THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

convenes the 

THIRTY-FIRST MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

DAY TWO 

The verbatim transcript of the Meeting of the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health held 

at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel, St. Louis, Missouri, 

on July 6, 2005. 
 

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C O N T E N T S 

July 6, 2005 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 10 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR

DR. LEW WADE, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

SUPPLEMENTAL REVIEW 

MALLINCKRODT SITE PROFILE 

DR. ARJUN MAKHIJANI, SC&A 13 

MALLINCKRODT SITE PROFILE 

DR. JIM NETON, NIOSH 48 

MALLINCKRODT SEC PETITION 

MR. LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH 90 

BOARD DISCUSSION, MALLINCKRODT SEC PETITION

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 99 

MALLINCKRODT SEC PETITION 

PETITIONERS 108 

BOARD DISCUSSION, MALLINCKRODT SEC PETITION

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 146 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 250 
3 

TRANSCRIPT LEGEND 

The following transcript contains quoted material. 

Such material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

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refers to microphone malfunction or speaker's neglect 

to depress "on" button. 
 

 

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

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

BOARD MEMBERS 

CHAIR 

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

School of Health Sciences 

Purdue University

Lafayette, Indiana 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D.

Senior Science Advisor 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Washington, DC 

MEMBERSHIP 

ANDERSON, Henry A., M.D.

Chief Medical Officer 

Occupational and Environmental Health

Wisconsin Division of Public Health 

Madison, Wisconsin 

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

Director 

The Vanderbilt Center for Occupational and Environmental

Medicine 

Professor of Medicine 

Nashville, Tennessee 

ESPINOSA, Richard Lee

Sheet Metal Workers Union Local #49 

Johnson Controls 

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Espanola, New Mexico 
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GIBSON, Michael H.

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union

Local 5-4200 

Miamisburg, Ohio 

GRIFFON, Mark A.

President 

Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc.

Salem, New Hampshire 

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

Director 

New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund

Albany, New York 

MUNN, Wanda I.

Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired)

Richland, Washington 

OWENS, Charles Leon

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union

Local 5-550 

Paducah, Kentucky 

PRESLEY, Robert W.

Special Projects Engineer

BWXT Y12 National Security Complex

Clinton, Tennessee 

ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

University of Florida

Elysian, Minnesota 
 

6 

AGENDA SPEAKERS 

(in order of appearance) 

DR. ARJUN MAKHIJANI, SC&A

DR. JIM NETON, NIOSH

MR. LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 

STAFF/VENDORS 

CORI HOMER, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH

LASHAWN SHIELDS, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH

STEVEN RAY GREEN, Certified Merit Court Reporter 
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AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS 

ADAMS, EILEEN, NIOSH

AL-NABULSI, ISAF, NCRP

ALGERT, DAVE, DOD/DTRA

ALLEN, M. GEORGE

BAFASI, MARILYN, MALLINCKRODT

BEATTY, EVERETT RAY, SR., FERNALD ATOMIC COUNCIL

BEHLING, HANS, SC&A

BEHLING, KATHY, SC&A

BERRY, CHARLENE, MALLINCKRODT

BIEST, JOAN, MALLINCKRODT

BLOSSER, FRED, NIOSH

BLUE, GEORGE, MALLINCKRODT

BROCK, DENISE, UNWW/MALLINCKRODT

BRUENING, MARK, MCW

BUHR, LORRAINE

BULYAK, HAROLD A.

CAPPIELLO, ROBERT, ATTNY FOR WIFE/MALLINCKRODT

CASE, DIANE L., DEPT. OF LABOR

CHEFITZ, SANDRA, GAO

COWPER, ANN, SPOUSE OF MCW WORKER

DEEP, HEIDI, NIOSH

DEHART, JULIA

DOWNS, DEB

DORNFELD, DEBBIE, U.S. SENATOR JIM TALENT

DREY, KAY, NUCLEAR INFO & RESOURCE

DUGAN, PAUL, MALLINCKRODT WORKER

EHLMANN, PAT, UNWW

ESPY, RICHARD, MALLINCKRODT WIDOWER

EPPE, STEVEN

FITZGERALD, JOSEPH, SC&A

FRISCHMAN, BILL, MCW

GARNER, DON, ST. LOUIS

GENERI, MARY, MCW

HAPPELL, CARL C., NIOSH

HEARL, FRANK, NIOSH

HEISTER, MELANIE, NCRP/VBDR

HERBST, ALVERA, MALLINCKRODT WIFE

HICKAM, JOHN

HINNEFELD, STUART, NIOSH

HOLTBAUS, RICHARD A.

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS 
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HOWELL, EMILY, HHS

JOHNSON, SHEILA, DAUGHTER OF MCW WORKER

KOENEMAN, BARB & TANYA, UNWW

LAMZIK, ED, RETIREE MCW

LEACH, ANN, MALLINCKRODT

LEACH, BOB, MALLINCKRODT

LICAVOLI, JOSEPHINE, MALLINCKRODT SURVIVOR

LOVETT, BRICE, UNWW

MAKARA, MEL, SELF

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A

MALDENHAVER, RUBY, MALLINCKRODT

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A

MCBRIDE, MOLLY

MCGRUEN, JAMES

MCKEEL, DAN, VILLAGE IMAGE NEWS

MILLER, RICHARD, GAP

MITAS, JIM, OFFICE OF CONGRESSMAN AKIN

MUECKE, EDWARD

MULEHOUR, BOB, SON OF (RICHARD)

NAGLE, KATHLEEN, DAUGHTER

NITCHMAN, JOHN

NOVAK, JUSTINE, MALLINCKRODT

PEDERSEN, ELAINE

POTTER, HERMAN, USW INT UNION

PRESLEY, LOUISE S., WIFE OF ROBERT PRESLEY

PUDLOWSKI, CAROL, MALLINCKRODT

RAFKY, MICHAEL, HHS

RAMSPOTT, CHRISTINE

RAMSPOTT, JOHN, MCW

ROSENETT, JAMES, MALLINCKRODT

SAMPSON, ROBERT, GAO

SCANENSEN, CLARENCE, UNWW

SCHAEFFER, D. MICHAEL, SAIC

SCHISLER, ELAINE, DAUGHTER OF MALLINCKRODT WORKER

SCHNEIDER, MARILYN, UNWW

SCRANEE, DARRELL, MALLINCKRODT

SCRANEE, RON, MALLINCKRODT

STACAOWITZ, RAINER

STEGER, RON, MALLINCKRODT

STUCKENSCHNEIDER, DOLORES, MALLINCKRODT

SUERMANN, ZELDA, MCW

TAYLOR, GEORGE EDWIN, VBDR

TOOHEY, RICHARD, ORAU 
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TUCKER, EVELYN

TUCKER, RICHARD

VERNOFF, GWENDOLYN

WALKER, EDWIN A., BETHLEHEM STEEL

WALKER, JOYCE, BETHLEHEM STEEL

WHITE, GARY, DOD

WILDHABER, SANDRA, MALLINCKRODT

WINDISCH, ANTHONY J., MALLINCKRODT WORKER

WIPFLER, ED, WELDON SPRING

ZIEMER, MARILYN 
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P R O C E E D I N G S

 (9:10 a.m.) 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS

 DR. ZIEMER: I'd like to call the meeting to 

order. A couple of announcements before we 

return to our agenda. First a reminder to you 

to register your attendance. Even if you were 

here yesterday and signed in, we ask you to do 

that each day. This is everyone -- Board 

members, staff, members of the public. 

Also if you need copies of the agenda or other 

related materials, those are on the tables in 

the room to my right, sort of toward the rear. 

So avail yourselves of those materials. 

Dr. Wade has a couple of comments for us, as 

well, as we get underway this morning. 

 DR. WADE: Yeah, thank you, Paul. I just 

wanted to spend a minute sort of putting today 

in context. As you'll notice from the agenda, 

today is spent almost exclusively on issues 

related to Mallinckrodt, and I thought I'd 

provide you just a very brief background as to 

why we framed today the way we did. 

 You'll remember over the last several Board 

meetings there've been a number of actions 

related to Mallinckrodt. Two meetings ago this 
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Board approved an SEC -- the addition of a 

class to the SEC cohort for Mallinckrodt, the 

years '42 to '48. It did that for a number of 

reasons. One of those reasons was an issue of 

data reliability. 

Two meetings ago as well NIOSH brought a 

petition evaluation to this Board to deny 

adding a class to the SEC for the years '49 to 

'57 for Mallinckrodt. At the last meeting the 

Board considered and debated that, and asked 

that two things happened as it postponed its 

decision. It asked that NIOSH go back and -- 

and come to this Board with reasons that the 

Board should not be swayed by issues of data 

reliability as it was when it voted on the '42 

to '48 petition. Jim Neton had presented some 

hypothetical examples to the Board as to why 

there was sufficient information and NIOSH felt 

it had a sufficiently robust dataset that it 

need not be concerned about issues of data 

reliability, and the Board asked for Jim to 

come back with real examples of that. 

In parallel, SC&A was going through a detailed 

review of the Mallinckrodt site profile. The 

Board asked that SC&A continue its work into 
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the evaluation of that site profile and bring 

its findings back to this meeting. 

So this morning we're going to start with some 

discussions about the site profile. SC&A's 

going to present its findings. Jim Neton is 

going to present some of the information that 

the Board asked him to bring back concerning 

why we had a sufficient data array not to be 

concerned overly about issues of data 

reliability. 

 Once we've finished those discussions of the 

site profile, then we'll spend our time 

addressing the open question of the SEC 

petition for Mallinckrodt for the years '49 to 

'57. So I think that's the context of the day 

as we face it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Lew. And one of the 

reasons that Wanda Munn perhaps felt it was 

deja vu all over again was -- was the fact that 

at our last meeting we had a review -- a 

Mallinckrodt-related review which raised a 

number of questions, and I think that NIOSH had 

not had an opportunity to interact on those. 

Indeed there was an initial review of Rev. 1. 

There was a supplemental review, and the Board 
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received just Friday what is referred to as the 

second supplemental review of the NIOSH site 

profile Rev. 1. And it's that document, second 

supplemental review Rev. 1, which Board members 

have received -- I believe there are copies 

available here for the public -- and this will 

be reviewed for us at this time by Dr. 

Makhijani. And then -- 

So on your agenda where it says Mallinckrodt 

site profile, it's really the review -- the 

supplemental review of that by our contractor, 

SC&A, as presented by Dr. Makhijani. 

So Arjun, if you'll take the podium now, we'll 

be pleased to hear from you. 

SUPPLEMENTAL REVIEW

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. Yeah, I 

-- but we called the first one supplemental 

because the first review was really of Rev. 0 

and then was supplemented by what we did on 

Rev. 1, and so this is the second round of 

that. 

Last time our review was partial and 

preliminary, as we said, due to the very short 

time. And we've tried to complete it, so we 

addressed --
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First of all, before I launch into this, I 

really want to give some thanks to some people. 

I came out here at the end of May -- near the 

end of May -- to talk to site experts and 

workers and -- and I really thank them all. 

Many showed up and I really want to thank 

Denise Brock for organizing that meeting. She 

put a lot of time to do that. And I also want 

to thank Kay Drey, who lives here in St. Louis 

and has a -- quite a large archive of documents 

and -- and she allowed me into her basement and 

-- and -- to look at the documents and that was 

very useful. 

And I -- I really want to thank NIOSH. I know 

they have a lot on their plate and they're very 

pressured, and we have lots of questions. We 

had a meeting in Cincinnati and -- and it -- it 

really -- I'm grateful that they were as 

responsive -- a lot of the correspondence is -- 

is in the attachments. 

 The Board basically asked us to look at the 

questions of data and the usability of the site 

profile for the '49 to '57 period for the 

downtown site, and there were some incomplete 

items from the last time we looked at this. We 
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hadn't looked at the airport site, both for the 

'49-'57 period, and we hadn't looked at the 

decommissioning section that -- that NIOSH had 

added, so we did that. 

As you all know, there was uranium processed 

there, ores of various kinds, and then some 

residue processing also occurred, and we tried 

to address all those issues. So this review 

really covers the -- both the downtown site and 

-- and the SLAPS -- the airport site -- St. 

Louis Airport Site, as it relates to processing 

at Mallinckrodt. And so that's the -- I think 

I've already covered this. 

 The other thing that we did here is we -- we 

did try to look more completely or -- or get a 

better sample of those five, six boxes and see 

what was in them that might not be reflected in 

the site profile. The -- the transcript of the 

Cincinnati meeting is -- is not yet available, 

but I presume it will be posted on -- on the 

OCAS web site when it is. 

So the -- the main focus of my presentation is 

going to be on this '49-'57 period, and so let 

me just get on to that so there's some time for 

questions. 
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 Our overall conclusion was -- as more fleshed 

out now -- is the same as it was before, that 

to do anything other than minimum doses for 

compensation, major modifications to the site 

profile will be necessary. Also the -- the 

revised site profile will then have to be 

converted into a set of recipes and procedures 

to enable the dose reconstructors to have 

sufficient guidance about a -- a quite complex 

operation to be able to actually reconstruct 

doses in a way that's scientifically 

defensible, and we tried to flesh out what that 

might mean. 

The data and analysis in the TBD really -- so -

- so -- they -- it -- the TBD is just a first 

starting point, and so there'll be more work 

that'll be necessary after the TBD's complete. 

Our major con-- so there are three categories 

of doses that we've always talked about. 

There's the minimum dose, which we've dealt 

with already. There's the reasonable dose with 

claimant-favorable assumptions, and there's the 

maximum dose with scientifically reasonable 

worst-case assumptions. 

 Now I distinguish between the last two -- when 
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I think of reasonable dose with claimantfavorable assumptions, I think of a situation 

where, for instance, you have bioassay data for 

all the relevant radionuclides for which the 

worker was exposed, so if they were exposed to 

radium and thorium and neptunium and uranium, 

then you have radionuclide-specific data. You 

may have some gaps about solubility and 

particle size and so on which you fill in with 

claimant-favorable assumptions. But what --

what you have is really a measurement-based 

dose with some claimant-favorable assumptions. 

If you take that idea of reasonable dose with 

claimant-favorable assumptions, something 

that's quite accurate and leans toward the 

claimant, then we concluded that reasonable 

doses with claimant-favorable assumptions were 

not possible, that the dat-- the data along the 

lines that we were talking about is not there 

to sustain such a type of dose reconstruction. 

We listed a -- we list a number of items that 

will be necessary to fix, both in terms of data 

and analysis, and I'll go into them in some 

detail. That will be necessary if maximum dose 

constructions with scientifically defensible 
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worst-case assumptions are to be made. And I 

really want to stress the latter part of this 

because it's always possible to make worst-case 

assumptions that are subjective, that you can 

say well, it can't possibly be bigger than 

this. But I -- as -- as we look at the 

situation, the worst-case assumptions do have 

to have some scientific basis, and that's also 

how we read the regulations. And I'll come 

back to that at the end of my presentation 

because I think there are some quite difficult 

regulatory issues to be addressed in regard to 

maximum doses. 

But first let me go to the technical issues. 

Why do we think that reasonable dose estimates 

are unlikely to be possible. Well, Mont Mason 

himself said that radon dose data are not 

sufficient except for minimum and maximum 

estimates. And it's not simply a question of 

the number of radon measurements that were 

taken. We all agree that there were thousands 

of radon measurements that were taken. It is 

that the radon exposures were primarily puff 

exposures. For instance, when the drums of ore 

were being opened, or when the drums of 
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residues were being opened and so on. And 

because they were puff exposures and we don't 

have -- we don't have the data from those puff 

exposures for the individual workers, you -- 

you can't make reasonable estimates and the 

type that I was talking about, but you could 

make bounding estimates by using distributions 

and 95 percentiles and so on, but you do have 

to collect all the data. We discuss that we 

feel that radon in many areas might be high 

enough to affect non-respiratory tract organs. 

The other part that -- that's unclear is what 

was the history of residue processing in Plant 

6, and that's not very clear so it's not -- 

it'll not be possible, we think, with the 

existing data to make an accurate assumption 

about radionuclide ratios in the composition of 

the air. So some kind of -- if you can't find 

that history exactly and we -- we didn't see an 

indication that you could, then you'd have to 

make some kind of maximizing assumption about 

that. So a reasonable estimate is not possible 

-- no distribution, no -- no time period for 

processing. 

Similarly we didn't find Mallinckrodt-based 
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measurement data for these other radionuclides. 

There's some data on radium 226. I believe 

it's actually one measurement that was taken in 

1947, one set of measurements, and that 

measurement was not related to the period in 

which the re-extraction of uranium was done. 

But I did find, and I -- we agree with NIOSH 

that that was a good starting point and that 

100 to one ratio for radium would be -- would 

be applicable for the later period for -- for 

ore proc-- ore processing and first -- first 

cycle K-65 residues. 

We have no radionuclide-specific bioassay data 

for the most important radionuclides for a lot 

of workers -- thorium 230, radium 226, actinium 

227 and protactinium 231. There may be a 

possible small exception -- I think there might 

be some thorium 230 bioassay data for -- for 

the thorium extraction in the '55-'57 period, 

but -- but I'm not sure about that. 

 There's insufficient information to develop 

accurate correction factors for Barnes Hospital 

urinalyses, 1949 and early 1950. We -- we do 

think that -- from the information available 

that Barnes Hospital analyses might have been 
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systematically underestimated. But the degree 

of underestimation would have been variable 

because of precipitation of uranium from the 

standard, and -- and it may be possible to 

develop a maximum correction factor. But 

accurate correction factors, it at least -- 

there didn't appear to be the base and data to 

-- to be able to do that. That applies just to 

a limited period of '49 and maybe early 1950. 

There are incomplete environmental release 

data. Now this was -- this is a new item. 

There are no environmental release data in the 

site profile. We found in the five, six boxes 

of consid-- that there was -- there's evidence 

of -- of large releases of uranium on a partial 

basis that's compiled. That -- that 

information is on -- on page 38 of -- of the 

report where I compile -- I simply compiled a 

table that was in the document cited there. 

And as you know, Plant 4 is not mentioned here. 

And in my experience, every single es-- 

estimate that has been done of environmental 

releases from nuclear weapons plants in modern 

times, including those sponsored by the CDC, 

has found the old estimates to be significant 
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underestimates. So I -- these values are not 

to be taken as accurate. It's just -- these 

values are to be taken as what was thought to 

be released at the time, and it would take a 

significant amount of work to actually develop 

environmental doses, and probably some 

maximizing assumption would have to be made. 

There's not enough data on incidents to be able 

to do accurate doses, we think, for -- for -- 

for rare incidents. For instance, there was 

spills from the digester tanks when there was a 

lot of foaming, and there was cleanup 

operations involved with those spills. They 

were very episodic, of course. For frequent --

for frequent events like blowouts that workers 

experienced, that would be a different matter 

and that can be done. 

There's a lack of air monitoring data at the 

airport site. Mallinckrodt workers went there. 

There's a question of radionuclide ratios over 

there. And a lot of the wet residues dried out 

at the airport, so how -- some -- some kind of 

worst-case assumptions will need to be made 

there. 

And we think that unmonitored workers were at 
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risk of significant exposure and they were 

quite -- the clerical workers were unmonitored, 

so some kind of maximizing assumptions will 

have to be made for that. 

So to update the TBD for maximum dose -- 

possibly; we don't know whether it'll all hang 

together when it's done, but this is what we 

believe needs to be done to make that judgment 

-- incorporate all the available radon data, 

the residue composition, processing history and 

development of worst-case assumptions. And it 

may be that if -- if it can be tracked to 

Fernald, it might be simpler than -- than what 

I found, but I was not able to track it to 

Fernald. So the suitable radionuclide ratios 

need to be developed. 

In this context I would like to say that -- 

that I might not have made it clear enough 

during the subcommittee meeting, but I don't 

think that the air concentrations can be used 

for -- for doing dose reconstructions, even if 

you had these radionuclide ratios. I think you 

do have to go back from the bioassay data and -

- and use those because there's no -- there's 

no evidence that we've come across that the air 
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concentrations were actually measured when the 

residues were being processed. And I think 

because of the high concen-- high specific 

activity of these radionuclides and -- and in 

the residue, I -- I don't think there's any -- 

I -- at least I have not seen any analysis that 

would allow me to be comfortable that the air 

concentration data, in the absence -- that -- 

the air concentration data can be used for lots 

of things, but I don't believe they can be used 

for dose calculations for these radionuclides. 

I think you do have to develop ratios and go 

backwards from bioassay data, and you have to 

be comfortable that those ratios are -- are 

defensible. 

You have to develop a correction factor for the 

Barnes Hospital data. 

I think the thorium 230 urinalysis data do need 

to be located. I don't see how -- how these 

doses for the AM-7 residues processing can be 

done otherwise. 

 The air concentration measurements in -- in 

Table 22 of the site profile are not useful. 

They were not made during the production time. 

The multiplicative factor of three is -- is not 
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founded in any -- any data or any surrogate 

analog, and I don't think the air concentration 

data are going to be useful unless some -- some 

very close process someplace else can be found, 

and we haven't seen any evidence of that. So 

without bioassay data I think it'd be -- 

currently I don't know how -- how the thorium 

230 doses could be reconstructed. 

And I think a better -- better assumptions 

about airport site workers need to be developed 

for air concentrations. I'm not comfortable 

that -- that what's there in the site profile 

is -- is a good set of worst-case assumptions. 

For incidents that were frequent we had this -- 

we had a discussion as part of our June 1st and 

2nd meetings. This did come up at the last 

Board meeting, how are blowouts and incidents 

going to be happened -- going to be taken into 

account. And when I came here to St. Louis it 

was again confirmed that -- that blowouts were 

very frequent, sometimes once a week, twice a 

week, once every two weeks. They varied 

according to plant and period because the metal 

production was shifted to a newer plant in -- 

around 1950. And -- but they were pretty 
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frequent relative to the bioassay frequency. 

And so long as they were once a week or once 

every two weeks, they -- the intakes would look 

more like routine intakes and -- and would be 

covered if a maximizing approach to analyzing 

bioassay data is used. That is, NIOSH has 

suggested -- I believe at the last meeting, or 

-- or on June 1st or 2nd, I don't remember when 

-- that if -- if the inferred air concentration 

envelopes all bioassay data, then for frequent 

incidents we would agree that this would be a 

reasonable approach. 

I'm not sure -- we're not sure that this would 

cover infrequent incidents. For instance, 

there were dust bag ruptures and -- they were 

not as frequent, so far as I know. I -- I've 

not been able to establish any idea of the 

frequency; perhaps more interviews might be 

able to settle that. But we're not -- we're 

not comfortable, from what we've seen, that a 

defensible or worst-case approach has been 

demonstrated as yet for infrequent incidents. 

It can possibly be done, but it hasn't been 

demonstrated during our discussions. 

Site expert and worker interview data will be 
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essential for infrequent incidents 'cause you 

first of all have to establish the types of 

incidents we're talking about, what the 

radionuclide -- this radionuclide ratio is 

going to appear in a variety of incarnations 

and situations because it will appear in the 

environmental data -- we've got environmental 

data for uranium. We don't know how much 

radium or thorium and so on is there with it. 

And it's going to have to be estimated because, 

from worker interviews, we know that the alleys 

had a lot of dust and, as you heard yesterday, 

tables in cafeterias and so on and -- and 

there's evidence that -- that this -- this 

problem will -- will occur in a number of 

guises, and a suitable set of assumptions needs 

to be developed. 

In regard to incidents, I've said this last 

time, also, that survivor claimant dose 

reconstructions are going to pose more 

challenges if, as appears to be the case from 

the files at Mallinckrodt, that the incidents 

are not in -- in the file generally. Some 

incidents are in the file, but I think the 

incidents of the type that we're talking about 
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-- at least I -- I didn't see fully documented, 

so there -- there are serious data gaps in this 

regard. 

We had -- and here I'm especially thankful to 

NIOSH and to -- for -- for actually doing these 

calculations. We -- we raised the question -- 

and -- and in the annex four of the report you 

can actually see the geometries that were 

studied on page 66 through 68 of the report. 

NIOSH studied three different geometries of -- 

of external dose exposure, location of the film 

badge, and -- and there's a little table of 

correction factors on page 64 of the report. 

And it seemed reasonably clear that correction 

factors will have to be developed by job type 

and by organ. Where the job type is specified 

to be a particular location for a given period 

of time -- and by the way, we agree with NIOSH 

that job type data are very good at 

Mallinckrodt generally, and they are available 

and they are in the worker files. And so this 

-- this data is available to be used. There 

are very few cases in which job type data are 

not available. And -- but correction factors 

will have to be specific to the source, the job 
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and the organ. 

 How the roving workers are going to be handled 

in this regard is going to be a special 

challenge. And in view of this, we've 

suggested that one -- or a short set of 

claimant-favorable or worst -- defensible 

worst-case correction factors might be 

developed. But it'll still be necessary to do 

quite a lot of work. These are very 

preliminary numbers, as we understand from 

NIOSH. They don't incorporate beta doses and 

they don't incorporate other complicating 

factors. They're not done with a -- with the 

assumption of a real-life dummy that has the 

characteristics of a human body. 

The other TBD changes that are needed is worker 

monitoring history for Plant 1 and 2 

decommissioning need to be established. Plant 

and 1 and 2 decommissioning was done in '49 and 

'50. There are no records for this 

decommissioning. It's not clear that the 

workers who did the decommissioning were 

monitored. If they were not -- if they were 

monitored there would not be a -- a difficulty 

here. But if they were not monitored, we don't 
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see that the kind of air concentration data 

that are available for production can be 

applied to decommissioning. So you know, we 

don't have an approach to suggest other than 

researching documents. A closeout survey was 

certainly done. 

The -- for those workers for whom surrogate 

worker cohorts are needed, we don't know how 

many there are. Presumably there are few. The 

Tables 28 for internal dose deri-- for air 

intake are derived from bioassay and Table 33 

for external dose need to be revised. 

And then there are the usual set of revisions -

- 95 percentile values for air concentrations 

if they're going to be used; oro-nasal 

breathing, which is an outstanding issue upon 

which we -- we don't have agreement yet, if I 

was to understand Dr. Neton's presentation from 

yesterday. 

It's clear that the working hours per year in 

the site profile don't reflect the normal 

experience of workers. Workers normally worked 

six days a week. They were working overtime. 

There's very clear evidence that in peak 

periods workers even slept at the site in the 
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dispensary. Independently more than one worker 

said this. It is documented in attachment 6. 

I -- I think that the presence, the time of 

presence on site is a very critical factor. 

We cannot ignore the fact that workers were 

even sleeping there at the site in terms of -- 

now if you have bioassay data and so on, this 

is okay. But if -- if you don't have bioassay 

data, I think it -- it raises major questions 

about how -- how the -- the working hours 

default at least should take six days a week 

into account, and overtime was very, very 

common. And if it's not built into the site 

profile and the claimant is not -- and the 

employee is not alive, it -- it makes it -- it 

makes it very difficult 'cause you would 

normally go back to the default assumption, and 

I think the default assumption is not good 

enough. 

We do think that breathing rates for heavy work 

periods should be incorporated; that the 1.2 

cubic meters that's currently in the site 

profile doesn't reflect the variety of 

conditions and it should be adjusted for those 

periods. 
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One issue that did come up that I don't have in 

my slides, but it is in the report, is when I 

showed -- when we discussed the AEC time data 

for how long it took to do the bomb charging 

with workers -- I must say they all laughed 

when I -- when -- when they -- when they looked 

at -- they told me 30 minutes, of their own 

accord before I showed them the data. And then 

I showed them the data so I -- I didn't want 

them to be biased in any way by what was in the 

AEC records. When I showed them the AEC -- 

laughter was really the first and uniform 

response. I don't know how we're going -- I 

think the use of air concentration data is -- 

spent -- the time-weighted data is going to be 

very difficult. 

Review of the boxes, boxes contained quite a 

bit of data. The external dose data, there's 

quite a bit of it that remains to be captured. 

It would be useful for worker cohort 

development as necessary for maximum dose type 

of things. It won't be useful for typical 

worker cohort development because in most cases 

the job locations are not identified. They are 

identified only for the most exposed workers, 
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and dose ranges are not uniform. 

I've already mentioned the environmental 

releases. I think this is -- the importance of 

the environmental release point should not be 

underestimated in -- because people were moving 

back and forth between buildings, we don't know 

whether these were puff releases, we don't know 

the patterns of exposure, they -- this is -- 

this is a big new item that I just developed as 

I -- you know, discovered, rather, I should say 

-- as I was making a final check to see whether 

I'd covered my review of these boxes properly, 

and -- and I came upon this table which -- 

which I've reproduced for you. So -- so I 

think -- I think it's very important to 

understand that this is -- this is a new item 

that needs to be properly considered. And its 

implications for -- for unmonitored workers, 

including clerical workers, are at this time 

unknown. But the releases are large enough 

that they could be significant. 

 (Unintelligible) survey of the decommissioning, 

the type of file indicates that dose 

reconstruction currently stopping at '62, but I 

don't know how the workers are tagged in terms 
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of who were Mallinckrodt workers and when they 

are followed and how long they're followed, and 

I did not attempt to research this issue 

further. But -- but how long the dose 

reconstructions are carried out for 

Mallinckrodt workers and how long the residues 

in the airport site and the movement of the 

residues is taken into account is -- is kind of 

a -- somewhat unclear to me, but could be 

important for individual workers 'cause workers 

may have gone from Mallinckrodt to the 

contractors and then to the new contractors, 

and I'm not clear that -- that we can track 

them. 

The good news on the decommissioning is that 

the -- the bioassay data seem to have been done 

well and in triplicate and there seems to have 

been some quality control for -- for the 

bioassay data, and it should be available for 

most workers. 

A lot of the assumptions in the site profile 

regarding suspension and the indoor work year 

and so on seem to be claimant favorable. 

There are some outstanding factors. There's 

the pesky issue of radionuclide ratios again; 
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the external exposure geometry issues may not 

be as complex, but we didn't see a discussion 

of that. 

I'm not sure the SLAPS workers were -- were 

monitored. I didn't -- didn't see clear 

tracking of that. 

I -- I do think that -- that we can't assume 

that the airport site's chemical composition 

and solubilities and so on were the same, 

because they dry out over there, they get 

oxidized, they -- they change chemically. 

And ingestion -- when air concentration data 

are used for production times and no bioassay 

data, then of course ingestion has to be taken 

into account. We're still not comfortable with 

the way NIOSH is handling the ingestion 

question. It's not just a question of 

particles being deposited on surfaces from the 

air. There's -- there's large particle 

ingestion issues that are apart from the 

deposition out of the air onto surfaces that -- 

that need to be taken into account. 

But overall, the -- the work remaining to be 

done on the decommissioning period seems to be 

possibly less than -- than in other cases, 
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especially if these radionuclide ratios are 

established. 

The -- the big regulatory question that we came 

across is if in the absence -- our judgment is 

that -- that reasonable dose reconstructions 

will not -- are unlikely to be possible at 

Mallinckrodt, so only maximum doses will be 

possible, if they are possible. We can't make 

a judgment. If all -- quite a lot of work 

remains to be done, and at the end of it there 

will have to be a scientifically defensible set 

of assumptions for maximum dose calculation or 

maximum plausible dose calculation. And in 

that case, if an SEC petition is denied it will 

go back to 42 CFR 82. Currently 42 CFR 82 

defines this efficiency method for dose 

calculation. I did -- we did review all the 

six cases that have been denied at 

Mallinckrodt. In a number of cases the 

internal doses that are being used are -- are 

not a scientifically defensible set of internal 

doses. They've used Technical Information 

Bulletin 2, which has radionuclides like 

plutonium and strontium and cesium, which were 

probably not present at all and, if present, in 
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extremely trace quantities. And it's not -- 

it's not defensible to use those kind of 

assumptions -- or not fair and not equitable. 

And if you use those assumptions for 

Mallinckrodt, then you can use any assumption -

- then you can justify any -- any set of 

assumptions for any worker. And -- and that 

level of -- of -- that -- that departure from 

the basic history of the site as to what 

happened there seems -- seems not justified to 

us. And so the question is how are these 

maximum criteria going to be developed and are 

they going to be used for compensation as well 

as denial. And in that case is there one set 

of worst-case assumptions or are there two sets 

of worst-case assumptions. And then in that 

case, how do you define -- as we read 42 CFR 

82, all -- in order to be fair, the worst-case 

assumptions do have to be scientifically 

reasonable. And if they're -- if they're -- if 

they are used for denial and compensation, then 

the question is what happens to all the cases 

in which worst-case assumptions have been used 

only for denial and POCs greater than 50 

percent and then they are recalculated. 
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We don't have an answer to this, but this 

clearly seemed a very confusing and unclear 

thing to us that -- that we felt that we should 

point out to the Board, and this -- this 

elaborates what I have just told you and that 

gives you the team of -- of people who worked 

on it. 

I'd be happy to take questions. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Arjun. Let's 

begin with Dr. Roessler. 

DR. ROESSLER: I have two questions. The first 

question is on this slide you mention the 

internal team reviewers. I don't see Joyce 

Lipsztein on there. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, I think Joyce was very 

busy with other things. I did send things to 

Joyce and I don't think she fully -- she got a 

chance to get to them 'cause she was working on 

Y-12 and various other things. Mike Thorne is 

also a very good expert on internal dose 

issues, and I also used Bernd Franke, who also 

has experience in bioassay and internal dose. 

I did send all the materials to Joyce, but she 

DR. ROESSLER: Okay, but Joyce is still -- 
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 DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, yes. 

DR. ROESSLER: -- with -- with the team in some 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: She's working on Y-12 -- if I'm 

right, Joe. Is Joe here? John, is that right? 

Yeah, I saw all the e-mail traffic so I'm -- I 

know that she was working on Y-12. 

DR. ROESSLER: I think it's unfortunate she 

wasn't involved in this particular review. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. Well, I did send her the 

materials for -- for review, but... 

DR. ROESSLER: The other question I have is on 

slide 13, and in here you talked about the 

decommissioning, 1958 onward. I'm wondering 

what the pertinence of that is with regard to 

this petition, which ends with the 1957 period. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, the -- Dr. Roessler, the 

decommissioning does not have to do with the 

'49-'57 period. Since we were asked to do a 

site profile review, the last time we had said 

it was incomplete. We thought it proper not to 

have to go back again and say oh, it's still 

incomplete and we're going to do it next time. 

So we did put some effort, although not the 

major part of the effort, in doing this. It 
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doesn't have a direct relevance to -- 

 DR. WADE: And for the record --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- the main question before -- 

 DR. WADE: -- SC&A's review is of the site 

profile. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: So we didn't -- we didn't want 

to have to tell you that we haven't finished 

yet and we'd like more time, so we tried to 

finish everything. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Arjun, just for clarity, your 

sixth slide --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: This goes backwards one at a 

time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, it -- it's entitled "Bases 

for finding that reasonable dose estimates are 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- unlikely," which I -- I think 

one might take that to be kind of the bottom 

line. But then the following slides suggest a 

number of changes in the Technical Basis 

Document --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- that -- the implication is that 

if these changes were made, then reasonable 
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dose estimates perhaps could be made. Is that 

the position that SC&A is taking or -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, I don't believe we took a 

contradictory position like that. I think -- I 

think there are some items there that -- that 

could be like in the -- fall in the category 

for that item of reasonable doses, but overall 

I think most of those items relate to the 

development of scientifically defensible worstcase assumptions for maximum doses. So when --

when you add up all the changes, we don't think 

-- we think there are a number of items that -- 

listed in that slide for which you cannot make 

reasonable dose estimates. So when you make 

all the changes and add it all up, you are 

going to -- you're going to have -- you're 

going to be in the territory, in our judgment, 

of -- of maximum dose estimates. 

 DR. ZIEMER: As opposed to reasonable. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You're not ruling out the 

maximizing process. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, what we've said in regard 

to maximizing is, because the changes are so 

major and outstanding data questions are 
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significant, we -- and then it all has to be 

translated into do-- that we couldn't make a 

judgment whether at the end of the road you'd 

actually be able to --

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, understood. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- do it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: But this is the -- necessary, 

but whether it's sufficient or not, I don't 

know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, understood. Wanda? 

 MS. MUNN: Dr. Makhijani, could you 

characterize a little more clearly for us what 

is the issue with the Barnes data? 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. The -- we didn't find any 

evidence that the urine samples were 

contaminated and so on. The issue with the 

Barnes data was that the standard itself was 

deteriorating with time, and so the standard of 

-- comparison amount of uranium in the standard 

was decreasing because the uranium was getting 

precipitated out of the solution at the time of 

the comparison. And so there was a discussion 

and a number of tests and comparisons were 

done, which is in the February 2, 1950 
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document. That document was analyzed and a 

full analysis is presented in Attachment 7, 

Mike Thorne did that for us. And so far as we 

are able to tell, it appears that one of the 

systematic error -- one systematic error arose 

from the standard deteriorating, and that would 

have tended for samples to be overestimated, if 

there hadn't been another error. However, it 

appears when they did the independent tests, 

and this was the set number six -- I'll point 

you to the place in the discussion. If you go 

to the end of the report, on page 85 you'll see 

over there a test that was done on -- on this, 

and the Barnes data were actually systematic 

underestimates when tested by the New York 

Operations Office, not against the Barnes 

standard but against the New York Operations 

Office standard, which we presume was okay. 

It appears then that there were two competing 

errors, one arising out of -- we do not know 

what, maybe a calibration issue of the 

equipment or something that seemed to give 

approximately a 30 percent underestimate. And 

that was being offset over time by 

deterioration of the Barnes standard. At the 
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time a comparison was made, it -- you know, New 

York Operations and -- and Mallinckrodt were 

reading the same thing and it seemed like 

Mallinckrodt was making an overestimate 

compared to the standard, but the standard 

itself had deteriorated. 

So there -- there appears to be some kind of an 

error in Barnes. We're not sure -- this is the 

best that we could tell from the data 

available. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim Neton, can you add to this? 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I'd just like to add a little 

bit to that. I -- I've read the Mike Thorne 

analyses and I'm very familiar with the memos 

that are cited. I -- I think it was 

erroneously attributed to me in the review that 

I stated that the source of the high values was 

just contaminated samples. There is indication 

that there were contaminated samples. There's 

a memo to that effect. But we also discussed 

this possibility of the standard precipitating 

out of solution, which was well covered in that 

February 2nd memo. 

And in fact, I think the competing interest or 

competing effect that is referred to here -- on 
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three occasions Mallinckrodt was called to 

Barnes Hospital. This was written up in the 

Mont Mason letter, and Mont Mason did a very 

nice evaluation of this. On three occasions 

they kept saying the instrument's losing 

sensitivity. In other words, they measure 

their same standard, and it would read low. 

Well, on three occasions they actually 

artificially boosted up the calibration curve 

so that they now read like they used to, 

artificially raising the efficiency. And I 

think on those three occasions that explains a 

lot of the discrepancies that Mike Thorne was 

observing. So I think it's not an unknown. I 

think it was well covered by Mont Mason, and so 

it does explain a lot of these differences. So 

I think that's what was going on. Standard's 

precipitating, artificially jacking the 

calibration curves back up to expectation 

rather than calibrating, and -- so I think it's 

something that we need to take into account, 

but I think the issue is well documented and 

well characterized. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah -- yeah, I think the issue 

is documented. We've -- we've presented some 
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kind of a rough, sketchy analysis of it, not -- 

not -- and we haven't recommended a correction 

factor. But we think that there is some 

correction to be done and some looking into. 

They did try to develop a constant correction 

factor, and we think -- and this is -- this is 

discussed in the site profile as it currently 

stands, to some extent. And that -- so -- but 

it's not -- it's not clear that the Barnes 

Hospital data are systematic overestimates for 

all the data that were taken. And so a 

question of correction factors does arise. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Other comments or questions? If 

not, we'll continue with the presentation by 

Dr. Neton from NIOSH. And again, Board 

members, you should have a copy. And thank 

you, Arjun, for --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- your presentation to us. You 

should have a copy of Dr. Neton's overheads, as 

well. 

 MR. GIBSON: (Via telephone) Excuse me, Dr. 

Ziemer? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Mike, are you on the line? 

 MR. GIBSON: Yeah, I just wanted to let you 
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know that I -- I called in about an hour ago. 

I just didn't want to interrupt Dr. Armanjani 

(sic), but just to let you know that I am in 

participation now. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Very good, Mike, glad to have you 

aboard. I wonder, were we able to provide Mike 

with copies of these documents? 

 DR. WADE: Not to my knowledge. Do you have 

access to a FAX machine, Mike? 

 MR. GIBSON: No, I -- I have some of the 

preliminary stuff, the -- the PDF documents 

that were sent e-mail, but I don't -- I don't 

have the -- the rest of the stuff, no. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We'll try to get copies to you 

somehow today, Mike, so you have a hard copy of 

these presentations. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: I could e-mail them from my 

room. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Would you like -- if you have 

access to e-mail, Dr. Makhijani can e-mail his 

overheads to you from his room here yet this 

morning. 

 MR. GIBSON: 

mail. 

Yeah, yeah, I do have access to e-

 DR. ZIEMER: I think we have his e-mail in the 
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document, do we not, in the -- in the book? 

We'll get it to you. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) I have -- I 

have his e-mail. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. That will --

 DR. WADE: Mike --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- that will come to you shortly, 

Mike. 

 DR. WADE: Mike, are you --

 MR. GIBSON: That'd be great. Thank you. 

 DR. WADE: Mike, are you able to hear the 

proceedings adequately? 

 MR. GIBSON: Yes. I mean there's a little 

cutting in and out, but I think I'm -- I'm 

hearing most all of it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Mike. 

We'll -- we'll proceed with Dr. Neton's 

presentation, and at the break I think Dr. 

Makhijani will try to e-mail you this material. 

 MR. GIBSON: Okay. Thank you. 

MALLINCKRODT SITE PROFILE 

DR. NETON: Okay. Good morning again. I'm 

going to talk about Mallinckrodt and dose 

reconstructions in a couple of specific areas. 

I'm not here to necessarily rebut, point by 
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point, the SC&A review. I'm -- I'll certainly 

be happy to answer any questions that we're 

talking -- you know, and discuss that in the 

general context, but here I'm really to talk 

about two -- two issues, really. 

At the last Board meeting there was this 

outstanding issue of integrity of the data and 

biasing of the data low and that sort of thing. 

So I'm here to present our analysis of the data 

and what we've found as to that issue. I 

think, to some extent, this has been mitigated. 

SC&A has also, I believe, agreed that their 

analysis has shown that there has been no 

obvious gross alterations of the datasets, but 

I'll go through these slides nonetheless just 

to show what we've done. 

And secondly, I've added a slide because I 

sensed that the raffinate issue was going to 

loom large on the horizon, so I have a few 

slides just to go over the raffinate, to set 

the stage for maybe some discussion. 

Before I proceed, though, I would like to 

credit -- SC&A has done a tremendous job in 

reviewing these profiles. As you can sense, 

they leave no stone unturned and they've done a 
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tremendous job in -- in reviewing the dataset, 

and I think this profile and our dose 

reconstruction process is much stronger for 

that. So I will give them a lot of credit. 

Okay, moving forward, though, I would like to 

start and just outline the dose reconstruction 

process again because I think, in some sense, 

SC&A and NIOSH are a little bit -- coming at 

the approach from slightly different avenues. 

There are a number of data elements that make 

up the site profile, or a number of data 

sources, and that's represented over here on 

the far left. The first thing we do is we go 

and collect Department of Energy data, to the 

extent possible -- what we've got as far as 

monitoring data, that sort of thing. 

We have the claimant file where the claimants 

often put in information, in -- you know, 

annotations about incidents and such. 

 And then unique to Mallinckrodt, we have what's 

known here as the CER database, the Center for 

Epidemiologic Research database. That is an 

electronic database that has a pedigree. It 

was inherited from the Mancuso study way back 

in the late '70s, and was validated by ORISE at 
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that time, and we have the legacy database 

here, which is very helpful in performing these 

dose reconstructions. I'm going to talk to 

some extent about this piece. 

But -- so we have -- we have the data. And 

then what happens to this data. This is where 

we start. Now we have site profiles, and in 

addition to site profiles we have procedures, 

implementation guides, Technical Information 

Bulletins, that sort of thing that help 

interpret all these sources of data, as well as 

the claimant interviews that help identify 

unique conditions. As Dr. Makhijani pointed 

out, this is most helpful and useful when we're 

interviewing claimants who are former workers 

and less help from survivors, but nonetheless, 

we have this avenue available to us. 

All of this goes together under the -- under 

the review of an experienced dose 

reconstructor, we have minimum experience 

requirements, who assemble this and come up 

with the dose at the end of the day. 

What I'd like to point out is the site profile 

is one piece of this. In -- in some sense, 

when you listen to these reviews -- and 
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justifiably so -- they -- they appear like 

they're stand-alone documents used in a vacuum. 

Where, as you'll see in my discussion, we have 

much, much information here that does not need 

to be relied on -- does not need to rely on the 

site profile to do an adequate job 

reconstructing doses. 

So let me just talk a little bit about the 

sources of data. Again, the DOE responses are 

individual and summary film badge reports. We 

have gone out and asked the Department of 

Energy to give us all relevant information you 

have, including incidents, medical X-rays. We 

have tabulation of urinalysis results for 

claimants, these dust study cards that we 

discussed this morning -- individual cards that 

document by year an individual's work locations 

on a weekly basis. And then these McBee cards, 

which some of you may remember. Before the 

days of the computer, these cards that have 

little holes punched in the top and you -- you 

push in a rod and you can sort by different 

fields. This is what the original film badge 

data are on. And in fact we have a large 

number of workers with the cards with the 
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handwritten weekly doses entered onto them. 

The CER database, of course, is a compilation 

of all the data that was at the site, including 

much of the information that was -- was 

available at the Department of Energy. But I 

just want to give you a sense of the magnitude 

of the data that we have available that's 

already computerized. 

We have over 9,000 of these air dust cards, 

representing 1,443 workers through 1955. After 

'55 these are less useful. They tended not to 

keep track of them as often because I think, as 

you'll see later, the air concentrations in the 

plant were decreasing rapidly, and I think they 

relied more on the urine monitoring program. 

 The database also contains 13,600 urine sample 

results, individual urine sample results, 

almost exclusively for uranium, although there 

are thorium measurements in there that we -- we 

have found. 

There's also over 8,000 person-years of film 

badge results. That's 8,000 yearly values for 

workers at the site. 

Importantly, there is about 4,700 area radon 

measurement results that we can rely on for 
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characterizing the radon in the work 

environment. 

And something that hasn't been discussed so far 

is about 2,400 radon breath measurements. 

These are breath measurements that were made 

primarily by the Health and Safety Laboratory 

to help determine what the intake to radium was 

in these workers. We believe to some extent 

these can be used to help put upper bounds on 

the radium intake of workers at Mallinckrodt. 

The SC&A review has challenged the value of 

some of the early samples. The memos that they 

cite, to my knowledge, really refer to falsely 

high values because the radon in the room was -

- was elevated, therefore leading to elevated 

radon breath measurements. So if anything, I 

think that these would tend to bias the results 

high. But these can be used and there's a 

large number of workers that were measured. 

And in fact, these can almost be used to help 

trace which workers were involved in processing 

raffinate because there's no reason to measure 

the radon in breath, which is an indirect 

measurement of radium intake, unless the worker 

was potentially exposed to that -- that waste 
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stream. So I think to a large extent we can 

use these to help bracket who was exposed to 

raffinate materials. 

Now let's get back to the issue of data 

integrity. We have -- in going through the 

database, we have about 1,300 pages of original 

laboratory result sheets from the Health and 

Safety Laboratory. You might remember that 

that was the laboratory that had oversight of 

these AEC operations as far as health and 

safety goes, a very credible laboratory with a 

well-qualified staff. In looking at these 

sheets, there's about -- there are 14 entries 

available per form. Now not all forms are 

completely filled and we didn't go in and count 

every sheet. But if on average there's about 

10 entries per form, which I think is probably 

not an overestimate, you end up roughly with 

about 13,000 urine sample results that are the 

original coded sheets that HASL sent to -- sent 

to Mallinckrodt. 

Now I just want to point out that it's kind of 

suspicious that we have 13,600 urine sample 

results that were coded off the original 

workers' cards, and we have, by my estimation, 
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pretty close to that number of HASL urine 

sample data. Now I'm not going to suggest 

that's 100 percent, but I think what we've 

found -- and I'll talk about this later -- is 

virtually all of the uranium measurements after 

1949 were done by the Health and Safety 

Laboratory by our own independent evaluation, 

which gave us a fairly good comfort level that 

the urine sample results can be relied on, to a 

large extent. 

We also have these results of periodic dust 

studies that were conducted. There were 

campaigns on an annual basis to go characterize 

the work environment and dust at these various 

work locations, but also campaigns that would 

go and measure specific areas where there was 

concern. So between '49 I think and '57 there 

are -- I wrote this down -- 42 dust study 

reports. Those are individual reports that are 

each made up of hundred of individual -- 

individual air sample measurements. So you get 

the sense that at Mallinckrodt we have a large 

volume of data to start with. 

Okay. Now lets get back again to this -- this 

integrity of the data issue. We approached 
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this from a multi-faceted viewpoint and so we 

tested in several different ways. We poked 

around and looked at the data to see if, you 

know, it walked right, smelled right, looked 

right, make sure the data appeared to be okay. 

So the first thing we did was we got together 

with ORISE and got their validation studies, 

what was their protocol that they used to 

accept the Mancuso data that was -- already had 

been coded in the '70s, was inherited from the 

University of Pittsburgh when they took over 

the studies. And they did a ten percent random 

sampling of the data against the original 

jacketed cards that they'd pull out of the 

medical records and validated that they 

believed that the data that were already coded 

were -- were acceptable. With the exception of 

the urine data, they felt the data could be 

relied on, to a large extent. They actually 

went back, though, and recoded all the urine 

data -- 100 percent recoding -- and so we have 

very good confidence in the urine data here, 

and also good documentation of the other data 

that they -- they accepted were valid. 

So we went back and looked at the CER data and 
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went back and looked at some of the original 

data sources that -- that were available, such 

as the HASL data. We looked at the HASL data 

sheets and compared it with the results that 

were in there. And then we looked at the 

consistency of the fit in the CER data with 

typical occupational exposure data, did this 

data look about -- look right; from a person 

who's done a lot of occupational data and 

looking at literature values, do these have the 

right characteristics of what you'd expect. 

Then finally we went back and looked at some of 

these intakes and, using the values in the 

profile, estimated what the intakes -- compared 

the intakes estimated using the air 

concentration data and the intakes one would 

expect using the air data. 

I will be the first one to admit that this has 

a lot -- there's a lot of uncertainty in the 

intakes based on urine data. Those who have 

worked with any bioassay data recognize that 

there's large uncertainties. What we were 

really looking for here is, again, is there any 

gross deviation from what's expected, and we'll 

see what happened. 
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And then finally we went back and said okay, if 

these data do appear to be okay, what is the 

extent of the data available for the active 

cases. Do we actually have real data for 

people, or do we have to have surrogate data 

for 90 percent of the workers. 

Okay, I'll just -- I have a few of these 

slides, and they're quite colorful and pretty, 

but I think the most important thing to note is 

the nice linearity of these -- these graphs. 

The red line represents the dust concentration 

in dpm per cubic meter -- that's on the left 

axis -- and the urine concentration data is on 

the right side -- is on the right axis. And 

you can see that these things -- these fit 

straight lines on a log probability plot very 

well. And what's interesting is they tend to 

be parallel, which is kind of interesting. 

You'd expect the urine sample to somewhat 

parallel the air sample data if the 

concentrations did indeed go up and down 

concomitantly. 

So I have slides here for 1949. We see no 

perturbation there. That looks very consistent 

with -- with our evaluation of standard data; 
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1950, similar. There is some trend here toward 

divergence here, but nonetheless these Rsquared values are really good. 

Now this is interesting. I spoke about this 

earlier at the working group meeting. This is 

a good example of what happens when you've got 

some -- when you have some censored data. The 

dust concentration data here was entered right 

out of the CER database and plotted on a log 

probability plot, and you see here that there's 

this extreme down-turn right around 30 percent. 

And I mentioned this morning -- for those of 

you who weren't here, I'll repeat it -- that it 

turns out that the dust concentration data in 

1952 and onward were not computed on the 

individual sheets. I'm not saying that they 

don't exist. The sheets are there. I've 

looked at some of the original sheets. They've 

entered -- remember I said they kept track of 

where the workers were by week in individual 

years? They never bothered to go back and 

calculate the dust concen-- add in the dust 

concentration data for those jobs, for whatever 

reason. When ORAU coded this, they put in zero 

to hold the place as a missing value, and this 
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is what happened. And I've confirmed this with 

Betsy Ellis, who reviewed this dataset, and 

this is exactly what happened. So this is 

somewhat of a fortuitous example of what can 

happen when you do have data that are censored, 

and we were able to figure out what -- what 

hap-- what went on. 

 Okay. Interestingly, we just plotted here the 

mean -- the median value of the urines over 

time with its fifth and 95th percentile values, 

just to show that there is a consistent downturn in the urine monitoring data over time, 

and a fairly consistent spread of the data. So 

this is essentially a replot of all the data 

that I just showed you on one slide. 

Now this probably won't be tremendously 

readable. I got this right out of an AEC 

report, but my intent here is to show that the 

down-turn in the urine data -- this is on a log 

scale -- is very consistent with what the AEC 

is reporting based on their analyses and 

different engineering controls that were put in 

place over time. This line right here 

represents the average air concentration -- and 

this is for Plant 6, I believe -- yes. The 
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average air concentration in Plant 6, starting 

in 1949 and continuing on through the 1950s, 

and a tremendous drop here in around 1949 

through -- between 1949 and '50, indicating 

that a lot of these work practices were put in 

place, work practice and work controls. And 

that's very consistent with what we see in the 

urine data. This value here, you might wonder, 

is the maximum values that were measured, and 

this is the average values. 

Okay. We did the same thing -- I'm not going 

to present you a litany of the external data, 

but suffice it to say that the external data 

fit very nicely the same way, and we saw no 

evidence of -- of a fudging of the datas, and 

I'm just going to show 1949 and 1957, and 

you'll have to trust me on this; I can produce 

the graphs if you'd like, but they're all very 

boring and fairly straight, like this. 

Okay. Let's get on to the -- so we -- we've 

got the feel that the data do not look askew, 

and the last test that we did was we looked and 

said okay, let's compare the air dust data -- 

which are the red dots -- against the urine 

data for a subset of the workers. So in this 
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particular case we're talking -- we're looking 

at the ether house, which is -- remember we 

talked earlier in the day about the ether house 

being the extraction area where the raffinate 

was already -- the radium was removed and here 

they're trying to get more pure uranium. 

So here are the points representing the median 

value of four workers' urine who had fairly 

complete monitoring over time. I believe 

actually there -- there was four here and -- 

and another set here, but nonetheless there 

were four workers with fairly complete urine 

monitoring data. And I indicated here the 

fifth and 95th percentile air bars, assuming a 

GSD of three, which is very consistent with 

what we use in our site profile -- in our dose 

reconstructions. It's well-established that 

there's a number of reasons why urine data has 

uncertainty. Partly it has to do with what we 

talked about yesterday, the breathing rate; 

part of it has to do with the particle size; a 

lot of it has to do with the individual 

metabolism of the workers. So I just wanted to 

show that there is uncertainty here and that 

the -- the red squares, which are the air dust 
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data, I think I can say are not inconsistent 

with the urine data. 

Now again, the uncertainties are large, but 

there's no gross indication that these data 

were -- for example, if the urine data were all 

down in here, I'd start to worry a little bit 

that maybe they were under-reporting the urine 

data. 

But I've just done this for a few plants. This 

is Plant 6 where there's no -- no radium source 

term. 

Now if you look at -- this is a cloth operator, 

and I think SC&A has this same analysis. It's 

not graphically presented in their report, but 

the same -- I think they've done the same 

comparison. I was actually encouraged to see 

we got the same -- pretty much the same 

numbers. 

What you see here is interesting that in the 

earlier days you see a higher value for the 

uranium dust -- the dust data, decreasing down 

over time, and still not inconsistent with the 

-- with the bioassay data here. But what seems 

to be happening here is you have a radium 

source term. The ether -- the cloth operators 
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are the people who were working with the radium 

product that was precipitated out. And one can 

envision that as the pitchblende ore 

concentration started decreasing in quantity of 

-- of raf-- of radium, you started more 

approaching a value that was closer to the -- 

to this situation. So I thought that was kind 

of an interesting indication that where you 

have -- in fact, if you look at the ratio of 

this to this, it's almost like around 100 to 

one, which I think is extremely fortuitous, but 

nonetheless interesting. Again, all of the 

values are within the air bars. 

Similar analysis here not quite as good 

agreement. Again, this is real data, warts and 

all. But again not inconsistent data for a pot 

room operator. These are people working with 

the -- the purified form of the uranium in the 

pots in Plant 6. Higher here, but it's still 

in the same general vicinity is all I'm trying 

to point out. 

This is an interesting operation here. I'm not 

exactly -- I can't explain this away, other 

than -- I thought about this point a long time. 

It's high. You would -- it's encouraging that 
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it's high, not low, but at the same time, this 

-- we modeled these as Class W materials, and 

it's quite possible -- in the packaging 

operations sometimes workers were handling UO2, which is Type S material. One would expect 

less in the urine than what we're seeing for W, 

so maybe that explains it. But this is the 

only slide where I felt there was some issue, 

but again, I'm encouraged that the value is -- 

is higher for the -- you know, it's -- it's 

easier to consider why that value is high 

rather than extremely low. 

So again, I'm not saying that this is -- 

validates it completely, but if you -- if taken 

collectively, you know, the -- the lognormal 

fit of the data, the not inconsistent agreement 

with the urine and the air data, one has a 

sense -- and I think SC&A agrees -- that 

there's -- the integrity of the data is -- is 

not really an issue. 

Let's talk a little bit about the percentage of 

the workers monitored here. I've got a graph 

here, and I think Larry Elliott has a slide 

that shows actual numbers, but this is a 

graphic representation by year of what we 
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believe to be the percentage of workers that 

were actually monitored with these types of -- 

of measurement techniques. You can see the 

breath radon was a small subset of the workers, 

but about 15 to 20 percent over time, 

terminating in '55. This may actually be the 

affected population of raffinate workers. 

There may be more than that, but certainly 

these would represent the more heavily exposed 

workers. You would be taking breath radon 

measurements on the more heavily exposed 

worker, and -- and we know -- we know who these 

people are. I mean we actually have their -- 

their job cards and everything. 

Followed by the urinalyses, starting at about -

- less than 60 percent in '48 and increasing 

over time to where you have about 80 percent of 

the workers monitored through '55, and a slight 

down-turn here after '56 when production 

operations started to -- to decline. I think 

'57/'58 was pretty much agreed that that was 

the end of the production operation for -- for 

the Mallinckrodt facilities. 

Air dust, we have a similar pattern, for the 

most part, of 50 percent -- not quite as many 
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here in '50, but then increasing rapidly to 80-

plus percent '51 and '52. Now I have to 

explain, the red -- the red bar is the air dust 

cards that we actually have the time-weighted 

average values filled in. I've indicated here 

on this graph the air dust card we have for 

workers after '52, which give us information 

about job location but have not necessarily 

been finalized to the -- to the time-weighted 

average value, but we could go back and 

reconstruct that ourselves. 

 And film badge data, we have a very consistent 

percentage, 75-80, up to almost 100 percent of 

the workers monitored in the later years. So 

again, we have a lot of data on these workers. 

This is projected based on the total population 

that worked on the uranium project at the -- at 

the -- at Mallinckrodt. 

Okay. So that -- that's our projection, based 

on what we know to be the work -- you know, the 

number of workers we have data for versus the 

number of workers we believe to actually be 

working at the Mallinckrodt facility. 

Now we went back and looked at records 

available for claims that we have. Right now 
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we have 109 cases in our possession who have 

employment start dates between 1949 and '57. 

Now these are people who are not in -- as part 

of the SEC. I mean they started after 1948. 

And we went back and looked at a number of 

these individually. 

First we went back and looked at job title work 

category information, and we at least have some 

information on what these people did for 98 

percent of these 109 cases. There's something 

in their file that tells us what they did. I 

think there's only two people out of these 109 

where it says unknown, and one of -- I've 

looked at both of those and it's -- it's an 

interesting -- it does not appear to be -- they 

do not appear to be workers who had a high 

potential for exposure, let's put it that way. 

 The DOE response and CER files were reviewed. 

We looked at -- do we have -- what -- do we 

have any urine data and film badge data for 

these 109 workers, and we went back and looked 

at every single one, and we found that we have 

-- for about -- almost 80 percent of the cases, 

we have some urine data and film -- some film 

badge data. I'm not saying we have complete 
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monitoring records for all 78 percent for every 

year, but there is some indication of what 

their magnitude of their exposure was for -- 

based on urine and film. That's a pretty --

pretty large percentage of the work force. 

It's interesting -- these are -- these are not 

necessarily the same workers. For example, in 

some cases you may have urine and no film and 

some film and no urine, but it came out about 

the same. You have -- still about 78 percent 

of the workers have some data. 

Now of -- I mentioned about 12 percent we don't 

have bioassay data. I thought it would be of 

interest to just sort of catalog the workers 

where we don't have bioassay data, and many of 

these make sense -- clerk/typist, secretary, 

foreman possibly. Some of these, though, I -- 

were surprising. But then I started looking at 

these, and some of these -- subcontractor at 

the kiln, maintenance welder -- these are -- 

research chemists -- these people started later 

in the Mallinckrodt years at Destrehan Street. 

And in fact, if you go back and look at their 

Weldon Spring files, you'll find some urine 

data. So overall, the percentage is even 
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higher than 78 percent if you start 

incorporating urine data that you have from the 

time they went to Weldon Springs. And of 

course those can be used, to a limited extent, 

to go backwards in time and figure out some 

bounding estimate based on that. 

Okay. All right. Another thing we did when we 

looked at the Center for Epidemiologic Research 

data versus the Health and Safety Laboratory 

sheets, we went back -- and remember, there's 

1,300 of these sheets and they were somewhat 

arranged chronologically, but not perfectly, 

which kind of made the effort a little more 

labor-intensive. But we went and looked at 20 

percent of those 109 cases that we -- we have. 

And we compared the data that was in the CER 

database to the actual coded sheet on the 

Laboratory analysis result. And we found that 

98 percent of all the bioassay results were 

found in the HASL laboratory sheets. In other 

words, 98 percent of the results for those -- 

those 20 percent of the workers were HASL 

laboratory results. I think there was only a 

couple that weren't -- three I think weren't 

found. Two of those were in the 1949 time 
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frame, which were more than likely done by 

Barnes Hospital, interestingly weren't in the 

database at all. And another one -- it appears 

to be a duplicate where the CER database had 

two samples one day apart with the same value, 

and it appears to be just a -- a clerical entry 

error. 

So we had very good comfort that the data that 

we're working with these claimants -- these 

cases are -- are HASL urine data. 94 percent 

of the data that we found exact -- exactly 

matched what was in the CER database against 

the HASL. 

Like any database, we did discover some errors 

in transcription of dates, the dates were off. 

Reading numbers that are handwritten oftentimes 

you'll see a four transcribed as a nine, that 

sort of thing. Those are the type of errors 

that we -- we found in here. We do believe 

that the errors were reflective of data on the 

Mallinckrodt cards and not the CER data, 

although we've -- we've looked at this in a 

couple of cases, it seems to match, but we're 

not saying that it was always the case. But 

nonetheless, this gives us a pretty good 
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picture that the CER database for the urine are 

pretty usable for dose reconstructions. 

Okay. I've gone through this and I don't want 

to belabor the point, but you know, to 

summarize what we've done with this 

characterization work, large percentage of 

workers monitored. Almost everybody we have 

some job information about job title or 

category. 

The distributions of the data are very 

consistent with what we've seen ourselves in 

NIOSH and other research studies. No evidence 

of alteration. The decrease is consistent with 

what we've seen from the AEC reports. 

The intakes and -- based on urine and air are 

not inconsistent with expectations given -- 

even given their large uncertainty term. 

And the urine samples in the CER database agree 

very well with the original HASL reports. 

So -- so that -- given that volume of 

information, I think we -- we've got a pretty 

good picture of how to proceed with dose 

reconstructions. And remember, where we have 

the original data we have to rely less and less 

on the site profile to make up these -- you 
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know, to use these surrogate worker 

distributions that we talked about. 

Now I just want to finish up with a couple of 

slides on raffinate. Again, raffinate is a 

term used to define residues created from the 

refinement of ore. The chemical process 

creates a disequilibrium, so it's well known 

that this disequilibrium is most important for 

the daughter-- radium-226, actinium-227, 

thorium-230 and protactinium-231. 

I think this is a fairly instructive slide. 

This is an AEC report when -- this is a 

simplistic view of it, there is more going on 

here, but just so we know where the waste 

streams come off -- as we talked about this 

morning, this lead sulfate cake is really the 

K-65 cake. This is where radium -- sulfate, 

lead sulfate were precipitated, so this is 

where you take out all of your radium. This 

was a refinement process here where they just 

wanted to remove the excess sulfate. There is 

some radium in here, but most of the radium -- 

as far as I understand the chemistry -- stays 

up in this lead sulfate cake. 

We talked a little about this morning -- in 
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1949 they started to add a step here where they 

would take this cake and wash it with sodium 

carbonate -- both of these processes were 

washed with sodium carbonate, with the intent 

of removing additional uranium, to improve the 

recovery of the uranium. That's a little 

different than reprocessing all the way from 

the beginning like we talked about. I mean 

this is not a full reprocessing with digestion 

and everything. This is just taking the cake 

and essentially washing it and taking out more 

uranium. 

Once you get down to the diethyl ether 

extraction process, there were occasions where 

there'd be a precipitate. This would include 

some junk that they needed to filter off. This 

was filtered off using the Sperry ca-- Sperry 

press, thereby the name Sperry cake. This 

Sperry cake was what was used and sent to 

Mound, 20 tons, to obtain protactinium-231. As 

we mentioned, two grams of protactinium-231 

were extracted from 20 tons of this material, 

so we have an idea what was in this junk as far 

as protactinium. 

 And then, after going through the whole process 
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and liming it, the aqueous phase is dumped in 

the river, and then you have the airport cake 

which ended up being a huge pile of stuff, 25 

feet high, covering -- I don't know -- acres 

over at the St. Louis airport site. This was 

just essentially dumped on the ground, is the 

way I understand, reading it. This material 

was drummed, being essen-- originally it was 

the property of the Belgian Congo government, I 

believe. This was -- this was preserved more 

in drums, but this was just left on the ground. 

So we do acknowledge that there are 

disequilibria in each of these things. We do 

believe that there are techniques that can be 

used, even including taking this material and 

running it back through to extract more 

uranium. We can account for the disequilibrium 

using either urine and/or air sample data and 

use default assumptions that -- that bound the 

exposures for the workers. 

I think with that -- I have just one more slide 

here, but that's essentially what I just said. 

We can use default ratios for thorium and 

radium exposures. If we -- if we do it both 

ways, if we base it on a urine result and we 
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use a air sample result, we're going to pick 

the higher of the two and assign the dose to 

the worker, so that -- that's our approach for 

dealing with the raffinate issue. 

I think with that, that's all I have to say. 

guess I'd be happy to discuss this if there's 

any questions. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thanks, Jim. Dr. Roessler 

has a question. 

DR. ROESSLER: My question has to do with the 

radon breath analysis, which has nothing to do 

with radon in the environment. It's an 

indication of how much radium is in the body 

and comes out in the breath. I think that 

should be clarified. 

But you -- you indicated that this -- looking 

at those measurements -- on certain individuals 

would be an indication of how you could look at 

the ones who might have been exposed to 

raffinate. And I'm wondering if you're making 

that assumption based on the fact that these 

people might have been expected to be exposed 

to radium -- but did they know back then about 

the raffinate? 

DR. NETON: Oh, yeah, I think that's why they 

I 
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took the radon breath analyses, they were -- 

DR. ROESSLER: Okay, there's indication -- 

DR. NETON: -- they were concerned about the 

radium. Oh, sure. 

DR. ROESSLER: But -- radium, but what about 

the protactinium and thorium and the other ones 

that have been brought up as radionuclides of 

concern? 

DR. NETON: I believe they were -- they were 

aware of the waste stream. But as has been 

pointed out, very little bioassay were done for 

-- particularly the Sperry cake operators. 

There are thorium-230 samples in the database. 

Now the thorium-230 process actually took the 

residue, ran it through -- it was a wet 

process, by the way, and when it was shipped to 

Mound it was liquid, and so it -- with the 

exception of dumping this into the digesters, 

it's a wet process the entire way. There were 

bioassay monitoring taken for thorium-230 for 

those workers, and it was a limited campaign. 

It was a -- it was a one-shot deal to extract 

that thorium and send it to Mound, so we have 

some confidence and there's some indication 

from interviews with Mont Mason that ORISE did 
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back in 1980 that it was a limited campaign. 

It took place in Plant 7E, we know the 

facility. So we do have some ability to 

bracket the time and the facility where these 

occurred. 

DR. ROESSLER: So are you also saying that -- 

that because they took these measurements on a 

limited number of individuals that that helps 

define the --

DR. NETON: Well --

DR. ROESSLER: -- raffinate problem or -- 

DR. NETON: -- I think so. I think it's a safe 

assumption to bet that if you were monitored 

for radon in breath, there was some potential 

for you to exposed to raffinate. We would be 

hard pressed not to assume that the person was 

at least involved in the raffinate -- 

transportation, processing, handling -- in some 

way. I mean it doesn't make sense that they 

would take a subset of workers and measure them 

for radon in breath without there being some -- 

in fact, there are lists that I've gone through 

that talk about who's being added to the list 

and who's being taken off and that sort of 

thing. And there's clearly, in my mind, a 
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decision process to -- to cover these workers 

who were exposed to radium, at least. But they 

-- they won't be informative at all about 

thorium-230 or that sort of thing, but at least 

as far as people who were exposed in the 

process stream. Whether we would end up 

defaulting to a protactinium exposure or 

actinium, thorium or thorium-230 exposure is 

something that we would determine on a case-bycase basis. 

For example, if we knew the person was a 

digester and we knew that they're working the 

digester before any re-extraction had gone 

through, it would be a pretty safe bet to 

assume a one to one equilibrium of radium to 

uranium. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Anderson. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I was -- I was just 

wondering, it -- it -- a lot of this sounds 

very reasonable and -- and the decision to who 

to do breath analysis on, but is there any 

documentation describing that that -- you know, 

do we have something more than the assumption 

that if you're going to do it, you would do 

these workers because they're exposed to radium 
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rather than it's our -- we're just interested 

in what the radium exposures in the work force 

would be. I mean that would be another way to 

look at it, and --

DR. NETON: Yeah --

DR. ANDERSON: I mean you would think that 

there -- these would have a sampling strategy -

- I'm sure they had it at some time. The 

question is was it ever written down. 

DR. NETON: Right. I'm not aware of any at 

this point. But I don't want to imply that we 

would only assume those people were radium -- 

or raffinate workers. I was just trying to 

indicate that that would be a good starting 

point to say well, certainly these people have 

potential. Now let's go and look at, for 

instance, the film badge results. If you 

recall, radium has a huge photon emission from 

the daughters. So people with extremely low 

film badge results are very unlikely to have 

worked with significant quantities of radium. 

But if you -- on the other hand, if you have 

very large film badge results -- and believe 

me, they are high film badge results in the 

early Mallinckrodt years -- that's an excellent 
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indication that you're working with radium, or 

around radium material. So that's another 

indication. 

Then you couple that with job and -- and those 

type of issues --

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- you should be able -- we should 

be able to get a fairly good feel. And of 

course where there's doubt, we're going to err 

on the side of the claimant on this issue. 

DR. ANDERSON: My -- my other question was -- 

very interested in the 109 individual -- I mean 

part of it is can it be done technically, and I 

think you're showing that it can. The question 

is how practical and feasible to do all of 

these combinations and cross-checking as -- as 

how many of people who filed claims during this 

period actually have -- have had the dose 

reconstruction done, not just the efficiency 

process. I mean you're saying -- you haven't 

been waiting for the site profiles in order to 

complete these, so have any of them actually -- 

you have a lot of individual data. How many 

have actually gone through the full evaluation 

and have done -- that have reconstructors 
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actually done what you're describing, crossreferencing all of these various -- I mean it's 

a fascinating process to be able to do. It 

also sounds very time-intensive, so I -- 

DR. NETON: It is. These are 109 what we would 

call active cases, meaning they still need to 

have dose reconstructions completed. I think -

- and I don't have this number exactly, but I 

want to say that we've done 30 or so dose 

reconstructions thus far at Mallinckrodt, maybe 

36 -- Arjun may know better than I do at this 

point -- but most of those were compensable, 

and most of those were lung cancers because, as 

you can see, the source term here lends itself 

to very large lung doses. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: The radon component, the uranium, 

the radium. In fact, I think one of them were 

compensable based on an actinium-227 dose 

calculation. I think there were five or six 

that were non-compensable that Dr. Makhijani 

spoke to, and we did use these over-estimating 

-- what we would call a deliberate overestimate 

approach. We would say we don't know exactly 

what happened, but it's certainly less than X, 
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based on our -- our knowledge of what's going 

on. And I -- I recognize there's some issues. 

When you start adding radionuclides that 

weren't present at the site, it stretches -- 

stretches the credibility issue a little. So 

we've done some of those. 

I don't know that we've done any what we would 

call complete dose reconstructions for any of 

these workers thus far. 

DR. ANDERSON: It just becomes kind of a 

practical issue. Given the workload that's 

there to be done, the amount of effort one has 

to put into a relatively small number of cases 

here, an efficiency issue would be something to 

look at. 

DR. NETON: Right, yeah, I don't want to imply 

that we're going to do full, complete refined 

dose reconstructions. I think in many cases 

the maximum assignments -- maximum credible 

assignments -- plausible assignments, not using 

these -- these overestimating things -- will 

end up possibly, for systemic cancers, being -- 

you know, using the efficiency process and 

demonstrating that it's less than 50 percent. 

It's the -- it could work either way. 
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Although, on the other hand, for some of these 

raffinate workers where one cannot do a 

refinement other than a maximum credible dose, 

it's possible that many of those cancers would 

be -- would be compensable. 

DR. ANDERSON: But up to this point, after this 

amount of time, we haven't really done any of 

those so you --

DR. NETON: No. 

DR. ANDERSON: I mean it's feasible, you're 

saying, to do, but it hasn't actually occurred 

yet. 

DR. NETON: That's correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Roy DeHart. 

 DR. DEHART: But we've heard concern on the 

part of the petitioners that they're -- they 

were not getting information at the time they 

were employed, and I assume that much -- this 

data was identifying the individual by badge 

number or name. Do you know whether reports 

were rendered -- I realize this was an early 

time -- back to the employee? 

DR. NETON: I do not. That doesn't mean that 

it wasn't. 

 DR. DEHART: Okay. Thank you. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Other questions for Jim Neton? If 

not, we're going to take a break at this time. 

Thank you, Jim. And we'll --

 MR. GIBSON: Dr. Ziemer? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Mike. 

 MR. GIBSON: Could I make a comment? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, yes, you certainly can. 

Didn't mean to ignore you, Mike. Go ahead. 

 MR. GIBSON: I'm sorry, I guess you didn't see 

my card. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Out of sight, out of mind, Mike, 

yeah. 

 MR. GIBSON: You know, with respect to the 

quantity of data, and I know I've in some ways 

raised the hackles of some of my colleagues 

before and I didn't intend to do that -- you 

know, a couple of years ago Secretary -- thenSecretary Richardson said we have not 

adequately monitored these workers. So with 

respect of the quantity of the data -- and 

let's assume for the moment that the quality of 

the data is correct -- you know, the Board was 

made up intentionally of medical professionals, 

health physics professionals and labor, and I 

think that was for a reason. Because there are 
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those of us who have been in the field and ac-- 

for decades and actually seen what went on, and 

it's the -- sometimes the way people are 

monitored, number one. 

For instance, were air samples taking at the 

breathing zone where the work was going on, or 

were air samples taken where the monitor sat 

over in the corner of a room, which is not 

going to give you an adequate representation. 

Were air monitors set up up-stream or downstream of the air flow if you're working 

outside. So irregardless (sic) of the quantity 

of the data you have available for you -- and 

again, let's assume that the data that was 

analyzed by the professionals is correct -- to 

me -- I've seen instances where it's still not 

-- the monitoring that may or may not have 

taken place is still not representative of the 

exact position of the workers, irregardless 

(sic) of if it was taken in the same building, 

the same room, it still wasn't -- not 

necessarily put in a position to where it truly 

indicates what the workers may have been 

exposed to. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Yes, thanks, Mike. Good 
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point. 

 MR. GIBSON: And as far as default assumptions, 

you know, I am not a professional, but the 

default assumptions they take when they have 

personal bioassay data and the like -- even if 

you take the worst-case assumptions for those 

default factors, those default factors are not 

always necessarily the correct factors to be 

taken into consideration. 

In mean, for instance, a lot of bioassay 

samples -- I know at Mound the default factor 

was 45 days from your last bioassay test. It 

may have happened the day after your last 

bioassay test, which may have been 90 or 180 

days ago. Another default factor is they 

assumed 33 percent weekly, 33 percent slow, 33 

percent, you know, yearly type solubility 

classes of the -- of the material. So even if 

you take that worst-case assumption, that's 

still the worst case of the default factor they 

use, in my opinion, and not necessarily the 

worst case of what it may have been. So I --

you know, I just wanted to --

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, thank you -- thank you for 

making those points, Mike. 
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Other comments? Yes, Mark Griffon. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Just -- just a quick follow-up on 

that. I think one thing that I -- I -- I 

wanted to re-emphasize maybe that Jim mentioned 

was that in the cases where they're backcalculating intakes, they're going to look at 

the air sampling data along with urinalysis 

data and -- and it's at least somewhat 

reassuring to me that -- that most of these 

people have urinalysis data. I -- I have some 

questions on the air sampling data, also -- the 

representativeness of it. It was -- it was 

studies and I think later they assigned some of 

those job values to individuals, so it's not 

really -- when you look at the CER data, it's 

my understanding is that even though it looks 

like you sort by individuals and you have data 

there for them, those data were actually 

averages from a prior study on that certain job 

title, if I'm understanding this correctly. 

But -- but notwithstanding any of that, it's 

reassuring that -- you back-calculate intakes 

two ways, using urine data and using the air -- 

and forward calculate it using the air sampling 

data, and they -- NIOSH is committing here, I 
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think, to saying we're going to take the worstcase value of either one of those and carry it 

forward with -- to -- to calculate the 

appropriate doses. So I think that -- that's 

one somewhat reassuring statement. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Any other comments before we take 

our break? 

Okay, we'll take about a 15-minute break and 

then we'll reconvene. Thank you very much. 

 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 10:50 a.m. 

to 11:15 a.m.) 

 DR. ZIEMER: We're ready to reconvene this 

session, ask everyone to take their seats. 

Dr. Wade has a couple of comments as we get 

underway again. 

MALLINCKRODT SEC PETITION

 DR. WADE: Just as we begin an SEC discussion, 

I -- I'd remind you of several things we've 

talked about before. What'll happen this 

afternoon now -- this morning and continue this 

afternoon is that you'll be presented with an 

SEC petition evaluation report by NIOSH. We'll 

hear from petitioners as to that report. The 

Board'll then deliberate and make a 

recommendation. That recommendation will go to 
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the NIOSH Director, who will form a decision 

package that will go to the Secretary. 

I've said this to you before and I'll say it to 

you again. I think it's terribly important 

that you create a record that strongly supports 

the package that you send forward. It is this 

record, as well as the recommendation, that 

will go to the NIOSH Director and form the 

basis of the decision package that goes 

forward. So I -- I stress again, make sure 

that everything you feel pertinent to your 

recommendation is contained in the record and 

will support the recommendation that goes 

forward. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, and I want to also 

check and see if Mike is still on the line. 

Mike, are you with us still? 

 MR. GIBSON: Yes, still here. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Then we are going to 

proceed with the Mallinckrodt SEC petition 

evaluation by Larry Elliott. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer, and good 

morning again, members of the Board and the 

public. I won't go through some of the slides 

you've seen before. In this particular 
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presentation, as I did yesterday, I truncated 

the presentation because I feel the Board 

already knows its responsibilities under the 83 

rule that we have and you're following those, 

so I just keep my comments specific to the 

evaluation of the Mallinckrodt SEC petition at 

hand. 

I would remind the audience and the Board that 

there is a two-pronged test that must be met, 

according to the statute. This test consists 

of, one, is it feasible to estimate the level 

of radiation doses of individual members of the 

class with sufficient accuracy. And I'd call 

your attention to the rule again on what 

sufficient accuracy means in this regard, and 

that is whether or not we can estimate the dose 

with a maximum bounding dose or a more precise 

dose estimate. 

Secondly in the test, is there a reasonable 

likelihood that such radiation dose may have 

endangered the dose of members of the class. 

If you answer no to the first part of the test, 

then you have to answer the second part of the 

-- of the test. 

 Our evaluation process of this petition, as 
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with all petitions, includes examining all the 

available data and information that has been 

obtained through the site profile development 

and all the other tools that are related to the 

particular site in question, as well as looking 

at dose reconstructions that have been 

completed to date and the petition information 

that was submitted by the petitioners. In that 

we are to determine the completeness of the 

data search and examine the quality as well as 

the quantity of the data and the information 

that we find. 

The petition at hand was submitted to NIOSH on 

July 21st of 2004. The initial class 

definition was all employees that worked at the 

uranium division at the Mallinckrodt Destrehan 

Street facility in St. Louis, Missouri from 

1942 through 1957. 

The petition was qualified for evaluation on 

November 24, 2004. And as you know, we work 

diligently with the petitioners to make sure 

that a full basis of information is provided 

with the petition for examination, and that's 

part of this qualification effort. 

 The petitioners were notified and a Federal 
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Register notice was provided regarding the 

qualification of the petition, and that was -- 

both of those were done on December 20th of 

2004. 

NIOSH evaluated the petition and submitted a 

summary of findings and petition evaluation 

report to the Board and the petitioners on 

February 2nd, 2005. A summary of the 

evaluation report finding was published in the 

Federal Register on February 3rd of 2005. 

On February 8th, 2005 we presented the 

evaluation reports and proposed class 

definitions to the Board. Those class 

definitions consist -- were -- there were three 

class definitions and they consisted of the 

following: One, all DOE, DOE contractors or 

subcontractors employed by the uranium division 

of Mallinckrodt during the period from 1942 

through 1945; secondly, all DOE, DOE 

contractors or subcontractors who worked at the 

uranium division at the Mallinckrodt Destrehan 

Street facility during the period of 1946 

through 1948; and the third class, all DOE, DOE 

contractors or subcontractors who worked at 

uranium division of the Mallinckrodt Destrehan 
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Street facility during the period from 1949 

through 1957. 

In that evaluation discussion of the SEC 

petition at hand in February, additional issues 

were identified by this Board and NIOSH 

responded to those issues in a supplemental 

report. The Board sent a recommendation to the 

Secretary of Health and Human Services on March 

11th, 2005 and in that recommendation you asked 

that a SEC designation for all DOE contractors 

or subcontractors or Atomic Weapons Employees 

who worked at the uranium division at 

Mallinckrodt Destrehan Street facility during 

the period from 1942 through 1948, the first 

two classes that we identified for you, be 

added to the Special Exposure Cohort. 

 The Board reserved judgment, as you recall, for 

workers employed during the period of 1949 

through 1957 until NIOSH had completed its 

supplemental report on that time period and 

answered some of the questions the Board had 

raised. 

Meanwhile, as we were working on those issues, 

the Director of NIOSH sent a recommended 

decision to the Secretary of Health and Human 
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Services on April 6th, 2005 that was consistent 

with the Board's recommendation to add a class 

of workers for the time period of -- up to 

1948. 

The Secretary of Health and Human Services sent 

his decision to Congress on April 11th, 2005 to 

add the uranium division employees at the 

Mallinckrodt Destrehan Street facility for the 

period of 1942 through 1948 to the Special 

Exposure Cohort. 

Now on April 27th, 2005 NIOSH presented its 

supplemental report to the Board. At that time 

the Board requested verification of data and 

examples of dose reconstructions using actual 

data, and Dr. Neton has presented that to you 

today. The Board also at that time reserved 

judgment pending that information from NIOSH 

for workers employed during the period 1949 

through 1957. 

Beginning in 1949 Mallinckrodt established an 

operational program of radiation monitoring of 

employees and work areas. This monitoring was 

conducted by -- with the oversight by the 

Atomic Energy's Commission on Health and Safety 

Laboratory, or HASL. And notwithstanding the 
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data reliability concerns that have been raised 

or were raised for the early period, NIOSH 

believes that there is sufficient information 

from the various monitoring activities, 

together with the information on radiological 

sources and processes, to reconstruct and 

validate the dose estimates for the period of 

1949 through 1957. 

In the SEC petition evaluation report 00012-2, 

Section 7.3 on items two, three and four, 

you'll find reference to this table and the 

following table that I'll present. But item 

two raised issues about breath radon and 

questioned the limited number of data and the 

use of zeroes in that data. I think Dr. Neton 

has presented to you today a solution to that 

by using urinalysis results to cure that data -

- data gap. 

On item three, the purportedly lost medical 

records, NIOSH has searched all documents and 

we have not found any indication that medical 

records were lost, and so the loss is not 

confirmed as of this date. 

Item number four regarded altered records and a 

conscious cover-up, referencing a 1949 dust 
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evaluation which was never finalized -- a dust 

study which was never finalized. Our solution 

for this particular data gap would be the 

availability of data from a fully operation 

program from 1949 to 1957 that had the 

oversight of the AEC HASL laboratory and the 

ability to cross-reference data streams and 

validate the data sources, as Dr. Neton has 

portrayed for you earlier this morning. 

In these two slides and in Dr. Neton's 

presentation we have presented to you that a 

large percentage of the workers were monitored 

and tracked by not only job title but also job 

category. There are considerable data and -- 

and distributions of urine, dust and external 

data that are consistent with occupational 

exposure datasets. Dr. Neton talked about 

lognormally distributed data as we would expect 

it to be; that he identified no evidence of 

significant alteration on either the low or the 

high ends of those distributions of data; and 

that the decrease in urine monitoring results 

over time were consistent with the reduction in 

the source terms due to improvements in 

engineering controls. 
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We also pointed out that the comparison of 

intakes from urine and air sampling data are 

consistent with our expectations. It was made 

clear I think that the urine sample data in the 

CER database agrees very well with the original 

HASL data, and we have made a commitment that 

we would use -- with regard to urine or air 

data -- whichever would be the highest and most 

claimant-favorable dataset for use in dose 

reconstruction. 

In summary, for the years 1949 to 1957 NIOSH 

finds that radiation dose estimates can be 

reconstructed and validated for compensation 

purposes for this particular class. So we find 

that it is feasible to do dose reconstruction 

and therefore, while we believe that health was 

endangered here, we don't have to answer that 

particular prong of the two-part question. 

And that concludes my brief presentation on 

this evaluation report. You've heard this 

three times and I welcome any questions you 

have at this point. 

BOARD DISCUSSION, MALLINCKRODT SEC PETITION

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

will open the floor for questions from the 
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Board members, if you have any at this time. 

Dr. Melius. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, Larry, in your presentation 

-- sorry. 

In your presentation, under petition overview, 

you referred to follow-up to the April 27th 

Board meeting, said the Board requested 

verification of data, and I think -- believe 

that's what Jim presented. And you also say -- 

says examples of dose reconstructions using 

actual data. Now what -- what are you 

referring to there that Jim has presented -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Jim did not present any of those. 

We felt that the data that -- that this 

presentation that he gave gave you insight into 

the various data streams. I'll let Jim answer 

the rest of it. 

DR. NETON: Actually I think the dose 

reconstructions using real data were the intake 

calculations that we -- we presented that were 

based on real -- real data, compared to the 

intake estimates using the air concentration 

data. So if you recall like the ether plant or 

ether room, they were like N equals three or 

four --
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 DR. MELIUS: No, I gue-- I just --

 MR. ELLIOTT: They weren't actual dose 

reconstructions, but they were -- 

DR. NETON: No, they were examples -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- how we use the data in dose 

reconstruction. 

 DR. MELIUS: They're one component of a 

possible dose reconstruction. I just --

DR. NETON: Right. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- think that's sort of 

mischaracterizing them to say that they're -- 

DR. NETON: Okay. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- examples of that and -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: That's what the Board asked for 

in February -- or in Cedar Rapids, and we 

didn't go to that extreme, you're right. 

 DR. MELIUS: Well, I wouldn't -- since I was 

the one that requested it, I would disagree 

with you calling that extreme. I think you're 

basically saying you didn't do it and that's -- 

let's leave it at that 'cause I -- I -- I have 

some issues with that, but we can talk more 

about that later. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other comments or questions 

from -- from the Board members. I'm sorry, 
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just the Board members, yeah. 

 Okay, then -- oh, Henry, yes. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I'm -- I'm just interested 

in the existing claims that have been filed. 

What -- what proportion of those -- or how many 

individuals would fit into this? 

 DR. ZIEMER: You're talking about the 

Mallinckrodt claims that have been filed to 

date? 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, we heard earlier about 109 

that are currently open. I guess I just want 

to have a sense of -- of what's currently in 

the queue, what number of individuals would 

potentially then fall under this process versus 

the dose reconstruction process that we heard 

that none of the cases to date have actually 

gone through the dose reconstruction, although 

we heard that, you know, there's a lot of data 

that individually that's there and you haven't 

been waiting on the site profile, so the 

backlog on these is -- they just haven't been 

done. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I think if you look in your 

booklets under Program -- Program Status 

Reports, you'll find a summary there that's 
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provided by our communications development team 

on the number of cases. It's after my 

presentation, if my presentation's inside your 

book. It's -- I don't believe it's going to 

break it out the way you want it, Dr. Anderson. 

It talks about how many cases exist at 

Destrehan Street in our -- in our holdings. 

think there are around 300-some. At the other 

end of the spectrum, how many of those have 

been completed and sent on to the Department of 

Labor, I believe that number is 75. The 109 

cases that Jim was talking about are active 

cases in -- in the process. We can't -- I 

don't have a ready number for you to tell you 

how many cases would be affected for this time 

period because these cases, as you know, are 

individualized and some of them have time 

across time periods. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't have that number. We can 

probably get it for you today, but -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I mean --

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- I don't have it at my disposal 

right now. 

DR. ANDERSON: I mean some of these individuals 

I 
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would -- would qualify under the earlier time 

period issue --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, that's true. 

DR. ANDERSON: -- so I -- you know, yesterday 

we talked about the small group of people when 

we expanded the -- the Iowa by -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Perhaps Jim Neton can add some 

light here. 

DR. NETON: Yes, I think there's some confusion 

here. The 109 active cases we -- we have in 

our possession worked in the 1949 to '57 time 

period, so those -- those 100 percent fall 

under this evaluation report right now. 

Now there are an additional 50 or 60 cases that 

have employment that spill over into this time 

period that are also members of the original 

SEC class. 

DR. ANDERSON: That's -- that's -- yeah. 

DR. NETON: That's your question, possibly -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- and -- and I don't know how many 

of those are SEC versus -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- you know, non--

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individual case basis is the point I was trying 

to make --

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- and determine how much time 

they had in each time era. 

DR. NETON: But my point was, the 109 I spoke 

about have no employment in the SEC classes 

that have already been awarded. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Your question, Dr. Anderson -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, that's --

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- was how many had a foot in 

both. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I mean it's kind of what's 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

DR. ANDERSON: -- what is the impact and how -- 

how much time is expected to do these dose -- 

dose reconstru-- I mean to me the issue is one 

of feasibility, I think. There's a lot of data 

available and we've heard kind of theoretical 

ways to go about doing it, but up to this point 

it really hasn't jelled yet into having been 

applied, and -- and is it totally feasible to 

do this? I mean it could be done, but we 

haven't seen it's actually been done and I want 
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to know how many of those potentially are out 

there because if there's 109 or so that's, you 

know, one-third of one month's evaluation 

review and so maybe those could get done pretty 

quickly. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other comments? Dr. 

Melius. 

 DR. MELIUS: Just a question and then a 

comment, just make sure I understand what's on 

the record from NIOSH. The only thing new on 

the record from NIOSH for this meeting is 

really Jim's presentation. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: That's correct. 

 DR. MELIUS: Relevant to Mallinckrodt. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: That's correct. We did not 

change the evaluation report -- 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- the 02 -- the 2 or the 

supplement to that. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. And then my comments, back 

to what Henry was just asking about and to my 

earlier comment, the question also is the 

question is of feasibility and what -- I 

thought we as a Board had requested last time 

was some evidence of feasibility by looking at 
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example cases -- do that. And instead what we 

got was examples of -- rather than example 

cases, we've had parts of dose reconstructions 

and -- and issues of feasibility related to -- 

to those. And -- and I think those are -- 

DR. NETON: I think that --

 DR. MELIUS: -- somewhat different. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim. 

DR. NETON: That wasn't my understanding. I 

presented, if you recall, last time a graph 

that had parallel lines that showed intakes 

based on urine data and intakes based on air 

data, and that was a hypothetical slide. And I 

believe what -- what we were asked to do was to 

go back and -- and not use hypothetical data to 

present those slides, but to actually fill them 

in with three or four or so examples using real 

data, which is what we've done. So I 

reproduced essentially the graphs I presented 

in Cedar Rapids, using real data as opposed to 

hypothetical data. And I'm sorry if I 

misunderstood the intent, but that's what I 

believe we were asked to do. 

 DR. MELIUS: Well --

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you for that clarification. 
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 DR. MELIUS: Just for the record is -- 

I had a subsequent question with -- 

conversation with Larry trying -- making sure -

- clarifying at least what I meant and what I 

think the Board meant, and I think enough said 

on that, but I think it is -- puts us in a sort 

of a difficult position 'cause we still really 

haven't evaluated full feasibility on a number 

of example cases, and I -- I think -- makes our 

decision-making here much more difficult. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. Other comments? 

MALLINCKRODT SEC PETITION 

If there's no other comments, then we want to 

hear from the petitioners, and let me begin by 

introducing Denise Brock and -- on behalf of 

the petitioners. And Denise, if you'll take 

the floor, and any others you want to have 

speak to the petition, as well. 

MS. BROCK: I'd first like to say hello to 

everybody. And you'd think I'd be used to this 

by now, as many times as I've done it, but my 

hands actually sweat. I had to get Larry to 

get me some water. Thank you, Larry. 

And again, hello. I would like to thank 

everyone for coming today, and I would like to 
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second Senator Bond's welcome yesterday to all 

of you again today. I feel very blessed that 

St. Louis is once again the meeting place for 

this petition. And I would also like to offer 

my thanks to members of the Advisory Board, 

Senator Bond and Talent, all the members of the 

Congressional delegation, as well as NIOSH, 

Department of Labor, ORAU and SC&A staff. I 

thank you to all the claimants and members of 

the public who are here today. 

I actually had a quote that I had gotten from a 

book -- Robert Oppenheimer -- but this was just 

brought to my attention by someone in the 

audience who is a former Mallinckrodt worker 

and he actually wrote this himself. His name 

is Sonny Schwenisen*, and I quote, (reading) 

With our hearts and hands we helped this nation 

through a dark and difficult time. We now ask 

the nation to show us their heart and help us. 

One year ago I filed a petition for Special 

Exposure Cohort status for the Mallinckrodt 

workers from 1942 until 1957. At that time a 

site profile of Rev. 0 was being used to do 

dose reconstructions. In February of this 

year, during your last visit here, NIOSH 
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decided to split my cohort. Thankfully you 

voted to give the workers SEC status from 1942 

until 1948. This decision gave many workers 

and/or their surviving family members a feeling 

of closure, a feeling of justice being served. 

I commend you for this decision and I ask you 

to give the remaining workers at this site the 

same designation. I want to thank you for your 

diligence, as well as your patience in hearing 

my repetitive comments and pleas. 

I believe that during the February meeting the 

site profile for Mallinckrodt Rev. 0 was 

undergoing a revision, and Rev. 1 was underway. 

SC&A had not yet been given an opportunity to 

start their audit on this revision. As you 

will remember, decision on the remaining years 

of my petition were tabled due to some newlyfound boxes of data and a so-called Mont Mason 

memo. NIOSH felt that this information, along 

with the revised site profile and their view 

that AEC oversight gave way to more credible 

assay, was enough to do an accurate dose 

reconstruction on the remaining years. 

NIOSH was given time to further their research 

on the Mallinckrodt datas, and SC&A was 
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reviewing the newly-revised site profile. As 

you already know and as I've previously stated, 

the boxes and the memo turned out to be very 

different than what NIOSH had originally 

claimed. The Mason memo raised many questions 

as to who actually authored the memos and only 

seemed to strengthen my case. 

In Iowa during the month of April I came before 

this Board again to plead my case. Due to the 

unforeseen problems with the IAAP, SC&A was 

unable at the time to complete the review of 

Rev. 1 for Mallinckrodt. The Board voted to 

direct SC&A to finish this review and take it 

up at this meeting. 

 Now I've recently learned that on June 1st and 

2nd there was a meeting between SC&A, NIOSH and 

the Board, and I'm really perplexed as to why 

this happens the way it does. As a petitioner 

I feel that I should have been alerted to that 

meeting, either via e-mail, phone call, mail, 

something, and I should have been privy to that 

meeting. I don't know that these are closed or 

-- or private. Even if they're not open to the 

public, I think as a petitioner I was put at a 

distinct disadvantage again not being able to 
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hear the findings or whatever had went on, and 

I wasn't able to even take a look at SC&A's 

findings. Most of the Board I believe got that 

on Friday. I just got that about a day ago, so 

that puts me at a disadvantage again. 

 And I understand that as a result of this and 

as part of comment resolution, NIOSH was given 

a list of corrective actions. I don't know 

that that's been completed. 

SC&A was to complete findings on whether or not 

it was feasible to estimate dose. Based on the 

findings of this audit of Rev. 1, it does not 

appear that it provides a basis to do dose 

reconstruction with sufficient accuracy. 

The radon portion of this TBD is still not 

complete, although SC&A has noted that it may 

be possible to do this at a later date. 

 However, there are aspects of this site profile 

for which data does not exist. For example, 

there is no isotopic-specific assay which would 

allow NIOSH to verify raffinate dose in the 

same way there is data to verify uranium. 

Frankly, this is the core issue which has got 

to be addressed. And so far what NIOSH has 

produced is a set of ratios between the 
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concentrations of the raffinate and uranium 

which they assert can be used to estimate dose. 

This is based on one day of isotopic air 

sampling at Mallinckrodt. 

As the SC&A audit points out, there is 

significant uncertainty, if not doubt, about 

the 100 to one activity ratio. On page 27 of 

the audit report, and I quote, (reading) Much 

more research is needed to determine the radon226 to the U-238 ratio of the residues that 

resulted from reprocessing. 

And again on page 20-- end quote, I'm sorry. 

And on page 28 I quote, (reading) Expected 

ratio would be in the range between 100 to 

1,000. End quote. 

Further on, three other radionuclides were not, 

it appears, taken into account in NIOSH's 100 

to one activity ratio -- thorium-230, 

protactinium-231 and actinium-227. 

On May 23rd and 24th, 2005 Arjun Makhijani of 

SC&A met with a series of former Mallinckrodt 

workers and conducted interviews. During this 

interview one of the many extensive discussions 

was in reference to time and task, and I think 

Arjun mentioned this earlier. For example, the 
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AEC estimated that one job in particular took 

6.5 minutes, and as Arjun said, the workers got 

quite a chuckle out of that. Everyone there 

present rejected these findings and estimated 

the job to be at least 30 minutes or longer. 

Well, I have a few of these workers here today 

who you will hear give expert testimony as to 

the multitude of explosions, blowouts, spills. 

You'll hear about excessive dust, mist, vapors, 

et cetera from the raffinates. 

As SC&A previously noted in its review of Rev. 

0, even one more rem of the Sperry cake per 

month over a few years has a potential for 

significant internal dose. This raffinate, and 

I've stated this before but for the record, 

this raffinate was dewatered in a Sperry press 

and contained actinium-227, protactinium-231, 

thorium-230, as well as radium. These 

raffinates were acidic and neutralized with 

lime and a cake was created. This mixture 

could create an exothermic reaction. Durations 

of raffinate exposures are not well quantified. 

More significantly, NIOSH has been unable to 

identify which workers were exposed in Plant 6. 

Does NIOSH have a scientifically sound basis 
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for determining who was or was not exposed in 

Plant 6? The answer is no, and this is why 

Congress created the SEC. 

I would now like to read and quote from notes 

taken during the interview process with Arjun 

Makhijani and some of the site experts. On 

page 6, digester process for ore and 

raffinates, in the mid-1950s the ore drums were 

handled by a mechanical arm that would empty 

them into a large digester tank. The personnel 

were separated from the tank by a glass wall. 

This was after the process had been automated 

and manual shoveling of the ore and raffinates 

into the digester tank was no longer carried 

out. The acid in the tank would foam. 

Sometimes the tank would overflow. 

A similar process was used for thorium ionium 

extraction. The response to the question "Was 

it normal for stuff to boil over" from a site 

expert who worked in the area for about six 

months during the thorium-230 extraction period 

in 1955 to 1956 was, and I quote, (reading) Oh, 

yes, there were all kinds of messes there, end 

quote. 

This problem extended to thorium-230 
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extraction. Site expert: They were trying to 

recover ionium out of the raffinate. The 

raffinate was on the alkaline side. It would 

foam and boil. It would go on the floor. 

One severe accident required the 

hospitalization of a worker from the burns that 

resulted from liquid spilling all over his 

body. By the way, that worker is here today, 

scars and all. It is unclear how many workers 

were involved in the clean-up process, and how 

long that lasted. It involved hosing down the 

area. 

Workers were also lowered into these tanks to 

clean them out. When they were lowered in, 

someone -- or, I'm sorry. When they lowered 

someone in, they had to have a mask and someone 

at the top with a lifeline. However, there may 

have been more manual handle of the raffinates 

at the airport. I quote, (reading) The stuff 

would be scooped into drums at the airport and 

would come into a conveyer. The 

(unintelligible) would come onto a conveyer 

belt and it was behind the glass screen and the 

mechanical arm would grab it, manipulated by an 

operator, and pour the (unintelligible) into 
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the vat and then it would start foaming, end 

quote. 

Arjun Makhijani asked, "Were there fine 

particles of acid in the air?" Site expert: 

The main project was the big 10,000 gallon 

tank. (Unintelligible) agitator filled up the 

tank with nitric acid and it would be heated up 

and there would be 100 drums of uranium ore 

emptied into it. Each drum would be cut into 

the -- cut in the hallway. You'd take the lid 

off, wear your respirator. You'd sample the 

drum and put the sample in a jar. The lid was 

put back in. The drum was rolled onto a 

platform press and the button -- I'm sorry -- 

platform press the button and it would go up 

and grab the hydraulic arm, and you would push 

buttons and it would empty the drum into the 

tank. You'd reach in and take the lid off. It 

was the -- well, it was on rollers and the drum 

was washed with water spray, and you'd keep 

adding to the drums. We had ore from all over 

the United States, some from Africa. The fastreacting drums would be added and then it would 

be the slower-reacting ones that would be 

added. Sometimes there would just be fumes, 
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and sometimes there would be red-hot nitric 

acid fumes all over the plant. 

Arjun asked, "How often did that happen?" Site 

expert said the operation was round the clock. 

It happened at least once a week, at the 

minimum, probably more. It was round the clock 

so hard -- so that it's hard for me to say 

because he was not on all shifts. It was all 

out of operation and the foreman would have to 

get out the air hoses and thin -- and thin it 

would -- oh, I'm sorry -- and then it would -- 

and then it would get back to work. I would 

breathe a lot of nitric acid fumes. I don't 

know if there was uranium dust in the fumes or 

not, but there could have been. Then it was 

pumped out into the ether area where they 

extracted uranium. 

The other thing I wanted to mention, I found 

this interesting, too -- a site expert said 

sometimes a skip hoist would fail and the drum 

would come crashing down. Those drums were 800 

or 900 pounds, and they would spill all the 

stuff and it would get all around the rollers. 

There would be ore on the limit switches, and 

maintenance workers would have to clean it up. 
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That's just part of the wonderful -- wonderful 

interview that Arjun did with the -- the 

workers. They -- they did a wonderful job. 

You will also hear from one of the many 

survivor claimants. As Arjun mentioned, the 

insurmountable hurdles that these family 

members must go through to even complete a 

phone interview, so I do have someone here 

today to speak on that. 

In the task three report, page 212 of 260 under 

5.7, summary and conclusions, it states that 

based on procedures under review the adequacy 

of the interview process is adversely affect -- 

affected and compromised when the claimant is a 

family member. It goes on to state, and I 

quote, (reading) Lastly, the potential problems 

in the interview process as an integral part of 

the dose reconstruction process, especially for 

a family member claimant, are complicated by 

the current absence of a published procedure 

that specifically addresses the closing 

interview and the failure to involve the 

claim's dose reconstructor or a qualified 

health physicist in the closing interview in 

real time, end quote. 
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On pages 213 and 214 of the task three report, 

under 5.8, there are nine suggestions for 

improvement on this process. I do not know if 

these have been completed yet. 

I would like to restate for the record what 

Congress directed NIOSH to do with respect to 

Special Exposure Cohorts. In the FY 2005 

Omnibus Appropriations Conference Report, I 

quote, (reading) Radiation exposure, the 

committee strongly encourages NIOSH to expedite 

decisions on petitions filed under the 

procedure for designating classes of employees 

as members of Special Exposure Cohorts, 42 CFR 

Part 83. It was Congress's intent in passing 

the EEOICPA of 2000 to provide for timely, 

uniform and adequate compensation for employees 

made ill from exposure to radiation, beryllium 

and silica while employed at DOE nuclear 

facilities or while employed at beryllium 

vendors and atomic weapons facilities. The 

committee urges the Department to recognize 

that in situations where records documenting 

internal or external radiation doses received 

by workers at the specific facility are of poor 

quality or do not exist, the workers should be 
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promptly placed in a Special Exposure Cohort, 

end quote. 

NIOSH believes that it is feasible to estimate 

dose on the Mallinckrodt workers 1949 to 1957. 

I would like the Board to consider that the 

concept of feasibility goes beyond the 

scientific, technical ability to reconstruct a 

radiation dose. 

Senator Jeff (unintelligible) in an October 12, 

2004 statement involving enactment of this law 

stated that, and I quote, (reading) And 

feasibility could entail the lack of relevant 

radiation dose records, that the records are 

missing altogether, that it would be 

prohibitively expensive to reconstruct dose, or 

it might take so long that the workers would 

have died by the time the job was completed, 

end quote. 

Congress did not limit feasibility to only 

technical, scientific issues. 

 The first Mallinckrodt site profile was 

complete in October of 2002. It is now going 

on its third version, and it has been a year 

since I filed my SEC petition. NIOSH has not 

completed (unintelligible) contractor, and 
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although I appreciate -- and I do -- NIOSH's 

diligence in trying to correct these problems, 

it is time to honor Congressional intent. As 

Senator Bond noted, the site profile may be a 

living document, but when do we decide that 

enough time has passed? Do we allow the very 

claimants that this law was enacted for to die 

while waiting for NIOSH to have revision after 

revision. 

Workers and claimants alike are dying. Every 

meeting that I have pled my case for this group 

of ailing workers I have been at a distinct 

advantage (sic), everything from surprise 

material and documents to reports that I 

haven't been given an opportunity to review. 

This meeting was no different, and I'm 

referring to the Cincinnati meeting and seeing 

all the reports. 

There is no procedure in place to give 

assistance to petitioners by an independent 

source. There is no procedure to notify the 

petitioner when there is other meetings 

relevant to what they have petitioned for. But 

the Advisory Board is here to say when enough 

is enough. 
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 Mallinckrodt workers from 1949 to 1957 deserve 

equity. Congressional intent demands justice 

for this set of workers. I am beseeching you, 

begging you as Senator Bond did, to add this 

class of workers to the Special Exposure 

Cohort. SC&A has stated that (unintelligible) 

finding reasonable dose estimates are unlikely. 

And I had noticed, too, when Dr. Neton was here 

he talked about job categories without 

bioassay. I understand that maybe certain 

things would not have bioassay because maybe 

the secretaries weren't badged or clerical 

people weren't badged. But it looked to me as 

though there were some things in there such as 

chemical operators and maintenance men and 

different things, and I found that perplexing 

that there was no bioassay on those people or 

there was bioassay missing. 

There are numerous discrepancies and problems 

with this current TBD. Time, you know, again, 

to revise this. It's -- it's time that 

claimants do not have. And to the extent, 

however, that you are unable to determine that 

the entire group should have inclusion, I would 

urge you to consider a sub-cohort of these 
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workers who had potential exposure to 

raffinates, who were employed in Plant 6, and a 

group on page 29 of 86 on the SC&A report. 

This case has been made that the raffinateexposed work force, for which there is no 

isotopic-specific bioassay, limited air 

monitoring and no means for verification of the 

potential exposure. 

 Again, feasibility has to do with time, as 

well. It has been a year -- almost a year 

since I filed this petition. Every day these 

workers are dying, and not just the workers, 

the claimants. This is an excruciating 

process, and -- and not just for us. I know it 

is for the Board. I know it is for NIOSH. I 

know that NIOSH does the best they can do. But 

there has to be somewhere -- somewhere to draw 

this line. 

I agree with what -- what Wanda said. We're in 

the same place here. That's my struggle, too. 

We were in the same place in Iowa, and this is 

a living document. There's always going to be 

some new box or some new information that's 

going to come forward. But these workers do 

not have the luxury of time. They are dying 
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and the longer they live, the more cancers they 

end up with. They're suffering. They could 

use help with their medical bills. 

Congressional intent was not to drag this on. 

It was not, and I urge you, I beg you to please 

give them the justice that they deserve. 

I thank you for your time. I know you have a 

hard decision in front of you and I respect 

each and every one of you. I appreciate all 

you've done. I appreciate NIOSH having so many 

meetings in St. Louis for me. 

I do have several workers that I would like to 

make some statements, and I've asked them to 

please try to keep it to about three minutes 

because I know everybody would probably like to 

break for lunch. The first person that I would 

like to call up is a wonderful former worker 

named George Blue*. George actually worked in 

the raffinate house and had a terrible, 

terrible accident, so I'll stand up here in 

case George needs any help, and then I will 

call the next one. And thank you again. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Denise. And if George 

prefers to speak from there, that will be fine, 

too. 
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 MR. BLUE: Do I have to come over there? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Either -- your choice, whatever 

you would prefer. 

 MR. BLUE: There's something I'd forgotten to 

mention earlier. It was related to the digest 

tanks where the -- occasionally the big mass of 

red fumes would -- would spew out of the tank, 

and the company kept two or three guys 

constantly crawling up in the I-beams washing 

off dust so when the fumes boiled down it took 

a lot of dust -- uranium dust in the air. 

I think what Denise wanted me to talk about 

mostly is the experience I had at the raffinate 

tank where we were dissolving the raffinate in 

-- in an acid to extract an element out of it. 

And my job, after the raffinate was dumped in a 

small tank and digested in acid and fumed over 

and boiled back and sumped back, and when it 

was sent to my tank it was supposed to be 

stabilized. And then I would heat it up to 

about -- I think it was 190 degrees, and then 

sample it and maybe it needs more acid. 

Anyway, as I was agitating and bringing up the 

temperature, I seen this starting to react, 

foam up, and I shut -- tried to shut the steam 
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off and ran down the steps. And before I got 

hardly any ways it came over and it covered 

about 80 percent of my body. I peeled off all 

except my left arm and left leg, and I got 

scars on various part of my body from it and I 

spent about eight days in the -- Barnes 

Hospital and then a few days after -- after I 

got back, they called me to work and said I 

wouldn't have to do anything. But the foreman 

wanted me to start cleaning up and the -- I -- 

I did start and then I got real weak and -- and 

they sent me home. I don't -- I don't remember 

how, but anyway, after a few more days I went 

back to work. They told me that getting sick 

had nothing to do with the accident. The 

accident stopped whenever I came back to work, 

so I always kind of appreciated that, but I 

didn't -- you want me to talk about opening and 

sampling drums more or... 

MS. BROCK: About the urinalysis, they only did 

one at the hospital. They had to catheterize 

you and you never had any more urinalysis after 

that. 

 MR. BLUE: No, I -- yeah, they kept wanting me 

to urinate when I was in the hospital and I 
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I 

wasn't able to and they had to catheterize me 

and got a sample, but I never heard of 

anything. And working with raffinate, I always 

figured it was just dust and mud and stuff. 

never heard radon mentioned one time, and I 

thought it was -- I knew it had a little bit of 

uranium left in it after refining, but... 

MS. BROCK: Tell them about how it just filled 

the room with smoke. Remember when you talked 

about that going all over (unintelligible) 

everything was going all over? 

 MR. BLUE: Yeah, yeah. When one of those big 

tanks would boil over, the smoke and dust and 

fumes would spread through the building. You 

want me to mention about the -- that tank that 

exploded? 

MS. BROCK: Sure. 

 MR. BLUE: Yeah, they -- they had a large tank 

where all the floor sweepings and -- and hosing 

down and everything went in this tank and they 

boiled that down and then send that to refinery 

and digest. And one night -- luckily the 

operator was -- was on break, but the tank 

exploded and blew a big hole in the roof and 

concrete block wall had a big hole in it, and 
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they was -- (unintelligible) lot of places with 

holes in it where acid ate -- ate through the 

concrete and... 

The -- the sampling of the drums -- there'd be 

about 100 drums put in the digest tank and the 

drums were put down on a open hallway and you'd 

take the lid off with a respirator, which 

wasn't a very good respirator, but -- then 

sample each drum. And it -- that could have 

been in front of a hood or some place where -- 

you know, we didn't consider radon gas or 

anything like that, it just -- you know, just 

something you -- you never -- you weren't 

informed about or aware of, but I think I went 

over my three minutes, though. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Denise, you have 

others I think that you want to have join you 

there, too, and please, go ahead. 

MS. BROCK: Next I have Anthony Windisch. 

MR. WINDISCH: Good afternoon. My name is 

Anthony Windisch. I worked at the Mallinckrodt 

Destrehan uranium plant in St. Louis from 1945 

to 1957, and I worked at the Weldon Springs 

plant from 1958 to 1967. At a previous meeting 

of the Advisory Board I testified that I am a 
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certified computer professional. I started 

working with computers at the Weldon Springs 

plant in 1962. I testified that the Mason memo 

shows how most of the recently-found computer 

keypunch cards and other radiation records was 

a bunch of garbage and useless. 

In May I attended a meeting with your audit 

investigator. I testified that as an 

electrician at the Mallinckrodt uranium plant I 

had witnessed and/or experienced production 

mishaps at almost every processing step during 

the production of uranium metal. For example, 

I worked to help clean up the contaminated 

electrical equipment after the ether house fire 

-- explosion; I'm sorry, not a fire, explosion. 

And I often worked to repair the large electric 

furnaces that were damaged because of the 

misfiring of uranium processing bombs. 

 The processing bomb was placed into a large 

electric furnace and heated to about 1,200 

degrees. After some time, the bomb would 

implode with a chemical reaction where the pure 

uranium metal would settle down into the 

smaller, lower section of the bomb and form a 

uranium metal billet or biscuit that was about 
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15 inches in diameter and about six inches 

thick. 

 These processing bombs would often explode. 

The uranium and other metal -- materials would 

burn through the liner and through the oneinch-thick steel shell, spitting out uranium 

and other contaminants that would wreck the 

inside of the electric furnace. Chemical 

operators, electricians and others had the 

dusty and radioactive hazardous job of 

repairing the furnace. During one period of 

time these bomb explosions occurred once a 

week, sometimes every other day. 

In my employment records I understand there is 

an employee suggestion verifying that because 

of the frequent bomb explosions there was a 

shortage of pre-cast ceramic tile, and I had 

recommended that more readily available fire 

brick should be used to repair the electric 

furnaces. 

In 1962 when I was promoted to the job of 

computer programmer and analyst, one of my 

first jobs as a programmer/analyst was to 

review and analyze requirements, design and 

program computer programs and write computer 
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programs to produce a monthly badge exposure 

report. My monthly badge exposure report for 

each processing department listed each 

employee, with weekly badge readings and a 

calculated average daily badge film exposure. 

The department average daily badge exposure was 

also reported. 

As an analyst I needed to understand what I was 

working with, and I review this with you. The 

worker film badge did not measure the amount of 

radiation activity. It was simply a Kodak 

picture film that recorded or measured the 

level of radiation. It did not record the 

amount. A high level of the badge exposure 

alerted the safety department to reconstruct 

what is now called a work site dose 

reconstruction profile, where they would 

actually go out to that worker's work site with 

a Geiger counter and air sampling devices and 

try to project a measure of radiation dosage 

during a specified period of time. 

They would then take this dose profile and 

multiply that by the time that the worker spent 

on the job and come up with the total amount of 

dosage. This dose -- dose profile is a 
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standard radiation exposure rate which is 

multiplied by the amount of time worked, giving 

the total amount of radiation exposure for the 

worker. 

In 1962 I was working with an IBM 12K computer 

that did not have the capacity nor the 

expertise to calculate complex dose 

reconstruction profiles, and with limited 

keypunch card storage information, which is now 

obsolete. 

A work site dose reconstruction profile was a 

very important tool and an ever-changing means 

for calculating and tracking radiation 

exposure. The safety department maintained a 

current dose reconstruction profile for each 

unique work site at the Destrehan uranium 

plant. When a uranium processing job stream 

was modified and changed to improve production 

and/or to improve health and safety conditions, 

the safety department would calculate a new 

dose reconstruction profile to reflect current 

working conditions. And as a previous speaker 

pointed out to a chart showing that lower 

urinalysis reports indicated that over the 

years the working conditions at the plant -- as 
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the urinalysis went down, the working 

conditions went up. 

NIOSH may have, for example, the latest 1957 

site reconstruction profiles for each work site 

at the St. Louis Destrehan plant, and these 

1957 profiles can be used in dose 

reconstruction for the time worked at the 

Destrehan plant during 1957. On the other 

hand, a 1957 dose reconstruction profile is not 

a valid measure of radiation dosage for any 

earlier years of 1949 through 1956 when the 

same work sites were more primitive and had a 

more hazardous environment. 

In addition, there is no specific dose 

reconstruction profile to measure the ether 

house explosion, the exploding radium 

processing bombs, the overflowing raffinate 

tanks and other production mishaps. 

Thank you for your time, your attention and 

consideration. And may I add a full context of 

my speech for the records? 

MS. BROCK: The next worker that I have 

actually is what -- it's a claimant, a survivor 

claimant. His father was a worker. His name 

is Eugene Pape and Steve Pape would like to 
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come up for a couple of minutes and just talk 

about what it was like to go through that 

telephone interview. 

 MR. PAPE: Hello, my name is Steven Eugene 

Pape. My father was Eugene C. Pape. He worked 

at the Destrehan Mallinckrodt Chemical Company 

from 1945 -- through 1945 till his death in May 

10th, 1977. He was diagnosed with carcinoma 

lung cancer April 21st of 1977. My mother died 

of complications of diabetes September 6th of 

1999. 

It was very difficult for my mom and I. I was 

17 years of age. My -- my dad was 58. It was 

very difficult for us for those years. My --

my dad was very adamant about not speaking 

about his -- his work. I never knew what he 

did. He got his job right after -- at 

Mallinckrodt right after World War II. He was 

in the Army in the south Pacific and received a 

purple heart. He was -- like I said, he was 

very adamant about what he -- about his job. 

He never ever spoke about it. We never knew 

what he did whatsoever until October 28th of 

2004 when I had to do the NIOSH dose 

reconstruction. 
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Here's a -- here are some of the questions, and 

I could not answer them accurately, but I did 

the best I could. It says here, building 

location, Building 7. And it says production 

operator. I never knew that. It says did the 

covered employee participate in a biological 

radiation monitoring program -- urine, fecal, 

breath, in vivo, whole body count? Answer: 

Don't know. Was the covered employee ever 

restricted from the work place or certain job 

duties because they had reached a radiation 

dose limit? Don't know. Was the employee ever 

required to have a medical X-ray for this job 

as a condition of employment? Answer: Don't 

know. Was the covered employee ever involved 

in an accident during radiation exposure or 

contamination? Answer: Don't know. It says 

can you name coworkers or other witnesses such 

as consulting industrial hygienists or 

radiation safety specialists who can confirm or 

expand upon the information you have provided 

us? Answer: No. Are you aware of any records 

related to the information you have provided 

that may help us estimate the doses for the 

covered employee? Answer: No. It says have 
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we missed any questions -- sorry, have we asked 

-- have we missed asking you about any 

conditions, situations or practices that 

occurred during this job which you think may be 

useful to estimate radiation doses for the 

covered employee? Don't know. Comments were 

he worked seven days a week for a number of 

years, and that's -- it was very hard for me to 

answer these questions, but I did the best -- 

the very best I could, to the best of my 

ability, so that's -- I'm sure that this is a 

lot harder for -- for widows or widowers of -- 

of these workers. And I know that it would 

have been very hard for my mother, so thank 

you. 

MS. BROCK: Would it be all right -- I have a 

couple of more workers that have came (sic) a 

little bit of a distance and I said they would 

keep it to about three minutes, and then I have 

just like one sentence and we're finished. Is 

that okay? 

Next I'd like to call Bob Leach -- Robert 

Leach. 

MR. LEACH: My name is Robert Leach and I went 

to work for Mallinckrodt in 1950. I was 
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transferred to the uranium division in '52. I 

worked down in Plant 4 from '52 to '57 and then 

I was transferred to Weldon Springs to -- until 

they closed the plant, 1965. 

When I first walked into Plant 4 I'd never 

worked in such a dirty and filthy place in my 

life. I was assigned to help make the bombs, 

and around on the floor there would be green 

salt, there would be magnesium fluoride all 

over the place, and it was the same area which 

they used the jolters and everything to fill 

the liners full -- with. And this was all over 

the area, and many times these -- has been 

stated before -- these -- well, we called them 

bombs, but actually they weren't. But anyway, 

they came through the side of the -- the shells 

and it was up to me and many others, after they 

cooled down, to go into those furnaces and to 

clean them up and to chip out the molten metal 

and all of that inside the furnaces. 

Now this was a furnace where they used -- put 

the small ones in, which was about -- I believe 

about 300-pound ingots that came out. And then 

later on, why they -- we started putting them 

into the bigger furnace, and sometimes the 
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metal mol-- or the metal would be about a 

3,000-pound ingot. And many times -- this 

happened the same way in the -- in the furnace. 

It would come out in the furnace, and then it 

was up to me and many other operators to get in 

there and clean that out, all the slag, 

magnesium fluoride and the metal. And more 

than once the metal came completely through the 

bottom of the furnace and would -- would be 

running out into the area. And of course we 

were -- common sense told us to get the hell 

out of there, and we did until it cooled down. 

But then we had to go right back in again and 

clean it all up. 

I had one foreman or somebody there told us 

this metal won't hurt you, said -- like these 

3,000-pound ingots, you could set on them all 

day and anything that you absorbed in your body 

would be gone within seven days. Or if you 

want to take a piece of paper and put it over 

it and then you can set on it, it wouldn't 

bother you there. Well, they didn't know what 

in the hell they were talking about, as they 

found out later. 

And this -- this went on for quite some time, 
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and our exposure on this depended on who the 

foreman told you to get into the furnace and 

clean it out or ever what needed to be done. 

And this is why there is no way in the world 

they can take a chart and all of that and 

figure out what each of us was exposed to. 

They're just whistling in the wind if they 

think they can do it because it is impossible. 

And I know, ladies and gentlemen, this is -- 

petition was up to 1957, and then I went to 

Weldon Springs. But out there, in case I'm not 

around by the time we get around to Weldon 

Springs, which is very likely, it was many, 

many times that we worked anywhere from 40 

hours to 76 hours a week. We would work 12 

hours a day and Saturday and Sunday. Now 

that's just not me 'cause I was a foreman part 

of the time, but it was all of the operators. 

Now how are you going to figure out one man's 

exposure on this? And like I said before, 

there's no way in the world that you can figure 

it out. Thank you. 

MS. BROCK: I would now like to ask Ed Luecke 

to come up, please. This is the final worker 

that I have to speak today, and then I just 
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want to wrap it up with a couple of comments. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Denise, for our recorder, could 

you give us the name again? 

 MR. LUECKE: Yes, would you --

MS. BROCK: Yes, Ed Luecke. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Ed Bicky, B--

 MR. LUECKE: It's spelled L-u-e-c-k-e. I 

started to work for Mallinckrodt May 6th, 1947. 

At that time I was in Plant 4, and Plant 4 

basically was two floors. The one floor below 

was below ground level and I went to work and 

they had what they called coffins. And these 

coffins -- we'd take what we called brown oxide 

and put them in there and they treat it with 

(unintelligible), and then this 

(unintelligible) would turn that brown oxide 

into what we called green salt. We had two -- 

four of us worked down there. One of the 

persons who's a -- Brad at that time, he was a 

lead man -- he was the one that added the 

(unintelligible) into it. And the other 

person, like myself, all I did was to pull 

these out and put them (unintelligible). It 

was a very, very hot job. And these other two 

were the ones who took and put the green oxide 
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into drums to be weighed off, and then they put 

brown oxide on -- on these -- and these are 

called -- what we called coffins. You put 

those in there and after that the salt would 

take a -- later on be mixed with magnesium and 

blended together. 

 And they asked about badges, we had no badges. 

We had nothing, and we had no vacuum to pull us 

away. And they took the -- we mixed those two 

together like the magnesium was put in on top 

of what we called green salt, we had all these 

fumes. We did have -- the company did give you 

a respirator, but it was made out of hard 

rubber and that was very uncomfortable to have 

on. We just forgot about that word. 

 And after that, I was moved -- after Plant 4 

was done away with, I was moved to Plant 6E. 

Well, 6E was a much better plant and when I 

went in there and went to work -- like my job 

at that time -- I was a utility man, moved 

around a lot. Down at Plant 6 I moved around a 

lot of jobs. Now we had what they called a 

vacuum that drags all this away, and on the 

inside there there was a huge bag and the -- 

the bags would be vacuumed, pulling it up, and 
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on the outside of those bags they had air rings 

and the air would go up and down and blow that 

dust loose that would drop down and that 

material you were talking about going to the 

airport, that's how it got to the airport. 

They'd take a load of that in trucks and move 

it out of -- anyway, what had happened, there's 

electric eye on the inside. Anything that come 

through breaks that beam of light in any way, 

it shuts it down. Well, and that worked real 

good until later on, would say about three 

years later, I go to foreman one particular 

morning on a Monday and I said to him that 

number two system up there will not stay on 

automatic. You mean to tell me you worked on 

Saturday, time and a half and Sunday double 

time and you come to me on a Monday and you 

tell me that that system won't stay on 

automatic? Put that thing on manual and forget 

it. All these persons on the outside walking 

around saying I'd, you know, get a good breath 

of air in the morning. 

What they were breathing is all this dust -- 

well, later on they moved that to Weldon 

Springs, but the conditions at that Plant 4, 
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they were -- oh, just deplorable. I mean you 

never realized -- I need to -- about time? 

Okay. And I want to thank you for your time 

and listening to what I had to say, but I have 

to leave now. Thank you. 

MS. BROCK: I would like to thank everybody 

again, but I'd like to give a special thanks to 

the workers, claimants that I had come up. 

They are absolutely a wealth of information 

and, to me, as a daughter of a worker and a -- 

you know, a daughter of a claimant, this 

procedure seems somewhat backward to me. I 

love the fact that SC&A came in to talk to 

workers, but it just seems to me -- and I don't 

mean this in a bad way to anybody, but it just 

seems to me that this sort of thing should be 

done while you're doing the site profile, or 

before you do a site profile, and to 

incorporate these workers' statements because 

it's so relevant. They are absolutely amazing 

and their -- their memories are impeccable. 

They trigger each other's memory and I -- I 

just think that sometimes instead of guesswork 

maybe we should talk to them first, not after. 

And I also wanted to state for the record that 
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I know that NIOSH feels that there are certain 

things that they can do to correct the site 

profile. And I listened to SC&A's report and 

myself, I'm not completely sure that if -- how 

much time it will take to actually do all these 

revisions. And even once they're all done, 

there are no assurances that dose could be done 

even after that, not -- not scientifically 

based. We're wasting time. 

Again, I just have to stress that. I -- I know 

there was an environmental issue. I -- I don't 

know how much is involved with that but I would 

like the Board to actually really think about 

that and think about how much time this could 

take. And then even after all that time, would 

it be fruitless. And this law was enacted to 

help these workers and these claimants. 

 Again, I think it's time to act and I -- I hope 

you act on their behalf. I thank you again 

very much. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Denise, for a very 

articulate presentation. 

We're going to recess now for lunch. We will -

- let me see how we are time-wise. It's 12:30. 

We're going to shoot for 1:30, according to the 
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Designated Federal Official. Let's try to be 

back about 1:30. We'll reconvene. The Board 

will then discuss further the Mallinckrodt 

petition at that time. Thank you very much. 

 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 12:30 p.m. 

to 1:45 p.m.) 

BOARD DISCUSSION, MALLINCKRODT SEC PETITION

 DR. ZIEMER: I'd like to call the meeting back 

to order. We're going to begin a discussion of 

the Mallinckrodt SEC petition. This is a 

discussion of the Board members. They may call 

on the petitioners or NIOSH or our own 

consultants, SC&A, to assist in answering 

questions pertaining to this issue. At some 

appropriate point when Board members feel that 

they're sufficiently informed of the issues, 

the Chair will call for a formal motion of some 

sort. There are several possible options, but 

we will ask for, at some point, formal action. 

 Before we take such action I will also ask that 

the legislative requirements be read, and I 

think we have someone searching out to get the 

original language, so counsel is getting that 

for us so that Board members, at the request of 

Mr. Owens, we will read the language so we know 
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exactly what the statutory requirement is in 

terms of the actions that we may take. 

So let me open the floor for discussion. Any 

questions of either the petitioners, of NIOSH 

or of our own consultants -- or general 

observations or discussions on the petition. 

Who wishes to begin? Yes, Leon will begin. 

MR. OWENS: Dr. Ziemer, I would like to ask Dr. 

Makhijani, in terms of the review that SC&A 

performed on the site profile, just would like 

to know whether or not, in terms of the other 

documentation that SC&A has reviewed as part of 

the site profile, if the completeness and the 

accuracy of the records is as we have heard 

earlier. I'd just like to hear his comments in 

regard to that. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, aside from the question 

of radionuclide ratios, which we've discussed 

quite a lot and where there may be data in the 

Fernald K-65 silos -- and I wasn't able to 

track that, but that might be possible -- I 

think there are data sufficiency questions in -

- in several areas. One of the more important 

ones I think is the question of infrequent 

incidents. We've said that the analytical 
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procedure isn't demonstrated, but also who was 

present during infrequent incidents is not 

known because these infrequent incidents, like 

bag ruptures and severe foaming spills, are -- 

are not well documented, to my knowledge. At 

least I haven't been able to find the 

documentation. 

I believe that in order to -- to -- to make a -

- a dose estimate of some kind, either some 

very maximizing assumption has to be made with 

different solubilities because there were these 

acid fumes that might have had uranium. You 

could have had Class S -- so the whole question 

of infrequent incidents I think is a pretty big 

one. 

I mentioned environmental dose several times, 

Mr. Owens, and I think the importance of that 

should not be underestimated. The CDC itself 

has spent quite a bit of money, many millions 

of dollars, sponsoring studies of environmental 

releases from nuclear weapons plants. And I 

was surprised at the magnitude of the partial 

estimates that were made in the '50s. This 

would apply not to the workers with bioassay, 

but there were 20 percent of the workers who 
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were not monitored, and so you've got 20 

percent of the workers for whom you would -- 

now this wouldn't be a full-scale research 

project, but just to give you an idea, the CDC 

dose reconstruc-- the reconstruction of the 

source term, which was a major part of the 

study of Fernald that was sponsored in the -- 

in the 19-- early 1990s cost $6 million. And 

the Fernald plant was fairly similar, broadly 

speaking, to the Mallinckrodt plant. And while 

this would not be a similar research project 

and you could undertake some maximizing, I 

don't know of the data that exists that would 

allow you to make maximizing estimates for 

environmental dose. In fact, for Plant 4 I -- 

I did not find any environmental data at all. 

I mean I just found one document with some 

information. I have no idea if more exists or 

not, and I don't think at this stage NIOSH 

should say whether it knows, but I haven't seen 

any indication that NIOSH has any information 

about this more than what we've said. 

There's a question of the correction factors 

for the roving workers, which I mentioned in 

passing. This -- we -- we -- I think these 
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workers were badged. There's a whole set of 

analytical difficulties that would be pretty 

severe, and I think one of them would be what 

kind of correction factors do you use for 

external dose. 

So there's a -- there's -- I think the -- both 

the analytical revisions to the TBD that need 

to be made would be -- are very major, and 

there are some data gaps. That's the -- the -- 

the reason I said, or we concluded that at this 

stage we don't know if everything -- when all 

is said and done, we can't really be sure at 

the end that you could construct a 

scientifically defensible dose. 

I'll give you a short example and -- and then 

pause, because, for instance, your typical 

uranium intakes, based on bioassay, are in -- 

in the 10,000 to 100,000 picocuries per year 

range. If you apply factors of several hundred 

for radium and a factor of 100 for thorium and 

a factor of 4, do you wind up in a place that's 

reasonable. We have pretty serious question 

about whether radon breath data are suitable. 

And certainly the people who were monitored for 

radon breath do not exhaust the population of 
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workers who were exposed to non-equilibrium 

radionuclides. I believe that proportion of 

workers was very likely to be much more than 15 

percent. 

So there are some real -- real data problems in 

relation of which workers, even after you've 

made maximizing estimates, that -- that would 

need to be addressed. That's why we couldn't 

say whether, at the end of the day, you'd be 

able to arrive at a reasonably based -- 

scientifically based maximum dose. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Before we have the 

next comment, I just want to double-check and 

see if Mike is -- Mike Gibson is on the line. 

Mike, are you with us this afternoon? 

 MR. GIBSON: Yeah -- yeah, I --

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 MR. GIBSON: -- (unintelligible) --

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, and feel free to call out, 

Mike, if you have a question from where you 

are. 

 MR. GIBSON: Absolutely. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim has a follow-up on that last 

comment -- Jim Neton. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I'm sorry, I'd just like to 
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address this -- this one issue, at least, of 

the -- the inability to reconstruct infrequent 

incidents. It struck me as odd in the -- in 

the report when I read it last night again, and 

it still strikes me as odd that -- it's 

somewhat counter-intuitive that SC&A contends 

that somewhat frequent incidents can be 

reconstructed using chronic inhalation intake, 

but infrequent incidents cannot be. In a 

sense, if you have an infrequent incident and 

we -- and we model a chronic exposure, then 

that infrequent incident, if it occurred, would 

actually drive up the chronic intake so that 

the integration of the picocurie per liter days 

excretion would essentially remain fairly 

constant, and we've demonstrated this with some 

models within our organization. 

Take, for example, this ten to the fifth 

picocurie per year intake that Dr. Makhijani 

speaks of, which is fairly normal when we're 

doing these calculations. If a person had an 

intake that resulted in 100 times the maximum 

allowable air concentration for ten, 15, 20 

minutes -- and you've heard workers testify 

that in those off-normal situations, 
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particularly in blowouts, they would leave the 

area; they were not going to stay there -- it 

would add a very small incidental increase to 

the overall intake. And we contend that that -

- it would even be included in the chronic 

intake model. You can't have several intakes 

that are acute and not drive up the chronic 

intake model at the end of the day. So I want 

to clear that up. It's very counter-intuitive 

to say you cannot do infrequent inci-- intakes. 

In the area of environmental dose, I'd just 

like to mention that 80 percent of the workers 

did have monitoring data. A number of the 

workers that were there on that chart were 

workers, as Denise Brock correctly pointed, 

probably should have been monitored, we just 

don't have their data. So they would be 

monitored using some sort of coworker surrogate 

data. The remaining few that are clerical 

types and administrative folks certainly could 

be monitored, and the thought crosses my mind 

that the lower bound of the air sample 

distributions might even be appropriate. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Arjun, did you have a -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: I think there's a 
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I 

misunderstanding about what I said. I didn't 

say that infrequent incidents couldn't be 

modeled. I said that a claimant favorable way 

or maximizing way hasn't been demonstrated. 

did work during the June 2nd -- on June 3rd I 

think we discussed this question of whether 

routine intakes, along with an infrequent -- if 

you assumed an infrequent intake, one incident 

during a six-month period as compared to a 

routine intake, would that drive up the dose, 

and it was thought not -- Mr. Allen thought 

not. And then he was surprised, when we ran a 

check, that it did. The -- if -- if you assume 

an intake just after the last bioassay, as has 

been suggested, assuming there's only one 

incident and the bioassay represents that one 

incident, it becomes very sensitive to the 

solubility assumptions because you have only 

one -- you have only one bioassay every six 

months, or even one bioassay every year. And I 

-- I bel-- I'm not saying -- the SC&A position 

isn't that it can't be done. The -- we agreed, 

I thought, on June 1st when Cindy Bloom 

correctly pointed out that when you have 

frequent incidents they do look like routine 
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intakes. So that -- that was a major issue at 

the last time that we had brought up and we had 

questioned it and -- and we believe that when 

workers actually experienced frequent incidents 

like blowouts when they worked in Plant 4, then 

this would show up in the bioassay and a 

maximizing way can be found. And I don't think 

there's an argument about that, but I do 

believe there's still an argument about - 

And 100 times did not apply to uranium intakes. 

I think that was a misunderstanding, too. I 

just said that if you have a ten to the five 

intake from uranium and then multiplied that by 

several hundred for radium and thorium, then 

you might wind up with numbers that might not 

look so realistic or defensible on the 

scientific grounds for total intake. Thank 

you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Okay, Dr. Anderson, 

then Dr. Melius. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, just -- just a couple of 

observations. I think one of the -- the issues 

that I'm grappling with is what we heard from 

Senator Bond and we've heard from a lot of the 

participants, and that's the timeliness issue 
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of how soon and when will these be done. 

Clearly an SEC petition -- the need to spend a 

lot of time doing reviews is quite a bit less, 

so there's more timeliness there. And I guess 

part of my questions this morning dealing with 

109, and I guess I would ask NIOSH is it 

reasonable if -- if in fact they were going to 

move ahead with doing these dose 

reconstructions, of which I understand really 

no detailed ones have been done yet, could 

these 109 be accomplished in the next three 

months so we get a sense at this point the 

question about the feasibility of all this, you 

know is -- hypothetically we've seen or 

theoretically or technically it -- it -- and we 

have to take NIOSH at their word and they're 

saying they can do it, it just hasn't been done 

yet. If -- if that kind of time frame we could 

expect they would be done, I -- I would be much 

more comfortable in hearing that there's a 

residual of people who -- who somehow are still 

in the system but we don't know where they're 

at, so how -- how quickly do you think you 

could move on these if -- if you were going to 

be tasked to -- to do this? 
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 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I appreciate that question 

again, and I have some information from -- from 

Cincinnati that would inform us a little more. 

There are 151 cases that started employment 

prior to 1948. That means -- this number, 151, 

would have less than 250 days in that 1948 time 

period, so they wouldn't fit into that class. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay? So you understand. Fortyone of those are Mallinckrodt workers and -- 

excuse me, 107 are Mallinckrodt only workers, 

41 are Mallinckrodt and Weldon Spring workers, 

so that we'd have to account for Weldon Spring. 

And three are Mallinckrodt workers and at some 

other AWE site, so if my -- oops, I just lost 

the whole thing. Modern technology, a bane. 

DR. ANDERSON: 107, I think. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, 107 -- 107 would be the 

number --

DR. ANDERSON: Pretty clean. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- and I would offer this in 

response to your question, that I think in four 

months time we can work through those 107. But 

a month of that four months I think would take 

for us to get with SC&A and iron out any issues 
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on the site profile that remain, and make sure 

that we approach these 107 with full due 

consideration and a full, thoughtful, 

deliberative site profile that'll aid us in 

working through these -- these 107 claims. So 

I would say give us a month to work that out 

and three months to work the claims, the 107. 

DR. ANDERSON: Okay. And another just point I 

wanted to -- being a epidemiologist and a 

statistical person, the graphs that were 

showing the lognormal distribution of the air 

monitoring and the urine monitoring, and some 

very impressive R-squareds, my understanding is 

those R-squares are related to lognormality, 

not that the air concentrations correlate 

exactly with the urines for the same -- I mean 

typically you would do an R-square looking at -

-

DR. NETON: I'm sorry, that -- yeah, the Rsquare value represented the goodness of fit to 

a straight line --

DR. ANDERSON: Right. 

DR. NETON: -- on that graph. 

DR. ANDERSON: So until we get to the 

individuals, you won't know are the high air 
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measurements --

DR. NETON: Yeah, I'm sorry, I never meant -- 

DR. ANDERSON: -- correlated with the levels -- 

DR. NETON: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply 

that and I --

DR. ANDERSON: 'Cause an R-square of .98 for a 

biologic thing like that would be unheard of. 

DR. NETON: Right, my --

DR. ANDERSON: So you would be arguing that in 

fact you chose one and then you assigned values 

of the urine based on the air or vice versa and 

that's how you got --

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

DR. ANDERSON: -- such a great correlation. 

DR. NETON: Well, actually the intent was to 

demonstrate that the data are lognormally -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- distributed --

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- which --

DR. ANDERSON: I understood that. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, okay. I'm sorry. 

DR. ANDERSON: I just wanted people -- when you 

put the two up there, the assumption is that 

somehow the value of one correlates with the 
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other, but it's really the distributions that 

you were looking (unintelligible). 

DR. NETON: Correct, but I would point that the 

slopes of those lines, they parallel fairly 

closely --

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- which indicates that there is -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- increasing urine values with 

increasing air concentrations, although they 

weren't -- I didn't correlate them 

individually, which is --

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- I think what your impression 

was. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, it has to do with the 

population, not individual correlation between 

the value, so it kind of -- how it would be 

used for an individual, you might have a lot 

more discrepancy, just luck of the draw. 

DR. NETON: Well, actually we've committed, in 

cases where --

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- where the -- the raffinate issue 

comes into play, that we would use the higher 
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of the two dose reconstructions, either the air 

monitoring data or the reconstructed dose using 

the urine and applying a ratio and then 

applying an appropriate geometric standard 

deviation to each of those. And whichever 

results in the higher -- essentially dose to 

the organs -- would be used. 

DR. ANDERSON: Okay. And -- and the other 

thing I just wanted to say, following back to 

the last meeting that -- where we gave you -- 

asked -- some charges that I think a lot of the 

questions that we raised that we deferred 

voting on this have in fact been addressed. 

The validity of the data, I think we're much 

more comfortable that, you know, the likelihood 

of it being doctored in any way is -- is 

relatively remote, so I think that -- I want to 

say thank you for doing that. 

 Again, my only issue is the one of 

hypothetically -- you believe you can do it. 

We've heard that you don't think we can do it, 

and the only way to really know is -- 

DR. NETON: To do it. 

DR. ANDERSON: -- is doing it, and that's why 

I've -- if -- if you're prepared to do that in 
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a timely fashion, I think that'll address some 

of the concerns of the issues. 

And then the only third one is we're sort of 

left with three groups of people, the preapproved group. Then you have people who have 

cancers that are not covered by the SEC group 

who worked both pre- and post-, and how one 

addresses that we may have to talk about later. 

And then we have the group that I was going to 

focus on, those that really would only fit into 

this group, that we should be able to move on 

quite expeditiously. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Dr. Melius is next. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, just to pursue that point a 

little bit. You know, I think the crux of this 

comes down to how we sort of pull together two 

related but sort of divergent sets of data in 

terms of how they've been -- evaluations, how 

they've been put together. One is the SC&A 

evaluation of the site profile and the second 

is this -- NIOSH's evaluation of the SEC 

petition and do that. And I think that somehow 

we need -- need to make those work together and 

I think we have sort of several different 

approaches that -- that could be used. I am --
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like Henry, I'm reluctant to simply take NIOSH 

at its word without understanding what the 

process would be for -- you know, they say they 

can do individual dose reconstructions. Well, 

you know, let's see them do it. Let's -- let's 

get that process moving. It -- it can't go on 

forever and I think feasibility is a -- a -- 

something that we -- we have to consider in 

some way, though, albeit it's -- there's no 

fine line there and I think we're going to -- 

would struggle to come up with what is 

reasonable in that way and -- and there's 

probably a divergence of opinion on the Board 

as to what would -- what would be reasonable to 

do. 

As part of resolving that, I think -- question 

comes up is what -- what do we do procedurally? 

And you know, one is we could deal with the -- 

the petition and take NIOSH at its word and -- 

on the assumption that NIOSH can do what Larry 

said they can do, we can, you know, reach some 

decision on -- on the petition, saying -- 

turning it down and saying they should be -- 

individual dose reconstructions are feasible. 

 Another option is to wait and see what happens 
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when this -- NIOSH works with SC&A to resolve 

the issues on the site profile review. And 

that, I think, we -- could there be issues that 

will come up that would say that certain -- 

significant segment of these workers cannot 

have their dose reconstructed? Would that --

might that be identified in -- as part of this 

effort to resolve the -- the comments that -- 

that NIOSH -- that -- excuse me, that SC&A made 

on the NIOSH site profile. It may be, I don't 

well understand that completely. I was not 

present at the subcommittee meeting this 

morning so I don't know to what extent some 

further detail was discussed about that. But I 

think certainly one option is we postpone any 

decision until we've seen where we get with 

that resolution and maybe we have firmer 

evidence that NIOSH can do -- that these issues 

are resolved and that, at least in a general 

sense, there's nothing that would -- would be 

in the way of NIOSH being able to do full, 

complete, individual dose reconstructions. 

A third option and when -- was the option I 

tried to offer at the -- at the last meeting 

and one that, even if we don't do it here, I 
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think we need to consider for future SEC 

evaluations, is -- I find it very hard to 

simply accept or reject NIOSH's sort of very 

general statement, we can do them all/we can't 

do them all. And even though there's some 

refinement to that in terms of how they -- they 

work to define the class and -- it -- it's 

still pretty broad -- a broad stroke. And when 

we get into a complicated site like 

Mallinckrodt where there's a significant amount 

of data, we're not sure if it covers every 

situation and so forth, that kind of a broad 

stroke I think is very hard for us to evaluate 

without really seeing how all that information 

that is available would be applied in some 

specific cases. 

So whether it's for Mallinckrodt or, if not for 

Mallinckrodt, for future cases, I would be much 

more comfortable, and I think the Board and the 

whole process would be much better served if -- 

if NIOSH would actually work through some of 

the cases, some representative number of cases, 

examples, to -- to really test and evaluate in 

more detail whether or not it really is 

feasible to do dose reconstruction. 
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 So for Mallinckrodt, you know, another option 

is that, in addition to trying to -- that we 

work to resolve the SC&A comments on the site 

profile, we also ask NIOSH to do some example, 

representative dose reconstructions. Come back 

to us, show that they -- they are really 

capable of doing that. I was -- I was hoping 

they would do it for this meeting. They --

they did it part-way. They didn't do it as 

completely as I think would be helpful to us. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Jim. And you have 

saved the Chair from pointing out the options, 

I think, so -- and -- and done it very well. 

 DR. MELIUS: Good. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I -- I think before we, however, 

reach the point of action, we may want some 

additional comments and so on. Roy? 

 DR. DEHART: I would like to ask NIOSH if I 

heard correctly this morning that you could do 

a self-identified exclusion from doing the -- 

the dose reconstruction. In other words, you 

can identify an individual in whom you cannot 

do dose reconstruction and move -- in the sense 

like a -- you're -- you're identifying a 

specific cohort. Is that correct? You haven't 
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done that yet, but you could do that. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, both our dose reconstruction 

rule and our SEC petition rule afford us an 

opportunity to identify situations or cases in 

the dose reconstruction arena -- we could 

identify a case we can't do a dose 

reconstruction for and operate that -- I think 

it's under 82.7. I believe 83.14 in the SEC 

rule offers us the ability to say here's a 

situation, a class within a facility where we 

cannot do dose reconstruction, and we work with 

a claimant currently situated in that class to 

become a petitioner, and we're working through 

that right now on -- on some of these 

situations where we feel that there's 

insufficient data to do dose reconstructions, 

so we're trying to work with current claimants 

to establish a petition. 

 DR. DEHART: Thank you. That -- that would 

then broaden the opportunity, if -- if we chose 

to vote for them to go ahead and move with dose 

reconstruction. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim. 

DR. NETON: I'd just like to add to what Larry 

said, and it's true, when we do these analyses 
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it's very difficult to predict all -- all 

possible combinations. And so we do -- and we 

do the best we can to present objectively the 

data that we have and -- and the fact that we 

think, for all the classes we can conceive 

within that group, we can do dose 

reconstructions. But it doesn't preclude us 

from, when we start doing dose reconstructions, 

saying whoa, there's a special case or two in 

here and maybe even in the -- in the interview 

or there's some incident that occurred that we 

were previously not aware, we would be able to 

self-identify that and then that would go 

through this process that Larry just mentioned. 

So you know, it's -- we -- we can't -- I don't 

think I'm standing here saying with 100 percent 

certainty we can do every -- we believe we can 

do everything -- every single one based on all 

the data that we've looked at. But short of 

doing all 109 dose reconstructions, we can't 

say that. That's what I'm trying to say. And 

there is a possibility that, you know, 

something is out there that we just didn't 

anticipate. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Did you have a follow-up on that, 
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Roy? 

 DR. MELIUS: I actually have something. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I'll come back. I just also 

want to remind the Board, superimposed on the 

options mentioned, the issue of timeliness in 

terms of delaying decisions versus moving 

forward. We need to have that in the 

background. 

And then I also want to pose a question -- 

maybe I will ask Denise, because I heard her 

talk about a sub-- I think you used the term 

"sub-cohort," and you maybe specifically 

mentioned raffinate workers. I would like to 

learn whether or not, for example, are workers 

classified as raffinate workers or would one be 

able to identify a priori the raffinate 

workers? 

MS. BROCK: I was --

 DR. ZIEMER: Did I understand what you said 

correctly, Denise? 

MS. BROCK: You did. I was actually suggesting 

Plant 6 workers, and I believe it was page 29 

maybe of 86, if I remember correctly, in 

Arjun's report. And I'll have to ask Arjun, 

was that Plant 6 that was the raffinate area? 
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Is that correct? I'm thinking it was. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I understand that part of 

it. I'm asking can you -- can you go to job 

descriptions -- maybe NIOSH can answer this -- 

MS. BROCK: Somebody else, yeah, would have -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and identify --

MS. BROCK: -- to answer that. I don't know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and say a priori oh, this is a 

raffinate worker, or do you have to depend on 

the fact that maybe somebody took radon lung 

exhalation measurements or how -- how would one 

a priori identify if there were a sub-set, for 

example, of that type? 

DR. NETON: It would have to be based on -- and 

this is the crux of the issue that we discussed 

this morning -- on the job title category of 

the worker and what they were doing in Plant 6. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But they would not neces-- they 

wouldn't be classified as a raffinate worker. 

DR. NETON: No, but -- but the job categories 

are --

 DR. ZIEMER: Might give you a --

DR. NETON: -- such that --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- clue to it. 

DR. NETON: -- you -- a clear-cut example was a 
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feinc operator, a cloth operator, those type of 

people. But as SC&A has correctly pointed out, 

it is broader than that. Anyone that is 

working, particularly on the reprocessing of 

the K-65 residue from the digestion process 

through, would be correctly identified as a 

raffinate worker that worked with raffinate in 

more -- in disequilibrium, let's put it that 

way. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I didn't want to necessarily 

focus on that group except that I'd heard 

Denise mention that, but it was a follow-up to 

the question of, in a sense, could there be a 

sub-set within this group that you learn you 

simply cannot do dose reconstruction -- 

whatever that sub-set might be. 

DR. NETON: Right, and Larry might be -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Or is it more likely just to be an 

individual in each case? 

DR. NETON: It's more likely to be an 

individual by individual basis if we have the 

job category information. But one issue, and 

Larry may be able to speak better to this, is 

the Department of Labor, if -- if the SEC were 

identified as a sub-set of workers, the 
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Department of Labor actually qualifies those 

people based on their application as to whether 

or not they are in the SEC. We don't make that 

determination. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

DR. NETON: And to the extent that they would 

be able to -- to parse that out based on these 

more specific -- job categories are really part 

of the dose reconstruction process I can't 

speak to. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 DR. WADE: Denise. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Larry? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Let me just add to that -- that 

at that critical juncture when DOL makes its 

determination of eligibility for a cla-- for a 

member of a class, they use the full case file 

that's been developed. That -- that 

development would include work history, 

information that we add to the file, both from 

the CATI interview -- from the interview 

process, but also from looking up in the data 

that Jim has -- has spent numerous hours going 

through, can we put the name with a job title, 

and we add that and they will use that. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Denise, did you have a follow-up 

on... 

MS. BROCK: I was just curious if -- if Jim or 

Larry could explain it to where I can 

understand it, are you stating that the Labor 

Department would be the one to ultimately make 

that decision? Are you having to find the 

worker to fit the job title, and if... I guess 

I'm not understanding. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Development of the case file 

starts when the file is submitted to DOL. 

DOL's claims examiners work with the claimant 

to make sure that the -- the file is determined 

eligible by the diagnosis, through a death 

certificate or medical -- physician's report or 

whatever, and that the person worked at a given 

site. 

They then send that over to us once it's deemed 

eligible as a claim and we work up the work 

history. That's part of what we go through -- 

the interview process I know is a -- a major 

concern to a lot of people. It's not a 

required process. It's something we've added -

- we felt all along that it -- anything that we 

could gain from actually using a questionnaire 
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and we have to use a standardized 

questionnaire, but anything that could gain we 

would benefit the claimant would benefit from 

that. That's part of this development. 

As we go through data -- data such as what Jim 

presented this morning -- where we actually 

have individuals' names on these cards and the 

job titles that they held during the time that 

the sampling or the measurement was acquired -- 

whether it's a dust sample or a urinalysis 

sample or a badge result, we have those names. 

Jim was able to go in and find 109, which is 

now 107, but he found 109 people and he knows 

what their job titles were. We'll have to 

provide that to Department of Labor. And yes, 

Denise, that is their job. We don't make that 

determination. They're required to make that 

determination of eligibility for the class. We 

help them as much as we can by providing this 

additional work history information that's been 

developed. Does that -- does that help? 

MS. BROCK: It does. Thank you. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 DR. MELIUS: Can -- can -- can I just add to 
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that? I would think, though, if someone gets 

forwarded to you for individual dose 

reconstruction and as part of your process you 

discover that they really should have been in 

the Special Exposure Cohort, you would refer -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- them back. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Oh, absolutely. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, we don't want to -- 

 DR. MELIUS: So I --

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- see anybody mis--

misclassified here. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. Yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah. 

 DR. MELIUS: So there's a safety net, so to 

speak --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Absolutely, yes. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- for that. I -- I think we 

recognize -- this is back to Jim and Larry's 

comments earlier. I think we recognize that as 

part of individual dose reconstruction -- for 

example, for this Mallinckrodt cohort -- that 

you would -- you may identify people -- 

individuals, you know, a small number, that -- 
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for whom, for whatever reason, there's just not 

adequate information for dose reconstruction. 

I think what we're trying to avoid is -- have -

- finding out down the road that there's a 

large percentage of this group, you know, and 

what that large is, is it 20 percent or, you 

know, 15 percent or whatever it may be that -- 

that you really don't have adequate information 

for and so we -- I think we need to fine-tune 

the process, at least low enough that we can 

try to identify those -- those groups ahead of 

time and -- and I think I would actually argue 

for an interim evaluation step there, that we 

take a look at the site profile review from 

SC&A, we work to resolve that and see if out of 

that do we feel that there is a sub-group that 

-- such as the Building 6 workers who there may 

not be adequate information for. I don't have 

a good sense from our discussions so far how -- 

to what extent we believe that is a 

possibility, but certainly it's been raised and 

cer-- certainly something that at least to me 

would be a cleaner process if we -- and a 

better process is if we take an interim step, 

which would be resolving the SC&A comments. At 
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the same time that would allow -- I think give 

NIOSH a better sense of are there -- is there 

going to be a significant proportion of this 

cohort that -- of this petition that they will 

not be able to do individual dose 

reconstructions on and -- and that we delay our 

decision until that point in time, rather than 

having us make a decision now and then having 

to change it -- I don't know exactly what the 

process would be. I'm sure it's workable, but 

I -- also I'm afraid that it will just -- I 

think we want to avoid unnecessary delays if we 

can -- can help it. 

At the same time I think that process -- if we 

did it that way, then we wouldn't slow down the 

individual dose reconstruction process 'cause 

it's still a necessary, you know, one-month 

step to -- for us to try to resolve these SC&A 

comments on -- on the site profile. 

I would also just add, though, that -- that -- 

that is presuming certain amount of logistical 

work on the part of NIOSH to -- can we pull the 

Board together in a reasonable time, and if the 

next Board meeting isn't -- isn't feasible for 

three or four months, then I think we're -- 
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have to consider other options. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Unfortunately we've been 

pushing both our contractor and NIOSH against 

our own meeting time deadlines. And 

realistically, we end up doing a disservice to 

them because there are issues that they need, 

in essence, to discuss and -- and try to 

resolve so that we have whatever level of 

agreement we can reach in advance. And where 

the disagreements are we know that they have at 

least talked and -- and these disagreements 

remain. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But for -- for NIOSH to see the 

report for the first time a day or two before 

our meeting is very difficult, and that's not 

the contractor's fault. In a sense it's our 

fault 'cause we pushed the -- pushed the 

contractor to try to get things on a real -- 

very short time frame. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, can -- can I just add -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- I -- I think -- regardless of 

how we deal with this, I think from the point -

- perspective of trying to resolve these SC&A 
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comments on the site profile, I think it would 

be helpful if either the committee or the 

subcommittee could continue some of the 

dialogue from this morning -- as much as we can 

be specific about what we want pursued and what 

we think is important and what we think is 

maybe not as important so we can make that -- 

this follow-up as efficient as possible, I 

think it would be -- be helpful and I think it 

would be better for all and -- and I agree with 

you fully that I think it's unfair to expect 

NIOSH to have complete -- or comments on a 

report they only saw a few days ago, so... 

 DR. ZIEMER: And the same is true of the 

petitioners. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I was just going to have some of 

the similar remarks that you just made, Dr. 

Melius. I -- I think this morning we had a 

very good scientific discussion here on a 

report that just came out last week, and I 

don't think anybody's at fault here. I think 

it's just a set of circumstances that we 

operate in this program -- operate under in 

this program. Everybody is under a lot of 
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pressure. 

But I would welcome this kind of a discussion 

that you just mentioned, Dr. Melius, about what 

are the critical issues that you heard this 

morning that you want pursued farther. I think 

that there was a good give-and-take that 

happened this morning. I think there was 

affirmative -- nods of affirmation around the 

table as I watched -- overheard the discussion 

and watched the body language at the table. 

And there were some issues that, you know, 

people were still wrestling with in their mind 

-- we were wrestling with in our mind, trying 

to understand what the point was being made by 

SC&A, perhaps. So I think that would help us a 

lot in trying to come to resolution within a 

month's time on finalizing a site profile based 

upon the comments that we've received. So I 

would welcome that. That would serve as good 

guidance to us. 

 DR. WADE: Denise. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Denise. 

MS. BROCK: I second that, Dr. Ziemer, about it 

not being anybody's fault. But yes, it did put 

the petitioner, myself, in a situation -- such 
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as NIOSH, and obviously it was not SC&A's 

fault, nobody's fault, but it does put me at a 

-- at a disadvantage, as well as NIOSH. But I 

still have to go back to the issue of time and 

timeliness, and feasibility has to do with 

time, as well. And I have to state again for 

the record, these claimants are dying. They 

may not have a month. They might not have two 

months, three months. And I -- I just want to 

make sure that I understand this. Larry, are 

you saying that within a month that you will be 

able to go through absolutely everything that 

SC&A has in their audit review and take all the 

corrective actions and begin dose 

reconstructions and have those 109 cases 

completed by then? And if they are denied, are 

those defensible denials? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I didn't say a month. I said it 

would take us a month to work through -- in my 

view, it would take us a month to work through 

the comment resolution aspect on the site 

profile. That's why I would appreciate this 

kind of discussion on -- and guidance on what 

are the most critical elements and issues in 

that set of comments that came from SC&A. 
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Then I said we would work very diligently to 

finish up those 107 cases in three months' time 

post that. I think there are some cases in 

that 107 -- I think Jim would agree with me -- 

that we could work on while we're -- we could 

have our health physicists working on certain 

types of cases without the benefit of the site 

profile resolution comments because they either 

have enough monitoring information of record or 

they -- the type of cancer is such that we can 

work through that and give a definitive dose 

estimate that would be a defensible probability 

of causation. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Denise. 

 MR. GIBSON: Dr. Ziemer? Dr. Ziemer? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Michael. Hang on just a 

minute, Mike. Denise has a comment and then 

you'll be next. 

 MR. GIBSON: All right. Thank you. 

MS. BROCK: Sorry, Mike -- and hello, Mike. 

think I wanted to ask a question -- and I'm 

trying to think about how to word this. In 

Iowa there was a probability of causation chart 

developed. Is that possible that when you come 

back in that we can have one so that I can take 

I 
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a look at the types of cancers, similar to what 

you did in Iowa? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Larry, do you recall what chart is 

being referred to? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, we worked up a -- we worked 

up a set of cases for Dr. Fuortes and Richard 

Miller in that regard, I believe. Could we do 

that? We certainly could do that, but we're at 

a -- it puts us at competing resources. You 

know, we -- we put people on task to do that, 

why not just put people on task to do dose 

reconstructions? Then from that you could pull 

together the dataset that you're seeking. That 

would be my thought, but -- Jim has a comment. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Hang on, Mike. We'll get 

to you here. Jim Neton is following up on this 

comment. 

 MR. GIBSON: That's fine. 

DR. NETON: Just to follow up on what Larry 

said, I need to point out that the Iowa dose 

reconstruction model was a one-size-fits-all 

model, so it was fairly straightforward to come 

up with the estimated doses and projected 

probabilities of causation. These dose 

reconstructions are going to be unique, 
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individual dose reconstructions, scientifically 

based. It would be difficult, if -- it would 

not be impossible. It would be very difficult 

and, like Larry says, ex-- you use a lot of 

resources, to the extent where we'd almost have 

to do the dose reconstructions to develop the 

chart, I think. There's no way to predict 

based on the amount of monitoring data -- you 

know, the individual monitoring data and then 

how much we're going to have to supplement 

using, you know, coworker data to come up with 

some chart like that. I think it'd be very 

hard. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Mike, your comment? 

 MR. GIBSON: Yeah, and I'm -- you know, I -- 

I'm a little bit -- apologize for not being 

there. I'm kind of behind the eight-ball here 

and -- and I appreciate the phone hook-up, but 

it's -- kind of cuts in and out, but it -- if 

what I've -- what I'm going to say is not 

correct, you know, someone can correct me. But 

it -- it sounds like that there is a lack of 

individual bioassay data for some of these 

raffinite (sic) workers in Plant 6 and -- and 

that somehow NIOSH has determined that they can 
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take some kind of -- these monitoring results 

from air monitoring and give it a 100 to one 

ratio or whatever it is and therefore verify 

the -- therefore reconstruct a dose for each of 

these workers, at least in this Plant 6. And I 

just -- you know, I -- if I'm hearing all this 

correct and if that's all correct, it just 

doesn't seem to me that -- again, as I'd 

mentioned earlier about the -- the individual 

dose reconstructions, I don't see that -- I can 

see it being generic, but -- but how can NIOSH 

at least stand behind these dose 

reconstructions and -- and say that this is an 

accurate dose that can be defensible and 

feasible for each individual worker? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, I think NIOSH has a lot of 

urine -- urine analysis data, coupled with the 

air data, and would use whichever one gave them 

the higher estimate. But Jim Neton can speak 

to that. 

DR. NETON: That's --

 MR. GIBSON: No, I'm -- I'm sorry, I thought I 

-- I thought I heard that there was no -- no or 

very little bioassay data for the raffinite 

(sic) workers in Plant 6. Maybe -- maybe I was 
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mis-- maybe I missed something and, like I 

said, I don't have all this information in 

front of me, but that's what I thought was part 

of the case. 

DR. NETON: Mike, this is Jim Neton. I think 

what I hear you saying is that you recognize we 

have a lot of urine monitoring data, but it's 

primarily uranium data and we have no 

individual bioassay data for isotopes such as 

protactinium-231, actinium-227. That's true. 

But what we do have are these dust cards for 

1,453 individual workers that were -- that give 

-- give job descriptions for their work during 

that individual -- by year for 1949 through 

'57, the position at different processes. And 

we have these 40-something dust studies that 

were done that -- that are alpha measurements 

that can be used to determine the amount of 

upper limit or bounding exposures, given 

appropriate geometric standard deviations, for 

workers at those individual processes. 

 MR. GIBSON: Uh-huh. 

DR. NETON: So that -- they -- they are not 

generic. They can be specific, although I 

can't swear with 100 percent certainty there 
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aren't some that don't have cards that we would 

have to fill in the gaps. But -- but we do 

have individual cards for a large number of 

workers. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Jim --

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Jim, just a point -- again, a 

point of clarification there. You have 1,453 

individual cards --

DR. NETON: No, no, we have more cards than 

that. We have 1,453 workers -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Workers --

DR. NETON: -- who have cards --

 MR. GRIFFON: -- cards --

DR. NETON: -- multiple years for each -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 1,453 individuals, but -- but 

there's -- I -- I mean the -- the dust 

concentration values assigned, the daily 

weighted averages assigned, were not 

necessarily each individual worker. They were 

assigned from those dust study data. Correct? 

DR. NETON: Right, but -- it's confusing, but 

the time-weighted average for the worker is a 

composite of where he worked in the plant 

during that year. So for instance, if he were 
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at the feinc -- you know, the filtration press 

or whatever, it would say 24 weeks at this 

location, 15 weeks at another location, and 

those individual air concentrations would then 

make up the time-weighted average. 

 MR. GRIFFON: But the -- but the -- the 

individual ti-- the times are individualspecific --

DR. NETON: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- but the -- the dpm per meter 

cubed that's plugged into that equation -- 

DR. NETON: Are location-specific -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- are from the study. 

DR. NETON: -- right. That's correct. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, location-specific -- 

DR. NETON: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- so I just wanted to be clear 

on that. 

DR. NETON: You're right, that's correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Denise, did you have a follow-up 

on that? 

MS. BROCK: I don't really know if it's a 

follow-up on that. I apologize. I'm not a 

scientist, I keep saying this, and I'm not a 

doctor, so it's probably like pro poker players 
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playing with somebody that doesn't know if a 

pair beats a full house or whatever -- sorry, 

so just kind of bear with me. But I just 

wanted to restate a couple of things for the 

record, and maybe it is not something that 

needs to be said, but the way I understood, 

SC&A had stated that the basis for finding 

reasonable dose estimates are unlikely -- and 

what I heard SC&A say was that this was going 

to be a major undertaking, that all of this 

corrective action -- we don't know how long it 

could take. And at the end of it, we do not 

know if in fact it's going to even be workable 

or doable. And so I still have to go back to 

the FY 2005 where it states that these workers 

need to be put in in a prompt manner. This is 

not prompt. I filed this SEC petition over a 

year ago, or about a year ago. These people 

are dying. How long do we have to keep going 

through this? If this is this major 

undertaking and I'm -- I apologize, Larry, I 

think you're great, but I just don't understand 

what this 30 days is. Maybe I am dense, but if 

it's not going to be done in 30 days, how would 

the dose recon-- if everything's not corrected, 
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now in God's name are you going to have these 

dose reconstructions done? And if there's not 

anything on thorium-230 or actinium-227 or 

protactinium on these raffinates, how is this -

- how is this doable? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Does someone want to give an 

answer or is that a rhetorical question? 

Everyone's hoping it's a rhetorical question, 

Denise. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I -- I think we've discussed 

this previously that -- that -- the air 

monitoring data can be used to support the 

inhalation intakes from the raffinate material. 

There's also a suggestion -- I think it's a 

very good one -- Dr. Makhijani indicated that 

if the Fernald waste stream and the silos can 

be demonstrated to be predominantly ore from 

the process, I think we've got a handle on 

that. So there's a number of approaches that 

can be used here to bound -- bound these 

estimates. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Arjun, did you have a comment on 

that? 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. I mean we -- we did 

suggest approaches, and there isn't just one 
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issue, as I mentioned when I was asked by Mr. 

Owens, but there -- there are a number of 

issues. And I -- I don't see that we have a 

clear idea of how all of them are going to be 

resolved. Perhaps we may have -- Jim may have 

identified something regarding the radionuclide 

ratios, but I think that remains to be 

demonstrated, first of all. But assuming that 

it is, I -- I don't -- at this stage we can 

certainly engage with NIOSH, but I don't know 

where we would wind up after 30 days. 

Obviously, I mean there's a long list of issues 

and we're -- we're willing to engage at the 

Board's direction, but I -- I have to say, at 

this stage we have a certain conclusion we've 

presented before you that a significant number 

of issues need to be resolved, and then at the 

end of 30 days or whatever you mandate, we'd 

have to come back to you and -- and tell you 

whether -- NIOSH will tell you whether they 

believe they've addressed them satisfactorily 

and we'd have to tell you whether we believe 

they've been resolved, and there's no guarantee 

of an identity of an answer, obviously. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, I -- I don't think, as in 
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other cases, that if we did this that we would 

mandate a priori that everybody come to an 

agreement. It's -- it's the -- it's the issue 

of having a chance to sit down and say well, 

you've raised this; here's how we've responded 

-- and the give-and-take that you've done on 

other cases, that's what we're talking about. 

I forget the order here, who's next? Mark, 

were you next? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think I was. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Jim (unintelligible) of another 

comment, though. 

I -- I was just -- just to speak to Larry's 

comment a little, I think that we -- the Board, 

along with SC&A and NIOSH, I think -- and we've 

done this to some extent on the subcommittee 

level -- can sort of identify or prioritize 

issues that -- that need to be resolved for 

purposes of resolving this SEC petition. So 

there -- there are some things in the site 

profile that we can kind of -- so me comments 

that SC&A has raised that -- that aren't 

certainly as critical. So I think we can 

prioritize ones that we believe would have a 
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major potential impact on -- on decisions on 

this SEC petition. 

On top of that, I think a key component that 

I'd like to see is -- and I think Jim mentioned 

this earlier -- is -- is how -- how are these 

going to be applied in doing dose 

reconstructions. So I would -- I would like to 

-- you know, if we go down that path of -- of 

asking you to come back with -- with -- having 

some -- some more com-- some more comment 

resolution on the site profile, in addition to 

that I'd like to see some specific 

representative cases. And I'm not just saying 

ones that you can do with the data at hand 

right now. I'm saying take some of these 

assumptions on the raffinates and some of these 

other assumptions, once you feel comfortable 

enough with them -- because part of what we 

have to evaluate is feasibility and -- and -- 

feasibility, as Denise pointed out, is 

timeliness. So if you can say well, we've -- 

you know, not that we're still looking for some 

data to nail this down, but that we have it. 

So we need some representative cases and you 

can say here's how we're going to apply this, 
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and then we can look at both feasibility and 

sufficient accuracy for those representative 

cases. We have -- we -- we're going to see how 

those values are applied. And I don't -- I 

don't -- Jim made, you know, a very good 

presentation on how you've got different pieces 

of information that can be used to -- to -- to 

bound this sit-- situations. I guess there's -

- there's -- you know, what I want to see is 

some representative exa-- representative 

examples of how that would be carried through, 

how -- for a Plant 6 worker, first of all you 

have to decide whether he -- he or she does or 

does not apply to certain raffinate conditions 

on their -- on their intake values and -- and 

whether they -- you know, so -- and you're 

going to tell me that we can't have that. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well --

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- I agree with you 100 percent. 

That is exactly what we need to do. But the 

issue that -- and reason why we couldn't bring 

that to the table today for Dr. Melius's 

request from last meeting is that we cannot 

bring an example dose reconstruction case to 
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you unless it's an adjudicated case. I'm 

sorry, but we're bound by that. We cannot 

bring an example dose reconstruction case to 

the floor that has not gone through the full 

adjudication process, and that will take more 

time than what I've proposed in my four-months 

commitment to you. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. I think Wanda's next. No? 

 MS. MUNN: I'm not sure. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Go ahead, Wanda. 

 MS. MUNN: Henry was --

 DR. ZIEMER: Henry was next, okay. Wanda 

concedes to you, Henry. 

DR. ANDERSON: I guess I was -- what I'm trying 

to do is simplify the -- the process here, that 

this is a very complex site and the site 

profile is very complex and the site profile 

really is a kind of a universal activity and it 

has to sort of -- we can pick at it because it 

has to be able to address all possibilities. 

When you narrow it down to 105 cases, there may 

be some of the issues that are raised that 

aren't going to come up in some of the cases, 

so those -- and I think there are some broad 
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issues that we could sit down and, as we 

started out this morning and yesterday, nail 

them down. But all of the things that may come 

up in the future, if we don't have to deal with 

them today, those are still future issues. So 

I think we can sort out or separate some of the 

uncer-- I think a lot of what was pointed out 

are uncertainties in the data. I'm not sure 

we're going to resolve the uncertainties. It's 

only a matter of how are you going to address 

those uncertainties in the dose reconstruction. 

So... 

I mean the other question would be if we wanted 

to narrow the numbers even more, how many of 

those 107 are SEC-compensable tumors, so that 

there may be a smaller number. And if you 

start on those, those would give us a -- a -- 

you know, a better handle on -- on where we -- 

Yeah, that's why I -- that's why I gave you the 

lead yesterday, Larry, to go back and ask. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Let me see if I have that 

particular data point for you. 

DR. ANDERSON: I want a (unintelligible). 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I -- I don't have that 

particular number on how many would be SEC 
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cases. But what we typically see is a 60/40 

split, 60 percent of the cases have cancer of 

the list of the 22, 40 percent don't. Is that 

right -- or is that backwards? No, that's 

right. But I can't -- from this -- from this 

e-mail I can't tell you what the exact case 

number would be. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Liz? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I've just been asked to 

clarify on the question of bringing cases 

before you that haven't been adjudicated by the 

Department of Labor. It has -- the Board has 

always followed the policy when you've chosen 

your cases for dose reconstruction that you 

won't look at cases that haven't been 

adjudicated by the Department of Labor because 

the Department of Labor process could change 

those cases. They could be sent back as 

incomplete, they need more research, there's 

new cancers. So I just wanted to give an 

explanation as to the underlying reason -- not 

so much for you all, but for the audience as to 

why you wait for cases to be completely 

adjudicated and finalized before the Board 

reviews them. 
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 DR. MELIUS: Can I clarify? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Sure. 

 DR. MELIUS: I mean this was brought up at a 

meeting two months ago. There's a subsequent 

discussion with Larry Elliott about doing this. 

In that discussion I pointed out that we were 

not asking for complete data on individual 

cases and we didn't want to violate any legal 

issues involved. All we're asking to do is to 

go through -- through and show that it's going 

to be feasible, that the issues -- particular 

technical issues raised in a representative 

number of cases can be dealt with within the -- 

based on the information available. We're not 

asking to see individual case information. I 

think it's very possible for you to be able to 

do that and make a presentation to the Board 

that does not violate this issue if... 

 DR. ZIEMER: For example, could you do a group 

of cases and summarize them at -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I --

 DR. ZIEMER: We've done ten cases and here's 

what we found or something like that, without -

-

DR. ANDERSON: And how -- this is how we 
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addressed this issue, you know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think right now we're just 

asking -- you may not have a -- I don't think 

the Board is asking that we look at case soand-so that worked there so many years and, you 

know, that -- information that would identify 

who it is. But perhaps -- give that some 

thought, can it be done in a summary form. 

Mark, you follow-up on that? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, just -- just to fol-- 

follow up on that, I mean I was just thinking 

back to a meeting probably several years ago 

now in Santa Fe where -- where Jim, you 

presented some sample DRs for -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: De-identified. 

 MR. GRIFFON: De-identified, right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, it was the low-hanging fruit 

cases. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, the Bethlehem Steel and 

several others --

 MR. ELLIOTT: But they'd already been 

adjudicated. 

 MR. GRIFFON: They had been adjudicated? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, we've been operating under 

that direction --
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 DR. ZIEMER: I guess that's right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- not only from --

 MR. GRIFFON: I thought they were --

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- our general counsel but DOL's 

general counsel --

 MR. GRIFFON: All right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- from the very start -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- that when we bring anything in 

front of this Board for your audit and your 

review, that as a case it has to be an 

adjudicated case. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And we thought long and hard 

about this, Dr. Melius. We thought what can we 

bring to you that would explain how we would 

validate the data, how we would use the data in 

dose reconstructions and answer some of the 

questions that were on the table from Cedar 

Rapids. That's what Jim attempted to do this 

morning in his presentation, without violating 

this mandate that we have that we cannot bring 

example cases that have not been adjudicated. 

In two months' time we couldn't have brought 

you adjudicated cases for -- as examples. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Let's move on. Wanda. 

 MS. MUNN: Well, there's a lot to say about 

this. Everybody sitting at this table 

certainly knows we're not ever going to have 

perfect information. There are always going to 

be data gaps. Whether or not they're data gaps 

that we can live with is another issue, I 

guess. But the data gaps that I personally 

have heard here are not that egregious. 

Quite to the contrary, it seems to me that 

there's been an exceptional effort expended to 

gather and to analyze as much information as 

possible about the exposures of the workers in 

this proposed class. 

I see the decision that we need to make today 

as being a watershed decision, for more reasons 

than one, not the least of which is that, based 

on recent correspondence that I've seen, it 

appears to me that even some Congressional 

perception of what has occurred in prior 

decisions that we've made is either an 

incorrect perception or it, at the very least, 

does not match my memory of what transpired in 

these meetings. It seems very important that 

we be particularly cautious in how we approach 
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this special cohort. 

It also appears to me that the detail and 

availability of the data that we have here 

shows very clearly that there was considerable 

concern for the workers' safety and welfare by 

both the contractor and by the governmental 

agency that was overseeing the work at 

Mallinckrodt at that time. The fact that we 

have separate bases of data on which to rely 

when we start attempting to determine 

probability of causation is really important, I 

believe. 

If we do not accept that it is possible for our 

agencies to do what they say they can do, then 

I don't see that we leave ourselves any 

options. There's no reason that I can imagine 

why our subcommittee cannot give some very 

specific direction as to what we consider to be 

priorities, and why our -- the Board's 

subcontractor and -- and NIOSH cannot come to 

some agreement on the major issues that we 

would like to see resolved at the same time 

that effort is ongoing with respect to 

resolution of some of these outstanding cases. 

As I understand it, however, nothing can be 
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done on these outstanding cases until we have 

made a decision with respect to the SEC. Is 

that correct, or am I incorrect? 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't believe there's anything 

that requires the dose reconstruction process 

to come to a halt while the petition's in 

process, unless they do it from a practical 

point of view. But there's nothing in the law 

that would say that you can't continue to 

process, is there? 

DR. NETON: No, there is not, but we would -- I 

think we would be limited on the number of 

cases we could do until we -- we came to some 

conclusion on the SE-- SCA-- SC&A report. I 

mean they raised some issue which we believe we 

can address -- I mean we just have seen this 

report Friday, but a number of their issues, 

you know, we need to take into consideration, 

but they are not insurmountable, in our 

opinion. 

 DR. WADE: But there is a sub-set of the 107 

that you could begin to work on now. 

DR. NETON: A sub-set of the 107, that's 

correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And let me point out to the Board 
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that a delay has a -- the same effect as 

denying the petition -- 

 MS. MUNN: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- from a practical point of view. 

It means that -- or -- denying the petition or 

supporting the NIOSH recommendation has the 

same effect because it -- it says in the 

meantime we will proceed with the dose 

reconstruction process. 

 MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That is the practical effect of 

it. To the extent they can do that and still 

address the other issues that the Board is 

demanding be done, but -- theoretically, at 

least. 

 MS. MUNN: So that being the case, and with the 

very clear understanding that denying an SEC 

petition does not mean denying the claims, 

quite to the contrary, the vast majority of the 

claims probably -- given what I believe will 

occur, on the basis of the information that's 

available for these claimants -- will probably 

turn out very much the way the percentages have 

fallen in other categories, as well. 

So it seems clear to me that we need to make a 
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decision today. I am prepared to make a motion 

if the Board is prepared to receive it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me ask if there's additional 

discussion, just in general, before we put a 

motion on the floor. I'd be glad to -- 

MR. ESPINOSA: I have a question. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, a question here and then Jim 

has a comment. Okay. Yes. 

MR. ESPINOSA: As far as adjudicated claims, is 

there any way that it could be brought to the 

Board in an Executive Session rather than -- I 

guess the question would be towards Liz or 

Larry. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Completed claims --

MR. ESPINOSA: Not --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- individual claims from 

Mallinckrodt? 

MR. ESPINOSA: The individual claims from 

Mallinckrodt that -- you know, I understand 

that none of them are adjudicated yet, but is 

there any way that they could be brought to the 

Board for examples like Dr. Melius is asking 

about to --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I don't think the problem is 

the privacy information. I think the problem 
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is that you're not an appeals board and it 

would turn you into an appeals board. You're 

an advisory board. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Okay, understood. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: So if you make comments on 

an unadjudicated case, it becomes part of the 

record. DOL hasn't dealt with it, so it's not 

really the privacy that we're protecting 'cause 

we would --

MR. ESPINOSA: Understood. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- protect that anyway. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Jim? 

 DR. MELIUS: I think we should come back to 

that issue later 'cause I think we need to 

resolve how we're going to review SEC 

evaluations, and I -- I respectfully disagree 

with sort of these I think are overly-broad 

conclusions that I -- terms of what we're 

asking for and what could be done to satisfy 

that. However, I think that we still have to 

wrestle with issues related to our contractor 

doing SEC evaluation -- evaluations, I believe 

they're called, and I think that -- best be 

done in -- in that context. And whether we set 

up a workgroup or work with a subcommittee to 
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resolve this, I -- I just think it's imperative 

that we come up with a better way of working -- 

of eval-- for NIOSH to evaluate SEC petitions 

and -- in order for the Board to be able to 

deal with these in a -- a better fashion and a 

more efficient process, but I think we can put 

that off for here. 

In respect to Wanda's comments, I think there's 

one exception, at least in my mind, that's not 

been resolved yet in terms of the -- 

Mallinckrodt, and that is the Building 6 

workers and that -- I believe that a resolution 

of the SC&A comments on the site profile would 

also allow us -- at least it would allow me to 

be more comfortable about making a decision 

about the S-- about the Building 6 workers and 

whether there's adequate information available 

to be able to do individual dose 

reconstructions on them. 

 Therefore, I would prefer that we postpone a 

decision on the Mallinckrodt petition until we 

have resolved that particular issue. I don't 

believe it's possible to do that at this 

meeting. I think we do need time for NIOSH to 

evaluate the SC&A report. And frankly, I think 
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we need to give time for the petitioners to 

evaluate the SC&A report in order to be fair to 

them. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, could I ask you for clarity -

- in your -- your comments about the Building 6 

workers, are you viewing them, for example, in 

the manner in which I talked about earlier, as 

a possible sub-set of this cohort that might 

have eligibility status on its own right? 

 DR. MELIUS: Correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I this case identified in a much 

more clear way than say raffinate workers, per 

se. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I'm using Building 6 as a -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Building 6 --

 DR. MELIUS: -- as a way to refer -- I guess -- 

whether you call it a sub-class, I'm not sure 

what the right terminology is, but certainly 

something the petitioners have raised. I -- at 

least I personally still have doubts about the 

adequacy -- the information for them. Again, I 

believe that once NIOSH has had a chance to 

comment, when there's been some resolution on 

the SC&A evaluation of the site profile, I 

believe we'll be able to come to a conclusion 
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on that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. And then Denise again. 

MS. BROCK: Yes, thank you. I really 

appreciate that, Dr. Melius, and I would 

appreciate the time to do that because, as we 

said, NIOSH nor myself has actually had the 

opportunity to actually take all of that in. 

And for the record and for clarification, I 

want to make sure that I understand. The 

halting of the decision will not halt the dose 

reconstructions, and I -- I understand that you 

call that the low-hanging fruit. I'm assuming 

that's your underestimate -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I don't know if it's still 

low-hanging fruit. The low-hanging fruit may 

be gone. They're reaching -- 

MS. BROCK: Picked through all those. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- very high these days. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Let me answer that. Yes, it's 

been pointed out to me that I need to make a 

point of clarification here. Up until this 

point in time, from I believe back before 

February even when we first started the 

evaluation report on this particular class, we 

suspended work on Mallinckrodt claims from 
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Destrehan Street only, unless there was a 

situation in a particular claim that allowed us 

to move forward like one of the efficiency 

measures would afford us. So just to make sure 

that everybody's working on the same page here, 

we have not been doing Mallinckrodt claims 

unless they were of the sort or of the type of 

claim that could be conducted under the 

efficiency process. 

 However, depending upon what the outcome of 

this Board's deliberation is today, we're ready 

to proceed --

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- with dose reconstruction. 

 DR. MELIUS: Can I just follow up on that? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Sure, Jim and then Denise. 

 DR. MELIUS: I think this clarifies Denise's 

question, I hope. Say this committee or a 

subcommittee, I'm not sure (unintelligible) 

subcommittee of the Board, comes up with a list 

of whatever it is, six issues, key, priority 

issues from the SC&A evaluation of the site 

profile that need to be resolved, you need a 

chance to comment on those and try to resolve 

the issues with S-- SC&A. Work on those 
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particular issues relevant to individual dose 

reconstructions would be on hold for 30 days, 

until that meeting -- until that resolution 

took place. 

Other aspects of those individual dose 

reconstructions you could have dose 

reconstructors working on, so those cases would 

be moving forward, except for those particular 

issues. Once those issues got resolved, then 

the -- the dose re-- individual dose 

reconstructions would be completed 'cause you'd 

have a, you know, pathway for doing that, so to 

speak, and -- and you'd be able to do it. So 

it wouldn't completely halt all individual dose 

reconstructions. You would be able to start 

forward -- you wouldn't be able to complete any 

that had -- where those issues were relevant to 

-- and -- and --

 MR. ELLIOTT: You have accur--

 DR. MELIUS: -- but you'd be making progress. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: You have accurately portrayed 

what I've been trying to communicate for 

several minutes here, but yes, we would -- we 

would proceed along those lines. What -- what 

has changed? Well, what has changed is we have 
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a set of comments that I'm very appreciative of 

from Sanford Cohen & Associates. We had a good 

discussion this morning. I wish you all would 

have been here because it was a good scientific 

dialogue that occurred. I think from that 

dialogue we recognized quickly what things do 

need to change and we're ready perhaps to make 

those changes. 

The statute calls for individual dose 

reconstructions. In the -- in the sense of 

Congress, I believe they understood there was 

going to be a requirement here for individual 

dose reconstructions, given the data at hand or 

the lack of data at hand. And in this -- in 

this case at Mallinckrodt where we have 

specific claims that we could move forward 

given what we know now are the comments on the 

site profile and the issues that have been 

raised about that, we can move forward on those 

claims where we can. And those that -- claims 

that have remaining issues yet to be resolved, 

we'll have to hold those until we get those 

resolutions put to -- to bed. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Henry? 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I mean I would agree with 
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Jim that it would be nice to see how the 

package is put together for an individual. On 

the other hand, what I'd also like to hear, you 

know, in the four-month period, is yes, we've 

actually constructed these; these are off being 

reviewed by DOL as opposed to what they are, 

rather than well, we're able to get through ten 

of them and we're working on the other ones 

still and then --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, we can certainly give you 

that level --

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I mean that would be -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- of information. We can't --

DR. ANDERSON: -- a minimum. I'd rather have 

so how did you address this -- you know, how 

did -- how did you reconstruct based on -- on a 

certain principle --

 MR. ELLIOTT: We can present --

DR. ANDERSON: -- yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- like Jim did this morning, we 

can present about issues and provide examples 

of how we've addressed those issues. We would 

send these -- the claims that we're working on, 

when I said --

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 
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 MR. ELLIOTT: -- we'd hold some back 'cause we 

have to resolve issues, we would do that, but 

we would do that with the intent of working 

through those issues and moving those dose 

reconstructions out as soon as possible. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: The ones that we can move out, 

the dose reconstructions that we complete given 

the information at hand, we would do so. We 

would turn those reconstructed doses over to 

the claimant and get their input on them so 

that they'd -- they're going to know what -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- where they fall. We'll go 

through the regular process that we've gone 

through with all of our other dose 

reconstructions, and then we would -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- we would be ready to come into 

the Board room and talk specifically about how 

we've handled issues. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

DR. ANDERSON: That's -- that's really -- what 

I really want is -- is to get these -- these 
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moving, that if -- one, that we were to deny 

this and then a year from now hear that of 

these 107, 105 haven't been addressed yet, and 

then we're in a much tighter bind than if they 

say they're actually able to do it and they've 

done it and -- and here's the process. I'd be 

much more comfortable then at that point of 

saying well, clearly they can do it rather than 

we think we can do it. 

 MS. MUNN: But Henry, they've already told us 

they can do it. They've said we can do it. 

There are issues with respect to the TBD that 

need to be worked out, but they've already said 

they can do these cases. And if they can do 

these cases, then there is no reason for a 

Special Exposure Cohort. 

DR. ANDERSON: The way I look at it is I can 

tell you I can run a four-minute mile. And you 

know, you say boy, I don't know if you can run 

a four-minute mile. And unless I --

 MS. MUNN: Oh, yeah, I know, you can run a 

four-minute mile. 

DR. ANDERSON: Well, I used to run a fourminute mile. That was a long time -- 

 MS. MUNN: You're just saying that -- 
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DR. ANDERSON: Part -- part of the issue is 

these are very complex things. And to this 

date and after five years, apparently none have 

been done. So they can't be an easy task. I 

mean 8,000 have been completed elsewhere and 

these have not. So not one has gone through 

the complete process. So you can say you can 

get to the -- we can fly to Mars, but if you 

say we want to do it within three years, then 

we have to look at the other options. That's -

-

 MS. MUNN: But a part --

DR. ANDERSON: -- (unintelligible) plan. 

 MS. MUNN: Part of the reason they haven't been 

done is because we said wait until we look at 

this other stuff. You know, we're -- we're a 

part of the reason why some of these haven't 

been done. 

DR. ANDERSON: I mean I would disagree. I 

would say we heard from Jim that there's a lot 

of individual data and that in fact the site 

profiles may not be that relevant or useful or 

needed in order to complete individual dose 

reconstructions. And you know, I can 

understand if people moved to another facility 
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 MS. MUNN: Well, true. 

DR. ANDERSON: -- that's another issue. But if 

you can do the dose reconstruction, why hasn't 

it occurred? And I --

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay --

DR. ANDERSON: -- you know, you can say it's 

because of the --

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

DR. ANDERSON: -- the site profile -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Henry's --

DR. ANDERSON: -- but I just don't think, you 

know, we can wait --

 DR. ZIEMER: Henry is --

 MS. MUNN: He asked for more. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, it's back to your -- the old 

adage about the proof is in the pudding. 

Right? Denise, you're -- 

MS. BROCK: That would be my comment, exactly. 

And I'm not saying that anybody's lying or 

being dishonest. I'm just saying that there 

are differences of opinions. SC&A was hired to 

audit this site profile. By Larry's own 

admission, a lot of these dose reconstructions 

have been put on hold. I'll tell you what's 
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been dose reconstructed. Lung cancers because 

those are easy pays. You can do an 

underestimate and those are going to hit. You 

do an overestimate on a prostate cancer, it's 

done. But other things like non-metabolics and 

other cancers that are still sitting there are 

still sitting there, and if they couldn't be 

done yesterday I don't know why they're going 

to be done next week. And what happens when we 

come back and -- and I'm still confused on the 

month/three month thing. When we come back and 

those aren't done or if there are some that are 

able to be done now, is there a maximizing dose 

being used? And what happens when you have 

somebody being denied? I'm just -- I'm 

perplexed at this and I agree with Dr. 

Anderson. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Larry. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: The proof is in the pudding. It 

is. And I could run a four-minute mile when I 

was 21, but I can't do it today. And this is -

-

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I can claim the same thing, 

but who's going to -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: This is a -- oh, I have a --
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 MR. GRIFFON: There's a lot --

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- ribbon that says --

 MR. GRIFFON: There's an awful lot of Jim Ryuns 

around this committee. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I have a ribbon that says I did 

it, but --

 DR. MELIUS: We're going to have a road race 

later tonight. However, the --

 MR. ELLIOTT: As long as Griffon's not in on 

it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, I think we're getting punchy 

here, let's --

 DR. MELIUS: The results can't be released 

until DOL adjudicates those, so -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, go ahead, Larry. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Two things -- two things happened 

that had us put Mallinckrodt claims on hold 

that were not reconstructible -- or not easily 

reconstructible for us, they're -- where we -- 

where we couldn't use our efficiency 

approaches. Those two things were we were 

awaiting this revision -- this revision of the 

site profile to be reviewed and we wanted those 

comments so that we could move forward and not 

have to redo a bunch of claims. 
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The second thing was this petition. We didn't 

want to go through a bunch of dose 

reconstructions if this petition was found to 

be approved for a class. So we've been 

anxiously awaiting for this -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- over three meetings wanting to 

know which way it's going to fall so that we 

can move forward on these claims. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: As you know, I have limited 

resources and staff to put to bear on these 

problems. And unfortunately, until we have a 

clear understanding of what's going to happen 

with Mallinckrodt Destrehan Street, we devoted 

our -- and focused our dose reconstruction 

attentions to other sites, except when we got a 

claim in that could be done from Mallinckrodt 

under an overestimating or an underestimating 

approach. Denise is totally accurate. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: The only ones we've completed in 

those 75 -- you can -- you can look at them, 

they're all lung or they're all prostate. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Now I know that Wanda 
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is anxious to make a motion, and Jim is 

wiggling around like he wants to make a motion, 

but I think I'm going to have us all make a 

motion here. We're going to take a break and 

then we'll have time for motions. 

 MS. MUNN: Very good. 

 DR. MELIUS: It's also why I was wiggling 

around. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And Mike, we'll be back in about 

15 minutes. 

 MR. GIBSON: Okay, I'll call back. 

 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 3:10 p.m. 

to 3:30 p.m.) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you for your patience, 

everyone. We're ready to reconvene. I want to 

check and see if Mike Gibson is still with us. 

Mike, are you on the line? 

 (No response) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let's see -- Cori, can you check 

to see if Mike is on the -- 

MS. HOMER: He's not on the line. We're trying 

to reach him. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Mr. Owens has 

requested that we be reminded of the 

requirements of the SEC legislation, and Dr. 
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Wade is going to read the appropriate parts 

from the Federal Register for us. 

 DR. WADE: Right, I'm reading from 42 CFR Part 

83, Procedures for Designating Classes of 

Employees as Members of the Special Exposure 

Cohort Under the Energy Employees Occupational 

Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000, the 

Final Rule. I'm reading 83.15, How the Board 

will Consider and Advise the Secretary on a 

Petition. I'm assuming that's what you would 

like read. 

 (Reading) 83.15(a), NIOSH will publish a notice 

in the Federal Register providing notice of a 

Board meeting at which a petition will be 

considered and summarizing the petition to be 

considered by the Board at the meeting, and the 

findings of NIOSH from evaluating the petition. 

(b), the Board will consider the petition and 

the NIOSH evaluation report at the meeting, to 

which petitioners will be invited to present 

views and information on the petition and the 

NIOSH evaluation findings. 

In considering the petition both NIOSH and 

members of the Board will take all steps 

necessary to prevent the disclosure of 
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information of a personal nature concerning the 

petitioners or others where disclosure would 

constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of 

personal privacy. 

(c), in considering the petition the Board may 

obtain and consider additional information not 

addressed in the petition or the initial NIOSH 

evaluation report. 

(d), NIOSH may decide to further evaluate the 

petition upon the request of the Board. If 

NIOSH conducts further evaluation, it will 

report new findings to the Board and the 

petitioners. 

(e), upon the completion of the NIOSH 

evaluations and the deliberations of the Board 

concerning a petition, the Board will develop 

and transmit to the Secretary a report 

containing its recommendations. The Board's 

report will include the following: (1), the 

identification and inclusion of the relevant 

petition; (2), the definition of the class of 

employees covered by the recommendation; (3), a 

recommendation as to whether or not the 

Secretary should designate the class as an 

addition to the Cohort; and (4), the relevant 
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criteria under 83.13(c), and findings and 

information upon which the recommendation is 

based, including NIOSH's evaluation reports, 

the information provided by the petitioners and 

any other information considered by the Board, 

and the deliberations of the Board. 

Let me quickly read from 83.13(c), since it's 

referred and I think it's relevant to what you 

are asking. 

And now I'm reading from 83.13(c), (reading) 

NIOSH will evaluate records and information 

collected to make the following determinations: 

(1), it is feasible to estimate the level of 

radiation doses of individual members of the 

class with sufficient accuracy? (Punctuation 

read) (i), radiation doses can be estimated 

with sufficient accuracy if NIOSH has 

established that it has access to sufficient 

information to establish the maximum radiation 

dose for every type of cancer for which 

radiation doses are reconstructed that could 

have been occurred (sic) in plausible 

circumstances by any member of the class, or if 

NIOSH has established that it has access to 

sufficient information to estimate radiation 
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doses of members of the class more precisely 

than an estimate of the maximum radiation dose. 

NIOSH must also determine that it has 

information regarding monitoring source, source 

term or process from the site where the 

employees worked to serve as the basis for a 

dose reconstruction. This basis requirement 

does not limit NIOSH to using only or 

preliminarily (sic) information from the site 

where employees worked, but a dose 

reconstruction must, as a starting point, be 

based on some information from the site where 

the employees worked. 

I think that covers the relevant portions now. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. Counsel has 

some additional comments here. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Did that say "preliminarily" 

or "primarily"? 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think it was "primarily," but he 

may have said "preliminarily." 

 DR. WADE: It says "primarily." I misspoke. 

Thank you. Primarily. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I know that too well. 

 DR. ZIEMER: A question, Denise? 

MS. BROCK: Yes, just one more, sorry. At the 
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30-day meeting or any other proceedings 

relevant to Mallinckrodt, as a petitioner I 

would like for the record to be noted that I'd 

like to be notified so that I can attend these 

meetings. 

 DR. ZIEMER: What meetings? 

 DR. WADE: Any other meetings that take place 

regarding the SEC petition. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Thank you. The Chair 

now recognizes Wanda Munn for purposes of 

making a motion. 

 MS. MUNN: Based on the information that we 

have received during this meeting, and upon the 

assurance of NIOSH that it is feasible for them 

to complete dose reconstructions on employees 

of the Mallinckrodt Chemical -- what is their 

correct name -- Mallinckrodt facility -- 

Mallinckrodt Works, yes -- from the -- let me 

start over again. 

Based on the information that we have received 

in this meeting, and on the assurance of NIOSH 

that it is possible for them to complete 

adequately a dose reconstruction for workers of 

the Mallinckrodt -- of the Uranium Division of 

Mallinckrodt Chemical Works from the years 1949 
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through 1957, I move that the SEC petition 

00012-1 and 2, sections 2, covering all DOE, 

DOE contractors or subcontractors, or AWE 

facilities who worked in the Uranium Division 

at the Mallinckrodt Destrehan Street facility 

during the period from 1949 through 1957 be 

denied. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, you've heard the motion. 

The Chair's going to interpret that you have 

meant that we would recommend to the Secretary 

that it be --

 MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- denied. 

 MS. MUNN: That was my intent. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Is there a second? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Second. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The motion has been seconded. It 

is now on the floor for discussion. 

 MR. GIBSON: (By telephone) Dr. Ziemer, could 

I ask who seconded the motion? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Seconded by Mr. Presley. 

 MR. GIBSON: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim Melius. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, based on my earlier 

comments, I would move to table the motion. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: There's a motion to table. Motion 

to table is not discussable (sic). Is there a 

second, however? 

 MR. GIBSON: I would --

 DR. ZIEMER: It's seconded. 

 MR. GIBSON: I would second that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's been seconded. We must vote 

immediately on tabling. Tabling requires a 

two-thirds vote. All those in favor of tabling 

-- and let me -- let me -- this is information. 

The motion's not debatable. If the motion 

carries, it has the effect of postponing until 

the Board removes it from the table, which may 

be at a subsequent meeting. It's not been 

designated. If the motion carries, the Board -

- or the Chair will entertain a subsequent 

motion that would contain, hopefully, 

instructions on what NIOSH and the contractor 

are to do in the meantime, and that motion 

could come later in the meeting. 

All those who favor tabling this motion, please 

raise your right hand. Now I'll call for a 

voice vote from Mike -- one, two, three, four, 

five, six, seven, eight -- and Mike? 

 MR. GIBSON: Table the motion. I vote to table 
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the motion. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Vote to table. Then the Chair 

declares that the motion has carried, and the -

- the motion to recommend that the petition be 

denied has been tabled, which has the effect of 

postponing action until the -- until the item 

is removed from the table. 

Okay. In essence, that then completes the 

Mallinckrodt action for today. However, the 

Chair indicated that we would entertain a 

motion that would have some instructions as to 

what our contractor and what NIOSH should do. 

And I might add that it's not necessary that we 

make this motion at this moment if -- if the 

Board wishes to give some thought, or even have 

the subcommittee itemize some priority items of 

the type we said -- talked about before. Now 

Jim. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I'd like to first start, 

rather than with a motion, with some discussion 

as to how we can -- can best proceed, and to 

proceed as efficiently as possible I think is 

important for the petitioners and also I think 

to be cognizant of the amount of time and 

resources that have already been spent in -- on 
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-- on this issue and try to resolve it as 

readily as possible. And so I -- so I guess 

the question is what is -- the first thing I 

think we need to do is specify the particular -

- as much as we can, based on what we've heard 

from SC&A and from NIOSH on what -- what 

particular -- how -- prioritizing SC&A's 

comments on the site profile so that NIOSH pays 

particular attention to those. And I guess the 

question I would raise to the Board is do we 

want to do that as part of our subcommittee's 

function, since the subcommittee initially 

started that this morning and I think that may 

be best, or we can do it as the full Board. 

But I'm comfortable either way, so -- you know, 

frankly, I wasn't at the subcommittee meeting, 

so I would -- I had missed out on some of that 

discussion, so --

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, and let me point out that 

during the subcommittee meeting there were a 

number of items identified -- I think five 

perhaps -- that were perhaps the priority 

items, but those would need the blessing of the 

full Board at some point. But -- and we do 

have scheduled a subcommittee meeting this 
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evening, and the Chair's going to propose that 

-- that we move to the subcommittee meeting 

fairly soon, like by 4:00 o'clock or something, 

because we had allowed until 5:00 for work on 

the petition, but since we're now ahead of 

schedule we could have the subcommittee work on 

that yet this afternoon and -- and formulate a 

recommendation to the full Board for action 

tomorrow. 

 DR. MELIUS: And then I would propose, based on 

that, report and action from the subcommittee 

that we could then introduce a motion tomorrow 

as to what needs to be done to resolve this 

issue, what would the next steps be and do that 

relevant to the petition, also. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We may also wish to talk about 

when -- when we might meet again. It might be 

important for us to have a meeting soon to 

learn the status of the 30-day work, if that's 

what -- if that's the direction we go. We may 

not be ready with the -- the report on how dose 

reconstructions are going, but at least -- may-

- maybe a meeting sooner than we would 

otherwise have met. 

 DR. WADE: Right. I mean in my role as DFO, 
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given what I've heard this morning, I -- I 

would think we need to be prepared to meet in 

August, very soon after the 30-day clock would 

tick down --

 DR. ZIEMER: Mid to late August, perhaps. 

 DR. WADE: -- to address this issue. So I'd 

ask you to begin to think about that. I do 

think it's important that we deal with this in 

a -- in a timely way. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, could -- could I request 

that the subcommittee then, as part of 

developing this list of priority issues, then 

have discussions with NIOSH and SC&A so we're -

- we're sure that it is feasible to resolve it, 

whether it's 30 days or 40 days or whatever, so 

that we don't -- I think it would be a mistake 

to have a premature -- a meeting before things 

are adequately resolved, but at the same time I 

don't think we want to delay -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think it would be appropriate to 

do that, and if -- if perhaps someone from SC&A 

and from NIOSH could join us for the 

subcommittee meeting shortly and -- and we can 

identify those things and bring them firmly to 

-- to the Board in the morning for formal 
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action, and -- and perhaps a vote of 

confidence, as it were, in the action. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

 MR. GIBSON: Dr. Ziemer? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Mike? 

 MR. GIBSON: I would like to also add and -- 

and again, I'm a little behind the 8-ball here 

since I wasn't able to attend, but I think we 

still have this issue on the table of dealing 

with the adequacy, the timeliness and the 

thoroughness of the information that is given 

to NIOSH to make these dose reconstructions 

that we -- we struggled with that caused a 

problem with the Iowa petition. And I think 

the subcommittee or the working group needs to 

put that on the agenda, also. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. GIBSON: And secondly, if I could, I would 

like to make a motion that it's not NIOSH's 

fault, it's not SCA's fault, it's not our 

fault, but I would also like to make a motion -

- just as we did in Idaho (sic) -- to draft a 

letter of regret to the petitioners and 

survivors of St. Louis plant for delaying this 

process even further. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: I will interpret that as a motion. 

Are you asking that that be expressed verbally 

or that there be a formal letter? 

 MR. GIBSON: Yes, I'm asking for a motion from 

the Board. I'm asking for a motion and that 

the Board would agree to that, same as we did -

- as in Idaho -- or, I'm sorry, Iowa. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Iowa? The motion is that there be 

a letter from the Board, I believe, to the 

petitioners --

 MR. GIBSON: And survivors. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- expressing -- and their -- and 

the survivors, expressing our regrets that this 

delay has had to occur. I believe that is the 

motion. Is there a second to that motion? 

MR. OWENS: I second it, Dr. Ziemer. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Leon Owens has seconded the 

motion. Is there discussion on this motion? 

Wanda? 

 MS. MUNN: I hesitate to do that. I have no 

compunction at all about expressing verbally 

and in our minutes our -- our concern over 

further delay. But I don't know what this 

Board could have done to expedite this issue 

any further than we have, other than to ignore 
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I 

the precision that we've asked for from our -- 

from our contractors and from our agencies. 

don't know what else we could have done and I 

certainly hesitate -- as a matter of fact, I 

would be greatly averse to any move to back off 

from our request for thoroughness, and so 

therefore I would not support this motion. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Leon? 

 MR. GIBSON: Could I --

MR. OWENS: I think --

 DR. ZIEMER: Leon, Mike -- Leon is -- 

 MR. GIBSON: Okay. 

MR. OWENS: I don't think it is a retreat from 

any position that the Board has taken, but I do 

think that this Board -- since we serve at the 

pleasure of the President, and since this Board 

was created by the Congress, and since we have 

workers who have given their lives for our 

freedoms, I think the least that we can do is 

to send a letter of regret, as was done before. 

These folks that have been sitting here for the 

last couple of days, some of them are just as 

unfamiliar with this process as if we were to 

have a child in here. And they don't fully 

understand what's going on. The only thing 
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that they know is that they have been waiting 

for years, watching their loved ones die, to 

have claims paid. And so I do not feel that it 

is in any way an imposition for us to send a 

letter of regret. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, so you speak for the motion. 

Others wish to speak for or against the motion? 

 MR. GIBSON: Dr. Ziemer, I'd like -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Mike, thank you. 

 MR. GIBSON: -- to respond to my -- with 

respect, to my colleague, Wanda. Again, I'm 

not blaming anyone, any organization, but you 

know, I just -- I think Leon pretty much 

represented what I said. We serve at the 

pleasure of the President. We have a duty and 

this is a cumbersome process. And given the 

facts that the issues that have taken place 

that are delaying this -- just like Leon said, 

there are people that are dying, there are 

people that need medical bills paid, and -- 

again, in Iowa my first motion was a letter of 

apology, and I chose -- you know, I chose a 

friendly motion to amend that to regret, and 

that's why I think we deserve the same for 

these people at Mallinckrodt. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Anyone else wish 

to speak? Anyone speaking against the motion? 

Anyone speaking for the motion? 

 MS. MUNN: I have one more comment. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Wanda. 

 MS. MUNN: I am in full accord with the intent 

and the sentiment involved here. But I would 

respectfully point out that all of the people 

who are ill and dying are not former employees 

of Mallinckrodt. We have multiple sites with 

multiple people who have similar kinds of 

concerns and similar kinds of pain. If we are 

to apologize, if we are to express our 

concerns, then it appears that we owe all 

people that apology, not simply the group with 

whom we are dealing right now. That's an 

unfortunate reality of what we're doing. But 

again, I repeat, it's a result of our desire 

for efficiency and our desire for as complete 

information as we can get. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. I think Leon was next and 

then Rich. 

MR. OWENS: I think as we go to the different 

site and as we're faced with circumstances 

similar to what we have now, the Mallinckrodt 
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workers have been waiting a long time for this 

Board to consider their SEC petition and there 

have been numerous delays. And I think 

everyone recognizes that those delays have not 

always been on the part of the Board or on 

NIOSH or on SC&A. So if we are faced with 

similar circumstances at these other sites, I 

would think that this Board would also consider 

a similar remedy, to send a letter of regret to 

those individuals. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Richard? 

MR. ESPINOSA: I'm in agreement with Leon. 

This is our third meeting discussing the SEC as 

well as the sixth month. I am in full 

agreement with the letter of regret. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Any others? Mike --

 MR. GIBSON: Dr. Ziemer? 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- another comment? Yes, go 

ahead. 

 MR. GIBSON: If -- if my colleague, Ms. Munn, 

would agree, I would take her comments as a 

friendly motion that we make it a blanket 

statement to -- to every site, to -- to all of 

these petitions we deal with just -- I mean 

just to let them know that we are -- we have a 
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job to do, but we are somewhat limited by the 

whole political process. And if -- if she 

would be willing, I -- I would take a friendly 

amendment just to modify the motion to make it 

a blanket letter to each and every site or 

petition. Not saying it's, you know, right or 

wrong or every petition's going to be granted, 

but just that, you know, we regret we have to 

delay our decision sometimes based on the 

political process and not -- not blaming any 

governmental institution. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you for that sentiment, 

Mike. I think the Chair is going to interpret 

that -- and I have this prerogative -- as a 

non-friendly amendment, only in the sense that 

I'm somewhat reluctant to think about writing 

to -- how many sites are we talking about, 900 

sites or something. Yes, there are, or more -- 

I forget, but the number's not critical, Larry. 

That's -- there's more than a few sites. I --

I would -- I would hope -- you know, if this 

situation occurs, as Leon says, in the future, 

we can handle those as they come. I -- I'd 

certainly be more comfortable if we simply 

acted on this motion for this situation and 
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handle the others as -- if that's agreeable 

with you, Mike, I think we'll proceed on that 

basis --

 MR. GIBSON: Well --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- if I understand your sentiment. 

 MR. GIBSON: -- I'm sorry, I meant as they come 

up. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I -- yeah. 

 MR. GIBSON: I didn't --

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, as they come up, yes. Henry, 

your comment? 

DR. ANDERSON: I was only going to say I -- I 

think some type of communication would be 

useful because obviously the people who are 

here have heard it, but there are others that -

- I'm not sure I would send a physical letter 

to all of them, but I think to put a letter up 

on the web site or something so people -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well --

DR. ANDERSON: -- would have an explanation -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- if the motion passes, the Chair 

will prepare a formal letter similar to what we 

did in Iowa and --

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- it would -- it'd basically go 
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to Denise and I think -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- she would share that with -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Okay, that's --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- with her colleagues. That 

would be what would happen. 

Are you ready to vote on the motion? Okay, all 

in favor, say -- raise your right hand, let's 

just get a hand count -- one, two, three -- 

six. 

And those opposed to the motion? And then the 

motion carries. So ordered and we will -- and 

Mike, that -- with your permission, I will word 

that somewhat analogous to what we did for the 

Iowa situation. 

 MR. GIBSON: Okay. Well, I would be willing to 

-- to help you with that if -- if you -- if 

necessary, but -- and for the record, 

obviously, I --

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, you drafted the other one. 

I'll use that as a template, with -- 

 MR. GIBSON: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. I'm proposing that the 

issue called policy issues related to SEC 

petitions be postponed until tomorrow so that 
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we can allow the working group to get underway 

here shortly. Is that agreeable? And that --

that will be a brief item tomorrow on our 

agenda. 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Unintelligible) literature? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Can you at least --

 DR. MELIUS: Could someone tell us what it is? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I'm going to ask Lew to tell 

you what that is. 

 DR. WADE: Two things I wanted to do under 

that. One was to -- you had asked for 

information concerning the classified 

information issue, and -- and OGC was going to 

speak to that. 

I also wanted to at least put on the table this 

issue of what we do about the non-covered 

cancers when we -- when we grant an SEC. I 

don't think we -- we have to resolve that, but 

I think we need to have that issue in front of 

us and have some discussion on that. We have 

time tomorrow afternoon for Board deliberation. 

I just wanted to frame the issue, which I've 

done, and I think we need to talk about it 

tomorrow afternoon. 
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 DR. MELIUS: Okay. Mr. Chairman -- and would 

it be helpful, before the subcommittee meets, 

for us to try to work out a meeting time and -- 

for this next meeting that we're talking about? 

I mean I'm not sure which is -- you know, sort 

of which is better --

 DR. ZIEMER: I would suggest we do that 

tomorrow, but if you -- if you prefer to do it 

today, we can --

 DR. MELIUS: Well, I think we're all here. I'm 

just a little hesitant that -- that we start to 

lose people tomorrow afternoon and -- and also 

it might be sort of easier to... 

 DR. WADE: Well, let's take a shot -- last week 

in August, last full week in August, week that 

starts on the 22nd? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we'll go right around the 

table and check calendars here. Last week of 

August? 

 DR. WADE: Week that starts on the 22nd. I 

would propose the middle of that week, let's 

say the 23rd/24th. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, the week that starts the 22nd? 

 DR. WADE: Right. 

 DR. MELIUS: That's fine with me. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: I believe -- let me ask -- there's 

a counterpart group of ours that deals with the 

veterans, and Melanie, I'm going to ask you to 

remind me when your group meets, because I'm 

supposed to be there for that meeting. Is it 

the 24th of August? 

 MS. HEISTER: No, that is the 17th and 18th. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 17th of August. All right -- yes. 

I thought I hadn't written it down, it is here. 

Okay. 

 DR. WADE: So the 23rd and 24th, just let's go 

around. Wanda? 

 MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 DR. WADE: Leon? 

MR. OWENS: Yes, sir. 

 DR. WADE: Roy? 

 DR. DEHART: Edinburgh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: He's out. 

 DR. WADE: Mark? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Roy's out. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I'm okay. 

 DR. WADE: Robert? 

 MR. PRESLEY: (Inaudible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Rich? 

MR. ESPINOSA: I'm having a little bit of 
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problems with -- is it going to be two days of 

-- two full days of meetings or -- 

 DR. WADE: No, no, no, just a phone call. Oh, 

no, this is --

 MR. GRIFFON: No, this is a --

 DR. WADE: Yet to be determined. 

MR. ESPINOSA: I'm looking at this Board agenda 

and it has a -- August for a conference call 

and you're -- you're talking about a face-toface meeting for a full two days? 

 DR. WADE: I am talking about a face-to-face 

meeting, the length of which has to be 

determined I think by the issues in front of 

us, but I would say a minimum a day and a 

maximum of two days. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Might be a day and a half, though. 

 DR. WADE: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I -- I would -- I'm clear. 

 DR. WADE: Mike? 

 MR. GIBSON: You're saying the 22nd or 23rd of 

August? 

 DR. ZIEMER: 23rd and 4th. 

 MR. GIBSON: Yes, I could do it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 23rd and 4th. 

 DR. WADE: Yes? 
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 MR. GIBSON: Yes. 

 DR. WADE: Okay, so we have Dr. DeHart not 

available and Richard questionable. 

MR. ESPINOSA: I'm questionable. I can make --

the problem is I have something on the 22nd, 

which would be my travel day, so it's 

questionable I -- if I can make it for the full 

two days. 

 DR. WADE: Okay. Let's consider that then 

tentatively set. We do have to define the 

issues and we have to hear from NIOSH and SC&A 

as to the feasibility of this, but now we have 

-- we've put a mark in the sand for the days of 

the 23rd and 24th of August for the Board to 

get together to deal with the issues of the 

Mallinckrodt site profile. 

 MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) Do we want to do 

that in Cincinnati (unintelligible) everybody? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Do what? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Do it in Cincinnati where we've 

got all their resources. 

 DR. WADE: Okay, the proposal is Cincinnati. 

It's in -- it's sort of in the middle of the 

country. 

 DR. MELIUS: So is in St. Louis. I mean I --
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if we're going to do Mallinckrodt, I mean I -- 

that's the main focus, I think Mallinckrodt has 

some --

 DR. WADE: Well, we have to do some work in 

terms of hotels. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I --

 DR. WADE: Let us start that. We have enough 

now to begin the process. I think it's 

appropriate to move on with the subcommittee 

deliberations. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 DR. MELIUS: Do we have another meeting, I 

guess is the -- are we going to try to do 

another meeting time after that or are we -- 

 DR. WADE: Well, we will -- we'll do that 

tomorrow. 

 DR. WADE: This, in essence, would replace the 

telephone meeting we scheduled for August, I 

believe. 

 DR. WADE: Right, and Cori has calendars on -- 

no, we're looking at late September, early 

October for the next meeting. I think we'll 

continue with that. 

 MR. PRESLEY: We were asked to hold our dates 

in September. 
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 MS. MUNN: 27th through --

 MR. PRESLEY: Right, we were asked to hold the 

27th --

 DR. ZIEMER: Week of the 26th was the -- 

 DR. WADE: At this point I wouldn't change 

that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, better hang onto those. 

 DR. WADE: We have an awful lot to do. We have 

SECs coming up that have qualified in a time 

that we'll need to get together late September, 

early October. 

 DR. MELIUS: For the record, I'm not available 

then now. I've got a sub-- you sent out a 

subsequent correspondence saying the meeting 

was going to be moved, and I don't... 

 DR. WADE: We'll work on that tomorrow. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other comments on 

that? 

Okay, then we're -- we're going to begin the 

subcommittee meeting at 4:15. We'll take a 

break. Subcommittee then will reconvene at 

4:15. 

 MR. GIBSON: Dr. Ziemer? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Mike? 

 MR. GIBSON: Could I ask Dr. Wade to give me a 
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call at home? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. GIBSON: (Unintelligible) talk to him just 

for a second. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So noted. 

 DR. WADE: Okay, thank you. 

DR. ROESSLER: Is there a restriction --

 MR. GIBSON: Do you have my number? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Question? 

DR. ROESSLER: Is there a restriction on the 

number of Board members that can attend the 

subcommittee meeting? 

 DR. ZIEMER: No. Thank you, we're recessed. 

(Whereupon, the full Board concluded its 

meeting at 4:00 p.m.) 
_____________________ 

250 

C E R T I F I C A T E OF COURT REPORTER 

STATE OF GEORGIA 

COUNTY OF FULTON 

 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 

Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 

above and foregoing on the day of July 6, 2005; 

and it is a true and accurate transcript of the 

testimony captioned herein. 

 I further certify that I am neither kin 

nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 

have any interest in the cause named herein. 

 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 

6th day of August, 2005. 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102