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 

TWENTY-SIXTH MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

VOL. II 

The verbatim transcript of the Meeting of the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health held at 

the Shilo Inn Suites, 780 Lindsay Boulevard, Idaho 

Falls, Idaho, on August 25, 2004. 

NANCY LEE & ASSOCIATES 

Certified Verbatim Reporters 

P. O. Box 451196 

Atlanta, Georgia 31145-9196 

(404) 315-8305 
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C O N T E N T S
 

REGISTRATION AND WELCOME 

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

Mr. Larry Elliott, Executive Secretary . . . . . . . . .6 

ADMINISTRATIVE HOUSEKEEPING 

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

Mr. Larry Elliott, Executive Secretary . . . . . . . . .6 

USE OF UNCERTAINTY IN DOSE RECONSTRUCTION 

Dr. Jim Neton, NIOSH . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ISSUES UPDATE 

Mr. Russ Henshaw, NIOSH 51 

SUBCOMMITTEE STATUS 

Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair 65 

PUBLIC COMMENT 172 

REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF DRAFT MINUTES, MEETING 25 197 

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

Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 

ADJOURN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .256 

COURT REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
 

Legend of the transcript: 

[sic] Exactly as said 

[phonetic] Exact spelling unknown 

-- Break in speech continuity 

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

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

BOARD MEMBERS
 

CHAIR
 

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D. 

Professor Emeritus 

School of Health Sciences 

Purdue University 

Lafayette, Indiana 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
 

ELLIOTT, Larry J.
 

Director, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
 

Cincinnati, Ohio 

MEMBERSHIP
 

ANDERSON, Henry A., M.D. 

Chief Medical Officer 

Occupational and Environmental Health 

Wisconsin Division of Public Health 

Madison, Wisconsin 

ANDRADE, Antonio, Ph.D. 

Group Leader 

Radiation Protection Services Group 

Los Alamos National Laboratory 

Los Alamos, New Mexico 

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

Director 

The Vanderbilt Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine 

Professor of Medicine 

Nashville, Tennessee 

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 

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 

 AGENDA SPEAKERS
 

(in order of appearance) 

Dr. Jim Neton, NIOSH 

Mr. Russ Henshaw, NIOSH 

Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair 

STAFF/VENDORS
 

Cori Homer, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH 

Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court Reporter 

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 AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS
 

ANDERSON, BETTY A. 

BEATTY, EVERETT RAY 

BODNAR, LOUIS Z. 

BRAILSFORD, BEATRICE 

BRANDAL, LYNDA 

BRASWELL, TODD 

CASE, DIANE L. 

CHANG, C.C. 

CODDING, SHIRLEY 

COLVIN, J.C. 

DEEP, HEIDI 

EGBERT, H. DOYLE 

ELLISON, CHRIS 

FRY, DAVID 

HEISTER, MELANIE B. 

HENSHAW, RUSS 

HOSS, LARRY A. 

JENSEN, CLINTON 

JONES, BERTHA 

KATZ, TED 

MCCURDY, PEGGY 

MCCURDY, WILBERT 

MILLER, RICHARD 

OSTROW, STEPHEN L. 

OSWALD, ELEANOR 

PETERSON, HENRY K. 

POWELL, STEVE 

PRESLEY, LOUISE S. 

QUINN, JOHN D. 

RICH, BRYCE L. 

RINGEN, KNUT 

ROCKWALD, LYNN 

ROHRIG, NORMAN 

SCHAEFFER, D. MICHAEL 

SCHAUER, DAVID 

TENFORDE, THOMAS S. 

TOOHEY, R.E.
 

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P R O C E E D I N G S
 

(8:30 a.m.) 

REGISTRATION AND WELCOME 

DR. ZIEMER: Good morning, everyone. 

We'll reconvene for the second day of this Board 

meeting. 

 ADMINISTRATIVE HOUSEKEEPING 

We have a number of administrative matters to 

take care of. I think if Cori is here -- Cori, 

let's start out with the information on our next 

meeting and make sure everybody has the time and 

date and location. You may recall originally we 

thought we were going to be headed to Washington, 

D.C., but actually could not find a hotel there, 

so we went to Plan B. So Cori will tell us about 

Plan B. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Which, for some, was Plan 

A, actually. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. I think some of you 

are already aware, we'll be meeting in San 

Francisco in October. There were -- there was no 

room at the inn, so to speak, in Washington, due 

to the elections. And we will be staying at the 

Westin St. Francis. I've reserved three days, 

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one for the subcommittee meeting and two for the 

full Board meeting, for the 19th, 20th and 21st. 

It'll be up to you to decide which of those days 

will be for the full Board and the subcommittee, 

as I haven't made final arrangements for that. 

The contract was just signed last week. 

DR. ZIEMER: I think the subcommittee 

will have to go on the day before the Board 

meeting --

MS. HOMER: I believe so. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- so we'll put that on the 

19th and then the Board on the 20th and 21st. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Huh? Right? 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. I mean just so you 

know, the Board of Scientific Counselors for 

NIOSH meets on the 21st, so I won't be able to be 

there. I had us down for the -- Monday, Tuesday, 

Wednesday. 

DR. ZIEMER: What -- the 19th is a 

Tuesday? 

MS. HOMER: It's a Tuesday. I was 

trying to avoid folks flying on weekends. 

DR. MELIUS: The 21st is bad for me 

then, too, if I'm still on. I don't know if my 

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term's up or what's going on. 

DR. ZIEMER: Are people willing to fly 

on the 18th if --

DR. ANDERSON: Well, the 18th would be 

the subcommittee. 

DR. ZIEMER: I mean on the 17th. But we 

don't know about availability at the hotel at 

this point. Right? 

MS. HOMER: I can check and see if we 

can rearrange those dates, if I can renegotiate 

the contract. 

DR. ZIEMER: Do we lose two of you on 

the 21st? Is that -- but everybody's okay if we 

went 18, 19, 20? Could you check on that then? 

MS. HOMER: I'll check into it and get 

back with you. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let's see if -- we'll see 

if we can get that modified. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. Okay, 

go ahead. 

MS. HOMER: All right. Now the 

following meeting -- I'll put Washington, D.C. on 

the top of the list and see if we can arrange 

that, but I'll need some dates for the meeting 

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following the October meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: We're at mid-October. 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. Do we want to try 

for late November? 

DR. ZIEMER: We're probably going to get 

into December, at the earliest, it's -- I would 

suspect. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. Well, there's the 

1st, 2nd and 3rd of December. December 1st, 2nd 

and 3rd? 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, let's -- let's check 

the December dates. I'm out of the loop 1st, 2nd 

and 3rd. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: How about the week of the 

6th? Out all week? 

MS. HOMER: Gen is out? 

DR. ROESSLER: (Off microphone) Well, 

until the 9th. 

DR. ZIEMER: Again, we're now looking 

for -- well, we can still go two days, depending 

on who's on the subcommittee. 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

DR. DEHART: The week of the 13th? 

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DR. ZIEMER: 9th and 10th are out? 9th 

and 10th are okay? 

DR. DEHART: The 10th isn't for me. 

DR. ZIEMER: The 10th is not. Okay. 

Let's kind of keep track of -- the 10th we would 

lose one person? 

DR. MELIUS: Lose two. 

DR. ZIEMER: Lose two, okay. Let's look 

at third week, 13th -- week of the 13th. Let me 

just go through the --

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) I'm out 

on the 17th. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Rich is out on the 

17th. 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) Actually 

16th and 17th. 

DR. ZIEMER: Sixteen and 17 out -- 13, 

14, 15? 

MS. HOMER: Looks good? 

DR. ZIEMER: Thirteen, 14, 15? 

MS. HOMER: Okay. How about an 

alternate? Is that --

DR. ZIEMER: Tentative, December 13, 14, 

15 in D.C. Let's look at a fall-back... 

MS. HOMER: Yeah, alternate location. 

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DR. ZIEMER: I'm going to assume the 

week of the 20th is probably not very good. 

MS. HOMER: Huh-uh. 

MS. MUNN: That's a good assumption. 

DR. MELIUS: But nobody has meetings on 

the 24th and 25th, so they're free. 

DR. ZIEMER: The week of the 27th? A 

sufficient number of groans that -- okay, now 

we're into January. Week of --

MS. HOMER: The 3rd? 

DR. ZIEMER: Week of January what? 

MS. HOMER: January 3rd? 

DR. ZIEMER: Week of January 3rd. 

DR. ANDERSON: I have a conflict on the 

5th. 

DR. ZIEMER: I do, too -- 6th or 7th? 

DR. ANDERSON: 6th I do. 

DR. ZIEMER: Conflict? 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, 5th and 6th. 

MR. ESPINOSA: We're talking about D.C. 

on this. Right? 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me check again. 

January 3rd and 4th? 5th? 3rd, 4th and 5th? 

DR. ANDERSON: I've had -- the 5th is a 

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problem. 

DR. ZIEMER: 5th is a --

DR. ANDERSON: 5th and 6th. 

DR. ZIEMER: Actually I have a conflict 

on the 5th, also. 

Week of the 10th. 

MR. ELLIOTT: 10th, 11th and 12th is not 

good. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Inaudible) 

DR. ZIEMER: In where? 

MR. ELLIOTT: She's saying in January 

before the inauguration --

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, before the 

inauguration. 

MS. HOMER: The week of the 17th? Is 

that okay -- 24th? 

UNIDENTIFIED: 24th is fine. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Are we stuck to D.C.? 

DR. ZIEMER: 24? 

MR. ESPINOSA: Can we --

DR. MELIUS: I've got a conflict the 

week of the 24th. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Can we select an 

alternate location, too? 

MR. PRESLEY: That's what I was going to 

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say, if we couldn't -- if we can't make D.C. the 

13th, 14th and 15th, can we select an alternate 

location, go to Cincinnati that week or 

something? 

MS. HOMER: Well, would you consider 

something a little more southern, because it's 

winter? It might make it a little easier for 

travel. 

DR. ZIEMER: That probably will work 

better to have an alternate location rather than 

an alternate date, it appears. Otherwise you're 

going to get into February and it's too long. 

MR. PRESLEY: That's too long. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MS. HOMER: Amarillo has come up. 

DR. ZIEMER: Amarillo, Pantex. 

MR. PRESLEY: Amarillo --

MS. HOMER: And Savannah is a 

possibility. 

MR. PRESLEY: Amarillo, the weather's as 

bad there as it is --

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

MS. MUNN: Savannah's nice. 

DR. ZIEMER: Savannah is not really near 

the Savannah River Site. It's a nice place, but 

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if you want to go near the Savannah River Site, 

you almost have to go to Aiken. 

MS. HOMER: Or Augusta. 

DR. ZIEMER: Or Augusta. 

DR. ANDERSON: We did that. 

MS. HOMER: How close is Amarillo to the 

Pantex plant? 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, that's the -- that's 

the town. 

MS. HOMER: Is it? Okay. Would you 

like --

DR. ZIEMER: It's in the panhandle of 

Texas. It's not southern weather. 

MS. HOMER: Well, we could consider New 

Mexico again. We could do --

MR. ESPINOSA: I second. 

DR. DEHART: There is the bonus* reactor 

plant in Puerto Rico. 

MS. HOMER: Oh, I'm all for Puerto Rico. 

DR. MELIUS: There's also Amchitka. 

DR. ZIEMER: I don't think you're going 

to have many claimants from Puerto Rico. If we 

go to Amarillo, I'm not sure you're going to get 

a tour of the Pantex plant. It's probably 

unlikely, but you might get some -- how many 

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claims do we have from Pantex? Do we -- there's 

a worker group there that we could interact with. 

That would be the main reason for going to 

Amarillo would be to interact with the worker 

groups there. But I think we could find a better 

time of year for Amarillo, frankly --

MS. HOMER: Think so? 

DR. ZIEMER: -- if -- it can be pretty 

harsh. 

MS. HOMER: Well, there was a list 

originally developed from some suggestions from 

Board members of locations to go. We've been to 

almost all of them. Nashville is still on the 

list, Albuquerque we haven't been -- we've been 

into the area, but not specifically. 

DR. ZIEMER: Why was Nashville on the 

list? 

MS. HOMER: I'm not sure. 

MR. PRESLEY: There's two places close 

to Nashville. You've got Clarksville. I don't 

know how many claims we've got from up there, but 

that's close to Paducah and Clarksville. 

DR. ZIEMER: What's the closest large 

city to Paducah? 

MR. PRESLEY: St. Louis. 

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MR. ELLIOTT: Evansville. 

DR. ZIEMER: You can't get to Evansville 

from anywhere. Dick? 

DR. TOOHEY: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) considered Tampa for the (Inaudible) 

plant down there? 

MS. HOMER: Do we have work down there? 

DR. ZIEMER: Pinellas had almost no 

radioactivity in their site. They did timers and 

things. Did --

MR. ELLIOTT: Tritium is it. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, they did have tritium. 

Do you have claimants from Pinellas? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, we do. 

MR. PRESLEY: We do have claimants? 

MS. HOMER: Oh, a Tampa area --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, then that would be a 

good --

MS. HOMER: Okay, I'll put Tampa as an 

alternate. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

MS. HOMER: You'll be okay with Tampa? 

Okay. I'll bet I can get hotel space real cheap 

right now. 

DR. ANDERSON: Do we want to pick a 

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February date? 

DR. ZIEMER: Actually, for worker 

outreach, Tampa might be a better selection 

anyway than D.C. --

MS. HOMER: Would you like me to put 

that on top of the list? 

DR. ZIEMER: -- wouldn't it? 

MR. ELLIOTT: It's your choice. I just 

want to know -- I want to -- I'm lost here. Are 

we talking about December? 

MR. PRESLEY: December. 

DR. ZIEMER: December. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. So you want Tampa on 

top of the list as opposed --

DR. ZIEMER: How many prefer Tampa for 

the December meeting? How many prefer D.C.? 

Five. I actually prefer D.C. Okay, I think 

we're going to stay with D.C. for --

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- and Tampa's Plan B. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. Do we want to 

schedule a February meeting? 

DR. ZIEMER: Let's -- let's find some 

dates for February, we'll finish that up. First 

week of February, week of February 1st? Bad 

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days? 

DR. ANDERSON: Tuesday. I could change 

it -- a dentist appointment. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, that doesn't count. 

Any conflicts the first week of February? 

MS. MUNN: Are you talking about 1, 2, 

3, 4 or the 7th? 

MS. HOMER: 1, 2, 3, 4. 

DR. ZIEMER: That was 1, 2, 3, 4. How 

about the week of the 7th? Any conflicts week of 

the 7th? 

DR. MELIUS: The latter part of that 

week is bad for me. 

DR. ZIEMER: But 7, 8, 9 is okay? 

DR. MELIUS: 7, 8, 9's okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Is 10 not good? 

DR. MELIUS: 10 and 11 are bad. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MS. MUNN: 1, 2, 3, 4 is okay? 

DR. MELIUS: 1, 2, 3, 4 is okay, too. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: 1, 2, 3, 4 is -- February, 

first week of February? 

DR. MELIUS: Tampa? 

MS. HOMER: Yeah, I'll use the primary 

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and the alternate location selections you've 

made. 

DR. ZIEMER: Incidentally --

MS. HOMER: One'll be --

DR. ZIEMER: Incidentally, that first 

week of February would include January 31st. I 

think that's one day of that week. Any conflicts 

on the 31st, so that's included as the... Okay, 

we'll see what's available --

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- that week. Maybe --

which -- depending on whether D.C. or Tampa works 

out, then we can use the other one for the --

MS. HOMER: That's correct. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, very good. Thank 

you. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ANDERSON: So which -- which days? 

The start of the first of the week? 

DR. ZIEMER: She's got to check on hotel 

availability. That will influence it. 

DR. MELIUS: Cori, could I ask you --

that when we switch locations like we did for the 

next meeting or as soon as you pin down the 

dates, let us know --

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MS. HOMER: I'll let you know. 

DR. MELIUS: -- 'cause I heard by rumor 

and I -- it really disrupted --

MS. HOMER: It wasn't too much before 

you asked me, actually --

--

DR. MELIUS: 

MS. HOMER: 

No, I know, I know, but --

-- that I had booked it, so 

DR. MELIUS: I underst-- but I'm just 

saying in -- also if we keep a whole week open, 

then calendars fill up and --

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. MELIUS: -- as soon as we can pin 

down the actual dates, it's helpful. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Cori has 

some additional --

MS. HOMER: I do. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- things for us. 

DR. MELIUS: And I will speak to the 

Chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors for 

NIOSH about his scheduling, also -- not letting 

us know about meetings. 

MS. HOMER: To move on to other issues, 

for those of you that still have vouchers 

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outstanding, if you have not sent me voucher 

information this year or I'm waiting on signed 

vouchers, you need to forward those to me as soon 

as possible. We have fiscal year closeout, and 

it's a little earlier than usual this year. So 

if I haven't received any information from you by 

early September, I'm going to close out your 

voucher based on what information I have 

available. 

In the future, travel orders and 

vouchers are going to be forwarded to you via email. It's something that's been available for a 

while and I think some of you have sent that 

information when we're short of time. But it 

seems to be so much easier than Federal 

Expressing the materials to you. And I think all 

of you have the expense sheets by e-mail. If you 

don't, I'll be more than happy to send those to 

you. 

I will keep a stock of return envelopes 

on hand, so just see me if you need them so that 

you can mail your vouchers back to me without 

having to pay for your postage. 

Also, because we are --

MR. ELLIOTT: I need to reinforce that. 

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 If you don't get your vouchers in, we're going 

to be pestering you. 

MS. HOMER: Oh, yeah. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Because I can't let Cori 

just finish them out without -- with whatever 

information she has. We will be pestering you. 

We do have to close out by the end of this fiscal 

year, and they've upped the time for closeout --

instead of first of September -- right? It's --

MS. HOMER: I think it's the first of 

September. 

MR. ELLIOTT: First of September now is 

the cutoff, so we have to get this done by the 

first of September. 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. Because, again, of 

the short time frame for fiscal year closeout, I 

need to get your time as soon as possible. So 

we're going to go back to the old system we used 

to use; just write down your time, broken out by 

preparation -- subcommittee, for those that 

served on the subcommittee, preparation; and work 

group for those that served on the work group, so 

Larry can sign off on that and give it to me 

today and I'll be able to submit it on Monday 

when I'm back in the office, make sure that y'all 

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get paid. 

Now for tour attendees for the tour of 

the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental 

Lab tomorrow morning, we need to be ready, in the 

lobby, by about 7:00, 7:05 a.m. They'll be 

sending a van by to pick us up. We'll be going 

to the local facility for a movie -- well, most 

of you I think have seen the agendas. If you 

haven't, I have them on file in back. If you ask 

me for one I'll be more than happy to provide you 

with it. 

They have suggested, as usual, casual 

dress. It will not be a windshield tour. We 

will be going inside some of the facilities, so 

dress as comfortably as possible. They have 

suggested that no one wear anything polyester. 

They set off the geiger counters. 

MR. PRESLEY: Radon. 

MS. HOMER: That's exactly what she told 

me. You can take your phones with you in the 

van, but you will not be able to take them in the 

facilities, so any electronics you have -- it 

might not be a bad idea just to leave them at the 

hotel. And they suggested bringing an umbrella 

because it looks like rain, so -- any questions? 

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USE OF UNCERTAINTY IN DOSE RECONSTRUCTION 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you very much. 

Okay, let's move on to the next agenda item 

then, which is a presentation by Jim Neton on use 

of uncertainty in dose reconstruction. 

(Pause) 

DR. NETON: Well, good morning. Thank 

you, Dr. Ziemer. The title of this session is 

use of uncertainty in dose reconstruction. This 

is something that the Board had some interest in 

at the last meeting and so I put together a 

number of slides to talk about an overview of how 

we actually assign uncertainty for different 

applications in the dose reconstructions. In the 

time I have allotted here I can't go into an 

extreme amount of depth, but maybe if I whet your 

appetites for any additional descriptions or 

whatever, we can address that maybe in future 

sessions. 

So just some rudimentaries of what the 

uncertainty is all about in the dose 

reconstruction process. As you know, the IREP 

model itself and the way Congress enacted the 

statute was that we use the IREP model, which is 

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a Monte Carlo sampling program that applies 

uncertainty to the distributions for the risk 

coefficients. And in fact, the front end input 

to that model is the dose reconstructions, which 

we also use uncertainty distributions in that 

calculation. So some of this is probably a 

review for folks, but I just wanted to set the 

groundwork. 

The value for the central tendency of an 

uncertainty distribution will represent our best 

estimate. So you know, we do go to some lengths 

to try to figure out what really is our best 

estimate of the worker's exposure at the 

facility, at that job during that time period. 

But then we can take advantage of the probability 

distribution functions within IREP to assign some 

uncertainty about that distribution to encompass 

the fact that we don't know exactly what 

happened. I mean I don't think anybody in this 

audience could say you know anything with any 

certainty, and the goal here is to address that 

uncertainty as quantitatively as possible, and 

when an exact quantitation's not possible, to 

incorporate claimant-favorable assumptions. 

That's always our overrid-- our over-arching 

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factor here is if we don't know, science can't 

inform us, we'll include some favorable 

assumptions in the uncertainty distributions. 

The distributions that we employ, and 

I'll get into this a little later, vary 

considerably depending upon the application, what 

we are doing with that dose reconstruction. 

I think we've all talked about the 

efficiency process and how we will make some 

worst-case assumptions at the beginning of dose 

reconstructions to see if, even under those 

worst-case considerations, a claimant is noncompensable or likely to be non-compensable; then 

we'll terminate the dose reconstruction. That's 

all written in some detail in our regulation, 42 

CFR part 82. 

Under those conditions the distribution 

may be represented by a constant. I mean that is 

a distribution. The simplest distribution is a 

single value. 

Conversely, if we don't have any 

information available for individual workers, as 

I discussed yesterday for -- when we use coworker 

data, we'll develop some model distribution based 

on the data available to us. If we have 5,000 

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samples, it may be that they best fit a lognormal 

distribution or normal or triangular or whatever. 

One thing I do want to point out, 

though, the uncertainty in the organ dose is one 

of the many factors involved in the calculation 

of the excess risk -- excess relative risk. 

There are a huge number of variables in these 

calculations. And in fact, it's been our 

experience that for very uncertain cancer models 

where the models are not well known, the 

uncertainty in the dose distribution makes very 

little difference in the overall probability of 

causation. You can increase the uncertainty 

distribution by a factor of two or more, and as 

long as the central estimate stays the same, your 

probability of causation won't vary very much at 

all. That's because the over-arching 

contribution to the probability of causation, the 

uncertainty in that probability of causation, is 

the uncertain cancer model. 

Early on we thought it would be best 

maybe to do a sensitivity analysis; to get our 

best bang for the buck, to go through and look at 

where we needed to focus on refining these 

uncertainty distributions where they made the 

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biggest difference. At the end of the day, 

though, there are so many factors involved that 

we could not predict with any certainty where --

you know, where we should focus our efforts. 

These are just some of the factors I've 

outlined that are involved in the uncer-- other 

sources of uncertainty in probability of 

causation. Of course the cancer model itself, 

the risk model, is uncertain. It's based on a 

finite number of cancers, primarily -- as we know 

-- from the Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bomb 

survivors. There are not a lot of cancers in 

those cohorts, and also there are issues of 

adjusting those cancers to transfer to the U.S. 

population. Of course the dose rate -- dose and 

dose rate effectiveness factor has uncertainty 

about it, as do the radiation effectiveness 

factors. 

In fact, I've gone through and looked at 

this and, for example, a lot of our exposures are 

due to alpha radiation. And as we discussed at 

previous meetings, the radiation effectiveness 

factor in our model varies, unlike the regulatory 

framework that's used in the workplace where, for 

instance, one would assign a radiation ef--

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they'll -- it'll be called a quality factor or 

radiation weighting factor. Regulatory purposes 

assign a quality factor of 20, so all doses will 

be multiplied by 20. 

In our scheme, the radiation 

effectiveness factor is allowed to vary somewhere 

between four and 100, with a best estimate around 

18. That uncertainty in itself adds a huge 

amount of overall uncertainty to the model. And 

in fact -- I'll talk about this a little later --

for models like Bethlehem Steel, that is the 

largest single contributing factor to the overall 

uncertainty for some cancer estimates. It was 

over 58 percent of the uncertainty in the PC 

calculation was due to the radiation 

effectiveness factors in certain instances. 

So it's a very complex issue. I guess 

I'm trying to lay the framework here that there's 

no simple -- simple discussion on this. 

Okay. The uncertainty distribu-- there 

are a large number of uncertainty distributions 

available to statisticians and those who do model 

data. These are examples of the ones that we've 

used in dose reconstructions thus far. I've 

mentioned that constant. That falls out from the 

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-- you know, the worst-case assumptions that we 

use, we'll assign a constant and move forward. 

The log -- the normal distribution, which of 

course is a bell-shaped curve that we may all be 

familiar with that has a central tendency and be 

characterized by the average value and some 

estimate of standard deviation -- how tightly 

that data is grouped about this little bellshaped curve. 

And the lognormal, which is really sort 

of a special case of the normal. The data tend 

to be skewed towards the lower values, and then 

there'll be a few outlyers at the upper tails --

not a few, there will be outlyer -- I guess I 

shouldn't call them outlyers. There will be 

values at the upper tails. That typically is a 

distribution that's observed in many, many 

workplace environment exposure conditions, and in 

fact most environmental conditions where you'll 

have a lot of values that are grouped fairly 

close, but then you have some processes or 

parameters that are unknown that just add 

uncertainty and create these larger values. 

The triangular distribution, which we've 

taken advantage of in some of the exposure models 

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-- and I'll talk about that later -- in my mind 

is really a sort of a claimant-favorable version 

of the lognormal in the sense that a lognormal 

distribution has a sort of a bell-shaped curve 

and then a log tail. With the triangular, you 

only know -- you only have to specify the 

minimum, the mode and the maximum value. So you 

have the smallest value, the most frequentlyoccurring value, and then the highest value, so 

you have sort of this triangle, and that triangle 

can be skewed one way or the other, depending on 

where you pick that middle value. That could be 

construed to look like a lognormal, except that 

you don't have the declining tail, so that you 

sort of extend the upper -- the distribution of 

the upper values is extended out further in -- in 

-- on the X axis. I've got a couple of pictures 

of this that will maybe help explain it a little 

better. 

I just throw this up here because this 

is -- this is the efficiency process that's 

included in our implementation guide, and just to 

point out, you know, why -- how this would work 

for a constant. As we all know, with the 

efficiency process we pick the worst-case 

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assumption. For external, say we feel that's the 

most likely mode of exposure, you add up all the 

doses based on those worst-case assumptions. If 

it's a low probability, you do the same for 

internal, and if it's low, you're done. If by 

assigning a constant to all these values the 

person ends up at ten percent, there's no reason 

to move forward. That's a great idea, and one 

would argue why not just assign a constant to 

everybody. Well, the problem is, in some of 

these calculations a constant is used six or 

eight times. And as was learned early on in the 

EPA modeling, if you keep using a constant every 

step along the way, then you end up with some 

really improbable value at the end of the day. 

So that's when we would back off and then use the 

uncertainty propagation using Monte Carlo 

techniques. 

This just sort of defines how we use the 

constant for a worst-case assumption. This is 

just a quotation out of the regulation. It 

essentially says the highest reasonably possible 

value based on reliable science, documented 

experience and relevant data. In essence, we're 

saying we wouldn't use some absurd value. We 

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wouldn't pick a million rem or something like 

that. We would evaluate the workplace 

environment and pick the highest value that would 

make sense, given that exposure scenario. 

Okay. This gets into a little bit about 

the -- I'm glad it's early in the morning. I 

hope everybody's had a little coffee. These are 

-- the titles are hard to read, but the 

distributions I think are fairly visible. And I 

just wanted to point out some examples of some 

distributions. For example, this would be a 

normal distribution, a nice bell-shaped curve. 

This is an example of -- a fairly good example of 

a triangular distribution where you have a 

minimum value, the mode -- the most frequentlyoccurring probability value, then the highest 

value we could conceive of assigning. This is a 

nice example of a lognormal. You can see it 

looks sort of like a normal in this area, but the 

you have this tail out here where there are 

straggling values that add to the overall 

uncertainty, so you've got the three. 

Now what I wanted to point out, too, I 

alluded to earlier is why not use a constant at 

every step along the way. You can do that. For 

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instance, this is -- this is right out of our 

implementation guide for external dosimetry. If 

one wants to do a fully-researched dose 

reconstruction, this is what we would do for an 

external dose. You would take the dosimeter 

reading, the value that's on the badge -- and 

that has some distribution about it; let's say 

that's plus or minus 20 percent. Now you take 

the work -- the conversion of the dose -- the 

measurement on the dosimeter to some value to the 

tissue -- to the -- the regulatory value, the 

rem, the radiation equivalent man value. That 

has an uncertainty distribution about it, and 

then you end up with the dosimeter dose. But 

then you have to propagate in -- let's say this 

person -- this was their actual readings on the 

dosimeter. Now you have readings that were 

recorded as zero. They were sensor(censored)* 

data. There's some missed dose that we have to 

add in. This in fact would be our estimate of 

the distribution of missed doses. The most 

frequently-occurring value here would be the 

limit of detection divided by two, and the 95th 

percentile tail out here would be the limit of 

detection times n, the number of dosimeters, so 

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we would generate this lognormal distribution. 

Then you have to convert the missed dose again to 

some value of badge reading to actual dose to the 

organ, come up with that dose. And then you've 

got the same situation with the environmental 

dose. 

So my point here is you've got six 

different parameters that overall end up with a 

propagated uncertainty distribution. If we --

and we do this for certain cases. We can take --

on a worst-case assumption we will take the 

highest value of each of these distributions, run 

them through the probability of causation 

calculation, demonstrate that the person's PC is 

less than ten percent, 20 percent. We don't have 

to go through these iterations, which are very 

time-consuming. To do each of these runs a 

couple of thousand times, propagate this run 

through and then you end up with this 

distribution, which you have to characterize -- I 

would say that this pretty much looks like a 

lognormal distribution, which it probably is; we 

would analyze it, of course, with some formulas 

to determine that -- and then that would be the 

input term for this person's bone marrow dose. 

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So that's how uncertainty distribution is handled 

within the actual external dose calculation. 

Now if you get to internal dose, that's 

a whole different world. I mean those of you who 

have done anything with internal dose recognize 

that coming up with an internal dose value has a 

lot more -- more assumptions involved in the 

calculation than in the external arena. So what 

we've done to simplify the calculation is that 

we've considered all internal doses to be 

lognormally distributed with a geometric standard 

deviation of three. I'll explain, in practical 

terms, what that means in the next slide. This 

gets us out of the arena of trying to account for 

the tens of different values that have uncertain 

distributions in an internal dose calculation. 

You have uncertainty in the metabolic models, you 

have uncertainty in the values that were 

measured, obtained -- you know, internal doses 

are, by nature, indirect measurements. You can't 

measure the internal dose to an organ with a 

probe. You have to take a urine sample or a 

fecal sample or something like that, so you have 

the uncertainty in that measurement. You have 

the uncertainty in once it gets in a lung, how 

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fast does it leave the lung. All these 

parameters have uncertainty. 

We didn't pick this number out of a hat, 

though. I mean there are some scientific 

publications out there that do point to the fact 

that a geometric standard deviation of about 

three is pretty reasonable. In fact, it's 

probably a very fair, if not moderately claimantfavorable, assumption. Using this assumption 

results in a range of values spanning several 

orders of magnitude at the -- there's a piece 

missing here -- the 99 percent confidence 

interval. 

This is what I mean by that. This is a 

lognormal distribution. This would be -- this is 

not IREP. This is a program called Crystal Ball, 

for those of you who may have Excel spreadsheets. 

It's a nice little add-on package that you can 

take and propagate uncertainty with any -- any 

distribution that you can -- that you'd want to 

use, using an Excel spreadsheet. 

And so here's an example of -- let's say 

that we did an internal dose calculation for an 

organ and we thought that the best estimate, the 

geometric mean of that distribution was 1,000 

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millirem, and we're going to assign it in the 

IREP input file with a geometric standard 

deviation of three. In practical terms, what 

that means is we know this value within a range 

of times three/divided by three. So we know this 

value at one standard deviation, which is 65 

percent of the values within a factor of three. 

So by definition, at three standard deviations, 

we know this within a factor of nine in either 

direction. So in practice, what this means is 

the 99th percentile upper tail would be sampled 

at 9,000 millirem and the lower tail would be 

1,000 divided by nine. I haven't done the math, 

but it's somewhere above 100 millirem. So 

somewhere slightly above 100 millirem to 9,000 

millirem is the range of doses that we would 

assign, given that our best estimate was 1,000 

millirem. 

That's a pretty wide range. I mean 

we're basically saying we don't know this value 

very well, which is the case for internal 

dosimetry. There are a lot of uncertainties 

about these calculations. Every single -- and 

Dick can correct me if I'm wrong on this. I 

think every single internal dose that we put in 

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has at least a GSD of three associated with it. 

Now let me just turn to the uncertainty 

in exposure models. Remember I said the 

distribution used depends a lot on the 

application. What I pointed out to you was the 

uncertainty that we would use when we were doing 

a somewhat fully-researched dose reconstruction, 

something that we had external badge 

measurements, we had urine samples. In many 

cases for atomic weapons employers and others, we 

have no real monitoring data for the individuals. 

We have maybe a distribution of air samples. In 

that case we would develop an exposure model. 

That exposure model would be applied to the work 

force. 

Now there are a lot of different flavors 

of exposure models one can develop. You can do, 

in the case of Blockson Chemical -- or Bethlehem 

Steel, an exposure model that covers all workers, 

because we do not know at Bethlehem Steel where 

the workers were in space and time in relation to 

their work environment. We don't necessarily 

know. That information was not collected with 

any certainty. 

So in that case, we will develop a 

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distribution from the air samples that will cover 

the range of workers. And as I said, remember, 

the best estimate -- our best estimate is -- the 

best estimate for a triangular distribution would 

be the mode. And so in the case of Bethlehem 

Steel -- you can't see it very well on this 

slide, but in the case of Bethlehem Steel, we 

feel the best estimate for exposure was two times 

the maximum allowable air concentration at that 

facility. That was based on the air samples that 

we had available at the plant. 

And we've gone over this in previous 

Board meetings. I'm just going to refresh your 

memory. We also believe that our best estimate 

for the maximum credible air concentration in 

that facility is 1,000. This 1,000 was not even 

taken at Bethlehem Steel. It was actually taken 

at Simonds Saw & Steel at one of the processes, 

but we felt that there was enough uncertainty in 

our knowledge of the Bethlehem Steel air sample 

distribution to incorporate this, just to make 

sure that we covered the bases, that we weren't 

biasing these results on the low side -- even 

though, given -- remember, our best estimate of a 

work exposure is two. 

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Some have led -- this has led some to 

the conclusion that if your best estimate is two 

-- this is the highest value on the curve -- then 

that's what's being used to do the calculation of 

probability of causation. That's what's used to 

calc-- that's not even close to the reality of 

the situation. It's a fairly complicated 

scenario, but the best I can present it is that 

what happens is in most cases what ends up being 

used is -- the mean value of this distribution, 

by the way, is 335 times the maximum allowable 

concentration. The median value is really what 

ends up being used, the value at which 50 percent 

are below and 50 percent are above. So if you 

have, for example, a cancer model that you're 

running the calculation, it's almost equivalent 

as if you put in 300 times the maximum allowable 

air concentration in the probability -- in the 

IREP calculation, is the way it's sampled. 

That depends a lot, though, on the 

uncertainty of the cancer model. The more 

uncertain the cancer model, the more this 300 

becomes the best estimate, because this 

uncertainty is dwarfed by the uncertainty in the 

cancer models and all the other coefficients. 

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Remember, I said that if your cancer model's very 

uncertain, your best estimate -- the middle value 

of the distribution ends up being the driving 

value in the uncertainty distribution. 

It varies, though, if the cancer models 

are better known, then this starts to contribute. 

But nonetheless, somewhere in this range is what 

ends up being assigned to the workers. 

We've developed several of these 

exposure models for Bethlehem -- for some of the 

AWEs, Bethlehem Steel and Huntington Pilot Plant 

I think is one of them, Blockson has one of these 

type exposure models. We believe we cover the 

range. Again, if the probability of causation is 

calculated to the 99th percentile, it's being 

driven by some fairly high values that we believe 

are claimant-favorable. And in fact these val--

this value is assigned to every single worker at 

the plant, regardless of whether -- of where they 

worked in the operation, if they were a rad 

worker or not, 'cause we don't know, so we would 

just assign that. 

It's a fairly complicated issue, but I 

think I hit the highlights there. 

Let me back up. I think I missed one 

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point I wanted to make on internal. No, I guess 

I didn't. 

Okay, that's all I had prepared to talk 

about formally. I thought this might spur some 

conversation and discussion, so I'll stop there 

and answer any questions. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Jim. Very 

stimulating presentation. Let's see what 

questions we have this morning. Any -- yes, Jim 

Melius. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, this assumption of 

internal dosimetry, the lognormally geometric 

standard deviation of three, it would seem to me 

that that would depend on the type of internal 

dosimetry test. I mean I don't know much about -

- I've -- there aren't -- their distributions, 

but it would seem to me that some are more 

accurate than others. 

DR. NETON: Yes. 

DR. MELIUS: You know, like the 

difference between a spot urine sample and a 24, 

some -- I mean I'm sure there are others -- other 

examples --

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

DR. MELIUS: -- and so I guess my 

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question is -- is there really sort of a range of 

-- should this be adjusted for different types of 

tests or what's the... 

DR. NETON: If we did adjust it, I'd say 

we'd adjust it downward, we'd tighten it. This 

would represent, in my mind, the upper range for 

some of the worst type of analyses, like 

plutonium -- the actinides, those -- so if we're 

talking about taking a urine sample where one 

millionth of the intake is being excreted in the 

urine at any given time, that kind of situation. 

I will say I mis-spoke slightly, though, 

that the tritium model is much simpler, and we do 

apply or are in the process of applying a 

different uncertainty distribution for tritium 

because that distributes itself uniformly through 

the whole body. It mimics hydrogen or water by 

that point, and so the water distribution of the 

body in your excretion is known to a somewhat 

better degree than a GSD of three, and we've 

actually developed a Technical Information 

Bulletin to address that. 

I think the answer to your original 

question is, I would say that there are better 

estimates for some of the nuclides -- like cesium 

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is easier to measure, those type nuclides. This 

GSD of three I think covers a myriad of 

possibilities and does address, I think, the 

worst case -- worst cases out there. In fact, 

the analysis -- one of the analyses that we're 

quoting was a GSD of three that was quoted based 

on -- was it the atomic veterans analysis that 

was done -- Health Physics published some 

articles about -- this has nothing to do with the 

DTRA program. This is a peer-reviewed analysis 

of how well you could reconstruct doses from the 

atomic veterans using things like lung counting 

and urine sampling, and that's where a value -- a 

GSD of three was provided. 

DR. MELIUS: And how about -- that was -

- I'm thinking of changes over time and 

techniques and... 

DR. NETON: I think the overall 

uncertainty in the measurement -- as you get 

lower and lower and closer to background, of 

course, uncertainty goes up. And as you go back 

in time, the uncertainty goes up because the 

detection limits weren't as good, maybe. But 

really, those are small, compared to the 

differences in metabolic models, breathing rates 

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-- you know, all those other factors. That's why 

we're saying within a factor of ten, 20, 100, you 

know. You incorporate all those uncertainties in 

there and you end up with -- you know, I really 

believe that you had 1,000 millirem but I can't 

tell you if -- it's somewhere between 100 

millirem and 9,000 millirem. We're pretty 

certain we've got that bracketed. And under the 

way the IREP program works, you punch that in 

there, it's sampling those high values a certain 

percentage of the time. And of course the 

ultimate decision is basically the 99th 

percentile. I can't say that that's going to 

drive the PC calculation home, because again, it 

may be -- even with that uncertainty, the overarching uncertainty in the calculation is the 

risk model. These uncertain risk models -- I 

can't over-emphasize their contribution. We have 

had cases where the best estimate, the 50th 

percentile, is in the low percentages -- one, 

two, three percent; 99th percentile is over 50. 

And that's not because of the dose 

reconstruction. It's because the risk model, the 

uncertainty and all the other -- the transfer 

fac-- all that -- the radiation effectiveness 

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factors -- so in reality, this is one component 

of the risk. I don't say it's a small component, 

but it is in many cases. And where it is a major 

component, I think we've got it covered with 

these distributions. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Mark. 

MR. GRIFFON: Do -- yeah, I'd be 

interested in the references, too, at some point, 

for -- to support that GSD of three. 

The other question I have was did -- I 

know at one point IMBA -- the authors of IMBA 

were going to construct some uncertainty analysis 

functions into IMBA so that you could propagate 

it. I'm not saying I disagree with the use of 

this, but did they -- was that ever achieved or 

have they --

DR. NETON: Well --

MR. GRIFFON: -- or does your current 

version of IMBA --

DR. NETON: The current version --

MR. GRIFFON: -- allow you to... 

DR. NETON: -- of IMBA has a function 

that is a maximum likelihood estimator, but that 

really addresses only one component and that is 

the extrapolation of all the bioassay samples to 

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the intake. So if you have six bioassay samples 

that you've taken on a person, they fit some 

curve, and you're fitting these functions to it, 

it will propagate or estimate the uncertainty in 

that intake estimate. But that's -- again, 

that's just one factor of all of these myriad of 

factors that include metabolic models and all 

that kind of stuff. So reality is, we don't --

we don't use that function. We've been sticking 

with this. 

We have looked at it. We've looked at 

all kinds of possibilities, and we believe to be 

the most straightforward is just to assign this 

distribution to the internal dose. 

DR. ZIEMER: Larry. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Jim, would you comment on 

the sensitivity analysis function of IREP and 

what that really points to when you run that? 

DR. NETON: Oh, okay. Yeah. Owen 

Hoffman's sitting here. He's probably better 

qualified to speak on that than I am, but there 

is, under the advanced features of IREP, after 

you do an IREP run, you can click on this button 

and it will give you the relative contribution to 

the overall uncertainty for a number of factors. 

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 One is the cancer model, the risk model, and 

then all those modifiers of the excess relative 

risk function are in there. It also has the 

contribution to the relati-- radiation 

effectiveness factor and the contribution to the 

radiation dose. So anyone can do this. YOU can 

do an IREP run for any case that's been -- been 

run, click on the advanced function -- advanced 

features function and look at where -- you know, 

what's driving the uncertainty in this 

calculation. And that's what I've done. We've 

done these sensitivity analyses and there's no 

clear pattern. That's the problem. Because 

there's so many -- the latency is built in there, 

age at exposure, the incidence adjustments, all 

those other factors. 

I guess I'd like to ask Owen if he's got 

anything else to add about the sensitivi-- the 

advanced features. I mean did I portray that 

properly, Owen, or... 

DR. ZIEMER: Grab a mike there, please, 

Owen. 

DR. HOFFMAN: Actually it's a thrill for 

me to sit in the back of the audience and hear 

this presentation because it's been one of the --

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my -- my areas of my career where I've been a 

strong advocate is explicit incorporation of 

uncertainty as probability distributions, 

including the uncertainty on the dose. 

Yes, in IREP there is an advanced 

feature that does a sensitivity analysis. And 

what that does is it -- it apportions the 

uncertainties of the various components of IREP 

and the uncertainty on the dose input to see 

which contributes most to the overall spread of 

values. Now that's not the same as to say which 

one contributes most to the 99th percentile of 

PC. So if you're interested in what contributes 

most to the 99th percentile of PC, go back into 

the model and fix a value as a constant and see 

what difference it makes to the 99th percentile 

of PC. It's a little bit more complicated 

calculation. 

I'd just like to mention, Jim, that in 

some of our analysis of internal dosimetry for 

some of the transuranics, you might get GSDs 

somewhat greater than three. But for things like 

iodine 131, strontium 90, cesium 137 and tritium, 

the GSDs will be much lower than that, when 

you're taking into account just the internal 

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dosimetric model. But that's exclusive of the 

uncertainty in the intake. So oftentimes the 

uncertainty in the intake will dominate over the 

uncertainty in the internal dosimetric model. 

But that won't necessarily be the case for things 

like plutonium. 

DR. NETON: Right. There's --

unfortunately there's not a ton of literature out 

there on this. This is not an area that's been 

explored in a lot of detail, and I believe that 

we're somewhat blazing the trail here in this 

area. And as we learn, we're certainly going to 

modify. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Owen, for that 

added comment. 

 Other questions? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: There appear to be none. 

Thank you again, Jim. We appreciate that. 

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ISSUES UPDATE 

Next we're going to have an update on 

scientific research issues, and this'll be 

presented by Russ Henshaw. 

MR. HENSHAW: Can you hear me? I don't 

know if this is up... 

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Well, good morning to the Board. I'm 

the epidemiologist with NIOSH Office of 

Compensation Analysis and Support. I've been 

more or less the one-man shop there for the three 

years of the program's existence. We are hiring 

another person, and I'll get into that a little 

later. 

I wanted to give you a brief update on 

our research projects, where we are. I thought 

I'd start with the lung cancer model. As you 

know, we talked about that in prior meetings. 

And just to recap, there is another version of 

IREP known as NIH-IREP, which is maintained by 

the National Cancer Institute, NCI. As you know, 

late last year NCI revised their lung model 

according to a published analysis of the Japanese 

survivor data. It was a study published in 

Radiation Research in 2003. Based in part on 

that, but also on an additional speciallycommissioned analysis, and also they based it on 

professional judgment by the scientists at NCI. 

We have not followed suit on that. 

Instead we've chosen to let the dust settle and 

evaluate that model for possible application to 

our EEOICPA-covered work force. 

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The difference between the -- then --

the change made in late 2003 -- the difference in 

probability of causation between their version 

and our version of IREP was mainly a difference 

between smokers and non-smokers. In NIH-IREP the 

PC results are generally more claimant-friendly 

to male smokers and to females exposed at younger 

ages. NIOSH-IREP remains generally more 

claimant-friendly to male non-smokers and to 

females exposed at older ages. 

Well, we learned, since the last Board 

meeting, that NCI has opted to make a further 

change to their lung model. Specifically, they 

decided to adjust for internal exposures -- that 

is chronic exposures to alpha radiation. The 

reported effect of that change is to smooth out 

the differences in probability of causation 

results at the 99th percentile credibility limit 

for smokers and non-smokers. In fact, my 

understanding is that the difference is 

practically negligible -- or at least minimal. 

I do have an update. I just learned 

from talking with Owen at this meeting that that 

change went into effect last week -- the change 

in exposure to alpha radiation. So what we've 

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done when we learned about this, basically we put 

it on hold and decided to wait until they made 

their additional change, and then resume our 

evaluation -- which we are in the process of 

doing. We have a preliminary report from SENES 

exploring the differences in the two models and 

with certain recommendations, and that's in 

internal review right now within OCAS. 

Secondly, you might recall we have a 

project going on re-evaluating DDREF, the dose 

and dose rate effectiveness factor. Just for 

those of you not familiar with that, I know the 

Board is familiar with it, but DDREF is in effect 

an adjustment factor that's built into IREP to 

account for the differences in exposures of the 

Japanese survivors compared to U.S. nuclear 

weapons workers. Specifically, the Japanese 

cohort was exposed primarily to acute doses of 

radiation at relatively high dose rate --

basically intermediate rate to high. Whereas the 

work force covered by our program -- exposed 

mostly to a chronic lower dose rate radiation. 

What DDREF adjustment does is basically account 

for the presumption that the risk per unit dose 

of radiation is less at low dose/low dose rate 

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than at acute high dose rate. 

Now although the ICRP recommends a DDREF 

of two, what we opted for in creating NIOSH-IREP 

was to use a more claimant-friendly uncertainty 

distribution -- there's actually two uncertainty 

distributions in IREP. They apply to solid 

tumors only, not to the leukemias. And our 

distributions are weighted mostly between values 

of one and two. 

At any rate, that was a controversial 

issue at the time the probability of causation 

rule was published and at the time of creation of 

NIOSH-IREP, as you all know. 

I know this is of interest to the Board, 

but it's also of great interest to us. We 

thought it was time to take a fresh look at 

DDREF, re-evaluate our assumptions and, based on 

that re-evaluation, possibly propose an 

adjustment to the DDREF. 

Where we are right now is that we 

received a preliminary report from SENES in May, 

just two and a half or three months ago -- a very 

complex and lengthy report, 88 pages long. It's 

still within an internal review in OCAS. We hope 

to complete our review and submit our comments to 

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SENES shortly -- hopefully, actually, within the 

next week or two. I've got this month on that 

slide. That may turn out to be true. 

And ultimately we do intend to submit 

any findings or recommendations to outside 

experts, either via a panel or possibly 

commission subject matter experts to 

independently review our findings. We're not 

sure yet. It's going to depend more or less on 

the ultimate report after a back-and-forth 

between OCAS and SENES. 

I talked at a previous meeting about our 

intention to upgrade NIOSH-IREP with the new 

version of Analytica. Analytica is the software 

package that functions as the computational 

engine behind IREP. At the time I prepared this 

slide, we had a projected implementation date of 

August 20th. I'm happy to report that we did go 

through with that on the 20th and transition went 

smoothly, no reported problems. And our own 

tests have shown that this new version actually 

processes cases at two or three times as fast as 

the old version. But more importantly, we can 

now process cases with 500-plus rows of exposure 

information. Previously that was very difficult 

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to do and took -- if it could be done at all, it 

frequently took 30 or more minutes. And in 

instances where we increased the simulation 

sample size to 10,000, a claim simply could not 

be processed at all. We reached a capacity limit 

and a time-out problem. 

We've also -- in conjunction with that, 

we've changed the NIOSH-IREP version number to 

5.3. The previous number was 5.2.1. 

Also, as I mentioned in the e-mail to 

the Board, the IREP summary reports now include 

the Analytica version number printed on the top 

of each summary report. Just -- avoid confusion, 

there's -- there's an IREP version number and an 

Analytica version number. Again, NIOSH-IREP is 

at 5.3. Analytica is -- version number is 3.0. 

We did begin interviewing for a research 

health scientist position. We began mid-August. 

Those interviews are actually still proceeding, 

but we should have -- should have the whole 

process wrapped up within a couple of weeks, I 

believe. And barring unforeseen circumstances, I 

would expect the new person to be on board prior 

to the next Board meeting, and I assume will 

probably be at the next Board meeting. 

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This person's primary duty will be 

applied research, as opposed to unending pure 

research. And I mention on the next slide, the 

first project will be to conduct a feasibility 

study of current occupational dose-response data. 

Incorporation of occupational studies 

into our risk models has been a primary interest 

of the Board. It is of major interest to OCAS, 

as well. We will begin that project this year. 

I do want to just remind everyone, though, that 

the probability of causation rule went into 

effect just two years ago. At the time the rule 

was promulgated, the decision had been made by 

NIOSH that the current state of knowledge of U.S. 

occupational studies was insufficient to 

incorporate it into our risk models. 

I might add also as recently as late 

last year when NCI is-- the NCI/CDC working group 

issued its report to revise the 1985 radioepi 

tables, they commented that at that time, less 

than a year ago, that estimates based on low dose 

studies are far too imprecise to be used in risk 

modeling. Well, that may be the case, but 

nonetheless, we do think it's time to take 

another look at it, and we'll begin with a 

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feasibility study. And if the -- that study 

indicates that there is a sufficient quality and 

quantity of dose-response data among occupational 

cohorts, we will launch into the next phase to --

which would be to incorporate that data as a 

supplement to our risk models wherever that may 

be possible. 

Grouping of rare and miscellaneous 

cancers, that was another priority item that the 

Board identified. As you recall, the cancers 

were originally allocated to risk groups based on 

epidemiological data mostly, but also biological 

plausibility and uncertainties. And I do want to 

clarify, by the way, an issue that came up in the 

subcommittee meeting two days ago when Larry 

asked a question about the risk group for rare 

and miscellaneous cancers. There are two things 

going on here. There are 32 IREP risk models, 

but each of those models falls into one of three 

major risk groups. Or if it doesn't, into a 

separate -- a separate risk group. And I just 

want to summarize those risk groups now. 

The three main ones we call -- group one 

is a group that includes breast cancer, digestive 

cancers, and it depends -- that risk model 

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depends on age at exposure and age at diagnosis. 

The group two cancers depend on age at 

exposure and age at diagnosis, but also 

incorporates an age-independent excess relative 

risk per sievert, as multiplied by an agedependent modifying factor. And that group 

includes cancers such as bladder, connective 

tissue, esophagus, eye, many other sites. 

Group three cancers characteristic --

the major characteristic is that the excess 

relative risk per sievert is constant for all 

ages at exposure and attained age. There's no 

age dependency. And that group includes female 

genitalia, less ovary, and lung cancer. 

There are nine additional risk models 

that we loosely call group four, but each has a 

unique -- a unique risk model. 

I might add that I think this 

exploration of -- or re-evaluation of how these 

cancers are grouped I believe dovetails into the 

feasibility study of occupational cohorts. I 

don't see why we can't look at both of these 

issues, if not simultaneously, at least in 

conjunction with each other. And I think there's 

a good deal of interplay there that needs to be 

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studied. In fact, the more I think about this, I 

don't think we can really look at the two issues 

independently. 

I have on the slide that that project is 

in the planning stage, but really it's really in 

the beginning stages. I expect a preliminary 

report from SENES very shortly. 

Projects I did not mention on the slides 

-- three, to be specific. This is late-breaking 

news. We intend to conduct a review of the 

choice of organ sites for dose reconstruction. 

Again, this is not for IREP risk modeling, but 

the choice of the appropriate organ for 

conducting the dose reconstruction. There may be 

instances, for example, where the choice of organ 

for dose reconstruction possibly conflicts with 

the way the respective IREP cancer model is 

allocated to a risk group. There may be 

instances where one could choose between two or 

three organ sites for conducting dose 

reconstruction, and maybe it's a judgment call. 

We want to re-evaluate those situations and make 

sure that if we're using an organ that's perhaps 

less claimant-friendly than another that there's 

a sufficient scientific rationale for that. Or 

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if not, change it. 

We also need to look at the -- our 

latency adjustment for bone cancer. That's a --

there's a current difference in the latency 

adjustments in NIOSH-IREP as opposed to NIH-IREP. 

NCI decided that the bone cancer model -- the 

latency adjustment for the bone cancer model more 

properly falls into a latency adjustment used for 

thyroid cancer. We have not made that change, 

but we need to evaluate that and make a decision. 

And finally, as you all know, the Health 

Energy-related Research Branch in NIOSH received 

some funds to conduct studies of CLL. They had a 

public meeting last month. Three representatives 

from OCAS attended that meeting and I guess --

not much more we can say about that at this point 

except that presumably there'll be a report 

issued from that meeting and we will proceed from 

there. 

That's really all I have at this time. 

I'd be happy to entertain any questions. 

DR. ZIEMER: Russ, would you mind just 

repeating the variables on your second group? 

MR. HENSHAW: Sure. I didn't name all 

of them. It's quite a bit, but --

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DR. ZIEMER: The main ones that you had 

identified. 

MR. HENSHAW: Bladder cancer --

DR. ZIEMER: No, not the organs, but the 

variables. 

MR. HENSHAW: Oh, I'm sorry. The excess 

relative risk per sievert depends on age at 

exposure and age at diagnosis, but an ageindependent excess relative risk per sievert is 

multiplied by an age-dependent modifying factor. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

MR. HENSHAW: Group three is the only 

one of the three main groups with no --

DR. ZIEMER: Constant with age. 

MR. HENSHAW: -- dependency on age. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other questions 

or comments? Yes, Jim. 

DR. MELIUS: Just more of a comment. 

Would it be possible on the -- since we're -- I 

think we're meeting in Washington next time -- to 

get a presentation from NCI or whoever needs to 

be involved on the smoking adjustment lung cancer 

issue? I don't know if the timing's right in 

terms of your reports that you're receiving, but 

there might be an opportunity to have them come 

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and explain it. 

DR. ZIEMER: Have they basically 

finished their work on that issue or --

MR. HENSHAW: My understanding is that 

final adjustment just went into effect last week. 

They call their report an interim report, 

pending release of BEIR VII and so forth, but --

yeah. The last I heard, by the way, is that BEIR 

VII is expected out late this year or early next 

year. Does anyone have an update on that? 

UNIDENTIFIED: We've heard that before. 

DR. MELIUS: As Cori says, check's in 

the mail. 

MR. HENSHAW: I don't know. I mean I 

guess it's possible. I guess we certainly... 

DR. ZIEMER: I can almost assure you 

BEIR VII will not be out this year. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, we'll -- we'll look 

at that and -- I think it depends -- it would be 

nice if we had something to present as a 

companion so that you can make the comparison and 

make a contrast and see the full gamut. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, that's why I was 

asking were you going to be ready. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, well --

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DR. MELIUS: And same thing -- I mean at 

some point a briefing on the SENES work on 

(Inaudible) that would be good. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Of course. All of this --

let me just speak to process. You know, we 

develop our work and we put it in front of 

subject matter experts for peer review and 

comment, as we've done with our probability of 

causation and the IREP development that we did 

when we were in rulemaking. You saw those 

subject matter expert comments. You had them 

available to you to weigh in your deliberations. 

That's the same process we would use for any 

substantive or substantial modification we would 

make to any risk model or any dose reconstruction 

methodology. We'd get subject matter expert and 

peer review comments for your benefit when we 

bring a proposal before you to evaluate. 

DR. MELIUS: It's just that there -- no, 

I agree with the procedure. I just think -- may 

be a way of sort of briefing us as you go along 

so -- rather than all at once. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Sure. 

DR. MELIUS: For example, the DDREF, if 

-- if there's a certain finding or part of report 

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that's -- has some significant implications --

MR. ELLIOTT: I agree. As you can tell, 

we're putting more resources behind this. We're 

putting more momentum into these various research 

questions you have raised as primary questions 

for us. I think it's appropriate to keep a 

standing agenda item here on research issues and 

have Russ or his other colleagues come before you 

and present status now. Okay? 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Any additional 

questions for Russ? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Apparently not. Thank 

you, Russ, appreciate the input. 

The next item on the agenda is called 

subcommittee status, and -- a comfort break has 

been requested. 

MR. PRESLEY: Good idea. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we'll take a comfort 

break. 

(Whereupon, a recess was taken.) 

 SUBCOMMITTEE STATUS 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's reassemble. 

The next item on the agenda is called 

subcommittee status. What we'll do is simply 

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start with an update on the charter, and then 

move into the report of the subcommittee. 

You should have received in your packet 

or -- I think in your packet, or as a handout, 

the final clean version of the subcommittee 

charter. The subcommittee charter was approved 

by this Board at the last meeting. You recall 

that it had to be submitted to the --

MR. ELLIOTT: Committee management. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- committee management 

office -- I was trying to get the right name --

for their approval, and that now has been 

approved and the sub-- or the charter of the 

subcommittee is in effect. So it requires no 

action. I just wanted to make sure everybody has 

a copy of it, and then to remind you that under 

the -- well first, anyone need a copy of the 

subcommittee charter? 

MR. ELLIOTT: It's under your -- it's 

under your tab which says roster, charter and 

subcommittee establishment. It should be there. 

You're going to first see the roster of the 

Board, then the charter of the Board and then the 

memo that establishes the subcommittee. 

DR. ZIEMER: Memo dated June 21st. 

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Okay? Now notice that the membership of the 

subcommittee is identified as being the 

attachment, and the attachment is the Board. So 

all members of the Board are members of the 

subcommittee. So the way that this works is that 

for a particular meeting, we can select any 

subset of the Board to serve as the subcommittee 

for a particular meeting, but it will not be the 

whole Board at any given time. We still will 

have a number -- which is somewhere spelled out 

here -- the Chair plus three members and the 

Designated Federal Official. So there's four 

members of the Board at any given meeting, plus 

the Designated Federal Official. 

Any questions on the charter itself? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, so the charter is in 

effect. The subcommittee did meet on Monday of 

this week. The individuals who met for the first 

time as the subcommittee had also comprised a 

working group that met a month ago in Cincinnati 

to develop some materials for the subcommittee to 

review and develop further, and then ultimately 

for that -- for a recommendation to come to the 

Board on procedures for selection of cases to be 

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reviewed as part of our audit process. 

So what this Board needs to do now is to 

receive from the subcommittee its recommendation 

on how to select the cases and a process for 

reviewing those cases. In that connection, there 

is a handout which consists of two pages, and the 

handout doesn't really have a title on it --

well, it says procedures for selecting and 

tracking dose reconstruction pages -- or cases, I 

guess that's the title -- dated 8/24 and it has 

as a second page a kind of flow chart. And 

actually the flow chart is the main thing that 

we'll be focusing on and the -- what looks like 

the first page is really an explanation of how 

the flow chart works. Now --

DR. MELIUS: Excuse me, I'm missing 

that. 

DR. ZIEMER: You're missing that. Okay, 

let's make sure we got a copy for Dr. Melius. 

DR. MELIUS: No, never mind. Wanda 

helped me. I put it in the discard pile. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, we weren't sure it 

was a very attractive-looking document, but that 

confirms -- we've got to dress these up in the 

future. 

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Now if you'll keep that document at 

hand, what we want to do is walk through that, 

show you what the thinking of the subcommittee 

is, and this will become a recommendation and 

basically a motion from the subcommittee for the 

Board to adopt this as a procedure. 

Now the person who really helped us sort 

of get this in usable shape was Mark, and Mark, 

if I can call on you to walk us through the 

document and explain the concept here. And as 

Mark does this, I think it would be helpful if 

the Board would recall that we talked about a 

matrix of kinds of dose reconstructions, the 

matrix being an array that represents various 

facilities, various kinds of cancers, various 

types of workers, various levels of probability 

of causation, all of the parameters of interest. 

And the thinking being that we would like to 

have a sampling from all of this -- different 

parts of this array in various amounts, depending 

on weighting. 

For example, a facility that has a lots 

of claims might therefore have more samples 

tested or reviewed than a facility with very few 

claims. But in any event, have the matrix in 

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your mind as Mark walks us through the process. 

Mark. 

MR. GRIFFON: My third attempt at this. 

We did this on the subcommittee level, too. 

Yeah, I guess the -- that is important 

to keep in mind is that I think, you know, at the 

end of the day -- in this flow sheet there's some 

parameters of interest defined here, and what I -

- what I envision happening is at the end of the 

day we want to make sure we can fill this matrix 

with a sampling of -- you know, with cases in 

those relative amounts by the time we're finished 

sampling the whole set of available claims, of 

available cases. 

So having said that, we thought we 

needed -- this is sort of to establish a 

procedure of how we're going to first select 

cases, and then sort of drop them in that matrix 

and fill our matrix up. So the first step at the 

top of that flow sheet -- it's easiest to follow 

this flow sheet, I think -- is to select the 

cases, really just using a simple random numbergenerator type selection process, and these will 

be of the available completed cases, finalized 

cases. Am I using the right terminology, Larry? 

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 The --

MR. ELLIOTT: I think they -- to be 

correct, it's the cases that have been 

adjudicated to the point where there's a final 

decision proffered. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, which I think 

currently is somewhere around --

MR. ELLIOTT: Fourteen hundred, I 

believe, that have achieved that state at DOL. 

MR. GRIFFON: So you know, we're 

thinking -- and actually we did a few trials of 

this -- just have a random sampling of those, no 

criteria, no stratification at all. And then 

take those random samples and run them through 

our parameters here and fill our matrix and --

and this is where we build in the flexibility so 

it's not a strictly statistical sampling method, 

but we as the Board or if we decide to delegate 

this to a subcommittee, but right now I think we 

as the Board would then look at these cases and 

have the information on these listed parameters 

below, and go down the list in order that they 

came up in a random selection process and decide 

-- you know, we'll take the cases and fill our 

matrix, but then if we get to a point where we've 

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got too many, in our view, of one certain type, 

then we can go to the next case. You know, we 

can exclude that, put that back in the pool, so 

to speak. Okay? So that's generally how it's 

working. 

We looked at these parameters, as you go 

down this flow sheet -- these are the primary 

parameters where we're interested in looking at 

in sort -- sort of a -- I look at them as 

descriptive statistics of the cases. And the 

reason these -- one, two, three, four -- the 

reason these five are highlighted is because 

these were criteria that we were interested in 

that were also searchable on the NOCTS system on 

NIOSH's database. 

POC categ-- and then we had some 

deliberations in our subcommittee about the 

appropriate ranges and the percentages of 

samples, and you can see to the right of each box 

on this flow sheet there's a description where we 

sort of came down and this -- this, we should 

say, is preliminary and we may want to adjust 

this in a later date, or even today if you don't 

agree with it. But this is where we came down on 

sort of the appropriate number of samples by 

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grouping. So for POC, zero to 44.9 percent, we 

went -- at the end of the day, when we fill our 

matrix, we want 40 percent of all of our cases to 

be within that group. From 45 to 49.9, we see 

that as a very sensitive, important area. We 

want a sampling of 40 percent, at the end of the 

day, to be out of that group. And the rationale 

there is -- you know, a couple of things. I 

think there -- there's some assumptions when a 

POC gets over 45 percent, the efficiency rules 

are, I believe, turned off with NIOSH and they go 

back and do a more refined dose reconstruction, 

so there's some different things that come into 

play. Also they're closer to the 50 percent 

award area, so that's why we weighted that a 

little higher. And then greater than 50 percent, 

we certainly want to sample some of those cases, 

as well, but we weighted it a little lower, 20 

percent. 

And then the next major criteria, 

facility, and the note says sample based 

proportionately on the total number of claims 

from all DOE facilities. And we've got this 

listing, and I've -- on an Excel spreadsheet I 

sort of went through this and they way I've --

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the way I've looked at it now, I tried to modify 

it slightly last night to be consistent with Jim 

Neton's presentation where he -- he's saying 

roughly -- when they have more than 40 cases for 

a site, around that area, that's when they're 

tending to do a full site profile, and -- and it 

made sense to me to -- we needed a cutoff. 

Obviously you can't sample 2.45 percent for a 

site that only has, you know, one or two claims, 

so we needed some cutoff. At 40, you're looking 

at one case. So you know, the way I laid it out 

right now, I lined -- did a list of all of our 

facilities which -- where currently they have 

more than 40 claims. And now that's going to 

change, obviously, but just -- just for a cutoff 

at this point, I chose that, and we'd sample --

DR. ZIEMER: And just for clarity, for 

example then, if -- if Idaho had ten percent of 

the total claims in the system, then we would 

expect in our matrix to -- out of our total 

sample, ten percent of that to be Idaho. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, right. And that's 

the propor-- yeah, the proportional sampling 

there is that it's proportional to the number of 

claims for those -- for the sites, so the sites 

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with higher numbers of claims, we'd sample in 

accordance with the claim percentage of the total 

claims in the system. 

And then at the -- the last grouping 

there is -- is a group of all the sites with less 

-- you know, less than a certain point, maybe 

less than 40 overall claims in the system. And 

we grouped them all together and from that pool 

we'd do a 2.5 percent sample, which is where we 

wanted to end up, if you remember, in our overall 

sampling is 2.5 percent. But the other ones, the 

-- the larger sites, we'd -- we'd sample 

proportionately, you're right, Paul. Thanks. 

The next criteria, decade first employed 

-- again, these -- we weighted by decade and, you 

know, this was -- you know, based -- I guess we 

had discussions in the subcommittee, you know, 

based on our experience at the sites. And where 

we thought that there'd be more complex, more 

difficult cases, but -- and also more, you know, 

likely higher exposures, we tended to weight 

those decades a little higher. But we didn't 

want to exclude -- you know, we certainly don't 

want to exclude the 1980's, or even the nineties 

-- nineties and beyond, I guess that would be, 

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so... 

And duration of employment the same way, 

you can see the breakout there. We -- we 

weighted zero to one year fairly heavily because 

of the concern of some workers that may -- you 

know, may have a short term at some sites, but 

they may have -- they may fall into that category 

of the unmonitored question, so there may be some 

unique circumstances that we want to look at. 

That's why -- that was our sort of rationale for 

that. 

And the final is the risk model, which 

is basically the IREP risk model, the type of 

cancer. And -- and here we left this pretty 

open. The reason we didn't want to necessarily 

say a proportional sampling is because I think if 

we look at the current statistics -- I'm not sure 

if I have the latest ones, but there are some 

fairly common cancers -- skin cancer, prostate 

cancer -- that we may not want to do a 

proportional sampling of those types of cases 

because they're -- at least for prostate it's a 

very -- fairly non-radiosensitive, too, so how 

much do we want to look at -- you know, we may 

not want to do a proportional sampling -- we do 

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say in here, though, that our intent is to 

examine cases representing each type of model, at 

least some cases exam-- you know, related to each 

type of model. So that's kind of still open. 

DR. ZIEMER: And I might insert here, 

and I think this Board could at some point decide 

on what that distribution should be. Our thought 

was at the front end, with say 20 or so sample 

cases, we may not try to -- we're not going to 

fill all these boxes anyway. But the other thing 

is, we -- it occurs to me that the three overall 

categories that Russ described to us earlier may 

be a starting point to subdivide these because 

they look at the variables in different ways and 

we may want to look at that and break those three 

categories into some distribution. But we can --

MR. GRIFFON: Uh-huh, there may be other 

ways to -- yeah. And finally, and not to be 

overlooked -- it probably shouldn't be in a 

little box in the lower right-hand corner, but I 

apologize on the format -- there's other criteria 

that we certainly have discussed on this Board 

and in our subcommittee that we think are pretty 

important parameters in, you know, looking at 

those cases where coworker data was used. The 

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thing about these criteria listed in the corner 

is that they're -- currently none of these are 

searchable criteria on the NIOSH database, so we 

can't -- total ca-- you know, we can't get the 

descriptive statistic when -- when we get a 

printout of random cases, the descriptors --

we'll get POC, we'll get facility, decade, 

duration and risk model, but we can't get these 

other parameters, so we'd have to open the case. 

So what we -- we feel that we want to -- at the 

outset we want to track this information, or have 

our -- our subcontractor track this information 

so that we get a sense of where -- and the other 

-- obviously the other parameters, just to look 

down them, monitored versus unmonitored is a 

important one. Job category is certainly 

something that we --

DR. ZIEMER: And once we start tracking 

it, we can assure ourselves that we are sampling 

across these parameters, as well. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: A priori we can't get at 

the data. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. And I guess that -

- that's -- I think that's it. That's --

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describes what we thought of as the process, 

Paul, unless you --

DR. ZIEMER: Right, and if you --

MR. GRIFFON: -- have further 

explanation. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- look at the first page 

now in terms of how it's done, we actually would 

ask NIOSH to simply use the random number 

generator to generate a group of cases. This 

Board or the subcommittee would then look at that 

list of cases and -- and see how they fit into 

the matrix, and then we could either accept or 

reject a case. But we would have a list of cases 

and you would just move on down through the list. 

The other thing is that once the cases 

are selected -- and I'm not sure that -- says so 

here, but what the subcommittee talked about was 

having -- for each case having two members of 

this Board being primarily responsible for that 

case, coupled with a contractor person who would 

work up the case, because we're not all dosimetry 

experts. We talked about that --

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, that -- I didn't put 

some of that -- I know we had discussions about 

the panels and the interface with the 

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subcontractor. That -- I think -- if we want to 

modify that, it should be in our other procedure, 

which I don't even remember the name of it, but 

we had a case processing procedure, I believe, 

and this -- I just looked at --

DR. ZIEMER: This is the tracking --

MR. GRIFFON: -- (Inaudible) I didn't 

want to overlap it with the other one, yeah, 

so... 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I don't think that it's 

any different than what you've proposed in your 

process procedure, other than what we've agreed 

to -- and certainly the Board has to weigh in on 

this -- was to -- once you select the case, we 

would create a compact disk that had your set of 

cases for you, as a member, to look at with all 

information in it. It's not redacted, so it'll 

be a Privacy Act-controlled disk, if you will, 

that would be delivered to you and the 

contractor. I think that's the only difference -

-

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think we -- we 

clarif-- I mean I think some of the discussion we 

had in the subcommittee was sort of -- now that 

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we -- 'cause we -- SCA was represented in the 

audience and we had a little further discussion 

of almost logistics, how's this going to work, 

you know, so we envisioned sort of a -- you know, 

and we still might want to --

DR. ZIEMER: But we --

MR. GRIFFON: -- write this down within 

our procedure, but the panel members could al--

you know, conference call in with SCA during the 

development. And then at some point when the 

cases are brought back to the Board, we talked 

about having a first day closed session where 

specific cases could be discussed and ca-- you 

know, case reports, but also where aggregate data 

-- an aggregate data report might be brought by 

SCA to that meeting, and then, you know, in 

closed session we could discuss the individual 

cases and the aggregate report, and then in open 

session present the aggregate findings where we 

don't -- where we can't -- can't discuss privacy 

information. So that's sort of -- we talked 

about that kind of process stuff. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, let's focus on the 

selection procedure then. So this recommendation 

comes as a -- or this comes as a recommendation 

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from the subcommittee and therefore is considered 

a motion before the Board to accept or to modify. 

So this now is open for discussion. Jim Melius 

DR. MELIUS: Okay --

DR. ZIEMER: -- then Wanda, then Rich. 

DR. MELIUS: I would have -- I like the 

proposal. I -- the only one I would question is 

the over-weighting on the duration of employment 

towards few years. You have 40 percent of the 

cases would have less than five years of work at 

a facility, and that seems to me to be high. And 

I agree that we want to pick up some people with 

short dura-- short duration, but seems to me we 

would learn more -- there'd be more work involved 

I guess, but we would learn more from looking at 

people with longer duration of exposure. 

DR. ZIEMER: And this is a good point, 

and one -- one thing that we should be cognizant 

of is that, to some extent, these are gut 

feeling, arbitrary numbers. And also we don't at 

this point know how this distribution compares 

with the claim distribution on longevity of the 

job and so on, whether -- whether we are really 

greatly over-sampling, even beyond what it looks 

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like here, compared to the number of claims. So 

it's a point well taken and if someone wishes to 

revise the numbers, it's quite appropriate. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, and I mean I was just 

trying to look at -- as I looked at this, think 

through -- well, where are people going to fit, 

and it dep-- somewhat depends on sort of the --

you know, the order -- I mean that these are 

going to interact and not going to be -- same, so 

will people with short duration of work more 

likely be people who have a lower probability of 

causation, 'cause they'd have lower exposures, so 

-- yeah, but I'm afraid if we try to overfill on 

that particular thing, I think we're going to end 

up with a -- I'm not sure a very representative 

population, nor do I think we get a good look at 

what the dose reconstructors do. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Certainly with AWEs you 

have a contained employment period that is --

that is reconstructed against. And it's not --

those are not, you know, decades. Those are 

usually in short number of years, so --

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, that was what I was 

going to mention is that another issue is going 

to be for different facilities, and somewhat 

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depends on sort of the order you go through in 

terms of selection as we fill this in. But maybe 

that's something we can adjust later on, but I 

just -- it's the one I thought -- I was a little 

concerned about. 

DR. ZIEMER: You're not proposing a 

change at the moment, or are you proposing a 

change? 

DR. MELIUS: Well, I'd like to get some 

more discussion. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let's see, I guess Wanda 

next. 

MS. MUNN: I'm glad to have heard the 

explanation because I was -- I was concerned over 

whether the random number generator was going to 

be used for specific sites when we first started 

out, or later on whether we were going to do one 

-- the sites, as for example, site profiles were 

complete. And so I'm -- I think -- my question 

is probably answered -- the first question was 

answered by relating table one more directly to 

the first statement in the procedure that was 

given. 

But I do have a little concern with the 

note down at the bottom. It was my understanding 

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from all the information that we've heard here 

that job category is something that's almost 

impossible to tie down for most of the claimants. 

DR. ZIEMER: The issue has to do with 

what words are used to describe the job. 

MS. MUNN: What types --

DR. ZIEMER: However, once you get a 

case and open it, you can figure out, for 

example, whether it's a welder or a lab 

technician or whatever it may be. But a given 

kind of job sometimes has multiple names and 

maybe different names at different sites. But I 

think our thinking was that we could at least 

separate out kinds of workers, like engineers or 

construction workers or maybe some broad 

categories, even though -- we can't certainly 

sort against them. Once we have a case open, you 

can figure out what the person did. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah, and my -- my point is, 

if we're going to do that, probably we should 

establish as a goal -- one of the things that the 

committee is going to have to do is to make some 

judgment with respect to the broad job category. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, and how to decide --

I guess how to decide primary job or something 

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like that, I mean --

MS. MUNN: Yeah. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, 'cause that could 

become an issue. I mean there's different 

approaches to that. 

MS. MUNN: I think we probably need to 

make it clear in our procedure that that will 

have to be a judgment made by -- by the committee 

'cause I don't see any other way you're going to 

get that done. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MS. MUNN: My only concern then left 

with the procedure itself is in the very last 

item in item six when you say this information 

will include only the statistics of the case 

reviewed. Only the statistics probably mean 

different things to different people, and for 

some, that would include the facility, that would 

include diagnoses, that would include month of 

employment, all of which are a part of the flow 

chart over here, but is that indeed -- are the 

items listed on the flow chart indeed the items 

that we want to present in our case presentation, 

or --

DR. ZIEMER: Let me try to answer that 

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in part. The idea was that once the individual 

cases are reviewed and the whole thing is rolled 

up, what would come to the full Board in open 

meeting would be a report that might take the 

form of -- that 25 cases have been reviewed and 

in 20 of these cases there were no issues, in 

three cases there was questions raised about 

something -- no cases would be specifically 

identified in open session, simply a kind of a 

statistical rollup of the overall picture. 

MR. GRIFFON: I think may--

DR. ZIEMER: In several cases this issue 

arose. 

MR. GRIFFON: I think maybe a better way 

to phrase it is like summary findings or 

something like that --

MS. MUNN: Summary findings. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- instead of statistics 

of cases. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah. 

MR. GRIFFON: If I can propose to 

include -- instead of --

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, summary findings --

MR. GRIFFON: -- those statistics, yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- would that be more 

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acceptable? 

MS. MUNN: It would be to me. 

DR. ZIEMER: I take it by consent that 

the words "summary findings" would be substituted 

here for "statistics". Thank you. 

MS. MUNN: And now being a -- being a 

detail junkie, I guess, I have a tendency to 

think in process, so it concerns me a little bit 

on how our random number generator is going to 

work from NIOSH's point of view. That is to say 

is there going to be a possibility that the same 

case may be reviewed more than once --

DR. ZIEMER: No. 

MS. MUNN: -- or is that number -- is 

NIOSH going to have to drop that number out of 

their generator once it's been chosen? 

DR. ZIEMER: Once that case is out, it's 

our understanding that the -- I mean if it -- if 

it showed up again, it would simply be omitted --

or deleted. 

MS. MUNN: Because our procedure doesn't 

say so. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Okay, we can 

certainly add that. The intent is that the cases 

that have been reviewed are out of the pool. 

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MS. MUNN: Once done, it's done. Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: So we can add a phrase to 

include that, yes. Thank you. 

Rich, you were next? 

MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah, mine was a -- kind 

of on the same lines as Wanda for job categories. 

I was just kind of wondering how defined it was 

going to get, and so... 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. I think the answer 

is we don't know. We will have to get some cases 

and start to see what -- what those look like and 

try to sort them. In other words, we're saying 

the intent is to sort or to track, but it's not a 

-- it currently is -- the -- searchable variable 

at the moment, yeah. I guess Jim was next, and 

then Roy. 

DR. MELIUS: Back to my issue on 

duration of employment, I'm assuming -- you 

didn't have any really data to base this on --

DR. ZIEMER: No. 

DR. MELIUS: -- in terms of that? 

DR. ZIEMER: No. 

DR. MELIUS: So rather than trying to 

propose that -- to make some changes in 

particular things now, I think -- you know, we're 

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-- at this point it rather -- with the first 

whatever -- it's 14 or whatever we have, I think 

you'd be able to get some summary statistics off 

of that in -- for these different parameters and 

have the subcommittee or whoever look at that at 

the point in time so that we can get a better 

handle on what's out there --

DR. ZIEMER: Keep in mind, this is 

basically conceptual in the sense that the Board 

could -- whatever you adopt could be modified at 

any later date. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, and that --

DR. ZIEMER: Once you get some 

experience and say well, we need to adjust the 

matrix. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: We need to sample more in 

this area or some other area. 

MR. GRIFFON: Actually I've --

DR. ZIEMER: In fact, you could go back 

and say we don't have enough cases from some site 

and you could now sample randomly within a site. 

DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: The subcommittee actually 

tested the process. We had some sample lists 

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generated by both random number and by 

probability of causation category to see what 

those looked like. And for example, if you use 

pure random numbers, you see an array of cases 

which very much reflects the number of cases in 

the different sites. 

DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: Obviously it doesn't track 

exactly because you can get clustering. This --

it's a little like Las Vegas, you know. You 

don't -- you may get a run of something. 

MR. GRIFFON: Actually I think for --

for POC it was a little different because we had 

to only use final cases, but I think for the 

parameter you're thinking about, and maybe even 

for decade empl-- first employed we can ask NIOSH 

to do a query against the entire database, 'cause 

you've got that data in there as soon as a 

claim's in. And it might be interesting just to 

see the -- not necessarily that we'll sample 

proportionately, but at least we'll know --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, let's make this 

point, that -- there's two ways to approach this. 

One is to do the whole random sample, in 

advance, of all the cases. Then once they're 

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settled, plug them in. 

The other is to use the pool of final 

cases and sample as you go. If you sample as you 

go, then you can sort by POC if you wish, 'cause 

you have that as a variable. But if you do a 

pure random on all cases submitted, you do not 

know the POC on --

MR. GRIFFON: No, my -- my point was 

just to -- not -- not -- I don't disagree with 

what you said, Paul. I was talking about another 

thing, which was --

DR. ZIEMER: Oh. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- to -- to define our 

categories up front a little better --

DR. ZIEMER: Oh. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- if we look at the whole 

cohort statistics, and I didn't think about that 

before, but we could -- we could ask to see 

decade first employed for all, how many -- 30,000 

cases or whatever you've got in the system, and 

the same with years worked. I don't think that 

would be hard to do, would it, Larry? 

MR. ELLIOTT: No. 

MR. GRIFFON: Then we could see how that 

falls out and we can -- you know, we might make a 

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decision to sample proportionately for those, as 

-- like we did for facility or we may say no, we 

still want to know -- you know, but at least it'd 

be interesting to see how they fall. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I would -- it seems 

to me, and I can -- just what I know, that --

what's been settled so far and so forth is that I 

think for efficiency purposes you're going to end 

up having to first stratify on probability of 

causation and sample within the categories here. 

If not, I think it's -- I think it's going to be 

hard to reach these --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, in fact some of these 

may work against each other. For example, the --

if you go to a certain percent of short duration 

work times, you may be heavily selecting from 

AWEs, whereas you may want more samples from the 

large facilities where the work times are longer. 

So these could actually work against each other 

if we're not careful. 

I think Roy was next. 

DR. DEHART: It's in part an extension 

of what we were just talking about. We have 

1,400 current cases out there, and I was just 

going to ask how do we go about assigning a 

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number in selecting out of that? We assign a 

number to all 1,400 and then how do we generate 

what's coming out -- of cases that we're going to 

see? 

DR. ZIEMER: This proposal would use a 

random number and select from those. 

DR. DEHART: Okay. Based on the number 

only, just as the random number is generated 

initially. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

MR. GRIFFON: That's it, yeah. 

DR. DEHART: And that's going to have a 

bias because the 1,400 cases are biased in where 

they're coming from. We all know that. 

DR. ZIEMER: That's understood, and that 

sample base will change as time goes on. 

DR. DEHART: I understand. 

DR. ZIEMER: But the point is, though, 

if we sample from that, it's still -- we're still 

looking at a small total of what the eventual 

matrix would be. And the idea here is we can 

still fit these into our matrix. 

And let me tell you that if the Board 

approves this procedure today, we are prepared to 

give you the list. I've not seen the list. It's 

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hidden in a mayonnaise jar, buried -- no. 

UNIDENTIFIED: It's in the olive jar. 

DR. ZIEMER: We asked Todd, who's the --

what's Todd's title? He's the information 

management guy from NIOSH -- to generate the 

random list for us in case the Board approved 

this. We are prepared to give you a list of I 

think 25, and we can look at that and say let's 

take the first 20, and we're prepared to then 

generate the disks and assign the Board members 

and give that list to the --

MR. GRIFFON: (Inaudible) 

DR. ZIEMER: -- to the contractor. 

MR. GRIFFON: And just -- just --

DR. ZIEMER: Don't -- don't distribute 

any copies, and -- no one has seen this list 

except Todd. 

MR. GRIFFON: Just so everyone 

understands -- I mean that's the -- I mean we 

just -- we ended up with a purely random up 

front, generated a list with those descriptive 

statistics, and then the --

DR. ZIEMER: The list will --

MR. GRIFFON: Our challenge will be to -

-

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DR. ZIEMER: The list will tell you the 

POC category, the facility --

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: It'll tell you all of 

these. 

MR. GRIFFON: And our challenge then is 

to go down one by one through those 25 as a group 

and just say in or out, and that's the hand 

selection part of it. I think we -- we just felt 

it -- especially at this first stage, we were 

uncomfortable in -- you know, I think we're more 

likely -- I was -- at least in the subcommittee 

level, I was focused on let's -- let's fill the 

matri-- let's worry about filling the matrix more 

than having a purely random, stratified sampling 

approach. We -- we can randomly select it 

initially, but then we can hand-select them, we -

- they're not identified cases so there's not --

we just have some descriptive statistics to help 

us pick. And if -- you know, we know that 

Bethlehem Steel, Savannah River, Hanford --

there's quite a few cases up front of those --

those three sites. If we end up with 20 

Bethlehem Steels, we may say well, we don't want 

to do 20 Bethlehem Steel lung cancers, you know. 

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 So we can just X down some of those as we get 

them, put them back in the pool, so to speak. 

DR. DEHART: My question was one of 

procedure, and I think I now understand what is 

intended. I do have one other question and that 

is the selection of the ten percent for the 

forties employee group. It would seem to me that 

you would want to be higher, because the 

assumption on dose is going to be much higher in 

that -- in that particular group. And I would 

feel that there's perhaps a greater chance of 

error and perhaps we'd want to see more of those 

cases up front. 

DR. ZIEMER: One of the things, though, 

we're not sure of -- and we may have to get the 

statistic -- is how many actual cases come out of 

-- that still may be a smaller group 'cause 

that's in the very early stages of things where 

the system was building up in terms of numbers of 

workers. I think our intuitive feeling was that 

there were many more workers in the fifties. 

DR. DEHART: (Off microphone) Oh, yes, I 

would agree. 

DR. ZIEMER: So that this kind of 

reflects that, as well. But all of these can be 

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adjusted. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Wanda. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Wanda. 

MS. MUNN: Just a comment. To go back 

to the potential of doing a purely informational 

run just to see what's there right now, I guess I 

would caution that the information that we've had 

earlier today, and actually information that we 

had comments in our minutes from last time, point 

out that a very large percentage -- as a matter 

of fact, what we have in the minutes is 49 

percent of the claims that had been submitted 

were non-covered claims. So if we were going to 

do the kind of general information run that we 

were talking about with respect to existing 

claims... 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think you're referring 

to the Department of Labor's statistics --

MS. MUNN: Yes, I am. 

MR. ELLIOTT: That's not in this 

dataset. 

MS. MUNN: Yes, I am. 

MR. ELLIOTT: That's not in this 

dataset. 

MS. MUNN: Okay. 

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MR. ELLIOTT: The dataset --

DR. ZIEMER: These are only the NIOSH --

MR. ELLIOTT: The dataset that -- that 

you would be talking about selecting from would 

be the 15,000 -- or the 17,500 claims we have 

right now that have not been -- that weren't 

pulled back by DOL because they weren't a covered 

cancer --

MS. MUNN: Yeah, okay. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- i.e., like lymphocytic 

leukemia. So -- and of that, there's a subset 

that we have sampled the 25 from, the list that 

Dr. Ziemer's talking about that we have prepared 

for you upon your -- the subcommittee's request, 

that 25 sample was -- was randomly selected from 

the 1,450-some, I don't know the exact number, 

but... 

MS. MUNN: No, I don't have any problem 

with -- with the process that's going on for what 

I consider this pilot run now. 

DR. ZIEMER: Other questions? Yes, 

Henry. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I just wanted to 

say what we -- when we talked about the 

statistics, what we really meant is univariant 

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statistics, so that when we get through the 20 

and we would come back to the Board, we'd tell 

the public we reviewed four cases from Hanford, 

but it would not be four cases from the 1940's, 

from the what -- you know, that -- which would 

get toward it, but we would say there were five 

from the 1940's in the mix, there were three lung 

cancers, two whatevers, but it wouldn't be lung 

cancers from a site, so it would -- it's all 

univariant so people will understand. One will 

get a sense of what we're looking at from our 

matrix, but it would not allow identifiers. 

MS. MUNN: So summary findings is a 

better --

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

MS. MUNN: -- appellation. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me make sure that we 

have recorded the slight modifications. One is 

to use the words "summary findings" rather than 

"statistics" in item six. Another was to add --

and I didn't jot it down --

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think you --

DR. ZIEMER: -- Wanda's -- what was it -

-

MR. GRIFFON: I think you could put it 

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at the end of paragraph three, something to the 

effect of the following sentence: Once a case is 

reviewed, it will no longer be available for 

future sampling. Some -- something like that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, that's --

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Once a case is reviewed --

let's say it is removed from the sampling pool. 

MR. GRIFFON: That's fine. That's 

better. 

DR. ZIEMER: Are those the only changes 

in -- we've -- we'll take it by unanimous consent 

that those are okay. Any other changes on any 

parameters at the moment? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: If not, I'm going to ask 

for a vote on accepting these procedures. And 

the understanding is in a sense these are 

provisional, 'cause we're probably going to end 

up modifying them as we gain experience. 

Okay, all in favor, aye. 

 (Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any opposed? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any abstentions? 

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 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Motion carries. Thank you 

very much. 

This is a motion -- because it comes 

from the subcommittee, requires no second. Under 

Robert's Rules, the report from the subcommittee 

constitutes a motion but requires no second. 

Now procedurally, what the subcommittee 

is recommending is that if we select -- we're 

recommending 20 cases for today. Because the 

contractor's prepared to assign 20 cases at a 

time, that will give them some experience. 

MR. GRIFFON: I think that was our goal, 

anyway. We were --

DR. ZIEMER: That was our goal. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- depending on the 

sampling. 

DR. ZIEMER: We've asked the -- asked 

Todd to give us a list of 25, so that if there's 

-- if we see that there's, you know, a lot of 

cases from some site that we think is overrepresented, we'd just bypass that and go on. 

Hopefully we can select 20 cases. 

And then what we're going to want to do 

is -- the contractor will assign each case to one 

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of several persons on their team. We would like 

to have two Board members on each case. And 

obviously the conflict of interest thing comes 

into play here, so if you've -- are working on a 

site or have, then you can eliminate yourself 

from being a reviewer. There would be a 

timetable, and we're actually thinking about our 

next meeting as a time when we could roll out the 

first review of these cases, that the -- we would 

rely on the contractor to look at these in depth 

from a dosimetry point of view, but each of us 

may have a perspective. And you will have the 

full record. Every -- each Board member would 

have a full record of their cases on disk, as 

will the contractor. You'll have the opportunity 

to interact with the contractor's team person. 

And then prior to our meeting, we would have 

working groups. A working group would be two 

Board members and a contractor person that would 

get together, come to a final agreement on a 

recommendation to the Board for that particular 

case. 

Now the nature of the report is -- is 

still not well-defined, other than it's -- we 

know that it needs to be a general rollup, and 

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we're kind of learning it as we go here. 

Okay, the list now is being distributed. 

I do have a concern here that -- this list has 

no identifiers on it in terms of code numbers of 

case numbers. It does have decade, working years 

and IREP model, which I suppose might in some 

cases be -- someone might be able to use this to 

identify an individual. Is that possible? But 

at this point, whatever -- whatever comes out of 

the review, it's not going to be linked to 

specific cases, so here's the first 25. And 

these were drawn at random. I'm just looking 

down through this and I see -- one, two, three --

DR. ANDERSON: They're summarized. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, all right. Okay. So 

here's the frequency -- 32 percent of these cases 

are Bethlehem Steel, 24 percent Savannah River, 

12 percent Rocky Flats, and on down the line. 

They've simply analyzed this for us. You see the 

analysis by probability of causation. 

Interestingly enough, none of them have fallen 

between the 45 and 50, the area of great interest 

to this group. 

DR. ROESSLER: (Off microphone) Are 

those mistakes, the 1930's? 

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MR. ELLIOTT: Can I make a --

DR. ROESSLER: (Off microphone) Are 

those -- are those actual beginning dates? 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Decade 

first worked --

DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) worked at Bethlehem. 

DR. ROESSLER: (Off microphone) There 

are two of them from --

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) see there may have been a --

DR. ZIEMER: Somebody may have started 

working there before the actual -- that's their 

date when they started working there, I think --

yeah. And then you see the various -- fair 

distribution of kinds of cancers, and as you 

might expect, the second category's probably 

prostate. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Let me make a comment on 

the POC categorization here where there were --

none of the 25 showed up in that middle range of 

44 or -- 45 to 49. There are only 20 cases in 

that particular category anyway, so in this 

random sampling, we didn't hit any one of those 

20. 

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DR. ZIEMER: Now here's -- here's what 

the Board can do. For example, if you said we 

want at least one of those kind of cases in this 

first run, then we can instruct Todd to go back 

and select by POC and randomly select one of 

those 20 cases. That's the kind of thing you can 

do if you want to adjust the list and still keep 

the randomness into it. 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) I'd say 

we send Todd back. 

DR. ZIEMER: But also keep in mind that 

this is only 20 cases out of -- eventually we're 

going to have hundreds of cases that we sample, 

so this -- this is -- this is a kind of a first 

run-through for us and for the contractor. This 

is part of our learning experience on the 

process. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Let me restate -- I misspoke. I stand corrected. Dr. Neton corrected 

me. We have only eight cases that would be in 

that category, between 45 and 49.9 percent. We 

have 20 cases out of the first 4,000 that we have 

turned over to DOL, so out of 1,450-some that 

have reached the final decision stage, we have 

only eight. So that's why --

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MR. GRIFFON: That's a very small 

number. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We've got -- smaller than 

20, even. 

DR. ANDERSON: (Inaudible) 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, and --

MR. ELLIOTT: My apologies. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- for the initial run, 

this may be fine because we're really learning 

how to do the job. 

DR. ANDERSON: We've got a lot of low 

POCs. 

MS. MUNN: We're all on the same 

learning curve. 

DR. ZIEMER: Which is fine. 

MS. MUNN: That's fine. We have a few 

high ones, too. 

DR. ZIEMER: Now the -- what -- what I'm 

going to ask for is -- to start us off, I'm going 

to ask for a motion to accept the first 20 on the 

list as the 20 that we will test --

MR. ESPINOSA: So moved. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- and it's been moved and 

DR. ANDERSON: Seconded. 

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DR. ZIEMER: -- and seconded. Was there 

a second? 

DR. ANDERSON: Seconded. 

DR. ZIEMER: Now discussion. We can --

we can change that. 

DR. MELIUS: I would just argue that 

that gives us all the Bethlehem Steel and we end 

up --

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) 

DR. MELIUS: -- yeah, and whereas the 

last five are not, and I'd rather eliminate five 

of the Bethlehem Steel or something to that --

like that. 

DR. ZIEMER: For now. 

DR. MELIUS: For now, yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: And if we eliminate them, 

they go back in the pool. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: How many Bethlehem Steels 

are you proposing we eliminate? And we will 

eliminate them starting with the bottom of the 

list, in fairness, I guess, and go up. There are 

how many Bethlehem Steels? 

DR. MELIUS: I just counted eight, I 

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think. 

MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) In our 

frequency distribution (Inaudible). 

DR. ZIEMER: There are eight Bethlehem 

Steels. 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) You have 

to consider the other criteria, I would say -- I 

would argue, but... 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim is -- are you proposing 

that we eliminate five Bethlehem Steels, Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: And do you agree then that 

it would be the last five on the list of 

Bethlehem Steels? I mean we -- we just have --

DR. ROESSLER: We should look at 

cancers, I think -- I think we should look at 

other parameters. No? 

DR. ZIEMER: I would argue that right 

now it's too early to do that. If you're simply 

sorting -- you're looking at facility as the 

variable, then in -- in keeping with the process, 

you just take them as they came. In other words, 

you're saying well -- you've reached -- you've 

saturated Bethlehem Steel with the third one. 

The next one we draw, we eliminate. 

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DR. MELIUS: If we keep in mind --

MR. GRIFFON: Here's -- I'll make a more 

specific proposal. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MR. GRIFFON: I would propose to draw --

DR. ZIEMER: I'm sorry, I don't think we 

had a second on your motion yet, but -- are you -

- are you re-motioning -- re-moving something? 

DR. MELIUS: This may be a friendly 

amendment. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think it's a -- I 

think it's a friendly amendment. I still would 

say five Bethlehem Steel cases, but I would say 

let's drop number ten, 13, 14, 15 and 16 in the 

order down the list that they appear. And I 

looked at that based not only on Bethlehem Steel, 

but also I didn't want to do like -- I think 

there were a couple of colon cancers and a couple 

of lung cancers, so --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, that's the last five 

Bethlehem Steels. 

MR. GRIFFON: Oh, is that the last five? 

DR. ZIEMER: Basically that's --

MR. GRIFFON: So it's the same motion. 

DR. ZIEMER: That's the same motion. 

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Did somebody second that motion? 

MR. GRIFFON: I second Jim's motion. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. The motion then is 

to eliminate those five Bethlehem Steels and pick 

up the last five on the list, and that's been 

seconded. Is there discussion on this motion? 

Robert, are you addressing the amendment? 

MR. PRESLEY: No, I'll buy that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Richard, addressing the 

amendment? 

MR. ESPINOSA: No, not addressing the 

amendment. 

DR. ZIEMER: We're addressing only the 

amendment to drop five Bethlehem Steels. Yeah, 

Tony? 

DR. ANDRADE: Just one comment on the 

next to the last Bethlehem Steel. Here we have a 

really high POC, and then you have the lung 

cancer situation, which is what we really kind of 

expected. I think that that would be a very 

interesting case to ring out. 

MR. ESPINOSA: That's --

DR. ROESSLER: (Off microphone) There 

are two of those, though. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah, there's one on --

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DR. ROESSLER: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) one is in the list. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, the first --

MR. ELLIOTT: Could we only talk one at 

a time, please, for our recorder, who is a 

champion, but he is somewhat disadvantaged when 

he's got six people talking at once. 

DR. ZIEMER: So Tony, are you speaking 

against the motion to drop those five? 

DR. ANDRADE: No -- okay. I recant. It 

is pointed out to me there's another lung cancer 

above it. 

DR. ZIEMER: And again, keep in mind, 

we're not filling the matrix with 20 samples. 

MR. GRIFFON: I just want to make one --

one informational comment that I have --

DR. ZIEMER: Informational comment? 

Yeah. 

MR. GRIFFON: I have the matrix pulled 

up, the proportional method that we proposed, and 

I think Bethlehem Steel -- I don't know if this 

is a current number, but I have 417 cases. So if 

you just did -- there were 417 overall cases, so 

I don't know -- you know, that's another argument 

for -- not to sample too many --

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DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- in this first round of 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- sampling from Bethlehem 

Steel. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. See, this is 

exactly the kind of run you'd like to get if you 

were in Las Vegas. You're putting your money on 

Bethlehem Steel. Right? 

DR. ANDERSON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Are we ready to vote 

on the motion to amend, which would be to 

eliminate those last five Bethlehem Steels and 

add the last five on the list, and that would 

give us our list of 20? 

All in favor, aye. 

 (Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any opposed, no? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any abstentions? Let me --

I'm going to ask a question here. On doing this, 

do Board members have to recluse (sic) themselves 

if they're associated with one of these 

facilities? 

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MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: No, I think -- I think it's 

an issue we have to --

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. No, it is an issue 

that you have to face. If -- I'll remind you of 

your conflict of interest waivers. You have --

each of you -- may or may not -- have a waiver 

letter, and in that waiver letter it will specify 

what you must affirmatively recuse yourself on, 

which site -- or sites. And I have a listing 

here if it helps, if you don't remember what your 

waiver letter says. 

DR. ANDERSON: So did that --

DR. ZIEMER: Now --

DR. ANDERSON: -- (Inaudible) not have 

voted on Bethlehem is the question. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, but you see, the 

bigger issue is in voting on that you are also 

voting to include some other sites. It's not --

MR. ELLIOTT: That is not a problem, I 

do not believe. It's when you get into --

DR. ZIEMER: You're not really doing 

anything with respect to evaluating it. It's 

just the list of --

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) Somebody 

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else could take that site. 

MR. ELLIOTT: That's right. That's 

right. You should recuse yourself if someone 

wants to give you a site to review -- a case from 

a site to review that you are -- your waiver 

letter says you must recuse. This general kind 

of voting I think is -- on -- on what to include 

or exclude, is not a problem at this point. 

DR. MELIUS: Just on the conflict of 

interest issue, like for myself, I believe I 

would have conflict, but it wouldn't be on any 

parameter that would be available here. It 

wouldn't be until I saw the case file. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

DR. MELIUS: It would be an 

occupational, I -- I don't think it's likely to 

occur, but -- but it would be -- so -- so some of 

that may be -- you know, like at least for me, 

it's -- I won't know until I see the case. 

MR. ELLIOTT: That is true, you wouldn't 

know until you saw the case name. 

DR. MELIUS: Right. 

MR. ELLIOTT: The name of the 

individual. 

DR. MELIUS: And some more information, 

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in which case I think then -- then we have to 

have a procedure for --

MR. ELLIOTT: Right. 

DR. MELIUS: -- reassigning that case. 

MR. ELLIOTT: That's -- yes, that's 

correct. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. We have now accepted 

a list of 20 cases that will constitute the 

initial review. I want to call on John Mauro to 

describe for the Board how your team will handle 

this, and then that will help them to understand 

what we have to do. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Can I verify for the 

record who made that motion? I think Dr. DeHart 

seconded it, but --

DR. ZIEMER: Well --

DR. MELIUS: I did. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- we're going to attribute 

it to Jim Melius. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Okay. Now we stand 

corrected. 

DR. MAURO: Our proposal lays out 

basically what I'll be summarizing, and our 

proposal, as you folks probably know, is part of 

the contract. So in essence, when the first set 

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of 20 cases come in, at that point I distribute -

- well, first and foremost, this issue of --

Privacy Act issue is critical 'cause I believe 

these cases will have the identification. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

DR. MAURO: So first and foremost, we 

have to make sure that we are all cleared from a 

Privacy Act training perspective, and everyone 

understands the seriousness of this. There will 

be -- right now I anticipate -- we have 

identified what I call case managers. These are 

five very senior people, all of whom have some 

specialty, expertise. They have many, many years 

of experience, advanced degrees, but some of them 

have more expertise in external, some more 

internal, some really know an awful lot about 

uranium or plutonium. We have five lead people 

that I call case managers. Okay? 

What I'm go-- what I -- my plans are to 

distribute all the 20 cases to these five people, 

in addition to distribute it to -- for some of 

those -- some of those sites are currently in the 

pipeline for site profile reviews, so for those 

cases -- for example, as we all know, Bethlehem 

Steel is the first one that looks like is going 

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to move through our pipeline for site profile 

review, so by all means the task leader for 

Bethlehem Steel will also receive the cases 

dealing with Bethlehem Steel. Because what I'd 

like to do is to make sure there's a linkage 

between the case managers and the folks who are 

leading the tasks regarding site profiles, so we 

take advantage of the knowledge base that 

currently exists within our team on Bethlehem 

Steel, for example. 

Okay, so let's -- let's say -- so -- so 

on -- the first step in the process would be to 

distribute the -- the C-- I assume -- they'll 

come out in the form of CDs with -- with all the 

records, would probably go out to on the order of 

-- I would say perhaps eight or nine people 

within our organization will get them all. Okay? 

They'll all have probably a few days just to 

scan through them -- okay? -- so they get an 

appreciation for what the -- the nature of the 

problem is. Then we're going to meet in McLean. 

In the McLean meeting, it's at that point where 

we're going to deal them out, so to speak. My 

thinking is right now, each case manager will get 

-- we have five case managers -- will get four 

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cases. Okay? Each person will get four cases. 

We have our procedures. It's all laid 

out in our proposal. We have an Appendix C to 

our proposal, which is the procedures that we're 

going to follow to perform these reviews. One of 

the things that I'm starting to realize is that 

those procedures are -- probably will -- are --

are a living document. That is, as we learn, 

we're going to find out that they may be too 

cumbersome. Because of the efficiency approaches 

you folks have taken, it may not be necessary to 

go through the -- but I'm getting adrift here. 

So what happens is each person is going 

to have a mandate. Each case manager will have a 

mandate. This mandate will be to review that --

their -- his or her four cases within a certain 

time period and with a certain work hour 

allocation, so that they have a budget. And then 

they're going to dive in. 

Now they have the -- now within the work 

hour budget they have, they can draw upon any one 

of the 33 people that are on our team. That is, 

we have a team -- team of 33 individuals, some of 

which have very, very specialized expertise --

for example, in interpreting film badge 

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dosimetry. They can draw upon that expertise, 

any expertise they care to, but within the 

constraints of their work hours and the time 

allotted to them. 

When they're through, they're not going 

to have a report but they will have their notes, 

their findings and their -- their initial 

perspective on the areas where there may be 

strengths or weaknesses or problems with the 

particular case. We will all reconvene -- let's 

assume for now, for the time being, that we could 

do that in one month. Okay? So on day one, we 

-- we have this meeting where we deal out all 

these cases. One month later, we all reconvene 

back in McLean and each person will get up before 

the rest of our team and tell their story 

regarding each case and explain what they found 

and their rationale for what they found. It'll 

be discussed. I'm envisioning that -- for --

each person will require about a half a day, so 

we probably would have a three-day meeting in 

McLean of the team, go over all 20 and have a 

chance to interact. Then each pers-- after that 

interaction, each person would go back and write 

his report regarding his findings, in light of 

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the discussions that were held. Once that report 

is completed, it represents a draft report. At 

that point that draft report will undergo our QA 

process. We have a QA -- our QA -- you'll see 

our QA procedure, make sure everything is signed 

off as appropriate, and then it's delivered to 

the Board. 

Now I understand at some point in this 

process the Board want-- you mentioned the Board 

being involved where -- any place in the process 

either the Board or NIOSH's folks certainly could 

step in. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me describe what the 

subcommittee was thinking about in that regard. 

At the point that the team gets together in 

McLean the second time, which is when you share 

your information but you don't have a written 

report, that for each case as it came up -- like 

at 8:00 a.m. on a certain day, this case is going 

to be discussed, and let's say that Mike and Tony 

were the Board contacts, they would be on a 

conference call with your team, have the 

opportunity to feed comments in or -- and hear 

your discussion. You're then going to develop a 

written report for that case --

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DR. MAURO: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- and later, probably the 

day before the Board meeting where we get 

together, those two would meet with your team 

person --

DR. MAURO: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- for reviewing the final 

report, and that would have to happen 20 times. 

We have essentially ten Board members, so each of 

our people are going to have several cases. 

Let's see, how's that going to work out? We're 

going to have five teams time-- we're going to 

have four cases apiece, also. So any one of us 

would have -- and in between would have the 

opportunity to interact by -- and Leon, but --

12. And in be-- and because of conflict of 

interest, things may be -- maybe not everyone 

will have that same total cases, so we'll have to 

divvy that up. But also have the opportunity to 

e-mail your contact person if you have comments 

to feed in in between. 

DR. MAURO: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: And then the other thing 

that will have to happen with all those cases is 

the rollup, which will constitute the official 

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report, which is the public report which rolls up 

all the cases into the summary -- whatever we 

called that, statistics -- not statistics but the 

summary findings, which is kind of a compilation 

of all of that. That's how we're envisioning it. 

Now -- so... 

DR. MAURO: Could -- just logistically -

- so there is going to be -- that -- there's that 

one month where we receive the documents. Okay? 

We have everyone go through their review 

process. Okay? Not quite sure whether it's 

going to require a full month, or maybe it'll be 

just a couple of weeks, so -- but we know what we 

have here is -- what we really -- what I'm 

hearing is what we have here is two-month 

increments to deal with 20 cases. Basically over 

that two-month period we want to go from the 20 

cases arriving at SC&A to two months later being 

in a position to give a pre-- to deliver hard 

copy or electronic versions of our reports 

regarding each case -- which of course would be 

confidential -- and also prepare aggregate report 

that would be appropriate for presentation before 

the Board. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right, the rollup. 

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DR. MAURO: And that all has to happen 

over that two-month period. During that time 

period there will be a lot of interaction between 

our case managers and the two individuals that 

would be assigned to each case, so there'd be a 

very active dialogue there. Okay? That's --

that's fine, though. Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: That's how we're 

envisioning it. Gen? 

DR. ROESSLER: Do the Board members 

involved get the CD at the same time that --

DR. ZIEMER: Yes. You will have the CD 

-- you'll have the same body of information as 

the person working it up, yes. 

Robert? 

MR. PRESLEY: Is that going to give you 

enough time, if we all meet together the day 

before the meeting, to roll up a final report? 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, the logistics of this 

is -- I'm not sure. I don't know -- I can't --

you know, this is... 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) This is a 

pilot (Inaudible). 

DR. MAURO: Let's think about it. I 

mean what do we have? Okay. 

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MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) with conference calls and stuff. 

MR. PRESLEY: Well, that's what I'm 

wondering, if --

DR. ZIEMER: Don't all talk at once, 

now. Robert, then --

MR. PRESLEY: That's what I'm wondering, 

if we cannot make some decision on the four cases 

that we've got sometime prior to that meeting and 

say okay, you know, we either agree or we 

disagree, or here's our findings that we don't 

agree with, so that when we come back to the 

meeting, a lot of this is going to be done. 

DR. MAURO: I would suggest that once we 

have our internal draft report, we say okay, I 

think we have -- you know, we have our orals, the 

orals, and you'll be listening to the orals --

MR. GRIFFON: Right, right. 

DR. MAURO: -- so you okay, so you'll 

get your first sense of where we're coming at, 

and we'll calibrate at that point. You'll be at 

least at a point that -- where we get some 

feedback, are we seeing the monster the same way, 

are we seeing the issues the same way. So 

there's the first stage of calibration. That's 

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good. So that -- and we'll have a whole month in 

front of us now. Okay? Or more, you know, 

because -- or more. But I think what is 

important, I hear what you're saying, is I think 

we deliver our report in draft form to all 20 of 

them a week before the meeting, so that gives us 

-- 'cause the logistics of interaction and 

refinement -- if we -- that would be the ideal 

situation, if we could actually go from the oral 

presentation, three weeks later have a draft 

report that will go to you folks, and we have an 

opportunity to discuss it, that would give us 

time to -- especially this first time through. I 

mean this is ideal. If we can do that, that -- I 

think that would give us the time -- you're 

absolu-- the day before will not work. You're 

absolutely right, the day before will not work. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. That's a 

good point. And the -- the day before the 

meeting -- I think as we envisioned it, the full 

Board would be sitting there in terms of various 

working groups. But it now becomes a full Board 

session -- closed session 'cause we're dealing 

with cases -- where each team would present their 

findings and you would have already seen what 

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your particular cases involved, and we would have 

an opportunity to look at the draft rollup at 

that time and consider that, as a full Board. 

MR. GRIFFON: One question I had on the 

-- you know, we would have the CDs and access to 

the -- Larry said the same information that the 

contractor would. One exception I've been 

thinking about since the presentation yesterday 

was the reference database, and I wonder if 

there's any way that the Board can get the same 

access that the contractor has to NIOSH's 

reference database. Because if we read through 

these dose reconstructions and they reference 

certain documents that we don't have -- I suppose 

we could go through this process of requesting 

them, but if they're all in this database, it 

might be a lot more efficient if we had the same 

access that SCA has. I don't know what that 

involves, but if that's possible, I think that'd 

be helpful. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I certainly agree it'd be 

helpful. I'm not sure how we've got it arranged 

to give access to -- to you. John, have you --

Jim -- Jim's not in the room right now. I would 

need his input on this. 

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DR. ZIEMER: We can follow up on that 

and --

MR. ELLIOTT: But let me offer -- I'm a 

little bit lost here on the dialogue between Bob 

and John. The full Board can't meet as a full 

Board on a conference call. That's a full Board 

meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: No, no. No. No, this is -

- this -- the conference calls are only 

individual team members with their contact. 

We're talking about a full Board meeting the day 

-- a closed Board meeting the day before the two 

-- the regular open meeting where we would hear 

all of the cases --

MR. ELLIOTT: Understood. Understood. 

DR. ZIEMER: In other words Bob would 

say -- Bob would present his four cases and their 

findings --

MR. ELLIOTT: In order for us to effect 

a closed meeting, we need to understand how much 

time you want and what -- and we have to state a 

purpose for that, which I think we know for sure 

what that purpose is, but the time element is a 

little bit nebulous to me right now, so if you 

want a full day, that's what we'll -- we'll ask 

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for and get. If you want a half a day, that's 

what we'll ask for and get. So --

DR. ZIEMER: We're talking about I think 

hearing 20 ca-- no, this -- this becomes the full 

Board, not the subcommittee. This becomes the 

full Board to hear the cases summarized. 'Cause 

we're all going to present to each other the 

cases that we're responsible for. The contractor 

would be there --

MR. GRIFFON: To hear -- to hear the 

cases, and then I suppose also the --

DR. ZIEMER: And the findings --

MR. GRIFFON: -- summary -- and the 

summary rollup --

DR. ZIEMER: -- and the draft summary --

MR. GRIFFON: Right, right, I think we -

-

DR. ZIEMER: And then the draft summary 

could be brought -- well, would be brought to the 

open meeting. 

MR. ELLIOTT: The draft summary, if it's 

prepared in time, could be sent to each of you as 

a pre-decisional, deliberative document that you 

would be required not to share with -- you know, 

but you could at least get your eyes on it before 

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you came together in a group, in a meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: Gen Roessler and then 

Robert. 

DR. ROESSLER: On the mechanics of 

receiving these CDs and receiving these reports, 

which are all confidential, I'm trying to figure 

out how they're going to arrive and how we're 

going to handle it if we're on travel or 

something when they arrive. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Next week we will prepare 

the CDs for you and send them out, so we need to 

know where you want those delivered to, and we 

will Fed Ex them to you. So -- and I was just 

reminded that the Fed Ex package will be marked 

confidential and to be opened only by you. These 

won't -- the other way we can do it is registered 

mail, but I'm more confident that Fed Ex is the 

way to go. 

DR. ZIEMER: Robert? 

MR. PRESLEY: The only problem that I 

see with this is -- is that we will have to make 

sure that when you have your review where we call 

in is that -- I presume you're going to do that 

in three days. We could -- and it'll all be the 

same conference call number -- that we recuse 

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ourself to make sure that -- like myself -- I 

don't listen in on anything that I shouldn't be 

listening in on. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think you're going to 

have to coord-- this is a logistical nightmare 

for your contractor to coordinate the conference 

calls with the appropriate members on the 

appropriate cases. Otherwise, you can't just 

call in and sit and listen. 

DR. ZIEMER: He's going to have to have 

a list of who the team members are for each case. 

When that case is ready, they probably will call 

from your end --

MR. ELLIOTT: And it won't be the other 

members of the Board. 

DR. MAURO: There is a logistics problem 

because you see, we're going to sort -- think of 

it like this. It'll be a person. He'll be a 

case manager. He'll have four cases. Some of 

those cases -- say in your case -- might be 

perfectly appropriate for you to sit in on that 

two-hour, three-hour -- but some of them, you may 

not. So what we will do is -- I think it's 

important on our part to understand fully -- you 

know, that is -- case manager number one has 

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these four cases. He's -- at this time period on 

this day, he's going to give a presentation 

before our crew on those four cases. You will 

certainly be informed of that, and then you'll be 

in a position to have -- you know, to alert us. 

When we're ready to move on to the next case, the 

problem then becomes if you'll have to recuse 

yourself from that one -- we're talking about --

that means someone else would have to come in. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

DR. MAURO: And you need to know -- you 

all need to know our plans well in advance so 

that you -- we could work this out. This is a 

tough nut. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

DR. MAURO: So -- but, yeah. But we'll 

give you that information. We'll give you that 

information. 

DR. ZIEMER: I want to throw one other 

thing into the hopper. Thank you, John. We 

appreciate that; it's very helpful. 

One other thing in the hopper is that we 

have proceeded on the assumption that these are 

20 basic reviews. The Board has the option of 

saying that we want to do some advanced reviews, 

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although my recommendation is this first time 

around we might be better just to do this, learn 

the process, before we get into advanced reviews 

-- unless anyone thinks that we should do an 

advanced review this time around. Yes, Henry? 

DR. ANDERSON: I thought at the 

subcommittee meeting we discussed that we start 

them all out as basic, and then at the verbal 

discussion it may say this is, you know -- we 

would then select some of those, rather than 

randomly select for in-depth review. I mean that 

was one way to go about it. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right, and we had some 

discussion as to whether or not you'd want to do 

a random selection on advanced reviews or if you 

want to pick a case. You can argue either way. 

I was arguing for -- for not sort of prejudging 

which ones would be the advanced reviews based on 

what you find, but you can argue both ways. But 

anyway, I think for this round, unless there's 

strong sentiment otherwise, we'll consider these 

as 20 basic reviews. We learn the process, the 

contractor learns the process. We're getting up 

to speed, as it were. Is that -- any objections 

to that? 

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Rich, you have a comment? 

MR. ESPINOSA: Not a comment, just a 

question. I was just kind of wondering how the 

teams'll be selected. 

DR. ZIEMER: We're going to do that in a 

few minutes. That is -- to some extent, there'll 

be a self-selection process 'cause you know the 

ones that you can't be on, if any, and -- and we 

start looking for volunteers and see how things 

proceed. 

Roy? 

DR. DEHART: For convenience, can we 

just number these sequentially, so we can have 

one, two, three, four -- and how do we identify 

them otherwise? 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm going to -- I'm going 

to tell you you can unofficially number them, but 

I've been told that we are not to associate any 

identification numbers with cases. So we don't 

want to refer -- can --

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Why not? 

DR. ZIEMER: We'll get to --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: You can unofficially 

number them to assist you in your process, and 

then once you sort them, NIOSH will send you --

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DR. ZIEMER: Some sort of number. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- some sort of --

they'll be identified when they're sent to you. 

DR. ZIEMER: There will be -- there will 

be a number to link it to a case number, 

eventually. But in the open meeting we cannot 

have a linkable number, so these are not numbered 

right now. But for convenience, we can call 

these one through 20. 

DR. MELIUS: But going forward, there 

will be a --

DR. ZIEMER: There will be a specific 

number. Pardon me? 

MR. GRIFFON: I'm just -- I don't know 

if this is going to be an issue down the line. I 

think it would be easier just to have the 

linkable number. I mean you think of the CEDR 

database, everything in there has a CER ID 

number, which is linked back to a file --

MR. ELLIOTT: We could --

MR. GRIFFON: -- that's only held at --

and that's public domain. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You could -- you saw this 

earlier where on the previous runs Todd did for 

you he had A-1 --

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MR. GRIFFON: Right, right, right. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- B-1, we --

MR. GRIFFON: That's what I'm saying, 

that would be --

MR. ELLIOTT: -- could do that here. We 

can just assign these a number. He probably 

already has them assigned an identifier where we 

can key back to the claim number. 

MR. GRIFFON: My argument is, why don't 

-- if we had that on the -- on the sheet right 

here in front of us, then the number we assign 

would be the number -- you know, there'd be no 

confusion. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Fine, fine. Todd, do you 

know what your numbering system is? 

MR. GRIFFON: I don't -- Liz might 

disagree with me, though. We had this discussion 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I'm sorry, I do 

disagree with you. I realize that there's 

another database out there that is numbered that 

way, but it probably shouldn't be, and I can't 

allow you guys to violate -- I'm not going to 

advise you to violate the Privacy Act in that 

manner. Like I said, you can informally number 

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these one through 20 so that they're --

DR. ZIEMER: Right now it's just --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- convenient for you 

to use --

DR. ZIEMER: -- for assigning, it would 

be one through 20. 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Okay, I'm 

not going to (Inaudible). 

DR. ZIEMER: Just do it sequentially. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You assign a number, we'll 

have the key. Okay? It's six of one, half a 

dozen of another I think, in my mind, but just so 

everybody here is clear, you need to have a PC 

that will handle a compact disk that will open up 

PDF HTML files. Okay? I hope everybody --

that's universal, I think, pretty much standard 

now. We will work with you on getting you access 

to our database systems that you heard about 

yesterday that ORAU has. We're going to have to 

figure out how best to do that. You're probably 

going to have to load what we call CITRX on your 

computers in order to access that database, 

either through our system or -- probably it'll be 

through the ORAU system, but we're going to have 

to work on that with you --

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DR. ZIEMER: Wanda, did you --

MR. ELLIOTT: -- individually. 

DR. ZIEMER: Wanda? 

MS. MUNN: I was going to suggest that 

if our contractor could group the cases that his 

people were going to look at in such a way that 

they -- they obviously would themselves be people 

who did not have to recuse themselves from those 

sites. Then if they knew the sites we needed to 

be recused from, it would be simpler for both 

them and for us to match the fact that these 

people cannot look at these sites, these people 

cannot look at those. It would be simpler in the 

long run. It would be difficult, I think, at the 

outset to set that up, but it should be easy for 

us to identify which sites we must recuse 

ourselves from. 

The other question that I had is -- and 

when we finish the rollup of the summary 

findings, who is going to present them to the 

Board? 

DR. ZIEMER: We didn't get that far. 

MS. MUNN: Well, if we're going to do it 

(Inaudible). 

DR. ZIEMER: This is an audit that is 

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coming -- this is a report that is coming from 

our contractor, I think, to the Board. We will 

have seen it, but my -- my inclination is that 

the contractor presents their summary and the 

Board then takes action on it. That's how I 

would see it, unless others see it in some 

different way -- unless you're volunteering to 

present it to us, Wanda. 

MS. MUNN: No, thank you. I'm willing 

to recuse myself. 

DR. ZIEMER: One other related thing 

I'll just throw into the mix here to make sure we 

cover the bases. The IMBA material that some 

have requested I believe is now available --

Larry, can you --

MR. ELLIOTT: You ready to hand that 

out? 

DR. ZIEMER: You want to speak to that 

and tell us the status of that? 

MR. ELLIOTT: We are ready to hand out 

IMBA. You will each receive a disk with your 

name on it. Your contractor will have a disk 

that they can load on their intranet for their 

use. I will also ask you to sign a nondisclosure statement at this point in time. You 

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should be aware that this disk has coded language 

in it so that if in fact you did share it with 

somebody, we can trace it back to your disk, and 

this is part of the agreement, the end-user's 

license agreement that we had to negotiate with 

the NRPB. 

I also think you need to discuss a 

training session. 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: Larry, you're specifically 

talking about an IMBA training session -- or a 

more general one, or both? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I think IMBA first, 

but -- I don't know. Perhaps a training session 

overall. I don't know how you feel about this, 

but IMBA is a -- the biological models themselves 

are complicated. The engine that runs it, you 

know, takes -- is fairly intuitive, but it does 

take, you know, a little bit of guidance and 

walk-through just to make sure that you're 

familiar with it and understand what features it 

has and how it can do work for you. So -- and we 

-- I would -- I would suggest -- I would offer 

that our contractor, ORAU, has a -- an approved 

set of tutorial procedures on IMBA that has been 

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used across all of their dose reconstructors. 

And if you want to avail yourselves of those 

procedures, we'll make those available to you. 

It will provide at least some consistency in 

approach. It will also give you some insight I 

think into the type of training procedures that 

ORAU has developed in this particular situation 

with IMBA. 

DR. ZIEMER: So would that -- would that 

serve the purpose then -- in other words, this 

could be done without going to Cincinnati or 

something like that? Rich is shaking his head 

yes. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Dick, would you like to 

come up and speak to that, as to how you see that 

working? 

DR. ZIEMER: While Dick finishes chewing 

whatever he's eating, let me ask if -- if we can 

get a copy of this for each Board member, it 

doesn't have to be the signed copy, but once I 

give this back, I don't remember what I agreed 

to. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Oh, yes, we will --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Once you all sign it, 

we'll make copies for each of you. 

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DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 

DR. ANDERSON: (Off microphone) Yeah, 

but it --

MR. ELLIOTT: Please speak into the 

mike. 

DR. ANDERSON: The question is, it says 

here we have to register, and how do we do that? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I believe that the 

way you do that is through the software. Just 

like any other software that you received from 

Microsoft, I believe it'll lead you --

DR. ZIEMER: Lead you through it. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- possibly will --

does it lead you to a web site where you 

register? 

DR. NETON: (Off microphone) No. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: No. 

DR. NETON: (Off microphone) I'm sorry -

-

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Okay, Jim's going to 

explain that then. 

DR. NETON: I'm sorry, I got taken away 

for a second. Where are we at? 

MR. ELLIOTT: We have issued IMBA and 

the question on the table is once they sign the 

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disclosure form, how do they register? 

DR. NETON: Right. That'll -- that'll 

be -- that'll take place at the time that the 

EULA is issued, the end user license agreement, 

which is still in process. So any -- any 

notations in there that talk about signing the 

end user license agreement -- I think it says 

pursuant to the agreement. Well, the agreement 

has not been finalized yet, so this is a 

conditional sort of usage until you sign the 

ultimate end user license agreement. At that 

point it'll become clear as to how to register it 

with -- with ACJ* & Associates. 

DR. ZIEMER: So there'll be something 

else that --

DR. NETON: There'll be an additional 

requirement for you to sign the contents or the -

- agree with the conditions of the end user 

license agreement. This is an interim usage we 

worked out with ACJ & Associates where the Board 

is authorized to use it fully under the 

conditions that are in that piece of paper you 

have now, and there will be more paperwork to 

come. That's about all I can tell you. 

We have also made --

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DR. ANDERSON: I mean that's not --

that's not what we're signing. 

DR. NETON: It's not what you're 

signing. 

DR. ANDERSON: No. 

DR. NETON: You're not signing the end 

user license agreement. 

DR. ANDERSON: No, it says we have to do 

it, and then it also says we're required to 

register, and --

DR. NETON: Right. 

DR. ANDERSON: You know, and then it 

says if we're in violation -- I mean it's a legal 

document that I'm agreeing to register, and I 

want to -- I want to register now for whatever 

I'm supposed to --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, it doesn't say when 

you have to do that, it says --

DR. ANDERSON: No, but... 

DR. NETON: This is --

DR. ZIEMER: It's a little like fishing, 

you got to do it before you get caught. 

DR. NETON: -- (Inaudible) issues and I 

can't speak to that. (Off microphone) Maybe we 

could put out some (Inaudible). 

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MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Since it doesn't give 

you a limitation on when you must do this, I'm 

going on the record and telling you that you 

don't have to register it until we have a EULA. 

You'll have access to a copy of the EULA. This 

is just a preliminary -- we wanted to try to get 

this to the Board so it's the best we could come 

up with to try to protect the software 

manufacturer and us and you all. So there'll be 

a new agreement once the EULA's finalized. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We don't expect the EULA 

to change based upon its content at this point in 

time. The problem here is that we're dealing 

with the NRPB and in -- in England right now, and 

we had some language inserted into the EULA about 

the U.S. Federal Acquisition Record -- or Regist-

- what is it, Register --

DR. NETON: Federal Acquisition 

Regulations, a FAR. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- Regulations, and 

they're not familiar with it. And they're also 

on vacation during the month of August, and so 

that's been part of the difficulty in getting 

this put into place. 

DR. ANDERSON: You know, I'm -- I'm just 

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I 

saying that as a legal document, it says I will, 

in accordance with the terms set forth in the end 

user license agreement --

DR. NETON: I think it's pursuant --

pursuant to the terms or something like that. 

mean there's --

DR. ANDERSON: No, in accordance with 

the terms set forth --

DR. NETON: I understand pursuant to the 

EULA I am required to register, so there is no 

EULA --

DR. ANDERSON: No, no, number three I'm 

looking at now. 

DR. NETON: Okay. 

DR. ANDERSON: I don't know what the 

terms are, so how can I follow them if I haven't 

seen the EULA --

DR. ZIEMER: Your intent is to follow 

them and --

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, well, I --

DR. ZIEMER: I would -- I --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Right, this is your 

intent to follow them, and we -- as soon as the 

EULA is agreed to, we'll provide you a copy of 

it. 

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DR. ANDERSON: I mean --

DR. ZIEMER: But you know, if --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Basically what you're 

agreeing --

DR. ANDERSON: I'm just saying --

DR. ZIEMER: But if you're hesitant --

DR. ANDERSON: -- as a legal document --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: If you're hesitant, 

we can pull the document back and take your 

software back. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- just -- we can wait, but 

give back the disk. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: That's the best that 

we can do at this point. 

DR. ANDERSON: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Gen Roessler has a 

question. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Would it be helpful if you 

summarize what's in the EULA as we understand it 

now? 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, that would be 

helpful. 

DR. NETON: The conditions -- to my 

knowledge, the conditions of the end user license 

agreement are very similar to what you're looking 

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at here as far as non-disclosure and those type 

of issues -- sole use for -- on this project. 

That's -- it's standard -- it's standard license 

agreement -- no different that -- well, I won't 

say no different, but very similar to what you do 

when you got an Excel spreadsheet product from 

Microsoft, I will only use this for my own 

purposes or the conditions for which it was 

purchased, that kind of stuff. I mean there's no 

real surprises there. It's just that we're 

dealing with a foreign country's regulations 

versus ours. 

DR. ZIEMER: Gen Roessler has a comment 

or question. 

DR. ROESSLER: Well, this may be a 

detail, but I think it's an important one. The 

thing I'm going to sign says it's version 3.1. 

It says that in several places. The disk I got 

says version 3.2.03. 

DR. NETON: Okay, that -- I think -- Liz 

can concur, I hope, that if you initial and date 

DR. ROESSLER: Can we just cross it out? 

DR. ANDERSON: Oh, good. 

DR. NETON: -- put the -- put the right 

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version there and initial and date it, I think 

we'll accept that. 

MR. PRESLEY: Question. 

DR. ZIEMER: Robert? 

MR. PRESLEY: When I leave here, I'm 

going to leave the country for three or four 

days, and all of the -- all of my luggage and 

everything like that's subject to be searched. 

Should I let you all go ahead and send this to my 

house? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Yeah, we can do that. 

DR. NETON: We can send that to your 

home. That's not a problem. 

MR. PRESLEY: I don't know, but it's --

you never know. 

DR. NETON: One thing that I will 

caution you is if you notice in small print on 

the cover, your name is embossed, so it is 

actually registered to you -- not on the cover, 

but on the disk itself, it is licensed to you. 

And I've been told by the vendor, and this is not 

specially put in there for the -- by the Board --

or for the Board, but they can track who it's 

licensed to if copies of printouts end up 

circulating about with other users, that sort of 

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thing -- just to point out that that feature is 

part of the software. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I already did. 

DR. NETON: Oh, I'm sorry, I missed 

that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Wanda. 

DR. NETON: I'm being redundant here. 

MS. MUNN: An easy question, I think. 

The description identifies 256 megabytes of RAM 

recommended. How much does it actually take up, 

how much space -- disk space, do you know? 

DR. NETON: I have no idea. Oh, that's 

not disk space, that's RAM, so that would be 

memory. 

MS. MUNN: I shouldn't say disk. How 

much memory? 

DR. NETON: I think that might depend on 

what you're running. If you're running the 

thorium model, which has all kinds of daughter --

progeny, rather, it would take up more, but I 

can't tell you. 

MS. MUNN: Okay, that's fine. 

DR. NETON: I think the specification 

basically says if you run all the features and 

you have 256 megabytes, it shouldn't crash. It 

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should run. 

MS. MUNN: And everything else on my 

system goes down. 

DR. ZIEMER: Gen Roessler has a comment? 

DR. ROESSLER: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) 

DR. ZIEMER: No comment? Rich, a 

comment? 

MR. ESPINOSA: I can see myself putting 

this on pretty much every computer I use -- one 

at the union hall, one at work, one at home and 

one on my laptop, you know. Are there any legal 

issues with that? I can imagine one being with 

the union --

MR. ELLIOTT: You will need to make sure 

and assure us that your -- each computer you load 

this on is password-protected --

MR. ESPINOSA: Okay. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- and has a time out on 

it. We'll have to send you all a copy of our --

I think you've already done this in some cases --

have they not done the SAFE -- if you come to our 

offices, the last -- the working group session, 

you had to go through SAFE, which is a training 

session on how to protect your computer and 

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privacy information on your computer. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: The only thing I want 

to be sure that you understand is if you put it 

on all of those computers, you are the only one 

who's allowed to use it. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah, I know. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: You -- as long as you 

have a way of protecting it, if you put it on a 

computer, then no else is going to be able to use 

that program. 

MR. ESPINOSA: More than likely I'll 

just keep it on the laptop, but --

DR. NETON: (Off microphone) Yeah, I 

would (Inaudible). That would be my 

recommendation. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) I think 

that'd be -- you'd better be real smart, Rich. 

DR. ZIEMER: Any other questions or 

comments? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Do you wish to proceed and 

select the teams at this point for --

MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) Can we 

have Dick speak to what you -- your question 

earlier since he's (Inaudible)? 

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DR. ZIEMER: Oh, yeah. What was the 

earlier question? 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) Training. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, training, yes. Dick? 

DR. TOOHEY: Okay, very briefly, we've 

got about half a dozen training modules that --

in the package for IMBA, and they start by just 

walking you through the program. Then there's a 

couple where you get a sample of bioassay data 

and it walks you through entering that, running 

the models. And then the final part is the test, 

which gives you one or two sets of bioassay data 

that you get to run yourself, and if you don't 

get the right answer, you don't get to do dose 

reconstruction under our policies. But we can 

make that available to you, either what we've 

done before, which is give you access to our 

server, or as, you know, stand-alone modules or 

whatever. 

DR. ZIEMER: So it's self-tutorial. 

Right? 

DR. TOOHEY: Yes, it is. It's --

DR. ZIEMER: Wouldn't it be easier just 

to --

DR. TOOHEY: -- set up for --

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DR. ZIEMER: -- do a disk? 

DR. TOOHEY: -- remote users. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Could you just send them a 

disk? 

DR. TOOHEY: To the best of my knowledge 

and belief, to coin a phrase, we can do that. 

But you know, until I talk to my IT guys, I won't 

guarantee it. 

DR. ZIEMER: If you will, try to find a 

way to get that training available to everybody. 

GIBSON HAS LEFT THE BUILDING. 

DR. NETON: I have one more -- Larry, 

did you mention the fact that SC&A also is 

receiving a copy of this for distribution? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, and then there was a 

question that I attempted to answer with Todd's 

assistance about getting the Board members 

access, as we have given Sanford Cohen Associates 

access, to the databases. Now we need to figure 

out how to do that, whether it's through ORAU and 

give each member of the Board CITRX -- I don't 

know. 

DR. NETON: No, this is a different 

issue. If we're talking about the site research 

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database that I discussed yesterday, that would -

- that would go through ORAU. That's outside of 

the firewall, and so I'm not sure how that -- how 

did that come up in relation to IMBA? I guess I 

missed --

DR. ZIEMER: No, not in relation to 

IMBA. 

MR. ELLIOTT: This is just in relation 

to reviewing cases, how can they get access to 

the documents that are relevant --

DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) The 

reference documents. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- the reference that are 

considered relevant to the case. 

DR. NETON: Fair enough. We'll have to 

work with ORAU to -- this would require a VPN, I 

believe -- a Virtual Private Network setup --

much like what was established with Sanford Cohen 

& Associates, on each of your computers. And 

there's also some Privacy Act training that's 

mandatory under ORAU's policy. 

DR. TOOHEY: (Off microphone) I'll waive 

the Privacy --

DR. NETON: He'll waive the Privacy Act 

for the Board. They've had several Privacy Act 

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training sessions. So -- but yeah, it is -- it 

is technically doable. We'll just have to work 

out the logistics -- through ORAU, though. 

MR. ELLIOTT: So I want a commitment 

that we're going to do that very quickly --

within the next -- can we say within the next two 

weeks, we're not only going to deliver these 

disks, we're going to deliver the IMBA training 

modules, we're going to deliver whatever 

mechanism we need to set up to allow them access 

to the data. 

DR. NETON: I will commit for Dick, 

who's standing to my left here, let the record 

show. 

MR. ESPINOSA: It might be a good idea 

to send out the confidentiality forms again. 

I've lost mine, but I know what I'm excluded 

from. 

DR. ZIEMER: Which forms are you talking 

about? 

MR. ELLIOTT: I have the conflict of 

interest sheet here for when you start your 

selection right now. I think -- did we get Mike 

Gibson's IMBA disk to him and get his nondisclosure statement? 

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UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Yes. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Okay. And so we need to 

take care -- you know, in your selection, I can 

address each of your individual conflicts if you 

don't remember. If you also recall, every year 

you have to go through a new conflict of interest 

disclosure, filing an OGE 450 form and then that 

will trigger a new waiver letter. 

DR. ZIEMER: You should have gotten that 

very recently 'cause this is the time of year 

they do it, isn't it, or is it --

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, it's ongoing right 

now, and I will offer this, that there are 

additional -- or new -- new sets of eyes looking 

at these things and asking questions, and so 

we're going through that process at this point in 

time in the year. But you are to operate under 

the current waiver letter that you have been 

given. And if you have any questions about that, 

I have a chart here that speaks to each 

individual's -- Board member's conflict. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. As far as the team 

assignments, now, how do you wish to proceed? Do 

you want to volunteer for certain ones or -- any 

-- I think we can allow that, if we just go down 

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the list. We're going to need two individuals 

for each case, and up to four cases per 

individual. 

DR. ANDERSON: I guess just from the 

logistics of the phone call, it would seem if --

if we can have the same two people share four 

cases --

DR. ZIEMER: That would be helpful --

DR. ANDERSON: -- rather than have --

DR. ZIEMER: -- it may not be always 

possible, but --

DR. ANDERSON: -- all 20 of them be 

different combinations of two. 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) just two cases. 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Up to --

up -- yeah. 

DR. ANDERSON: (Off microphone) Two --

two people per case. 

DR. ZIEMER: Two per case for four 

cases. 

MS. MUNN: (Off microphone) Four cases. 

DR. ANDERSON: (Off microphone) Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: So for -- for example, 

let's take the first four cases on the list. 

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What -- do we have two individuals that have no 

conflict with any of those sites that want to do 

those four? 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) I don't 

have any conflict (Inaudible). 

DR. ZIEMER: I see we have quite a few. 

So shall we -- just want to take these in order, 

since -- I mean does anyone have a strong 

preference, you're just -- okay. So why don't we 

-- why don't we put Robert and Henry on the first 

four cases; is that agreeable? 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) That's 

fine --

DR. ANDERSON: (Off microphone) Team A -

-

MR. PRESLEY: -- with me. 

DR. ANDERSON: -- team A. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Way to 

go, Robert. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, I'm not sure --

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) You're 

out of the country. 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) Yeah, but 

you're not going to get anything for the next two 

weeks. 

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DR. ZIEMER: Now we may have to shift 

this --if we end up the last team with some 

conflicts, we may have to -- okay, the next four 

cases would be Savannah River, Bethlehem Steel, 

Oak Ridge and again Savannah River. Tony and 

Mark, are you okay on those? 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: The next four would be 

Savannah River, Blockson, feed materials* and 

Rocky Flats. 

DR. ROESSLER: No, you missed --

DR. ZIEMER: Did I --

DR. ROESSLER: -- you missed nine. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) Bethlehem. 

DR. ROESSLER: Bethlehem. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, another Bethlehem. I'm 

sorry -- Savannah River, Bethlehem -- or 

Blockson, Bethlehem and feed materials. Right? 

MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) Bethlehem 

Steel, Savannah River, Blockson and (Inaudible). 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. Gen and Roy? Okay. 

Then we have Rocky Flats, Hanford, Savannah 

River and Rocky Flats again. Jim? 

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DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) I'm okay, 

yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Wanda? 

MS. MUNN: (Off microphone) I can't do 

Hanford. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, we got Hanford in 

there. Okay, I'll jump in. 

MR. ESPINOSA: I could jump in on that 

one. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we'll put Jim and 

Rich. Then we have -- then we have Huntington, 

Savannah River, Y-12 and feed materials. 

MS. MUNN: (Off microphone) Yeah, I can 

do that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Now I've got a conflict 

with Y-12, so I'm going to --

MR. GRIFFON: We've got Leon and Mike, 

also. 

DR. ZIEMER: I need to trade that. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Yeah, 

you've got Leon and Mike. 

MR. GRIFFON: I don't think either one 

of those are conflicted for those four sites, are 

they? I don't know. 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) Larry can 

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look and see. 

MS. MUNN: I'm fine with those. 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Wanda's 

fine. 

DR. ZIEMER: Do we have an odd number of 

people? 

MR. PRESLEY: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Oh, this worked out 

very well. The Chairman is (Inaudible). 

MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) You can 

pick which one (Inaudible). 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Wanda --

MS. MUNN: (Off microphone) I've got 

Mike, do I? 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) Wanda's -

-

DR. ZIEMER: Wanda --

MR. ELLIOTT: Neither Mike or Leon are 

conflicted on those last four. 

MR. GRIFFON: Can we say Wanda, Mike and 

Leon, since we're going to have an extra person? 

DR. ZIEMER: We've got two extras then. 

We've done ten. We have -- Wanda and me are 

left. 

MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) Or you 

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can give three cases to a couple of groups. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) There 

you go. 

DR. ZIEMER: Maybe that's the way to do 

it. Then we'll just lighten the load on a 

couple. 

(Pause) 

DR. ZIEMER: This is very arbitrary. 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) Could 

you do it by site? 

DR. ZIEMER: How about if -- yeah, let's 

-- would this be all right? Presley and Anderson 

take the first three. Let's take -- let's take 

the two Savannah Rivers --

MR. GRIFFON: Who's that for, the two 

Savannah Rivers? 

DR. ZIEMER: There are two in a row 

there. 

MS. MUNN: (Off microphone) Yes, 

(Inaudible). 

MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) Two 

Savannah Rivers and Bethlehem Steel. 

DR. ZIEMER: And -- you know, I'd 

skipped one anyway, hadn't I? Or no? Let's see 

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-- two Savannah Rivers and Bethlehem Steel, and 

we'll give that to Wanda --

MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) You had 

Tony and Mark, so --

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Yeah, 

we're already -- are you reassigning now? 

MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) 

Reassigning now? 

DR. ZIEMER: Wait a minute, who'd I have 

there? 

MR. ELLIOTT: You had Tony and Mark for 

the next four. 

DR. MELIUS: Henry, I'll trade you a 

Savannah River for a Hanford. 

DR. ZIEMER: I want to take one from 

each of those teams and just move them down or 

something. What's a way to do this? 

(Pause) 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) You could 

have teams of three for these first cases, too. 

DR. ZIEMER: That's what I'm -- that's 

what I'm looking at. 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) person on it instead of moving cases 

around. 

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DR. ZIEMER: Well, I was going to have 

three cases per team for -- instead of four cases 

per team; it just lightens the load -- rather 

than having more people on a case. So -- so what 

I've got here is Presley and Anderson take the 

first three cases -- here's an easy way to do it 

-- then Andrade and Griffon take the next three, 

which would be Savannah River, Savannah River, 

Bethlehem -- is that all right? We just move you 

up? 

DR. ANDERSON: (Off microphone) Then 

take the next three --

DR. ZIEMER: And then --

DR. ANDERSON: -- make it your 

(Inaudible). 

DR. ZIEMER: No, I can't be in the next 

three 'cause there's an Oak Ridge there again. 

DR. ANDERSON: Oh. 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) I was 

just looking at that. 

(Pause) 

DR. ZIEMER: So we'll just move Gen --

Gen and Roy up three. Are we still okay then? 

MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) Yep. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oak Ridge, Savannah River, 

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Bethlehem? 

DR. DEHART: 

Oak Ridge. 

MR. ELLIOTT: 

that's right. 

MR. GRIFFON: 

(Off microphone) I can't do 

(Off microphone) Oh, 

(Off microphone) You 

should have left Tony and I with Oak Ridge. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's switch you. 

Let's -- let's put Roessler and DeHart for Rocky 

-- or Savannah River, Savannah River, Bethlehem. 

Is that better? 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Yeah. 

DR. ROESSLER: (Off microphone) Okay, we 

just --

DR. ZIEMER: Second -- second team -- or 

second group will be Roessler and DeHart then. 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) And then 

we -- then Tony and I have the next (Inaudible). 

DR. ZIEMER: Then we have Tony and Mark 

the next three. 

MR. GRIFFON: Which is -- just make sure 

I'm on the right line, Paul, that's Oak Ridge, 

Savannah River, Bethlehem? 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

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DR. ZIEMER: Then -- then we can insert 

-- does that give us -- that gives us three open 

now. Does that give us Savannah River, Blockson 

and feed materials. Right? Which will now be 

Wanda and me. Are we okay? 

MR. GRIFFON: Well, I was just -- I 

didn't know if -- just to make a suggestion, I 

don't know if it would make sense to have Mike 

and -- and Leon split with you and Wanda just to 

split the technical experti-- I don't --

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, sure, that's fine. 

Let's -- let's -- if we have no conflict, we can 

put Mike and me on -- that would be --

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Savannah, 

Blockson and feed materials. 

MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) That's no 

conflict. 

DR. ZIEMER: That would be Savannah 

River, Blockson and Fernald. Right? 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: And then Wanda will be with 

Mike (sic) on Savannah River, Y-12 and Fernald. 

DR. ROESSLER: (Off microphone) You left 

out --

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Didn't we 

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leave out Huntington? 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) Leon. 

DR. ZIEMER: With Leon. Now let's go 

through these again. 

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Yeah, 

read (Inaudible). 

DR. ZIEMER: The first three are Presley 

and Anderson. 

MR. ELLIOTT: And can we -- can we 

number these as we go, 'cause --

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- I'm going to send these 

to you and I want to make sure I get the right 

ones to the right people. 

DR. ZIEMER: One, two and three --

MR. ELLIOTT: One, two and three go to -

-

DR. ZIEMER: -- Presley and Anderson. 

Four, five and six go to --

MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Roy and 

Gen. 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) Roy and 

Gen. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right, Roessler and DeHart. 

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 Seven, eight, nine go to Andrade and Griffon. 

MR. GRIFFON: Then we skip one, just so 

Larry knows. Right? 

DR. ZIEMER: What? Then -- well, this 

now becomes ten. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) Savannah 

River --

DR. ZIEMER: Ten, 11 and 12 will be 

Gibson/Ziemer; 13, 14, 15, 16 --

MR. ELLIOTT: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) 14. 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) 14. 

DR. ZIEMER: Huh? 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) 13 and 

14. 

DR. MELIUS: Richard and I. 

DR. ZIEMER: I have four of them for 

you. 

DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) Yeah, we 

have --

DR. ZIEMER: I have 13, 14, 15, 16, 

Melius and Espinosa. 

DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) 

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(Inaudible) 18 was up, too, you know. 

DR. ZIEMER: And then Leon and Munn will 

be 17, 18, 19, 20. Okay. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Just so I make sure, can I 

read --

DR. ZIEMER: Yep. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Okay, if you number these 

and you drop out the bottom five Bethlehem Steels 

so they're not numbered -- right? -- we're going 

to give number one, two and three to Bob and 

Henry; four, five and six to Gen and Roy; seven, 

eight and nine to Tony and Mark; ten, 11, 12 to 

Paul and Mike; 13, 14, 15 and 16 to Jim and Rich; 

17, 18, 19 and 20 to Leon and Wanda. 

DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Okay. You will see those 

disks coming at you next week, so we need to know 

if you're not going to be -- where you want them 

sent. If you're not going to be at your 

residence, I need to know an alternate location 

to... 

(Pause) 

MR. GRIFFON: They won't be there before 

Monday, will they? 

MR. ELLIOTT: No, they won't be there 

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before Monday. 

MR. GRIFFON: They won't be there on 

Monday -- or no? Okay. 

MR. ELLIOTT: They will probably be sent 

out Tuesday, I imagine. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you very much. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Tuesday or later --

Wednesday. 

DR. ZIEMER: Henry? 

DR. ANDERSON: And as soon as we can get 

a date for when the contractor work group's going 

to be, it'd be helpful to know. I mean we're 

going to be tied in to a narrow window of calling 

DR. ZIEMER: John -- John, you'll let me 

know and I'll transmit that then. 

DR. ANDERSON: 'Cause we could maybe 

shift -- if it's going to be three days, we could 

maybe shift to meet people's schedules. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We need to send -- Bob, 

yours doesn't need to arrive until... 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) the 13th of September. 

DR. ZIEMER: Now keep in mind, although 

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we've grouped these by four, keep in mind that 

the contractor could conceivably have four 

different people for your four cases. You're not 

necessarily working with a single contact. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Really? 

DR. ZIEMER: Sure, because they're going 

to assign them based on expertise. We have 

assigned them, in a sense, arbitrarily. But no 

matter how you cut it, that's -- you're not --

you're not necessarily going to be with one 

person. 

DR. MELIUS: And I think we also have to 

recognize that it just may not be logistically 

possible for -- I mean (Inaudible) my schedule, 

some other people's, just try to pick out a date 

and times, it's going to be very, very hard. 

DR. ZIEMER: And incidentally, the 

participation in the conference call would not 

necessarily be mandatory. If you're going to be 

on travel but had comments, you'd simply transmit 

them -- you're going to get feedback in any event 

from the contractor. Okay? 

We need to take a lunch break and then 

aft-- first thing after lunch, at 1:30, is a 

public comment period. Let me -- I think we have 

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had some sign-ups, have we not, for public 

comment? We have at least one comment. And then 

we will proceed -- we have some other working 

items to take care of, including the minutes and 

the other documents from the contractor. So 

let's adjourn till 1:30 -- or recess till 1:30. 

We're not adjourning. You can leave your stuff 

here. 

(Whereupon, a luncheon recess was 

taken.) 

DR. ZIEMER: Just for the record, Henry 

Anderson, Mike Gibson and Roy DeHart have had to 

leave, so are not here for this afternoon 

session. We still have a quorum, however, and we 

will proceed. 

 PUBLIC COMMENT 

This will be our public comment period. 

We have two individuals that have requested 

time. We'll begin with Richard Miller. Richard, 

the floor is yours. 

Is there a mike -- hang on, it's coming. 

(Pause) 

MR. MILLER: Good afternoon. My name is 

Richard Miller -- is that too loud? 

DR. ZIEMER: That's good. 

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MR. MILLER: I'm with the Government 

Accountability Project. I apologize for not 

being at the last meeting, but I'm glad to be 

back. 

I wanted to touch on several items 

today. The first is Blockson Chemical. We 

understand that earlier this week the Federal 

Register notice was published which changes yet 

again the definition of what is Blockson 

Chemical. We've discussed previously -- the 

policy issue here is whether you count the radon 

dose at the Blockson Chemical facility from the 

grinding of rock phosphate, and a year ago in 

July the Department of Energy published a notice 

which narrowed the Blockson Chemical facility to 

only building 55, which was where they 

precipitated out the uranium from the phosphoric 

acid. But the question was whether earlier steps 

in the chain had radiological consequences or 

potential consequences and whether that dose 

should be counted or not. 

And then I, you know, just meandered 

onto the NIOSH web site and lo and behold we see 

that there is yet another site profile published 

at the end of June for Blockson Chemical. And I 

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couldn't tell whether it was my computer or 

whether it was the document, but page nine seemed 

to be blank. And I don't know if that's true or 

not, but if -- is -- has the question of whether 

radon is going to be counted been resolved in 

terms of the adjudication, particularly of the 

lung cancer cases, or is that still an unresolved 

issue? 

DR. ZIEMER: Do you or Jim want to 

answer that? 

MR. ELLIOTT: We haven't seen -- I'll 

look at the site profile. I'm concerned about 

page 19 being blank, so --

MR. MILLER: Nine. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- I'll check -- I'll 

check that out -- page nine? 

MR. MILLER: Page nine, yeah. Which was 

the one which referred to radon dose, so I just -

-

MR. ELLIOTT: That may be the reason why 

it's blank then --

MR. MILLER: That's why --

MR. ELLIOTT: -- because we had reserved 

--

MR. MILLER: -- I'm asking. 

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MR. ELLIOTT: We had reserved that until 

we've fully considered the situation. I have not 

seen the Federal Register notice, nor were we 

notified by DOE that it was being changed. It 

was a surprise to us as it was to you. We still 

are considering how to go about reconstructing 

lung cancer doses and what we will do with regard 

to radon. We haven't arrived at a decision point 

on that. 

MR. MILLER: So the revised site profile 

that's up doesn't -- doesn't close out that issue 

is what --

MR. ELLIOTT: No, it does not. 

MR. MILLER: Okay, that's -- that's what 

I really wanted to get clarified on. Is -- is it 

-- is it sensible -- is this a sensible question 

for the Advisory Board to be taking up, I mean 

what dose do you count or not count? I mean 

doesn't that fall kind of within what this Board 

ought to be deliberating on, or is -- it just 

sort of strikes me -- I mean this has been 

hanging out there since October of 2003 when the 

first site profile was published. Now we're sort 

of winding the clock, it's -- you know, we're --

you know, we're pushing to the fall of 2004. A 

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full year has passed. The issue's not resolved 

or closed, and you all haven't really had a 

chance to deliberate on this. And you know -- I 

mean Larry's obviously wearing the hat of the 

dose reconstructor. You're wearing the hat of 

the -- you know, the site profile manager, but 

you're also the one setting the agenda here. Is 

there a way to get this on the agenda once and 

for all and get it aired out and get at least 

some recommendations, whether the government 

accepts them or not? 

DR. ZIEMER: I think the answer is yes, 

there is. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, there is. But the 

Department has not determined that it's an agenda 

item for the Board to take up at this point in 

time, so we'll have to come to our closure on it 

and provide it to the Board for its deliberation 

when the -- when it is appropriate. 

MR. MILLER: Okay. Well, there's a 

draft site profile out there, so I figured it was 

appropriate once one's been published. 

The second issue I wanted to touch on 

was the Special Exposure Cohort. You've got, as 

noted, several petitions filed. I wanted to 

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comment particularly on the Mallinckrodt one 

because I understand it'll be one of the first 

ones you all get, and I heard mention -- at least 

yesterday and it may-- probably wasn't a complete 

answer from -- from NIOSH staff, but they said 

well, we're looking at that sort of '42 to '46 

time period on -- on getting some kind of report, 

I guess was -- was -- was -- I don't want to 

characterize the words because they are what they 

are. Our sense of this -- looking at the 

Mallinckrodt site profile, at least -- is there's 

more to the Mallinckrodt site and whether dose is 

reconstructible than merely whether there was 

internal or external bioassay data undertaken 

between '42 and roughly '48. I believe they 

started doing some external dosimetry in around 

'46, and started doing more internals starting 

around '48. But there are -- the whole raffinate 

process where they took basically the -- the --

the -- where they made filter cake, where they 

extracted the liquid raffinate, which was loaded 

with all of the actinium-bearing -- particularly 

actinium-bearing waste and other materials that 

were ultimately shipped to Mound -- right? None 

of that's been assessed in the site profile. 

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There's no actinium dose estimates. It's not 

even mentioned. I did a keyword search just to 

make sure it might have been mentioned, yet we 

know there's a lot of it. We know it's oozing 

out of the airport site where they dumped the 

raffinates in St. Louis. If that dose isn't 

estimable, why is that not also part of the 

consideration of what dose can or can't be 

reconstructed? I mean why is that outside the 

scope of -- of your research -- or is it? Am --

am -- am -- am I prejudging and -- I -- you know, 

where y'all are headed with this? I mean that's 

-- I guess it's half a comment, half a question. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, Richard, this is a 

public comment period so your comments are noted 

and I'm not going to respond to questions of this 

-- this sort and type. It's premature. So --

MR. MILLER: Right. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- please -- please 

constrain your comments to comments, if you 

would. 

MR. MILLER: Well, I may --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, the information is 

noted in the --

MR. MILLER: I mean I think -- I think 

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this is not the first time that issue's been 

raised, but I -- I -- I am reacting to what we 

heard earlier in terms of the assessment of that 

petition and --

DR. ZIEMER: We hear what you're saying. 

MR. MILLER: -- and -- and I would 

encourage that inquiry. 

The second issue has to do with how this 

Board assesses the Special Exposure Cohort 

petition. And -- and although it -- it -- the --

what le-- was left, at least from my perception, 

of unresolved in the SEC rulemaking and in the 

procedures which were posted, I guess, after your 

last Board meeting and -- and which have had a 

chance to read -- left me with this puzzle. If 

your SEC -- if you're going to determine that 

it's not feasible to estimate dose because you 

can come up with a maximum plausible worst-case 

dose estimate, but that is not the estimate which 

is going to be used for compensating cases where 

P of C exceeds 50 percent -- so in a nonefficiency framework -- what happens? Who falls 

through the cracks and how do you -- what's --

what's -- yeah, what -- what is the logic of --

what is the logic of your decision point? What 

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is the logic of the decision point? And I think 

you all need to rethink, re-examine -- as you get 

your first petitions in and think about your 

analysis, are we having people for whom there --

they're in the class, you determine that you 

could come up with a worst-case dose estimate for 

them, but it turns out it's over 50 percent, so 

we're not going to apply the worst-case dose 

estimate to those people; we're going to try to 

come up with a better estimate. But you can't 

come up with a better estimate, but nevertheless 

there you are. They're not also eligible for the 

Special Exposure Cohort petition. And I -- I --

I just think this is a question y'all have to --

to wrap your minds around again. I -- I know 

you've heard me raise this more than once. 

DR. NETON: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) 

DR. ZIEMER: Response from Jim Neton. 

DR. NETON: I know we're not supposed to 

respond to comments, but when they're -- when 

there's some factual issues, I think it's best to 

correct them --

MR. MILLER: Go right ahead. 

DR. NETON: -- at this point. I think 

you're mistaken, Richard, that if -- if a -- if 

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the worst-case estimate would put somebody over 

50 percent, we would use that as the dose 

reconstruction if that is the only value we had 

to reconstruct the dose. I don't know where you 

got the idea we wouldn't. 

MR. MILLER: 42 CFR 82.10(k) says you 

will use a worst-case dose estimate up to the 

point that it -- you will apply that, provided 

that the P of C -- it's -- it's for your 

efficiency process. 

DR. NETON: No, the efficiency process, 

though -- the worst-case estimate can be used if 

that is the only estimate that you have 

available. You cannot use a worst-case estimate 

if there is a refinement that can be done. In 

other words, you can't -- you can't start the 

efficiency process and say my worst-case estimate 

is it's -- it could come to 40 rem and that's 

compensable. You can't stop there, because if 

there's additional information, one could refine 

the estimate. You can't award a compensation 

case based on an incomplete research profile. 

MR. MILLER: Oh, absolutely. 

DR. NETON: So what I'm saying is, if --

but if you go and it's a worst-case estimate and 

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there is no refinement available, that's all you 

know, then that's what you would use. You have 

to. There is no other information available. So 

I don't... 

MR. MILLER: Well, then -- then -- then 

the question I guess will be when you set your 

thresholds for what constitutes capping the dose, 

the test will then be are there cases where you 

have capped the dose -- right? -- which you are 

not going -- which would fall on that side of a -

- we can reconstruct the dose and we've capped it 

and so therefore we know that this population, 

this subset of the cohort, for example, has --

has -- has -- then going to be compensated 

accordingly. 

DR. NETON: It does not necessarily mean 

be-- and we went through this at the last Board 

meeting, and you weren't here so I guess that's 

why there's a little bit of confusion. But it is 

possible to say that we can cap a dose and -- and 

determine that a cohort should not proceed 

forward in the SEC process. That does not mean 

that NIOSH would not do further research to 

refine the dose as necessary in accordance with 

the regulation. 

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MR. MILLER: Well, we'll -- we'll --

we'll quickly see how that plays out in practice. 

MR. GRIFFON: (Inaudible) where we went 

last time in Buffalo and we did have this 

discussion, and it was probably mainly me, but 

where we went with that was that, you know, 

capping that dose to exclude someone from an SEC 

-- you know, my argument was well, you could say 

they got, you know, 4,000 -- you know, maximum 

estimate could be 4,000 rem, but you're not 

locked into having to use that --

DR. NETON: I think there's some --

MR. GRIFFON: -- so --

DR. NETON: -- some language in the 

regulation that says there has to be some sort of 

a reasonable upper cap. One cannot say a million 

rem. So it's in there. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Proceed, Richard. 

MR. MILLER: Sure. 

DR. ZIEMER: Do you have additional 

comments? 

MR. MILLER: Yes. The -- the -- the --

the second thing I'd just like to shift gears to 

is the -- I guess just a sort of a personal 

response, which it was hard not to sit in the 

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audience, and I don't know what it felt like to 

be around the table, but it was hard not to sit 

in the audience yesterday and feel a certain 

twinge of anxiety as the presentation by the 

audit contractor played out before the Board. 

And -- and I guess -- the good news was, it 

appears as though the records access issue seems 

to now be resolved, that -- that -- that that 

problem is now behind us and I -- and I hope 

that's the case. 

The second question that didn't seem 

quite as clearly resolved, although there were a 

number of constructive suggestions from Tony and 

from Bob Presley and others about the Q clearance 

issue, is that if the Q clearance issue does turn 

in -- become an obstacle to actually completing 

these, what can we do? Is there somebody who 

could become a champion to make sure that the 

needed and necessary Q clearances are obtained? 

I mean is -- is there -- is -- is there somebody 

who can sort of take ownership of this, either in 

the ag-- whatever the relevant agencies or the 

Chairman of the Board -- I don't know who the 

right person is to be the champion to make sure 

it happens. Because if a year from now we come 

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back and we're still waiting with Q clearances in 

the pipeline, I think there's going to be some 

frustration again. 

DR. ZIEMER: No. Your comment is noted 

and we are asking the same question. 

MR. MILLER: Oh, okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Who will our champion be to 

get that done, but thank you for --

MR. MILLER: Yeah, okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- underlining that. 

MR. MILLER: Yeah. And -- and now --

and then -- and -- and hopefully here, again, the 

issue about DOE access -- I was -- I was 

comforted to hear Tom Rollow once again reassure 

that the letter had been transmitted down through 

the field and tha-- and tha-- and that there's 

hope for -- for cooperation from -- from the DOE. 

Having said all of that, I -- I hope 

that this is now -- that this process is now 

going to steer more smoothly and -- and that 

there are not structural problems that are 

underpinning the multi-faceted role that NIOSH is 

having to play, which is -- is a tightrope, a 

delicate rope to walk, but it is hard not to put 

it on the record and say it's noticed and that 

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there's -- there's some difficulty there. And I 

don't know what all the background conversations 

are. I don't know what all the facts are. I do 

know that when it plays out publicly here, 

there's more to it than what meets the eye. I 

don't know what's necessary to bring greater 

transparency to it. Maybe there isn't any --

anything more to be dealt with. But I hope that 

there's not a structural problem here in NIOSH 

accommodating the contractor's needs, whether it 

be in contract management, records access or 

whatever new is going to come up on the horizon. 

And if there is a structural problem, if there's 

a governance issue here, then I -- I just think 

the Board should, as I'm sure it will, keep its 

ears closely attuned to this question. 

Finally, I wanted to talk a little bit 

about what I think are the -- the -- probably the 

most interesting aspect of the audit process 

that's moved forward so far, and I've gotten 

phone calls and communications from people who 

have met with the audit contract team at -- at 

the two locations that -- I think -- I don't know 

how many they've been to, but at least the two 

I've heard from -- which is that people felt 

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really good about being able to communicate. 

There was a high sense of comfort level that they 

were being listened to, whether -- how -- how 

it's going to be accounted for remains to be seen 

in whatever reports you get, but that these site 

interviews give people a chance, collectively, to 

-- and particularly for those with expertise --

to provide additional information and data that 

may not be fitting into the process as it is. 

And secondly, I think it'll be a useful 

reality check against what NIOSH has encountered 

in the paper records and their own interviews, in 

their claimant interviews. And I would certainly 

hope that -- that the site interview process 

continue forward because I -- it looks to me like 

this is going to be a value-added component as 

you went forward. 

And then lastly we heard from a 

gentleman last night who worked at the special 

manufacturing facility, the SMC, the depleted 

uranium tank armor facility out here at INEEL. 

Does anybody know, was the SMC facility included 

in the site profile? Anybody know? Yes? No? 

DR. ZIEMER: A couple of people here 

might -- yes is the answer. 

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UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) It is 

included. 

MR. MILLER: It is -- SMC is going to be 

included in the -- in the site profile? Okay. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) It's 

there now. 

DR. NETON: (Off microphone) It's there 

now. 

MR. MILLER: It's there now. Okay. We 

looked on the web site last night for the 

internal dose section and that -- that, I guess, 

hasn't quite made it up on the web. 

DR. NETON: (Off microphone) It lags 

behind a day or so. 

MR. MILLER: Yeah, okay. Thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Richard. Now 

we'll hear from David Fry with PACE. David did 

address us last night and he has some additional 

remarks today. 

(Pause) 

MR. FRY: Okay, I just wanted to make a 

couple of comments. Last night I asked about if 

they would redo the site profile meeting here 

because, you know, we were -- we didn't have all 

the information before, like we didn't have the 

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internal dose document. And last night we heard 

that it was on the web. I'm not picking on 

anybody, but as soon as we left I went and looked 

on the internet and it's not on the web yet. It 

says still under development, so I think we kind 

of need that document, you know, before we can do 

another site profile. 

And also on the occupational 

environmental dose and the external dosimetry, we 

noticed they hadn't been updated since the April 

28th meeting, so a couple of concerns we had. 

And then on the minutes that we got back 

from ORAU on the first meeting that we had, and I 

think Richard Miller just addressed one of them 

on the SMC project, if it was covered or not. 

There was one comment that there's a good 

description of the procedures but little about 

actual exposure, and we didn't really get a clear 

answer on that. Another comment was -- it says 

only ten percent of doses are reported. How can 

NIOSH or ORAU make conclusions when the amounts 

reported are inaccurate. That was the concern 

that was brought up, and Bill Murray's written 

response was the calculations are best -- based 

on DOE records. It's the only way we can do it. 

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 There's no way to verify if the data are good or 

bad, so it's kind of a concern there if we can't 

-- can't verify the data, you know, how do we 

know what we have, really. So just -- just a 

couple of things I wanted to bring up. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. As 

far as I know, that's all of the individual 

comments that have been requested. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 

(Inaudible) 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, please approach the 

mike. 

(Pause) 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Is this 

okay? Okay, one thing I understand --

DR. ZIEMER: You'll need to identify 

yourself for the record. 

MS. CODDING: Oh, okay, my name is 

Shirley Codding. I made a comment last night, 

and then this morning I heard that you guys are 

going to be touring the site tomorrow. And my 

one big concern is you're going to go out to the 

site and you're going to see a site that is not 

what we knew in the six-- well, even fifties, 

sixties, seventies and eighties. You're going to 

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see a much cleaner place. 

They're not going to take you in the 

areas that we are all concerned about where we 

have picked up all the problems. You're going to 

go out and see a site and walk away from there 

saying what in the world are they complaining 

about, because I guarantee you, if you looked --

before -- in the PODs, the orders -- the daily 

orders, before every tour is a massive -- for 

days before that -- clean up, clean up, clean up, 

make it look good. And personally, I think 

that's how we got our star status. Before those 

tours, we're out there -- that's our primary job, 

clean-up. 

And so you're not going to -- you're not 

going to go in the areas -- number one, like the 

old calciner. When we worked an overtime, if you 

were held from a graveyard to a day shift, you 

prayed you got that as a job because you could go 

down there, put your feet up and relax 'cause no 

manager in his right mind was going to come in 

there. I don't think a manager had been in the 

old calciner since the seventies. You're not 

going to see it because we deconned the best we 

could, tore the building down on itself and 

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capped it with concrete that's five feet tall off 

of the ground. You're not going to see that. 

You're not going to see the deep tanks 

at all where some of the fuel processing 

operators went down and were horrendously 

exposed. You're never going to see it because 

nobody goes even near there now. 

The solvent tank is long gone. You're 

not going to see that, not only the radiation, 

but the chemicals that we were exposed to back 

then that they don't allow on the site anymore. 

There's a -- half of the chemicals I worked with 

in the eighties I'm not allowed to even touch 

now. 

You're going to see a much safer site. 

We don't even go above six foot on a ladder 

without a safe work permit, but in the old 

calciner, I was crawling up pipes to get in the 

overhead pipes to manipulate a valve because we 

had a leak, and I went up there with nothing but 

a pair of NICs* on, gloves and shoe covers. 

You're not going to see any of that. 

You are not seeing the real site 

tomorrow. And I really want you to be aware of 

that when you go out there, that what you're 

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seeing is what they want the public to know 

about. It's not what was going on, and 

particularly in the sixties and seventies and the 

eighties. 

We stopped using the injection well I 

believe in 1986. As an operator, when we'd be 

ready to send out our evaporator, overhead 

condensates, we'd go over and turn up the 

detectors one because we knew it was going to set 

off an alarm. Well, you want to get rid of the 

stuff. The company told us to go ahead and do 

that. We turned up the detectors. We weren't 

supposed to turn it up to ten to the fourth, but 

I know of two times for sure that it was done 

just because we had to get rid of the stuff. It 

went into the injection well. That went down to 

the aquifer. You've got your Snake River 

alliance*, your Jackson Hole people that finally 

put a stop to that 'cause they were screaming 

we're -- we're not doing things right at the 

site. That is what you're going to see now is 

the changed, not what was, not the way we worked. 

Also, I'm sure you've gone around town 

and you've noticed we have no industry in this 

town. This town has put all of its eggs in one 

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basket and that's the site. So if you wanted a 

good paying job and you did not have a degree, 

you weren't a doctor, you weren't an attorney, 

you weren't a big farmer, you went out to the 

site. And because everybody wanted to go out to 

the site for the good-paying job, there were 50 

to 100 people waiting for your job if you didn't 

do your job. The company told you to jump, you 

asked how high, because if you didn't, there was 

-- there was 50 operator -- 50 people lined up 

for my one operator job. I did what they told 

me. They wanted me to go in in my birthday suit 

in the cell, I would have -- and thank God that 

didn't happen 'cause it made everybody happy. 

Seriously, that's how it was. We would 

have done anything that they asked. HPs, VoTech 

gave a class at -- for -- to certify us in HP. 

They were pumping out HPs like you can't believe. 

Yeah, you better believe the HPs did what they 

were told, because there were 200 waiting to take 

their job. We didn't ask questions; we did. And 

we did it to the best we could, and plus -

You know, when you're young, you're 

invincible. I can do anything. I'll survive it. 

And now a lot of people I worked with are dead. 

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 They really are. They're gone. Or they're in 

such horrendously bad condition -- I'm one of the 

lucky ones. I've survived eight surgeries on my 

head. I am a lucky person. Do you know, I've 

lost two sup-- no, three supervisors now. HPs 

that I've worked with hand-in-hand have died of 

cancer. We sent things into the stack that now 

we -- we monitor so close you can't believe. We 

sent things in the injection well that went to 

the aquifer. We -- we prayed for a job in the 

old calciner 'cause the manager wouldn't come in 

and catch you resting 'cause, you know, from --

overtime from the graveyard shift to day shift 

was really hard. You wanted that. But nobody --

we had a coffeepot down there, for crying out 

loud, to help keep you awake. But a manager 

wouldn't go downstairs. If he needed to talk to 

you, you went up and talked to him. Nobody went 

down there. 

You guys aren't going to see anything 

like that. You're going to see a nice clean, 

wonderful place to work. That's not what we 

worked in. That is the new and improved site, 

and it is done only because of public outcry on 

it. It is done because we were dumping stuff 

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into the ground. We were --

Do you know -- just a few months ago we 

even put a sealant on the tank farm. Now you're 

going to look at it and say, you know, nothing's 

going down into the ground there. Twenty-three 

years I worked, there were valves that leaked 

among* the tank farm. They dug up some dirt in 

the tank farm that were hotter than heck. 

Three to four years ago I went to Petco 

and bought rabbit food because us gals in the 

operation befriended some rabbits, and so in the 

wintertime we -- I bought rabbit food. I took it 

out there. We had two rabbits that let us girls 

get pretty close to them, and -- but the guys, 

when they'd walk by and say something, the 

rabbits took off 'cause the guys kept saying 

fatten them up so we could eat dinner. And --

but we finally last summer got an e-mail that 

said no more feeding the rabbits; we're finding 

hot rabbit turds. 

And I was out once and Craig Bishop, an 

HP, was picking up goofy things off of the tank 

farm and out in front of 604 where I worked, 

picking -- and I was what are you doing? He said 

collecting rabbit turds, survey. And he said 

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some of these are screaming hot, and he put the 

monitor there and it pegged out* like you 

wouldn't believe. We've got rabbits walking 

around all over there that are hotter than a sonof-a-gun, and yet we walk all over there. 

The dirt on the tank farm -- they did 

take a couple shovelfuls that were so screaming 

hot -- so now we got a nice asphalt cover over 

it. You guys'll never see that. You're not 

seeing the real thing. You have no idea what 

we've been through, and it's not the same area. 

We don't even work like we used to. 

And that's all I was just going to say. 

I just want you to be aware of what you're 

seeing tomorrow is not what is. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you for those 

comments, and I think the Board is certainly 

aware of that. Thank God that it isn't the way 

it was -- and this is true at all the sites we 

visit. They're very different than they were. 

And of course, you know, when I -- when I have 

company at my house, my wife doesn't let them 

look in my closet, either, and it -- obviously 

we're not going to see everything. We do want 

the Board to have a feel for what the site --

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what is the site, where did all this occur. So 

we -- but we understand what you're saying and we 

appreciate those comments. 

Is there anyone else that wishes to make 

a comment? If not, we're going to proceed on the 

agenda. 

REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF DRAFT MINUTES, MEETING 25 

We have a number of additional items to 

take care of in our working session, beginning 

with the minutes of our last meeting. I'd like 

to call for any changes or additions to the 

minutes. Wanda? 

MS. MUNN: I'd like a couple of 

clarifications, I think, on one or two sentences 

that must have -- it must have made sense to me 

at the time, I was there, but when -- reading 

them later, I wasn't sure. The very last 

sentence on page seven says the site profiles are 

not applicable to workers with no monitoring 

information at all. I'm not sure exactly what 

that means. 

DR. ZIEMER: That's quoting Dr. Neton or 

summarizing Dr. Neton's comments. Jim, it -- the 

last sentence on page seven says the site 

profiles are not applicable to workers with no 

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monitoring information at all, and she's asking 

for a clarification I think on that sentence. 

MS. MUNN: Yes. 

DR. NETON: Yes, that -- that's what I 

said or a good summary of what I said. What I 

meant by that is that the site profiles were 

really -- the first pass at the site profiles 

were constructed to evaluate people with 

monitoring information -- TLDs, urine samples, 

that sort of thing. People that had no 

monitoring information at all, it would be very 

difficult to use the site profile to do a dose 

reconstruction because we wouldn't have incident 

reports or coworker data to evaluate that. So I 

think it might be a little strong. I might -- I 

might rephrase that to say are not necessarily 

applicable, because there may be some situations 

where we could do it. I can't think of any off 

the top of my head. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well -- but the point is, 

this does fairly reflect what you said. 

DR. NETON: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay? 

DR. MELIUS: If you go to page 50, the 

bottom of the page is -- there's two sentences 

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from which that sentence is abstracted from, 

which I think capture Jim's --

DR. ZIEMER: This is in the executive 

summary versus the detailed -- yeah. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, and --

DR. ZIEMER: So unless you object, can 

we leave the first one since he's indicated it is 

correct? 

MS. MUNN: Yes. Yes, that's fine. 

That's fine. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Another one, Wanda? 

MS. MUNN: I didn't have any problem 

with the one on 55. On page 16 --

DR. ZIEMER: Sixteen? 

MS. MUNN: Uh-huh, the first paragraph 

of Ms. Mosier's Labor status report. I -- I made 

some reference to that earlier. I believe I 

understand exactly what that means, but I wonder 

whether everyone who reads this understands that. 

DR. ZIEMER: This is the first sentence, 

starting with "Ms. Mosier"? 

MS. MUNN: The first paragraph, 

presented statistics -- a breakdown of categories 

-- cancer remaining the major category at 70 

percent. Then the next sentence says the next 

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largest is non-covered conditions, which is 49 

percent. And I understand that there's an 

overlap there, but I wonder whether the ordinary 

reader would in fact wonder how you can have 70 

percent and then have 49 percent not covered. 

Now I -- you know, I get it, but I'm not at all 

sure that it's clear. 

DR. ZIEMER: Because you can have some 

with both. 

MS. MUNN: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: I guess the issue would be 

70 percent of what. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah, uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: And Ms. Mosier isn't here, 

but I think it was 70 percent of all -- I'm not 

sure. 

MS. MUNN: No. 

DR. ZIEMER: Seventy percent of all 

claims? 

DR. MELIUS: Couldn't -- couldn't 

someone refer back to the presentation that they 

made at the last meeting. You still have the 

slides. Someone may have kept them. And just 

sort of treat it as a grammatical error and it 

can be clarified --

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DR. ZIEMER: I don't -- I think the 

numbers are probably right. 

MS. MUNN: I think they are, too. 

DR. ZIEMER: You could have 49 percent 

other conditions, and some of those are overlaps 

where they have cancer and some -- I think is 

what the situation --

MS. MUNN: I think that's what it is, 

too, but it's not clear just reading it, prima 

facie. 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm not sure what we'd do 

with it at this moment. 

MS. MUNN: I'm not sure, either, but I 

felt it was confusing. The next --

DR. ZIEMER: Maybe -- maybe the way to 

treat it is to say which is 49 percent and which 

may include some of the -- and which could also 

include the can-- some of the cancer cases, or 

something to that effect. 

DR. MELIUS: Or if we want to fix it 

here, we can just take out the numbers, just --

DR. ZIEMER: Cancer the major category 

and the next largest is non-covered conditions. 

DR. MELIUS: That way we don't... 

DR. ZIEMER: That certainly removes the 

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ambiguity. Anyone object? And the transcript 

will have the exact -- without objection, we'll 

just remove the percentages there so that it --

so we would remove the words "at 70 percent" and 

remove the words "which is 49 percent". Thank 

you. 

MS. MUNN: In the paragraph above that I 

think we need to add one word to the second 

sentence of the last paragraph in that section. 

It starts "So long as the Board decided 

correspondence should be generated", I think the 

word "and" needs to go in there, doesn't it? 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, "and determines the 

purpose and focus". 

MS. MUNN: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: The word "and" will be 

inserted there, take it by consent that's a 

grammatical. 

MS. MUNN: Then my only other comment is 

the bottom of page 39 where, without any prelude, 

we sort of -- it looks as though Ms. Munn 

promptly -- suddenly decided she wanted to 

announce that she'd never heard anyone making 

jokes, and I guess I would like to suggest a 

change to that --

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DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

MS. MUNN: -- without changing the 

meaning. I would suggest "Ms. Munn commented she 

felt it was necessary to dispute an earlier 

inference that some individuals might not 

approach these claimant issues seriously. She 

stated that no person had ever made jokes about 

these matters within her hearing." I would ask 

that that be substituted for the first sentence. 

DR. ZIEMER: Is there any objection, and 

you can provide that wording to the --

MS. MUNN: I will. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- to the staff and to the 

editor. 

MS. MUNN: Thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: Without objection, we'll 

clarify that. Thank you. 

Larry, you had one? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, on page five, under 

Oak Ridge Associated Universities Team Dose 

Reconstruction Project for NIOSH Claimant 

Contact. The last sentence in the first 

paragraph that reads "They now handle almost all 

mailings to claimants" should correctly read 

"They now handle almost all CATI mailings to 

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claimants." 

DR. ZIEMER: That's a acronym, C-A--

MS. MUNN: T. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- D-E? 

MR. ELLIOTT: C-A-T-I. 

DR. ZIEMER: C-A-T-I. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Computer -- that's an 

acronym for computer-assisted telephone 

interviews. 

DR. ZIEMER: They now handle all --

almost all CATI mailings to the claimants. 

Without objection --

MR. ELLIOTT: The reason -- the reason 

why it makes it correct is that ORAU does not 

handle all mailings to the claimants, but they --

I guess they handle almost all, if not all, 

mailings on the CATI. 

DR. ZIEMER: Without objection, we'll 

make that change. 

 Any others? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Motion to approve the 

minutes with these changes? 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) So moved. 

DR. ZIEMER: Second? 

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UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Second. 

DR. ZIEMER: All in favor, aye? 

 (Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any opposed? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Motion carries. 

BOARD DISCUSSION AND WORKING SESSION 

We had two documents from the 

contractor. One was the organizational conflict 

of interest plan, the other was the quality 

assurance project plan. The contractor 

representative indicated yesterday that they 

themselves had some editorial changes. He has 

given me the mark-up, and although the changes on 

the surface appear to be minor, there are so many 

of them and they are throughout the document, I'm 

suggesting that we defer approval of the 

documents, with the understanding that they are 

operating under these general principles. And 

most of the changes are indeed editorial. They 

have some -- just some wording issues. And ask -

- I'd like to see if there's any changes the 

Board wishes to suggest on these documents. We 

would refer them back to the contractor to add 

our changes to theirs and come back with a clean 

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copy next time. Is there any objection to doing 

that? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: There appears to be none. 

Let me ask for changes -- let's start with the 

organizational conflict of interest plan, which -

- the first change is going to be they're 

changing the title of it to just conflict of 

interest plan, but do you have any changes to 

recommend on this? Larry. 

MR. ELLIOTT: They have titled both of 

these documents the National Institute of et 

cetera, et cetera. We would ask that they strike 

the National Institute of -- it is actually 

National Institute for, but I don't think it 

appropriate that NIOSH name appear on this 

document. You are the Advisory Board. It is 

your -- it is your contractor, it's your 

document. 

DR. ZIEMER: Without objection, we'll 

ask them to strike that. Thank you. Any others, 

Larry, that you --

MR. ELLIOTT: None that I have to offer. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other -- any other 

changes, questions Board members have? Wanda? 

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MS. MUNN: On CIO? 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, let's see, let's 

start -- we're still on conflict of interest. If 

not, I will ask them to come back with a clean 

copy -- and again, most of the changes that they 

are recommending have to do with the use of the 

title "Organizational Conflict of Interest" but 

then they have some other rewording changes that 

do not change substantively what they are doing, 

but nonetheless, they are wording changes and I 

think we would be more comfortable having clean 

copy to work with. 

So without objection, we'll defer action 

until the next meeting. 

Now, let's go on to the quality 

assurance project plan. Again, we'll strike 

National Institute of Occupational Safety and 

Health from the title. Wanda, I think you had an 

item on this one. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah, I have one or two, and 

I don't mean them as a criticism. I guess I'm 

trying to look at them as documents covering 

procedures and activities that someone else may 

have to audit at some time. And I -- when 

reading the duties of the quality assurance 

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manager, I'm assuming that there will be 

procedures established which this individual will 

approve and which will be the implementation of 

the policy which this document purports to be. 

I'm a little concerned about the 

statement of regularly assessing documents and 

the adequacy without any information about --

DR. ZIEMER: What page are you on? 

MS. MUNN: I'm on page six of 15. 

DR. ZIEMER: Under quality assurance --

MS. MUNN: Quality assurance manager --

DR. ZIEMER: -- manager? 

MS. MUNN: -- yes. (Reading) regularly 

assesses and documents the adequacy of quality 

systems by reviewing procedures and auditing work 

products. 

I am assuming there will -- I would like 

to assume that there will be a procedure which 

will establish the frequency and the type of 

documentation that would occur there. But of 

course in an overall policy document like this, 

it's impossible to spell that out. 

DR. ZIEMER: So are you suggesting --

MS. MUNN: I guess --

DR. ZIEMER: -- a change in the wording? 

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MS. MUNN: I'm requesting just a little 

more specificity in that wording, and I think it 

would be better for the contractor themselves to 

identify what that specificity should be. But 

bearing in mind the audit function that will 

follow -- may follow on their activities, I'd 

like for an auditor to be able to see what the 

quality assurance manager had done with regard to 

that item. 

DR. ZIEMER: Are you suggesting that we 

specify or ask them to specify the frequency, 

where it says "regularly"? 

MS. MUNN: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: Does "regularly" mean once 

a year or --

MS. MUNN: At least --

DR. ZIEMER: -- once a week or --

MS. MUNN: At least, you know, and --

DR. ZIEMER: And to specify how they are 

MS. MUNN: What reporting system would 

be used, yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Is there any objection to 

asking for this change, or --

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I -- I mean I would 

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read this as sort of a job description, what that 

person -- you know, what they would do. And 

there really should be some reference to those 

specifics in -- under plans and procedures, 

section six. And I agree they don't cover -- at 

least I don't see it covered -- covered there, I 

just -- and I think that would be the place to --

at least they -- you know, the quality assurance 

plan should include, you know, whatever schedules 

or whatever -- or it could -- it may well -- as 

well go up above, but -- one place -- it could go 

in either place, and that's what they -- so they 

should be able to modify it in either. 

MS. MUNN: Under plans and procedures 

there is, again, the specific procedure of having 

each individual read the quality plan and the 

documentation then is a sign-off by the 

individual that they have read that procedure. 

It seems to me, when I was asking for something 

in addition on the preceding page, I was asking 

for a little more specificity as to what the 

manager's responsibility was --

DR. ZIEMER: Let me --

MS. MUNN: -- (Inaudible). 

DR. ZIEMER: -- suggest this. I'm just 

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marking this up 'cause this copy's going to go 

back to them. Suppose we suggest that on item 

three under quality assurance manager that they 

specify frequency and documentation, either here 

or in section six. 

MS. MUNN: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: Would that be suitable? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

MS. MUNN: Yes, it would. 

DR. ZIEMER: Any objection to doing 

that? 

MS. MUNN: No. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, I take it by consent 

that we'll ask for that change. Okay. 

Wanda, do you have any others? 

MS. MUNN: No, the other was something 

I'm sure will happen in -- in procedures under 

item nine, QAPP training, page 12 of 15. It says 

the QA manager supervises training of each 

individual working on the contract. I assume 

that documentation will fall as a part of that 

supervision and documentation. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, documentation as 

referred to in the previous section. 

MS. MUNN: The previous section, yes. 

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Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: Do you think something 

additional needs to be added? 

MS. MUNN: No, other than the fact that 

document control does not mention training 

documents specifically, one place or the other. 

DR. ZIEMER: So you're suggesting that 

perhaps they add something that -- documentation 

of training? 

MS. MUNN: Just a tracker, yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Any objection to asking for 

that clarification? 

 Okay, Tony? 

DR. ANDRADE: I wanted to actually get 

even -- even a clearer definition of the quality 

assurance manager's role and responsibilities, so 

back to page --

DR. ZIEMER: Sure. 

DR. ANDRADE: -- of 15. It's a little 

murky on item one. It says that the quality 

assurance manager establishes and implements 

quality policy. Okay? Clearly anybody who's 

done quality assurance before knows that the QAPP 

is only the umbrella document to implementing 

procedures. So is this person going to be 

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responsible for writing or to have written 

implementing procedures for the QAPP? I think 

that should be absolutely crystal clear at this 

point, because then on the next page these 

procedures are referred to, but nobody knows 

who's got responsibility for writing them or 

being responsible for having them written. 

DR. ZIEMER: So you want clarification 

of who... 

DR. ANDRADE: Right, clarification of 

whether it is the quality assurance manager that 

is responsible -- has overall responsibility for 

the development of quality implementing 

procedures. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Any objection to 

asking for clarification on that? 

DR. MELIUS: They would just expand duty 

number one with more specificity? 

DR. ANDRADE: Yes. 

DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: So clarification of whether 

the QA manager is responsible for -- what was the 

word you used then -- for developing? 

DR. ANDRADE: The development of quality 

implementing procedures. 

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DR. ZIEMER: Development of quality --

DR. ANDRADE: Implementing --

DR. ZIEMER: -- implementing procedures. 

Thank you. 

Okay, any others? Yes. 

MR. ELLIOTT: In both documents -- let's 

take the QAPP first. On page four of 15 under 

scope, also in the conflict of interest plan on 

page six under 5.3, second paragraph, there is 

mention here of SEC reviews. Your contractor --

it's not in the scope. And in the procedures and 

the rule that we have, the research evaluation 

reports come to the Board. The Board is charged 

with evaluating the content of that and sending 

us back to do more work and more development. So 

there's no role for your contractor with regard 

to SEC. I thought we had -- we tried to address 

this when we developed the tasks, and it was 

struck out of the tasks, but I see it's coming 

back, so... 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, and I think -- we may 

have had this discussion before, but I think 

early in the process when we were going out to 

find a contractor, there had been mention of a 

possible role in SEC evaluations, but that 

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certainly is not currently a task, so --

MR. GRIFFON: But it is -- just for 

clarification for me, it still is part of the 

overall original contract that -- that was bid 

on. It just hasn't been issued as a task. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You want to speak to this, 

Jim? 

MR. GRIFFON: It's in the contract -- I 

mean it's in the -- you know. 

DR. NETON: I don't think so. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, it's on -- I'll give 

you the page. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I don't think it's in the 

contract. It was in the -- the --

DR. NETON: I think their bid --

MR. ELLIOTT: -- RFP, request for 

proposals. At that time, when the Board put out 

its RFP, we didn't have any -- no one had a clear 

insight as to whether or not there would be a 

role. But as the proc-- as the rule was 

developed, the rulemaking ensued and the 

procedures were developed, the Department does 

not view that there's any role for the Board 

contractor on SEC. The time line of processing 

petitions and evaluation reports calls for the 

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Board to take action on those by either saying 

yes, we agree with the eva-- the conclusions of 

the evaluation report to add a class, or no, we 

don't agree with the evaluation report and send 

NIOSH back to work on it. 

MR. GRIFFON: Okay, but I -- I thought 

we still left -- I thought we -- if someone could 

double-check that for me, I thought we still left 

a placeholder and we took out specific reference 

to a regulation because none existed, but we left 

a placeholder that the contractor may provide 

technical assistance in the SEC review process --

may provide technical assistance to the Board, 

and it was kind of a -- a section (c) if I 

remember in the task order contract. 

Now I -- I don't think --

DR. ZIEMER: Or did it precede the task 

orders? I think it was removed from any of the 

task orders. 

MR. GRIFFON: It wasn't in any of the 

tasks. I guess it's -- it's a langua--

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, you mean -- but prior 

to the individual tasks. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, prior to the 

individual tasks, I thought it still remained in 

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the final... 

MR. ELLIOTT: What does the Board 

envision for --

MR. GRIFFON: Well, I don't know, I'm 

just saying --

MR. ELLIOTT: -- technical support? I 

mean --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, maybe we should have 

this discussion for a moment. Let's set this 

aside, because that's the only other thing I have 

before me. I wanted to raise this question and 

let me ask it. 

We have nine petitions in some stage of 

process, and I think an indication that some of 

those petitions may be sort of fully ready for 

something by our next meeting -- for what? For 

review or just -- they'll be in the Federal 

Register? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I made a statement 

yesterday that we fully expect that the public 

will be noticed in the Federal Register that X 

number of petitions have been qualified. That 

will -- that notice will include a brief 

description of the petition by what site it 

represents. I'm hopeful also that we may have --

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I can't promise this, but that we may have a 

class or two defined with a research evaluation 

report for the Board's review. 

The process that is envisioned by the 

rule and the procedures speaks to the Board's 

role in reviewing and evaluating, from its 

statutory mandate, the evaluation that we do on 

petitions and advising whether to move them 

forward or to send us back. There's not an audit 

or a quality aspect of that. It's just what it 

is on its face value. You either accept it or 

you don't accept it. And it has to be a function 

of this Board. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me ask this question. 

What -- what -- the document that comes to the 

Board, which will be presumably the official 

petition and an evaluation done by staff, what is 

that going to look like in terms of content and -

- I think one of the questions that arises is how 

much of it is technical information where some 

Board members may feel uncomfortable in 

evaluating it without the assistance of say a 

contractor -- not for quality purposes, but 

simply for other purposes. Or in this case, are 

we -- we are in a different capacity 'cause we're 

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part of the decision at this point. 

MR. ELLIOTT: That's right. 

DR. ZIEMER: So --

MR. ELLIOTT: And you don't have a lot 

of time. The time toll's on you. 

DR. ZIEMER: We're not overseeing the 

quality of -- like we would on a dose 

reconstruction. We are actually part of the 

decision itself. But my question is, what is the 

level of technical information that this Board 

will have to evaluate, both in terms of technical 

depth and maybe in content -- I think -- we need 

to be able to feel some comfort level in our 

ability to evaluate the document. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We -- yes, we recognize 

that as an issue, a concern that you have. We 

share it. We not only see the Board as an 

audience, we see the petitioners as an audience. 

We see the public as an audience. So these 

things will have to be couched in terms that the 

public can understand. We envision these will be 

a nominal report, ten to 15 pages; a summary page 

that includes the original petition, class 

definition, outlines the qualification process, 

presents a new class definition if necessary or a 

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revised class definition or a class definition 

that melds multiple petitions together in a case 

where we have multiple petitions for a given 

site. That will all be encompassed in that 

summary section. A discussion section that 

presents the case argument or the rationale for 

either adding a class or not adding a class, and 

a recommendation conclusion section. 

DR. ZIEMER: And there will --

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, a similar --

DR. ZIEMER: -- also be an opportunity 

for members of the public to have input on --

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, that's in the 

procedures. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- pro or con on --

MR. ELLIOTT: That's right, and you hear 

that out. It's similar to a -- the rulemaking 

process that you went through where it's a --

rather than a public-noticed rulemaking, it is 

public comment in your forum as an advisory body. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Comments on --

reactions -- Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: Well, just to further 

complicate this issue, as -- as I mentioned 

yesterday, we will have site profile reviews and 

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individual dose reconstruction reviews underway 

and parallel to this process that will, you know, 

cover -- could cover some of the same sites for 

which there are SEC petitions. And the one site 

you mentioned yesterday as being -- Larry 

mentioned yesterday as being likely to come --

come up or some possibility it'll come up at our 

next meeting is the Mallinckrodt site, for which 

we have a site profile review that's also going 

on almost -- roughly the same time and could very 

well be ready for presentation at -- at our next 

meeting for the Board's decision on approving and 

so forth and so on. And to me it's going to be 

very hard to -- to separate the two. And as a 

Board member, I may feel -- I would be reluctant 

-- I may be reluctant, depending on what's in the 

-- NIOSH's Mallinckrodt recommendation, to review 

and approve or not approve that while we -- you 

know, depending on where our -- how our site 

profile review came down. And I can, you know, 

envision, you know, theoretically, lots of 

different possibilities that, you know -- again, 

the -- our contractor finds some source of 

information about dose that -- that NIOSH was not 

aware of or NIOSH's contractor was not aware --

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and vice versa. I mean there's lots of different 

'narios (sic), and you know, whether or not --

even at this point I find it hard to figure out 

whether -- what kind of technical help we might 

need or whether we will need any assistance in 

doing this. But we are going to have to figure 

out how these two processes come together. 

DR. ZIEMER: And -- and we may have to 

actually go through the SEC process to see how 

that plays out. At the moment, there's no clear 

role for the contractor in the SEC process. I'm 

going to suggest that we simply remove it from 

these documents. We can always amend this and 

add it if at some point we say that there is a, 

for some reason, a role. We would basically say 

these two documents also apply to that activity. 

There's no reason we couldn't add it later if 

needed. But certainly they don't have a clear 

role now. It's not in any of the tasks. So my 

suggestion would be -- so that we can at least 

move ahead on this, is simply to remove it from 

these documents for now. And I think -- it's not 

obvious to me what role the contractor would have 

in the SEC process until we get a good feel for 

what that's going to look like and our ability to 

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evaluate those petitions as -- and maybe -- maybe 

we'll know that or have a -- start to have a feel 

for that at the next meeting. 

Clearly our role is very different in 

that process than it is in these. 

DR. MELIUS: My only concern about 

delaying that decision -- and I don't think we 

can make it today or --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, there's nothing our 

contractor's going to do in the meantime on the 

SEC, so --

DR. MELIUS: Right, right, right. Well, 

the problem with delaying is there is, as Larry 

pointed out, there's some timeliness issues 

related to these petition reviews, and I don't 

think we want to get in the position of, you 

know, Larry -- NIOSH having ten, you know, SEC 

recommendations ready for us and us saying well, 

gee, we need a contractor to do this or we need 

this assistance. And so I would hope certainly, 

you know -- as may be -- hopefully by the next 

meeting we can have a more complete discussion 

and NIOSH'll have worked out much -- in much more 

detail what will -- how it's -- the nature of its 

recommendation, what the report's going to be 

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like, what will -- what kinds of information will 

be given to -- to review and so forth. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think at the next 

meeting we need to have an agenda item where we 

present and walk through the procedures and 

highlight, you know, those activities within the 

procedures that are -- the Board is directly 

involved in. You know, the notice of qualified 

petitions. That's something the Board needs to 

be aware of 'cause it's part of your notice. 

Those things need to be shared with you in a 

presentational format, which we have not done 

yet. We would have put it on for this meeting, 

but Katz couldn't stay for the whole meeting and 

we had a full agenda, as well. 

I also think if we don't have a research 

report on a petition or two for you at the next 

meeting, we need to have a shell of one so that 

you can see what it is and give us input into it. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, you could do it in a 

mock-up sort of --

MR. ELLIOTT: A mock-up, yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: So we can see what kind of 

data we're going to be reviewing -- yeah. Good. 

MR. ELLIOTT: This is -- we're also 

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required to have an evaluation plan, that's part 

of the procedures. So you know, there's a --

DR. ZIEMER: That needs to be developed. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- litany of things here 

that need to be attended to for your better 

edification of the process. 

MR. GRIFFON: And just -- just so people 

do realize, it is in the contract. I mean I just 

checked this with Jim Neton and it is, on page 7, 

actually, of the Sanford Cohen & Associates 

contract. It's no task, I agree, but if -- you 

know, as we're thinking about this, if we do want 

to create a task for something that they can 

assist us with -- I think you're -- I mean -- and 

we clearly said technical assistance. It wasn't 

a audit kind of role. We knew that. But I think 

the thinking was we might want some back-up on 

certain issues that we felt uncomfortable 

addressing. So just so people might want to look 

at that and think about what a task might look 

like, and as we go forward I think we need to 

think about that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So then going back 

to the two documents, for the time being is it 

agreeable that we simply remove that from the 

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documents and ask them to modify accordingly? 

Without objection, we'll -- this'll be, for our 

recorder, on the quality assurance plan at 

section 3.0, second sentence, we would remove 

"and SEC review", and on the conflict of interest 

plan, page six under section 5.3, second 

paragraph, remove the phrase "SEC petitions". 

Tony? 

DR. ANDRADE: Just a detail, but don't 

forget the org chart on the next page, and also 

the description of the con-- of the SEC program 

manager. 

DR. ZIEMER: The org chart -- yes -- has 

an SEC petitions review manager. 

DR. ANDRADE: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: And I don't know if they 

have -- they could still have that in their 

organization. Was -- was there one in the other 

document? 

DR. ROESSLER: (Off microphone) A 

description of the manager in the... 

(Pause) 

DR. ZIEMER: Were those the only two 

places, Tony? 

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responsibilities and the chart. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. In that 

particular one, for example, on page seven, it 

looks like a sampling of petitions that they're 

reviewing, and this is something we, in any case, 

have never specified. 

Any other recommended changes for those 

two documents? Yes, Richard? 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) Under 

the cost projection accuracy --

DR. ZIEMER: Which document are you in? 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) QA plan. 

DR. ZIEMER: QA plan, page? 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) Ten or 

11. I'm just wondering if there's any way to add 

maybe monthly reports to the Board or a quarterly 

report to the Board. 

DR. ZIEMER: On cost projections? 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me address that 

separately because that's already being done and 

I want to speak to that here in a moment. It's 

probably not necessary to put it in here, but I 

will address that in just a moment. 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) All 

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right. Thanks. 

DR. ZIEMER: Any other changes? 

MR. GRIFFON: Just --

DR. ZIEMER: Mark. 

MR. GRIFFON: Just on the conflict of 

interest document, I know that we had a 

commitment during the presentation that the 

conflicts of interest would be posted on the web 

site. I wonder if maybe that could be included 

in the -- and the web site location could be 

also, you know, included. I'm not sure what 

section it would go in. 

DR. ZIEMER: Once these are approved. 

You're talking about these -- this conflict of 

interest plan? 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Once it's approved --

MR. ELLIOTT: I think he's referring to 

their web site, and we'll add a hot link to our 

to direct folks to their web site. Okay? 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. On the issue that 

Richard just raised, we have -- and they're 

available for your perusal, they're sitting 

behind Larry here -- the documents pertaining to 

each of the four tasks. These incidentally are 

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not -- these are proprietary. They have cost 

information in it so these documents are not 

available to the public, but any of the Board 

members can peruse these. They have the monthly 

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billings, the amounts spent so far on each task, 

the deliverables. 

For example, here's task one, which is 

the site profile review. And if you look in the 

very front of this, it has all of the actions 

taken by the contractor by date. Then there's a 

section that lists the Board-approved proposal, 

what the task is. There's various correspondence 

relating to that particular task between the 

contractor and, for example, NIOSH in this 

particular case. There's -- well, there's some 

procedures. There's proprietary information that 

is -- the actual billings are in here. And 

incidentally, when those monthly billings come 

in, I see those. I have to approve those before 

they're paid, so those -- those come in. There's 

-- it shows -- the billing is broken down into 

detail, which person -- which contractor person 

accumulated so many hours and they're billed at a 

certain rate, and travel, overhead and all those 

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things are in here. There are charts showing the 

total spent on the tasks so far, the percent of 

the award and so on. So all that detail's here 

and we get -- that is updated monthly. That's 

being provided -- it's being provided to me and 

it's being provided to NIOSH, the person that 

NIOSH has designated to track the expenditures in 

the contract. 

Are there any questions on that? And if 

there's information that Board members want to 

see monthly -- I mean any of that can be 

distributed, but -- but for example, here's one 

from July where I have signed off saying the 

amounts claimed are reasonable and require -- I 

have to certify that if there was a deliverable 

that has been delivered, and then -- I'll show 

you, Rich, 'cause you're right here -- it shows 

all the previous vouchers and the amounts and 

total billed to date against that task, percent 

of the funds expended. Those are all tracked and 

a detailed breakdown. So we have that on every 

task, and it's -- yes. 

MR. ELLIOTT: The procurement office 

receives the billings and then they are sent to -

- to my office to Martha DiMuzio, who you've met. 

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 She then provides a copy of those to Dr. Ziemer, 

asking him to evaluate them and sign off on them, 

or kick them back. We could, if you -- if it's 

the Board's pleasure, we can have a presentation 

on each task and the status of progress of 

expenditures, not progress of work. Okay? 

That's Sanford Cohen & Associates that should 

present you progress on their work, but we can 

give -- if you -- if it's your pleasure, we can 

summarize for you in a report to the Board, and 

it can be done either in a public presentation or 

in a written summary --

DR. ZIEMER: For each meeting? 

MR. ELLIOTT: For each meeting. 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) I'd just 

-- I'd personally like just to see a general 

overview of what's being done and --

DR. ZIEMER: Why don't we schedule that 

as a regular part of each meeting. It'd probably 

only take 15 minutes or so. Would that be 

agreeable? 

MR. ELLIOTT: That's fine. 

DR. ZIEMER: Would the rest of the Board 

like to have that information or --

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) So 

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moved. 

DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) Yeah. 

MS. MUNN: I would hope that it would 

only be a very, very high level overview. I for 

one am -- I was impressed with the amount of 

detail that was in the financial tracking of the 

QA plan already, and I just --

DR. ZIEMER: I think it's going to be a 

bird's eye view and that's what you're asking 

for, Rich. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Where are we on -- where 

are we on each task and --

MS. MUNN: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: It won't take too long. 

We'll take it by consent that that will be 

provided in the future. Thank you. 

And then I think we'll keep -- these 

will be here if you want to peruse these in 

detail at the meetings, so I think Martha will --

MR. ELLIOTT: These will serve as a 

reference -- set of reference documents for the 

Board members. They are available at each Board 

meeting. They will be maintained in a current 

status, up to the point of, you know, whatever we 

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can arrive at before -- before we present to the 

Board here, before we're at a Board meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Do we have 

other items that we -- that the Chair has 

overlooked or that --

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) There's 

a couple of things that I'd just like to bring 

up. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, please. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Number one, on a --

whenever we go to these sites, I'm just wondering 

if we could get like a site overview of what the 

site does and their -- it'd be especially helpful 

to me when the public speaks that I'd kind of 

know what they'd done. 

DR. ZIEMER: Excellent suggestion. I 

don't know what's planned for tomorrow, but it 

certainly would be helpful to those that are 

going to have an overview of the kinds of 

activities the -- at least the primary facilities 

that are on the site, what the site's role has 

been in the past, that kind of thing. 

MR. GRIFFON: I actually was talking 

with Jim yesterday and I thought it would make a 

lot of sense, up front on the agenda --

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DR. ZIEMER: In the meeting. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- if -- if you had not a 

-- just a -- not just a historical operations 

overview, but if a site profile's been completed 

for where -- the location where we're at, sort of 

present a summary of that, 'cause that might also 

bring some questions up from the audience, you 

know, later on in public comment time. So it 

might be a way to -- for us to learn about the 

site, but also to bring some questions --

DR. ZIEMER: And perhaps a description 

of the main processes that have been done in the 

past so that when workers refer to working on 

some line or whatever that you can relate that to 

a location or a process. I think it's a good 

suggestion, Rich. I'm not sure how to implement 

that. Do you know on the tour this time to what 

extent they'll be given kind of an overview as --

at the front end of the tour? 

MS. HOMER: (Off microphone) Well, 

(Inaudible). 

(Pause) 

MS. HOMER: From my understanding, there 

will be packets provided to each attendee that 

include maps and things of that nature. There's 

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going to be a CD provided to each person. What 

information is on that CD, I don't know. I know 

that in Idaho Falls we'll be seeing a movie, and 

then on the site out -- or on the trip out -- I'm 

sure we can pose questions, as is -- norm. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, hopefully there'll be 

some historical information, as well, in the 

movie that sort of lays the groundwork -- why is 

this site here, what has it done in the past, 

what is it doing now. I think that --

MS. HOMER: And I suspect that's what's 

in the packets of material we're getting. I know 

that there'll be a map and there'll be a question 

and answer period, as there always seems to be on 

the tour. 

DR. ZIEMER: But perhaps in the future -

- I think you're asking, Rich, in the future if 

we might -- particularly if we go to a place like 

Pinellas -- what did -- what went on here at this 

plant. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Good suggestion. 

Did you have another item? 

MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah, on Dr. -- on the 

outreach and the schedules -- on the outreach, 

I'd like to see a schedule for the site profile. 

And I'd also like to make sure that the area --

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Department of Labor resource centers receive that 

schedule, too. You know, I know there was an 

outreach in Pantex and the Department of Labor 

for New Mexico did not receive that. 

DR. ZIEMER: What needs to be done here? 

I'm -- can you flesh this out, Jim? 

DR. NETON: Could I --

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: I'd just like to address the 

practicality of the request. I think it's a good 

idea. The practicality is, though, that these --

these meetings get arranged fairly short order. 

It takes a lot of negotiation with the local 

union folks and we rarely have more than three to 

four weeks' notice. So we can't put out, for 

example, a schedule for the next six months. It 

hasn't happened that way yet. We wish we could. 

So the best we can do is to notify -- as soon as 

we know -- you know, the affected people. But we 

also do -- always notify Department of Labor, at 

least the national level, that we're going to be 

doing that and invite their participation -- if 

they want. We don't want to force them into it. 

It's not our call to require them to be there. 

But we find it is helpful that Labor is there. 

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MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah, one of the -- one 

of the reasons why I'm saying this and suggesting 

this is there's outreach groups like the Los 

Alamos POWs that would have been probably 

instrumental -- and will be in the Los Alamos 

outreach. 

DR. NETON: Right, and I think we've 

been coordinating with them. Mark Lewis -- I 

don't know if everybody has met Mark yet. He is 

-- he used to be a member of the union at 

Portsmouth, has now joined ATL, one of the --

ORAU's contractors, as the lead on this issue. 

And one of his jobs now is to go do pre-meetings 

at sites. He will go to a place like Los Alamos, 

knock on some doors, find out who the important 

people are that can help him arrange these 

meetings, and then we go about the business of 

finalizing. So we're doing a lot of -- a lot 

better job of groundwork up front now than we did 

say three or four months ago. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: Other items? Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: I have a couple of other 

questions. One is a question on -- back to our -

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- our contractor. Presumably at our -- by our 

next meeting or before our next meeting, they 

will have done -- completed some of the site 

profile reviews. What is our procedure for those 

being shared with the Board, as well as being 

presented to the Board? Have we sort of decided 

on a format and an approach for doing that? 

DR. ZIEMER: We do not have a set 

procedure for that. It would -- I think on the -

- on the site profiles, I believe it's in order 

for us to get a copy of the draft in advance, is 

it not? Can that be done? I'm asking this from 

a legal point of view. 

DR. NETON: Well, advance to the extent 

that -- and Dr. Ziemer, you were a part of this 

conversation we had with Sanford Cohen -- that 

NIOSH would be first afforded a fact-- a review 

for factual accuracy of the draft before it was 

issued to the Board. At the time it's issued to 

the Board I think it becomes a public -- public 

document, and so we just --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, that was my question. 

Is it public or predecisional if we're -- if 

it's distributed to us for review prior to a 

meeting? 

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DR. NETON: Okay, Liz Homoki sitting 

next to me says it's predecisional, so I guess 

it's not necessarily publicly --

DR. ZIEMER: Until we adopt it, it's --

DR. NETON: -- available until you adopt 

it. But once it was -- well --

DR. ZIEMER: Once it's on the floor at 

the Board meeting, it becomes --

DR. NETON: Right, then I guess that's 

your option then on how to -- how to proceed with 

that predecisional draft --

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

DR. NETON: -- whether it would be a 

closed session or just have it vetted at a public 

session. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Well, let me kind of 

bounce your question back to the full Board, Jim, 

and that is how does the Board wish to proceed on 

this? It would make sense to me that we got some 

kind of a draft of the proposed report at some 

point when -- when the contractor believes it's 

ready. They will have done a reality check with 

NIOSH on factual accuracy at that point. Tony? 

DR. ANDRADE: I think I would just 

suggest -- I guess to start the conversation --

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that we follow a parallel path. I think it is 

wholly appropriate that NIOSH reviews it for 

factual accuracy. But after that, the review 

itself should be considered by the entire Board 

during a closed session. 

DR. ZIEMER: I don't know if there's any 

privacy issues that would allow us to do it in a 

pri-- in a closed session. My impression is that 

the reason for the closed session was --

DR. ANDRADE: Was Privacy Act. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- was Privacy Act issues 

on individual cases. I don't think that would be 

the case for a site profile, would it? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: (Off microphone) I 

can't imagine that it would be. 

DR. ZIEMER: So it --

DR. ANDRADE: Oh, I can -- I can 

imagine. 

DR. ZIEMER: You can imagine? 

DR. ANDRADE: Yes, of course, especially 

if they're going to do interviews with site 

personnel. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: (Off microphone) But 

I'm going to have to see (Inaudible). 

DR. NETON: The only issue that I could 

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foresee is that in order for the Board to 

understand what has been completely done, as Tony 

suggests, is maybe some Privacy Act information 

may need to be discussed to understand some 

concerns or issues the Board might raise. I mean 

that's a possibility. I don't know. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, what would have to 

happen, I think, in reality is that once the 

draft document was ready, if the contractor had 

some concerns that in discussing this they had to 

identify individuals from whom -- I don't know if 

it's individuals from whom they obtained 

information had to be disclosed or what -- then 

perhaps it could be in private session. 

Otherwise, I think it's got to be in the open 

session, as far as I can understand it. Robert? 

MR. PRESLEY: If there are areas in 

there where we would have to use a name or a --

or a -- of a person that they went through, could 

you not leave that out and put the site that -- I 

mean the site's not going to be anything. 

DR. ZIEMER: I mean it's going to be --

it's going to be an evaluation of the site 

profile, so I -- the report itself -- it's hard 

for me to envision why it would necessarily bring 

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out individual issues. Can -- can you think of 

any? I mean --

MR. ELLIOTT: When we do our work and we 

consult with people -- like if you look at 

Bethlehem Steel, or maybe that's not a good one; 

what's the Bridgeport Brass one -- we use 

personal communication. And if we cannot get a 

release from the individual that we talked to, 

then that's the way it is couched, a personal 

communication. I would hope that your contractor 

would use some similar approach to either get a 

release or waiver from the people that they talk 

to so that their name could be used as a 

reference, or it is listed as a personal 

communication. Otherwise, I -- you know, I'm at 

a loss, too, as to -- unless -- unless there's a 

-- the only other thing I could think of, as I 

was sitting here listening to the discussion, 

unless there is a document that is found by your 

contractor that we had not discovered that may 

have personal dose data in it, you know, personal 

identifiable information in it that would -- in 

that case, I'd hope they would redact it for 

public consumption. 

DR. MELIUS: But most likely they're 

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just going to reference it. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Most likely they're going 

to reference it, so --

DR. MELIUS: So it's not going to be --

yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. So my sense of it is 

that it's -- it comes to the Board so we have a 

chance to see it before our meeting, but it is 

part of the open meeting. 

DR. MELIUS: This -- the procedure --

and again, I'm concerned about appearances here, 

that -- at the time it comes in for this factchecking by NIOSH, do you get a copy of it, Paul, 

or is it just --

DR. ZIEMER: No. 

DR. MELIUS: Is there going to be 

documentation of what changes are ask-- what --

what if there's a dispute between -- about the 

facts between the contractor and NIOSH? Is --

how do we get that resolved? 

DR. ZIEMER: Actually I think maybe Jim 

-- can you answer --

DR. NETON: Yeah, I think -- I think 

that, knowing -- working with SC&A thus far, I'm 

very certain there will be some documentation if 

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there were any changes to some record file. I 

mean that's going to happen. I don't think 

there'd be any problem with -- with Dr. Ziemer 

receiving an advanced copy, I suppose, while 

we're doing a factual accuracy check, just so a 

paper trail could be followed as to what -- what 

had changed. But really, this is -- this -- SC&A 

is under no obligation to change anything at all. 

I mean all -- all we're doing is be able to 

provide comments back as to the factual accuracy. 

If they disagree that it -- they disagree that 

this is the way it's going to be, that's their 

prerogative. We have no control over their 

ability to edit the document at all. It's just 

going to be our comments back them on --

DR. ZIEMER: They would just comment 

that we don't agree that you've -- that you've --

MR. ELLIOTT: I think --

DR. ZIEMER: -- characterized this 

correctly or whatever. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You know, we'd play an 

untenable role here, and I would hope that it's 

the Board's pleasure and insistence that someone 

on this Board -- and I think this was discussed 

Monday afternoon -- see the NIOSH comments for 

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factual accuracy and clarification that were 

given, and understand then from that point of 

view, you know, what changes were occur-- took 

effect or what didn't take effect, you know. 

DR. MELIUS: 

DR. ZIEMER: 

MR. ELLIOTT: 

DR. ZIEMER: 

DR. MELIUS: 

came to you, Paul --

DR. ZIEMER: 

copy of the comments. 

DR. MELIUS: 

Yes, no, that -- that's --

So it's tracking both sides 

Yeah. 

-- of the issue. 

Right, and so if a copy 

Then we would also want a 

-- and you'd get a copy of 

the -- or you know, whenever -- whatever the 

timing is, I don't care, but the -- that way 

you're in the -- the report's to the Board. It's 

gone to NIOSH to -- you know, for this factual 

check, which is --

DR. ZIEMER: Sure. 

DR. MELIUS: -- which is appropriate, 

and then -- you know, if there is -- in fact it 

may help resolve any -- any issues or what-- and 

-- 'cause we are going to decide what can be 

presented and so forth, and we certainly don't 

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want to be in the position of sort of 

point/counterpoint or, you know, that, I don't 

think. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

DR. MELIUS: And so at the same time 

that says yeah, there is a paper --

DR. ZIEMER: There's a paper trail. 

DR. MELIUS: -- trail or whatever you 

want to call it with that and it protects 

everybody involved. 

DR. ZIEMER: I think it's a good 

suggestion and I'm certainly willing to do it 

that way if there's no objection on the part of 

the Board. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I don't even see any 

reason why our comments wouldn't become part of 

the public record. I would hope that they would. 

DR. ZIEMER: Sure. 

DR. NETON: I might just add one thing. 

In our discussion on this with SC&A where Dr. 

Ziemer was involved, John Mauro agreed to take on 

the task of -- of writing this up as an internal 

procedure within SC&A to improve the transparency 

of the whole process so it didn't appear to be an 

arbitrary process. And I haven't seen that yet, 

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but I know that he was -- he volunteered to do 

that, so we might ask him -- the Board might ask 

to see if that -- if that's done. 

DR. MELIUS: I have one other -- I guess 

question or comment, would be if -- if NIOSH is 

going to be ready at the next meeting to present 

us with an evaluation on an SEC petition, would 

it -- would it -- and I guess this is my 

question. Would it be helpful for us to have a 

working group set up to -- to interface with 

NIOSH and staff between now and the next meeting 

so that we get -- you know, maybe make that --

our evaluation of that petition go easier when it 

is presented to -- to the Board? There are going 

-- I mean there's a number of --

DR. ZIEMER: Are we likely to be 

evaluating a petition at the next meeting, or --

MR. ELLIOTT: You're -- I -- this is not 

promissory. Okay? I certainly expect you're 

going to have an evaluation plan to look at. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, that's --

MR. ELLIOTT: I would -- I would also 

hope that we might have one or two or -- I don't 

know how many, maybe at least one -- class 

petition evaluation report for you to look at. 

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So you know, we're -- we're working very hard 

trying to push these things through, at the same 

time -- at the cost of not bringing the Board 

along fast enough, too. I recognize that. So if 

you want a working group, I'll work -- I'm 

willing to work with y'all. 

DR. ZIEMER: This would -- this would 

mean that whatever proposed SEC petition is ready 

to go would have to be ready for a working group 

prior to a meeting. I suppose it could be the 

day before, but we have a day set aside already 

for our subcommittee, so then we're getting --

we're moving the timetable back. But we can 

certainly set up a working group on a standby 

basis, if the Board wishes, so that, if needed, 

they could be marshaled into action. 

DR. MELIUS: That -- that's really what 

I --

DR. ZIEMER: Is that your suggestion? 

DR. MELIUS: -- think is -- and -- yeah. 

MR. ELLIOTT: They could certainly meet 

separately from the subcommittee on the same day 

if that's, you know, necessary. 

DR. MELIUS: That working group would be 

sort of contingent on the -- you know, whether or 

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not you're ready -- if you're going to be ready 

or not. 

MR. ELLIOTT: It wouldn't be in the same 

room --

DR. ZIEMER: However -- however, we are 

envisioning that at our next meeting that we will 

be reviewing 20 cases as a full Board in closed 

session. 

MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) That's 

right. 

DR. ZIEMER: So unless we have a fourth 

day set aside, we're -- on the other hand, a 

working group can also work by phone, if 

necessary, if they have something to look at. 

Does the Board wish to have a working group on --

sort of on standby for this activity if -- if 

necessary? 

MR. ESPINOSA: I don't think that'd be a 

bad idea. 

MR. PRESLEY: Question. 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm -- yeah. 

MR. PRESLEY: Could -- we're supposed to 

get a plan prior. Would it be possible for us to 

get a copy of the plan and us go through that, 

and let's go through -- if -- if we do get some 

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reports ready to go, go through them. And if we 

need a working group, then come up with a working 

group after we see how much detail and work this 

is going to be. Would it be possible for us to 

get that evaluation prior to so that we can all 

look at that? 

DR. ZIEMER: Evaluate the plan itself. 

DR. MELIUS: But I think we have to 

establish the working group at a meeting, so we 

have to -- if we're going to do it between now --

MR. PRESLEY: It could be done -- it 

could be done at the next meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: The working group could 

look at the plan, though, is what he -- what I 

think is --

MR. PRESLEY: Do you want the working 

group to look at the plan? 

DR. MELIUS: Look at the plan, and then 

if necessary or appropriate, yeah. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I don't see a problem with 

that at all. I think that's -- makes a lot of 

sense for us to get an evaluation plan to you so 

that you can see what that looks like -- and 

that's nothing more than telling you where we're 

going to look, which rocks we're looking under 

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and how -- you know, how far we're going and why 

-- you know, what we're --

DR. ZIEMER: We could --

MR. ELLIOTT: -- using in that eval--

DR. ZIEMER: -- we could set up --

MR. ELLIOTT: -- in that research. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- a working group of three 

or four. They'd be on a standby basis. They'd 

have to establish a date based on what happens at 

NIOSH. There appears to be -- without taking a 

formal vote, there appears to be support for the 

idea of having a working group on call. I now 

then will ask for volunteers. We need at least 

three people to be in the working group. 

DR. MELIUS: Henry, Roy, Mike --

MR. ESPINOSA: I second. 

DR. ZIEMER: You're volunteering for 

them. Okay, Rich has volunteered --

DR. MELIUS: I'll do it, though. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- Wanda has volunteered, 

Jim has volunteered, and we can add one more --

Bob Presley. We've got four people. 

MS. HOMER: That's Rich, Jim, Wanda and 

Bob? 

DR. ZIEMER: Rich Espinosa, Wanda Munn, 

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Jim Melius, Robert Presley. Their task will be 

to evaluate and make a recommendation on the 

evaluation procedure -- procedures --

MR. ELLIOTT: Plan. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- plan, evaluation plan, 

and if necessary on a petition, if it is in a 

state for such review. Let me ask, Robert, will 

you be willing to serve as the coordinator and 

make sure that the -- you -- the four of you come 

up with a common time, you either share it by email or phone, conference call, whatever, 

coordinate time and effort and make sure 

everybody's got the documents, if that's 

agreeable? 

MR. PRESLEY: I'll do that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. And then you'll 

report back to the Board at our next meeting. 

Thank you. 

MR. ELLIOTT: If I may, just so 

everybody understands, could we give you an 

evaluation plan today? No. If we had qualified 

a petition, were we ready to give you an 

evaluation plan? On short order thereafter. 

Okay? But we've got to qualify the petition 

first, then come -- the ne-- first things first. 

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 Then the next thing is give you an evaluation 

plan. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. Other 

comments, suggestions, recommendations? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Anything for the good of 

the order? 

MR. ESPINOSA: Motion to adjourn? 

DR. ZIEMER: Wait, I -- before you 

adjourn, Cori has a final comment. 

MS. HOMER: Very quickly, and I'm sorry 

to not give you this information earlier, for 

those who are attending the tour, a reminder to 

bring photo ID and cash for lunch. We'll be 

eating in the lunchroom. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Mark, another 

comment? 

MR. GRIFFON: And it's probably a little 

late in the day to bring this one up, but the --

the site profile reviews -- I mean I'm going back 

to yesterday's presentation. If -- if SCA is 

going to give us a report, we still have that 

question of -- the task says final report, and 

you know, we had some dialogue yesterday about, 

you know, could we make this an interim report 

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because they haven't had access and they might 

want to go... 

DR. ZIEMER: Mark, I interpret that more 

as a heads-up issue of concern. I don't think 

they're at the point where they're saying that 

they want us to change the task right now. I --

that was -- would have been my understanding of 

it, because now the access issue has pretty well 

been taken care of and they're moving ahead. So 

unless they come back to us and say we really 

aren't going to get there --

MR. GRIFFON: My under-- my 

understanding was they felt like they were up 

against some deliverables, but if they delivered 

what they have now, it would be perceived as the 

final report and therefore there'd be no chance 

to go further and -- you know, I -- I just -- I 

don't know if that's an issue or not an issue 

or... 

DR. ZIEMER: My interpretation of what 

they said was that they're giving us a heads-up 

that they might get to a point where they feel 

like they -- they have not finished but can't go 

any further. I don't believe they're there yet. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, that --

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DR. ZIEMER: How did other --

DR. MELIUS: My -- my -- that was my 

recollection, too, at least for the ones that are 

-- had the earliest deliverables, I believe --

Savannah River, Mallinckrodt, Bethlehem, if --

DR. ZIEMER: I think they're okay on 

those. 

DR. MELIUS: -- if those issues were 

resolved for --

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

DR. MELIUS: -- and that we just have to 

see where things go with some of these other 

issues later on. 

DR. ZIEMER: They were kind of laying 

the groundwork for coming back to us and -- and 

saying we can't go as far as we thought we wanted 

to, is how I understood it. I'm -- I don't know 

that there's any action that we could take now 

that would --

MR. GRIFFON: Okay. I just --

DR. ZIEMER: Until they --

MR. GRIFFON: Maybe in the future we --

I --

DR. ZIEMER: We may have to do something 

in the future, and I think he was --

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MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, and I'm thinking 

about how -- how the Board is going to interface 

DR. ZIEMER: I think he didn't want to 

hit us cold with that at some point down the 

line. 

MR. GRIFFON: Okay. But I think in the 

future we may need on there --

DR. ZIEMER: We may need to define what 

we think is a final report. 

MR. GRIFFON: And -- and is within the -

- I mean we may have to make some interpretations 

as a Board as to the --

DR. ZIEMER: 

MR. GRIFFON: 

DR. ZIEMER: 

MR. GRIFFON: 

DR. ZIEMER: 

MR. GRIFFON: 

leave it --

DR. ZIEMER: 

items? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: 

Thank you very much. 

Yes. 

-- technical scope. 

Yes. 

Right. 

Yes. 

All right. I guess we'll 

Yeah, good comment. Other 

If not, we stand adjourned. 

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(Whereupon, the meeting was adjourned at 

3:10 p.m.) 

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C E R T I F I C A T E
 

STATE OF GEORGIA ) 

) 

COUNTY OF FULTON ) 

I, STEVEN RAY GREEN, being a Certified Merit Court Reporter 

in and for the State of Georgia, do hereby certify that the 

foregoing transcript was reduced to typewriting by me personally 

or under my direct supervision, and is a true, complete, and 

correct transcript of the aforesaid proceedings reported by me. 

I further certify that I am not related to, employed by, 

counsel to, or attorney for any parties, attorneys, or counsel 

involved herein; nor am I financially interested in this matter. 

WITNESS MY HAND AND OFFICIAL SEAL this _22nd_ day of 

September, 2004. 

___________________________ 

 STEVEN RAY GREEN, CVR-CM 

 GA CCR No. A-2102 

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