still don't have a direction.

2 And so, quite frankly, I think that 

3 it's proving that it's not feasible to bound a 

4 dose with sufficient accuracy and give these 

5 people the relief that Congress intended.

6 In addition to that, the records and 

7 monitoring, it's proven to be unreliable to 

8 suggest you can rely on a 1997 Notice of Violation 

9 relative to the 79 percent noncompliance because 

10 they were monitored later and found to be below 

11 the MDA. I makes a number of dangerous 

12 assumptions, one, because it assumes that the 

13 workers were tested for the appropriate 

14 radionuclides.

15 Two, it doesn't tell us when the 

16 follow-up tests were even performed. If they 

17 were below the MDA on the subsequent test date 

18 that doesn't tell us what the exposure was on the 

19 date of the uptake.

20 You spent a lot of time discussing why 

21 the subcontractors failed to submit the bioassay 

22 tests, and that it wasn't SRS's fault, it was the 
.

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1 subcontractors refusing.

2 But, quite frankly, fault's 

3 irrelevant. And it has nothing to do with it 

4 because there's a large number of workers in a 

5 radiation control area with potential exposure, 

6 actual exposure, and we have no record of their 

7 monitoring. It doesn't matter why, it's just 

8 it's missing and that affects your accuracy. 

9 The last point I'd like to make is 

10 that the contractor is the person or the entity 

11 that's responsible to demonstrate compliance with 

12 the radiation safety standards. Throughout its 

13 history the contractors failed to do that. You 

14 can look going back to '52 to as recent as 1990. 

15 The Tiger Team points out that this is a 

16 widespread problem.

17 You have 294 instances or violations 

18 of safety and health procedures. I think that's 

19 pretty clear evidence we can't just presume that 

20 any other documents that exist are done correctly 

21 and all the other monitoring was right.

22 You have seven anecdotal examples to 
.

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1 support the proposed models. I'd submit to you 

2 that I have a number of clients that were involved 

3 in incidents that there was no testing reflected 

4 in their bioassay history. There was not data 

5 kept on it. If I dig deep enough, in some cases, 

6 I find the incident report that shows testing, 

7 but it's unrecorded.

8 I think that's pretty clear that, 

9 given that you know the records are incomplete 

10 and you know that they are inaccurate and now we 

11 know many of them have just been destroyed, you 

12 can't assume the lack of an incident report means 

13 a lack of an incident. You can't assume that 

14 lack of a test didn't just mean that test got 

15 discarded. 

16 And so where it leaves us is a lot of 

17 guessing, and a lot of guessing seems to be 

18 pointing in the direction of lowering the 

19 person's exposure. And I think that's a 

20 dangerous assumption. It's certainly not an 

21 appropriate assumption when it comes to radiation 

22 safety.
.

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1 And going back to the timeframe, if 

2 you look at the executive summary from the Tiger 

3 Team, it notes that failures to address and 

4 implement appropriate nuclear and national 

5 standards to assure that operations were 

6 conducted in a safe and environmentally 

7 acceptable manner. Investigations of several 

8 incidents involving the reactor operations 

9 highlighted how far the site had fallen below the 

10 commercial nuclear industry. 

11 I don't know how we can hold them to 

12 a lower standard than we do the commercial 

13 nuclear industry. The workers are the same, they 

14 certainly are just as susceptible to cancer 

15 caused by exposure to radiation. In the 1990 the 

16 Tiger Team was pointing out the standards at this 

17 site had fallen well below the rest of the 

18 industry. That doesn't warrant the benefit of 

19 the doubt. That doesn't warrant assuming 

20 everything in favor of proper procedure and 

21 proper monitoring.

22 I think it's clear that there was not 
.

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1 proper monitoring. It's clear we don't have the 

2 appropriate records. And the only way to get us 

3 to fulfill the promise that Congress made is to 

4 grant the SEC and give them the efficient 

5 compensation that they deserve.

6 My co-counsel has a couple of comments 

7 to add.

8 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, go ahead.

9 MR. FESTER: This is Josh Fester, also 

10 for the petitioner. I have discussed it in 

11 previous Advisory Board meetings, and at the 

12 expense of belaboring the point, the main focus 

13 or the inquiry of whether to grant the SEC is 

14 feasibility. Co-counsel, Mr. Johnson, discussed 

15 it. 

16 The key word here is feasibility. 42 

17 U.S.C. 73.42(b) states that an SEC may be 

18 designated if it is not feasible to estimate with 

19 sufficient accuracy the radiation dose that the 

20 Class received and there's a reasonable 

21 likelihood that such radiation dose may have 

22 endangered the health of workers.
.

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1 Two issues considered when 

2 determining feasibility are time and resources, 

3 which, again, I think Mr. Johnson just discussed. 

4 Ten years has passed here. The SEC petition to 

5 the SRS has been before the Board for going on 

6 more than a decade, close to two decades since 

7 the EEOICPA was created by Congress.

8 Certainly, from a time standpoint, 

9 it's not, and it has not been, feasible to 

10 reconstruct a dose for the class of employees 

11 named in the petition.

12 I've been patiently and intently 

13 listening throughout the course of the day, and 

14 among the things I have heard is that NIOSH and 

15 its representative is -- from them, is that we 

16 think that the records for internal monitoring 

17 and monitoring for specific radionuclides is 

18 substantially complete but that we need more 

19 information or, you know, we need to track these 

20 things down.

21 You know, there are a few problems 

22 with this. First, while it would be ideal to 
.

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1 have the time and opportunity to continue to 

2 delve throughout this information, to do data 

3 captures from the SRS, it's not feasible in terms 

4 of time consideration.

5 Every day, week, month, year that 

6 passes I have clients that are suffering though 

7 just horrendous diseases, cancers, and they're 

8 denied, you know, the basic rights under the Act, 

9 and basic dignity, and they are dying during this 

10 process.

11 The longer this goes -- I guess, 

12 again, I just want the Board to understand the 

13 human element of this. I have, anecdotally, one 

14 client that's terminal with cancer out at the 

15 site. He's still working, he has a death sentence 

16 essentially, being denied the healthcare to, you 

17 know, just basic healthcare. He has to keep 

18 working to be able to afford the insurance to 

19 have a chance of surviving. 

20 And I just wanted to say one thing, 

21 you know, the class of people, employees out at 

22 this particular site, you wouldn't find workers 
.

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1 and people anywhere else in our state even that 

2 you have at the SRS.

3 But now you're talking about extending 

4 the completeness analysis when we know already 

5 that the data is incomplete, not sufficiently 

6 complete to accurately perform the dose 

7 reconstruction for these individuals.

8 During the discussion of the 

9 completeness of internal modeling, a 

10 representative from NIOSH stated -- basically 

11 there was a lot of reliance upon assumptions that 

12 DuPont properly monitored and protected its 

13 workers. The analysis was only for a certain set 

14 of subcontractors for a few years in, I think, 

15 the early to mid-1980s, '81 to '86 I believe it 

16 was.

17 Even during the snippet of worker 

18 monitoring history, the records considered by 

19 NIOSH, the records are not complete. Most of the 

20 RWPs are not found for the DuPont years, and I 

21 think you'll see that they were either discarded 

22 or shredded.
.

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1 At one point a representative for 

2 NIOSH attempted to rely upon an anecdotal 

3 incident where the worker was not monitored 

4 because it was assumed that they weren't in areas 

5 where they would have needed follow-up 

6 monitoring.

7 And using that one anecdotal incident 

8 to explain away a large percentage of 

9 noncompliance with the monitoring procedures, 

10 that's just inappropriate and I think not good 

11 science. It certainly wouldn't pass a Daubert 

12 standard in any court of law in the United States. 

13 It's not adequate, also, to assume 

14 based on the track record in monitoring failures 

15 at the site and this kind of situation is 

16 responsible for noncompliance.

17 Today's completeness or reliability 

18 of monitoring, when monitoring is mandatory, on 

19 an assumption that DuPont/Westinghouse would have 

20 monitored if there was radiation, if they were in 

21 radiation areas, improperly gives the contractors 

22 and subcontractors the benefit of the doubt, when 
.

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1 under the Act the claimant is supposed to have 

2 the benefit of the doubt. This is supposed to be 

3 claimant-favorable.

4 Even if there was always monitoring in 

5 all the areas that the subcontractors and 

6 contractor workers worked in, there's no 

7 indication that they were monitored for the 

8 appropriate radionuclides and if the workers were 

9 tested for the appropriate radionuclides. I have 

10 seen nothing to that effect.

11 What we know is that, for the early 

12 Westinghouse years at the very least, there was 

13 a very poor compliance with internal monitoring, 

14 80 percent noncompliance.

15 Another assumption relied upon is this 

16 idea based solely on conversations with former 

17 employees who relate that DuPont was somewhat 

18 better centralized than Westinghouse and better 

19 at keeping monitoring records.

20 However, nothing in the record since 

21 the beginning of this SEC petition indicates 

22 that. It indicated the contrary. And that's 
.

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1 made evident through the -- the evidence is clear 

2 now that that's just not a good assumption, 

3 through the Tiger Team report, the findings in 

4 2005, and the 2005 SC&A report as well.

5 Another issue that I wanted to bring 

6 to the Board's attention is the seemingly 

7 arbitrary distinction between construction trade 

8 workers and other subcontractor workers, other 

9 folks that, you know, weren't necessarily 

10 electricians or construction laborers, might have 

11 been escorts, janitors, security personnel that 

12 would have been in the same areas, worked for the 

13 same subcontractors, and for which there's also 

14 a dearth of any monitoring records.

15 If you want anecdotal examples of that 

16 I could probably give you 20 just out of my 

17 office. We've heard, again, a lot of anecdotal 

18 evidence in support of -- excuse me.

19 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Excuse me. Can you 

20 please wrap up relatively soon?

21 MR. FESTER: Sure. I think that's all 

22 I have for you, unless my co-counsel has anything 
. 

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1 further to add.

2 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you.

3 MR. JOHNSON: Again, I guess the last 

4 thing I'd say is I believe I understood, in the 

5 presentation on the last proposed model, I 

6 believe I understood NIOSH to say that robust 

7 analysis is not possible, it's sort of a weight 

8 of the evidence.

9 Well, we agree, and we would submit 

10 that the weight of the evidence is that where we 

11 are it's not feasible to bound a dose with 

12 sufficient accuracy, that the records don't 

13 exist, and for those reasons the SEC should be 

14 granted.

15 And, certainly, I thank you for you 

16 all's hard work and thank you for your patience 

17 today.

18 WG SEC Recommendations and/or Path Forward on 

19 Discussion Items; Plans for August 

20 Board Meeting 

21 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you both for 

22 your comments. And I think as you know the entire 
. 

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1 Board is meeting next week and there's an hour 

2 and a half session on the Savannah River Site. I 

3 believe on Thursday, correct, Ted?

4 MR. KATZ: Yes.

5 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Good, thank 

6 you. Ted, anything else we need to do?

7 MR. KATZ: No, I think that takes care 

8 of it.

9 CO-CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, good. Thank 

10 you everybody for your patience and contributions 

11 and we'll see most of you next week in Santa Fe.

12 Adjourn 

13 CO-CHAIR CLAWSON: Thank you everybody 

14 for joining us today.

15 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

16 went off the record at 3:37 p.m.)

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 
. 

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