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 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

 CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL 

 NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL 

 SAFETY AND HEALTH 

 + + + + + 

 ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND 

 WORKER HEALTH 

 + + + + + 

 LINDE WORK GROUP 

 + + + + + 

 MONDAY 

 JANUARY 25, 2010 

 + + + + + 

 The Work Group convened, via 

teleconference, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Standard 

Time, Genevieve S. Roessler, Chair, presiding. 

PRESENT: 

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Chair 

JOSIE BEACH, Member 

MICHAEL H. GIBSON, Member 

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member 
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ALSO PRESENT: 

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official 

NANCY ADAMS, NIOSH Contractor 

ISAF AL-NABULSI, DOE 

ANTOINETTE BONSIGNORE, Petitioner 

CHRIS CRAWFORD, OCAS 

MONICA HARRISON-MAPLES, ORAU Team 

EMILY HOWELL, HHS 

JEFF KOTSCH, DOL 

LAURA KROLCZYK, Office of Senator Gillibrand 

JENNY LIN, HHS 

JOHN MAURO, SC&A 

JAMES NETON, OCAS 

STEVE OSTROW, SC&A 

BEN ROSENBAUM, Office of Senator Gillibrand 

MUTTY SHARFI, ORAU Team 
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 C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S 

Call to Order/Roll Call 4 

Opening Remarks and Overview 7 

 Gen Roessler, Chair 

OCAS ORAU Presentation 10 

 Chris Crawford 

 Summary of SEC 107 ER 10 

 Justification for Use of Vacuum 11 

 Cleaning GA for Linde Renovation Period 

 Tunnels 55 

 Ms. Bonsignore's documents 65 

 P-539 and Lead Cakes 93 

Tasks Forward 101 

 Exposures in the Tunnels 103 

 Action Item - NIOSH 103 

 How to Bound the Airborne 103 

 Radioactivity Doses 

 Action Item - SC&A 110 

 K-65 Issue 110 

 Action Item - NIOSH 110 

 Action Item - SC&A 111 

 Ms. Bonsignore's Affidavits and 111 

 Reports 

 Action Item - SC&A 112 

 Summary of SC&A's Action Items 115 
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 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2:01 p.m. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay, so let's get 

started with the roll call. I know Gen has a 

pressing schedule and will probably be worried 

about her cell phone anyway as this goes on. 

 This is the Advisory Board on 

Radiation and Worker Health. I'm Ted Katz, 

I'm the Designated Federal Official. This is 

the Linde Work Group of the Advisory Board. 

 As always, we begin with roll call 

with Board members. Since this is a site, 

please also speak to whether you have a 

conflict of interest for this site for 

everyone governmental involved in this, 

beginning with the Board members then. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: This is Gen 

Roessler, Advisory Board member, Chairman of 

the Linde Work Group, no conflict. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Jim Lockey, 

Advisory Group Board member, no conflict. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Mike Gibson, 
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Advisory Board member, no conflict. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Josie Beach, 

Advisory Board member, no conflict. 

 MR. KATZ: And do we happen to have 

any other Board members not on the Work Group, 

but on the call? 

 (No response.) 

 Very well. Then the OCAS-ORAU 

team? 

 DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton in 

Cincinnati, no conflict. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: This is Chris 

Crawford in Cincinnati, no conflict. 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Monica 

Harrison-Maples, ORAU, no conflict. 

 MR. SHARFI: Mutty Sharfi, ORAU 

Team, no conflicts. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. 

 Now SC&A? 

 DR. MAURO: John Mauro, SC&A, no 

conflict. 

 MR. KATZ: Welcome, John. 
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 DR. OSTROW: Steve Ostrow, no 

conflict. 

 MR. KATZ: Very good. 

 Then HHS or other federal employees 

or contractors for feds? 

 MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS. 

 MS. LIN: Jenny Lin, HHS. 

 MS. ADAMS: Nancy Adams, NIOSH 

contractor. 

 MS. AL-NABULSI: Isaf Al-Nabulsi, 

DOE. 

 MR. KATZ: Welcome, Isaf. 

 MS. AL-NABULSI: Thanks. 

 MR. KOTSCH: Jeff Kotsch with 

Labor. 

 MR. KATZ: Oh, welcome, Jeff, too. 

 Very good. Then, now, last but not 

least, members of the public and any staff of 

congressional offices who wish to be noted in 

the record. 

 MR. ROSENBAUM: Ben Rosenbaum, 

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's office. 
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 MR. KATZ: Welcome, Ben. 

 MS. KROLCZYK: Laura Krolczyk, 

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's office. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Antoinette 

Bonsignore, petitioner. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay, that sounds like 

that's it. 

 Then let me just remind all the 

parties on the phone, especially since we're 

entirely dependent on the phone, please mute 

your phones except when you're addressing the 

group. If you don't have a mute button, 

please use the *6 button. That will work as 

mute. Use *6 again to come off of the mute. 

And if you have to leave the call at any 

point, please don't put the call on hold. 

Just disconnect and call back in because the 

hold is disruptive. 

 Thank you. 

 Gen, it's your meeting. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay, thank you, 

Ted, and thanks to the rest of you. 
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 I did not get out a printed or 

published agenda. I thought we would follow 

our usual procedure and usual agenda. 

 We're holding this meeting because 

at our December 14th meeting in Cincinnati we 

identified some issues -- I think they 

primarily came from Antoinette -- that NIOSH 

said they would follow up on. So we'll take 

those first, I think, if Chris and Jim are 

ready for their presentation. 

 Then we will see if we have any 

response from SC&A. After that, we will hear 

from Antoinette. 

 Our Work Group meetings are not 

actually designed for public comment. 

However, this Work Group has had the policy 

that Antoinette, as the claimant's 

representative, participates. 

 So that is the way I see the 

agenda. Ted, do you have any changes? 

 MR. KATZ: No, that sounds good to 

me. 
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 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Then, if everyone 

is ready -- and actually, I should mention 

that the transcript from the December 14th 

meeting is on the CDC OCAS website. You can 

find that there. 

 In emails, you should have gotten 

two documents from Chris Crawford. One was 

the summary of the Linde Ceramics Plant SEC. 

This is the brief descriptions of the actual 

SEC 00-107 that was issued November 3rd, 2008. 

 I have gone through that and I'm 

really impressed with this short summary. It 

certainly is easier to read and to identify 

the main items of interest. That is actually 

No. 1 under Chris' agenda. 

 You should also have that summary 

from Chris, NIOSH's response to the issues 

that came up last time, and then Steve Ostrow, 

if you want to refer back to that, he has a 

listing of the various findings and 
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resolutions that we have dealt with in this 

Working Group. I think that is the paperwork. 

 So go ahead, Chris. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Thank you, Gen. 

 I don't know if we need to say 

much. Perhaps Ms. Bonsignore has a comment 

about the summary of the SEC 107 Evaluation 

Report. I hope it is useful. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes, it is useful, 

and I have provided it to the workers. They 

have found it useful. 

 I think that that kind of 

transparency in this process would be a useful 

addition to all SEC Evaluations in the future. 

 I think that workers would appreciate having 

the very technical language of the ERs reduced 

to something that is easily understood. So I 

thank you for that. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I agree with you, 

Antoinette, and I think, too, it should be 

made available for all SEC petitions. I don't 

know who put this together, but certainly they 
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should be complimented. 

 DR. NETON: This is Jim. I will 

credit where it's due; Chris Crawford put it 

together, with some editorial help from other 

folks, but he bore the brunt of it. 

 We will take that under advisement, 

that it was good, and that it's being 

suggested that we adopt this at other SECs. 

 MR. KATZ: Well, thank you, 

Antoinette, for starting this ball rolling. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: You're welcome. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Then, if everyone 

agrees, I'll go on to Point 2 in the NIOSH 

response document, which is entitled, 

"Justification for the Use of Vacuum Cleaning 

GA", meaning general area, "for Linde 

Renovation Period". 

 Jim just brought up, besides the 

text, which I assume most of you have had a 

chance to read -- I'm sorry it didn't come out 

a bit earlier, but I hope everybody has had a 

chance to look at it. 
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 Jim just pointed out that an 

analogous activity, which is pneumatic 

jackhammering, basically, done on surfaces 

that were previously cleaned, actually shows 

about half the airborne contamination level 

the vacuum cleaning does, which is another 

reason we chose that. Otherwise, I think the 

explanation in here pretty much stands on it. 

 Are there any comments? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think probably, 

Chris, for the record, you should briefly go 

over and state what your conclusions are. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Very good. 

 The issue was, during the remedial 

period, and specifically during the renovation 

period of the remedial period, which is the 

1960s so far, we needed to choose a 

representative airborne contamination 

activity, I might call it, to give some idea 

of what airborne levels of contamination might 

have been during the renovation period, when 

there was activity like jackhammering and 
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vacuuming and sweeping, and so forth. 

 To do this, we went back to the 

original decontamination period in 1950, where 

conveniently there were measurements of 

various activities and how much alpha dust 

output was present in the air during each 

activity. 

 Many of the activities have both 

general area samples and breathing zone 

samples. They are also arranged to give you 

both minimum, maximum, and average exposures 

during these activities. 

 I'm just checking the SRDB number, 

if I have it here. This is the Heatherton 

1950 document. I'll have to give you the SRDB 

number later. It's on page 25 of that 

document, labeled page 25. 

 NIOSH decided to use the vacuum 

cleaning process, which is a general area 

sample, air sample, taken during the 

decontamination in 1950. The minimum exposure 

at that period was .1 MAC. That is a Maximum 
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Air Concentration, is what that stands for, 

where 1 MAC is 70 dpm, I believe, per cubic 

meter. The maximum concentration was 5.3 MAC 

and the average, 1.2. 

 We chose this as a representative 

sample of what a renovation activity might 

produce. We felt that this was quite 

conservative. The reason for that is that (a) 

the original work was done in a highlycontaminated environment. The renovation 

work, which was done a decade later or so, was 

taking place in a facility that had already 

had one decontamination done. It should have 

reduced the amount of embedded radionuclides 

that could have been made airborne during any 

kind of a surface-disruptive activity. 

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activities. I think you will see in the 

explanation in the NIOSH response some of them 

we felt weren't representative of a more 

general renovation effort. In other words, 

the original decontaminators knew where the 
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contamination was, they went directly to those 

spots, and they removed, for the most part, 

the entire surface around the most 

contaminated areas. 

 This was not the objective during 

the renovation period, where you are moving 

machinery around or erecting walls and doing 

normal industrial processes like that. There 

it would be strictly random whether you ran 

into a contaminated area or not. So we 

thought a more general activity like vacuum 

cleaning better represented the amount of 

material likely to have been airborne. 

 Also, as I mentioned, if we look at 

that table 5 in the Heatherton 1950 document, 

we looked at what jackhammering would do in a 

previously clean surface. We found that it 

was only half as contaminating as vacuum 

cleaning. So this seemed to us another 

indication that we were being conservative. 

 I hope, Gen, that is a fairly good 

description of what that item is about. 
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 CHAIR ROESSLER: Perhaps I should 

have stated earlier that, when we met in 

December, this came up again because 

Antoinette mentioned that she felt that 

statements from the workers who were actually 

there, that they were not being paid close 

attention to. Then Dr. Neton said that we can 

revisit this document, and that is what has 

taken place. 

 I assume, then, Chris, your summary 

of this is after revisiting the information 

that was provided, the statements from the 

workers? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes, Gen, that's 

correct. We did look at the workers' 

statements. One thing we note is that, while 

there was a considerable amount of renovation 

work, it would be hard to consider that work 

continuous during a 10-year period. So we 

already feel that we are being conservative in 

granting this level of exposure to the workers 

for the entire 10-year period. I hope that is 
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understood, that that vacuum cleaning proxy is 

being used for the entire 10-year period for 

all workers at the site. 

 DR. MAURO: Chris, this is John 

Mauro. 

 You had mentioned that the 1950 

cleanup work that was going on observed dust 

levels ranging from .1 to about 5 MAC. Am I 

correct, is that going to be your start point 

for the 1954 start date for this particular 

SEC petition? In other words, are you looking 

at your 1950 data, where there was decon work 

going on as being the place that's going to 

start your process? 

 When you summarized your writeup, 

which was a very good summary, I was looking 

for sort of the bottom line, though: okay, 

here's how we're going to do the dose 

reconstruction. We're going to assume this 

concentration, starting in 1954, and we're 

going to assume it declines or stays constant 

at some rate, up until some date at the end of 
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the time period of interest. 

 That certainly, I'm sure, is in 

other material, but I was sort of looking for 

that kind of explanation, sort of a 

quantitative description. Okay, given all 

that, here are the assumptions we're going to 

use. I guess I'm still a little unclear on 

what that is. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: What you're 

describing is not the case. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: What I'm describing 

right now is the level of airborne 

contamination that we're assuming for the 

renovation period of the 1960s, during the 

remedial period. It does not include the 

period between '54 and '60 and the period 

after '69. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. So you're 

zeroing-in on just that one piece, that one 

slice in time? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Right, yes. 
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 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

 DR. NETON: This is Jim. 

 That's the time period where the 

renovation activities occurred that had the 

potential to generate some airborne. The 

other period before that was more, I could use 

the term quiescent, I guess. It wasn't really 

any activities going on other than general 

warehouse activities. 

 DR. MAURO: Please forgive me if 

this is a repeat, but could you paint the 

picture for me, beginning at '54, then up to 

the renovation period in '60, and then post-

'60? What is the overarching story on how 

you're coming at this problem? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Basically, and I 

want to point out to all the Board members and 

other listeners that we're basically working 

on two different tasks at the same time here. 

 We have an SEC issue: can we bound the dose 

during the period of the SEC 107 petition? I 

think we've answered that question. This 
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issue that we're now dealing with is more of a 

dose reconstruction issue having to do with 

the Site Profile. 

 To answer John, we felt, and we 

have evidence that, the airborne survey that 

was done in 1981-82, which was published in a 

1982 report, provides evidence that we have a 

relatively low amount of airborne activity at 

that time. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Also, we feel that 

the gamma measurements, that is, the 

measurements of the fixed contaminants, their 

gamma output from surface readings which were 

done around 1950 and then again in the 

eighties, remained constant over time, which 

is evidence that the airborne concentration, 

which, after all, has to be derived from the 

embedded contaminants, was probably more or 

less steady-state. 

 We are not proposing, in other 

words, to use what we consider a non-
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representative decontamination level of the 

1950 decontamination effort. We don't think 

it would be physically representative of 

conditions that were experienced by workers on 

the site after 1954. 

 We have one little piece of 

information, John, that I would like to point 

out. In that table 5 again, in the Heatherton 

document, they took one measurement a half an 

hour after sandblasting. The sandblasting 

maximum contaminant level was 49 MACs, but a 

half hour later it was 1 MAC, which is still a 

significant level, but that is not the point. 

 The point is in only a half an hour it 

dropped by a factor of 49. 

 So we think that to take the high 

contamination levels found, airborne 

contamination levels found in the 1950 effort, 

and then just straightlining it would 

massively overestimate exposures in the early 

fifties and then after 1969. 

 DR. MAURO: So what is the MAC 
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you're assuming for 1954 as your start point 

for airborne dust-loading? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: We assume it is the 

same as the 1981 measurement. 

 DR. MAURO: And that is in terms of 

MACs? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: I didn't express it 

in terms of MACs, but it is 10 to the minus 

8th levels of uranium, for instance, 10 to the 

minus 9th levels of thorium and radium. 

 DR. NETON: You mean microcuries 

per cubic centimeter? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. Sorry. 

 DR. MAURO: I am just trying to get 

oriented. You know, I think in terms of your 

starting points, I understand what you're 

saying; the 1950s end up, the .1 to 5 MAC 

numbers are for the 1950s, which may not be at 

all appropriate to apply to, let's say, a 

quiescent period that may have begun in '54, I 

guess. 

 But I like to think in terms of, in 
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order to set the picture, okay, so you are 

assuming some constant concentration of 

airborne dust-loading, dpm per cubic meter -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: -- of some 

concentration. But I guess it would just be 

useful for me to think in terms of some 

fraction of a MAC, and you're assuming that 

that's going to be constant from 1954 right up 

to the 1980s, with this perturbation that 

occurs in the 1960s. 

 DR. NETON: Exactly. Right. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

 DR. NETON: John, Mutty Sharfi is 

on the phone. 

 Mutty, do you have that information 

handy, what dpm per cubic meter we're talking 

about? Are you there, Mutty? 

 MR. SHARFI: Yes, I'm here. 

 I have to dig it up. 

 DR. NETON: Okay. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: I don't want to pull 
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the context of this discussion, but are we 

discussing a TBD issue or the SEC part of this 

issue? 

 DR. NETON: Well, John was just 

trying to get a handle, I think, on what 

levels we were going to use there. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. Listen, I'm 

sorry, if I stepped in and asked the question 

that's really out of context of the intent of 

this meeting, my apologies. I was just trying 

to get a picture of the whole story. 

 DR. NETON: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: This helps me 

visualize. 

 DR. NETON: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: But if the whole 

purpose of this conference call was to talk 

about the 1960 period, the renovation, then I 

probably am raising issues maybe that have 

already been resolved. 

 DR. NETON: Well, yes, we had 

talked about this issue at the last meeting. 
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It was my impression that there was some 

misunderstanding of what was going on here. I 

think Chris just summarized it pretty well, 

that this is not your traditional situation 

where AEC activity stopped and then it was 

turned over to workers, and then you could use 

something like this straight-line -- was it 

TIB-71, I forget -- 70 approach. 

 Because, in fact, the work areas 

were D&Ded fairly extensively, as indicated in 

our report. What effectively you were left 

with, then, was primarily fixed contamination. 

 So it's a little different scenario. 

 So, then, you have this lower 

level, fairly low level of fixed contamination 

remaining from the early fifties all the way 

through the eighties with very little going on 

in the building, with the exception of this 

1960s period. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

 DR. NETON: And the sixties period 

was the take-home question we were trying to 
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answer for purposes of this meeting, but the 

other issue is relevant as well. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And it's my 

understanding, and from reviewing our 

transcript, that I think we had pretty much 

resolved all of this during our discussions. 

But Antoinette brought up the question as to 

whether NIOSH OCAS had really looked at the 

worker affidavits. 

 DR. NETON: Correct. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: This is 

Antoinette. 

 If I could just interject here just 

briefly? I'm a little confused as to why 

we're talking that there's a line of reasoning 

here that the renovation work only occurred 

during the 1960s. 

 The worker statements that I 

submitted after December 14th clearly talk 

about continuous renovation during the 

fifties, sixties, and seventies. I'm looking 

at one of the statements right now. 
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 So forgive me for interrupting, but 

I'm just a little confused about this 

allegation that the fifties, after 1954, there 

was this, I believe the term was quiescent 

period. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: This is Chris. 

 The information is certainly a 

little vague. I did look specifically. There 

were two workers who gave statements 

specifically talking about the moving of very 

large industrial metal shears. One of them 

said it took place in '62; the other one said 

in '57. From my reading of the many 

documents, the 1962 statement appeared to be 

more likely to be true. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes, I understand 

that, but I am looking at the statement that 

you are referring to from one of the workers 

who was most knowledgeable about the 

renovation work, and I will read directly from 

his statement. 

 "This renovation was continuing 
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during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s." 

 This is the same worker you're 

talking about that you're taking information 

about the 1960 period. So I have to ask you 

why you would parse one worker's statement to 

accept some part of it as being credible and 

another part as not being credible. 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Chris, may I 

say something? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Of course. 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: This is 

Monica. 

 All of the affidavits in the 

information that we were given in the original 

petition indicated that the renovation period 

was across the 1960s, without being able to 

give us any more definitive information than 

that. People's memories, and in my interviews 

of the former workers, they all said, yes, it 

happened in the sixties. 

 We looked for specific 

documentation to substantiate both the start 
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and end date. We were able to find 

information beginning in the sixties talking 

about renovating Building 30 and certain 

buildings. So we had documentation evidence 

in support of what we had been told by the 

former workers. 

 We chose to extend that all the way 

to '70, even though we didn't have any clear 

evidence that it went on to '70, but our 

original interviews with the former workers 

indicated that it was in the sixties. And 

that's where that initiated from, the period 

of being from 1960 to 1970. 

 We, from our initial interviews, 

thought that we were bounding the renovation 

period. Now here we run into some trouble in 

terms of defining what is the renovation 

period because what we understood as 

renovation was significant changes to the 

structure of the building. 

 That's all I've got, but that was 

the initial discussion of renovation. 
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 MS. BONSIGNORE: I understand that, 

but, as I've tried to point out, I did provide 

some additional documentation after the 

December 14th meeting. 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: We haven't 

found any documentation in support or to 

counter the workers' statements at this point. 

 The original workers' statements, we found 

some documentation which we were able to use 

to support those workers' statements, and we 

were able to give as much benefit of the doubt 

as we could for the entire period of 1960 to 

1970. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: And can I ask you, 

what specific research you've done after 

reviewing the documents I provided after 

December 14th to validate or disprove that 

some of the renovation work could have 

occurred during the 1950s specifically? 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: We had 

already gone back to the site and requested 

records and licensing materials having to do 
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with renovations. We talked with people at 

the site, when we initially got the petition, 

and everything that we were able to get from 

the site at that point indicated starting in 

the early sixties, around 1962. 

 And because there was some 

uncertainty as far as the exact start date, we 

chose to just start with 1960. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Perhaps my 

question wasn't clear. I'm asking what 

research you have done after I submitted the 

documents, the affidavits, workers' 

statements, after December 14th. 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Basically, 

just a re-review of all of the documentation 

that has come in since this petition has been 

put forth, everything that we have in our 

records. We looked for any additional 

information having to do with renovation 

previous to 1960, and we weren't able to 

locate -- 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'm sorry. So is 
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what you're telling me that you've -- I'm a 

little confused here. 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: I'm sorry. 

What I'm saying is that we continued to gather 

records from the site and from all of our 

sources, even after we have completed the 

Evaluation Report. So we went back and we rereviewed everything that had come in since the 

Evaluation Report had been completed, and 

looked for any additional documentation that 

might support some change in the renovation 

period date. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: So what you're 

saying is that you looked for additional 

documentation after I submitted the workers' 

statements after the December 14th Working 

Group meeting and found nothing to support 

those statements? Is that what you are 

saying? 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: I didn't find 

anything additional. Yes, that's what I'm 

saying. 
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answer that Antoinette is looking for, and I 

think the rest of us, too, after she submitted 

the additional information, you did look at 

it? 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Yes. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And you did take 

that into consideration, then reevaluated the 

other things you've previously had? 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Yes. 

 DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton. 

 Ms. Bonsignore, maybe I 

misunderstood, but I was under the impression 

from our last discussion on December 14th that 

your main concern was that there were a lot of 

construction-type activities that occurred 

that you believed would not be bounded by the 

modeling approach, or not the modeling, but 

the data that we used to estimate exposures 

during the renovations. That seemed to be 

your biggest concern at that time. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, it was, but 
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I wasn't aware during our last meeting that 

the renovation work that occurred during the 

late 1950s was not being included in the dose 

exposure model that you are relying on here. 

I was not aware of that. 

 DR. NETON: Okay. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: So, again, I need 

to stress again that I really believe that, 

and the workers are very concerned that the 

statements that they're providing are not 

being given due regard. 

 DR. NETON: Well, this is Jim 

again. 

 I think that we have. Again, we 

were trying to address the issue that I 

thought was on the table, which was, have we 

addressed the workers' concerns that 

construction-type activities were occurring 

and that the values of inhalation exposure 

that we were using for that period were valid, 

given the statements that were made? 

 I think that we have made a 
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legitimate attempt here to address that issue 

and take the workers' statements into 

consideration. 

 Now the issue of the time period is 

something I'm hearing for the first time again 

by you, that that's another concern that you 

have. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, it's a 

concern because of some of the statements that 

have been made here about general renovation 

efforts versus specific renovation efforts 

that occurred during the 1950s versus later 

time periods. 

 I think, if we are going to have a 

claimant-favorable analysis here, that just to 

be limiting this to general activity 

vacuuming, vacuum cleaning, just seems 

counterintuitive to me, considering the 

statements that I have provided. 

 DR. NETON: Well, that's at the 

heart of the issue that Chris tried to address 

earlier, that we believe that the vacuuming 
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activities are representative, would be 

representative, if not higher, exposures than 

what occurred during this renovation period, 

precisely because there were jackhammering 

measurements after they decontaminated the 

buildings that are lower than the maximum 

value that was observed during vacuum 

cleaning. That's why we are using it. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I understand that, 

but perhaps this is my lack of technical 

expertise here, but why wouldn't you consider 

all of the efforts, the vacuum cleaning, the 

jackhammering, consider all of that in a 

combined analysis? 

 DR. NETON: Well, because the 

major, the purpose of all of that 

jackhammering in the 1950s and sandblasting 

was to clean the surface of the facilities 

from radioactive materials. And they were 

fairly successful at that. 

 So, when the facility was released 

for general use, it was the belief that they 
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were fairly clean. Now that wasn't perfectly 

clean. So there were some residual levels, 

but they were much lower than the levels that 

existed during the heavy activities of the 

decontamination period. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I understand that 

they would be lower, but I don't think it 

would be accurate and fair to suggest that the 

decontamination efforts through 1954, when the 

building was handed back over to Union 

Carbide, that the facility was clean. I mean 

we are talking about standards from the 1950s. 

 DR. NETON: That's not what we're 

suggesting. I mean we're saying that it could 

have been as high as five times the maximum 

allowable air concentration for uranium in 

air. That's a fairly good exposure, given the 

fact that the buildings were cleaned to some 

degree, to a large degree. They weren't 

perfectly clean. We acknowledge that. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Well, I 

mean, clearly, we're at an impasse here. I 
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don't believe that the workers' statements are 

being given due regard here on many levels, 

and you, obviously, disagree. So I have no 

desire to keep banging my head against a wall, 

you know. I'm just going to renew my 

objection to this issue, and I guess we could 

move along. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I would ask a 

question, Antoinette. Do you feel that NIOSH 

has looked at the testimony? And I think what 

they're doing is coming up with a method to 

bound the dose. They're not ignoring the fact 

that there was radioactivity exposures there, 

but they are coming up with a claimantfavorable method of bounding the dose. 

 Do you object to that approach? Or 

perhaps we could have some input here from 

SC&A that might bring this a little closer to 

closure. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes, I do object 

to that approach, Gen. 

 DR. OSTROW: Okay. This is Steve 
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from SC&A. 

 I reviewed all the worker 

statements, and I'm going to take a viewpoint 

I guess like John normally does on this. 

Let's look at, a little bit, the purpose of it 

all, the overview. 

 I think the overview, and Gen just 

stated that, is does NIOSH's approach bound, 

reasonably bound, a dose a worker could have 

gotten during the renovation period? And from 

what I hear, from what I have read, NIOSH's 

approach is taking the value for the vacuum 

cleaning and applying it uniformly for a 10-

year period, and they are not saying that is 

the exact dose. They are saying that is a 

reasonable, scientifically-based, bounding 

dose and encompassing any activities that 

might have gone on during that period. It is 

a high dose and it bounds the period. I think 

that is what we sort of have to focus on. 

 I think, notwithstanding the 

workers' statements, or taking into account 
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the workers' statements, I actually think it 

does bound the dose as far as we go. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: John, Jim Lockey. 

 Is that they are applying the 

vacuum dosing as a continuous exposure for 

that 10-year period as the higher limit? Is 

that right? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: That is correct. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: As if somebody was 

vacuuming continuously eight hours a day, 40 

hours a week, for 10 years? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. 

 DR. OSTROW: And SC&A's opinion is 

that this seems to be a high dose from what it 

probably actually was. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: From a work 

perspective, that doesn't occur. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Dr. Lockey? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Let me also point 

out that we're assuming that every Linde 

worker, no matter where they were stationed, 
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is assumed to be in Building 30 during that 

renovation for the entire 10 years. Probably 

only 45 to 75 workers were actually working in 

Building 30 at any one point, from what I 

could tell from the various documents. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Was the vacuuming 

dose upper bound higher than when they were 

doing jackhammering, et cetera, when you had 

that data? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes, if you take the 

jackhammering data that was done after the 

surfaces were cleaned. We have that 

measurement from 1950. So the level of the 

vacuum cleaning was twice as high, a little 

more than twice as high as the jackhammering. 

 DR. NETON: And that may seem 

counterintuitive, but you have to remember 

that these vacuuming activities were vacuuming 

the contamination that had already been 

cleaned, you know, removed, the pieces and the 

particulate, and there's no indication that 

they may have had HEPA vacs, or whatever. 
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 So that was one of the issues I 

had, was that, you know, vacuum cleaner does 

sound like it would be, by today's standard, a 

cleaner operation, but that's not the case 

here. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: It was compared -- 

what data was it compared to for 

jackhammering? What was that year? 

 DR. NETON: There was a survey 

taken during the D&D period after they had 

decontaminated the surface, and for some 

reason, were jackhammering on it, and they 

took a measurement of that surface, of that 

air concentration during that activity. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I would also like 

to make one other statement about someone 

mentioned that they only assumed about 45 

workers would have worked continuously in 

Building 30. Was that correct? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Forty-five to 75, I 

said, and it is not relevant because we are 
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assuming that everyone who ever worked at 

Linde during that period, worked only there 

and only during the maximum renovation level. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Right, but the 

reason I am mentioning that is that all the 

workers worked in all the buildings at various 

points from the late 1950s onward and I 

believe Building 31 had a much higher radon 

concentration than Building 30, according to 

survey data, if my memory serves. 

 DR. NETON: Radon concentration? 

That's a little different issue than we have 

just been discussing, but I don't have the 

data in front of me to see if that's correct. 

 But if it is, then we would have to get into 

a discussion of the way we are approaching the 

radon model, which would be different than 

jackhammering during construction activities 

or renovation activities. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: It's my 

understanding we had resolved the radon issue 

earlier and that, at this point, we are 
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responding to Antoinette's questions about 

this issue of vacuum cleaning. 

 This is Gen Roessler. I would like 

to say at this point that I think I have to 

agree with Antoinette. We might have to say 

that we agree to disagree on this. 

 But the intent of these Work Group 

meetings is to have a technical exchange 

between NIOSH, OCAS' approach and our 

contractor, SC&A, who typically critiques this 

work in great detail, and then with the Work 

Group participating, asking questions, and 

coming, hopefully, to some sort of a 

conclusion on this. 

 I think we have actually reached 

that point, except that I would like to have 

some input from the other Work Group members. 

 Dr. Lockey has asked some questions, and I am 

wondering if Josie or Mike have some questions 

at this point that might help us resolve this. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes, Gen, this is 

Mike. 
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 You know, I understand the 

technical discussion, but what I did not hear 

from anyone was, when Antoinette asked the 

question, was there additional research done 

after she submitted the documents, December 

14th, I believe she said. And I believe what 

I heard was that OCAS just re-reviewed the 

information they had previously had in hand. 

And I just don't think that that is giving due 

justice to the information she submitted. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: It is my 

understanding -- and maybe Monica and Chris 

can respond to this in a little more detail -- 

that OCAS did take Antoinette's materials that 

she submitted, looked at her concerns, and 

then went back over all the other materials 

they had and reevaluated them in light of 

Antoinette's comments. 

 Did I say that correctly, Monica? 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Yes, you did. 

 There was certainly -- yes, that is exactly 

it. There is no point in elaborating. 
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Mike, how it could be done differently. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Gen, that's what I 

heard, but if there was new information 

provided by the workers, then there should be 

some additional research done, new research 

done other than just going over the previously 

submitted information. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And where would 

you get this additional -- where would you go 

to do new research? It seems like we've 

pulled out everything that is available. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, with all due 

respect, Gen, I think the idea that all of the 

documentary evidence that may be available 

about what happened at the Linde site during 

this time period has already been uncovered 

is -- I mean, there are data-capture efforts 

that are going on continuously. I mean, I am 

currently waiting for some more information 

from a FOIA request from the Department of 

Energy about this time period. 
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 So, to suggest that all possible 

information has been uncovered by NIOSH just 

doesn't really hold water for me. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, then, that 

brings us to something I think came up at our 

last Work Group meeting, is the thing that the 

Board and the Work Group, I think, tried to do 

is bring closure to this sort of a situation, 

so that some decisions can be made in the 

interest of the claimants, that they don't 

have to sit and wait for the decision. 

 What I'm hearing from you, and I 

think I did at our last meeting, is that you 

feel that there is more information out there, 

that we're not ready to come to any 

conclusions. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, if the 

conclusion is going to be that this petition 

should be denied, yes, I would argue that 

there should be additional efforts to uncover 

information. I don't see how I would benefit 

the people I represent by conceding that all 
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possible information has been uncovered and 

let this petition die. That does not serve 

the interests of the people that I represent. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Of course, we 

can't, at a Work Group meeting, we don't make 

that decision. We work through these issues. 

 We then report to the Board and at the point 

that we do make a report to the Board and 

bring this up as a motion, the Board then 

votes. That is when the decision is made. 

 I think it is very preliminary to 

even assume that this decision would go either 

way, just based on the Work Group meeting. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I understand. I 

understand the process, Gen. What I'm trying 

to emphasize here is that I believe there have 

been three revisions to the Site Profile for 

Linde to date. That generally means that 

these are living documents because NIOSH is 

uncovering more and more information from 

these sites on a continuing basis. 

 So what I'm just trying to 
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emphasize here is that, in light of the 

statements that I provided after the December 

14th meeting, I think there should be an onus 

upon ORAU and OCAS to make an effort to do 

additional research, and not just a 

reevaluation of the documents that they 

already have. 

 The documents that they already 

have, they have already come to a conclusion 

on, that their analysis is sound. I'm arguing 

that it is not sound. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Perhaps what we 

should do at this point, I think I see where 

we're going on this, Antoinette, and you might 

want to, after we finish the other items, 

advise us as to where we go on this, whether 

we make a presentation to the Board after we 

finish this Work Group meeting. This would be 

at the Board meeting in February. Or, if you 

come up with some specific items that we 

decide we have to follow through further, 

we'll do that. 
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 But what I'm suggesting here is 

that we perhaps go on to Chris' report, Item 

No. 3, his other item, finish those, and then 

come back to the more general discussion about 

whether NIOSH needs to look for more 

information. I'm not sure where they would 

find it. 

 I don't know. What do you think 

about that, Ted? 

 MR. KATZ: Well, Gen, I mean just 

because one issue we sort of put to bed, so I 

don't want to reopen it, is Antoinette had 

asked, you might recall -- in the last Work 

Group meeting in December we discussed this 

issue of whether this would be presented in 

February or not. Antoinette had reservations, 

wanted to think about it, and she has 

responded to that. Maybe I didn't circulate 

that. 

 But, anyway, she has asked that 

this wait until the Buffalo meeting. So this 

is not on the agenda for the February meeting. 
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 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. 

 MR. KATZ: Any of it. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think I 

understood that it might, but I wasn't sure 

that -- 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, I may have failed 

to notify the rest of you about Antoinette's 

discussion with me about that following the 

meeting. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. So, then, I 

think what we need to do, or perhaps the most 

efficient thing, is to go through the rest of 

the NIOSH response, and then see where we 

stand and, with advice from SC&A and 

Antoinette, decide what actions should be 

taken, then, before the Buffalo meeting. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Well, Gen, this is 

Josie. I have a quick comment. 

 And we may have already discussed 

this, but after reviewing the SC&A White Paper 

on the documents that Antoinette had sent to 

all of us, I noticed that it just pretty much 
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identified what was in the documents, but 

didn't give us a real understanding of if SC&A 

found anything new or enlightening in their 

reading of those documents. 

 DR. OSTROW: Josie, this is Steve. 

 That's true. You characterized it 

correctly because SC&A wasn't really turned on 

to do a detailed review of these documents. 

We were asked just basically -- we had a lot 

of documents that Antoinette sent, and we, 

basically, did an inventory, just to keep 

track of what we actually had in hand. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Well, I thought we 

had suggested that you do an inventory to see 

if there was new information or if there was 

something different than what you had already 

looked at. 

 DR. OSTROW: My understanding, we 

just basically did an inventory. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. Then I 

misread the email that was sent out, I 

believe, by you stating that you would look 
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for any new information. 

 So you haven't done that, I'm 

assuming? 

 DR. OSTROW: No. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'm sorry. This 

is Antoinette. 

 Just to clarify what Josie just 

asked here, is it my understanding that SC&A 

has not reviewed the documents I provided from 

the workers, the testimony, affidavits, for 

any new information? Is that what you're 

saying, Steve? 

 DR. OSTROW: Yes. Basically, we 

were turned on by the Board, subsequent to the 

meeting, to go through all the documents, and 

I read them all, and basically inventory 

what's there but not to actually evaluate 

what's there in a written report. We stopped 

short of evaluating. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Will there be any 

effort for you to evaluate them? 
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request of the Work Group. We could. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Jim Lockey. 

 Josie, I sort of remember that I 

thought that SC&A was going to evaluate them 

also, but -- 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, definitely. I 

was surprised when I was reading through this 

that there was no evaluation done. So I would 

like to go on record as saying that I would 

like to see that, an evaluation of all the 

documents. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: This is Jim Lockey. 

 I concur with that. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes, and I am not 

sure why or what happened in between where 

that didn't occur. Can anybody remember that? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I was under the 

impression that -- this is Jim Lockey -- that 

SC&A was going to evaluate it, not just 

inventory it, but evaluate it, to see if this 

was new information or information that 
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already had been obtained. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: But since we have 

time, it seems like that's an item, then, that 

should be taken care of after we finish this 

Work Group meeting, and that we will attempt 

to, then, in some way before the Buffalo 

meeting. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. SC&A is fine 

with that, if that is the direction you are 

giving us. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. Should we 

continue, then, with NIOSH's response? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Okay. This is Chris 

Crawford. 

 We will go on to Point 3. Again, 

Point 3, which has to do with the tunnels that 

were located beneath many and between many of 

the Linde buildings, especially including 

Building 30, this is both a TBD potential 

issue and an SEC issue. 

 We have tunnel measurements. We 

have a -- I forget whether it was an 81 or a 
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78 tunnel measurement of radium and uranium in 

water which was found in the tunnel. The 

tunnels were, apparently, frequently flooded. 

 That was useful information which we did pick 

up from the workers' statements. 

 We also have information, I 

believe, in the 2002-2003 remediation period 

where measurements were taken -- many 

measurements were taken in the tunnels. I 

believe Mutty was telling me every meter or so 

they would stop, take measurements of the 

floor and walls and so forth. So we have 

quite a bit of information late in the 

process. 

 The reason we think that is 

valuable information and useful for the entire 

period, the residual period, is that the 

tunnels, as far as we know, were never 

decontaminated. Their contamination, 

apparently, is the result of runoff from 

surface waters and snow, melted snow, that 

brought material from the contaminated soils 
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into the tunnels. 

 That is, there was no process work 

done in the tunnels that we're aware of. They 

carried steamlines, electrical lines, perhaps 

communication lines. I'm not sure about the 

latter. 

 Workers, apparently, did work in 

the tunnels at all times of the year, but on 

an occasional basis: that is, when repairs or 

changes were needed. 

 The result is we have yet to 

establish a TBD method for assigning dose for 

work in the tunnels for any period, by the 

way, but we are working on that. We expect to 

be able to come out with a White Paper on that 

and a proposal for how to assign dose to 

workers who were in the tunnels. 

 For the SEC, we believe the key 

question is, can we bound the dose that a 

worker will have gotten in working in the 

tunnels. And we believe we have enough 

information to do that without at this time 
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saying exactly what that bound is, but we can 

come up with it within a reasonable time frame 

and that is being worked on now by members of 

ORAU. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Gen, this is Mike. 

 I have a question. 

 When they say, work occasionally in 

the tunnels, what do you mean by that? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: What we mean by that 

is that nobody lived in the tunnels. They 

were utility tunnels. If a repair needed to 

be done or if a new line needed to be run, 

people would work in the tunnels. 

 So we decided that we have to come 

up with some reasonable occupancy level for 

the tunnels and for what classes of workers 

the tunnel work should be considered. This 

has yet to be done in detail. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: I guess the reason 

I am saying that is, you know, I have a 20-

some-year background as a maintenance 

electrician. I was assigned to power 
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distribution at Mound. So my work week, 

probably 30 of the 40 hours per week involved 

me going in and out of tunnels, manholes, 

substations, taking voltage readings, taking 

infrared scans, looking. 

 It's a preventative maintenance 

program. There are several workers that were 

assigned to do just that. 

 So, when you say it wasn't 

regularly occupied, no, it's not in the meant 

for that, but there could be several workers 

that that was probably three-fourths of the 

week, of their weekly work. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: And to that point, 

what are you basing your estimate on how much 

time workers would have been working in the 

tunnels? Is that based on a specific document 

that you have? 

 DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton. 

 We're not ready, we don't have an 

estimate of that at this point. I think what 

Chris was saying is we don't believe occupancy 
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would be 100 percent but some fraction of 

that, and the information that Mike Gibson 

just provided is excellent information. I 

mean he raises a very good point here, and we 

need to take that into consideration when we 

are developing the exposure assessments for 

this class of workers. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I guess what I'm 

asking here is what you are basing the 

estimate on. Is it just an educated guess or 

are you basing it on anything that you have in 

hand? 

 DR. NETON: Do you mean the 

estimate of the number of hours per week? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes. Yes, that's 

what I'm asking. 

 DR. NETON: We do not have an 

estimate at this point. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay, because -- 

 DR. NETON: We are researching that 

right now. That's where we're at. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Antoinette, I 
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think this is another item that we need to put 

on the agenda, that NIOSH has to complete this 

evaluation, come up with their approach to it. 

 And it seems like, built into this, on this 

item and maybe some others, before we have 

another Work Group meeting, we also have SC&A 

evaluate what NIOSH puts together. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I understand that, 

Gen. I'm just a little confused by what Jim 

-- I believe that was Jim speaking. Because 

here I'm reading at the bottom of page 1 of 

Chris' document. It says, NIOSH anticipates 

that workers that performed their duties in 

the tunnels would have worked no more than 20 

percent of the time in those tunnels. 

 So what I'm asking is what you are 

basing the upper bound of 20 percent on. 

 DR. NETON: That is a very good 

question. I don't know the answer to that, 

either. 

 Chris, do you? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: That was, in reading 
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the myriad statements that were submitted, I 

read something that made me think that was a 

reasonable estimate. 

 We can certainly revisit that. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Who is speaking? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: But this is not, I 

think, the purpose of this meeting. 

 First of all, let me point out 

that, if they are in the tunnels, suppose we 

put them in the tunnels 100 percent of the 

time. That means they're not upstairs during 

the building renovation. This is a complex 

process. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I appreciate that, 

but -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: You need to think 

out where you are putting these people. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I appreciate that, 

but there could have been some workers who 

were working more than 20 percent of the time 

in the tunnels and then other workers working 

in the building at certain times. 
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up with a number like 20 percent, and based 

upon what. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: One of the workers 

who remarked upon wading through the water in 

the tunnels mentioned that he went in there a 

certain amount of times. I don't have that in 

my memory, but it wasn't much. 

 DR. NETON: But, again, this is 

Jim. 

 We are going to take this under 

advisement, and certainly 20 percent is not 

the value that is locked in place here. We 

need to consider statements such as Mike 

Gibson has made and review other sources. 

 If it's true and we agree that 80 

to 100 percent is the right number, we would 

certainly be willing to use that occupancy 

factor. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: And I assume that 

SC&A will also be tasked to review this issue 

as well as they are Issue No. 2. 
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suggestion, is that first we allow NIOSH to 

complete this, using whatever information has 

come up today and other available information, 

then SC&A look at what NIOSH has done before 

we take the next step. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Thank you, 

Gen. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. I think, 

then, we probably have clarified and finished 

with No. 3. Well, we're not finished with it, 

obviously. There's work to be done. 

 I think No. 4 in Chris' report 

we've also taken care of. I wonder if we 

could do No. 5 and then come back and come up 

with what our future task is? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Very good. So, Gen, 

were you saying we're going to skip over No. 

4, which is fairly obvious? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, I didn't say 

skip over. I read it and thought that it 

dealt with No. 3, but go ahead. Please 
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summarize No. 4. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Only -- I wanted to 

acknowledge that I have personally reviewed 

all of the supplementary documents submitted 

by Ms. Bonsignore, all the testimony from the 

workers and so forth. 

 There were some useful details. 

Certainly, the tunnel work was one example of 

that. The size of the tunnels, for instance, 

was described by one worker. The working 

conditions were described, and even to some 

extent, the amount of time that that worker 

spent in the tunnels. 

 But, aside from the tunnel, there 

was a lot of testimony about moving the 

shears, and references to other renovation 

work that was done, and then a lot of 

references to the fact that Linde was a very 

dusty place. 

 This is interesting. It is not 

probative, let me say. It doesn't add very 

much to our understanding of the radiological 
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conditions of the site. 

 That's not a complaint. That is 

just my summary of what I read. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'm sorry. Who's 

speaking? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: This is Chris 

Crawford. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. The purpose 

of the documents that I submitted about the 

renovation work, and perhaps I didn't make 

that clear, was for them to be a jumping-up 

point for additional research. I believe that 

is the obligation here, that petitioners 

provide initial information about working 

conditions and the overall dose that workers 

were exposed to. Then, the obligation and 

onus, is then upon ORAU and OCAS to do 

additional research in response to that. 

 So I would disagree with your 

characterization that the statements were not 

probative. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: This is Chris again. 
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 It is difficult for me to 

understand what kind of research we could do 

about the Linde site that would add to our 

current understanding. We have a certain 

amount of scientific research. It does not 

now seem probable that we are going to 

discover much more, since we have done a 

pretty thorough search of the records at this 

point. 

 What is left is for us to try to 

prove exactly what renovations were done and 

exactly when they were done, and how many 

personnel would have been affected by them. 

 I don't know of any kind of 

research that would turn up this kind of 

information. We are going to have to use a 

sort of reasonable-man standard. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I understand what 

you're saying, but I would assume that you 

probably felt that way upon the first Site 

Profile and then upon the second Site Profile 

and upon the third Site Profile. 
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 So forgive me, but I would assume 

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revisions of the Site Profile, that you 

thought you had done an exhaustive search of 

all the documents that were available at that 

time as well. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Sometimes we revisit 

the documents when a new document is 

discovered. Other times, because of changes 

in standards, for instance, on other sites, we 

go back to a site like Linde and say, well, we 

did it this way over in this other site. 

Maybe we should consider this other method for 

Linde. 

 The TBDs are continually revisited 

on a more or less regular schedule. So it 

isn't unusual at all to have multiple 

revisions of TBDs. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'm not saying 

it's unusual. I'm just saying that, from my 

review of all the revisions of the TBDs, that 

there have been additional reference materials 
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added to each one. 

 So my humble suggestion is that to 

decide at this point that there's no 

possibility of any additional documentation or 

evidence about what the renovation work 

entailed at this site, that seems a bit 

premature to me. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Do you have any 

suggestions, Antoinette, as to where more 

information could be found to help out with 

this? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, you know, 

every time I look at updates to the OCAS 

website regarding data capture efforts, there 

seems to be an ongoing effort to find 

documents. I would think that that question 

would be better addressed to OCAS. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: You see the 

problem that we get into on this, if we keep 

saying there might be more information, we 

need to look for more information, we keep 

delaying what we are supposed to be doing, and 
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that is to be as efficient and timely as 

possible as we can with regard to the 

claimants. It's kind of a quandary. 

 DR. NETON: Gen, this is Jim, too. 

 I guess I would like to make the 

point that, when we do these revisions to the 

Site Profiles, they've always been to the dose 

reconstructions themselves, and no information 

has surfaced as of yet that would indicate 

that there were conditions out there that 

would indicate that we couldn't bound the 

exposures at the site. 

 I guess that is what we need to 

sort of focus on; is it likely that we're 

going to find information that would suggest 

that we couldn't produce a plausible upper 

bound for exposure during a residual 

contamination period at a site that had 

largely been decontaminated prior to release 

to the occupancy. That's the question I need 

to wrestle with. 

 I mean, Ms. Bonsignore is totally 
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right, there is new information likely going 

to surface in a number of ways. But the key 

question is, is it likely that information 

would surface that would prevent us from 

bounding exposures? 

 DR. MAURO: Jim, this is John. 

 When I listened in on the previous 

meeting and this one, I have to say I walked 

away with a sense, a sensibility, that there 

was substantial amount of data during the 

decommissioning, the 1950 time frame, right up 

to the very end of the process. And I think 

this was sort of introductory when we first 

spoke, characterizing what was there in 1950. 

 And I also understand that there is 

data that has been collected on a number of 

occasions subsequent to that. Then, of 

course, we have this perturbation of 

renovation that occurred in between and there 

is a lot of work that was done trying to get a 

feel for how high the dust-loading might have 

been over what protracted period of time. 
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 So I'm picturing a situation where 

I'm saying to myself, is it plausible to place 

an upper bound? Now I have to say my reaction 

to this was, well, when you're in a situation 

like this, if you know that it could not be 

higher than then numbers that you saw in the 

1950s, and that was up to, I guess, 5 MAC that 

you had mentioned, because after that, because 

everything has really been removed, and to 

assume that you're going to be generating dust 

loadings that even approach that would be 

inconceivable. 

 And on that basis alone, I start to 

get a sense of whether or not you are in a 

position to place a plausible upper bound. So 

I guess I walked away from this with a sense 

that you're in a position to place a plausible 

upper bound. 

 That is why, when we started this 

conversation, I did ask this question, and I 

realize that it sort of diverted a bit from 

this business of the renovation period. But I 
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am more concerned that we know that it could 

not plausibly be higher than a given value. 

 I guess I was of the sense that you 

had the data that could put a lid on it. How 

far below that lid it really is, perhaps we 

don't know, but certainly we could put an 

upper lid on it. 

 Now I guess I realize that a lot of 

information is coming across now regarding 

more affidavits, more information about what 

took place during the renovation period. 

There is this matter of the tunnels. This is 

something that I guess I'm not familiar with 

personally, but where there's another place 

people could have been exposed, the question 

becomes, again, I ask myself, well, is there 

any reason to believe that the airborne levels 

of the dust loadings or the external fields 

could have been any higher than the conditions 

that were observed at the end of that 1950 

time period? 

 So, I mean, in my mind, once you 
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could take it there, you've got the anchor 

upon which to build your models. 

 Now is there anything that is, of 

the conversation that we are having right now, 

that defeats that anchor, that allows us to 

say, listen, there may be a better way to do 

it. It may be based on the fact that -- 

another point was made that we looked at the 

residual activity in the 1980s and we don't 

think it really changed very much. So we 

believe the real numbers are way lower than 

any numbers you would use in the 1950s. 

 But I keep finding myself going 

back to the OTIB-0070 philosophy, saying, 

fine, listen, if you have a different strategy 

that differs from OTIB-0070, and you could 

defend it, and it's lower, and you could 

defend it, then you make your case. However, 

if there is any question, you can resort to 

the OTIB-0070 approach and place that 

plausible upper bound. 

 So, you know, in discussing this 
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matter with Steve, I guess I came away with a 

degree of comfort that, with that data that 

you have in the 50s, it puts you in a position 

that you can place a plausible upper bound, 

and that becomes, at the end of the story, 

yes, you can place a plausible upper bound and 

reconstruct the doses. 

 And once you have that, then it 

becomes a matter of, okay, what are you 

actually going to do, which becomes more of a 

site-profile question. You know, how are we 

really going to do it? 

 I'm sure everyone wants to get to 

the point where they are comfortable that they 

found that upper bound, but I guess I walked 

away from this, perhaps prematurely, with the 

sense that, yes, given that 1950s data, you 

were in a very strong position to place a 

plausible upper bound. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So it would be my 

conclusion, then, with what you have said, 

John, and what has transpired in this meeting, 
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is that SC&A agrees that OCAS has a method for 

bounding the dose, based on the available 

data. 

 I do think, though, that we have to 

allow time for OCAS to look at the newer 

information and then to come back to us at a 

later date with that, and then for SC&A to 

reevaluate their look at the new data, if 

there is any new data. 

 DR. MAURO: It would almost -- you 

know, unless my model, and when I say model, 

the way I think about it is incorrect, that 

is, the real question is that there's new 

information coming in that could possibly 

defeat this upper bound that I have in my head 

in the 1950s, where you could say, well, no, 

there were things going on and measurements 

made and circumstances that would say, you 

know, it could have even been higher than 

that, and we don't know how much higher. 

That's when you are in an SEC world. 

 Now I guess, Chris and Jim, at our 
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last meeting, that is why I had a sense that 

you had a grip and your arms around this 

particular issue. But there was some 

discussion during this meeting related to not 

taking advantage of that 1950 data, and you 

may very well have good reason not to do it. 

 Now am I misremembering what we 

talked about the last time, and that you 

really never intended to use that as your 

starting point; your actual levels are going 

to be well below that, based mainly on this 

1980 data? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. So -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: But that is a TBD 

issue. I again want to emphasize we're not 

talking the SEC now. 

 DR. MAURO: Well, okay. Are we 

saying now -- and again, bear with me if I am 

rehashing old material because of so many 

sites we are working on. So I am incorrect 

when I say that your plan was to use the 1950 
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data as your starting point and then let it 

drop down from there at some slope that is 

consistent with the data collected later? You 

have a whole different strategy based on the 

residual activity that was observed in the 

80s, with a general sense that there is no 

reason to believe that it really was higher in 

the earlier days, except for this interim 

period where there was renovation going on. 

 DR. NETON: This is Jim. 

 It's more than a general sense. I 

mean we went to some length in that last 

report that we issued to do some comparisons 

of the direct radiation exposure measurements 

to help support the fact that the levels of 

contamination appear to be consistent between 

the 1950s and the 1980s. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. When we discussed 

this last, I remember expressing a degree of 

concern about using external radiation 

readings and what you get from that as a way 

to make judgments about trends in, let's say, 
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residual activity and the associated 

inhalation exposures. 

 In other words, the fact that you 

may have seen relatively low levels from 

survey meters, that that automatically meant 

that the levels of, whether it's radon or 

resuspended uranium or other radionuclides 

that may be earlier, I mean, that is certainly 

encouraging that the external field is low and 

stayed low. 

 But to make the leap of faith that 

that alone allows you to conclude that the 

airborne levels of various radons, whether 

it's radium or uranium, is also assurance that 

those levels also remained extremely low all 

the way back to the 1950s, is -- I guess I was 

a little surprised to hear that during the 

course of this conversation. 

 We may have hashed a lot of this 

out already, but I have to say, after this 

phone call, I guess I'm going to take a little 

closer look at that line of thought. 
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 So you're not using the 1950 data? 

 You had mentioned it earlier, but that is 

really off the table. You feel that it is not 

something that has any applicability to the 

start points of 1954. 

 DR. NETON: I never say anything is 

off the table in these discussions. I mean we 

try to be open-minded. But, you know, 

certainly, we would appreciate your feedback 

on the June 18th, 2009 report that we issued. 

 Is that right? Yes, it's June 

18th, 2009, that describes why we believe 

those numbers were -- and this was in direct 

response to your initial comments. 

 DR. MAURO: Right, right. Yes. 

 DR. NETON: But, you know, we're 

open. I mean, if SC&A has some valid 

criticisms that we can discuss in more detail, 

we're open, keeping in mind that we do have 

these 1950 data points. 

 DR. MAURO: Right. 

 DR. NETON: Again, I think that is 
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a refinement issue as opposed to a bounding 

issue, but -- 

 DR. MAURO: Since SC&A is going to 

be looking at these affidavits and their 

implications regarding dose reconstruction, 

and do a little research -- we finally got the 

green light to go ahead on that -- we're going 

to look a little closer, I guess, at the SEC 

issue, in my mind. 

 In the end, I think Ms. 

Bonsignore's main concern is, listen, do you 

have the data to say with a level of 

confidence that you could place a plausible 

upper bound for the entire time period. I 

think enough has been discussed on the phone 

today that left me a little bit off-balance, I 

have to say, and maybe it's simply because I 

didn't do enough homework prior to this 

meeting. 

 But since we do have this 

opportunity to look at the matters and to 

discuss them a little further, it sounds like 
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there's no rush to try to get something 

concluded by the February meeting, I would 

like to take another look at that with Steve 

and the rest, and just convince myself that 

there's a way, because I am of the opinion 

that, from the data we looked at before, you 

can place an upper bound by using your classic 

OTIB-70 approach. 

 It is a little disturbing to me 

that you are not going to be using that. I 

guess, at this point, I don't recall looking 

at the data in a way that says walking away 

from that approach is okay here because we 

have other better ways of doing it. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: John, you're talking 

about 1954 on, right? 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. 

 DR. MAURO: See, if you remember -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes, I remember 

that. Your question really is, is it 

appropriate that perhaps they don't take the 
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1954? 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, if you recall, in 

fact, you asked me a question during the 

course of the previous Work Group meeting on 

this subject. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: I remember. 

 DR. MAURO: And I answered that 

question, and you said, "Well, listen, John, 

if during renovation, is there somehow that 

the dust-loading could go up and up and up, to 

a point where it is higher than one might have 

experienced during the 1950 time period?" 

 And my answer to you was, no, I 

could not conceive of a situation arising like 

that. As a result, if push comes to shove, 

and you are really saying, listen, the only 

way we could place a plausible upper bound is 

by taking, let's say, the 5 MAC and holding it 

constant for that time period, and that would 

capture any kind of renovation work and place 

an upper bound, when I answered that question 
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you asked, I answered it from that 

perspective. And I still feel that way now, 

and I would answer it that way again. Yes, 

that is going to bound your problem, and for a 

lot of reasons, many of which were discussed 

during this meeting. 

 But then I did hear, also, at the 

same time, that that's not the approach that 

is being used. There's a different approach 

that is being used. 

 Now I guess I don't have a full 

appreciation of it, and it may solely be 

because I haven't taken a close enough look at 

some of the reports that came out. So I will 

be the first to admit that, that I may be -- 

but I do remember the last time we spoke about 

it, I had in my head that the starting point 

was going to be some of that data that was 

collected in 1950 as being your starting 

point, out of the gate, so to speak, for 1954. 

 I may have just misunderstood. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: No, I think that was 
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my impression, and it was going to be 

extrapolated down toward the more recent data. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, and then when I 

heard this discussion today, it sounds like my 

understanding of that -- you're making me feel 

better, Jim, because I thought maybe I just 

missed the boat on this one. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: No, no, that was my 

understanding. They were going to extrapolate 

it down -- 

 DR. MAURO: Right. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: -- over time to the 

more recent data. 

 DR. MAURO: Right. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: But the issue is not 

that you can't put an upper bound limit on it. 

 The issue is, when does that upper bound 

limit decrease over time? 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, the slope. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: The slope, that's 

right. 

 DR. MAURO: The slope, yes. 
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 MR. CRAWFORD: What is the early 

data point for the beginning of the slope? 

 DR. MAURO: Right. Yes, but, you 

know, during the course of the conversation, I 

heard that they are not going to be using, 

NIOSH is not going to using that 1950 data, 

which leaves me sort of like, well, from my 

way of looking at it, the rock I was standing 

on, where I felt the degree of confidence, 

that, no, we got this one, you know, you got a 

handle on this one, it sounds like, well, no, 

no, no, NIOSH is not going to be doing that. 

It is going to be doing something else. And 

that leaves me a little bit off-balance, not 

that what NIOSH is planning to do there is 

necessarily a problem with it, but it is not 

what I thought they were going to be doing. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: No, I understand 

that, but the issue is not that an upper bound 

can't be set. The issue is, what level should 

it be set at, for what time period? 

 DR. MAURO: Then, if everyone 
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agrees that that is the situation, we are not 

dealing with an SEC issue. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Well, that's what 

I'm asking you, because what I am hearing you 

say is that we can set an upper bound. It's 

just, when is it applicable? Is it applicable 

to '54 or is it applicable way after that at a 

higher level? 

 DR. MAURO: Well, but I also heard 

that NIOSH does not plan to do this. NIOSH 

plans to do something different. 

 So what I believe to be a plausible 

way of setting an upper bound is not, in fact, 

what is going to happen. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Oh, I see what 

you're saying. 

 DR. MAURO: In other words, though 

in my mind they have the wherewithal to place 

an upper bound, my understanding of all this 

data that was collected early on in 1950, but 

NIOSH is not going to do that. So, in my 

mind, I guess I am a bit off-balance with 
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 DR. NETON: I think you are 

twisting the logic a little bit, though. I 

mean, if an upper bound can be put, then why 

is that not a Site Profile issue? 

 DR. MAURO: Well, you know, I 

guess, Jim, maybe -- 

 DR. NETON: By your definition, 

there are no Site Profile issues because we 

haven't picked the upper bound -- 

 DR. MAURO: Well, no. I mean, I 

guess I heard at the last meeting that your 

plan was to take advantage of that data and 

use that as your starting point, and then, 

from there, there's going to be some slope. 

 DR. NETON: Well, I'm pretty clear 

that we didn't say that. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay, then I apologize. 

 I misunderstood. I thought that's what was 

being done. 

 DR. NETON: No, we always intended 

to use the 1950s data for the renovation 
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period. I mean that was pretty much -- and 

that is reflected in our June 19th White 

Paper. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. But, starting in 

1954, which is the time period that is of 

interest here -- 

 DR. NETON: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: -- right -- what is the 

dust-loading and radon levels for airborne 

activity and perhaps external activity that is 

going to be used? What's the plan? 

 DR. NETON: Well, that's what we 

talked about at the very beginning of this 

conversation, that we are going to use the 

values that were measured in the 1970s or 

eighties. 

 DR. MAURO: You see, I'm sorry to 

do this to you, but right now I've got to take 

a look at that. 

 DR. NETON: I agree. I mean I wish 

you would. I mean it seems to me that no one 

at SC&A has reviewed this June 18th report, 
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and I wish you would because, otherwise, we 

are just talking in circles here. 

 I mean, honestly, we write the 

document, and it seems like there is very 

little understanding of what our position was 

in the document that we issued six months ago. 

 Sorry. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, it seems 

like we have a chance to get this all 

clarified. I think it has gotten more 

confusing than less confusing. 

 So it seems to me that, in view of 

everything that has come up, John's comments 

in particular and Antoinette's comments, that 

we do get the chance to come up with a new 

document addressing these issues and have SC&A 

look at it. 

 Is that the path forward? 

 DR. NETON: Sounds reasonable to 

me. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. So I think 

we have to get to a point where we discuss the 
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whims of this, so that we can get it completed 

by the Buffalo meeting. 

 It is my understanding -- and, 

Antoinette, if you are still on -- 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes, ma'am. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: -- I think you do 

want us to come to the Board with this at the 

Buffalo meeting because you will have 

claimants and participation at that meeting? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes, that's 

correct. 

 And I would just like to add just 

one other item about the utility tunnels, that 

I hope that there will be consideration of the 

possible exposures from people who worked in 

the utility tunnels in the overall evaluation 

of whether a bounding analysis can be done 

here. 

 DR. NETON: This is Jim. 

 Absolutely. I mean that would be 

part of our evaluation. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay, because my 
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concern is that everyone has come to a 

conclusion that there are no SEC issues here, 

only TBD issues. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Oh, I don't think 

we've come to that conclusion. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think we're 

talking, we're mixing things, I think. 

 DR. NETON: Yes, I think the 

tunnels are a fairly new issue to us. I mean, 

you know, we went and looked at that. We 

haven't completed our evaluation yet, either. 

 So I would withhold judgment on that one as 

well. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay, thank you. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. Why don't 

we, then, go on to No. 5, which is really in 

Chris' report something quite separate. But 

if we could put that to bed, then we need to 

come back to talking about who is going to do 

what and when, so we can achieve the goal of 

making a presentation at the Buffalo meeting. 
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 And by the way, Ted, while Chris is 

doing that, I don't have my notes here. When 

is the Buffalo meeting? 

 MR. KATZ: I will look it up. 

Carry on. I will look it up while you are -- 

 MS. ADAMS: This is Nancy. 

 It is May 19th through the 21st. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. I'm not at 

my own desk. 

 Okay, Chris, would you like to 

complete the P-539 and the lead cake 

discussion? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Great, Gen. I'll 

start with that. 

 Ms. Bonsignore came up with some 

documents that referred to chemicals known as 

P-539 and C-33. I concentrated on the P-539. 

 I looked at the evidence in the 

documents. First of all, the substance, when 

tested at three different air concentrations, 

was found to be fatal for all the dogs tested 

within 48 hours. This is not a characteristic 
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of radiological exposures. This seems like it 

is probably a chemical toxin, just to start 

with. That doesn't mean it might not have a 

radionuclide attached to it. We are not sure 

about that. 

 The workers, in the Linde Ceramics 

 Safety Rules and Regulations Handbook, 1940, 

there are safety instructions about the 

handling of P-539. It is referred to in that 

document as a monomer, which is an organic 

chemistry term, which is it is a basic subunit 

of a polymer. Many monomers hook together to 

make a polymer, in other words. 

 Again, this is not a description of 

a particular radionuclide. It is a 

description of an organic chemical of some 

sort. 

 In another document, it is referred 

to as a catalyst, which in chemistry is a 

substance that does not take part in a 

reaction, but causes the reaction to 

accelerate. 
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 At any rate, all of this taken 

together doesn't have any particular 

suggestion of a new radioactive element being 

introduced. 

 The discussion by John Vance and 

others is somewhat hypothetical, but that is 

okay. They are trying to figure out what the 

P-539 substance might have been. 

 His guess was uranyl nitrate 

hexahydrate. That is a uranium organic 

compound with uranium bound to it. 

 It is not, however, a new 

radionuclide. So, no matter if we accept John 

Vance's estimation or just assume it's an 

organic catalyst of some sort, we feel we know 

the source term, that is, the radioactive 

elements, the input to the Linde site. We 

know what came to the Linde site. We know 

what left the Linde site. We don't believe 

the P-539 describes a new type of 

radionuclide, whether it involves uranium, 

which was already there. 
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 By the way, that uranyl nitrate 

hexahydrate would not be a catalyst. That is 

one of the reactants in the process of 

producing uranium oxide. 

 I hate to be so long-winded about 

this, but I wanted to look at from every 

different direction as much as we could. 

 There was another memorandum, a 

curious one, having to do with expenses 

connected with the storage of gangue lead 

cake. I don't know if I'm even pronouncing 

that one correctly. 

 But what that is is residue left 

over from uranium refining. What we know 

about that is such residues were shipped away 

from the Linde site in the mid-1946 time frame 

and before the third processing step began in 

November of '47. 

 So, even if that substance was on 

the site, it was removed from the site and is 

not, in bulk at least, any consideration for 

the residual period or the late processing and 
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decontamination periods. 

 There will, of course, be trace 

residuals, which, in fact, have been found, 

both airborne and in the water, at the Linde 

site. 

 Why don't I open it now to any 

questions about that? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: This is 

Antoinette. I have two questions. 

 First, with respect to the P-539, 

is there any information that NIOSH can 

provide to the Department of Labor to assist 

them in any revisions to the SEM with respect 

to adjudication of Part E claims at this 

point? 

 DR. NETON: This is Jim. 

 I'm not sure what you are asking of 

us to do, other than what Chris has just 

summarized. We are not engaged in providing 

analysis of chemical exposures at the sites 

currently. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. I guess I 
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am just trying to determine if there is 

anything that can be done with respect to 

figuring out what the P-539 was beyond the 

guess that John Vance provided, to perhaps 

assist claimants filing Part E claims. I 

guess that is my general question. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think the 

question here for us, I think, is, do we 

believe that this has anything to do with 

radiation exposure? I think that is what we 

have to address. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes, I understand 

that, Gen. I'm just trying to make a general 

 inquiry as to whether there's any additional 

research that could be provided to assist 

claimants filing Part E claims, if they were 

exposed to something, some chemical compound 

that is not radiological in nature, but some 

other compounds that have not yet been 

identified on the SEM. 

 DR. NETON: Right, and that is 

certainly not something we have been engaged 
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with in the past. I mean I can take that 

suggestion up the chain here, but that is not 

something that I could commit to at this 

meeting. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. And the 

second question I had with respect to the 

March 11th, 1945 memo on the gangue lead 

cakes. I was wondering if that March 11th 

memo had been reconciled with the other March 

11th, 1949 memo that I provided back in March 

of 2008 that also talked about the K-65 

disposal issues. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: This is Chris. 

 I can't answer that affirmatively 

exactly because now I'm not sure what the 

other memo related. 

 What we do know is that, to the 

extent that we have a K-65-like residue, it 

was shipped off the site in '46. After that, 

I don't know what to tell you. 

 The memorandum, the current 

memorandum, has to do with storage cost. I 
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don't know if they are referring to Linde 

being charged back for the Lake Ontario 

Ordnance Works storage. It is just hard to 

tell from the document. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Right. That is 

why I am asking. Because there is another 

memo, also dated March 11th, 1949, that I 

submitted with the original petition back in 

March of 2008 that also speaks to this issue. 

 So I am asking if these two memos, 

this current memo that we are discussing here 

and the previous March 11th, 1949 memo, have 

been evaluated concomitantly. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: All I can tell you 

is that the previous memo was evaluated 

previously. I didn't relook at that previous 

memo. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Would it be 

possible for you to do that? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes, although it is 

hard to see what that would have to do with 

the SEC issue, just so you know. 
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 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, you are 

claiming that, after 1946, there wouldn't be 

any processing material or any K-65 stored at 

Linde, at the site. And I just want to make 

sure that that's an accurate statement, in 

light of this memo and the other March 11th 

memo. 

 If this is a problem for someone to 

review the two memos together, and to make 

sure that what you are stating about 1946 

being the end-point is accurate -- 

 DR. NETON: We could certainly do 

that, yes. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Thank you. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. Ted, do we 

have our tasks forward, then, on all of these 

items? 

 MR. KATZ: I think it would be 

helpful to state these clearly. 

 You know, I was running through the 

transcript while some of this was being 

discussed, just trying to figure out what 
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sounded like some people thought was 

miscommunication about SC&A's task with 

respect to the documents that Antoinette 

submitted. I really, frankly, couldn't find 

where people are remembering a discussion 

tasking SC&A, and I was looking for emails and 

having a hard time finding them. Maybe we can 

clear that up. 

 So, in any event, let's just be 

really clear about exactly what each party is 

tasked to do at this point going forward. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And I was thinking 

the same thing, Ted. I was going to try to 

describe what I thought, but I think perhaps 

the best approach would be for OCAS, first of 

all, to tell us what the understanding is that 

their assignment is, and then SC&A follow with 

theirs. Then we see if we agree with that, 

and then we pick some dates where things are 

going to be done. 

 MR. KATZ: That sounds good. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So, either Jim or 
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Chris needs to do -- 

 DR. NETON: Yes, Chris stepped out 

of the room just briefly, but I can, I think, 

identify the areas I think we talked about. 

 The first thing that comes to mind 

is this NIOSH to complete their analysis of 

the exposures in the tunnels. We need to 

provide a White Paper on that and provide it 

to the Working Group and SC&A. That is the 

main thing that comes to mind. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, I think if 

we go back a bit, didn't you also agree to 

provide a better description of how you're 

going to bound the airborne radioactivity 

doses? This is going back to the vacuum 

cleaning and that discussion. 

 DR. NETON: Well, I thought we did 

the vacuum cleaning in the 1960s, was our 

bullet 2 or our item 2 in the response that we 

put out. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: It was. But maybe 

John has a comment on this. I didn't sense 
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that you had come to an agreement on that. 

 DR. NETON: Well, I think where 

we're at is that SC&A is at odds with our 

position, that maybe they didn't clearly 

understand it or maybe we failed to 

communicate clearly. I don't know. 

 But our current position is 

documented in, again, this June 18th White 

Paper that we issued that was in direct 

response to SC&A's concerns about using this 

1980s-type data. So that is where we outlined 

the comparison of some of the survey 

measurements and such. 

 To my knowledge, we have never 

received written comments on that approach. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So it is up to 

SC&A at this point, then, to go back and 

relook at that? 

 DR. NETON: I'm not trying to 

direct the Working Group, but I think that's 

where it makes sense to me. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Gen, this is Josie. 
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 I wrote that down as an action item 

for SC&A because I thought after that 

discussion that is what John was going to do. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, I certainly want 

to do that. 

 Steve, let me ask you, did we 

submit a written response to the June 18th 

White Paper? 

 DR. NETON: Are you asking me, 

John? 

 DR. MAURO: No, I'm asking Steve 

Ostrow. 

 DR. OSTROW: All right. Here's why 

I was trying to break in. 

 Okay. At the last meeting, the 

December 14th meeting we had of the Work Group 

in Cincinnati, we had on the agenda the note 

that the June 18th report by NIOSH that we're 

referring to was submitted by email on 

December 8th, and we got it just before the 

Cincinnati Work Group meeting. 

 We discussed it during the meeting 
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extensively, the report, and we went through 

it carefully. But we didn't provide a written 

response to it afterwards. We provided a 

verbal response during the meeting, and you 

can find that in the transcript. 

 DR. NETON: Right. I understand 

that, Steve, but my concern was that at least 

John didn't seem to -- somehow we failed to 

communicate that that's what we were doing 

because both Dr. Lockey and John misunderstood 

what our approach was. 

 DR. MAURO: Jim, I'm not going to 

disagree with that. I mean I'll take that. 

 MR. KATZ: I think the transcript 

maybe needs to be revisited. Because if it 

was thoroughly discussed and John's not 

remembering it, but there was that discussion 

and there was agreement, having SC&A go back 

and redo it again in writing seems kind of 

silly. 

 DR. NETON: Yes. But to be honest, 

I don't know that we actually did agree on 
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disagreement is legitimate or real. 

 MR. KATZ: Right. No, all I was 

suggesting is I think we should look and see 

exactly what SC&A said on the record in the 

transcript as a starting point. If somehow 

that issue was dropped without it being 

resolved, it makes sense that SC&A go back and 

finish it up. But if there was actually a 

clear resolution in the discussion, you may 

not be charging SC&A to redo what it just did. 

 DR. NETON: Yes. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: What was the date of 

the transcript? 

 DR. OSTROW: The teleconference or 

the in-face meeting was actually December 

14th, the transcript from December 14th. 

 MR. KATZ: Right, and the 

transcript is on the website. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Okay. I thought you 

said June. I was wondering. Okay. 

 MR. KATZ: No, June 18th was when 
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 MR. CRAWFORD: Right. Okay. 

 MR. KATZ: But the discussion of 

it, apparently, didn't happen because maybe 

there wasn't even a -- I can't recall -- a 

Linde meeting. 

 DR. NETON: I have to make a 

correction here. I'm in error. The report 

was not issued, the White Paper was not issued 

June 18th. That was the date of the 

Evaluation Report. I'm reading the -- 

 MR. KATZ: Oh, oh, oh. 

 DR. NETON: I'm misreading the 

title. 

 Steve is correct that this document 

was issued, well, it is listed revised 

December 3rd, 2009. So I can't guarantee the 

date that it went out. But Steve is 

absolutely correct, it went out sometime in 

December. 

 MR. KATZ: Right. Well, that makes 

much more -- 
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 DR. NETON: Yes, I'm sorry. 

 DR. MAURO: I feel a little 

vindicated, a little bit. 

 DR. NETON: Yes, I'm sorry. I was 

reading the title of the report, and it struck 

me as odd, but, anyway, I apologize for that 

error. 

 MR. KATZ: No, it is helpful to 

have this clarified. 

 DR. MAURO: No problem. Good. So 

it sounds to me that, in my mind, SC&A has got 

to take another look at the transcript 

because, obviously, we had a lot of discussion 

on December 14th regarding your December 3rd 

White Paper. I know I will have to refresh my 

memory on exactly what we discussed and where 

we stand, especially with respect to this 

misunderstanding perhaps that I have on how 

you were going to use the 1950 data. 

 DR. NETON: Right. 

 MR. KATZ: Right. Gen, if that 

makes sense to you, then SC&A can start with 
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the transcript, look at the transcript, see 

what the discussion was, and then if there are 

ellipses, in other words, if it wasn't 

resolved, then SC&A sort of can carry forth 

from there with additional evaluation that 

they can report on in a small memo or paper, 

or whatever it might be. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: That sounds like 

the approach. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. 

 DR. NETON: Okay. Then, following 

up with NIOSH's action items, I think that the 

other one was that Chris Crawford will 

evaluate the two memos on the K-65 issue that 

were issued fairly close in time, to look at 

the consistency among them. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. 

 DR. NETON: That's the issue that 

Ms. Bonsignore brought up just fairly recently 

here. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'm sorry to 
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interrupt, but if I could respond, but if I 

could respectfully request that SC&A also take 

a look at those two memos? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think that is 

the plan, is for NIOSH first to come through 

with what they have agreed to do. Then we 

will pass it by SC&A. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. I just want 

to make sure that the issue about those two 

memos is not lost in the translation here. 

 DR. NETON: I think, as far as I 

know, that's the two issues that we agreed to 

evaluate. 

 DR. MAURO: Now SC&A had one 

related to Ms. Bonsignore's affidavits and 

reports, whereby I know that we collected 

them. I know Steve summarized them. I 

reviewed that. But it sounds like that 

there's more analysis that has to be done on 

what the implications of that might be with 

regard to your approach to doing dose 

reconstruction. 
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 Is that a correct characterization 

of that material that was provided by Ms. 

Bonsignore and what role we have, what role we 

should be playing? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay, I think that 

was part of it. So it seems like SC&A has two 

assignments that they are going to begin now. 

 NIOSH has the two things that they 

are going to be doing, and then SC&A is 

finally going to look at everything. 

 MR. KATZ: SC&A is going to look at 

the documents that Antoinette submitted and 

address their implications for either the 

petition or, I would just say, also dose 

reconstruction, whatever. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And they're also 

going to look at the transcript -- 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: -- to see if 

there's some misunderstandings. I think that 

has to be done fairly soon to keep all of this 

online. 
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 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: The transcript review is 

just the starting point for evaluating the 

OCAS approach to reconstruction for that 

period. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Right, right. 

 DR. MAURO: What might be helpful 

-- this is John -- is that Steve and I will 

both review the transcript. We will collect 

our thoughts regarding this and maybe we will 

report back in a memo to the Work Group, sort 

of like everybody get on the same page. Okay, 

here's where -- our understanding is this is 

what came out of that meeting, the previous 

meeting that we had on the 14th. And it may 

turn out that we're all on the same page or it 

may turn out that we're not. 

 If we're not, you know, I could 

take the next steps -- hold on a second. 

 Hold on one second, please. I'm 

going to put the phone down for one second. 

Please hold on. 
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 (Pause.) 

 I'm sorry, I just had a little 

minor emergency to take care of. Everything 

is fine. 

 It sounds like, once, Steve, you 

and I go over that material, maybe we could 

just get back to the Work Group and NIOSH and 

sort of re-baseline ourselves about where we 

are and maybe what the next steps should be, 

because maybe it will turn out there is very 

little more to do, or maybe there is some 

initial analysis we need to do related to 

where we stand after we review the transcript. 

 MR. KATZ: I think that is a great 

plan, John. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

 MR. KATZ: I think that's a great 

plan. Then you can lay out what your path 

forward is -- 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: -- if you have more to 

do. 
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 MEMBER GIBSON: Gen, this is Mike. 

 I just want to make sure I'm clear. 

 SC&A was to look at the information that 

Antoinette provided on the 14th, and it is not 

just against the available data, but see if 

there's possibly any other data out there. Is 

that correct? 

 DR. MAURO: That's my 

understanding, is to look at Ms. Bonsignore's 

material. This is in addition to the 

transcript. 

 In other words, we have a couple of 

action items, as I understand it. There's a 

transcript which sort of like baselines 

ourselves. Let's just get back, make sure we 

are all on the same page, understanding what 

is in this transcript, and what possible 

follow-up actions SC&A may need to take. We 

will certainly discuss that with you. 

 But the second thing has to do with 

doing a thorough review of Ms. Bonsignore's 

materials with respect to how it might have 
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implications regarding both the SEC and Dose 

Reconstruction/Site Profile-type issues. 

 Quite frankly, we would probably do 

that in parallel, and when we get back to the 

Work Group on both matters, you know, what 

follow-up actions SC&A plans to take -- 

because it may turn out that, based on Ms. 

Bonsignore's materials, we may want to talk to 

a few people and try to run down some 

information that might have some relevance 

that is revealed to us when we start to do 

some analysis of Ms. Bonsignore's material. 

 But I don't think we should move 

forward without sort of re-baselining, 

regrouping, and then getting back. This 

shouldn't take long. I mean I am going to 

guess, I am saying within a couple of weeks we 

should be able to, maybe sooner, get ourselves 

a little better oriented on what the next 

steps should be. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Mike? Mike? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes? 
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 MR. CRAWFORD: I'm not sure, did 

that answer your question? I sort of feel it 

didn't maybe answer your question because I 

thought you were asking, will SC&A search out 

additional information? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes, that's what I 

was asking. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: What I'm asking is, 

did you get an answer? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Well, I think John 

was saying it is going to be like an interim 

step before they may go further, if I 

understood him right. 

 DR. MAURO: We will search out 

additional information as it becomes apparent, 

as necessary to do so. In other words, I 

don't think we are going to initiate a data 

capture effort. You know, we've been down 

that road. 

 But it may turn out that the 

material that we review from Ms. Bonsignore 

may reveal that, no, maybe there is a need for 
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additional followup, inquiries. We will let 

the material lead us to where our next steps 

should be. 

 And we will inform everyone of 

that. I mean, after we do our homework, and 

we go through, do the two things, namely, Ms. 

Bonsignore's material and the transcript, and 

your December report, NIOSH, and then I think 

we regroup and inform the full Work Group, 

maybe in a technical conference call, if that 

is appropriate. Say, "Listen, here's where we 

are and here's what we think." You know, we 

may actually have some position or we may say, 

no, there's a little bit more homework we have 

to do, maybe even a couple of interviews. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So are you 

suggesting that perhaps within two or three 

weeks we have another conference call before 

we take the next step? 

 DR. MAURO: Well, I don't know. 

Steve, I think that by you and I working 

together for a couple of weeks, we should be 
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able to bring this to ground and then provide 

our response. 

 I don't think it is a big effort. 

It is reading the transcript, reading Ms. 

Bonsignore's, you and I working through the 

problems and deciding where we are and where 

we think we should go. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Would it work for 

you to do that, for NIOSH to work through 

their assignments, and then we have a 

conference call and deal with everything? Or 

is that too fast? 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, I don't think OCAS 

can project exactly when it is going to be 

finished with its work. 

 This interim step that John is 

talking about, he can send us an email with a 

memo, you know, covering where they are with 

this. But it seems like we need to have that 

before we have a decent idea to schedule a 

conference call. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes, okay. 
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 MEMBER GIBSON: And this is Mike. 

 I guess I would just reserve the 

right for my question until we see this 

interim information. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I just had a 

question for John. 

 Are you foreclosing any further 

data capture efforts at this time? 

 DR. MAURO: No. No. I would 

rather say that, after we re-baseline, take a 

look at the report again, take a look at the 

transcript, take a look at your material, at 

that point, we will, SC&A will prepare an 

email to the Work Group, including NIOSH, that 

would say, listen, this is where we are, and 

this is what we recommend the next steps for 

SC&A to take, if any. 

 Some of those next steps may very 

well be additional data capture, interviews, 

that sort of thing, or maybe not. 

 At that point, I guess, based on 

what we would recommend to the Work Group, the 
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Work Group would then -- perhaps there would 

be a need at that point for another call to 

inform you of where we are, because I don't 

think you would automatically see our email. 

I mean our email that we transmit to the Work 

Group is internal. 

 But, depending on the outcome of 

that exchange within the Work Group, it sounds 

to me it would be reasonable to keep you 

apprised of the developments. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'm sorry, I'm not 

going to be permitted to see your email? Why 

is that? 

 DR. MAURO: Well, I mean we work 

for the Board. We will write our email. It 

will go to Ted Katz, NIOSH, and the Work 

Group, and it is certainly within the hands 

and the decision of our Project Officer as to 

what to do in terms of communicating this 

material. 

 Because, remember, all our work is 

material that is done under the Privacy Act. 
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It is done within, under our contract, on 

behalf of our Project Officer, Ted. So, I 

mean, it's really we report to Ted. 

 MR. KATZ: Antoinette, don't worry. 

 This memo is not going to have Privacy Act 

information, and it shouldn't take any 

significant amount of time to share the 

information with you. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. I just want 

to be certain that there's not going to be any 

issues about, you know, this whole thing about 

pre-decisional working documents that I don't 

have access to under -- you know, I just don't 

want to go down that road again. 

 MR. KATZ: This is not going to be 

a problem, Antoinette. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Thank you. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Ted, this is Gen. 

 I'm at a Health Physics meeting. I 

have an appointment coming up. I can delay it 

a little bit, but I am wondering if you have a 

suggestion as to how we can pull this to 
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closure, so everybody knows what we are going 

to do and when. 

 MR. KATZ: I think we have just run 

down the list. OCAS has its marching orders; 

SC&A has its marching orders. The next thing 

we will expect, then, is a notice from SC&A, a 

memo from SC&A. At about that time, it would 

be good if OCAS has an idea of just its 

timeframe for working on the tunnel question, 

for example, and whatever else it has to do to 

wrap things up. 

 And at that point, we will schedule 

a Work Group meeting that makes sense, given 

where things stand. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: That sounds good. 

 Okay. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Ted, Jim Lockey. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Would it be 

worthwhile for you just to send out a short 

email outlining the tasks for people? 

 MR. KATZ: It would be worthwhile 
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to send out that. I would appreciate -- some 

things are going on -- I would appreciate it 

if SC&A and OCAS would just send me their 

bullets. I will put it out to the whole group 

to summarize what these marching orders are. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: That sounds good. 

 MR. KATZ: That would be great. 

Thank you. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, Jim, normally, 

what we do is, after we have these kinds of 

conversations, I will usually put together 

SC&A's understanding of what it is has to do 

and what direction is received, what it has 

been tasked to do. I send that to Ted. Then, 

of course, it is distributed. 

 MR. KATZ: Rather than even putting 

me in the middle, OCAS and SC&A, if you will 

just send the memo to the Work Group saying, 

"These are the things we're doing."? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Very good. 

 MR. KATZ: That would be great. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: You've got it. 
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 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. I am going 

to have to sign off, but I don't want to do 

that until we ask Mike and Josie if they have 

further questions. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Gen, this is Mike. 

 No, I will just wait until these 

bullets come out, just to make sure that I 

feel the things were covered that were raised. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay, and, Josie, 

are you still on? 

 (No response.) 

 She might not be. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Gen, I'm sorry, can 

you hear me now? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes, you were on 

mute. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I thought I was off 

mute. 

 I am in the same position. I would 

like to wait and see what SC&A comes up with 

and go from there. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. Is there 
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anything else that we need to do at this 

point? 

 MR. KATZ: I just want to thank 

Antoinette for her participation, too, and all 

of you for your hard work today. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. So I think 

we wait for SC&A and OCAS to send the bullets. 

 Then we will schedule another Work Group 

meeting, once we find out what the time frame 

is. 

 MR. KATZ: That sounds good. Just 

everybody, in preparing, in thinking about 

your work tasks ahead, keep in mind the May 

date that we are working towards. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: And, Ted, am I 

right with that May 19th to the 21st? 

 MR. KATZ: That sounds right to me. 

 Nancy Adams -- 

 MEMBER BEACH: That is correct. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: And, Nancy, has 

there been a site selected yet for the meeting 

in Buffalo? 
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 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

 MS. ADAMS: The Crowne Plaza in 

Buffalo. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'm sorry? Which 

plaza? 

 MS. ADAMS: The Crowne Plaza Hotel 

in Buffalo. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Thank you. 

 I know it. Thank you. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And we do have the 

opportunity, we will all be at the February 

meeting. So there may be a possibility that 

we could explore whatever needs to be looked 

at at that meeting. I don't know. Maybe that 

isn't the appropriate way to do it. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I would prefer 

that that not happen, since I cannot be at the 

February meeting. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes, I thought of 

that after I started saying it. 

 MR. KATZ: It's all right. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. 
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 MR. KATZ: It is not on the agenda, 

Antoinette. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Thank you. 

 MR. KATZ: So, thank you, 

everybody. 

 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 4:01 p.m.)