THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 


PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 


CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 


NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 


convenes the 


WORKING GROUP MEETING 


ADVISORY BOARD ON 


RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 


LINDE SITE PROFILE
 

The verbatim transcript of the Working 


Group Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 


Worker Health held in Cincinnati, Ohio on 


March 26, 2007. 


STEVEN RAY GREEN AND ASSOCIATES 

NATIONALLY CERTIFIED COURT REPORTERS 

404/733-6070 
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C O N T E N T S
 

March 26, 2007 


WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 


DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO 


INTRODUCTION BY CHAIR 10 


INTRODUCTION BY DR. OSTROW 14 


ISSUE ONE 20 


ISSUE TWO 31 


ISSUE SEVEN 46 


ISSUE EIGHT 51 


ISSUE NINE 52 


ISSUE TEN 65 


ISSUE ELEVEN 66 


ISSUE TWELVE 74 


ISSUE THIRTEEN 74 


ISSUE FOURTEEN 86 


ISSUE FIFTEEN 93 


ISSUE SIXTEEN 95 


ISSUE SEVENTEEN 98 


ISSUE EIGHTEEN 99 


ISSUE TWENTY 103 


ISSUE TWENTY-ONE 104 


ISSUE TWENTY-TWO 104 


COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 
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TRANSCRIPT LEGEND
 

The following transcript contains quoted material. Such 


material is reproduced as read or spoken. 


In the following transcript: a dash (--) indicates 


an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 


sentence. An ellipsis (. . .) indicates halting speech 


or an unfinished sentence in dialogue or omission(s) of 


word(s) when reading written material. 


-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 


of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 


reported. 


-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 


the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 


available. 


-- "uh-huh" represents an affirmative response, and 


"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 


-- "*" denotes a spelling based on phonetics, 


without reference available. 


-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 


failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 

 

 

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


(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 


BOARD MEMBERS
 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
 

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D. 


Senior Science Advisor 


National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 


Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 


Washington, DC 


MEMBERSHIP
 

BEACH, Josie 


Nuclear Chemical Operator 


Hanford Reservation 


Richland, Washington 


GIBSON, Michael H. 


President 


Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union 


Local 5-4200 


Miamisburg, Ohio 


LOCKEY, James, M.D. 


Professor, Department of Environmental Health 


College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati 


ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D. 


Professor Emeritus 


University of Florida 


Elysian, Minnesota 

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IDENTIFIED PARTICIPANTS
 

BEHLING, HANS, SC&A 


BLOOM, CINDY, NIOSH 


CHAN, DESMOND, SC&A 


CHANG, CHIA-CHIA, NIOSH 


CRAWFORD, CHRIS, NIOSH 


ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH 


HOFF, JENNIFER, ORAU 


HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 


KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL 


MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A 


MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 


NETON, JIM, NIOSH 


OSTROW, STEVE, SC&A 

 

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P R O C E E D I N G S


 (1:00 p.m.) 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS
 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO
 

DR. WADE: This is Lew Wade. I have the 


privilege of being a designated federal 


official for the Advisory Board, and this is a 


meeting of the work group on the Linde site 


profile of that Advisory Board. This work 


group is chaired by Gen Roessler. Josie 


Beach, Dr. Lockey and Mr. Gibson are members 


of the work group. They’re all here and 


present in the room. 


Let me start by asking if there are 


any other Board members who are connected to 


this meeting by telephone. 


 (no response) 


 DR. WADE: Are there any Board members 


connected by telephone? 


 (no response) 


 DR. WADE: Okay, so I judge we don’t have a 


quorum of the Board; and therefore, we can 

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continue with our deliberations. What I’ll do 


is go through some introductions. We’ll start 


with the people around the table. Then I’ll 


ask for other members of the NIOSH/ORAU team 


to identify themselves, other members of the 


SC&A team to identify themselves.
 

I’ll then ask for other federal 


employees who are on the call by virtue of 


their employment. I’ll ask if there are 


members of Congress, their staff, workers or 


worker representatives that are on the call. 


I’ll then ask that anyone who wishes to be 


identified, do that. And then before we begin 


the deliberations, I’ll give you a little talk 


about phone etiquette and things we should try 


to avoid. 


So let’s begin by going around the 


table. I will also ask that for members of 


the Board, SC&A, ORAU and the NIOSH people who 


identify if they have any conflicts relative 


to the Linde site. 


This is Lew Wade. Again, I work for 


NIOSH and serve the Advisory Board. 


DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton. I work for 


NIOSH, and I am not conflicted at Linde. 

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MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell with HHS, no 

conflicts. 

DR. OSTROW: Steve Ostrow with SC&A, no 

conflict. 

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


conflict. 


DR. BEHLING: Hans Behling, SC&A, no 


conflict. 


DR. ROESSLER: Gen Roessler, Advisory Board, 


no conflicts. 


MR. GIBSON: Mike Gibson, Advisory Board, no 


conflicts. 


MS. HOFF: Jennifer Hoff, ORAU team, no 


conflicts. 


MR. CRAWFORD: Chris Crawford with NIOSH 


OCAS and no conflicts. 


MS. BEACH: Josie Beach, member of the 


Board, no conflicts. 


DR. LOCKEY: Jim Lockey, Board member, no 


conflicts. 


MR. ELLIOTT: Larry Elliott, I work with 


NIOSH. I have no conflicts. 


 DR. WADE: Now let’s go out to those on the 


telephone. We’ll start with members of the 


NIOSH/ORAU team. 

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MS. BLOOM: Cindy Bloom, no conflicts. 


 DR. WADE: Other members of the NIOSH/ORAU 


team? 


 (no response) 


 DR. WADE: Members of the SC&A team? 


MR. CHAN: Desmond Chan, no conflict. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Arjun 


Makhijani, no conflicts. 


 DR. WADE: Hello, Arjun. 


Other members of the SC&A team? 


 (no response) 


 DR. WADE: Other federal employees who are 


on the call by virtue of their employment? 


MR. KOTSCH (by Telephone): This is Jeff 


Kotsch, Department of Labor. 


 DR. WADE: Hi, Jeff, as always welcome. 


I’m asking for members of federal 


employees who are on the call by virtue of 


their employment. 


MS. CHANG (by Telephone): Chia-Chia Chang 


with NIOSH. 


 DR. WADE: Hi, Chia-Chia. 


Any other? 


 (no response) 


 DR. WADE: I’ve also already asked for 

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NIOSH/ORAU team and SC&A team. I’m going to 


move now to members of Congress, their staff, 


workers or worker representatives. 


 (no response) 


 DR. WADE: Anybody on the call who wishes to 


be identified that hasn’t already identified? 


 (no response) 


 DR. WADE: Okay, before we begin I’d ask you 


to use common sense in terms of your 


connection by telephone. If you’re not 


speaking, then mute your phone. If you are 


speaking, speak into a handset as opposed to 


using a conference call. There’s all kinds of 


background. Be mindful of background noises. 


Again, we want to use conference calls. It 


facilitates the Board’s work, but if there are 


poor etiquette practiced, it can be difficult 


for us to do this. So think about background 


noises. Think about what you’re doing, and 


we’ll begin. 


Gen? 


INTRODUCTION BY CHAIR
 

DR. ROESSLER: So we’re meeting to go 


through the issue resolution matrix for the 


Linde findings. The first thing I’d mention 

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is that we did get this, the SC&A findings, 


the NIOSH response. We received a copy from 


Chris which was a little difficult to read for 


those of us who have reading glasses. The 


font was kind of small. 


Steve actually took that and put it in 


a bigger font. I hadn’t asked him to do it, 


but I appreciate it. And it’s in a landscape 


form so if anybody needs this extra little 


help in looking at it, I did make another 


copy. I’ve got just one. I wonder if there’s 


another copy for Mike to look at. 


So on the SC&A team we have Steve 


Ostrow who’s working with us, and the NIOSH 


person is Chris Crawford. Typically, in these 


work group meetings we go through the matrix 


step-by-step. I would like to propose doing 


this a little differently. I’m not feeling 


real strongly about it, but Steve had sent to 


me a list -- I had asked him for the most 


significant issues that SC&A found. And he 


sent me a copy of that, and I sent them to the 


work group. I’m not sure if Mike got his. 


And I was wondering if it would be 


more efficient to go through it from that 

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point of view, not actually step-by-step 


through the matrix but deal with the 


significant issues. And I can call those out 


as we go. Those significant issues I think 


are also in your review of the site profile, 


aren’t they? 


DR. OSTROW: Maybe not. Gen, I’d like to 


change it a little bit here. We had sent you 


the significant issues I think like last 


Tuesday before we had the NIOSH response, 


which means there is a difference. And after 


spending the weekend looking at the two of 


them, some of the significant issues we sent 


you, I don’t think are that significant any 


more. 


DR. ROESSLER: Well, that’s good. 


DR. OSTROW: I think we’d like to do a 


little bit of what you propose, and we have a 


few significant issues that we’d like to 


discuss first, and maybe then go through the 


22 comments we have. Some of them are not too 


important after reviewing things. Just a few 


of them have actually some importance, and a 


number of them are quite redundant. So I 


think we’d like to proceed in a little bit 

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different order than what we had sent you. 


DR. ROESSLER: So what you’re suggesting is 


out of the list of significant issues you sent 


around to the work group that you now have a 


different list, a shorter list, of significant 


issues. So perhaps the approach, if this is 


okay with Chris and the rest of the work 


group, would be to for you to say here’s the 


issue we want to discuss first. 


DR. OSTROW: Yeah, I think so. I’d like to 


give a little introduction which will be very 


brief, what we see as some significant things. 


Then I think we could go through the 


individual issues fairly quickly. Most of 


them are sort of either short discussion or no 


never mind and just concentrate on the couple 


that are of more significance. 


DR. ROESSLER: So to do this you would take 


the matrix then, point out the issue so we 


could all look at it and follow through on 


that. 


Now how do you feel about this, Chris 


and Jim? Would this be an appropriate --


DR. OSTROW: We’ll cover everything in the 


matrix but --

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 DR. WADE: If I can ask you just to speak up 


a little bit if you could. 


DR. ROESSLER: Okay, so --


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): This is 


Arjun. This is Arjun. Steve, did you get my 


e-mail on the weekend? 


DR. OSTROW: Yeah, I got it with my, I 


looked at it just before I went to bed 


actually. Yeah. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Okay, so I 


guess you’ll factor that list in as you feel 


appropriate? 


DR. OSTROW: I will. If I miss anything, 


please jump in. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Okay, great. 


Thanks. 


DR. ROESSLER: Okay, so go ahead and take 


the (unintelligible). 


INTRODUCTION BY DR. OSTROW
 

DR. OSTROW: I just want to say that I was 


the lead reviewer on the Linde profile for 


SC&A. And the other person who did a lot of 


the work, Desmond Chan, is on the telephone 


line also and Desmond should jump in also if 


necessary. 

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The first thing I’d like to say is 


that in reviewing our comments in the actual 


full report and in the issue resolution 


matrix, I must say I have to apologize a 


little bit to NIOSH and ORAU that our language 


was a little bit overblown in a couple of 


cases where we used some language as a little 


bit intemperate, and we criticized maybe too 


much. And please forgive us. 


You know, this was after reading and 


re-reading and re-reading, we got a little bit 


tired of reading, you know, and after awhile 


got a little bit testy in some of the 


comments. So don’t take it too personally 


some of our comments. 


 DR. WADE: I hope you learned from that 


experience and won’t do that again. 


DR. OSTROW: That’s right. We’ll tone it 


down a little bit. 


The way I read it is that for the 


internal dose is the main area that we’re 


concerned with in this. And the way I read it 


is that we started out, ORAU started out with 


air concentration data which was taken 


primarily from the AEC report, New York 

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Operations office, 1949 report. And this is 


the basis for the data which we have a copy of 


if you have to refer to it. 


That’s “Health Hazards in NYOO 


Facilities Producing and Processing Uranium 


Status Report”, April 1st, 1949, in which the ­

– I guess it was the AEC New York Operations 


Office looked at various uranium processing 


plants in New York state and looked at the 


Health Physics. I think there were seven 


plants and Linde was one of them. 


This formed the basis of the internal 


dose based on measurements that were taken at 


Linde. The maximum value for airborne 


concentration was 33 MAC which is found for 


Linde. I was looking at some data and that 


air concentration data was then used for 


internal dose in the ORAU calculations. And 


the internal dose consisted of two parts, 


inhalation and ingestion. So it was used for 


an inhalation and ingestion. 


Now some of the questions we’ve had, 


first of all we looked at, since everything is 


based, or a lot of it’s based on this 33 MAC 


assumption, is that a good assumption to start 

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with? Is 33 MAC really a limiting value of 


the site? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): John, this is 


Cindy Bloom, and since this first came out 


which we were on a tight schedule, we’ve 


assembled the internal dosimetry data that 


would better relate to the issue. And I guess 


from where I sit, I would propose we go back 


and analyze that data. We have a little over 


700 uranium bioassay results, urinalysis 


results that we can use to develop the 


internal intakes a little bit better I think. 


DR. OSTROW: Okay, so you’re saying that 


you’re going to be re-looking at the internal 


dose using this bioassay data that you have 


now? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Correct, with 


NIOSH’s permission and approval. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Cindy, this 


is Arjun. Does the bioassay data span the 


different production periods, you know, the 


African ores, the U.S. ores, and just 


concentrates, so on? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Arjun, there is 


an SEC that goes through October 31st, 1946 --

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DR. OSTROW: ‘Forty-seven, ‘forty-seven. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): --and there was 


no African ore production during the 


production periods after that time. They 


started with U-02 concentrates. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Oh, okay, 


thank you, thank you. Yeah, I’d forgotten 


that. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): So the bioassay 


actually that we have right now is from the 


end of 1947 through the very beginning of 


1950. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Thank you, 


thank you for clarifying that. I had 


forgotten that. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): You’re welcome. 


DR. ROESSLER: Steve, are you giving us 


background now? Are you dealing with a 


particular issue --


DR. OSTROW: I’m just giving you two more 


minutes of background so you can see where 


we’re coming from, then we can talk about 


issues. 


DR. ROESSLER: Okay. 


DR. OSTROW: So anyway, so some questions, 

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first, as I said is the 33 MAC a good number? 


Is it really, because if it really is a 


limiting value, some of our comments go away. 


Two, can you legitimately estimate 


airborne concentrations, are the inhalation 


doses from the air concentration data in the 


uranium facility? We have some questions 


about that. How widely you can relate the 


two. 


And three --


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I’m sorry. I 


didn’t hear two. There’s a cell phone it 


sounds like on this line. 


DR. OSTROW: I think two was can you 


reliably estimate inhalation doses from 


airborne concentrations in a uranium facility? 


And three is the ingestion thing. It 


was assumed that the ingestion is 0.2, 20 


percent of the inhalation. Is that a good, 


valid procedure to take also? 


So this is all like a sequence of 


things to look at for the internal dose. 


That’s basically where we’re coming from. So 


I think I would go through our specific 


comments. A number of them are redundant, and 

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a number of them deal with these issues. 


And a number of them we looked at over 


the weekend and decided aren’t too important. 


So I think we can start like at issue number 


one, just run through, and the ones that 


aren’t important we can get rid of quickly. 


Sound okay with everyone? 


DR. ROESSLER: Sound okay, Chris? 


MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. 


ISSUE ONE
 

DR. OSTROW: Number one, this is where I, 


one of the things I apologize for. I 


criticized too much maybe the way it was done. 


And NIOSH said my comment’s too general and 


all that and so forth. This is what we 


criticized basically that there were 


unsupported assumptions and significant 


uncertainties in the information used. 


Well, maybe that’s overstating it. We 


do have some comments though on some specific 


issues. For example, whether -- this is sort 


of general. Were all the contaminated areas 


taken care of. For example, when we did 


interviews with the workers up in the Buffalo 


area after we started doing our review, the 

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workers seemed to think there were more 


contaminated buildings and areas than were 


identified in the site profile. Whether these 


were important or not, the workers seemed to 


think there were more areas than that. 


There was also the issue, which I 


don’t know if it was mentioned in the site 


profile. I didn’t find it. But if tunnels, 


apparently, there are all sorts of utility 


tunnels that ran under the buildings, and the 


workers have been giving stories about how, 


especially when it rained and this that and 


the other thing, the water would be dripping 


down. And if the buildings were contaminated, 


then the water in the tunnels would be 


contaminated. And I don’t know if this was 


looked at or not or if this really happened or 


not. These are recollections and 50 years 

ago. 

The workers mentioned various piles of 

radioactive stuff, water and other things 


outdoors. I know the report mentioned a few 


places that you had looked at piles of 


radioactive stuff outdoors. But this is just 


a question of whether, you know, how deeply 

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you looked. Did you include everything that 


you could find in that? Are there other 


things? 


And one of the issues that came up a 


little bit later that we actually pulled out 


separately, the burlap bag business, which you 


did mention in your report, but apparently 


there were tens of thousands of burlap bags. 


These are the ones that were used to hold 


uranium, uranium rods and ore, arrived in rail 


cars and workers pulled the stuff off in 50 


pound burlap bags. 


When the bags were empty, they stacked 


the bags up in piles, and the workers 


recollect sitting and eating lunch on them 


because they were nice and comfortable 


outdoors. And I know the bags were supposedly 


empty, but since it’s burlap, and they’ve got 


a lot of uranium dust, they probably had some 


activity which may be small for one bag, but 


if you’ve got lots of bags and your sitting on 


it, maybe that’s an important contributor, 


maybe yes, maybe no. That’s something to look 


at. 


So that’s issue one. There’s nothing 

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to resolve, really, in issue one. It’s just a 


question of taking a look at some more things. 


Oh, and one other thing that Arjun had brought 


up in his e-mail that he sent last night, the 


burlap bags were eventually burned, I think, 


or incinerated. 


Now I didn’t see any mention in the 


TBD of an incinerator and which either means 


that there was one, maybe there wasn’t one 


onsite. But somewhere they incinerated all 


these bags, and I’m not sure where they 


incinerated them. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): There were two 


different periods of time, John. There was 


burning of the bags. There was an 


incinerator. I found a reference that 


mentioned it in 19, the earlier 1940s. Also, 


those were the ore bags that were referred to. 


And remember again that there’s an SEC based 


on the internal exposures during the earlier 


years. And so we’re looking at November 1947 


forward for internal exposure from whatever 


might have been on site at that point. 


MR. CHAN: (by Telephone): Cindy, this is 


Desmond Chan. When we talked to the workers, 

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they actually were talking about there’s 


thousands of bags after the ‘50s. They’re 


still sitting behind building 30s in the bay 


area when they have other trucks coming in and 


out. And they’re piling up there. They 


probably are just sitting there for like a few 


years before they are moved away or 


incinerated or burned. So I think that is 


what we are so concerned about. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I think we 


probably all need to go back and look at the 


references and see what’s there because I do, 


I have seen references to piles of bags 


sitting onsite. I do see information that 


indicates that procedures changed over time. 


But at this point I’m not willing to --


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): I understand, 


yeah, we’ll just point out that there’s some 


concern there. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Right. 


DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. I’d like to 


also add maybe it’s more about a policy 


question. I understand there is a break point 


between the SEC period and a non-SEC period. 


But nevertheless, the matrix for doing dose 

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reconstruction there are the non-presumptive 


cancers that still need to be dealt with. And 


so I would imagine that the technical issues 


that we may have that may apply or be of 


concern during the, I guess, what’s it? Pre1947 or (phone interference) time period. The 


SEC (phone interference). We’re still 


interested in that, and I believe it’s valid 


to address issues, even though they aren’t in 


the SEC period. 


DR. NETON: We have to look at the 


definition that the SEC has and what reasons 


the SEC was granted, for example, that says we 


just have no knowledge of reconstructing four 


doses because there’s no data, then when it 


comes to reconstructing non-presumptives we 


would say can’t do it. 


 DR. WADE: But you should raise your 


technical issues. They need to be looked at 


in light of the SEC definition to see if we 


really need to dismiss the issue because the 


SEC definition says we can’t, we haven’t 


learned anything about that. Or if it 


doesn’t, then it might relate to the non-


presumptive cancer. So you should raise your 

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issues. 


DR. NETON: In fact, the only revision to, 


that I see in this TIB or this site profile 


was PC-1, which was issued to incorporate. 


We’ve gone through the site profile and 


modified it to deal with non-presumptive 


cancers. Or modified to incorporate the 


comments that were raised in the SEC that kind 


of said what we can and cannot do in this 


document. Good point. 


DR. ROESSLER: So then going back to Steven 


mentioning the burlap bags. Should that be 


dealt with here or that’s issue number 17? 


Did you want to pursue it --


DR. OSTROW: I think we did deal. I think 


that’s it for the burlap bags. I think it’s 


basically that they may have been an issue 


from the early days on through the 1950s. And 


basically we have to check and see how they 


were handled, you know, whether they were 


significant or not significant. 


DR. ROESSLER: So are we actually discussing 


issue 17 now is my question. 


DR. OSTROW: Yeah, I think so. 


DR. ROESSLER: I think we kind of jumped --

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DR. OSTROW: Bounced around, didn’t we? 


DR. ROESSLER: Yeah. 


DR. OSTROW: Good, we finished 17. That’s 


enough. 


DR. ROESSLER: I just want to make sure. I 


don’t have anything to write here. What did 


we say about 17? What’s the conclusion on it 


and what, is there an action item for NIOSH on 


it? 


DR. OSTROW: Yeah, I think 17’s done. And I 


think the action item, well, it’s two action 


items. One’s for NIOSH to research the burlap 


bag issue, take a look at their documentation 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Excuse me. Item, 


issue 17 is related to external exposure. 


It’s not related to internal exposure. 


DR. OSTROW: Yeah, yeah, 17’s external. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I think then your 


idea of picking an approach and sticking with 


it is probably a good one until we capture the 


issues that are important and don’t bounce all 


over the place. 


DR. OSTROW: Okay, I’ll try not to bounce 


too much. 

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MS. BEACH: Well, and I have an issue with 


it being just external because if you’re 


sitting on thousands of bags during lunch and 


break and someone flops down next to me, can I 


be contaminated by that? Or can I get some 


internal? So I think that needs to be 


explored to what, it says lightly 


contaminated, but what does that mean? And it 


says for years so --


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): There are two 


different issues. There are the ore bags that 


came in prior to 1947 when the SEC was 


established, is now established. So those are 


in the SEC periods, and we’ve said we cannot 


reconstruct that dose. Now there’s an 


allegation that burlap bags were still sitting 


around during that later period. 


And the answer to that is we need to 


look into that further. We haven’t seen 


evidence of that in the documentation that 


we’ve looked at. They were handling waste a 


little bit more efficiently it looked like to 


us when we reviewed the records. But we need 


to look into that for the internal issue after 


1947. 

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DR. ROESSLER: So is that both an internal 


and an external? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Right, but issue 


17 in the matrix is only external. 


DR. OSTROW: That’s true. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): There’s another 


issue somewhere before that on internal from 


the bags. 


DR. OSTROW: Okay. 


DR. ROESSLER: Can you print that out so we 


know where we’re --


DR. OSTROW: What issue is this? 


DR. ROESSLER: So we can sort of follow 


through on these and make sure we don’t lose 


something. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Or just in 


general on the internal ones. So I guess in 


general I would go back and say that this has 


to do with going back and looking. We now 


have bioassay data to go back and use. So we 


would capture it that way. 


DR. LOCKEY: You’re talking about issue 17? 


This is Jim Lockey. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Issue 17 when I 


read the NIOSH report appeared to be looking 

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primarily at external dose issues. On the 


internal dose issue we would look at that, and 


that’s really summarized sort of by issue two, 


I guess, the use of air concentration data. 


We would go back and look at the bioassay data 


which would include consideration of the 


internal dose from the burlap bags, the folks 


who had bioassay. 


DR. ROESSLER: So it appears we’re now 


talking about issue two and issue three 


because Cindy’s bringing up the urinalysis 


data that would be used apparently in lieu of 


doing the air concentration. Is that where 


we’re at? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): We would look at 


both sets of data, Gen, but probably the 


urinalysis data would win out as you point 


out. 


DR. ROESSLER: It seems like that may be the 


most important issue on the table right now is 


to evaluate that. Would that be what you 


think, Steve? 


DR. OSTROW: Yes, it comes with both 


internal and external of the burlap bags and 


what you would affect the air concentration 

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data if you sit on the bags and would have to 


get dust in the air and breathe it in and 


ingest it if you’re eating lunch. 


MR. CRAWFORD: Is that likely to exceed the 


33 MAC? 


DR. MAURO: I think that --


DR. OSTROW: Probably not, maybe not but --


DR. MAURO: Let’s work our way down and as 


the original plan. Work our way through and 


the ones that we can do quickly, we do 


quickly. And the ones we have to stay on, we 


stay on. Otherwise, we’re going to lose 


control. 


ISSUE TWO
 

DR. OSTROW: Okay, issue two. This is the 


issue of air concentration data. As I 


mentioned before, how valid is it to use the 


air concentration data as the estimate for 


internal dose estimation, as the basis for 


internal dose estimation? 


John, I think you had something to say 


about that? Do you want to report on this? 


DR. MAURO: Well, it turns out I’ve been 


looking at a lot of the air data for all the 


AWE facilities on Chapman Valve, and Dow and 

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across the board. And the data -- now, as I 


understand it, the 33 MAC, I guess the bottom 


line is that we have some criticism of 33 MAC 


that to a certain extent I want to buffer down 


a bit. 


As I understand it, the work done by 


the New York Operations Office in 1949, they 


took a number of measurements, a large number 


of measurements, for Linde. And they did come 


up with it looked like time-weighted averages 


for different operations. And the highest 


daily time-weighted average amongst the whole 


bunch that they saw was 33 MAC. 


Now I walk away from that saying 


that’s pretty good. One of my concerns has 


always been if I have a number of air 


measurements, each one’s a time-weighted 


average representing a different type 


operation, and I have a bunch of workers, I’m 


not quite sure where they worked, but they 


did, in my opinion, you pick the highest time-


weighted average because that’s your, would be 


a plausible upper bound. So I walk away 


saying that’s a pretty good number. 


And we have some criticisms here that 

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there should be some uncertainty. I think in 


re-thinking this, you know, if you pick 33 MAC 


as a plausible upper bound, you don’t really 


have to assign uncertainty because you’ve 


picked an upper bound, but it’s a plausible 


upper bound. So I’m not saying it’s off the 


charts, but it’s up there. 


The only thing that I walked away with 


that said I still have some concern is that 


it’s not apparent when I read the NYOO report 


that the 33 MAC was obtained from breathing 


zone samples or from general air samples. My 


experience is that the relationship between 


intake and general air samples is pretty poor. 


There’s lots of literature on that. But the 


relationship between breathing zone samples 


and intake is a lot better. 


So my question to you -- I guess it’s 


a layered question. One is if you were, in 


fact, going to base your model, your exposure 


matrix, on 33 MAC for inhalation of uranium --


we haven’t even talked about the other 


radionuclides -- on first blush I would say 


it’s a good number, but I would like to hear a 


little bit more about the degree to which that 

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33 MAC was obtained from general air samples 


or from breathing zone samples. 


And I guess that’s my question. You 


may have an answer to that, but on top of that 


it sounds like you did one better. It sounds 


like you’ve got a lot of bioassay data. Now 


if you’ve got 700 bioassay data samples that 


go back to the full time periods of concern, 


well now you’ve struck gold. And you can say 


a lot about what the intakes were. 


You’re in a position to validate the 


33 MAC so it becomes a very important data 


source to support. It sounds like it’s being 


done because of the SEC, but that’s extremely 


valuable. But item number two simply boils 


down to I’d like to hear a little bit more 


about the 33 MAC and whether or not you think 


that represents the breathing zone sample or 


is that something that comes from general air 


samples. 


DR. BEHLING: So can I ask a couple 


questions about the particular measurement? 


This was a time-weighted average for, I 


assume, an entire shift for all the different 


workers. And was this part of an audit that 

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was announced? And sometimes that’s a very 


critical thing if this was like an audit by 


NYOO, people tend to clean up their act for 


the duration of the audit. All of a sudden 


people wear respirators. They are mindful of 


certain things. They’re being watched, and 


the question is if that particular measurement 


And I’m not questioning the validity 


of that time-weighted value, but if this was 


done as part of a scheduled and known audit by 


the NYOO. One also has to look at it in the 


context with everyday, normal operation that 


may have been (inaudible). The conduct of 


workers is somewhat different. 


MR. CRAWFORD: I think the respirator issue, 


while probably true, people would tend to wear 


them while inspectors were present, probably 


isn’t relevant for the measurement, however, 


of the air concentrations. 


DR. BEHLING: Well, yes and no. For 


instance, I’m looking at some key things that 


maybe I missed here in discussing, but I’m 


looking at some documents involving Fernald. 


And there’s a right way to do something, and 

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there’s a wrong way. 


And one of the funny things was people 


were asked to transfer certain amounts of 


material including uranium from one location 


to another. And the operator was identified 


as saying if I do it very carefully, this is 


what general air sample data concentration 


would yield, and again, it’s an empirical 


measurement. 


And if I do it modestly carefully, 


this is what it’ll do. And if I’m in a very 


hurry because of production quotas that are 


pushing at my back, I’m going to do it very 


recklessly. So yes and no. It’s air 


sampling, but air sampling done under 


different conditions of motivation by the 


worker. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Just to, in 


general at this period in time, the AEC was 


coming in to see what was going on. It wasn’t 


really considered an audit in terms of we’re 


going to beat you up if you’re not doing well 


enough or if you’re not following the rules. 


We want to collect information. 


In general, they would collect 

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breathing zone samples, general area samples 


and sometimes process samples which tend to be 


even higher than the breathing zone samples. 


I think that we’ve stated that we’re going to 


go back and look at the bioassay samples so I 


think a lot of this is moot. 


But I also think that you mentioned 


use of respirators. And I think you need to 


remember that this was a chemical operation 


involving hydrochloric acid. Hence, that 


should maybe color how much you think people 


were wearing respirators or not. I do think 


they were a little bit more likely in this 


kind of operation to be wearing their 


respirators. Certainly, the people who were 


the chemical operators --


DR. ROESSLER: Cindy, are you saying that 


you have bioassay samples during the period of 


time under discussion so you could validate 


that 33? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Right, we’re 


going to go back and look at a coworker study. 


We’re not intending to either validate or 


reject the 33 MAC. That was our first 


approach at trying to come up with a way to 

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speed along the dose reconstructions. But 


we’ve now got this other data that we feel is 


more representative of what workers were 


actually exposed to. 


So we’re going to look at that and 


assuming that it is a valid set of data that 


covers a great enough period of time, we’re 


going to substitute that, which doesn’t mean 


we’re going to lose that air sample data 


because that’s good to know as well, but the 


reliance is going to be on the bioassay data 


as it has been for most every site profile 


where we can find bioassay data that’s 


applicable. 


Does that make sense? 


DR. BEHLING: Does the bioassay data include 


isotopic evaluation or is it basically 


photofluorometric that just gives you units of 


uranium per liter? Based on the fact that 


we’re also dealing with Belgian Congo pitch 


blend, what kind of bioassay data do we have? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Once again I need 


to say that they were not processing ore as of 


1947, November, 1947. They were starting with 


U-02. This is uranium urinalysis data. We do 

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have some radon breath analysis from 1944 and 


1945 that could be used to estimate an upper 


bound on radium intakes, but I don’t think 


that’s an important point because we’re moving 


forward from 1947. 


Now I think as we move down the matrix 


when we talk about other radionuclides there 


may be an issue there. But I think we should 


hold off until we get to that place. Right 


now I’m just talking about uranium intakes. 


DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro again. Just 


to help everyone around the table, this 


special study that was done by the New York 


Operational Office, they actually, it was only 


performed over a one-week period according to 


the data, to Linde. And they broke up the 


different types of operations into 21 separate 


different operations. And the one that by far 


had the highest time-weighted average was one 


particular called Group B and C operations 


which had the 33 MAC. 


So my first reaction to that was, 


well, of all the different types of 


activities, certainly, all the workers weren’t 


involved. To assume every worker that was 

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there experienced a 33 MAC seems to be a 


reasonable, plausible bounding assumption. 


And now this dataset by the way not only for 


Linde but the other seven facilities, which 


include Harshaw and several others, they 


become a very important rock that all of the 


AWE work is standing on. And the fact that 


you now have bioassay data that goes along 


with this, you’ve found a holy grail. 


In other words in my opinion a 


comprehensive evaluation of the validity of 


using time average, whether these are 


breathing zone or not I’m not sure, but let’s 


assume they were, data as the rock you’re 


standing on because by the way that’s where 


OTIB-4 comes in. It’s an extremely important 


document. This particular dataset now is 


going to validate the use of these air 


sampling data as a plausible upper bound. So 


I’m very happy to hear this, and I think it 


looks like, Jim, you’re excited about doing 


this. 


DR. NETON: Yeah, yeah. 


DR. LOCKEY: John, how many samples were 


there in that database? 

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DR. MAURO: I’m looking at the columns and 


out of those 21 the highest one that looks 


like there was 15 samples. The second highest 


there were three. The third -- so we’re 


talking a total of, I would just guesstimate 


from eyeballing this table it looks like over 


100. 


DR. LOCKEY: A hundred samples. 


DR. MAURO: Over 100 air samples. 


DR. LOCKEY: And most of them are clustered 


around what? What was the results? 

DR. MAURO: They range from a MAC of less 

than one. 

DR. OSTROW: Most of them are less than one. 


DR. MAURO: In fact most of, it turns out 


interestingly there was that preferred level, 


the 70 MAC. 


DR. NETON: Seventy DPM. 


DR. MAURO: Seventy DPM, right, right. So 


one MAC it looks like most of them, the vast 


majority of them were below one MAC, the 


preferred level. But there were a total of 18 


out of the 100 or so that were above one MAC. 


And the worst one was, the worst cluster of 


15, was one particular operation, the Group B 

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and C Operations it’s called, that was the 


highest one amongst, that was 33 MAC. 


And so someone to say in Linde 


operations if you happen to be working in 


Group B and C, your reasonable estimate for 


you would probably be on the order of 32 MAC. 


That appears to be the worst case, with the 


proviso that this was breathing zone. If it 


wasn’t breathing zone but included a lot of 


general air samples, then you could question 


it. 


DR. NETON: Well, we’ve been through this 


method before at Bethlehem Steel, and it’s 


really, like Cindy said, a combination of 


breathing zone when the workers were actually 


doing a process. But when they take a break, 


and they go into a locker room, for example, 


they’ll use a general area sample which I 


think is fairly representative of the area. 


It’s not subject to the drop off in 


concentration as you move away from the exact 


source because you’re fairly far, the general 


area samples were fairly far removed from the 


source of the generators. 


DR. MAURO: So by definition when I hear 

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there is a time-weighted average, because 


that’s how they represented here, you could 


safely presume that means a combination --


DR. NETON: And that methodology has been, 


we provided that before to you guys. 


DR. ROESSLER: So does that mean that this 


new dataset and the new evaluation that 


they’re going to do that we have taken care of 


a number of issues? I’m interested in getting 


through the numbers here. 


DR. LOCKEY: It’s a very valuable dataset if 


you can correlate it with the internal dose 


issue, and you’re dealing, most of yours are 


under one MAC, but you’ve got some extremes 


there, and you should be able to correlate 


that with your internal dose. 


DR. MAURO: To answer your question, Gen, it 


deals with the uranium side of the house, not 


the thorium, raffinates, those are going to be 


tough nuts to crack, and we’ll get to those. 


DR. ROESSLER: So looking at the matrix 


then, how far down have we moved? Have we 


actually gone through issue six? Certainly, 


we’ve been concentrating on two and three. It 


appears that we’ve talked about the time­
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weighted averages in issue four. We talked 


about breathing rate, which you said, and the 


ingestion rate. It seems to me we’ve covered 


through six. 


DR. MAURO: I think, you know, six. 


Jim, correct me if I’m wrong. The 


method used in issue number six, the dealing 


with ingestion? 


DR. NETON: Right. 

DR. MAURO: That was the old .2 rule of 

thumb. 

DR. NETON: OTIB-9. 

DR. MAURO: And now from reading recently I 

read the updated Bethlehem Steel site profile. 


It looks like you’ve come up with a 


correlation between activity --


DR. NETON: We did that for Bethlehem Steel 


because we had some of the Simond’s Saw and 


Steel information, but we still are committed 


to revisiting that model and coming up with at 


least validating the .2 or coming up with a 


different approach. I think if we use 


urinalysis data, the ingestion goes away 


because then you can either assume it was all 


ingestion or all inhalation and --

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MR. ELLIOTT: That model being TIB-9 or the 


Bethlehem Steel exposure model? I’m sorry, 


you said that model, lost me. 


DR. NETON: TIB-9. Bethlehem Steel was a 


unique situation where we found, we used 


Simond’s Saw and Steel data to sort of, and 


surface contamination data, remember we had 


that whole discussion. And we included that 


in the Bethlehem Steel site profile. And 


SC&A’s position at that time was, well, this 


sounds really good in principle, and you have 


some data you could use there. But you 


weren’t convinced that it was generally 


applicable complex wide. So we still owe that 


piece which is a TIB-9 re-evaluation. But 


again, if we go to urinalysis data then the 


ingestion rate goes away because we’re not 


inferring any ingestion rate any more. We’re 


using what’s coming out in the urine to 


determine --


MS. BEACH: And that would take care of 


number five, the breathing rate that was in 


question --


DR. NETON: Yes, all those issues go away if 


we have a valid coworker model. 

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DR. ROESSLER: So basically we have looked 


at internal uranium, we promised to look at 


the bioassay data and come back and revisit 


all of these issues brought up in one through 


six, one being a rather general one. So is 


that a consensus that we have, on those 


issues? 


DR. MAURO: Yes, one through six covered. 


DR. ROESSLER: Then what is your, Steve, 


would you want to just continue on and go --


DR. OSTROW: Yeah, let’s just keep going. 


Some of the other issues that are redundant we 


can just pull out anyway because they’re 


already covered. 


ISSUE SEVEN
 

DR. ROESSLER: Do you want to go through 


sequentially and get into the radon exposure 


then? 


DR. OSTROW: Let’s look at number seven 


which is radon exposure. I wasn’t quite sure 


how the radon exposure was actually handled. 


Perhaps maybe if one of the ORAU people 


explained how they did the radon exactly we 


can comment on it further. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I’ve gone back 

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and glanced at the data, and there were some 


measurements in different areas of the process 


that were used to come up with a distribution 


of radon measurements. I want to go back and 


look at those more closely. I oversaw the 


calculational approaches but didn’t look at 


specifics in all instances. But I believe 


that the data are very favorable to claimants 


especially again considering that there is no 


ore being handled during this later period. 


But I do want to go back and check 


when the measurements actually took place. I 


did also go back and look at the Mallinckrodt 


data where we have some measurements during 


the later 1950s period when Mallinckrodt 


stopped processing ore. And I looked at the 


similarity of those exposures, and I think 


that this is a reasonable number. But again, 


I’d like to go back and check and not try to 


argue it any harder one way or the other at 


this time. 


DR. OSTROW: This also brings up, I guess, 


the question of the burlap bags again. I know 


the African ore was just processed in the 


early days during the SEC period. But the 

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question is what happened to the bags. Were 


they taken off somewhere? Were they still 


hanging around in the ‘50s? And if they still 


had the African ore residues in it, they could 


still be producing radon even into the ‘50s 


period even though the plant wasn’t processing 


African ore anymore. So we’re left with the 


question, detective question, what happened to 


the bags? 


MS. BEACH: We talked about looking into the 


records of when they burnt bags and possibly 


that would give us some information. 


DR. OSTROW: Yeah, yeah, that’s part of the 


detective story about what happened to the 


bags. 


MR. CRAWFORD: These bags were stored 


outside? 


DR. OSTROW: Yeah. 


MR. CRAWFORD: Did you say that? 


DR. OSTROW: They had tens of thousands that 


were just piled up. 


MR. CRAWFORD: Then exposed to the Buffalo 


winter over a period of many years, and the 


summer actually, there should be a lot of 


bleaching and settling over such a time. But 

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what happens to burlap sitting outdoors for 


five or six years in that climate? I’m not 


sure either even if they’re not burned. 


DR. NETON: Well, it sounds like we 


committed earlier to investigate this burlap 


bag issue. 


DR. OSTROW: Right, this sort of relates to 


DR. NETON: And Cindy also suggested she was 


going to go back and look at the radon data 


and see what timeframe it covered. It’s not 


clear to me that these radon samples were all 


taken before ’47. I mean, I don’t know. We 


need to look at that and see if there’s a 


radon component. But certainly it is true 


that the radon levels would be lower, and 


should be lower, than what was measured during 


the African ore processing. One would think 


so. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): And a lot of 


those measurements that were made during 


processing were in closed areas of tanks where 


you got the hundred, there were hundreds of 


picocuries per liter values I should think. 


They’re not representative of what people 

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would have been exposed to on a long-term 


basis. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): This is 


Arjun. How about the tailing areas for the 


radon like on still winter days or something 


like that? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I want to go look 


at that again, too, Arjun, because my 


understanding is that the tailings went 


offsite to that Ashland facility from the 


domestic ores and the tailings from the 


African ores went to Lake Ontario Ordinance 


where I’m not sure exactly or I’m not sure 


that any material with high specific 


activities remained onsite. We do have some 


later data that shows that there is some 


radium in the soil, but I don’t believe that 


the concentrations are very high. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Yeah, if you 


remember, material from Mallinckrodt --


correct me if I’m wrong, Jim -- but material 


from Mallinckrodt was also sent to Lake 


Ontario. It might have been a little later, 


so it might have been onsite for some time, 


but I haven’t studied the Linde site very 

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much. I just went through it quickly to make 


some comments for Steve. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): The K-65 from 


Mallinckrodt did go to Lake Ontario. 


DR. ROESSLER: The burlap bags with, we have 


external coming up later, but on the internal 


you’re only concerned about the radon. 


There’s nothing else there? 


DR. OSTROW: No, it also puts dust in the 


air so it could be for the breathing it in 


also. 


DR. ROESSLER: So there’s more to follow 


through than just the radon on the burlap 


bags? Was that a part of --


DR. NETON: Yeah, I think Cindy’s going to 


check into, if the bags were there, and they 


had at one time contained the African ore, 


then we have an issue with the entire K-chain 


from uranium on down. 


DR. OSTROW: So it may or may not be a 


problem. It’s just something that needs to be 


investigated. I think we’re finished with 


issue seven then. 


ISSUE EIGHT
 

Moving on, issue eight is the 

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raffinate trace radionuclides. And this 


basically, we brought up the question of 


raffinate traces were not adequately addressed 


in the Linde site profile. And the response 


we got back from ORAU was we concur there 


might be issues of assigned non-uranium 


intakes that have not been adequately 


addressed. This will be reviewed further. So 


that’s fine. It’s going to be looked into. 


DR. ROESSLER: So that’s a promise, and we 


can go on to the next one. 


DR. OSTROW: Right, the issue is taken care 


of. 


ISSUE NINE
 

Nine is this work hour thing again 


which is, we have actually two different 


places that we -- this is just, we have the 


comment which may or may not be important. 


It’s not a big thing. But there were 


different work hours assumed all over the site 


profile, 40 hour weeks, 48 hour weeks, 54 hour 


weeks, sometimes there’s a one-hour lunch 


break included or not included. They seem to 


have worked six-hour weeks (sic) in general at 


the plant and could have been eight-hour days 

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or nine-hour days six days a week, six days a 


week. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): The work hours 


changed as time went on and whether after the 


war the number of days decreased for some 


people. Depending on what job type you had 


the hours were different. And I was just 


looking at another contract that said thou 


shalt not work longer than 42-and-a-half hours 


per week. So the hours are all over the 


place. 


For the internal dose and looking at 


bioassay this won’t be an issue anymore. For 


the external dose based on some badge data 


this isn’t an issue either because those are 


integrated exposures. 


DR. OSTROW: That’s true. 


DR. BEHLING: It would be an issue if you go 


to the 33 MAC time-weighted because it be --


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I agree. 


DR. BEHLING: -- different if you use five 


days at nine hours a day versus six days 


versus eight hours a day because the 33 MAC is 


defined by the day as opposed to the hours. 


DR. ROESSLER: Is that something that comes 

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up then after the evaluation --


DR. NETON: After evaluation of the 


potential coworker model. If it’s determined 


we can’t do a coworker model, then that 


becomes an issue. But if a coworker model is 


acceptable --


MS. BEACH: I just wrote down as an issue 


because they were sitting on potentially 


contaminated bags during their breaks and 


lunch. It was one of the observations I made 


by NIOSH’s answer that this period included 


lunches and breaks. But depending on where we 


go with those contaminated bags, were they 


routinely, it says on number 17 for years, 


were sitting on that. So that was just one of 


mine. 


DR. NETON: Are you saying that they might 


not be wearing their TLD badges then or film 


badges? 


MS. BEACH: Oh, they could. I’m sure that 


they would be wearing it, but they wouldn’t 


have had that break period that would have 


taken them out of a contaminated area if they 


were sitting within that contaminated on those 


bags. 

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MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): But the bioassay 


and the badge both integrate the exposure. 


MS. BEACH: Yeah, that should take care of 


that. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Jim and 


Cindy, but the external dose reading would 


raise some kind of geometry issues similar to 


what we had --


DR. NETON: Right, right. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): -- before at 


Mallinckrodt because you have, you know, the 


lower torso parts of the body. 


DR. NETON: Yeah, that’s one of our 


overarching science issues that we’re 


attempting to address which is non-uniform, 


parallel-beam geometries. Agreed. 


DR. ROESSLER: So that’s taken up in issue 


14, another issue along the line of --


DR. NETON: I think the issue of non-uniform 


exposure geometry is being taken up as a site-


wide, complex-wide issue at this point and 


will be addressed out of the context of this 


profile review. I mean, it will be 


incorporated eventually once we came to a 


determination of how to deal with it. 

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56

 DR. WADE: But you captured his comment. 


DR. LOCKEY: John, is that adjusted with an 


eight hour time-weighted average in the New 


York review? 


DR. MAURO: It was represented as a time-


weighted item. I don’t know if it’s eight. 


DR. LOCKEY: Do you know the sampling time? 


Do they give you a sampling time? Do they 


have sampling times on there? 


DR. MAURO: The data is not that detailed. 


DR. NETON: They would sample the workers 


whenever they worked. I mean, they would 


follow the worker around all day. 


DR. OSTROW: Yeah, there were sample type 

things. 

DR. LOCKEY: Thirty minutes here? 

DR. NETON: They would represent their 


entire work processes during the day in little 


blocks of time. 


DR. MAURO: In theory if the guy they 


followed that worked ten hours, then whatever 


he did. 


DR. LOCKEY: They’d follow them for ten 


hours if they were there for ten hours to 


capture whatever he worked. 

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DR. OSTROW: Yeah, the report doesn’t give 


any sort of detail on that though. I mean, 


you’re right. There’s no data on that. 


DR. NETON: Based on past observations of 


these types of studies that have been done, 


they would follow the worker around the whole 


day. At least capture a representative block 


and then figure out he worked 15 minutes here, 


four hours here, three hours there. That sort 


of thing. 


DR. OSTROW: That’s also the point. This is 


all done on one day, right? 


DR. NETON: One week. 


DR. OSTROW: One week, so in one week they 


did all this. I don’t know how representative 


one week is in the history. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I think this was 


factory type work, and it probably was fairly 


representative which isn’t to say that things 


didn’t change over time, but I think they went 


in to try to find very representative 


conditions. 


DR. LOCKEY: It wasn’t enforcement, right? 


Is that correct? 


DR. MAURO: No, this was, at that time all 

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this was done because the AEC just took over, 


and they implemented a program. Listen, we 


got all this activity going on, supporting 


either the war or the post-war effort really 


to manufacture uranium. And they have all 


these private companies that we enlisted into 


this operation. We better find out what the 


heck’s going on. And that’s when they sent 


out the folks that have, a lot of my former 


professors, and went out to see what’s going 


on. 


So it was a data gathering effort, and 


they found out there was a lot of bad 


practices going on. So I’m convinced that the 


seven facilities that they investigated, they 


did not clean up. They took a look at them, 


what was their practices, and then they put 


out all these reports subsequent to that that 


came out in the ‘50s. They said things are 


pretty bad out there. We’ve got to fix this 


on all levels across the board, everything 


from incineration to grinding and machining to 


lathing operations to the need for ventilation 


systems. That all came out later. 


So I think I feel pretty confident 

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that the NYOO 1949 report captures the downand-dirty underbelly of what the heck was 


going on in those days before they really took 


some serious steps to clean up. That’s how I 


see it. 


DR. OSTROW: I agree, John. I just read 


this yesterday quickly, but they mentioned 


that Linde needs to be cleaned up; however, 


they don’t think it’s going to happen because 


they’re going to stop processing soon anyway. 


So they’re not going to do it basically. 


DR. LOCKEY: That was after the sampling was 

done. 

DR. OSTROW: Yeah, yeah, it was like a 

comment made in the report on that. Because 


they were supposed to shut down operations 


anyway soon. 


MS. BEACH: And that was done in the year 


1949? 


DR. MAURO: The report came out in ’49. 


Yeah, and they give you the dates when the 


actual sampling was done. It was done -- here 


it is, from October 26th to November 2nd, 1948. 


That’s when they actually went out there. So 


it was a one-week period, but you’re right. 

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You’d normally expect that if their real 


intention was to get a snapshot of what’s 


going on out there; let’s see if we can make 


things better, they would have tried to do a 


good job. And these were the best there were. 


I mean, I, these are the people, guys like 


Merril Eisenberg, (unintelligible) Cassidy. 


These were the people who were the forefathers 


of the whole industry were there. So, I mean, 


I’m --


DR. LOCKEY: Can you send a copy? Is that 


available? 


DR. MAURO: I have it right here. The copy 


is electronically, yeah, I got it off the web. 


You guys put it up. It’s on your web. I’m 


trying to think of where I found it, the NYOO 


report, this report. The New York Operations 


Report. I call it the 1949 report. 


MR. ELLIOTT: As we, as these documents are 


introduced, we need to make sure there’s a 


folder on the O drive. 


DR. NETON: I think it’s out there, but I --


DR. MAURO: It’s out there. 


MR. ELLIOTT: Well, we’ll send an e-mail out 


and let everybody know where this is at. 

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MS. BEACH: Yeah, that’d be great. 


DR. ROESSLER: So what you’re saying, John, 


is you’re confirming the importance and 


validity of this database. There’s no bias or 


anything like that. 


DR. MAURO: I think that this was a genuine 


effort made by the New York Operation Office 


under the auspices of the Atomic Energy, the 


newly formed Atomic Energy Commission to get 


out there and clean up their act. They felt 


that there were all these private companies 


out there doing all this important work that 


did not have (unintelligible). And they 


actually said if you read the text. It’s 


right in the introduction. So this was a 


nightmare. These places were filthy. There 


were given no good controls. The exposures 


were, I mean, it’s right in the beginning. It 


says that. And here’s all the data that 


characterizes it. 


DR. ROESSLER: Answer my question. You feel 


that the database is valid? 


DR. MAURO: Yes. 


DR. ROESSLER: And that it is not biased? 


DR. MAURO: I feel the database is valid to 

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the extent that one week’s sampling of worker 


activities captures the full range of 


activities. But I think that was an attempt 


to be as valid as you can make it. 


DR. LOCKEY: One interesting thing they 


answer other questions is the way they looked 


at the work records during that timeframe and 


to see if this was representative of the hours 


worked during the weeks during the month 


during that timeframe. 


DR. NETON: That’d be tough to do. I don’t 


know if we have that. 


DR. BEHLING: I have a question, John, what 


were the dates (unintelligible). 


DR. MAURO: Late ’48. 


DR. BEHLING: No, no, not the year but the 


timing --


DR. MAURO: End of October, the beginning of 


November 1948. 


DR. BEHLING: Okay, because one of the 


things that we do learn is that during those 


years air conditioning was not existent and 


ventilation was questionable. Warmer times of 


the year there was obviously the windows were 


open. The doors were open, and so it does 

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have a seasonal aspect to it. 


DR. MAURO: Absolutely, and that’s why this 

--

DR. NETON: I think this has a great point 

that we have the 700 bioassay samples we can ­

- the coworker model and see how that fares 


against the 33 MAC value that they calculated. 


DR. MAURO: This is going to validate. See 


DR. NETON: My guess is we’re going to come 


out lower but I don’t know. 


DR. OSTROW: And I agree also that the 


bioassay is much better. You have decent 


data. It’s a good answer to a lot of these 


questions. 


DR. NETON: But it’s a good, a great 


opportunity though to sort of validate what 


they’ve done. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Jim, this is 


Arjun. In the validation exercise I guess if 


you’re trying to match them up, you’d have to 


have some knowledge of the solubilities and --


DR. NETON: Yeah, I guess validates probably 


not the right word, Arjun. I think just to 


compare the two values, we would, of course, 

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use both solubilities. I don’t know if we 


would. We could use both solubilities, but 


you don’t know, for example, if the workers 


did, if the workers did wear respirators, then 


that 33 MAC value is not a good comparison to 


begin with. 


So all that we can do is to compare it 


and show that it looks like the urinalysis 


data possibly, if it’s a good, valid coworker 


model, comes out and has an exposure that’s 


either equal to or smaller than the value that 


was, you know, that you would infer from the 


33 MAC. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): I agree with 


you. 


DR. NETON: You know, you’ve got particle 


size issues. If these are five, ten, 15 


micron particles, it’s clearly been shown in 


past studies that the urine –- the respirable 


fraction is much smaller than what’s in the 


particle sizes that are, the air samples that 


are used so there’s a lot of caveats here. We 


have a problem I think if it comes out that 


the coworker urine model shows a higher level 


of MAC exposure than what was measured in this 

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study that would be not a good outcome, but 


we, of course, would have to deal with it at 


that point. 


DR. ROESSLER: So it appears on issue nine 


that because it’s not an issue right now in 


the internal or external that the work hours 


would be taken into consideration by both the 


bioassay and the film badges. Is that the way 


you read this then? 


DR. OSTROW: Yes. 


ISSUE TEN
 

DR. ROESSLER: So now we’ve kind of lopped 


into issue ten, I think, if we’re done with 


issue nine. 


DR. OSTROW: Ten is easy because I think 


we’ve reviewed it. I discussed it with John, 


and I think we should withdraw issue number 


ten. We decided that’s not an appropriate 


issue. 


DR. ROESSLER: So you want to withdraw it 


completely? 


DR. OSTROW: Yes. We discussed that. 


DR. ROESSLER: Does everybody, anybody have 


any comments? 


DR. NETON: No comments. 

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DR. ROESSLER: Give me a concise statement 


as to why you withdrew it. 


DR. MAURO: If the 33 MAC is, in fact, a 


plausible upper bound, there’s no reason to be 


concerned with the uncertainty in that number. 


ISSUE ELEVEN
 

DR. ROESSLER: Okay. So then how about 


issue 11? 


DR. MAURO: Eleven’s a good one. 


MS. BEACH: Can we go really quick back to 


ten? So the ventilation and all that stuff is 


not an issue? Because that was one of the 


ones that was in ten, poor ventilation, nonexistent -- does that cover all that then? 


DR. MAURO: This goes back to the 33 MAC. 

MS. BEACH: Okay, so it will be covered 

there? 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, if the 33 MAC, if we 

didn’t have the bioassay data and that’s going 


to let us know, right now the position that 


NIOSH has taken, and that we tended to agree 


with, is that the NYOO report was a good -- in 


other words if you have all this data. You 


have 21 different categories of workers at 


Linde alone. That’s just Linde. They did it 

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for seven different facilities. At Linde 


alone they picked the worst category which had 


33 MAC. It seems to me that that ain’t bad 


except for the problems that Hans brings up. 


If they happened to pick a week that was in 


the winter or the summer, and this sounds like 


it was in the winter, it may have been closed 


conditions up at Linde --


MS. BEACH: Worst conditions. 


DR. BEHLING: No, no, if you look at 


Fernald, the worst of the hot summer days when 


they left doors wide open --


DR. MAURO: And the wind blew through. 


DR. BEHLING: -- fugitive emissions were 


blown throughout the whole facility. The 


summer is probably the worst time. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I think it would 


change depending on the facility from day to 


day and whether you had inversions and all 


sorts of things. And it would be a tough 


call. But I think again you’re talking about 


a fluorination process here where there were 


ventilation, mechanical ventilation added to 


the systems to reduce worker exposures, to 


reduce wear and tear on equipment. There were 

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issues about the acid concentrations in the 


air. So I don’t think it’s reasonable to 


assume that ventilation was nonexistent or 


worse than at other facilities. 


DR. ROESSLER: What about number 11? 


DR. OSTROW: Eleven issue requires some 


discussion. This comes up actually the same 


similar issue in 11, 15 and 20. It’s tough so 


I will read them, about the use of geometric 


mean values where it’s appropriate and where 


it’s not appropriate. And based on our 


reading of this it looks like the response to 


issues 11 and 20 contradict each other at 


least partially. 


It looks like issue 20 took into 


account or mentioned that the response, 


mentioned the OTIB-20, which was released 


after the site profile was done in October 


’05, where there’s three different categories 


of exposure. And that wasn’t factored into 


the response to issue number 11 here. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): OTIB-20 only 


applies to external dose. It does not apply 


to the radon information. Again, a lot of 


these were process samples and samples taken 

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at surfaces not where people’s breathing zones 


were. And I said I plan to go back and look 


at these again. 


DR. MAURO: I think this is almost a generic 


issue. Our understanding is that in 


responding to number 11 where we raise this 


question about the geometric mean, the answer 


basically came back, well, it is standard 


policy to use the full distribution or the 


geometric mean as a reasonable representation 


of what a given worker may have been exposed 


to. 


Now it is our understanding -- and, 


Jim, please correct me if I’m wrong -- that 


that approach was something that was adopted 


very early on because I remember that was an 


issue that we confronted when we dealt with 


Bethlehem Steel. Subsequent to that a 


somewhat more claimant favorable philosophy 


has been embraced whereby there are certain 


conditions, yes, when you’d use the full 


distribution of a given dataset as a surrogate 


for a person who wasn’t monitored. 


So if you have a person who wasn’t 


monitored, and you want to reconstruct his 

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dose, whether it’s external or internal -- I 


guess I’ll take it to that extent -- whether 


it’s external or internal, you have to ask 


yourself some tough questions. Do I apply to 


this person the full distribution or do I 


apply to this person the upper 95th percentile 


value? And the answer that was provided in 


number 11 seems to have come back with the old 


school. Well, we could apply the full 


distribution or the geometric mean. I don’t 


think that’s the case any longer. 


DR. NETON: First of all this document was 


written before any of those concepts had been 


fleshed out. I know the answer is current, 


but Cindy’s right. The TIB-20 only applies to 


external dose issues, and in particular, 


penetrating dose, photons, photon dose. 


We still do not have a generic 


position for internal because we feel that 


it’s more, it’s not as clear cut as in the 


external arena. For example, in the 


Department of Energy facilities, if you adopt 


a carte blanche position that all workers 


should receive the 95th percentile who weren’t 


monitored for internal dose, you’re in the 

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position of assigning more dose to the 


unmonitored workers than 95 percent of the 


monitored workers. It just doesn’t sit well 


with us. 


I think we have not put a policy in 


place because we’d like to evaluate this on a 


case-by-case basis. There are situations, and 


this may be one of them, where the 95th
 

percentile of internal makes some sense. We 


just have to look at the data and see what it 


says. 


Somehow if we can document that the 


highest exposed workers were monitored --


we’ve not been very successful in convincing 


you folks that that’s true, but say that we 


could come to that agreement -- then we 


certainly wouldn’t apply the 95th percentile to 


those. So I think we’re in agreement. It’s 


just that the official policy for external is 


in place, but we did not put that --


DR. MAURO: Well, that wasn’t articulated 


in, the only reason I’m bringing it up, in the 


response to our question number 11, what you 


just described wasn’t articulated, but it was 


later on dealing with external. And I 

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understand. 


DR. NETON: We’re not against the 95th
 

percentile, we just want to use it judiciously 


in internal exposures. 


DR. ROESSLER: So what have we done with 11 


and 20? I don’t think we’ve even looked at 


15. 


DR. OSTROW: Are you going to try to develop 


some position for this or are we just going to 


continue looking on a case-by-case --


DR. NETON: Right now it’s a case-by-case 


basis. It’ll be a position for this 


particular site that we’ll adopt. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I think I can 


think of an example where you’re talking about 


perhaps data, and this is not for this 


particular site but the St. Louis airport site 


where they have radon measurements on top of 


the piles out there. And you might choose to 


make those a distribution or you might choose 


a 95th percentile. But for that particular 


site because people aren’t out there, the 


distribution would be much more reasonable. 


And to prescribe using the 95th percentile 


wouldn’t be reasonable because people aren’t 

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out there all the time. 


DR. NETON: Right, that’s a good example. 


Another one that comes to mind is Chapman 


Valve. We had so few bioassay data points 


that we took the highest value we could find. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): And we went the 


opposite way on that one. 


DR. NETON: So it depends on the individual 


situation what we feel using our professional 


judgment gives the claimants the fairer shake. 


Although if we could put it all in one place 


it would be better. I would agree that, you 


know, if we could consolidate all into one --


DR. MAURO: On a case-by-case basis what 


happens then is, of course, then you have to 


make your case why in this particular case we 


did this. So I think it’s going to be, you 


know, and you have to review a lot of data and 


make your arguments on a case-by-case basis. 


MR. ELLIOTT: And maybe we’ve got to make 


sure we do it consistently where it’s 


appropriate. 


DR. NETON: I’m not saying that we wouldn’t 


entertain making a policy in one document, but 


right now I don’t know that we’ve got enough 

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sense as to put it all in one place and make a 


generic document. 


DR. OSTROW: Okay, I think that takes care 


of 11, and I think 20 also again. 


DR. ROESSLER: And 15, I imagine we’ll wait 


until we get there? 


DR. OSTROW: Yeah, 15, maybe yes, maybe no. 


I have to see what it is. 


DR. NETON: Did we skip over 13? 


ISSUE TWELVE
 

DR. ROESSLER: We haven’t done 12 yet. 


DR. OSTROW: Okay, this one also is related 


to the 33 MAC. This goes away if 33 MAC 


really is an upper bound, and if you’re going 


to be using the bioassay data which could be 


even better then you don’t need a 


comprehensive uncertainty analysis. This 


relates also to the 33 MAC and the bioassay. 


ISSUE THIRTEEN
 

DR. ROESSLER: And 13, right? 


DR. OSTROW: My comment basically here is I 


didn’t understand, well, literally it might be 


my problem, how some of the external dose was 


done. It’s a scheme that’s quite complex, and 


I had read several paragraphs. I just 

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literally could not understand them. Maybe it 


would be clearer to the dose reconstructor or 


the people who wrote it, but I just literally 


couldn’t understand it. 


DR. ROESSLER: You’re talking about just the 


missed occupational dose? 


DR. OSTROW: Yes, for 13. 


DR. ROESSLER: Missed external dose. 


DR. OSTROW: Yes, excuse me. 


DR. ROESSLER: What do we need to clarify on 


that? 


DR. OSTROW: I think if the -- going to 


comment, I have one example, but I think it’s 


if the TBD is revised, just parts of it should 


be rewritten. That’s my comment on it, 


editorial things. I’m not saying it’s wrong. 


I swear I couldn’t understand it. 


MR. ELLIOTT: It’s complex, and you didn’t 


have a clear understanding of what the 


approach was. 


DR. NETON: So, Cindy, would it be too 


difficult for you to explain in simple terms 


here exactly the approach? 


DR. OSTROW: Simple enough for me, please. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I think that the 

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approach that was taken in this rework was to 


try to use every piece of information 


available to develop a very well reasoned and 


complete argument as to what the doses were. 


In the final hour reviews came back that 


indicated this has to be usable by dose 


reconstructors as well. 


And so we went and in order to not 


lose information but to make a more simplified 


approach, we came up with the table in the 


last section of the external section. But I 


think this is always, you know, how simple do 


you make your assumption so it’s readable and 


people don’t have to go back through all the 


pieces and parts of data versus how accurate 


do you want to be in terms of presenting all 


that information. And it’s a challenge to say 


the least. 


DR. OSTROW: I think the comment was also 


that the, it wasn’t clear at all times the 


distinction between the sort of background 


information. You present a lot of data, 


background data, and then you came up with the 


conclusions that the dose reconstructor could 


use. It wasn’t always clear reading it the 

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distinction between the two, whether the dose 


reconstructor is actually supposed to use a 


particular piece of data or this is just some 


point of information that’s not going to be 


used. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): What we actually 


tried to do was to make that last summary 


table the place where unmonitored workers’ 


doses would be found so dose reconstructors 


didn’t have to dig into the details of how 


that information was developed. But I don’t 


see this as a small task to rewrite this 


section, but it certainly can be done. 


MR. ELLIOTT: Has there been guidance given 


to dose reconstructors that’s not in the 


technical basis document or has guidance been 


given for dose reconstructions for Linde in a 


workbook fashion or is there something else we 


could rub off against the language in the 


technical basis document, against, that would 


help people understand how the approach works? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I have not seen 


or heard of any guidance although some of this 


might be included in a workbook. But I think 


I did look at one dose reconstruction that 

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SC&A had reviewed, and I found that the dose 


reconstructor had actually made it look very 


easy when they said we’re going to find the 


maximum dose in this table. We’re going to 


apply it, and now we’re done, and so that 


particular case looked very simple. But I’m 


not aware of any other information. 


Is anybody there that might be able to 


answer that? 


MR. CRAWFORD: One interesting factoid is 


that of the 230 cases that NOCTS shows having 


been filed, 130 have already completed dose 


reconstruction. So apparently it hasn’t been 


an inexplicable TBD. It has been used. We 


have a 51-1/2 percent compensability rate for 


those who had the --


DR. NETON: Table 36 is what they’re using 


here, and I guess the question is does SC&A 


have an issue with those being bounding doses. 


They’re pretty large doses if you look through 


the table of external gamma dose for workers, 


three rem, 1.6 rem, 1.7 rem, and those are 


fairly high doses for a uranium facility. 


DR. OSTROW: Gen, I don’t know of any, at 


least I didn’t have any issues with Table 36, 

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the final results. As you mentioned they are 


pretty high. We just had some trouble --


DR. NETON: Understanding. 


DR. OSTROW: -- but we were trying to figure 


out where all the numbers came from in some 


cases. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): I think, Steve, I 


have a recommendation. This is Desmond Chan 


again. If you go to our report in Table 5 


dash three on page 58. We tried to actually 


track Table 36 back to all the other tables, 


and I think there’s a few places we cannot 


trace back to the sources. And also I think 


part of the big concern that when we review 


all this tables, I think the basis of most 


numbers came from one of the survey readings 


early in the ‘50s after the flushing and the 


cleaning of the Building 30. And then that 


number was used as the basis for all the other 


numbers. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): No, no, no, that 


was --


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): I think that 


probably is what the question will be, you 


know, for you, Cindy. Maybe we misread it. 

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MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): No, I think there 


are a lot of different time periods addressed 


in there. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): Right, right. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): There’s the time 


period before work started up at the ceramics 


plant which is different from the Tonawanda 


laboratory. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): Yes, there’s two 


separate, you know, tracks there, yeah. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): And there’s a 


period where they were handling African ore at 


both facilities. There’s a period where there 


was a clean up and a standby period. Then 


they started up operations with U-02 again. 


And then there was another clean up period. 


So it’s not a simple site to address. 


The early data is based on, as you 


mentioned, some information related to a clean 


up survey that was thought to be a reasonable 


basis for capturing both the ceramics plant 


contamination which there was no uranium being 


used at the ceramics plant itself yet in the 


early days, and was also used for the later 


period of operations. Source term information 

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was primarily used for the early African ore 


days, and then later we have some film badge 


data that was available to estimate doses for 


the U-02 operational period. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): I do agree with 


you. I think when you go back and look at all 


the tables, and I think we actually tried to 


map Table 36, the data came from at least 


seven or eight other tables, Table 15, Table 


21, 35, 18, 33, and they all fit into that 


summary table I assume the dose reconstructor 


can use. And in a few places like, you know, 


I mentioned in Table 5.3 and then 47 for the 


ceramic plant, we cannot track back to any 


other tables. And the same with 1949 for the 


neutron dose, we cannot track back to the 


sources. So I assume that maybe we --


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): ‘Forty-nine was 


not calculated. The 1949 was based on source 


term data, and there’s actually a neutron 


section in there that explains how those were 


calculated using OTIB-24. 


DR. ROESSLER: We’ve been asked to take a 


break soon. Can we bring this particular 


issue to a close? Is there a recommendation 

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as to what needs to be done to clarify this? 


Is it editorial or is it okay? 


DR. LOCKEY: Let me ask a question. Do you 


feel that the boundaries put on one amount of 


workers is claimant favorable? 


DR. OSTROW: Well, looking at the final 


numbers you have in your Table 36, they look 


good. They’re high numbers. They’re probably 


claimant favorable. We just had trouble sort 


of doing a QA on it, trying to figure out 


where some of the numbers came from. You 


know, if they came from some of the other 


tables, then reading the text, but I’m having 


trouble trying to interpret the text also in a 


couple of cases. We’re not claiming that 


they’re wrong. It’s just that they’re hard to 


interpret. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I guess from 


where I sit I’d like a minute to maybe -- not 


today but over the next week -- go back and 


talk to OCAS about what this would take to, I 


think the documentation, we could make an 


attempt to write it more clearly. I know I’ve 


reviewed and used this a lot of times and 


tracked the numbers through, so I think it can 

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be done. 


And if all we need to do is write it 


more clearly, that’s one thing. If we need to 


go back and maybe simplify the approach in 


general because it’s so complicated that even 


if we write it more clearly, reviewers are 


going to be frustrated, then I think the 


answer is different. I’d like to be able to 


talk to NIOSH before we decide on a path 


forward on this. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): Cindy, maybe I 


have a recommendation. I think from a 


reviewer’s standpoint maybe you just even work 


on Table 36 and have a lot of footnotes and 


where the numbers come from. That may be 


enough. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Yeah, I think we 


have 13 footnotes associated with that table. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): Yeah, but there 


are still kind of gaps in there that we cannot 


be able to track, but that may be able to fill 


the gaps. That’s all my recommendation is. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Okay, I’m looking 


at the wrong table anyway. 


MR. ELLIOTT: What about some example dose 

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reconstructions which would apply the use of 


the table and walk people back through it. 


DR. MAURO: No, that’s not the problem. 


See, I think that, in fact, this is a 


recurring theme that we’re running into. I 


think that the final tool that says here’s a 


look up table. Use it, but to the dose 


reconstructors. And they do. That’s great. 


And it may very well be a great tool and be 


claimant favorable. 


But you have to realize, we, on behalf 


of the Board, have been asked do you believe 


that the table that’s been prepared is 


technically sound and well based and good 


science and good data. So we do our best to 


go back and figure out the rationale, how they 


got there. And very often we find ourselves 


challenged to be able to figure it out. 


I know Hans ran into the situation in 


the story we told earlier where we talked 


about this whole neutron to photon ratio and 


what was really done. The story Hans told 


represented taking all this information and 


trying to sort it all out, and they could make 


sense. So what you read really was an heroic 

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effort, quite frankly, to try to take a 


massive amount of information and tell a 


story. 


Now, in Hans’ case I think he managed 


to break the back of the problem. He figured 


it out, said, ah, I think I know what they did 


now. In this case we weren’t able to break 


the back of the problem. We could not figure 


out how he got there. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): John, we did get 


90 percent of the information together and 


then how they put into Table 36. But we just 


still have some missing link somewhere that’s 


all. 


DR. NETON: Maybe that’s the solution to 


pose those questions to us that you’re still 


missing. Have us generically go and answer 


all --


DR. MAURO: Fair enough. 


 DR. WADE: Maybe have a telephone call. 


DR. NETON: Yeah, we could do a telephone 


call or whatever. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): We can do a 


sidebar on this way. 


DR. NETON: Because rather than have us 

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answer everything. 


DR. ROESSLER: We reached a conclusion on 


this one. 


DR. MAURO: That’s good. 


DR. ROESSLER: So we’re going to take how 


long a break? 


 DR. WADE: We say ten minutes, and God knows 


how long that could be. 


DR. ROESSLER: So my watch says 25 to three, 


so about quarter to or a little after. 


 DR. WADE: We’re going to take a ten-minute 


break. We’re going to mute and come back on 


in ten minutes. 


(Whereupon a break was taken from 2:35 p.m. 


until 2:45 p.m.) 


DR. ROESSLER: Work group on Linde ready to 


resume. I think we have resolved through 


issue 13. 


DR. MAURO: That’s correct. 


ISSUE FOURTEEN
 

DR. ROESSLER: And so let’s go with 14 then, 


Steve. 


DR. OSTROW: Fourteen, we titled it “Film 


Badge Data,” and this one goes on here. This 


is a question on, this is actually related. 

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This is a question on the Table 36 also 


basically, and how Table 36 with all the 


different components went into this. So if 


I’m reading this correctly, my own comments 


here, I think this is actually covered by what 


we were just discussing about sort of the need 


to explain how this Table 36 came about. What 


the different components are in it. 


DR. ROESSLER: Okay, so that one’s --


DR. OSTROW: Fourteen, yeah, so 14 is 


covered by the discussion we just had on Table 


36. 


DR. MAURO: And I also think it goes a step, 


there’s a second aspect to it. And that has 


to do again, it appears that the Table 36 


recommended value was a median for a 


population of numbers that are being 


recommended. 


When using the median or the full 


distribution, and this is external, I believe, 


the question is should we be working with the 


median as your surrogate for unmonitored 


workers or should you be working off the 95th
 

percentile? So I think that this sort of goes 


toward the conversation we had before. 

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So in addition to, I guess, the ball 


is in our court to pose a focused question 


regarding how did you do 36? This is what we 


don’t understand. And we’ll do that. On top 


of that we would like to put on the table that 


how does the new, I guess, philosophy 


regarding the use of 95th percentiles play on 


Table 36? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I think that’s 


addressed by Comment 20 that says we don’t 


feel that we incorporated our new direction, 


and so we need to do that. 


DR. MAURO: Okay, good, then we’re in 


agreement. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Yes. 


MR. CRAWFORD: To a certain extent it seems 


to me that by locating the high, medium and 


low exposed workers in the way you did, you’re 


informally breaking them up into groups. The 


higher workers might need the 95th percentile 


for unmonitored workers. So we just need to 


make that more defined. 


DR. NETON: Yeah. 


DR. MAURO: Right. 


MS. BEACH: I had a question regarding this. 

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Do we have a sense of what was happening 


during that stand down period? It was a long 


period of time. And was there any monitoring 


done during that period? Because I know for 


me stand down in my plant means you’re doing 


housework. You’re cleaning. You’re sweeping. 


And I’m curious about that period of time, and 


if there’s any --


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I would have to 


go back and look at the external data for that 


period. I don’t have the answer to that right 


now. 


MS. BEACH: Thank you. 


DR. NETON: I’m sorry, I missed that Cindy. 


Did you commit to looking at the stand down 


period? Is that what we missed? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): No, I just said I 


don’t know the answer. 


DR. NETON: Okay. 


MS. BEACH: Well, it’s just a long period of 


time, and I was wondering if there was 


monitoring done during that time as well. 


DR. ROESSLER: Are you okay on that, Josie? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I think there was 


about a year, right? 

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MS. BEACH: Yeah, it was a little over a 


year, 8/1/46 to 9/14, but they really didn’t 


start production until 11/47. So I’m 


wondering what the workers did during that 


time period and was there monitoring for 


whatever they did or didn’t do. Just a 


question. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): Cindy, I have a 


question for the site profile Table 13. Do 


you have it? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Site profile 


Table 13. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): Yeah, that leads 


into Table 36. I think that’s the basis for 


the beta dose, the beta-gamma dose which I 


think I mentioned earlier. In 1949 there’s a 


survey done, and that survey number after 


vacuum cleaning and flushing. That number’s 


been used as the basis for a few years of 


external dose calculation. 


I think it’s a factor of three for 


some reason used to, as a multiplier for the 


survey data and to project back for before 


vacuum cleaning, before flushing. So you use 


the number to go back to 1948 and ’47. So I 

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just do not know where that factor of three 


comes from. Is it just a number you guys 


decided to use based on some dose number 


calculation? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I would have to 


look at that specifically again. I believe 


there was, I have a vague recollection of data 


from both time periods that Jerry Davidson 


(ph) had looked at, and there was about a 


factor of three difference, but I may be 


thinking of the wrong --


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): Right, footnote C 


on the table said assumed to be three times 


higher --


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Okay. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): Than the pre-


decontamination values. So I think it’s an 


assumption. So I just want to know the basis 


for the assumption because it affects all the 


other values because that is the basis for 


everything else. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Again, I think 


that particular data only applies to a very 


short period, but I’ll have to look at that 


again. 

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MR. CHAN (by Telephone): Okay. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): So it’s the basis 


of the factor of three for Table 13? 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): Right. 


DR. NETON: It says right after that the 


factor of three is based on the April 1949 


data. See discussion in text. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): Yeah, but I don’t 


see the discussion. I don’t see the 


justification or explanation why, what is 


factor three from, and how they calculated the 


factor of three. There’s no explanation of 


that. 


DR. ROESSLER: So John will include that in 


his focus question regarding Table 13. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): Yeah. I think 


that table eventually will fit into a few 


places in Table 36, the values. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I think that’s as 


you look at the before vacuum cleaning and 


flushing and pre-decontamination. I’m going 


to say that’s where it is, but that’s not 


quite right either. I’ll need to look at that 


again. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): Okay, thanks. 

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DR. OSTROW: Desmond, I think the conclusion 


is we’ll have to come up with a nice, concise 


list of where, specifically of questions that 


we have, and then I’ll send them out. 


ISSUE FIFTEEN
 

DR. ROESSLER: We can go to 15? 


DR. OSTROW: Yeah. Fifteen deals with the 


survey measurement data that’s included in the 


TBD. And this relates I think to number 20 


that we talked about before, about the idea of 


using the geometric mean values. And the 


response said we believe that the application 


of GSD of three to estimated unmonitored 


worker exposures adequately accounts for bias 


and uncertainty. 


So the question, this is related to 


the question before where they were looking at 


the highest 95th percentile values or the time 


average values. I mean, that’s the way I read 


it. 


DR. MAURO: Yeah, I think this is the 


recurring theme again. That is, when you work 


with a geometric mean and the geometric 


standard deviation as being a surrogate, in 


this case it’s external, we hearken back to 

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the 95th percentile question. Certainly there, 


again, there are times when using the full 


distribution makes sense, but there are times 


when it may not. 


But in this particular response it 


seems like a generic position has been taken 


that’s contrary to the position that’s 


described later. So this is the same thing we 


had before. Namely, the full distribution is 


not necessarily the answer. 


So if you have survey data, you have a 


distribution of information, I don’t think 


you’re done and just could automatically say 


we’re going to use that full distribution to 


represent everybody, one size fits all. I 


think that has to be used very cautiously the 


way Jim described it earlier. I guess that’s 


all. So it’s the same thing. I would say 15 


is the same as the other two we talked about 


earlier. 


MR. CRAWFORD: Except that Cindy’s 


explanation here suggests that there’s a 


systematic bias in the survey data typically. 


Break in if you want, Cindy. 


That would lead us to over predict the dose 

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from these surveys because, as she says, they 


tended to put the monitoring equipment where 


they expected the most dose. 


DR. MAURO: And if that case can be made for 


all categories of workers, that’s fine. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Right, and this 


is not a coworker data study. This is using 


the measured doses from the workplace. 


DR. NETON: Right. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): But we can look 


at this again and as you know, make our case 


and --


DR. NETON: Exactly, I think we just need to 


be consistent with the new TIB-20 and we can 


do what’s right. We just need to document it 


better I think. 


DR. MAURO: Okay, fine, good. 


ISSUE SIXTEEN
 

DR. OSTROW: Issue 16. This talks about 


the, also did he capture the doses’ time 


weighted average business. Again, did he 


capture the possible exposure to high dose or 


high risk tasks. And the answer back is that 


ORAU’s not aware of any such high dose or high 


risk task performed during the standby period. 

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If this is true, then it’s okay. I mean, we ­

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MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): We’re looking at 


16 now? 


DR. OSTROW: Sixteen, yeah. Basically, 


Cindy, you looked at all different tasks and 


you weren’t aware of any particular high risk 


tasks or high dose tasks? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): At this time I’m 


not aware of any. That doesn’t mean there 


couldn’t be any there, but I’m just not aware 


of any. 


MR. ELLIOTT: So, Cindy, this is Larry 


Elliott. Is that based on the documentation 


you’ve seen? In other words we haven’t seen 


any documentation that’s contrary to that. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Jerry Davidson 


looked at this data really hard for over a 


year trying to develop reasonable estimates of 


exposures, and I haven’t seen anything that he 


put together. I haven’t seen any of the 


references, any information myself that 


indicates that we missed something. But, 


again, as I go back and look at the 


information to develop some of this other 

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answers, I will look at this again. 


DR. ROESSLER: Are interviews with workers 

pertinent here? Is there any information on 

that? 

MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): We review all the 


CATI responses. I also review the worker 


outreach minutes when they become available. 


There are some indications that during the 


early years exposures were definitely very 


high, and I think we’ve captured those in the 


tables. I don’t recall seeing anything that 


we missed on a generic level, but we do look 


at all that kind of information in developing, 


the group that I work with, in developing the 


AWEs. We check. 


MR. ELLIOTT: Have we posed any questions 


specifically to the standby era as to what 


tasks were performed? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I’m not aware of 


any. 


DR. NETON: This says 1946 to ’47. Is that 


not in the SEC period? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Yes, it is. 


DR. NETON: And so it seems the central 


question here might be related to the SEC 

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period which has already been granted. 


MR. CHAN (by Telephone): But this is 


specific to the external though. The SEC is 


dealing with internal, right? I assume. 


DR. NETON: Right, good point. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): (Unintelligible) 


brings most workers in at that point so you’d 


have skin cancers and prostate. 


DR. ROESSLER: Okay, so Cindy’s going to 


take another look at it, and does that cover ­

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DR. OSTROW: Yes, that’s fine. 


ISSUE SEVENTEEN
 

DR. ROESSLER: Okay, then let’s go to the 


fun one, issue 17, on the burlap bags. 


DR. OSTROW: I think we discussed burlap 


bags ad nauseum. We discussed that. It’s 


important for inhalation, might be, to look at 


inhalations. It might be a direct dose also. 


Especially if you have people sitting on them 


it might be a skin cancer contributor or 


potential --


DR. NETON: If we look at it from the 


perspective of the ore itself, the progeny in 


the ore in addition to the uranium. 

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DR. OSTROW: What bags were there when. 


DR. NETON: It might be tougher to figure 


out than we’d like, but we’ll certainly look 


at it. 


ISSUE EIGHTEEN
 

DR. ROESSLER: Issue 18. 


DR. LOCKEY: I’m sorry, what was resolution 


16? I didn’t catch that. 


DR. ROESSLER: Cindy says she’s going to 


look through all this information again to 


make sure that the approach for the, there 


were no, maybe Chris or somebody else should 


say this, high dose or high risk tasks that 


need to be taken into consideration. 


DR. LOCKEY: Is that going to be including 


the stand down period for external? 


DR. ROESSLER: Yes. 


DR. OSTROW: Okay, issue 18 is the surrogate 


external exposure data. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Where are we now? 


DR. OSTROW: Eighteen, issue 18. 


This was a question, when we went back 


to talking about that famous Table 36, it’s a 


similar type question. I said that the 


process being used, a lot of different data 

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went into it, and it’s complex. And we 


weren’t quite sure exactly how it was being 


done in all cases. How the different things 


were, we mentioned that they’re, I think we 


mentioned five different types of data that 


were here: pre-clean up survey data, eight 


solid ore sample data, one-day survey in six 


locations, two one-day pre-cleanup survey data 


after vacuuming, flushing, post-


decontamination survey data. We weren’t quite 


sure how all the pieces fit together here. So 


we don’t have a confident feeling that it was 


all done sort of transparently. 


DR. MAURO: We’d like to be in a position 


where we can go to the original data sources 


as referenced or provided, and then go from 


there and stepwise reconstruct and match the 


recommended numbers that you have in your 


lookup tables. And need, we owe to you the 


places where we were not able to do that. But 


also at the same time, once we do that, once 


we’re at a point where, okay, now we 


understand exactly what was done. 


The other thing we owe is whether or 


not we believe -- because right now we’re 

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really sort of groping, whether or not we 


believe that the construct for your system, 


for surrogate external data adequately 


captures these high end groups. Our recurring 


theme over and over again is that, and we see 


it all the time, is, yes, I think that you’ve 


got all the data. Now we understand what you 


did. We can match your numbers. 


Then we have to ask ourselves the 


question, based on that information do we 


believe that all workers for different 


categories of workers and that have different 


functions, different places, are getting the 


benefit of the doubt. Or is it possible that 


the construct is only going to, is going to be 


fair to 50 percent of the workers. In other 


words if you work off the median or if you 


work off the full distribution, I guess, we 


owe you -- see, we’re in a funny position. 


We don’t quite understand how you came 


up with your construct, and once we understand 


it, we’ll be in a much better position to make 


some constructive criticisms on whether or not 


we believe that that construct is in fact 


claimant favorable for the full array of 

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different categories of workers. Now one of 


the problems we may run into is that we may 


not have a full appreciation of the diversity 


of work that took place. 


So we may be left in a funny position 


where we say, well, if we look at it all, and 


we say, okay, I think we understand the full 


range of the different kinds of activities 


that took place. And it looks like the worst 


category of activity from an external point of 


view were people who did this. Given that is 


there adequate data in the dataset that allows 


you to construct a surrogate for that category 


of people that we feel, yes, is given the 


benefit of the doubt to that group of people. 


And then we’re done if the answer is yes. 


But I don’t think we’re, because we 


got sort of stopped midstream where we really 


couldn’t figure out how your construct came 


about, we can’t answer the ultimate question 


for ourselves. We’re sort of left in the --


‘til we do that, so we’re not home yet. That 


is, after we pose it, we have this exchange on 


Table 36 and these other tables where we say, 


ah, okay, now I know what was done, how they 

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did it. I see the data that they used, and I 


can match their numbers. 


Then we’re going to have to regroup 


amongst ourselves and say, okay, does this do 


the trick. Does it cap, in the end does it 


provide a vehicle to give the benefit of the 


doubt to that subgroup of workers that were 


unmonitored that could have gotten high end 


exposures. If we come away with, yeah, I 


think it does, that’s the end of the story. 


Otherwise, we’ll come back and say, no, I 


don’t think it does. So we really, we can’t 


achieve closure in one step. It’s going to 


take a couple of steps. 


DR. ROESSLER: So the first step is for you 


to come up with your questions. 


DR. MAURO: Questions, and then we’ll be 


home, then we’ll be on our way to closure. 


DR. OSTROW: Issue 19, we discussed that 


already. This is the work hour business. 


ISSUE TWENTY
 

Twenty, this is the same issue we 


discussed also, I think, with issue 11 and 15, 


geometric mean business versus the, 


distribution versus 95th percentile. 

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104 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, and it’s in this place 


where you do say, yes, we agree. We need to 


revisit this question, so here’s the place 


where --


DR. NETON: Where you describe the document 


against these questions. 


DR. MAURO: Yeah, this is right. So there 


is no issue regarding number 20. I think 


NIOSH agrees that, yes, we need to revisit 


this in light of the new policy as articulated 


in the OTIB. 


ISSUE TWENTY-ONE
 

DR. OSTROW: Twenty-one, and this is 


basically the confidence of uncertainty 


analysis, I think is the same as issue 12 


which we’ve covered already. I think the 


answer to this is that if the 33 MAC or the 


new bioassay data is good, then you don’t need 


confidence of uncertainty analysis if you can 


get yourself that these are really the maximum 


doses that people can, exposures people can 


get, then you don’t need to do the uncertainty 


analysis. This goes away, issue 21. 


ISSUE TWENTY-TWO
 

Finally, issue 22 is the outdoor 

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doses. Here I had misstated. I said the site 


profile doesn’t address missed occupational 


and environmental doses to workers, and it 


actually does. I was used to the other site 


profiles where they have a separate section 


for environmental. In re-reading it more 


carefully, the TBD, it’s there, but it’s 


blended in with the other stuff. It’s not 


like really separated out. 


And this is like we discussed before, 


the environmental outdoor stuff, where all the 


piles of ore, waste piles, accounted for? 


Whether, was the incinerator outdoor, the 


incinerator that was --


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): Excuse me, 


somebody’s turning papers near the microphone. 


DR. OSTROW: I’ll repeat that we discussed 


this already. The issue is are all the 


sources taken into account, the burlap bags, 


the ore, the waste? Is there an incinerator 


onsite? Was there an incinerator onsite? 


When did it operate? Sort of these issues. 


Were the sources identified and accounted for 


correctly? 


That’s it. 

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DR. ROESSLER: Well, if you’re satisfied 


with 22, then are there any other issues that 


we need to bring up to complete this? 


DR. OSTROW: Arjun, did you have anything to 


bring up? 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): I was gone 


for a few minutes so I don’t know what all 


came up, but just I came back late after the 


break. But the ore concentrate question in my 


memory from the Fernald ore concentrate 


processing time, the Thorium-230 seemed to go 


along with ore concentrates or the radium got 


left behind. Now, was that not the case at 


Linde? 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): I believe what 


I’ve seen is that once you get to U-02, you 


might have a little bit of thorium left there, 


less than a half a percent by activity from 


what I’ve seen in documents. And that we’ve 


already agreed to go back and look at that 


again. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Yeah, I think 


if it’s U-02, I would agree with you. I sort 


of read concentrates, and so it came to my 


mind. 

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MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): No, it’s U-02 


after 1947. 


DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Okay, yeah, I 


think some verification on that point would be 


very important. And sorry that I missed that 


you’d already said that. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): That’s okay. 


DR. ROESSLER: Is there any other question 


or issue? 


 (no response) 


DR. ROESSLER: It seems like what we need to 


do now is put this on paper, and I’d 


appreciate some help from some of you as to 


what we resolved on each issue. The steps 


that I see are that SC&A are going to prepare 


their questions on the TBD Table 13 and 36, 


deliver these to NIOSH. 


And then NIOSH has a whole bunch of 


assignments. Cindy has committed to a lot of 


things. 


MS. BLOOM (by Telephone): You better not 


say that. You’re going to get me in trouble, 


Gen. 


DR. ROESSLER: I heard you say it over and 


over. What we need to get down on paper is 

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what you committed to. And I think the 


important thing is then to look at a 


timeframe, what’s reasonable to expect from 


SC&A on their questions to deliver to NIOSH. 


And what does NIOSH think that the timeframe 


would be to re-evaluate all these issues. 


Really they’re several, one big one, and then 


maybe some better documentation then. 


Does anybody have any comments? I 


think this we owe to the Board and the people 


on the telephone. 


DR. BEHLING: Who’s going to do the analysis 


of the bioassay? Because I consider that the 


single most important issue. 


DR. NETON: We’ll do that. 


DR. ROESSLER: Do you have some feeling for 


a timeframe on it? 


DR. NETON: Well, I think we need to talk 


among ourselves. I don’t want to give a 


timeframe right now. If we put out maybe a 


draft of what these action items are, we could 


fill it in. I need to talk to Cindy and 


workloads and the issues on the table right 


now. 


DR. ROESSLER: So we will work together then 

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on the issues. 


DR. NETON: I wish I could give you a 


timeframe now but I’m not prepared to do that. 


DR. ROESSLER: Perhaps by the next Board 


meeting or Board phone call we can have that. 


DR. NETON: Well, certainly well in advance 


of that, the Board call, by April 5th . 


DR. ROESSLER: That sounds reasonable. 


DR. BEHLING: Is the intent, Jim, to use the 


bioassay data as a way of replacing the air 


sampling data --


DR. NETON: Yes. 


DR. BEHLING: -- or to confirm the air 


sampling data? 


DR. NETON: No, the ultimate intent would be 


to use it to replace the air sampling data if 


we can determine that it’s a valid set, and 


it’s a lognormal and all the good caveats that 


go along with that. And if that does, then 


many of these issues drop off the table. But 


I need to talk to Cindy and the others to 


figure out how much time she has. It takes 


longer to construct one of these coworker sets 


than one would think even though we’ve done it 


many, many times there’s a lot of issues to 

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deal with. 


DR. MAURO: From my perspective in terms of 


communicating back to NIOSH the questions we 


have so that we could fully appreciate Table 


36 and the whole, that might work, rather than 


try to write it down, is it possible that we 


could have our reviewers talk to your people 


directly and say, okay, I don’t understand how 


you got this number. Could you walk me 


through it? And that might be a lot easier, 


just one phone call, may last an hour or two. 


And once we have a full appreciation 


of, okay, I think I understand what was done, 


then what we can do is perhaps put an e-mail 


out to the working group that says, okay, we 


understand. Here’s the answer. And then we 


can also say something about whether or not 


the follow on issues are concerned or have 


been resolved. 


In other words I understand what they 


did, and I think they’ve captured the high end 


group. Or I understand what that did, and I 


don’t think they captured the high end group. 


But at least we’ll be able to get it to that 


point, and then we’ll deliver that to you and 

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the rest of the working group. 


DR. ROESSLER: It sounds like in priorities 


with time it seems like that would work best. 


DR. MAURO: I thing that can go pretty 


quickly. 


DR. OSTROW: Well, John, I think we have to 


write it down though first even before the 


teleconference. 


DR. MAURO: No, among us, yeah. 


DR. OSTROW: I think it would be probably 


rather than spring it on the --


DR. MAURO: Okay --


DR. OSTROW: -- we should send them a copy 


and say we don’t waste time that way. 


DR. NETON: You can coordinate with Chris. 


DR. OSTROW: Because a lot of this stuff is 


very specific like what did you mean in the 


third sentence of this paragraph. 


MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, I think if you could get 


it said in advance it would certainly prepare 


us to be more responsive in the time you’d 


have to spend together on the phone. 


 DR. WADE: The Chair can be on the telephone 


call if you’d like. 


DR. NETON: Yeah, the working group members 

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are invited to participate in these calls but 


not required, at least that’s the way it’s 


been in the past. 


DR. ROESSLER: So is there anything else we 


need to consider, Lew or Emily? 


 DR. WADE: I think it’s an activity and then 


maybe during the April 5th call you can do a 


little bit better forecasting to the Board as 


to what they might expect when you do your 


work group report. But it was a very 


productive day. 


I think you did a masterful job of 


leading the folks here. 


DR. ROESSLER: Pushing them. 


 DR. WADE: Would they were all this smooth. 


DR. ROESSLER: Then I think we’re adjourned. 


(Whereupon, the working group meeting 


concluded at 3:15 p.m.) 

______________________________ 

113 

1 CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER 


STATE OF GEORGIA 


COUNTY OF FULTON 


 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 


Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 


above and foregoing on the day of March 26, 


2007; I, Steven Ray Green, then transcribed the 


proceedings, and it is a true and accurate 


transcript of the testimony captioned herein. 


 I further certify that I am neither kin 


nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 


have any interest in the cause named herein. 


 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 


22nd day of July, 2007. 


STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 


CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 


CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102