THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH
 

convenes the 

TWENTY-THIRD MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

The verbatim transcript of the Meeting of the

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health held at the

Red Lion Hotel, 802 George Washington Way, Richland,

Washington, on April 20, 2004. 

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C O N T E N T S
 

April 20, 2004 

REGISTRATION AND WELCOME 

Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 

Mr. Larry Elliott, Executive Secretary . . . . . . . . 16 

REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF DRAFT MINUTES, MEETINGS 21, 22 

Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair 

PROGRAM STATUS REPORT 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 

Dr. Jim Neton, NIOSH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 

STATUS AND OUTREACH - DEPARTMENT OF LABOR 

Mr. Pete Turcic, DOL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 

STATUS REPORT - DOE 

Mr. Tom Rollow, DOE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 

SITE PROFILE STATUS, USE IN DOSE RECONSTRUCTIONS, AND

ROLL-OUT, Dr. Jim Neton, NIOSH . . . . . . . . . . . .113 

RESEARCH ISSUES STATUS 

Mr. Russ Henshaw, NIOSH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155 

INTRODUCTION 

Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 

PUBLIC COMMENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 

ADJOURN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .262 

COURT REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 

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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. 

In the following transcript (sic) denotes an incorrect 

usage or pronunciation of a word which is transcribed in 

its original form as reported. 

In the following transcript (phonetically) indicates a 

phonetic spelling of the word if no confirmation of the 

correct spelling is available. 

In the following transcript "uh-huh" represents an 

affirmative response, and "uh-uh" represents a negative 

response. 

In the following transcript "*" denotes a spelling 

based on phonetics, without reference available. 

In the following transcript (inaudible) signifies 

speaker failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 

In the following transcript (off microphone) refers to 

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microphone malfunction or speaker's neglect to depress "on" 

button. 

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

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

 BOARD MEMBERS 

CHAIR 

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

School of Health Sciences 

Purdue University

Lafayette, Indiana 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

ELLIOTT, Larry J.

Director, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Cincinnati, Ohio 

MEMBERSHIP 

ANDERSON, Henry A., M.D.

Chief Medical Officer 

Occupational and Environmental Health

Wisconsin Division of Public Health 

Madison, Wisconsin 

ANDRADE, Antonio, Ph.D.

Group Leader

Radiation Protection Services Group

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos, New Mexico 

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

Director 

The Vanderbilt Center for Occupational and Environmental

Medicine 

Professor of Medicine 

Nashville, Tennessee 

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ESPINOSA, Richard Lee

Sheet Metal Workers Union Local #49 

Johnson Controls 

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Espanola, New Mexico 

GIBSON, Michael H.

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union

Local 5-4200 

Miamisburg, Ohio 

GRIFFON, Mark A.

President 

Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc.

Salem, New Hampshire 

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

Director 

New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund

Albany, New York 

MUNN, Wanda I.

Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired)

Richland, Washington 

OWENS, Charles Leon

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union

Local 5-550 

Paducah, Kentucky 

PRESLEY, Robert W.

Special Projects Engineer

BWXT Y12 National Security Complex

Clinton, Tennessee 

ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

University of Florida

Elysian, Minnesota 

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AGENDA SPEAKERS 

(in order of appearance) 

Dr. Jim Neton, NIOSH 

Mr. Pete Turcic, DOL 

Mr. Tom Rollow, DOE 

Dr. Jim Neton, NIOSH 

Mr. Russ Henshaw, NIOSH 

STAFF/VENDORS 

CORI HOMER, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH

STEVEN RAY GREEN, Certified Merit Court Reporter 

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 AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS

 DAY 

CARY, ANNETTE

COLLEY, ROBERT G.

DEHART, JULIA

EBY, KRISTIN

ELDER, DIANA

ELDER, ROBERT D.

KUDING, SYLVIA

LOVE, MARGUERITE E.

MAST, VERN

OLSON, JOYCE

RINGEN, KNUT

SCHAEFFER, D. MICHAEL

SMITH, ROBERT L.

STALEY, KENNETH D.

TOOHEY, DICK

TRENT, FRANK

WILLIS, T.L. 

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 AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS 

EVENING 

ADAMS, HUGH

AMADOR, ROBERT

BARKER, DIRK

BATES, CHARLES R.

BEECROFT, DONNA ALLRED

BERENETT, ROSE S.

BERGSTROM, AGNES

BIERLONI, THEO K.

BONE, SYLVIA

BOOKER, GARY P.

BROWN, E.B.

BROWN, PAUL

CHAMBERLAIN, TAPLEY B.

CHAMBERS, DONNA

CLAPHAN, F.D.

COLLEY, BOB

COOK, BETTY G.

DAUGHERTY, DOUGLAS C.

DAVID, JOHN

DUNCAN, HEATHER

EBY, KRISTIN

FESHUM, VIRGINIA P.

FLEMING, R.M.

HALSTEAD, CHARLES M.

HARRISON, B.W.

HAYS, CAROL

HARTLEY, DAN R.

HENNING, MICHAEL E.

HENSLEY, JANEL

JAHNKE, LOUISA

JARMSON, E.R.

KNIGHT, LAURA M.

KNOWLES, RANDY

KOLEBER, MARGARET

LEDFORD, CLIFF AND PEGGY

LEWIS, MARK

LILLION, ERIC

LOZIER, VERNON W. 

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LOZIER, VIRGINIA R.

MANUEL, MR. AND MRS. JAMES L.

MARTIN, KEITH A.

MASTROGIUSEPPE, RON

MCCALLUM, ROBERT

MERCER, CHRIS

MILLER, RICHARD

MITCHELL, C.J.

MOORE, CHARLES W.

MORSE, ROCCO J., SR.

MULLEN, LOIS

MYERS, CHESTER B.

NEWBILL, MATT

OGLESBEE, GAI

O'NEILL, ED

OVERSTREET, ROBERT W.

PATRICK, LINDA FOR LAURENCE PATRICK

PHILLIPS, CHESLEY W.

PHILLIPS, NATHAN

PIERCE, BRENDA PRINGLE

POWAUKEE, SHIRLEY

RAY, VELMA

RICHMOND, OLDEN

RUGGLES, ROBERT

SAMSON, E.R.

SCHNECK, LESTER

SHATELL, CHARLES W.

SMITH, MARY S.

STALEY, KEN

THOMPSON, BARBARA J.

TORRES, HENRY B.

TRENT, FRANK

UNDERWOOD, DAVID H.

VAN DYKE, KATHY

WALLACE, STEVEN L.

WALLACE, VIRGINIA

WELCH, MERLAINE E.

WERST, KENNETH E.

WILLIAMS, ROSIE LEE

WILLIAMSON, JIM

WILLIAMSON, NINA

YATES, ROY 

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P R O C E E D I N G S

 (9:00 a.m.) 

REGISTRATION AND WELCOME 

DR. ZIEMER: Good morning, everyone. We welcome 

you to this meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation 

and Worker Health. This is the 23rd meeting of this 

Board. I was reflecting on that earlier today. I've 

been on a number of boards in my lifetime, but I don't 

think I've been on any that have met 23 times in two 

years, but this is a hard-working group. 

My name is Paul Ziemer. I serve as Chairman of 

this Board. You -- those who are visitors, members of 

the public and others, you will notice the placards in 

front of each individual, and that will serve as an 

introduction to who the various members are. 

Mark Griffon is not here this morning, but he 

would certainly want you to know that he ran the Boston 

marathon yesterday and is on his way here from Boston, 

so Mark has bragging rights on that accomplishment, I 

guess. But he will be joining us a little later in the 

meeting. 

Let's see, and the Board is a little bit confused 

here because we've changed the seating arrangement. 

Dr. Roessler is sitting where the Chair usually does 

and I'm sitting over on the side today, so we've 

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shuffled things around. It helps keep the Board alert, 

you know. 

We would like to remind everyone, including Board 

members, to please register your attendance. There are 

registration books in the back on the table. If you've 

not already done that, please do that sometime yet this 

morning. 

Also, for members of the public who wish to 

address the Board, there's a sign-up sheet there. You 

may realize that as you look at the agenda that we have 

set aside an evening session at 7:00 p.m. this evening 

here for -- devoted to public comment, and you're 

welcome to sign up for that. If the agenda permits 

during the daytime hour here -- and we have a number of 

members of the public here -- we might be able to 

squeeze in some comments even earlier than that for 

those who might be interested before the afternoon 

session is over. I can't guarantee that; we'll see how 

things go. But if we have time, we may be able to 

permit some public comment as well this afternoon. 

There are also handouts on the table to my right. 

This includes not only the agenda, but various 

presentation materials that are being utilized by some 

of our speakers today, as well as various documents 

involved with past actions of this Board that might be 

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of interest to you. So please avail yourselves of any 

of those that you think might be of interest to you. 

We're pleased to have with us today some special 

guests. Well, you're all special, but we do want to 

recognize a couple of individuals. Shawn Bills, who is 

with Senator Patty Murray's office -- and Shawn is over 

here (indicating), and then Joyce Olson, who's chief of 

staff for the tri-cities office for Congressman Doc 

Hastings. Joyce is here and Joyce, being a local 

person, has agreed to give us a few words of welcome, 

as well. So Joyce, the podium is yours. 

MS. OLSON: Good morning, everyone. On behalf of 

Congressman Doc Hastings, welcome to the tri-cities. 

Welcome to a special corner of this world. Your fellow 

Board member, Wanda Munn, invited Doc to be here today 

to greet you in person, and first of all, you should 

know that Doc (sic) is well-known in this community as 

a leader and she's held in high regard for her service 

to the city of Richland and organizations like Girl 

Scouts of America and also on a committee called 

Citizens for Medical Isotopes that promotes the use of 

medical isotopes for the treatment and diagnosis of 

cancer. And so Doc considers Wanda to be a very 

knowledgeable person and appreciates her expertise on 

issues especially pertaining to the nuclear industry. 

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So Wanda invited Doc and Doc is very sorry he couldn't 

be here in person to say hello to Wanda and to extend a 

special welcome to each of you, but I have the pleasure 

of doing that on his behalf. 

To make your visit here a little bit more 

intriguing as you're doing your work, I just wanted to 

share a few local factoids with you. 

Did you know the tri-cities is situated in one of 

the world's most productive and diversified 

agricultural growing regions? Perhaps last night you 

had a chance to sample some of the wines produced in 

this region. Everything from apples and asparagus to 

mint and grapes and potatoes and alfalfa is grown here 

in abundance. 

And did you know that this region had two very 

special visitors about 200 years ago, Lewis and Clark, 

and they were part of the corps of discovery expedition 

dispatched by President Thomas Jefferson, and they came 

through and explored this region. And in a book 

written by Walter (Inaudible) and also referred to in 

Lewis and Clark's journals, they mention that when 

Lewis and Clark camped at the confluence of the Snake 

and Columbia River, they were greeted by 200 men 

singing and beating their drums. I think you'll find 

my greeting to you a little bit far less dramatic, but 

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I hope that some day you can explore our Native 

American heritage and early history. 

Did you know that the towns in this area, 

particularly Richland, are the legacy of the secret 

Manhattan Project developed during World War II to 

produce plutonium for our nation's first atomic bomb? 

And actually that's a fact you probably do already 

know, and on that note, I'd like to tell you that 

Congressman Hastings is very interested in the work 

that you are doing. It's important to promote and 

encourage healthy and safe workplaces. And in looking 

back at Hanford and the number of workers that worked 

at Hanford during World War II and on the Cold War 

effort, he recognizes that many of them possibly 

suffered from exposures. And he has acknowledged that 

our nation has the responsibility to aid in the care of 

those who suffered during their service at Hanford. 

Lastly, Congressman Hastings appreciates the 

progress that you're making in dealing with some of 

these very tough and sensitive and emotional issues. 

And finally, it is his sincere hope that your meeting 

here in Richland today and tomorrow is very productive 

and informative. Thank you very much, and welcome. 

(Applause) 

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welcome to all of us here today. 

We're going to now proc-- oh, I almost 

overlooked our distinguished Executive Secretary, Larry 

Elliott, who usually has an opportunity also to 

officially greet us at this point. Larry? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. On 

behalf of the Secretary Thompson, Department of Health 

and Human Services; Dr. John Howard, the director of 

NIOSH, I'd like to welcome the Board to Richland. And 

to the public, we welcome you to this meeting. We 

think it's very beneficial and informative. We hope 

that the public finds the work of the Board to be such 

and to find how the Board does its work in this open 

public setting. We look forward to a productive and 

informative two days. Thank you. 

REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF DRAFT MINUTES

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Larry. We're now 

going to proceed with the agenda as you have it in your 

booklets, the first items being the review and approval 

of draft minutes. We have two sets of minutes to 

review and approve today. One is for our meeting --

the 21st meeting which was held in Augusta, Georgia on 

February 5th and 6th, 2004. And then the second one is 

the 22nd meeting, which was actually a telephone 

conference call meeting held March 11th, 2004. 

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The minutes of the Augusta meeting were 

distributed to the Board members about a week ago so 

that they would have an opportunity to read them before 

they came to the meeting. Our Board minutes, I might 

point out -- particularly for members of the public --

are rather extensive. They include more than simply 

the actions of the Board, but they do give a fairly 

detailed summary of the discussions so that you have 

context for the various things that were done. So for 

example, this last set of minutes comprises somewhat 

over 50 pages. In fact, one could argue that it was a 

good thing we left the page numbers off so the Board 

members didn't realize how long they were. But we will 

instruct our keepers of the minutes next time to 

include page numbers so that we have a little easier 

time tracking where changes may need to be made. 

But with that being said, let me now call for 

any additions or corrections to the minutes of the 

February meeting held in Augusta, Georgia. And again 

we are looking for substantive changes. If you have 

minor typographicals, you can pass those on to Cori or 

to me later. Dr. Roessler? 

 DR. ROESSLER: On the second page of the 

Executive Summary, right at the top, this was a summary 

of Pete Turcic's talk. There's a very impressive 

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number there, $742 million. I think that that needs 

more detail because I think that number refers to more 

than just radiation compensation. And I looked later 

in the rest of the minutes and I couldn't find any 

detail later on on that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, this --

 DR. ROESSLER: Do you see where I'm --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- this is the Department of 

Labor report and could -- you're asking for a 

clarification of that number or --

 DR. ROESSLER: Well, I think it could be 

misleading since -- I think it's probably not just 

radiation compensation. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's not -- it's not the number 

for payouts from the portion of the program that -- for 

which this Board is responsible. 

 DR. ROESSLER: And since the minutes are 

related to this, I think we need another line in there 

explaining that. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: You are correct. I don't 

believe that -- I think Mr. Turcic stepped out, but I -

- this number, $742 million, is for beryllium, 

silicosis, the SEC cancers and cancers that have been 

dose reconstructed. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So can we agree that we will ask 

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that that clarification be added to the minutes? We'll 

put the proper words in there, basically to describe 

what Larry Elliott has just said and we will make that 

correction. Okay. 

 Dr. Andrade? 

 DR. ANDRADE: If we move beyond the summary 

section and just into the actual minutes themselves, on 

the OCAS program status report -- let's see, one, two -

- three pages in there's a comment made by myself noted 

about halfway down the page, starts that I noted that 

while I was anxious to see the SEC rule completed, et 

cetera, et cetera -- it goes on to say that it has 

nothing to do with dose reconstruction except for the 

fact that the rule proclaims that if dose 

reconstructions cannot be done -- and I think some 

words were left out -- parties might be eligible to 

apply for SEC status. I think those words would change 

the entire context of that statement. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Does everyone see the paragraph 

that's being referred to? (Reading) Dr. Andrade noted 

that while he's anxious to see the SEC rule completed, 

it has nothing to do with dose reconstructions except 

for the fact that the rule proclaims that -- and then 

you're asking that it say if? 

 DR. ANDRADE: That if -- and then dose 

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reconstructions cannot be done as stated there --

 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

 DR. ANDRADE: -- parties might be eligible to 

appeal for SEC status. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And then what about the rest of 

the sentence there? 

 DR. ANDRADE: The rest of the sentence 

stands. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So that he doesn't see any 

connectivity... Okay. Is there any objection to 

adding this clarification phrase that Dr. Andrade's 

suggested? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Without objection, we'll make 

that correction. 

Any others? Dr. Roessler? 

 DR. ROESSLER: This is a bit difficult 

without page numbers, but under site profile updates, 

when Dr. Neton was talking -- it's maybe ten pages into 

the minutes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Main topic, site profile 

updates? 

 DR. ROESSLER: Right, now go back --

 DR. ZIEMER: It starts on the left side of 

the double page. Right? 

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 DR. ROESSLER: Now I'm looking at the 

minutes. Mine are not --

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. 

 DR. ROESSLER: Anyway, but then go back about 

four pages -- and of course this is one of my favorite 

topics --

 DR. ZIEMER: Back toward the front or --

 DR. ROESSLER: No, toward the back, go four 

more pages --

 DR. ZIEMER: All right. 

 DR. ROESSLER: A paragraph that starts with 

occupational medical dose, and you recall that that is 

one of my favorite topics. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 DR. ROESSLER: When you find it, I'll tell 

you what my question is. 

Okay, in the middle of that paragraph it says 

an X-ray is taken with a collimated beam. Other organs 

not in the field of view would be irradiated, and I 

think that's probably true. I mean I think that's what 

was said, but I wonder if that might be confusing 

because it would seem to me that other organs not in 

the field of view would not be irradiated. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, technically that's 

certainly correct, they would possibly received some 

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scatter radiation, but this --

 DR. ROESSLER: I think maybe this sentence --

 DR. ZIEMER: This is summarizing what Dr. 

Neton said. An X-ray is taken with a collimated beam. 

Other organs not in the field --

 DR. ROESSLER: ... of view might -- I think 

it means that it might be included, to be claimantfriendly, or something along that line, because we 

talked last time about --

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, Dr. Neton is here, maybe 

he can clarify -- were you referring to scatter here 

or... 

(Pause) 

 DR. NETON: Okay, let me just get my bearings 

here. An X-ray taken with a collimated beam -- other 

organs not in the field of view would be irradiated. 

That's true, even if they had a collimated beam, there 

would be scatter and would irradiate the organs, so 

that statement is true. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. ROESSLER: That's what I suspected. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So that's what you're referring 

to? 

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to, scatter radiation from -- from even a well22 
 

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collimated beam would have scattered radiation in the 

body. 

 DR. ROESSLER: Maybe just to --

 DR. ZIEMER: So other organs in the field of 

view would still be irradiated from scatter. 

 DR. ROESSLER: Due to scatter. 

 DR. NETON: Due to scatter. 

 DR. ROESSLER: I guess I'd say might still be 

irradiated due to scatter. 

 DR. NETON: Correct. 

 DR. ROESSLER: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So the proposed change then 

would be might be irradiated due to scatter -- simply a 

technical clarification. Thank you very much. 

Tony, you have another one? 

 DR. ANDRADE: Right. One double page over, 

same section, near the top of the page. There was a 

question that I asked about -- I asked it of Dr. Neton 

and it says Dr. Neton referred to whether -- Dr. Neton 

referred to natural. He meant whether it was processed 

in its natural form. It's -- processing it naturally 

does not make any sense. 

 DR. ZIEMER: He meant -- insert the word 

"whether"? 

 DR. ANDRADE: Whether it --

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 DR. ZIEMER: Was --

 DR. ANDRADE: -- was processed --

 DR. ZIEMER: In its natural form. 

 DR. ANDRADE: -- in its natural form. 

 DR. ZIEMER: As opposed to processed 

naturally. 

 DR. ANDRADE: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Any objection to that 

clarification? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Without objection, 

we'll make that change. Others? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: If there's no changes, we can 

have a formal motion to approve the minutes as 

corrected. 

 DR. ROESSLER: So moved. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Second. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Moved and seconded to approve 

the minutes as corrected. Any final comments or 

discussion? 

All in favor, aye? 

 (Affirmative responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Any opposed, no? 

 (No responses) 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Any abstentions? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: No, okay. Dr. DeHart, do you 

have a comment? 

 DR. DEHART: We have been changing format of 

the minutes almost continuously. I would urge that we 

hold to his format. It's the easiest to read and to 

follow and I commend this document. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You like it without the page 

numbers, is that -- with page numbers, if we could. So 

noted. 

Is that -- that's Dr. DeHart's view, but 

others like some other version better? It appears not. 

Thank you. 

If we can turn to the 22nd meeting, these 

minutes you did not have in advance. This is a summary 

of the telephone call. It's a single topic discussion. 

These are very brief; however, if you have not had a 

chance -- well, you got your packet last night. If you 

did not have a chance to read these, the Chair is 

willing to have action deferred until tomorrow. I'd 

point out, however, this is a very short set of 

minutes. 

 MS. MUNN: I'd appreciate tomorrow. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We can delay till tomorrow. 

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Others -- okay, it seems to be a consensus that we 

delay action on those meetings unt-- or minutes until 

tomorrow, and we will take those up during the 

housekeeping session in the morning. 

PROGRAM STATUS REPORT 

We'll go ahead then with the next item on the 

agenda which is the program status update. Jim Neton 

is going to make that presentation. 

 DR. NETON: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. Is 

that --

 DR. ZIEMER: Is that a rheostat behind you 

there? Can we lower the --

 DR. NETON: There's a lot of them. Is that 

too low? Okay. 

Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. It's my pleasure to 

be here in Richland to present the NIOSH program 

statistics -- appreciate the nice weather that was 

arranged for us to be here. The last time I was here, 

in January, I think we had ten inches of snow on the 

ground, which is unusual around here. 

This is the standard format -- or standard 

presentation that you've received over the last few 

Board meetings, but it's gotten a little bit of a 

facelift and I think you'll find there's more graphics 

in here, a little prettier to look at, anyway, and 

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organized a little differently, and maybe a slide or 

two that you haven't seen before. 

The first slide shows the number of cases 

that have been referred to us from the Department of 

Labor. This is as of April 15th. We've popped over 

the 16,000 mark, so we're steadily increasing. The 

proportions from the different district offices of the 

Department of Labor are remaining fairly constant. We 

have about two-thirds of the claims from Seattle and 

Jacksonville combined, and Cleveland and Denver 

constitute about a third of the other claims. Of 

course Seattle and Jacksonville encompass some of the 

major DOE facilities such as Savannah River, Hanford 

and the Oak Ridge reservation, which largely accounts 

for the number of claims we're seeing in that -- in 

those district offices. 

This is a histogram that shows the cases 

received by quarter from the Department of Labor. As 

you can see, we popped at almost -- over 2,900 claims 

in the summer of -- end of the summer of calendar year 

2004 and have been dropping steadily down to around 200 

claims a week on average right now, although I think 

we're -- pardon? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 2002. 

 DR. NETON: 2002, yeah -- 2002, I'm sorry. 

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And we're seeing about 200 claims a week coming in the 

last month of the quarter for -- quarter three in '04 

is just for the first half of April statistics, so 

that's why the numbers seem so low. We expect that 

that will be at least as equal to quarter two after the 

end of the month is over. 

This slide depicts the number of requests we 

sent out to the Department of Labor -- I mean 

Department of Energy. We've sent out 15,373 requests 

that represent 13,897 cases. The number of requests of 

course exceeds the number of cases because we have 

multiple work histories for a number of our claimants. 

The other thing I'd point out is even though we have 

16,000 cases in-house, a couple thousand of those are 

from Atomic Weapons Employer sites, therefore the 

number is lower. We're fairly -- we keep fairly close 

with the requests for information to the Department of 

Energy. There's rarely a one or two-week backlog in 

getting those requests out to -- to Energy. So if you 

add the 2,000 AWE claims which we don't request 

information from Energy for most of the cases, we're 

right around 16,000 -- pretty close. 

We've received 14,711 responses, representing 

over 13,000 cases. 

We do request that we receive a response from 

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the Department of Energy within 60 days. If they 

cannot provide a response within 60 days, we ask that 

they notify us and provide a reason why that response 

can't be met. And we've had a fairly good 

relationship, as you know over past Board meetings, in 

getting these responses in from Labor -- or Energy. 

They've been quite responsive. We do show some claims 

that are outstanding over 60 days, and in fact we have 

a few -- a few, actually 114 -- that are over 150 days. 

Those claims -- we're working with Energy on those to 

try to move those forward. They typically represent 

claims that are either very early in the process -- you 

know, late '40's or even mid-'40's -- or have some 

bioassay records, particularly for internal dosimetry, 

that we're trying to capture that don't exist in 

retrievable form. They're either in databases or 

something to that effect where we actually need to --

they need to write a little database to get them to us. 

But we're working very closely. We do put out a 

monthly report to Energy informing of their performance 

and coordinate our effort to make sure that we both 

agree as to which claims are still outstanding. 

Telephone interviews I think has been a 

fairly successful program. ORAU has done an excellent 

job at keeping up with these interviews. We've done 

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13,127 interviews for -- at least one interview per 

case. Many cases have multiple interviews required 

because there are multiple claimants per case. And 

we've sent some reports out to 12,000 -- almost 12,300 

drafts to the claimants. 

The capacity of 200 to 300 is well in place. 

The interview process is not the pinch point in this 

process at all, and I think it's a fairly well-running 

machine at this point. 

This is a histogram of the number of 

interviews done by month since 2002. And as you can 

see, it's sort of an inverse of the number of claims 

received from Labor. Where in Labor we had the big 

bolus here and then going down, you can see that we're 

going up. It's kind of like a reverse lognormal 

distribution. But you can see we've had months where 

we've done over 1,700 interviews. 

This is the statistics for where we are in 

the dose reconstruction process. We have 4,338 claims 

staged for dose reconstruction. And what that means is 

that the claimant has received a letter notifying them 

of one of the select-- one of the -- from ORAU telling 

them that their dose reconstructor will be assigned. 

We also have received some response from the Department 

of Energy indicating that there is some available 

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exposure information. And most often the site profile 

for that site has been done, or some other technical 

document that would allow us to move the dose 

reconstruction forward. 

We also have -- this is a cumulative process, 

so there's 4,338 staged. There's also 1,020 that have 

been assigned to dose reconstructors. That means that 

a dose reconstructor has physically been assigned. 

There's a name attached to that file and it's in the 

person's queue to be done. These claims are what we 

call our hoppers. We fill the hoppers, ready to move 

out, and they would be the next -- they would -- these 

would be very close to having completed dose 

reconstructions. 

We've sent out over 2,700 draft reports to 

claimants, of which 2,319 -- well, we sent 2,714 and 

we've sent 2,319 finals to the Department of Labor. 

The disconnect here is that we require the OCAS-1 form 

to be signed before we can move it to the Department of 

Labor. That can take time. A claimant has up to 60 

days to sign the OCAS-1, so there's always a slight lag 

between the number that we have in the hands of the 

claimants and the number that are in Department of 

Labor. In some cases where you have multiple 

claimants, there may be ten claimants per case, it 

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takes some time to accumu-- do all the close-out 

interviews and acquire the OCAS-1 forms. 

This is just a histogram that shows our 

production by month. And you can see within the last 

year, starting in April of last year, those 2,700 

claims have been put -- most of those have been put out 

in the last 12 months. Our production is increasing. 

The month of April of course is not complete. We're 

optimistic that this histogram will exceed the March 

production goals. We're working very hard to do that. 

And I think -- if you can bear with my imagination, I 

think you can see a nice trend going upwards. I might 

argue that a linear quadratic equation could be fit to 

that. But we are -- we are moving forward and moving 

towards our goal of 200 dose reconstructions per week. 

The final dose reconstruction reports, as I 

indicated, should mirror the drafts that go out, the 

only difference being the waiting on the OCAS-1's to be 

signed -- close-out interviews and the OCAS-1's being 

forwarded to Labor. So this fairly closely mirrors our 

experience with the drafts going out the door. 

This is a new slide I don't think you've seen 

before. It might need a little explanation. The X 

axis here is claimant number. As you may know, we 

assign every claimant a unique I.D. number starting 

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from claimant 1 and moving out through claimant 16. So 

what this portrays in blocks of 1,000 is how many 

claims we've done per block of 1,000 claims. So we've 

done 253 dose reconstructions out of the first 1,000 

claims we received. 

I think it's interesting to see that the 

slope does tend to go in the right direction, that 

being that we are concentrating efforts to move out 

claimants earlier in the process when we can. However, 

we also have a policy that if a claim can be done and 

processed with the information that we have at hand, 

we're not going to hold them up, either. So that's why 

you see a fair number of these being done, as well. 

But in general, I think the trend shows our efforts to 

try to move the earlier claims out in a priority 

manner. 

This is a little busy, I suppose, but it's 

really a combination of the three histograms I showed 

before, this being the number of claims that we've 

received from the Department of Labor, the orange or 

reddish line -- or the yellow line is the draft dose 

reconstructions sent to claimants, and the red line is 

the final dose reconstructions sent to the Department 

of Labor. I like to look over in this area where I 

think in the month of -- two months, February and 

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April, I believe, we actually exceeded the number of 

claims going back to Labor than we received from them. 

So in a small way, we're starting to reduce the backlog 

of claims that are in our possession. We hope that 

this trend continues and we can rapidly start to chew 

into the backlog a bit faster. 

This slide depicts the administratively 

closed analysis records that we have in-house. What 

this means is that the number of claims that have been 

in the hands of the claimants for more than 60 days and 

an OCAS-1 form has not been received and the claimant 

is not forthcoming with any additional information. 

Per our regulations, we can administratively close the 

dose reconstruction, send a letter to the claimant 

notifying them that we have done so, and copy the 

Department of Labor. At that point the Department of 

Labor may close the case itself. So there have been a 

number of these -- not a tremendous number, but there's 

14 claims or cases that have -- people have received 

administrative closure letters from us. 

Of course the dose reconstruction is -- can 

be reopened if the claimant signs the OCAS-1 form or 

provides additional information. 

 Dr. Ziemer? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, you have an extra slide on 

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your handout. Did one get skipped or --

 DR. NETON: That's possible. Which one is 

it? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, it appears just before 

this one in our handout. 

 DR. NETON: Just before this one... 

UNIDENTIFIED: The reworks. 

 DR. NETON: Oh, the reworks. Maybe -- yeah, 

maybe the... 

(Pause) 

 DR. NETON: Somehow they got swapped in the 

computer. Okay. This is a slide that's titled 

"Reworks". What this depicts is number of claims 

during those time periods that have been returned to us 

from the Department of Labor. They've been through the 

entire process. The claimants received the draft, they 

signed the OCAS-1, the close-out interview's done. We 

sent it to the Department of Labor and, for a variety 

of reasons, it comes back to us to be redone. 

There are a number of reasons. They can 

range from the claimant has developed an additional 

cancer in the time period that the dose reconstruction 

was being processed. There could be an issue with the 

ICD-9 coding, the type of cancer coding that was on the 

original referral. There could be differences in 

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employment dates. The claimant will look at it and 

point out that their employment record was not exactly 

as depicted -- those type of issue. 

It doesn't look like a large number, but if 

you add those all up, it constitutes about five percent 

of our workload going back to -- that goes to Labor 

comes back to us for a rework. We have committed and 

negotiated this, that we would like to get these 

reworks done within 60 days because the claimant's 

already received it, they've signed the OCAS-1. 

In general, it's possible for us to do that 

because many of these reworks are adding a month or two 

of employment or an additional cancer that isn't very 

difficult to reconstruct. However, there are some 

cases where there are blocks of cancers or unique 

cancers that require -- if we'd done the efficiency 

process, for example, for a cancer and then the claim 

has a very low probability of causation, and then an 

additional cancer comes in that would require us to do 

a full analysis, it would require a lot of additional 

work, and sometimes it's not possible for us to do 

those in 60 days. But we do our best to get those out 

-- out the door. 

I think you see -- it looks like there's a 

trend here going up, but I think this is just an 

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artifact of the number of claims we're starting to 

process. 

Okay. The phone calls continue to be heavy. 

OCAS has received over 29,000 phone calls since the 

program started. However, I've been told that since 

we've started issuing these quarterly activity reports 

in the mail to claimants, that has actually reduced our 

phone burden somewhat. The claimants, after the first 

round, got the idea of what was in -- what was -- what 

this activity report was all about and they're able to 

interpret it. Our phone calls have gone down somewhat. 

ORAU has apparently -- there seems to be a 

very large number there, over 84,000 phone calls. I 

believe this includes the interviews that are done, as 

well as scheduling of interviews and close-outs, that 

sort of thing. So it includes some of that -- routine 

operations, but nonetheless, they've taken over a large 

burden of handling the phones. They have their own 800 

number that the claimants are aware of and I think they 

do a pretty good job at that. 

E-mail continues to be popular, over 3,900 emails we've received. We try to respond to those in a 

timely manner. Hopefully we can answer these within a 

day of when we receive them, sometimes a little longer 

depending on the nature of the question. 

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Okay, recent accomplishments. Physician 

panel -- in the area of physician panels, 40 new 

appointments were made on April 12th to bring our --

NIOSH has appointed 215 total physicians for the 

Department of Energy's activities under Subpart D. 

Site profiles continue to be developed and 

approved. I don't want to steal my thunder in my 

subsequent presentation, but we have four of the major 

DOE sites now covered with site profiles, those being 

Savannah River, Hanford, Y-12 and Rocky Flats. And as 

of Friday, we generated and issued the Iowa Ordnance 

Plant site profile, which was long in coming. I'll 

talk a little bit more in detail about that later on 

today. 

Quarterly dose reconstruction activity 

reports I alluded to a little earlier. Every quarter 

we send out an activity report that details the status 

of the claim to each claimant. We just finished the 

third issuance of those or third quarterly report last 

week, and I believe we sent out over 20,000 mailings to 

the claimants. I think that's been a very positive 

activity. 

The web site, if you haven't visited it 

recently, I would encourage you to. It's been somewhat 

redesigned. The site profile page that used to be part 

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of the dose reconstruction page now has its own page. 

There's some explanatory text in there about what a 

profile is and what the definition of facility is that 

we use for those profiles, that sort of thing. There's 

an archive page now for previous site profiles that are 

-- have been revised. So even if we -- if we revise a 

site profile now, all versions are still maintained on 

the web and it can be viewed by anyone who so chooses. 

The claimant status request is a new feature 

we've added. We've allowed now for claimants to 

request a status report of their claim via e-mail. If 

they send an e-mail to the OCAS box, they will be --

they will receive a written response from us. We try 

very hard to maintain claimant privacy with this 

process, and it was not -- it was virtually not 

possible to verify a claimant is who they said they 

were via e-mail. That's why if you send a request and 

we do some basic validation to make sure the person is 

either a claimant or an authorized representative, then 

we will send the e-mail -- the response directly to the 

claimant or the authorized rep's home address. In that 

case, if they haven't been the one to send in a 

response (sic), then there's no harm done. They'll 

receive a response that they didn't request. And we've 

been starting to get some of those in the door and we 

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process those in a fairly quick manner. 

The claim information page is updated 

somewhat, and I really an excited about this update. 

It provides some very good statistics. There's a flow 

chart there that has six boxes that depict where we are 

-- essentially a summary of the status that I just 

gave; how many claims in-house, how many responses from 

the Department of Energy, how many interviews, how many 

back in the hands of claimants, how many at Department 

of Labor, so it's a really nice linear flow chart that 

depicts what the status is. 

But what I really like is the feature that 

you can view all claim sites. If you click on the 

cases by covered facility, it is organized by state and 

you can look up where we are with every covered 

facility in each of those six boxes by site. 

So for example, if one wanted to know where 

we are -- we were with the Hanford claims, you could go 

to Washington state, find Hanford and find out that we 

have 1,865 I think claims from Hanford -- 1,875 claims, 

233 which have been returned to the Department of Labor 

with completed dose reconstructions. 

It's a dynamic site. It's updated once a 

day, so the numbers change daily. One needs to be 

aware of that, so when you quote statistics you have to 

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be careful on what day you're quoting the statistic. 

Okay, I think that concludes my formal 

remarks. I'd be happy to answer any questions if there 

are any. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Jim. Let's open the 

floor now for questions. Dr. Melius? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I have a couple -- about 

three questions, to be exact. The first question 

concerns the backlog and how -- explain a little bit 

more how you're sort of triaging the requests. I get I 

guess a little concerned. I was a little surprised to 

see that one new chart you gave with the -- the group 

of 1,000 at a, you know, time, where they were that --

we've got a lot of requests that are very old in there. 

Some of the first ones that come in that aren't being 

handled yet, and without knowing which sites they came 

from and so forth, it's hard for me to, you know, 

project how soon you get into those. But it -- could 

you describe a little bit more how you're balancing 

between doing -- assuming you're doing batches as the 

site profiles get done, but what's happening to the 

other cases that aren't going to get -- that are old 

but aren't sort of covered by the site profiles or --

either within a facility or because you're not doing a 

site profile on that facility for a while yet. 

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 DR. NETON: Uh-huh, where was that -- that's 

the one you're talking about (indicating)? 

 DR. MELIUS: No, no, I'm talking about the 

one where you broke it up by -- by thousands of claims. 

 DR. NETON: Oh, okay. 

 DR. MELIUS: That one, yeah. 

 DR. NETON: Okay. Both slides I guess are 

sort of connected. There are 4,000 claims that are 

staged -- what we call staged for dose reconstruction. 

And really that -- that's a function of where we are 

with our technical documentation on the programs. We 

have -- those four major site profiles for DOE 

facilities that I mentioned constitute roughly about 40 

percent of our cases that we can start to do. It 

doesn't mean we can do them all, but at least we're 

eligible now. We've got a pretty good handle on the 

technical issues at those sites, so those are going to 

be in the hopper, so to speak, we like to call them. 

But we also have other technical 

documentation that we can use. I believe at the last 

Board meeting I talked about these complex-wide 

approaches where we take a DOE complex-wide or an 

Atomic Weapons Employer complex-wide where we assign 

these very large exposures and we can move certain 

claims through that way. Those tend to go across many 

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sites. I've forgotten the statistic now, but the last 

time I looked, we had done dose reconstructions at 65 

different sites. I think it's much more than that now, 

and that's primarily a function of these complex-wide 

documents. 

But the bulk of the ones that you're going to 

see move forward are the ones that are covered by these 

-- the major site profiles. Savannah River Site, we've 

done a large number. Hanford, we're moving forward 

now. We expect Rocky Flats to start moving. Iowa 

should start moving. So that's sort of how we triage 

them. 

 DR. MELIUS: 'Cause if I look at this chart, 

it looks as if you've taken the first 11,000 or so -- I 

don't even know where the cutoff is -- and just sort of 

treated them as one group that applied at the same time 

and -- or just going through that process rather -- and 

then you're sort of triaging by when they applied for 

the most recent, you know, few thousand that have come 

in. I guess my concern is that if we get -- as you 

start to go through this backlog, you get -- however 

long that's going to take, a year or more, I don't 

know, it's hard to say -- but that you're going to be 

left over with some people that have, you know, filed 

claims four or five years ago and aren't being --

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 DR. NETON: I hear what you're saying. I 

agree with that, but the -- the problem is, once you 

have a site profile and you can do it, you know, we 

will do these first because those are the older claims. 

But however, if these can be done because we have the 

profile, we feel that it's in the claimants' interests 

not to hang onto it and wait until, you know, someone 

else back here can get done. So we will move a claim 

forward if we can --

 DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

 DR. NETON: -- given that we'll put most 

emphasis on moving these first. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I guess I would just get 

worried if we got six months down the road or a year 

down the road and we still had 500 claims left in that 

first 1,000 that, for whatever reasons, aren't being 

dealt with yet. Meanwhile we've got a lot more recent 

claims that you're going through. And I don't -- not 

saying it's an easy answer and I'm just trying to get a 

sense of what -- where -- where it goes and, you know, 

what approach might be used to help that. 

 DR. NETON: I understand. We're very 

sensitive to that and we -- we constantly -- I think I 

mentioned this in past Board meetings -- are moving 

through the claims and looking at them to see which 

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ones, you know, can -- can be done preferentially in 

the lower numbers. 

 DR. MELIUS: My second --

 DR. NETON: Sorry, I think Dick Toohey might 

have an additional comment to make. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Dick Toohey, ORAU. I just want 

to remind you that we do have a small group -- it's 

only about four people, but we call them the 

supplemental dose reconstruction team, and their 

mission is to work on the oldest cases. They've 

started with claim number one and if it can be done in 

the absence of a completed site profile, they do it. 

Also, our other efficiency process is to look 

at some of the easily-compensable cases. For example, 

lung cancer cases with positive lung counts for 

transuranic inhalation. Those turn out to be pretty 

compensable without having to do a lot of work on the 

dose reconstruction. And most of those, also --

apparently, at least from what I've seen -- are some of 

the earlier cases. So we are -- it's not a huge effort 

on knocking out some of the oldest cases, but there is 

some additional effort going on on that. 

 DR. NETON: Thanks, Dick. 

 DR. MELIUS: Another one of my questions 

really may be a third part of that efficiency process, 

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which would be in Special Exposure Cohort process. Can 

we have an update on that or is... 

 DR. NETON: I'll refer that question to --

 DR. MELIUS: To Larry? 

 DR. NETON: -- Larry. I know. I know. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: We should just make that part 

of the progress report and say we're not making any 

progress. 

Seriously, the rule has been revised 

according to public comment, which we carefully 

considered, and it has cleared through our Department 

and we're waiting on clearance from Office of 

Management and Budget. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me insert at this point that 

I have just received a letter from Secretary Tommy 

Thompson in reply to the letter from this Board. Did 

we get copies of this to distribute? We just got this. 

Why don't you go ahead and distribute that. 

It simply says we, the Department, have 

completed our work on the rule and its publication 

awaits clearance by the Office of Management and 

Budget. We realize that potentially eligible classes 

of workers have been blocked from filing petitions to 

become members of the Cohort, and we look forward to 

publishing the rule shortly so that petitions may be 

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filed. 

So I believe that's all we can say at this 

point. This is from the Secretary of Health and Human 

Services. You'll each get a copy of that letter and 

copies will be available for the public, as well. 

You had a third question though? 

 DR. MELIUS: I had a third question. I'm not 

going to suggest we write a letter to OMB yet, but... 

My third question goes back to the interview 

process, and we had a working group that dealt with 

some of those issues and I think we reported -- I 

believe it was about six months ago or so, but is --

and I guess my question is sort of where are you in 

some of the sort of the quality assurance steps that 

were being -- that we recommended and I think everyone 

sort of agreed on at the time that were sort of being 

implemented that would allow for better -- sort of --

better quality control in that process as what's sort 

of an ongoing evaluation of that process and -- this 

may be something that we put on the agenda for the next 

meeting or something, it's really up to you, but I 

think it would be nice to get an update on that. 

 DR. NETON: Yeah, I'm not 100 percent 

familiar with where they are with that right now. I 

know that they've drafted some procedures. Maybe I 

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could ask Dick Toohey to inform us -- for a sentence or 

two on that issue. 

 DR. TOOHEY: I should learn to sit closer to 

the microphone. The procedures have been drafted. 

They're in internal review. Some of them are in 

internal review, some we've sent over to NIOSH for 

review. We also have our internal QA group who 

completed a semi-annual -- oh, everybody hates the term 

"audit" so we say quality conformance assessment of our 

operations in February, and that report is out. And 

they also took a look at how the interview procedure is 

working and what additional procedures or controls, if 

any, may be needed. 

 DR. MELIUS: I'd just suggest that we 

consider sort of a -- one of the -- maybe next couple 

of meetings consider putting the interview -- sort of 

an update on that whole process on agenda on that 

'cause I think in terms of our review of the individual 

dose reconstructions that would sort of be timely and 

helpful. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Henry Anderson and then Robert 

Presley. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yes, I just want to commend 

you for -- we're sort of getting into a routine on the 

slides for tracking, and I think they're very helpful. 

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I would only add two things -- and I find this one very 

helpful, but what you might want to do is even make it 

more complex, which I know you've tried to simplify, is 

one along the base there it would be helpful to know 

what are the time frames, because 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 

might have been in a four-week period or some of those, 

so some sense -- I like the slides that show, you know, 

kind of the dynamics of time, so I -- and this is 

somewhat time, but it's also -- at times you have a 

bolus come in, so 6,000 to 7,000 might really be a 

arbitrary split and I wouldn't want people to think 

that because their number is, you know, 2,001, that 

that's somehow -- they've been waiting a whole lot 

longer than somebody at 3,000, so that might help. 

The other would be if you do have your staged 

ones, you could put the bar on top so we could have a 

sense -- not -- completed is obviously the finality, 

but get a sense of how many in fact are moving versus 

just sitting waiting for something else might be 

helpful. 

The other is the phone calls. I think that 

would also be helpful to look at that over time or 

spread it out in some way so -- you'd like to be able 

to see that the load on NIOSH has been coming down at 

the same time the others are going up, where you don't 

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get that dynamic sense from just the totals. 

The other would be to add -- I think the web 

site certainly has become more user-friendly providing 

information, and it would be helpful to see the hits on 

various components to see are claimants actually using 

it more than they were in the past. I mean you put a 

lot of resource into that, so you'd like to be able to 

show that in fact that's been effective. 

 DR. NETON: Thank you, very good suggestions. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Bob Presley. Jim, on the 

fourth slide, the age of outstanding requests, from 60 

days to 150 days, are these outstanding requests -- are 

they more prevalent from one site or two or three 

sites, or are they pretty much scattered out all over 

the AWE? 

 DR. NETON: You know, we used to have that 

statistic on these slides and we took it off for this 

one, so now you've caught me a little short. I would 

say they're probably reflective of a few sites, some 

sites -- I can't give you the exact details. I know 

that at Los Alamos we have some issues with bioassay 

results. That's when I alluded to the database issues 

where we're working with them very closely to get the 

data into the proper form so we can get those numbers. 

But I honestly can't give you the statistics off the 

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top of my head which sites those are. I do suspect, 

though, that they're some sites -- you know, some 

selected sites that constitute the bulk of those 

delinquent -- what I'll call delinquent requests. 

 MR. PRESLEY: I'm just wondering if it would 

help -- if some of these sites -- if we put a letter 

out asking that a little bit more attention be given to 

helping these sites get their information in. 

 DR. NETON: I don't know, I guess -- I can't 

answer that, other than I know we coordinate very well 

with the Department of Energy. They're aware and, as 

far as I can tell, the appropriate level of resources 

appear to be dedicated to these efforts. It's not a 

resource issue, I don't think. It's really 

availability of the information. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Melius? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, along those lines, I 

believe on our -- one of the agendas -- draft agendas 

we saw, there was a -- I think Ted Katz or someone was 

going to give a report that had to do with access to 

exposure -- you know, dose records and so forth. What 

was that, Larry? I'm... 

 MR. ELLIOTT: That was a -- we had scheduled 

an agenda item for this meeting to have Ted report on 

matters that influence dose reconstruction. 

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 DR. MELIUS: Oh, okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: This was actually a report that 

we were asked to prepare for Congress on that subject 

matter. We had envisioned that report would be 

available to present to you all. We think it's very 

educational and informative. But unfortunately, that 

report is not available to speak from today. So 

hopefully next meeting we'll have that. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay, thanks. Could -- just --

it would be helpful, along Bob's question, to -- the 

next time you present this is to -- little more 

information on the sites that -- where there is a 

problem and we can get a better understanding of that 

and not put you on the spot by trying to -- making 

someone remember where --

 DR. NETON: We'll add that back next time. 

 DR. MELIUS: 'Cause if my memory's right, it 

appears you -- a lot of the backlog has been cleared 

and --

 DR. NETON: Oh, yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: We think there's a very good 

relationship here and we're working really hard with 

the DOE to be coordinated on this. And I think -- is 

ETEC -- is Boeing in that mix? Is that one of those 

sites --

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 DR. NETON: Yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- where we've got like 30 that 

are over 150 days --

 DR. NETON: Yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- and the issue is is that --

we're working with them and -- the Department of Labor, 

Department of Energy, to make sure that they're 

eligible in -- claimants, first of all, and then if so, 

can we actually get out hands on the exposure records. 

So there's a little reluctance in that regard but we're 

working through that. 

 DR. NETON: I suspect there's an individual 

story behind every one of those. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And I think -- also I would say 

that those that are over 150 days, there is an 

individual story, there's some circumstance relevant to 

each individual claim as to why they're that -- they're 

overdue that long --

 DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- and we're working with DOE 

on that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Any further questions or 

comments for Jim Neton? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. If not, we'll 

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proceed on the agenda. 

STATUS AND OUTREACH - DEPARTMENT OF LABOR 

Next we'll have the status report from the 

Department of Labor. Pete Turcic is here today. Pete 

-- oh, hang on just a moment. Comment from Jim Neton. 

 DR. NETON: I'm going to steal the microphone 

from Pete -- we'll add back Pete's time. I forgot to 

mention one important thing that we're working on right 

now, and that is connected with recent accomplishments. 

We're working to get IMBA available to members of the 

public through our web site. We will entertain 

requests for IMBA outputs and runs to the OCAS inbox at 

this time. We do -- we are aware, though, that it's a 

complex program and is going to need some assistance 

from us, more than likely, to guide a person as to what 

type of input we need. And we're working to that end 

as we speak to develop a template for people to fill in 

to request, via e-mail, outputs from IMBA. So we're 

working very closely with Oak Ridge Associated 

Universities to make that happen. 

In addition, we will entertain calls to their 

800 number for guidance as to how to submit a request, 

as well. I don't -- we don't believe that it's 

practical to do on-line -- on telephone with IMBA runs. 

It's just too complicated. So we'll work with people 

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on the telephone to nail down what parameters they're 

really interested in obtaining information for, and 

we'll put that in writing and then we'll issue a 

request via e-mail or regular mail, whatever --

whatever makes sense. We'll also of course at any time 

entertain written requests via regular mail to our 

office. 

Sorry for not mentioning that, but I think 

it's very important that I bring that up. 

 DR. ZIEMER: All right. Thank you. A 

question on that. 

 DR. MELIUS: I believe -- this is Mark 

Griffon's question -- (Inaudible) running out here, but 

there was I believe a commitment to try to make -- to 

make IMBA available to the Board members? 

 DR. NETON: Yes. 

 DR. MELIUS: Has that been resolved yet? 

 DR. NETON: No, not yet, but we're working 

very diligently to work through the licensing issues. 

I believe that we're close, but at this time a decision 

has not been made how that will work. That's the best 

I can say. 

 DR. MELIUS: How soon will we have a 

decision? 

 DR. NETON: Larry, can you help me with that? 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: As soon as we can get it to 

you. We want it sooner. We realize that the Board 

needs IMBA, your contractor needs IMBA, and each --

each of those two entities, as well as our contractor. 

We are currently operating under a different user's 

license agreement and we have to put all of that into 

place. So as soon as we can work out those details --

we're full aware of the Board's time schedule for 

reviewing dose reconstructions. You want to get 

started on that, and to do that you have to have IMBA. 

We realize that. So we're working as diligently as we 

can to get it to you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Now, Pete. 

 MR. TURCIC: Thank you. It's a pleasure to 

be here to give you a status update on the DOL portion 

of the program. 

The number of claims -- we're up to over 

53,000 claims. And as you can see, the vast majority 

now are cancer claims. 

And here's the status. This chart gives the 

status. It shows where -- the status of the claims in 

the process. As you can see, there's about 15,600 

pending at NIOSH, another 2,000 -- over 2,000 that are 

pending action in our district offices. So those would 

be claims that have not received a recommended decision 

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yet. One thing that's affecting that number is that 

due to our recent efforts in enhancing our outreach, 

our number of claims have -- received have considerably 

gone up. For the last several months we've been 

averaging anywhere from 250 to 300, 320 claims per 

week. And in addition, another aspect of that is that 

the claims are now also -- that we're looking at, 

they're far -- far fewer percentage -- far less 

percentage are non-covered conditions. So we -- you 

know, the number of claims are up -- is up and so is 

the number of claims that are covered conditions. 

Another 1,900 are -- have a recommended 

decision and are in the process of, you know, awaiting 

a final decision -- either review of the record or for 

a -- for a hearing -- requested hearing. 

And to date we've issued over 22,000 final 

decisions out of the total of 39,000 -- almost 40,000 

cases that we have received. 

The breakdown, recommended decisions, you can 

see almost 13 -- over 12,500 recommended decisions to 

approve benefits; 19,000 to deny; final decisions, 

almost 12,000 to approve benefits and 16,000 to deny. 

Again, 16,000 -- that number is getting closer, Larry -

- 16,035 that -- referred to NIOSH. We've issued 

payments in 10,619 and we're approaching $800 million 

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in benefits and some -- over $30 million in medical 

benefits have been paid. 

Initial decisions, again we've issued 

recommended decisions in almost 32,000 claims or 24,000 

cases. Again, there are 13,600 pending -- cases 

pending at NIOSH and we've issued what we call our 

initial decision in some 95 percent of the cases that 

we've received since the program became effective on 

July 31st, 2001. 

Final decisions, final decisions in, again, 

22,000 cases or almost 28,000 claims, and there are 

final decisions issued in over -- in about 56 percent 

of the cases received, you know, since the inception of 

the program. 

Again here's a breakdown to show -- that 

shows the final decisions. Again, 11 -- almost 12,000 

to approve benefits. Of the 16,000 to deny, as you can 

see, some 9,000 -- almost 9,600 were denied because of 

non-covered conditions; 25 -- 2,500 where employee was 

not covered; 700 and some the survivor was not 

eligible; and 2,200 was insufficient medical evidence 

to demonstrate a covered condition. And this number is 

going up, the -- now it's over 900 where the cancer was 

not related or had a POC of less than 50 percent. 

We track our -- we have -- do a lot of 

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internal measurement of our processes and our -- you 

know, have standards for the performance. And under 

the Government Performance Result Act, our standards 

for initial processing is for a timely decision. In 

this year we raised it from 75 percent to 77 percent, 

and the two standards that we used -- if it's a DOE 

facility or a RECA claim, within 120 days; 180 days if 

it's an AWE or a subcontractor claim. And as you can 

see, for this fiscal year we -- we did meet our GPRA 

goals for last year. 

For this fiscal year, which we made in -- of 

the decisions that were made, the initial decisions 

this fiscal year, 93 percent were completed in --

within those time frames and with an average of 92 days 

to complete that initial decision from the time we 

received the claim until the time the case is either 

referred to NIOSH or a recommended decision issued. 

On final decisions, it's -- again we have --

our standard is that we want a final decision within 75 

days of either receipt of a waiver of objections or a 

request for a review of the written record, and within 

250 days if the individual requests a hearing. And 

this fiscal year in the final decisions issued, 99 

percent of the cases met the -- those standards. 

Again, on -- we have a GPRA goal that --

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processing time for the probability of causation, and 

we have a average -- we hold our district offices to an 

average of 21 days, from -- 21 days from the time a 

dose reconstruction is received from NIOSH that they 

have a recommended decision issued. And as you can 

see, in the first quarter we met it within 99 percent 

of the cases with an average of nine days. And the 

second quarter this fiscal year, 97 percent with an 

average of 13 days from the time of getting a 

recommended decision to the claimant from the time we 

receive the dose reconstruction back. 

The status of the NIOSH referrals -- and 

again, we've received 2,213 that -- with completed dose 

reconstructions, 189 that they weren't com-- you know, 

dose reconstruction was not necessary. And that could 

be for various reasons. Most of them were early when 

we had sent the CLL cases and, you know, when those 

came back. Of those, the breakdown, the recommended 

decisions, 528 to approve benefits and 1,388 to deny 

benefits. Final decisions, 470 final decisions to pay 

benefits and 691 to deny benefits. 

Some Hanford-specific statistics. Again, the 

nature -- we've -- this is -- we had an effort in the 

last two months that -- with PACE to try to increase 

the number of claims that we have received from the 

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Hanford site. That has been very successful. In the 

last two months we've received over 275 new claims, of 

which 200 -- yeah, the increase in the last two months 

since -- since that outreach effort began, and now 

we're up to 3,565 claims received from individuals 

claiming Hanford as a work site. The breakdown, again, 

most of them are cancer claims and 192 beryllium 

sensitivity, 126 CBD and other non-covered conditions, 

607. And again, that is way down, also. Most of those 

were early -- early cases. 

The breakdown, final decisions, 153 to 

approve benefits, 557 to deny. Recommended, 160 and --

to approve, 785 to deny; 1,726 cases referred to NIOSH. 

We've issued 70 payments and over $9 million paid to 

individuals at the Hanford work site. Just in the last 

two months since our increased outreach efforts, we had 

an additional 16 cases approved for benefits, 32 denied 

in those two months, with 14 additional that have been 

payments issued and 159 additional cases in that time 

period referred to NIOSH. 

And the nature -- again, 70 payments issued, 

30 of them were for cancer, 40 for chronic beryllium 

disease and we have 100 individuals that have been 

awarded benefits for beryllium sensitivity and 

receiving medical monitoring. 

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The status of the NIOSH referrals from 

Hanford, 209 that we've received back, 205 with 

completed dose reconstructions. Recommended decisions 

in 28 cases to approve benefits, 138 to deny and 27 

final decisions to approve benefits and 33 to deny. 

Our outreach efforts, we've -- again, we've 

tried to -- been trying to greatly enhance our outreach 

efforts, and our goals are to identify potential 

claimant populations, solicit claims from non-filers. 

We've been tracking very closely and trying to look 

into various sites, more specifics of the nature of the 

claims. And where we're not getting the number of 

claims that we expected, we've been collecting a lot of 

facility information and to promote -- goal to promote 

public knowledge and awareness of the program and to 

provide assistance in filing claims, as necessary. 

Our district office -- our district offices 

have been charged with coordinating the outreach 

efforts of the district offices, along with the 

resource centers in each of those areas, and to 

research employers at the covered facilities. And 

we've been focusing on trying to increase stakeholder 

involvement in our outreach efforts with unions, media 

outlets, advocacy groups and health care providers. 

We had a pilot program here with PACE that, 

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again, has been very successful and I want to thank 

Randy Knowles again for -- for their efforts. It's 

been very successful. And we've had meetings, you 

know, with PACE here, public meetings. We've had a lot 

of media outreach. We've met with a number of the 

local law firms here. And based on that, our resource 

center has had -- just in those two months -- an 

additional 353 contacts have been made, people that 

have come in for interviews. 

Some of -- on a national scope, some partners 

that we've been working with in our -- in our outreach 

efforts, the Center to Protect Workers' Rights. We 

have a -- an effort there where not only outreach, but 

the Center to Protect Workers' Rights -- we've had a 

difficult time, especially with some of the 

subcontractors, and they've -- we've put together a 

program and it's been very successful. They have 

performed well beyond what is called for in the 

contract and, as Knut liked to point out, under budget. 

So that's been a real good effort where they've --

we've been able to get employment verification 

completed on a number of very difficult cases that we 

were having problems with that, you know, the records 

just didn't exist. And we were able to -- they have 

access to some record sources that have turned out to 

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be very useful in that. And then we're also working 

with them to try to increase and develop some outreach 

efforts -- one of the things we were just beginning 

discussions on is a national effort for construction 

workers -- national outreach effort to reach many of 

the construction workers that worked at the different 

sites. 

We're in discussions with the National Cancer 

Society and there's going to be links on their web site 

to the program to identify, you know, potential sources 

of -- that people may come to for assistance. 

We also have an effort going on with the 

Cancer Treatment Centers of America. This is an effort 

where we're -- a number of thing-- we're cross-matching 

-- we're going to give them a listing of employers at 

the -- different sites that we have identified and 

they'll cross-match on their records, and anyone who 

may have listed that employer as an employer, then 

they'll send a mailing -- a letter that we give them --

to that current patient or former patient notifying 

them about the program and the elig-- you know, 

potential eligibility for benefits. So that effort is 

going on. 

We have a strong effort with the California 

Beryllium Vendors. We've had a number of meetings with 

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-- with those folks to try to make them aware of the 

program. And in fact, one of our goals is to reach 

beryllium vendors across the country, particularly very 

-- we have gotten very little from subcontractors of 

beryllium vendors. 

And a -- we have a effort going on with the 

National Councils of Laborers, and that's been very 

promising. And we're also working with them on some of 

their trust funds that -- in order to reimburse for 

payment of medical benefits and also to identify 

potential claimants there. 

And we have an agreement with the Ohio Bureau 

of Workers' Compensation. This effort that -- we've 

had a number of joint claimants, particularly beryllium 

claimants up in, you know, the Toledo area and we've 

signed an agreement with the State of Ohio to do crossmatches of claimants, so -- also we're -- we have a 

process where we have reimbursed the State of Ohio for 

medical benefits that they may have paid for a claimant 

who then receives benefits under the DOL program. And 

that's going very well. In addition, there's a lot of 

exchange going on -- data exchange for -- particularly 

subcontractors at various sites in the state of Ohio. 

And just as a -- each of our districts --

we're in a process -- we've met with each of our 

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districts and -- along with the affected resource 

centers and -- to come up with a strategic plan for the 

next six months in our outreach. We have Jacksonville 

to do. We've met with the other three districts so 

far and we'll be meeting with Jacksonville I think it's 

week after next to come up with their -- their plan. 

Basically what that amounts to is our Cleveland 

district office and the affected resource centers, the 

-- for the next three to six months they're going to 

focus on outreach to Fernald and Mound, with the 

rationale there being that those two sites are closing, 

and also the beryllium vendors. Again, we've -- the 

number of claims from beryllium vendors has dropped off 

considerably and they -- we haven't had a lot of claims 

from subcontractors of beryllium vendors. 

Denver is going to be focusing on Rocky Flats 

and Los Alamos, and we're trying to do our outreach and 

tie it in with when the site profiles are completed and 

coordinate, you know, these efforts with -- with NIOSH 

and the site profiles. 

Seattle will be focusing here in -- at 

Hanford and in California, and our Jacksonville office 

-- right now, again, we'll be meeting with them to nail 

down in a -- week after next, exactly what their 

outreach is going to be. 

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Additionally, we have -- on a national basis 

we're going to begin doing some what I refer to as 

educational outreach. I think that we have not done a 

very good job of educating people of the process so 

that, you know, when we get these large numbers of 

decisions coming back, it's -- I don't think we've done 

a good job of explaining to people why two people that 

may have worked together -- one, you know, goes through 

a dose reconstruction, has a certain type of cancer, is 

being compensated; the person they worked next to is 

not. So we're -- we're trying to develop some 

educational outreach efforts there. 

The first one, we're scheduled -- we're 

trying to schedule is to go up to the Buffalo area to 

have such a meeting with the people from the --

particularly from the Bethlehem Steel facility there. 

And with that, that -- open... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Pete. I think you 

were out of the room during our earlier review of our 

minutes from our previous meeting, and then a question 

arose in the reporting of some of your statistics in 

our minutes. And I'm wondering if a similar confusion 

might not arise again. If we look at slides, for 

example, four and five of your presentation -- and I 

know that the specifics that I'm going to ask about are 

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given in later slides, but I think what happens is that 

as people look at these slides, they may get misled. 

For example, a bullet on slide four says 

cases sent to NIOSH for dose reconstruction, 16,035. 

The very next bullet says payments issued, 10,619. The 

casual reader may be tempted to assume that there have 

been 10,619 NIOSH cases that have been issued payments, 

so perhaps in the future we could clarify -- for 

example, of the payments issued, what fraction of those 

 MR. TURCIC: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- involve NIOSH. Similarly, in 

the following slide, cases pending at NIOSH, 13,633; 

initial process completed for 95 percent of the cases 

received. I don't know if that 95 percent is of all of 

Labor's cases or those NIOSH cases. 

 MR. TURCIC: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You understand? 

 MR. TURCIC: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So a little bit of 

clarification, really --

 MR. TURCIC: Yeah, we'll restructure --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- in connecting those with your 

later slides which are NIOSH-specific, which give the 

actual numbers. 

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 MR. TURCIC: Okay, we'll restructure that and 

try to make it clearer. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Very good. Yes, Roy and then 

Jim. 

 DR. DEHART: Roy DeHart. My question is, you 

had mentioned that in the process -- the legal process 

of going through, that there are hearings that have 

been occurring. Could you expand on that a bit, the 

justi-- not the justification, but the issue around 

most of those hearings? 

 MR. TURCIC: What -- once a claimant gets a 

recommended decision, one of their options is to file 

objections. And they can raise objections and, if they 

so choose, they can ask for a hearing. And then they -

- at the hearing they can present their objections and 

to date -- we're starting to get a number of hearings 

that are dealing with issues in the dose 

reconstruction. Prior to that, most of the hearings 

dealt with -- objections dealt with factual information 

that -- or a lot of them dealt with, you know, noncovered condition, why -- or why are you saying it's --

it's not covered. Now we're starting to get quite a 

number of requests for hearings that are dealing with 

the specifics on a dose reconstruction. 

Now the way that works is that DOL will have 

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to adjudicate factual information that goes into the 

dose reconstruction and the application of methodology. 

So someone can raise an issue that the -- in the dose 

reconstruction, either a factual piece of information 

was not covered -- then we would have to address that 

and either, you know, address it in the final decision 

or remand it back to NIOSH for -- to redo the dose 

reconstruction. Or they could also object to the 

application of methodology, saying that it's not --

wasn't consistent with other cases or whatever, you 

know, the objection may be. 

So far, we've gotten objections that range 

from that certain issues were not covered in the dose 

reconstruction and what we would do is we then go back 

to NIOSH and see how that was addressed, and then in 

the final decision would either be to address it, you 

know, at that point in time or remand. But we're --

we're also -- instituted -- and maybe at the next 

meeting I'll have some hard, you know, data for you. 

We've asked our hearing representatives to identify and 

report issues that are coming up as, you know, that --

that -- when claimants request a hearing. You know, 

what -- what are the issues particular -- you know, 

relative to the dose reconstructions that are -- that 

are being raised. 

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 DR. MELIUS: Actually first question's along 

those same lines and Jim Neton talked about -- I think 

you call them remakes or --

 MR. TURCIC: Reworks. 

 DR. MELIUS: Reworks, okay, whatever the --

and -- confuse me, but those are cases that have gone 

up -- this has nothing to do with the hearings. These 

are cases that have gone --

 MR. TURCIC: Right. 

 DR. MELIUS: Could you talk -- explain a 

little bit about the process --

 MR. TURCIC: Sure. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- there and what kind of 

issues... 

 MR. TURCIC: Sure. We found that in -- more 

often than we expected, the situation may change. For 

example, another cancer. The individual may have been 

diagnosed with another cancer that was not addressed in 

the dose reconstruction because they didn't have that 

cancer diagnosed at the time the dose reconstruction 

was done. So that case may have to go back to have 

that cancer covered. 

Another instance is that we -- we have 

sometimes -- you know, our district office may not have 

done a -- either a -- the form for the -- you know, for 

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skin cancer or smoking -- for lung cancer, and it may 

have to go back. There may have been errors in the --

or changes in the ICD-9 codes. So there are --

there's, you know, a number of reasons why these 

reworks have gone back. I don't think that to date --

and again, we are just in the process of getting the 

requests for the hearings on dose reconstruction cases 

in large numbers -- that we have remanded any on dose 

reconstructions. I'm not aware of any that have been 

remanded yet. 

 DR. MELIUS: One of the topics that Jim Neton 

mentioned was the employment history discrepancies. 

 MR. TURCIC: Right. 

 DR. MELIUS: That was the one I was sort of 

trying to figure out how that could occur, though it 

seems to me -- I mean I know one of the issues has been 

figuring out how the employment history matches up with 

the exposure records. 

 MR. TURCIC: Uh-huh. 

 DR. MELIUS: So is it related to that or is 

it related -- that you get new information or more 

information about the person's --

 MR. TURCIC: It could be both. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

 MR. TURCIC: It could be that we have gotten 

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more information. Sometimes we don't get that 

information till after a final decision and the 

individual asks for a reopening, and so we may get 

information -- additional employment on a number of 

cases. We -- we have the process set up because 

oftentimes in -- in NIOSH getting the exposure records, 

they find additional employment that was not -- was not 

verified up front. Those -- they continue working it 

and note it so that -- but then before the case can 

become final, we may have to verify that employment. 

You know, if that additional employment was found 

through records, that's very easy to verify. But if 

the additional employment was talked about in an 

interview, we may have to go back and redevelop that, 

so there -- there may be instances there that, you 

know, we need to rework the case. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Wanda Munn. 

 MS. MUNN: Thank you very much for these good 

statistics. Along the same vein that was discussed a 

little earlier with respect to breaking numbers out, 

I'm particularly pleased, obviously, so see the Hanford 

site statistics. I'm doubly pleased to do so because 

one of our nationally-elected officials was quoted 

publicly here recently on a couple of occasions of 

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saying out of 35,000 cases -- claims, only one had ever 

been paid. So I'm pleased that you have some more firm 

numbers than that. 

In the first Hanford site statistic, 

compensation figures, we had the same kind of problem 

that we previously mentioned --

 MR. TURCIC: Yeah. 

 MS. MUNN: -- in that it is not clear to the 

casual reader or even to me, as a matter of fact --

 MR. TURCIC: Uh-huh. 

 MS. MUNN: -- how much of this compensation 

is applicable to the concerns of this specific Board, 

so --

 MR. TURCIC: Okay, yeah, we'll do -- we'll 

break that out specifically, yeah. 

 MS. MUNN: As a -- as a sub-note, if you 

would break that out in the future. 

 MR. TURCIC: Okay. 

 MS. MUNN: Just so we know what our specific 

cases --

 MR. TURCIC: Okay. 

 MS. MUNN: -- are doing, we'd certainly 

appreciate it. Thank you. 

 MR. TURCIC: Okay, no problem. 

 DR. MELIUS: Another question. We're going 

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to spend a lot of our time -- this Board -- tomorrow 

dealing with setting up the individual dose, you know, 

review process with our -- with our contractor and so 

forth, and I was just wondering if you had any views on 

how that process sort of ties into your efforts at the, 

you know, Department of Labor and issues -- obviously 

we're not, you know, reviewing individual cases per se 

and -- but -- but issues may arise during that process 

that may affect future claims or other claims and how 

that gets done and I'm just curious how you view it in 

terms of your overall process. 

 MR. TURCIC: I think it's -- it's very 

important to our overall process, and we would like to 

see it as early in the process as possible. You know, 

it's a quality control function. I would much rather 

have issues identified that can be addressed, you know, 

early rather than waiting until -- you know, from a 

particular site that we may have 2,000 final decisions 

and then find out that we may have to reopen all 2,000 

cases. So as early as possible would be, you know, our 

-- of benefit to us. And you know, the Board's input 

on things like that would be very useful when we get 

into these hearings on, you know, specific issues 

relative to the -- you know, the dose reconstruction. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Gen Roessler? 

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 DR. ROESSLER: Wanda's comment, along with 

Pete's discussion of outreach, has prompted me to bring 

up something that's been on my mind for some time, and 

it goes back to something John Till told us when he 

spoke to us about outreach. It appears that Pete's 

program is doing a real good outreach with potential 

claimants. But it appears that there's a big 

disconnect, either misinformation or lack of up-to-date 

information, with others -- the Congressmen and the 

public and the media, perhaps. And going back to what 

John said, I wonder if -- I don't know if it's the 

Board's responsibility or somewhere we should have 

maybe a quarterly newsletter that's written that could 

be handed out to interested people. That's just a 

beginning thought on that. 

Now I know NIOSH has the web site, which is 

fantastic, but how many people out there -- other than 

us, and maybe including us -- what percentage of people 

really use the web site? And is it -- is there a 

statement on there that's concise enough to really 

convey the progress that it seems like is being made on 

this project? It's just a thought that I think we need 

to pursue a little bit further. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't know if those were 

rhetorical questions or if you want the NIOSH staff to 

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answer, but certainly thought-provoking ideas. 

Other comments or questions? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Pete, thank you again for --

 MR. TURCIC: You're welcome. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- updating us on the progress, 

and NIOSH. 

The Chair is going to declare a ten-minute 

comfort break, even though it's not on your agenda. 

But we will take ten minutes before our next speaker 

comes to the podium. So please avail yourselves of the 

ten minutes, but come back promptly. 

(Whereupon, a recess was taken.) 

STATUS REPORT - DOE

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, I'd like to call the 

meeting back to order, please. Our next speaker will 

be Tom Rollow with the Department of Energy, and Tom's 

going to give us a status report and update on DOE's 

path forward. Okay, Tom. 

 MR. ROLLOW: Good morning. Since I talked to 

you folks last, I -- to this Board about -- in the fall 

-- last fall, I think it was in St. Louis, we've made a 

lot of progress. It's been real exciting. I think the 

main messages I want to share with you today are that 

we've put a maximum amount of our resources to work and 

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made some great progress in processing cases for the 

Part D portion of the program. We have a new plan 

which I'm going to share a little bit with you today on 

how we get from here to eliminating the backlog over 

the next two and a half years. 

And just as a reminder to the audience -- I 

know the Board is well aware of this -- Part D is the 

part of the program administered by the Department of 

Energy. It has to do with Workers Compensation and not 

with a compensation payment from the Department of 

Labor. And it's not necessarily under the auspices of 

this Board, but is basically a sister program to the 

program run by the Department of Labor and the National 

Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. 

I'd just like to start out here and say that 

first -- as a reminder, the first bullet up there, DOE 

provides determinations on causation by qualified 

physicians on our applicants, and these are 

determinations that affect the processing of the cases 

to state workers compensation. The determinations --

as you're going to see in a later slide, but the 

determinations that we've -- that we're now producing 

on a weekly basis have increased, but not nearly enough 

to reduce the backlog. Now we think it's a matter of 

resources and some legislative changes and some rule 

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changes, and I'll touch upon those. 

Our plan to eliminate the backlog will take 

about two and a half years to achieve. That plan is a 

combination of increasing our current production, 

eliminating backlog. We need some Congressional help 

to do that, both financially and legislatively. 

Last bullet on this slide, DOE is maximizing 

our applicants' opportunity for state workers 

compensation benefits. Again, as a reminder, this 

program helps people to apply for state work comp and 

does not have a compensation payment associated with 

it. 

Just contrasting the two programs, Part D and 

Part B, for everyone's information, the Part D program 

administered by DOE is assistance with state workers 

compensation, it's -- covers all illnesses related to 

radiation and toxic exposure. If we look over on the 

Part B side, the Department of Labor and NIOSH-run 

programs have to do with radiation-induced cancers, and 

in some cases beryllium and silicosis, as I'm sure 

you're aware. And a large part of the radiationinduced cancer determination is the dose 

reconstructions performed by NIOSH. 

Back on the left side of this screen, we use 

physician panel determinations. NIOSH does enter into 

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the picture there because NIOSH helps us recruit and 

actually selects and certifies the -- or qualifies the 

physicians that serve on these panels for the 

Department of Energy. Lastly, we gather radiation and 

other medical and employment data at the sites. 

We also do gather data for the Department of 

Labor and NIOSH programs. In fact, Mr. Turcic -- who 

was up here a few minutes ago -- talked about the 

Department of Labor program. Almost without exception, 

every case that has been acted on by the Department of 

Labor and by NIOSH on that side of the program, we 

collected the data and provided that to them for those 

programs, both employment -- mostly employment data and 

also the radiation data that -- that NIOSH uses. 

This is a kind of a picture of where we are, 

just to -- and for purposes of summary, our process can 

be thought of as several different boxes in a time 

continuum processing these cases. There's an 

application made here, next step is for us to interview 

and work with the applicant to figure out what the 

illnesses they're claiming, where they worked. Then we 

go get records from the site. Once we have the records 

from the site, we put together a case, and once we put 

together the case, it goes before the physicians panel. 

This is a picture of the cases per week that 

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we've actually been processing and preparing cases for 

the physicians panel. So these are not cases 

completed, but these are cases prepared by the 

Department of Energy for the physicians panel. On the 

left-hand side here, these are cases processed per 

week, and down on the bottom is a time line. 

If you notice this dotted line right here, 

this has to do with some financial changes that 

occurred in our program last fall, but it also is about 

the same time I think I came out to St. Louis and 

talked to you folks, so at that time we were preparing 

about -- looks like about 30 or 35 cases per week for 

the physicians panels, the Department of Energy. Today 

we're actually producing somewhat greater than 100 

cases per week. We're averaging about 120 cases per 

week for the physicians panels. 

Let's see -- this chart -- as I was drawing 

this diagram in the mid-air up here, this chart 

represents the physician panel determinations, so it's 

kind of the downstream end of the process. This is 

after the physicians have actually finished reviewing 

the cases and a determination has been sent back to the 

applicant. And again you can see that in the early 

part of the program we were averaging somewhere less 

than five cases per week. And since middle or late 

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January, we've actually -- are averaging up around 30 

cases per week processing for the physicians panel. 

The reason that these changes have taken 

place are -- there's several reasons for that. One of 

the main reasons is we did start full-time physician 

panels in Washington, D.C. The early concept in this 

program when I first took it over about a year ago was 

that we'd use part-time physicians. NIOSH would 

appoint these physicians and we would put them together 

part-time, working in the field, coordinating 

electronically to rule on these cases. We have since 

found that it's very efficient if we can get the 

physicians to meet all in one place at one time. So in 

early January we started bringing physicians to 

Washington -- one, two or three weeks at a time -- and 

putting them together in Washington and actually 

serving on a panel where they can work together in one 

room. And the productivity went up dramatically in our 

program for doing that, and we're trying to get more 

and more physicians interested in working that way. 

Our plan to eliminate the backlog -- we have 

about 23,000 cases -- applications for this program. 

We've processed something over 1,000 -- I'll show you 

the numbers later in my package. But our plan to 

eliminate the backlog results from a four-month 

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comprehensive review which we finished about a month 

ago and has these aspects to it. 

As far as the regulations go, we have 

actually issued a new rule about a month ago. It's out 

for comment -- for 30 days comment right now, but we're 

actually operating to it, and that new rule changes the 

number of physicians on a panel from three physicians 

to one physician. Now what that means is that one 

physician will look at a package in an application and 

rule on it. If that is in fact a positive, that 

application package is done and that person gets a 

positive determination. If that application is a 

negative, then it would go on to a second and to a 

third review to give the applicant the benefit of the 

doubt to make sure that -- before we give them a 

negative -- that two out of three physicians agree that 

that was a negative physicians panel finding. 

The legislation component -- components of 

our plan involve changing the physicians' pay cap. As 

you may or may not be aware, the original legislation 

fixed the pay cap at a executive level three level, 

which basically comes out to be $68 an hour, and we've 

found that physicians doing this kind of work typically 

see two -- a factor of two or more times that pay per -

- on a per-hour basis, and that is affecting our 

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ability to hire and attract physicians to work in this 

area. 

Also we are looking for legislative changes 

to expand the hiring authority. Basically the --

there's some restrictions in the current statute --

when I say statute, I mean law -- in the current 

statute or law that restrict the physicians that NIOSH 

can nominate for this program, and so we're looking for 

some changes to the statute to expand that hiring 

authority. 

And then also there's a requirement in there 

for a state memorandum of understanding with each state 

before we can process cases in each state. And that's 

really kind of a legacy or an antiquity for the 

program. At one time it was thought that this program 

might actually rule on each individual case on behalf 

of the state, and at that time you'd obviously have to 

have some kind of agreement with the state to spend 

their money -- their work comp money or make their work 

comp decisions for them. 

The current program does not do that. The 

current program provides a positive physicians panel 

finding and then helps the employee make an application 

for state work compensation. 

Those legislative fixes have been recommended 

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to the Congress and we're looking forward to their 

action on those legislative changes sometime in the 

next few or many months. 

As far as budget goes, year -- in FY 2004 

currently we have a $33 million appropriations 

transfer. I'll talk a little bit more about that in 

another slide, but we've asked Congress to allow the 

Department to move money from other tasks inside the 

Department to this task, and that request has been in 

to the Congress since about January and we're hoping to 

get action on that soon. That will allow us to apply 

more resources and process more cases, which I'll show 

you in just a minute. 

In the year 2005 or FY 2005 we have a healthy 

budget, $43 million budget request in. And when I say 

healthy, as I've shared with you last fall in St. 

Louis, we under-estimated the level of applications in 

this program early on and got a slow start, and these 

are monies that will help us catch up in the 

processing. 

Lastly, we've also implemented or are in the 

process of implementing many process changes. We've 

increased physicians recruiting, working closely with 

NIOSH to try to get more physicians attracted to 

working in this program. The physicians panels are our 

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major bottleneck in this program, and that cannot be 

solved just by resources. We've got to find qualified 

physicians to process the cases. 

We're also going to put together a tiger 

team. The Department of Labor has agreed to work with 

the Department of Energy to put together a tiger team, 

and those of you that -- been around DOE sites for 

ten-plus years -- no, this is not that kind of tiger 

team. But put together a tiger team to help categorize 

and rate suggestions that have been made to date for 

this program and figure out which ones will give us the 

best bang for our buck and implement those kinds of 

changes. I'll touch on that in another slide here in a 

few minutes. 

Also we are prioritizing cases -- living 

applicants before deceased applicants, for example. We 

try to process those first because those may have 

medical benefits which can benefit people sooner. Some 

of the cases involve dose reconstructions that NIOSH is 

performing. Previously we could have sent those to 

panel without a dose reconstruction and then waited 

some number of months or a year later to get the NIOSH 

dose reconstruction. It might have conflicted with the 

ruling of the panel, so we're going to hold back on 

those cases and await dose reconstruction before we 

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send those to panel. That provides both consistency in 

the panel findings, as well as allowing some of our 

other cases to go forward while we're waiting for the 

dose reconstructions. 

The supply of physicians, as I mentioned, is 

our number one challenge or number one bottleneck in 

this program, and I've touched on these issues before -

- the inadequate compensation issue which is outlined 

there. Limited hiring authority is more of a 

bureaucratic challenge, but if you're interested, 

basically the law or the statute that we're allowed to 

hire physicians under kind of characterizes them as 

part-time workers, yet this is a two and a half year 

program to reduce the backlog, and we need physicians 

that can work hard, hot and heavy for us full time for 

two and a half years or more, so we need some changes 

in the statute to allow us to do that. I don't think 

there's much more to say on that particular slide. 

This is an interesting slide. I'll take a 

minute and explain some of the aspects of it so you can 

kind of focus on it. On the left-hand side is full 

time equivalent hours. And full time equivalent hours, 

for those of you not familiar with the term FTE, if 

someone is working one hour a week for you and a full 

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fortieth full time equivalent. Okay? So that's 

actually a pretty good explanation on how this chart 

lays out. 

If you see this -- the dark blue up here, it 

says 167. NIOSH has appointed for the Department of 

Energy program to day -- when I say to date, this was 

like a month ago because NIOSH actually sent us 40 more 

physicians in the past few weeks. But NIOSH has 

actually appointed 167 physicians to our program here. 

Of those 167, 129 are currently working actively in the 

program. And the difference between those two numbers 

is just basically some docs are on vacation or for 

whatever reason -- they got appointed to the program 

but they don't have time to work on the program, so 

basically we have about 129 docs that work full time. 

But 129, we don't get 129 FTE from them. 

They originally committed to NIOSH that they would work 

for about 16 hours per month. If they worked for 16 

hours per month, you'd get this many FTE -- I guess 

that looks like it's about eight or nine, ten FTE there 

in that brown bar. What we're actually getting from 

them right now on average is about four hours per 

month, so just a couple FTE down here in this purple. 

Where we need to go to accomplish our plan 

and to process these cases is we need 20 FTE by June of 

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2004, goes to 35 FTE in January of 2005, and we need 60 

FTE in April, 2005 and then to the end of calendar year 

2006 to make this program work. So that kind of gives 

you a picture of where we need to go. And this is --

these are big steps. These are giant leaps to get from 

this little purple bar here to those yellow bars, and 

it's going to take a lot of work on our part and on 

NIOSH's part to identify and put to work those 

physicians. 

Physician productivity issues, there were 

stumbling blocks or some challenges, some obstacles in 

the statute and in the DOE rule that was originally 

produced. I've touched on this before. The rule 

required three physicians. We're going to one. That 

we have seen near-unanimity of results from these 

panels. It's taken us two to four weeks to coordinate 

these three-physician panels by telephone and e-mail, 

and we think going to a single physician will give us 

some great efficiencies there, also. 

I talked about dose reconstructions, there 

was a possibility of double determinations or 

conflicting determinations with dose reconstructions. 

If we sent through a case today and then got a NIOSH 

dose reconstruction that disagreed with that case a 

year from now, that would have presented some 

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challenges for the program as to how to deal with that. 

Also it's much more efficient for our physicians panels 

to deal with a dose reconstruction if it's already 

performed. They can just look at it. In fact, there 

may even be a possibility -- we talk about it down here 

in the lower right-hand corner -- of some presumptive 

determinations and not even have to go to the panel. 

Say if we had a positive dose reconstruction for a 

certain cancer from NIOSH, why even send it to the 

panel; just give it some kind of blanket approval and 

move it on. So those are some of the things that we're 

studying. 

There's not much more I want to say on this 

slide. Let me move on to the next one. 

Physician panel rule, I've touched on --

provides a doubling of cases per physician. We 

calculate or we estimate that we'll get about a double 

-- a factor of two increase in our productivity going 

to a single physician's panel. Now you say well, gee, 

Tom, if it's one physician versus three, you ought to 

be three times faster. But it actually doesn't work 

out that way because there are negatives, and the 

negatives have to go to a second and a third physician. 

And if you take the number of -- the percentage of 

negatives that we have versus the percentages of 

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positives and you do some simple math, you wouldn't see 

a doubling, you'd see a different number. But we also 

think that there's more efficiencies, as I mentioned 

before, by a single physician working alone than having 

to coordinate with two or three -- with two other 

physicians electronically and e-mail. So we think that 

the -- actually going to -- change the number of 

physicians should give us a reduction in physician 

hours per application by about 58 percent. 

Also it will save us money. We calculated 

$37 million in physician panel pay because there'll be 

less physician hours spent on these determinations. On 

the flip side, we plan to put that same $37 million 

back to work again both in increased pay for physicians 

-- if we can get that legislation through the Congress 

-- as well as faster rate of production. So we're 

going to spend that money, so I don't want anybody in 

the room to think we can turn that back to the 

Treasury. We need to put that money back to work. 

The case development process, when I was 

drawing this diagram in thin air up here --

application, case development, physicians panel, 

notification to the employee -- case development 

process is a little bit back upstream. That process 

we're actually pretty comfortable with today with the 

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resources that we have available. We have pretty much 

tweaked and optimized that process, and I'll show you 

some numbers here in a few minutes. 

Some of the issues that we have as far as 

ramping up, when the funds are available, to processing 

sufficient cases to work off the backlog in two and a 

half years, number one, not enough case managers, but 

that's simply a resource issue. We know where the case 

managers are. We know how to hire them. We use 

contractors for this work and so they're very -- it's 

very quick to get them on board and trained up. 

Additional productivity improvement still 

available, we're going to bring in DOL/DOE tiger team 

to help us categorize -- we've gotten a lot of 

suggestions from different organizations that have 

looked at our program. I brought in an independent 

review from a company called the Hayes Companies last 

August/September time frame. I also did an internal 

self-assessment of the program. We identified 

potential improvements from those activities. The 

General Accounting Office, the GAO, has also made 

suggestions. Government Accountability Project has 

made some suggestions. And so this DOL/DOE tiger team 

will take all those suggestions, prioritize it, figure 

out the cost benefit, the return on the investment, and 

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implement the ones that make sense to implement. 

Process is not standard throughout the field. 

We are -- this program has actually benefitted, it's 

actually been blessed, if you will, by having a lot of 

records available in the DOE system. Some of that's 

due to security. Stuff got classified in the past and 

stayed classified for many years and it made it harder 

to destroy. In the other cases, DOE -- the DOE program 

is just a pack rat and it has retained a lot of 

records. 

In other cases, there are regulations for 

retaining records. For example, radiation exposure 

records have to be maintained for 75 years. So we're 

lucky that those records do exist. Because they exist 

in many different shapes and forms at different sites, 

the collection of those records, both to support NIOSH 

dose reconstructions as well as to support the 

Department of Energy's work, it looks a little bit 

different at each site as far as how those records are 

collected. 

Over the years the records were treated 

differently at different sites. Some of them have been 

made electronic, digitized. Others are still stored in 

boxes. Some of them have people's names on them. Some 

of them had employee -- you know, employee numbers on 

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them, so you have to go correlate those to the people's 

names and Social Security numbers. So it's been a real 

challenge all around the complex of putting these 

records together. There's probably some optimization 

we can do through some standardization of collecting 

those records, and we'll continue to work on that. 

Additional operational improvements and 

reprioritization of cases, I touched upon this a little 

bit earlier. We have -- we allowed our advisory 

committee -- our board, not unlike you, to expire last 

January, and we are in the process of reauthorizing our 

advisory board -- our new advisory board. This board 

will be focused more on the production end of the 

business and less on the conceptualization of the 

program end of the business. But we expect the first 

meeting -- we expect those members to be appointed 

sometime in the next three or four weeks, and we expect 

to have our first meeting -- we hope in the month of 

May. 

I talked about applications as far as 

prioritizing living applicants who are eligible for 

medical benefits. Some applications also -- the 

applicants will -- may never be avail-- eligible for 

workers compensation benefits, like survivors who were 

-- had reached the age of majority before their parent 

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passed away, and so those kind of applications may also 

be reprioritized to the back of the line so that we can 

get the more needy cases or the more compensable cases 

moving forward in the process faster. 

This is another picture representing the 

overall plan, if you will, the scope of the program. 

And so let me just take a minute to kind of explain 

this to you, kind of let our eyes study it here for a 

minute. On the left-hand side is cumulative cases 

processed, and I mentioned the word -- the number 

23,000. We have about 23,000 cases -- applications 

today, yet this -- this chart goes up to September '07 

and has numbers up above 30,000 on it. We're still 

getting applications in at about 100 to 150 a week for 

this part of the program, and so whatever plan we have 

over the next three or four years working off this 

backlog has to take that into account, those cases 

still coming in. 

The green line here is cases processed for 

the physicians panels. So this is mostly my people 

working with the sites to get the records and put 

together the cases. And if you look on this chart, 

we're somewhere right here before this point of 

inflection in the chart waiting for additional 

resources for Congress to let us move that money from 

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one part of DOE to the other, and then we can put the 

case production past this point of inflection and put 

it in this -- this increase right here and process 

cases -- about 300-plus cases per week going up that 

green line. 

The dotted blue line is the physicians panel 

process, which is much harder for us to manage, and 

it's not just a resource issue, but it's find 

physicians and work -- work smart in the physicians 

area so the physicians panels can process over 300 

cases per week. And we anticipate that that increase 

is going to lag the green line by some number of months 

as we make these changes and get up to speed. For 

example, I made the rule happen a month ago. I can't 

make the legislation happen. That's the Congress's 

job. And so we have the proposal over on the Hill, but 

it could be well into the summer or the early fall 

before statute changes take place that can help this 

program. 

This is just another picture of the plan, 

looking at it strictly from determinations per week of 

physicians panel. And so the left-hand side here is 

determinations per week. As I mentioned before, we're 

somewhere down around 30 or less than 30, so we're --

that's the solid line -- and this is our plan over the 

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next 12 months. If you recall when I was showing you 

that chart of FTE, how that stair stepped up over the -

- over a 12-month period getting more and more 

physicians FTE time, that's what this sloping line 

reflects. At some point we hope to be processing 

physician panel determinations greater than 300 per 

week, and that will allow us to work off the backlog by 

the end of calendar year '06. And when we hit that 

point in calendar year '06 working off the backlog, 

then we're basically working in steady-state time, so 

that's why you see a dramatic drop-off in physicians 

panel determinations because we don't need as many 

physicians at that point in time. 

Again, as I've emphasized to you in my 

presentation today, budget and legislation. We have 

worked hard on optimization up to this point. We think 

we've done a good job in maximizing the use of the 

current funds to do -- and the current physicians that 

we have to process as many cases as rapidly as we can. 

To move forward from here forward, we need budget and 

legislation, and I think I've touched on that 

adequately. 

These are the numbers -- and I can come back 

to the Hanford numbers. I think what I'd like to do is 

go past Hanford and PNNL and just talk about the 

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national program statistics here for just -- just a 

minute. We can come back and talk about Hanford -- I 

don't want to shortchange Hanford and PNNL, but we can 

come back and talk to them here in a minute. 

We have 23,000 applications to the program, 

23,600. A couple of things to observe on this chart 

here. Of those 23,000, we are done, complete, with 

2,140. Now we get -- we get complete in several 

different ways. Like Labor, we have applications that 

are ineligible. They applied for a disease that's not 

covered by the program, they applied for a facility 

that's not covered by the program, or they applied 

during a time period that's not covered by the program. 

And a large majority -- or a significant percentage of 

Labor's rejections are also in the -- in the same 

category. This also includes, though, physicians panel 

determinations -- looks like about 400 to 500, both 

positive and negative determinations. And then there 

are some situations where people withdraw -- withdrew 

their case for one reason or another. So we've 

finished 2,140 cases. 

Now just to kind of focus on this for a 

minute, cases awaiting development, 9,600. So what --

what that says to us is we have some 12,000 -- 14,000 

cases that we're currently working on, so we are 

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working 14,000 cases. If you were to look at this 

chart over time, over the last six months, that number 

was up in the high teens just four or five months ago. 

We have significantly increased the number of cases 

that are actually being physically worked. 

If you do a little mental math here and you 

take these 2,000 cases here that have been completed, 

you take these 1,500 that are in the physicians panel 

process today, and you take these 1,500 that were done 

with that are waiting to go into the physicians 

process, these -- these are the total cases that my 

people have put together in Washington -- assembled for 

these physicians panels -- and that says two, three, 

four, five -- about 5,000 of the 23,000 cases DOE is 

done with their work. DOE has finished their work on 

those cases. All they're waiting for now is the 

physicians panel, and so we need to solve that problem 

so we can move those cases forward. But that reflects 

a great leap in production since I think I talked to 

you last fall in St. Louis. 

With that, I guess I'll ask if you have any 

questions that I can answer for you? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Tom. Let's see, who 

has questions? Okay, Roy. 

 DR. DEHART: Thank you, Tom, for the update. 

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I think the -- we all appreciate the new information. 

Particularly I was delighted to see that there's a 

reduction in potential conflict between Subpart B and 

Subpart D with regard to requirements now of having 

some kind of case reconstruction before you make a 

decision on the worker comp side of the house. 

On the advisory board, if I'm not mistaken, 

you're asking for those participants to be volunteers, 

not to be reimbursed. Right? 

 MR. ROLLOW: That is correct. 

 DR. DEHART: I don't understand why you would 

do that when you're -- you're having problems moving 

forward, but this Board is not all volunteer, I might 

add. 

 MR. ROLLOW: That's information I didn't 

know. I'll take that back to Washington. 

 DR. DEHART: You may find it helpful. 

 MR. ROLLOW: Okay. Thank you. 

 DR. DEHART: One other thing. In talking 

with physicians, and I think you're aware that I've 

been actively trying to recruit the program, one of the 

common questions is the insurance issue. Members of 

this Board may not realize that malpractice insurance 

is not covered under this. We are not practicing 

medicine in reviewing those records. It's an 

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omission/commission administrative insurance, and also 

many of the doctors are hired physicians by 

universities, by corporations, by whoever they happen 

to work with and for, and their insurance wouldn't 

cover them if they're doing this on their own time. 

And what is the status of that consideration? 

 MR. ROLLOW: That insurance is in place, and 

the fact that you're one of our practicing physicians 

and you didn't know that tells me I have a 

communications problem that I'll take back to 

Washington and work on. 

 DR. DEHART: It's been about two months since 

I've done a case, so that may be why, but thank you 

anyway. 

 MR. ROLLOW: Yes, sir. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, then Tony. 

 DR. MELIUS: Hoping that Larry will assure us 

that this advisory panel is not going to expire -- had 

us a little bit concerned there for a second, Tom. 

I just wanted like first to clarify for the 

record one issue, I think it was the reference to what 

Wanda said during the previous -- when Department of 

Labor was presenting. The quote -- the data from 

Senator Cantwell was in reference to this program, 

Subpart D, and refers to -- I think at least as of a 

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few weeks ago, one person had gone through the entire 

program and got to the point of compensation. Now 

there's issues, not to belabor them, of what the intent 

of this program is and so forth, but that is an 

accurate -- accurate figure that Senator Cantwell was 

saying and it was something that Department of Energy, 

you know, testified about a few weeks ago -- at least 

former staff people at the Department of Energy -- do 

that. 

One of the question I had is -- relates to 

some of your appropriations issues that you mentioned 

about cutting back staff and -- and so forth if you 

don't get the reprogramming. Are these staff at all 

involved in activities related to this program? 

 MR. ROLLOW: In my slides there may have been 

a couple of words that I didn't talk about today which 

talk about making some cut-backs later in the year if 

we don't see the appropriations. Is that what you're--

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 MR. ROLLOW: -- talking about? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 MR. ROLLOW: Yes, those would be staff that 

work for us through the M&O contractors at the DOE 

sites that collect records. 

 DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

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 MR. ROLLOW: In other words, we're -- in the 

records collection area we're working at a rate that 

exceeds a level budget, if you will, in anticipation of 

seeing this $33 million reappropriation. If we don't 

see it, we'll have to start laying off staff in the 

next few months at sites. 

 DR. MELIUS: So that would mean that the 

records coming to NIOSH would be cut back also? 

 MR. ROLLOW: That's a good question. We have 

from day one, since I took over this program about a 

year ago, I made the decision to put my customers 

first, which was NIOSH and Department of Labor, and we 

have never wavered in that -- on that commitment. And 

there are many reasons for that, but one was that their 

program was more mature and moving faster than ours was 

and so right now my intentions would be to continue 

that commitment and to put NIOSH and Department of 

Labor information requests first. But as I start to 

run out of resources, anything can happen. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Tony? 

 MR. ROLLOW: Let me, if I could, also, just 

to add the -- the statement of one person has received 

compensation. Let me just clarify that if I could for 

the Board. We actually see that as light at the end of 

the tunnel, as a great -- great achievement. The first 

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person at the end of our program has received 

compensation from the state workers compensation 

program. When people say well, gee, you spent -- and 

they quote $70-something million, it's really more in 

the $50 million in setting up this program, and you try 

to divide that by a denominator of one, then it says 

okay, $50 million to get, you know, one case $15,000. 

That's not what actually has happened. What I just 

showed you here is that -- I can't make this thing go 

backward; there we go -- what I just showed you here 

was that as far as the numbers go, there's a lot of 

activity that's happening in the process. And not the 

least of which is that 14,000 cases are being worked on 

right now. So when you look at numerators and 

denominators, you need to divide by 14,000 or some much 

larger number than just one number in state workers 

comp. 

We also expect many of these positives --

right now our positives are standing at 163. One can 

forecast that within the next four, five or six months 

those positives might reach 1,000. And we expect many 

of those to also result in financial compensation. 

Now let me also be clear. We don't control 

the financial compensation. That is controlled by 

state process; it's different in every state. The 

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Secretary puts us in a position for maximizing the 

probability of that compensation by ordering current 

contractors not to contest a claim. But the states and 

state laws actually govern that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think, Tony, you're next and 

then Leon. 

 DR. ANDRADE: Right. Perhaps I missed it 

during the course of your presentation, but during a 

change in -- a reprogramming action, the money has to 

come from somewhere. Did you mention where that 

somewhere was, what it was, and given whatever its 

origin may be, what your own personal assessment is 

that the reprogramming is likely? 

 MR. ROLLOW: Let me make just a couple of 

points on that. First of all, as far as the sources 

go, I'm the guy running the workers comp program and 

I've not spent a lot of time worrying about or studying 

where it comes from. Now holistically, I do represent 

the Department of Energy, and the Department of Energy 

of course is very much aware and concerned of that. 

And also our friends on the Hill in Congress look very 

close at that also because there are many projects in 

the Department of Energy besides the workers comp 

arena, and many, many more considerations need to go 

into those decisions as to where and when you move 

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money. 

From my standpoint, though, I do believe that 

the sources that were identified, a large part of them 

were like construction projects where the money was not 

used and now just needs Congressional approval to go 

use let's say excess or leftover money from an earlier 

project, use them in this project. In a couple of 

cases it may represent projects that will not get 

moving as fast this year as they -- as some may --

would like and therefore the Department says well, 

let's use this year's money from that project on Mr. 

Rollow's project and -- but I do think there's a high 

probability that the -- that our friends in Congress 

will agree that the sources, compared to the use of 

this money for this program, would be acceptable to 

them. So I do not expect that to be a stumbling block. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Leon? 

 MR. OWENS: Mr. Rollow, I've had several 

occasions to meet with you, talk with you, and I guess 

programs are measured in terms of success. And in 

regard to Subpart B and Subpart D, I guess we would 

measure them based on actual cases and claims that were 

paid for the individual workers and/or the survivors. 

And as I listened to your presentation, I think we know 

that there is one glaring deficiency at a lot of the 

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sites in regard to a willing payer. And after reading 

the Hayes report and reading the report by the Office 

of Management and Budget, I think both of those point 

to that as a deficiency. 

I'm also aware under the former leadership at 

the Department there was not as much interest in 

addressing the willing payer issue. I know 

specifically at my plant, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion 

Plant, for those workers who do not have a covered 

cancer, do not fall under Subpart B, there is basically 

no one there, even if they receive a positive 

physicians panel finding. 

As part of the overall programmatic changes 

that have been made, has the Department considered a 

legislative fix to the willing payer issue coming from 

the Department -- not just from the standpoint of 

processing these claims and then getting an individual 

to the point where they have a piece of paper that is 

of no value? 

 MR. ROLLOW: That's a good question. Let me 

talk globally about the program at large and then I'll 

just touch upon Paducah here before we finish. The 

willing payer question, just to frame that up for 

everybody's information, is a term that was coined to 

describe a situation where if the Department -- the 

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physicians panels give a positive finding to an 

individual, to an applicant, and that applicant applied 

for state workers comp, a willing payer situation would 

be where the Department actually controls the 

contractor, has a contract with the contractor where we 

can tell that contractor when -- when Mr. Jones 

applies, do not contest his claim. And that would be 

to put the Department in the position of being a 

willing payer, if you will. 

There might be many payers for a claim --

insurance, state funds, other contractors -- that we 

don't control might pay. Willing or not, they might 

pay. But this situation is just the willing payer 

question that Mr. Owens is asking about. 

There've been several estimates that have 

been put forth as far as what percentage of our 

applicants might have willing payers, and those 

percentages have varied from as high as 86 percent to 

as low as 50 percent. And so I think, Mr. Owens, your 

concern is that there's a -- that there's a group of 

people out there that may get a positive physicians 

panel finding that says yes, DOE harmed you, and they 

may not be able to get any compensation for that 

because of the willing payer issue. 

The question is, what is the Department doing 

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about that. We are -- we are developing cases and 

moving cases forward to see how the cases react, if you 

will, in the state workers comp programs in each state. 

And we're also doing some work studying the contracts 

and insurance arrangements for all the contracts for 

the Department of Energy. That work'll take me a 

couple of months to do and that'll give me some good 

indication of where I can and cannot make orders to 

contractors to do not contest a claim. 

As far as what's the final answer, is it 86 

percent, is it 50 percent, we won't know that until we 

have more cases under our belt. The official position 

of the Department is that we will -- we're going to 

contract, we're going to the National Academies to go 

study this issue because it's not just a mechanical 

question of how many cases are covered. It's also a 

social question and it's a Congressional kind of legal 

-- legislative kind of question. 

Congress passed a law that said use the state 

work comp system. The state work comp system in our 

country does not answer that kind of willing payer 

question. It's different -- it's different in every 

state and in different situations. And there's a lot 

of debate that went on on the Hill and we studied this 

debate, and it's -- and it's -- we have to let -- we 

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have to let the law -- the law has to have meaning, and 

so we have to -- we have to abide by the law. That's 

what we're doing now. 

So the answer to your question is we will not 

be coming forth with any legislative fixes to the 

willing payer problem this summer because we don't know 

if it is a problem. We need to characterize that 

through the summer, through the fall. Probably will 

take maybe upwards of about 12 months to finish the 

National Academy study and have more experience under 

our belt. 

Paducah, this will be good news for you, I 

think. I guess I'm concerned you hadn't heard this 

before, but as far as Paducah goes, all cases for 

Paducah that -- for exposures that occurred prior to 

July of 1998 when the Paducah plant was turned over to 

USEC would be covered by Bechtel-Jacobs. In other 

words, DOE would issue an order to Bechtel-Jacobs 

Company not to contest. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Larry has a comment and 

then -- or Leon, go ahead and follow up. 

 MR. OWENS: I guess my concern there, Mr. 

Rollow, would be that it's just not positive if 

Bechtel-Jacobs is going to continue to be on the site. 

And so at the Congressional hearing that was held by 

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Senator Bunning, Bechtel-Jacobs at that point in time 

stated that they had not been asked to be a willing 

payer, had no knowledge of that. So I guess -- you 

know, we're recompeting two contracts right now, and 

Bechtel's basically not going to be in position next 

fiscal year, so I -- you know, I'm struggling just a 

little bit in the event that they're not even on-site. 

I can't see them agreeing to serve as a payer, but... 

 MR. ROLLOW: Today, as you mentioned, 

Bechtel-Jacobs is a willing payer and will be until 

those contracts are placed for the Paducah and 

Portsmouth sites, and at that time I -- prior to that 

time it's the Department's intent that Bechtel-Jacobs 

would be ordered through the contracting officer at Oak 

Ridge to continue that responsibility. But that --

that legal document has not been written yet, so you're 

correct -- you can't count on it until it's done. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Larry Elliott. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Tom, you mentioned your intent 

to establish an advisory committee. I assume and I 

think I'm pretty right here, that's going to be a 

Federal Advisory Committee Act chartered committee? 

 MR. ROLLOW: Right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: What perspective of -- balance 

of perspective do you hope to bring in that committee, 

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and how large or how small do you see it being? 

 MR. ROLLOW: Well, the committee, as -- in 

the notice in Federal Register, I think it was in early 

January, was described I think as having representation 

from -- from labor, from -- I don't know the exact 

terms, but the insurance company, the DOE contractors, 

the DOE employees -- in other words, it could be both 

labor or it could be employee representatives -- people 

in the work comp industry -- I forget the exact -- the 

exact cross-section, and we expect it to have about 12 

members. And we have already solicited and gotten a 

lot of recommendations into the Department of Energy, 

and the Secretary is in the process of making that 

decision to actually select the members, and then we'll 

send that over to the White House for the White House's 

endorsement. And so we expect to see that in three or 

four weeks. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Any other comments? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Again, thank you, Tom. We 

appreciate the input and updating us on the DOE 

program. 

It's now time for our lunch break. We're a 

little bit behind the agenda, but we have some sort of 

flexible time at the other end, so we'll go ahead and 

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take our hour-and-a-half lunch break and reconvene at 

1:30. 

(Whereupon, a luncheon recess was taken.) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let the record show that Mark 

Griffon has arrived back from the Boston Marathon and 

he did finish the race, and that's great -- good job. 

(Applause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: He's keeping the time a secret, 

so all I'll say is he finished the race, which is an 

accomplishment in itself. 

 DR. MELIUS: Finished it in time to catch his 

plane to get here. 

SITE PROFILE STATUS, 

USE IN DOSE RECONSTRUCTIONS, AND ROLL-OUT

 DR. ZIEMER: We're going to now return to the 

regular agenda, and we begin our afternoon session with 

report on site profile status, and Jim Neton is back on 

the roster. Jim? 

 DR. NETON: Thank you again, Dr. Ziemer. Had 

a nice lunch, I hope everyone can stay awake through 

this one. It's always tough addressing a crowd after a 

long lunch hour. 

I'm here to talk this time about DOE site 

profile status, where we are, a little bit of an update 

on what we've accomplished since the last Board meeting 

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two months ago. This is a companion piece to an AWE 

profile discussion that I'm going to -- I'm scheduled 

to present tomorrow -- I think morning sometime -- so 

if you'll hold your questions on AWEs till tomorrow, 

I'd appreciate it. 

The first thing I'd just like to start with 

is the basic definition that we've put in our site 

profile web page so that people are all talking about 

the same thing. It's a document that contains 

information used to understand activities and radiation 

protection practices at a facility, and also attempts 

to flesh out the source terms that were there -- what 

types of radionuclides were there, what quantities were 

there, what chemical forms were there. And if you can 

marry those source terms with the radiation protection 

practices, particularly if you had decent monitoring 

data, then one should be able to move dose 

reconstructions forward. 

One thing I'd like to say -- I think at the 

Board conference call we had, it was discussed -- I 

brought up the issue at one point that the site 

profiles did not intend to be comprehensive evaluations 

of incident reports, and they aren't. There are some 

incident report -- incident type information in there, 

some of the major incidents, but they are not all 

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inclusive for incidents. We maintain that information 

in a separate site images database where we collect --

particularly the major incidents, catalog them. The 

site images database is searchable by keyword, that 

type of information. Some incidents are -- reports are 

very large. I mean the criticality -- Y-12 criticality 

incident report's very large. So I don't want you to -

- give the impression that we don't include incidents 

in these, but they are not necessarily contained in 

these documents. Particularly when you're doing dose 

reconstructions for monitored workers, we wouldn't 

necessarily rely on the incident reports. 

Just as a reminder, you've seen this slide 

before, but they are limited scope documents used as a 

guide, a road map to dose reconstructions, and used as 

a handbook. Again, if one has monitoring information -

- urinalysis, TLD, film badge measurements -- one 

should be able to interpret, for instance, the missed 

dose that was there if a person was monitored. And in 

fact, if one looks at the internal dosimetry 

calculations that we do in many of these dose 

reconstructions, they almost presume that incidents 

occurred. 

If one has a well-established monitoring 

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detectable, we will assume that some sort of incident 

or chronic exposure occurred between those two periods 

and assign some sort of dose for that monitoring 

period. 

These are dynamic documents. They are 

subject to revision any time we feel we have 

information available to us that was discovered that is 

new and would affect the dose reconstruction outcome 

for any of our claimants. 

Again, they're a compilation of technical 

documents. There's six separate chapters. Each is a 

stand-alone chapter, so that when it's ready it is 

signed as a stand-alone document and if it can be used 

for a dose reconstruction -- to accomplish a dose 

reconstruction, it will be. We do not require that all 

six documents be signed and compiled for that 

individual chapter to be used. We call the individual 

chapters, if you remember, Technical Basis Documents. 

The compilation of all six would be called a site 

profile. 

I want to say a little bit about the internal 

and external dose areas. There's been a number of 

questions since the last Board meeting that I've 

received from various sources regarding the concept of 

missed dose versus unmonitored dose. Those concepts 

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are not necessarily addressed in the site profile, but 

are included in our implementation guides. So if a 

worker were monitored routinely, for every monitoring 

period we would assess and attempt to assign the missed 

dose; that is, what dose could the worker have received 

and had all of his measurements show up as nondetectable. 

The example I would use is if you wore a film 

badge and every month they exchanged the film badge and 

that film badge could see no less than ten millirem, 

for an upper limit we would assign a 121 millirem dose 

to that monitored worker. There'd be a distribution 

about it, but the upper limit would be 120 millirem. 

If a person were unmonitored, it is not 

necessarily appropriate to assign missed dose to 

unmonitored workers. In fact, it shouldn't be assigned 

unless one can demonstrate fairly conclusively that the 

missed dose would conservatively estimate the person's 

unmonitored exposure. An example I like to use in 

those situations are if a person was monitored for ten 

years and had non-detectable dosimetry results every 

time for ten years, and based on that they were removed 

from the monitoring program because they had very low 

potential for exposure and they did exactly the same 

job for the next two years, it may be appropriate to 

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substitute missed dose for that unmonitored dose if we 

can demonstrate that that job was the same. But we 

have to be careful there. It's not always an 

automatic. It has to be done with very good 

justification. 

I hope that clarifies it 'cause I think it's 

a -- they're difficult concepts to grasp. They're sort 

of abstract, but we do assign -- and this is covered in 

our implementation guides. We do assign missed dose 

and we are recog-- we recognize unmonitored dose. An 

unmonitored dose cannot necessarily be substituted with 

missed dose unless there's some very careful analyses 

done. 

Looks like I got a little tab out of place 

here, but we have issued six site profiles for DOE 

sites. I don't normally think of Huntington Pilot 

Plant and Mallinckrodt as DOE facilities, but that's in 

fact that way the OWA -- Office of Worker Advocacy --

web site lists them. They're considered DOE 

facilities, so I've included them in this list. Many 

of these -- these have been done previously. I think 

the new ones on this list -- Rocky Flats is completed. 

That will allow us to start investigating 834 claims 

from that facility. Oak Ridge Y-12 is fairly recently 

completed. There's 2,088 claims from Y-12. And just 

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Friday we approved the Iowa Ordnance site profile, 

which I believe there's around 400 claims from that 

facility -- 500 claims from that facility. So we've 

made some very good progress. I think collectively, if 

you add these up, you get somewhere around 7,000 cases 

that are affected -- that are from these different 

sites, and that represents somewhere approaching 45 to 

50 percent of our claimant population -- not 50, about 

40 percent of our claimant population is covered by the 

current site profiles in place at DOE facilities. So 

we've -- I think we've made some pretty good progress. 

I do want to point attention to the fact that 

I've said "issued" and not "completed". We do, when 

necessary, issue a site profile without having every 

single piece of information in there. We will reserve 

sections -- I think the Board has become familiar with 

this. For example, at Rocky Flats in the external 

dosimetry Technical Basis Documents the neutron 

monitoring section for certain time periods is listed 

as reserved. We just can't use it. It's -- we're 

still trying to work out the details of what the 

neutron exposures really were during those time 

periods, but in fact anyone who didn't work in those 

time periods and had low potential for neutron 

exposures, we could start evaluating those cases. So 

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that's the concept of pushing these out as soon as we 

feel that they're technically accurate, complete enough 

to address certain blocks of dose reconstructions. And 

then we continue to move forward with the completion 

after the fact. 

They're also subject to revision. The 

Mallinckrodt site profile is undergoing revision one as 

we speak. If you remember from the St. Louis Board 

meeting, there were several gaps in that profile. It 

did not address exposures from decommissioning 

activities between 1959 and '61; also did not address 

residual contamination from '62 to 1995. So we're 

trying to flesh out those blocks of information so that 

we can move more Mallinckrodt claims through the 

process. I think Hanford site profile's also 

undergoing some limited amount of revision. 

And most of these revisions tend to be 

additions to the information that we couldn't use 

before. However, occasionally a site profile will be 

modified from a technical perspective that may change 

the dose reconstructions that we have previously done 

with them, and of course if that happens, we are 

committed to going back and looking at all dose 

reconstructions that have been through the Department 

of Labor process and denied and evaluating what effect 

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those changes may have on the previous dose 

reconstructions. It's not an easy task, but we're 

committed to doing that. 

Okay, this -- Dick Toohey likes to call these 

a measles chart -- really tries to depict where we are 

in the process. And a green circle is draft complete 

and in comment resolution. What this means is for 

these sites all of the site profile, the individual 

Technical Basis Documents, are complete and in draft 

form and have been seen by OCAS, the Office of 

Compensation Analysis and Support, so we're in comment 

resolution. We have some issues to iron out with ORAU, 

some technical issues -- some are substantive, some are 

not; it depends on the individual site. But I think 

it's very interesting to note that all but five of 

these sites are actually very near completion. So if 

you add that to what I just showed on the previous 

slide, we have a fair number of these DOE sites very 

nearing completion. 

Once these are all done, we will have covered 

site profiles -- we have site profiles that will cover 

about 80 percent of the cases that we have in house. 

So that's a major success story, I think, on our part 

and on ORAU's part. 

I know the question's going to be asked: 

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Well, when are all of these going to be done? And 

that's difficult, but I think you could understand that 

if we have drafts in hand and we're ironing out the 

details, we're not talking six months, a year. We're 

talking a matter of months before all of these are --

should be finalized and ready for use. 

That doesn't mean, though, that there won't 

be small pieces of each individual Technical Basis 

Document that will need to have some additional work to 

flesh out some neutron dosimetry issue or some 

unmonitored period that we can't quite figure out 

without additional research. 

I'll point out that this Iowa Ordnance Plant 

is now done. It can be taken off the list. Iowa 

Ordnance is a unique site. All the major DOE sites 

have these individual chapters. Iowa Ordnance is 

somewhat handled more like an Atomic Weapons Employer 

site. It's -- it had a limited operation for -- from 

DOE activities, and so it's covered with one -- one 

document rather than having these individual approved 

chapters. 

There's additional site profiles under 

development. I've listed them here. ETEC is the 

Energy Technology Engineering Center a/k/a Rocketdyne, 

General Atomics -- I mean there's a number of different 

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facilities imbedded in -- or connected with that 

facility, but it's in California, 123 cases there. If 

one adds up these claims, that will enable another 

1,400 cases to move forward. 

It's not exactly 1, 400 cases, though, 

because some people work at multiple sites and so it's 

not an exact number, but it gives a fairly good 

approximation, within about 20 percent I think of the 

number of cases we could cover. Particularly at AWEs 

people didn't tend to jump around as much as maybe some 

of the DOE facilities, like the Oak Ridge reservation. 

So these are under construction. Weldon 

Springs is a key one for us to finish to be able to 

move a number of Mallinkcrodt claims forward because a 

number of people that worked at Weldon Springs when it 

closed down moved to Mallinckrodt. That's one reason 

why you're not seeing more Mallinckrodt cases being 

completed. We just have not finished this site 

profile. 

Again I know I'm going to be asked a question 

about time frame. I think the best I can say is we're 

hoping to have -- and this is a goal -- these completed 

by end of summer or early fall. That's our target goal 

for the remaining ones. 

Once we get below a certain number of cases 

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for a site profile, we have to make a decision. Do we 

really want to invest the resources to generate a 

fairly extensive document that requires a lot of 

resources, or is it better just to do an individual --

what we tend to call hand-crafted dose reconstructions 

at those facilities. I think after these are done, 

we're probably getting there. 

I'd just like to switch gears a little bit 

and talk about the site profile -- what we call site 

profile roll-outs and the worker input activities that 

we've been trying to go around and obtain. ORAU, at 

the last meeting I indicated, had written a draft 

worker outreach plan. That document is now in fact 

completed and it's available here for distribution. I 

don't know if it's been passed out to the -- okay, so 

you all should have a copy of that. This is a 

controlled document that was written by ORAU, reviewed 

by us and approved by us, that essentially sketches out 

what the intent of this program is, and I just 

reiterated what the bullets are here. It establishes a 

worker outreach group. That worker outreach group is 

headed up by ORAU, Bill Murray -- who many of you may 

know -- is the ORAU representative there. Vern 

McDougal is also on board. He's a subcontractor to 

ORAU from ATL. 

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They have also just recently hired -- many of 

you may know Mark Lewis, formerly of the Portsmouth 

facility. He is now actively engaged in arranging 

these worker reach-out meetings for us. We had a very 

successful, I think, meeting at Portsmouth last week. 

It was Mark's inaugural meeting and I'm very excited. 

I think that -- I see a lot of energy going into these 

meetings and I'm looking forward to productive input 

from these sessions. 

They do provide an excellent input for worker 

-- worker input. As you recall, the site profiles --

we were -- it was indicated to us that they were --

they tended to be written in a vacuum, which we agreed, 

so we needed to go out to the workers, meet with the 

workers, get their input, let them know what these 

things are about, what type of information we may be 

missing or what they can share with us. This has been 

particularly productive -- I mentioned Portsmouth was a 

good example of that, good information-sharing. 

The building trades of course also have a 

unique perspective on what was done and what was 

monitored that we need to incorporate. And in fact, we 

are committed to adding construction activity chapters 

to several of the site profiles to help flesh out those 

-- those gaps that we perceive to be there. 

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These are -- we haven't done any public 

briefings yet, although we may be close at one 

facility. Occasionally you go to these sites and it 

appears that the lack of information is fairly low 

about the programs in general, about the difference 

between Subpart B and D and who does what. At that 

point, you know, we have to make a decision. Is it 

worth just having a public outreach type meeting to --

for a general education session to get the information 

level up there. 

We do take minutes at these meetings. It's 

not to intimidate anybody, but it's just to, you know, 

capture what we've done on paper, and we'll distribute 

them to a representative at the meeting to be 

distributed to the workers. We take a sign-up sheet 

and basically, you know, get people to input and say is 

that what we discussed, have we captured the relevant 

issues that you -- you rose (sic) at this meeting. All 

of this is detailed in that plan that's been 

circulated. 

This is a listing of some of -- well, the 

worker input meetings that we've had so far. We've had 

five meetings. If you notice, we're going on our third 

one at Hanford on the 22nd -- that's Thursday after the 

Board meeting. Thursday morning we're meeting with 

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PACE, and I believe the Guard union representatives. 

Sometimes it's difficult to get everybody together in 

one room on the same day, and we're sensitive to that 

so we try to accommodate where we can. Of course we 

prefer to make fewer trips, but if it requires us to 

make multiple trips to a site, we will do that. 

So we've done Hanford, we've done three 

meetings there. Savannah River was our first one, as 

you recall, on November 11th. Portsmouth we had March 

24th and April 16th. And these are upcoming: INEEL is 

next Wednesday, I think, April 28th; Nevada Test Site 

is tentative for May 10th, and Pantex is scheduled for 

June 3rd. All these have been scheduled since Mark 

Lewis has come on board, so you can tell that he's 

ambitious to get things rolling, and we really 

appreciate his enthusiasm. I believe we have some 

tentative negotiations going on with the Mound site in 

May. 

One thing that's come up at these meetings is 

that the site safety reps need some training. This 

came up at the Portsmouth meeting and I've heard this 

from other union representatives before, that there's 

enough claims being distributed now and the workers are 

going to their union representatives and asking for 

interpretation -- what does this mean; you know, what 

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we realize that there's a need for this training and we 

are in the early stages of planning a workshop for --

we're going to invite union representatives from the 

major sites -- hopefully health and safety type 

representatives -- invite them to Cincinnati. We'll 

fund the meeting at our expense to come there and have 

a one or two-day session -- we're not clear yet on how 

long it would take -- to essentially have a dose 

reconstruction workshop. Start with the regulation, go 

over the efficiency process, talk about IREP, IMBA, how 

do you read an IREP input sheet, all that kind of 

stuff. And hopefully to give people a baseline of 

knowledge that they're comfortable with with the 

process that we're doing. 

I understand it's a complex process. It's 

very difficult to understand these things. I don't 

know that we'll ever get there where people will be 

totally comfortable. But to the extent that we can 

provide some education and input, we're committed to do 

it and I look forward to working with the unions -- in 

the very near term; I don't want this to drag on for a 

long time -- to come to Cincinnati and collaborate with 

us and to getting this information shared. 

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there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's start with Gen 

Roessler, then Jim Melius. 

 DR. ROESSLER: Early on in the goals of the 

-- doing the site profiles, you talked about meetings 

with old-timers -- I don't know if that's the word that 

was used, but the workers and the people who were 

around there, if they're still available, in the '40's. 

And at Hanford I think that's particularly important to 

get that perception from the people who were really 

working there during the '40's and maybe during things 

like the green run. Have you -- what success have you 

had with getting people like that? 

 DR. NETON: I'll be honest with you, haven't 

done a lot in that area, but we are collecting data and 

information. Matter of fact, just this morning I was 

speaking to a fellow that's at this meeting who we're 

going to interview. He had a -- interesting knowledge 

-- level of knowledge, fascinating knowledge about what 

happened in the early monitoring days for construction 

workers -- or more specifically, what didn't happen. 

So we're trying to do that. We need to do more of 

that. But you know, we'll see how it goes. Right now 

we've -- we're committed to interviewing two or three 

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and was getting ready to retire, but you know, our 

involvement there has been limited. We need to -- we 

need to aggressively pursue that more. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I have a few questions. 

The first is an item from last meeting -- actually 

several meetings ago, also, but from my understanding 

from last meeting was that ORAU was -- and NIOSH were 

developing a conflict of interest policy regarding --

 DR. NETON: Right, right, I'm glad you 

brought that up because it was in my notes and I 

skipped right over it. Thank you. 

ORAU has drafted a conflict of interest 

policy. We are -- we are still in the process of 

reviewing it, but I will say that the revisions that 

they've made to their conflict of interest plan are 

very similar to the concepts that are included in their 

dose reconstruction conflict of interest policy, so 

that any worker who had worked at the site -- currently 

works or previously worked at that site could not be a 

principal author of one of those Technical Basis 

Document chapters. That doesn't preclude, though, them 

from using resources, site subject matter experts as 

resources to help flesh out and author those chapters, 

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because we really frankly believe that they have to. 

Those people are the most knowledgeable. But the 

person who puts pen to paper or whatever you want to 

say is -- cannot be -- you know, have that conflict of 

interest. And for the new profiles being developed, 

ORAU -- even though the official policy is not approved 

-- is following that voluntarily at this point until we 

review and approve their completed conflict of interest 

modification. 

 DR. MELIUS: I don't know how to ask this. 

It would be helpful to see it and -- I mean you say 

you're following it, and yet we can't see it. 

 DR. NETON: I understand, Dr. Mel-- yeah, 

it's -- until we get the final form out, I can't -- I 

can't authori-- or issue it, but it's extremely close. 

I mean I imagine this will be within a matter of weeks 

that we can get this thing issued. 

 DR. MELIUS: Well, if we can get a -- 'cause 

I think it's a significant problem and frankly people 

are going to be skeptical until they -- they see it and 

see how it's being implemented. 

And just a comment on what you have briefly 

described is I think one of the major issues is going 

to be transparency if there are -- you're going to 

access or use people with potential conflicts of 

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interest or whatever you want to call that as a 

resource, at least there ought to -- there should be 

some transparency to that, and I think it's really 

transparency for all your references for this 'cause I 

think that would be --

 DR. NETON: I agree. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- very helpful and --

 DR. NETON: Yeah, anyone who works on the 

profile as a member of the team needs to file a 

biographical sketch -- you know, they will have a 

signed biographical sketch indicating that conflict of 

interest and what their role was. But you're right, 

until we get that formal policy issued, it's -- you 

know, you can't tell. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Can I comment here on that 

issue? We agree, I think, very strongly that whoever 

contributes to these documents needs to be so 

referenced. And I think you'll see this conflict of 

interest plan come out, as Jim has described it, that 

will make sure that the principal authors -- who 

interpret what is provided to them, what resources they 

have -- are not conflicted. And as soon as we have 

this conflict of interest plan approved, I assure you 

we'll give it to the Board the day it happens. 

 DR. MELIUS: We'll give you a day or two. 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: I'm committed on the record, 

the day it happens. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay, okay. Appreciate that. 

And I think also -- I mean references to people who are 

at these outreach meetings you're having, the so-called 

"old timers" that Gen mentioned I think would be -- are 

also -- I think it's helpful to the credibility of the 

process to see who was accessed. And as people go back 

and look at how this site profile that was -- you know, 

may have been used for their dose reconstruction, I 

think it really adds to the process. 

 DR. NETON: We are committed to putting the 

minutes of those meetings on our web site, as well as 

the attendance sheets. And I think we make it clear at 

the meetings that we plan on doing so, so if anyone has 

a problem with that, they can -- they can withdraw 

their name. 

 DR. MELIUS: You have me a little confused on 

another point, some of the clarifications you did at 

the beginning -- and this has I think some implications 

on what the Board's going to be doing in terms of 

review process. And you mentioned I think three 

different -- you have sort of the site profile 

technical document which you describe in a chapter, so 

forth. You have these implementation guides which I 

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take it -- I wasn't clear whether those were sitespecific or more general. 

 DR. NETON: No, implementation guides are 

more general. Like we have an implementation guide for 

internal dosimetry, an implementation guide for 

external dosimetry. Those are more conceptual-based, 

how would one perform a dose reconstruction giving a 

set of bioassay records or a set of TLDs, how do you 

correct for where the organ is relative to the badge, 

those type of issues. 

 DR. MELIUS: So -- I mean those are something 

we as a Board have to think about how we -- do. But 

then the third one was this repository of incident 

reports and so forth? 

 DR. NETON: Well, it's not just incident 

reports. I don't -- I don't want to give you a misimpression of that. It is what we call a Department of 

Energy site images database. We do a lot of data 

capture efforts at facilities. We have scanned I don't 

know how many thousands of pages of records, but 

they're all catalogued on our database as PDF files by 

site. So for instances if one wanted to look at all 

the records we've captured at the Savannah River Site, 

one could go to that section of the database and do a 

keyword search and pull up anything that had "incident" 

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or "accident" in the title and retrieve those type of 

documents. So it's not just purely an incident 

database, but the incidents are catalogued in that. 

 DR. MELIUS: Are they -- those referenced or 

indexed anywhere relative to the site profile technical 

document? I mean how do we -- how do somebody from the 

outside know what you have and -- information you have 

and -- and don't have and -- I'm assuming internally 

you --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, these are all indexed. 

 DR. NETON: We can generate an index of 

what's in there. I mean that are put in there, but 

they're --

 MR. ELLIOTT: And the Board certainly has 

access to that, as well as your contractor. 

 DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And if -- correct me if I'm 

wrong, Jim. If one is -- one of those are used in a 

dose reconstruction, that's cited in the dose 

reconstruction report, are we --

 DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- incident report was found 

and such and such a date cited from --

 DR. NETON: Yeah, if it were used in the dose 

reconstruction, I mean the first ones we did were the 

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 DR. MELIUS: But they're not referenced in 

the site profile technical document. 

 DR. NETON: There are some referenced in 

there, but it's not an exhaustive list. The problem 

you have with incident reports and investigations, 

where do you draw the line? Do you draw the line at 

these little episodic two or three-people incidents, or 

do you have to get to a critical mass of 20, ten 

people? We have catalogued the best way we can the 

ones that have reports associated with them. We also 

request all incident monitoring data from the 

Department of Energy when we issue a request for 

information. We also request incident information 

during the CATI. There's numbers of sources that bring 

these incidents to the forefront. However, in certain 

dose reconstructions where we have monitoring data, it 

is not necessary -- necessarily essential to have that 

small incident in there, for example, an internal 

exposure. If one assumes -- if you have two bioassay 

samples and we assume for dose reconstruction purposes 

that an incident happened the day after his last sample 

and what could it have been and still been nondetectable a month or two months later, that dose would 

be assigned to the worker in the reconstruction. 

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So any incident that would have been in there 

is covered in a fairly claimant-favorable manner. That 

way we don't -- we can't possibly find all -- reference 

to all possible internal dose incidents that occurred. 

If we know about them, of course we'll deal with them. 

But if we don't know, using the claimant-favorable 

approach, we will assume some type of incident happened 

in that period. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, but --

 DR. NETON: I don't know if that's --

 DR. MELIUS: No, I understand what you're 

saying. I think it just -- if the individual's name is 

not attached to that in -- I'm trying to think as --

 DR. NETON: Yeah, yeah. 

 DR. MELIUS: If this is like the -- you know, 

the base document that's supposed to sort of guide 

these individual dose reconstructions. 

 DR. NETON: Right. 

 DR. MELIUS: And those -- and that -- and 

you're using these other technical documents and -- and 

-- but that incident -- let's assume that it's a 

significant incident, whatever that means. Okay? 

Clearly you can't cover every single one, but there is 

no name attached to it. It would seem to me that you 

would want some system to be able to make that 

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association, whether it be with a building or a process 

or a type of job that at least would raise the 

suspicions or -- I mean, again, we're -- you're not 

necessarily going to pick up the interview process, 

you've got a survivor or whatever. 

 DR. NETON: Right. Yeah, to confuse matters 

even more, I can talk about a different subset of the 

data, which is this worker profile database that we've 

talked about in the past, and that is under 

construction, where workers' data are going in there. 

Right now, by and large a large number of the 

claims that we are working on have monitoring data. 

These are -- I'm not saying we're not doing any 

unmonitored workers, but until we get a number of 

workers through that have monitoring data where we 

flesh out what their exposures could have been, that 

goes into the worker database. Then we can start 

moving through these workers who may have been 

completely unmonitored. It just can't happen until we 

get some more experience at certain sites. I'm not 

saying we're not doing any of those because there are 

some techniques we can use to do unmonitored workers, 

but -- but we need to gain some more experience with 

the monitored workers who have bioassay samples and 

TLDs to understand what happened in those areas, to 

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then be able to say okay, this unmonitored worker who 

did this exact same job or similar job has this 

exposure, in our estimation. I'm probably confusing --

 DR. MELIUS: No, no, no -- well, probably --

I probably don't realize I'm confused -- do it -- when 

I'm asking these questions, but you are using this 

efficiency process. 

 DR. NETON: Yes. 

 DR. MELIUS: And so you have someone that has 

monitoring and you're -- assuming that's a fairly 

significant percentage of those that you're moving 

through now. I don't --

 DR. NETON: Yes. 

 DR. MELIUS: You know, the site -- and so 

they're being excluded based on -- their -- their claim 

is being denied based on efficiency, yet how -- then 

how do you know whether or not you've missed an 

incident? I mean 'cause an in-- a signifi-- a 

significant incident, where's that --

 DR. NETON: Like I say, we assume -- if 

someone had bioassay monitoring, let's say that the 

person was monitored every six months. We would assume 

that the person had exposure, even though they were 

non-detectable that whole period during their work 

history, and give them internal dose -- whether it 

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would be -- there's a judgment call from a health 

physi-- professional judgment call whether this was a -

- potentially a chronic exposure scenario which could 

be more claimant-favorable or an episodic exposure 

scenario. I mean it depends on the case, but we assign 

essentially missed dose for internal exposures that 

would incorporate or include doses from incidents. 

That's what missed dose really is, from an internal 

monitoring perspective. 

 DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

 DR. NETON: If I assume you had an incident 

the day after you left your last sample, then your --

and your next bioassay was non-detectable, there's no 

incident that could have been greater than that. That 

is the highest dose we could possibly come up with for 

that un-- for that monitored period. 

 DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

 DR. NETON: Those are techniques that are --

that are often used in the program. So there is no 

incident that happened anywhere in that month that's 

going to be less dose because it happened closer to the 

monitoring period. Am I... 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I've just been trying to 

see how the -- we, as the Board reviewing this program, 

captured that in our -- to make our process efficient 

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 DR. NETON: Right. 

 DR. MELIUS: 'Cause if we're going to 

approach it -- if we're going to wait until we get to 

individual dose reconstructions, it seems to me that 

that could be then a lot of work for each individual 

dose reconstruction to make sure that the information's 

complete --

 DR. NETON: Right, yeah. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- that we have for that -- that 

you used for that individual. 

 DR. NETON: I'll give you an example. About 

a year ago I think we gave a presentation where we said 

in certain cases where an organ doesn't concentrate 

plutonium, for example, and the person was monitored 

and had periodic monitoring, or maybe only one 

monitoring, an exit monitoring point and it was nondetectable. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. NETON: In the efficiency process, we 

could assume that the person had an acute intake of 

plutonium on the first day of employment, and bring it 

down to where it was non-detectable the last day and 

give the person that whole integrated dose for maybe a 

15 or 20-year work history. That would encompass any 

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possible incident that could have occurred in their 

work history. I can't imagine mathematically that 

there is a more generous assignment that one could use. 

 DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

 DR. NETON: These are outlined in our 

implementation guides, these type of concepts. So 

those incorporate -- they preclude the use of incident 

data because you're assuming that a worst-case incident 

occurred at the beginning of the process. 

I think when we start reviewing dose 

reconstructions I'm hoping this will become a little 

clearer, but --

 MR. ELLIOTT: I know this goes back many 

meetings ago, but we gave a presentation -- Dave Allen 

gave a presentation on internal dose, bioassay 

analysis, and how we proposed to do that under the 

internal dose implementation guide. And Tim Taulbee 

come before you and gave a similar presentation on the 

external dose implementation guide. If you want to 

revisit those, we can certainly consider that and bring 

them back. They're on the web site, but we can bring 

those guys back in and I think illustrate again what we 

were proposing then and how we're actually doing it 

now, how we're using that -- those methods and those --

those concepts. 

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 DR. NETON: Yeah, I would be more than happy 

that we'd come back and revisit the issue of how we --

internal missed dose and the efficiency process work 

hand-in-hand and are extremely claimant-favorable in 

many of these dose reconstructions. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, are you asking about cases 

where -- is there any assurance that, if we do have an 

incident report, that it's linked to a particular 

individual who might have been there or involved? 

 DR. MELIUS: There's a way of linking it, 

that's --

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah --

 DR. MELIUS: -- what is -- what method are 

they using to link to this --

 DR. ZIEMER: So let's say somebody worked at 

Y-12 at the time of the criticality accident. 

 DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Does the Y-- can you link the Y12 report with an individual whose dose reconstruction 

occurs during that period? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's that kind of question 

that's being asked. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes and no. 

 DR. NETON: Yeah, I mean --

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 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes and no. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You may or may not, and I think 

Jim is saying, for example, if it's an internal dose 

issue and there's bioassay data, then the fact that you 

made the linkage may not matter --

 DR. NETON: For -- for -- to do --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- that that's what caused it. 

 DR. NETON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: On the other hand, if it's 

someone who wasn't monitored, you might have a 

different situation. 

 DR. NETON: Yeah, and that's what I was 

trying to say. The unmonitored workers are much more 

difficult. I mean I'll agree with that, and that's why 

we're constructing this worker database -- these data 

points, but we're not ignoring incidents. We're 

cataloguing them, but we are also performing dose 

reconstructions without necessarily having to link the 

internal exposure to an incident. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But if a person worked at a 

given site -- let's say Y-12 -- in mid-June of '58 --

that was the year, I believe. I happen to know that 

'cause I was there. 

 DR. NETON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Did -- how would you link that 

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 DR. NETON: Yeah. Well, we have the entire 

report. We know how many people were reconstructed in 

that incident. It's in this database that I spoke of, 

the Y-12 criticality incident --

 MR. ELLIOTT: I think a more illustrative 

example is the obverse question. Where we don't have 

the ability to link, what are we doing? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. NETON: Right, and that's what I'm trying 

to say --

 MR. ELLIOTT: And we're giving the benefit of 

the doubt. We're not challenging them in that way. 

We're looking at the reasonableness of the allegation. 

 DR. NETON: Right, I think --

 MR. ELLIOTT: And if they say an incident 

happened in building X where I was working, and to our 

best efforts we can't find that that incident was ever 

recorded but we can get an affidavit -- okay? -- we 

pursue that line. 

 DR. NETON: Yeah, I'm --

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 DR. MELIUS: But the -- I guess my question 

is -- well, I think it's two-fold. One is how do we 

assure the people involved in the program, the 

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claimants and so forth, that these are -- you know, 

incidents are accessible to you, to the extent that 

it's possible to do this, and that in some cases there 

may be a reported incident that's not recorded. Other 

cases there -- you may not have -- again, 'cause it's a 

survivor's -- you know, applying, they may not have 

that information, yet there's some assurance that 

there's an attempt to find that out. And I think 

people's expectations -- some say that was -- would be 

part of the site profile 'cause the site profile is the 

-- what the person doing the dose reconstruction's 

going to use as their Bible. And so I'm trying to get 

a feeling for what is the other --

 MR. ELLIOTT: But this goes to the practice 

of dose reconstruction. It doesn't go to the site 

profile. The site profile is a specifically-purposed 

document that doesn't necessarily speak to incident or 

accident reports. 

 DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: But in the practice of dose 

reconstruction, we expect each dose reconstructor to 

ask those questions of a -- of the case and pursue that 

line of thought until they're satisfied. 

 DR. NETON: I think we need to start -- when 

you start getting into the dose reconstruction reviews, 

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it'll become more -- may become more obvious how this 

tends to work. The profile is a guide, it's a living 

document, a dynamic document. It helps the dose 

reconstructor with their job to be more uniform and 

consistent. It does not have to have every piece of 

data that were ever existing at that site for it to be 

used, and you see we oftentimes do publish them without 

having the entire document completed. As long as we're 

aware of what is missing in there and can't use it for 

those scenarios, I think we can use it. I mean it's 

okay. But one needs -- you cannot review a site 

profile in a vacuum without looking at its 

corresponding dose reconstruction that was done with it 

to see does that really make sense. Was a good enough 

job done on the dose reconstruction in collaboration 

with the site profile to provide a convincing argument, 

technically, that this is the reconstructed dose for 

the person. 

 DR. MELIUS: But I think we're also looking 

for how are you -- it's a concern of ours, it's a 

concern of yours -- is how do you maintain consistency 

among the cases so that the same type of information's 

accessed, and that's to some extent what the site 

profile would provide -- again, never -- not complete 

and so forth, and I'm sort of thinking as our process 

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 DR. NETON: Yeah, I --

 DR. MELIUS: -- it helps the process, I mean 

-- obviously would do that and -- while -- but I think 

-- somehow I think -- you haven't convinced me yet, but 

I --

 DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- the site profile, including 

this -- you know, these incident (Inaudible), would be 

one way of making sure that there was some consistency. 

And for, you know, the claimants also to know that 

there'd been a comprehensive attempt to get what 

information's available for significant incidents and 

to the extent possible -- do that. And may or may not, 

you know, be helpful for some of the individuals --

individual dose reconstructions that you do. I'll 

think about it some more --

 DR. ZIEMER: Let's go ahead --

 DR. MELIUS: -- and be more confused and --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- Robert Presley has a 

question. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Jim, do -- are y'all getting 

any feedback from say the -- on the site profiles that 

are out on the web site now, are you getting any 

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feedback from any type of old-timers group or what we 

call graybeards or anything like that? And if so, are 

there means to where that site profiles can be updated? 

 DR. NETON: We have not received a lot of 

feedback. I want to say that it's a handful of 

comments and not as many as we would have hoped, I 

suppose. At least -- you know, the union briefings, we 

do -- we do get feedback and got some valuable 

information. But from the write-in, there's been some 

-- some input. If they do provide substantive input 

that would change the approach to dose reconstruction, 

as I mentioned, we would certainly modify the site 

profile to incorporate that information, put that back 

out on our web site as a revision and then go back and 

view its effect on all prior dose reconstructions that 

were denied. We wouldn't go back and look at the one 

that were awarded. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: If I could add to that, I know 

that we've had one comment that resulted in our looking 

at the source documents for a site profile to make sure 

that we had a reference that was given to us by this 

commenter. And I think that was valuable because we 

did have it and we could tell them we had it. 

In another case, a commenter gave us a 

reference which we didn't have, and so we considered it 

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and added it and -- added it to; I don't think it made 

any change to the site profile, but it was another 

piece of information we hadn't had before. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Another comment? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I will just be brief, but 

I will catch you tomorrow on your outreach plan once I 

figure out how to read an ORAU technical procedure --

couldn't even figure out where -- what it was at first, 

but -- and may have some questions tomorrow, but I'm --

one -- glad that you're doing it and so forth. I would 

-- and I think the idea of doing some more educational 

technical outreach I think is good. I would urge you 

to work with Department of Labor in some of -- 'cause 

it seems that Pete Turcic and DOL wants to do some of 

the same activities. And I think to the -- given the 

potential confusion about the different programs, I 

think it's helpful if everyone can go out together and 

do that, you know, within -- within resources and --

and so forth. But appreciate you getting this done and 

-- I say, I may have -- if I can understand it, I'll... 

 DR. NETON: I apologize for getting it late, 

but it was literally just signed Friday. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Further comments? 

Mark, yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Jim, I just need a little more 

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clarification on the unmonitored -- unmonitored workers 

versus unmonitored exposures. And what I'm trying to 

get at here is the -- I mean I've interviewed quite a 

number of former workers that have -- that have said 

there's been various jobs, various time periods where 

they were coming close to their quarterly limit and 

were told or -- or volunteered, in a sense, or else 

they would be rotated out of their job, they were told 

to leave their badge in their locker when they worked 

for the next couple of weeks or else they'd be over 

their limit and be shipped off somewhere else. That's 

one example. 

Another example is if you have all this 

bioassay monitoring data but the source term suggests 

that there were exposures to other radionuclides, 

that's something I would consider a potentially 

unmonitored exposure. You know, the worker was being 

monitored, but maybe for the wrong thing. 

 DR. NETON: Uh-huh. 

 MR. GRIFFON: So I'm wondering if you address 

that in your unmonitored -- in your concept of 

unmonitored dose, 'cause you didn't really say that 

when -- in your earlier statements. 

 DR. NETON: Right. Right. The first example 

that you bring up -- brought up actually came to us at 

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one of our worker outreach briefings. A person came up 

and brought up that exact issue, that even in fairly 

recent times workers were pulled off a job as they 

approached the administrative limit because -- or not 

pulled off, but they weren't badged and they continued 

to receive exposure. And in fact we're looking at 

that. We're going to actually write a technical 

bulletin on this issue where if you look at the 

cumulative dose for workers, cumulative frequency 

distribution, it goes up and then all of a sudden 

towards that administrative limit, it starts to go like 

this (indicating). And you know something happened 

there because the workers may even still have been on 

the bioassay program. So you can -- you can fit that 

curve and maybe extrapolate back upwards, and we're 

looking at ways to accommodate that. 

That is not going to affect a large number of 

workers, but a very important segment of workers 

because those are the ones that are very close to maybe 

the compensation, you know, value, so we're looking 

very closely at that. That's not addressed right now, 

but we're looking at ways to address that and this is a 

good example of something that we learned at one of 

these worker outreach meetings. 

I think we're aware of it in general. 

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There's articles on this, but to the extent it happened 

and to hear a real-world example at a specific site was 

very interesting to us. 

The second example --

 MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) We've heard 

that at a lot of sites (Inaudible). 

 DR. NETON: Yeah, I'm learning that. Yeah. 

The second example where we have bioassay programs 

where the source term had nuclides that weren't 

monitored, I think -- I think that speaks to the site 

profile. I mean the internal dosimetry site profile is 

supposed to cover and flesh out the source terms --

what radionuclides were there; were there transuranic 

nuclides mixed in with the uranium source term; were 

there other types of materials. And then that would 

require the health physicist to go back and reconstruct 

those. In fact --

 MR. GRIFFON: Then this also get to the 

linkage that Jim was talking about. How do you place 

that -- the worker -- the individual that you're dose 

reconstructing with that source term? How do you --

you know? 

 DR. NETON: We know what years the source 

term existed and when the transuranic wastes, for 

instance, started coming in in the late '50's and so 

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if --

 MR. GRIFFON: And do you --

 DR. NETON: -- and the site profile would 

definitely address that. That's not an incidentrelated issue. That is just --

 MR. GRIFFON: No, no, no --

 DR. NETON: -- a fact -- source 

term-related --

 MR. GRIFFON: -- but -- but for a --

 DR. NETON: -- fact. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- work history, especially 

for --

 DR. NETON: Right, where the worker was, and 

if we didn't know, we will assume always the most 

claimant-favorable approach and assign the worker the 

worst source term that existed at the site if it's not 

possible to determine their exact location. That's 

fairly standard practice in this program. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Did you have an additional 

question, Mark? No? Okay. Question, Mark? Okay. 

Other comments, questions? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, thank you very much. Our 

agenda calls for a break. We've not been back from 

lunch for a full hour. Does the committee feel like 

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they need a break yet or you want to press on? 

(Pause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: I guess we're going to have a 

brief break -- five minutes. 

(Whereupon, a recess was taken.) 

RESEARCH ISSUES STATUS

 DR. ZIEMER: Our next item on the agenda is 

Russ Henshaw from NIOSH. Russ is going to give us a 

status report on what the Board refers to as research 

issues. These are ongoing issues that are of interest 

to us in terms of -- relating to dose reconstruction 

and related issues. So Russ? 

 MR. HENSHAW: Good afternoon. Can everyone 

hear me okay? 

I'm Russ Henshaw. I'm an epidemiologist with 

NIOSH's Office of Compensation Analysis and Support, 

and my presentation today will focus on two areas. The 

first is an update on research topics. And as I go 

through the slides you'll see that we will have 

projects underway within the year addressing each of 

the three research areas identified earlier by the 

Board as priority one topics. 

The second part of the presentation will 

focus on a review of compensation results of our 

completed claims through the first quarter of this 

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year. 

And Dr. Ziemer, if it's okay with you, I'd be 

happy to entertain questions at any time during the 

presentation or after --

 DR. ZIEMER: Sure. 

 MR. HENSHAW: -- particularly in the second 

part when we start looking at the -- all the data. If 

it's unclear, please don't hesitate to ask me to 

clarify it. 

Just to recap the Board's earlier 

consideration of research topics -- and here for 

reference purposes are the topics the Board previously 

identified as priorities. There are three priority one 

topics and two priority two topics. And I'll address 

each of those in the coming slides. 

Well, this topic -- and that is the 

incorporation of occupational studies into NIOSH-IREP -

- appears first on the Board's priority one list. 

Obviously the DOE work force itself, rather than the 

atomic bomb veterans -- excuse me, atomic bomb 

survivors -- would be the ideal source population from 

which to derive IREP risk coefficients. However, when 

the risk models were first developed for IREP, NIOSH 

judged that worker studies were insufficient from which 

to derive quantitative risk estimates, due to a number 

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of factors but primarily because the complexity of the 

factors in the study and also the often conflicting 

findings. 

The idea, though, was to periodically revisit 

this issue, and we intend to do that this year. We 

will conduct a feasibility study within the year to 

review the current state of knowledge of worker 

studies. And if it appears warranted from that review, 

we would then propose to launch a more formal 

evaluation leading to the possible adjustment of IREP 

risk coefficients. 

And this has been discussed often, the NIOSHIREP lung and smoking model. And as you know, the 

model's a priority one topic and it conflicts now --

the model in NIOSH-IREP conflicts with the model 

currently in use in NCI's version of IREP which is 

known as NIH-IREP. NCI introduced a new lung model 

late last year based on a new analysis of updated 

Japanese cohort data. 

The question was how to deal with that, 

whether to adopt the NCI model, not adopt it, adopt it 

in some revised form, what have you. Well, this year 

we will have SENES convene an expert panel to evaluate 

the new model, not to second-guess NCI's decision, but 

to evaluate it for its applicability in our program --

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whether it fits the unique exposure characteristics of 

the EEOICPA-covered work force. 

This approach could also be used for other 

model differences. For example, the bone model. The 

NCI model uses a slightly different latency function 

than we do in NIOSH-IREP. 

The other priority topic -- priority one 

topic on the Board's list is the -- is how cancers are 

grouped in IREP, the grouping of rare and miscellaneous 

cancers, including prostate cancer. Well, again, we're 

going to address that this year. In fact, SENES will 

begin re-evaluating the risk coefficients used in IREP. 

In particular we are asking them to focus on the 

possible discrepancies in the uncertainty 

distributions, especially revisiting the logic and 

consistency in how the models were grouped in the first 

place and wound up into one of the 32 risk models 

currently used in NIOSH-IREP. Again, this project will 

begin this year. 

There were two priority two topics on the 

Board's list. There really isn't much to report at 

this time. The age at exposure workshop concept, which 

has been discussed previously at Board meetings, has 

been shelved for the time being. But it could be 

revisited at a later date. The problem right now is 

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the lack of development of a standardized database. 

And frankly, lack of staff time to pursue the project. 

However, age at exposure is a potentially 

crucial and controversial factor, so we can't let it 

fall off of our radar. Later, by the way, when I get 

into looking at the claims results, I have a slide 

showing the compensation rates by exposure age. It's 

kind of interesting. 

Interaction with other work exposures was the 

other priority two topic, and quite frankly we've 

discussed this from time to time within OCAS, but we 

simply have not had time to properly consider it. 

There's nothing currently planned. 

There of course are other potential research 

topics other than the five on the Board's priority one 

and two list. One of those is DDREF or dose and doserate effectiveness factor. And as you probably know, 

DDREF is a risk modifier that's used to adjust for low 

level radiation doses just for the non-leukemia 

cancers. The leukemia models employ a linear quadratic 

function which it's thought adjusts already for that 

issue. 

Actually the first phase of this project is 

already nearing completion. The first phase was an 

extensive literature review that SENES has been doing -

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- they began that earlier this year, and we expect to 

have a progress report from SENES within a few weeks. 

Once the report is in, we will review SENES's tentative 

findings and recommendations. The next phase then 

would likely involve convening an expert panel, but 

we'll wait for the written report before commenting 

further on that. 

And then there is chronic lymphocytic 

leukemia. As the Board knows, there was a 

Congressional appropriation for research specifically 

on CLL. CLL is of course the only cancer specifically 

excluded from compensation in IREP. It's been 

traditionally regarded as a non-radiogenic cancer. 

However, there are other cancers with very 

little evidence for radiogenecity and we have 

quantitative risk models for those cancers in IREP. 

For example, prostate cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, 

and even some of the leukemia subtypes like hairy-cell 

leukemia that is granted some risk in NIOSH-IREP, 

whereas for example the United Kingdom compensation 

program excludes hairy-cell leukemia as well as CLL. 

At any rate, our Health-Related Energy 

Research Branch, otherwise known as HERB, will begin a 

research project on CLL this year. That will include 

an acceleration of two leukemia studies already in 

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progress -- two of their own studies -- as well as a 

meta-analysis of other relevant studies, both published 

and unpublished. And they also intend to convene an 

expert panel, and I believe their plan is to do that 

this summer. 

If the findings from this study warrant it, a 

quantitative risk model for CLL could be developed and 

incorporated in NIOSH-IREP. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Russ, may I interrupt you just 

a moment? 

 MR. HENSHAW: Sure. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I just want to make note here 

that each of these scientific expert panels or 

technical peer panels, subject matter expert review 

panels, whatever you want to call them, whatever the 

findings and recommendations are from those, we would 

then bring forward to this Board. 

 MR. HENSHAW: Right, thanks, Larry. Just 

following up on that, they're -- in addition to the 

Board's own discussion of procedures for modifying 

IREP, that's also spelled out in the probability of 

causation rule which requires us to submit proposed 

substantive changes to the Board for review and to then 

consider those -- the Board's comments, if any. Also 

to notify the public via the Federal Register, consider 

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those comments, et cetera. And then finally to notify 

the Board, the public and the Department of Labor of 

the expected completion date for implementing any 

change after we've gone through that process. 

There's a provision to deviate from that --

those procedures, and again, those are the procedures 

in the probability of causation rule -- to deviate from 

those if circumstances warrant. It does not explain 

what those circumstances need be, but that -- that 

option is there. And a substantive change is defined 

as -- a substantive change to NIOSH-IREP is defined as 

any change that would substantially affect probability 

of causation. 

Now this is maybe only marginally a research 

topic, but since we're doing it right now, I thought 

I'd report on it. As you may know, the guts operating 

in the background of NIOSH-IREP is a software program 

called Analytica 2.0. Analytica released a newer 

version earlier this year, Analytica 3.0, and it 

addresses, for our needs, some of the limitations 

inherent in the older software package. 2.0 was 

limited by capacity, and by that I mean the number of 

rows of dose input that IREP can effectively process, 

as well as the number of iterations used. You might 

recall that most claims are run using 2,000 iterations 

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in the Monte Carlo simulation process. Claims that 

initially fall into the 45 to 50 percent range but do 

not meet the compensability level of 50 percent 

probability of causation, we use a -- we up the number 

of iterations to 10,000 for a more precise estimate of 

probability. At any rate, IREP is currently limited to 

-- at 10,000 iterations, probably no more than 300 rows 

of dose input. What we're finding lately is that some 

claims can have considerably more dose input than that, 

up to 500 rows or even more. So 3.0 would solve that 

problem. 

However, before changing over to it, we need 

to thoroughly test the software to ensure that there 

are no inadvertent effects on PC results, either due to 

rounding or some other unanticipated glitch in the 

software. And we are doing that. We're working 

cooperatively with ORAU and SENES to accomplish that. 

We have a test planned that actually is probably just 

getting underway this week, if not last week. 

And finally, the research part of the 

presentation, I thought I'd mention the potential use 

of our own claims data. It's possible that an epi 

analysis of claims data could prove useful in the IREP 

risk model. I say possible because there are 

limitations and some very serious challenges to the 

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data, but it's still possible. 

To begin with, the data are currently 

limited. The results should not be construed as being 

representative of all claims, not by any means. But 

more importantly, the dose reconstruction efficiency 

approach carries very serious limitations, especially 

when attempting to assess dose response. 

Right now -- you'll see as we get into the 

slides, results are based on 1,325 completed claims. 

Of those claims, with the exception of the claims from 

Bethlehem Steel, a claim -- any claim that's 

compensable -- virtually all compensable claims use the 

underestimate approach. Virtually all non-compensable 

claims use the overestimate approach. What that means, 

for my purpose -- our purposes for trying to do an 

epidemiological analysis, is that for compensable 

claims the dose reconstruction stops when enough dose 

is found to make the claim compensable. 

The converse of that, for a non-compensable 

claim, an extreme overestimate is used. If the extreme 

overestimate is still below -- would still result in a 

probability of causation below 50 percent, again the 

dose reconstruction stops. Therefore, we have few, if 

any, claims with complete dose reconstructions. 

Again that efficiency process -- I believe 

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Bethlehem Steel would be the exception to that where --

it was a kind of -- I don't know whether it's a unique 

site, but it was a site with I believe no personal 

monitoring data, so the model applies I think to all 

the claims. 

Other challenges are in comparing the data 

with National Cancer figures. It's difficult to do 

under the best of conditions. Also there are hundreds 

of different types of cancer, but less than three dozen 

cancer models in NIOSH-IREP. And finally, the 

claimant-friendly process further complicates an 

epidemiological analysis of the completed data, as in 

many cases we use multiple IREP models and take the 

model with the highest probability of causation, and 

that is the information that appears in our database 

that can be extracted for analysis. 

I'd like to share the claims results with 

you. Again, that's through March 31st, 2004. This 

includes completed dose reconstructions submitted to 

the Department of Labor for which we have received 

notice from the Department of Labor of a decision. 

That's about two-thirds at that time -- through March 

31st, about two-thirds of the dose reconstructions 

submitted to DOL. Thus it may not -- for that reason, 

it may not be predictive of future results, but also 

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because of the efficiency process, a more compelling 

reason, it would be surprising if it's predictive of 

future results. 

Another caveat is that the results for the 

cancer -- specific compensa-- cancer model-specific 

compensation rates reflect only claims with one primary 

cancer. You'll see later -- I show the compensation 

results for two other broad groups of claim types. One 

is secondary cancers for which the primary is unknown. 

The other is multiple cancers. Those are not included 

in the cancer model-specific results. 

Okay, just to -- what I've done here, I've 

taken the 32 cancer models in IREP and put them in a 

table. It goes across several slides. I have -- just 

to try to explain the table here -- I hope I'm pressing 

the right button for the laser pointer -- the column on 

the left is the cancer model in IREP, and it's arranged 

simply in the order that the models appear in the 

NIOSH-IREP pull-down menu, and that's roughly in 

ascending numerical order by ICD-9 code. 

The middle column is the total number of 

cases that were processed using that model -- and 

again, these are only -- these are claims with only one 

primary cancer. And the right column, probability of 

causation greater than or equal to 50 percent -- equal 

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to or greater than 50 percent. There are the claims 

that were -- the portion and percentage of -- excuse 

me, the number and percentage of claims that were 

compensable. 

In this case, for example, oral cavity and 

pharynx, there were 23 claims. Four of the 23 were 

compensable for a compensation rate of 17 percent. 

Oral cavity and pharynx, by the way, includes tumors of 

the lip, tongue, gums, tonsils, et cetera. 

Any questions on the table format or the 

numbers before I go on to the next slide? 

 (No responses) 

 MR. HENSHAW: I think I'll save you the agony 

of having me read what exactly you can see on the 

slide, so... 

 DR. HOFFMAN: Russ, since we have members of 

the public here, I think it's important to point out 

that this is not probability of causations greater than 

50 percent, but a one percent chance that the 

probability of causation would be greater than 50 

percent, and so it's a -- it's a highly conservative 

estimate of the probability of causation. 

 MR. HENSHAW: I -- thanks, Owen. I think 

what Owen -- what Owen is saying is that -- I think --

don't interpret the percentage in parentheses as the 

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average PC or the PC result. That's simply the rate --

the compensation rate, the percentage of cases that 

were compensable. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I believe he was simply defining 

what probability of causation means in this case. I 

don't think we understood the numbers in the column to 

be that. Owen, you were simply defining probability of 

causation as it's applied by NIOSH, which is --

 DR. HOFFMAN: Right, but in this case it's 

not a true probability of causation. It is -- after 

accounting for all sorts of uncertainty, if there is 

more than a one percent chance that the probability of 

causation is above 50 percent, then the claim is 

eligible. But that -- that qualification isn't evident 

here in the slide. It just says PC greater than 50 

percent. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, understood. 

 MR. HENSHAW: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. I 

misunderstood what Owen said. I'm sorry. 

Anyway, going on to the next slide, in the 

next five models as they appear in the IREP pull-down 

menu --

 MR. GRIFFON: Russ, I was just going to ask 

one thing. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Do we -- I think we've asked 

for this kind of data before and I'm not sure -- it 

might be more appropriate in tomorrow's discussion, but 

do we have a breakdown of number of claims by cancer 

type by site or something like that? I think -- I 

don't know if we --

 MR. HENSHAW: Whether or not the claims were 

processed, you mean? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, just in -- in terms of 

our case selection process it might be important for us 

to see, you know, how -- how that distribution is 

across all the claims currently in the system. 

 MR. HENSHAW: I have some results. I did not 

include that in this presentation since I was focusing 

on completed claims. But roughly, if you consider all 

claims submitted -- sent to NIOSH from the Department 

of Labor, about 34 percent of the cancers are nonmelanoma skin cancers; 14 percent fall into the all 

male genitalia model, it's mostly prostate cancer; 

about 12 percent --

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me interrupt --

 MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) 

something you can --

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, we don't need that now, 

and you're giving the overall. I think Mark is asking 

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-- for example, does some particular cancer appear to 

be, at least claim-wise, more prevalent at Savannah 

River, for example, or at Hanford -- and maybe --

 MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Looking at 

both, I think (Inaudible) --

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, and maybe at some future 

point or next meeting we could have that, or earlier, 

perhaps. I think as we get into the selection process, 

it might be helpful information. But please proceed. 

 MR. HENSHAW: The simple answer then is I 

haven't looked at that yet, so --

 DR. ZIEMER: But it could be retrieved. 

 MR. HENSHAW: One clarification on the all 

digestive model, by the way, that is all digestive 

except for the organs that have specific cancer models. 

So for example, liver cancer would go into its own 

model, gall bladder, et cetera. Anything that doesn't 

fit into that -- for example, tumor in the small 

intestine would go into the all digestive model. 

You can see lung cancer is a very high 

compensation rate thus far, 91 percent of the 230 

single primary lung cancer claims, only 21 were noncompensable. Some of this data is graphed a little 

later, as well. And the lung model, by the way, 

includes cancers of the trachea and bronchus. 

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Going on -- other respiratory, compensation 

rate of about 32 percent thus far. And other 

respiratory would include probably largely cancers of 

the pleura. For example, most of the mesotheliomas 

would fall into this category, but also the larynx and 

nose, except for skin cancer of the nose. 

Basal cell carcinoma model, the bottom row, 

it's a relatively high compensation rate thus far, 44 

percent. 

Any questions before I move on? 

 (No responses) 

 MR. HENSHAW: The other non-melanoma skin 

cancer model in IREP is squamous cell, and as you can 

see, that is a much lower compensation rate, which 

basically one might speculate mirrors the fact that 

squamous cell carcinoma is thought to be much less 

radiogenic than basal cell carcinoma. 

There is a separate cancer model in IREP for 

ovarian cancer. That's because the epidemiologic 

evidence is much stronger for radiogenicity for the 

ovaries. All other female genital organ tumors fall 

into the female genitalia excluding ovary model. Thus 

far from this dataset, none have been compensable. 

That's kind of a stunning number at the 

bottom, all male genitalia. That is about -- well, 219 

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cases. None in this dataset have been compensable. 

And of those 219, about 95 percent were prostate 

cancer. 

Going on, bladder cancer and then urinary 

organs excluding bladder, that has a relatively high 

compensation rate. That is -- that is a model that 

renal cancer would be processed in, cancer of the 

kidney. 

Nervous system models, ICD-9 codes 191 and 

192 -- 191 is for brain tumors, 192 is cancer of other 

organs in the nervous system, no compensable cases thus 

far with this data. 

And similarly for thyroid cancer, 14 cases, 

none were compensable. This -- there are a number of 

surprises in these results, but I certainly was 

surprised when I first looked at many of these numbers. 

I would caution the Board, though, to bear in mind that 

these results almost certainly will change. With 

thyroid cancer -- I don't know this yet, I haven't 

checked into it this closely, but it's quite possible, 

for example, that someone did a dose reconstruction on 

a thyroid cancer at a very low dose, learned how to do 

it and then, you know, culled other low dose thyroid 

cancers out of the claims database and did those as 

part of the efficiency process. It may be that 

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there'll be another batch of higher dose thyroid 

cancers which will completely change the way the 

results look. 

I do intend to follow this and other trends, 

of course, as we get ongoing in the program. 

I see a fairly large number of claims fell 

into the lymphoma and multiple myeloma model, very few 

of which were compensable, two out of 90. 

And finally we go to the leukemia models. 

There are four leukemia models in IREP. You see the 

first two here. The other two are on the next slide. 

They all have varying rates of compensation. For this 

dataset there were fewer than ten claims -- that is 

completed dose reconstructions submitted to DOL for 

which we've received notice -- fewer than ten claims in 

each of the four leukemia categories. If you lump the 

four -- the numbers from the four leukemia categories 

together, however, that's a total of 24 cases, 16 of 

which were compensable, for a compensation rate of 67 

percent. 

You kind of -- you kind of draw a line right 

there separating the last of the leukemia models from 

the next two categories and summed up the 32 cancer 

models, that would be a total of 1,071 claims. There 

are an additional 254 claims, however, that I did not 

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include in the cancer model-specific categories because 

there's really no good effective or logical way to do 

that. 

The claims with unknown primary cancer, there 

were 28, 24 of which were compensable. Those are -- in 

this case, they're all secondary cancers with an 

unidentified primary. As you may know, our protocol is 

to run one or more of the primary cancer models 

depending upon the secondary cancer identified, and 

then take the model that produces the highest 

probability of causation. There were 226 claims with 

multiple primary cancers, 146 of those were 

compensable, a rate of nearly two-thirds. 

Taken all together, all completed claims in 

this dataset, it's 1,325 claims, compensation rate is 

33 percent. 

I took the cancer -- cancer models with 

claims of at -- with -- excuse me. I took the cancer 

models with at least ten claims and graphed them from 

highest to lowest in terms of rate of compensability. 

And again, this is not -- the vertical axis is not 

probability of causation. That is the compensation 

rate. This recaps what you've seen in the table. The 

highest compensation rate was lung cancer, followed by 

urinary organs excluding bladder. Again that's -- I 

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haven't looked at this to verify it, but I'm 

speculating it's probably largely kidney cancer. Then 

the basal cell carcinoma model, 44 percent; other 

respiratory organs and then oral cavity and pharynx and 

malignant melanoma at 16 percent. And going down, 

squamous cell carcinoma, 6 percent; bladder, lymphoma 

and multiple myeloma, and so on. 

There were -- there were nine cancer models 

with no compensable cases. There are only eight on 

here. Sorry, I inadvertently omitted the all male 

genitalia, but that should also be on this slide. Nine 

models with ten or more completed cases, none 

compensable thus far. I'm saying thus far, that's 

through March 31st. I mean there may very well be 

compensable cases in our hopper by now for some of 

these. 

This is just a bar graph of the two groups I 

mentioned before, the unknown primary cases and the 

multiple primary cases. Again, you can see very high 

compensation rates. 

This is a graph of compensation by years of 

employment. I was really struck by the way this graph 

turned out, a nice -- nice slope to the data. 

 Any questions? 

 DR. ANDRADE: Russ, not a question but a 

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quick comment. Perhaps you can validate this or not. 

Isn't that slope rather artificial, given the 

efficiency process? I mean the longer -- the longer 

that you have worked, either at one site or more sites, 

if you go through the efficiency process and assign say 

missed dose over the span of your career, you're going 

to get a linear slope. 

 MR. HENSHAW: I think -- yeah, that's a good 

point. I think it's quite possible that -- maybe 

largely due to the efficiency process, that this could 

be a proxy for estimated dose. 

I did the same thing with age at diagnosis. 

Again, very nice linear slope. It also does not 

necessarily mean anything, following up on Tony's 

comment. It's hard to tell really what's going on with 

this. Of course I intend to follow it and look at it 

more closely as we get into this, but it's pretty to 

look at, anyway, for right now. But -- kind of thing 

if you were writing an epidemiology textbook, you know, 

you'd invent something like that. 

This was a very interesting observation. I 

looked at compensation with -- I looked at lung cancer 

compensation by smoking status. The bar on the left is 

never smoked, the bar on the right are all the other 

categories, including former smoker. Somewhat 

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surprisingly, the compensation rate was actually higher 

for smokers. 

It's hard to tell exactly what's -- I'm going 

to show you a slide -- the next slide breaks those 

numbers down by smoking category. It's hard to know 

exactly what's going on there. It's something we want 

to continue to look at as more data comes in. It 

probably should be noted that about -- about 100 of 

those 230 lung cases were from Bethlehem Steel. This 

may -- this may just be a function of such an 

overestimate -- or excuse me, such a high dose estimate 

used that it washes out the smoking adjustment. 

Here it is by smoking category. At 86 

percent is the bar on the left, and again, this is not 

probability of causation. That's compensation rate. 

You have former smoker, less than 10 cigarettes a day, 

10 to 19 cigarettes a day -- you can see all of those 

categories are higher than non-smoker. It doesn't 

start to drop until you get to more than one pack a 

day, but even there it's a compensation rate of 75 

percent. This -- you really can't make much of this 

number -- I think it was only two cases, one of the two 

were compensable. That's the more than two pack a day 

smoker. Then the column on the right, that questionmarked number, that just -- that means smoker, but it's 

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unknown how many cigarettes he or she smoked per day. 

In the risk model it's kind of an average across the 

other smoking categories. Again, it was only a few 

cases. 

 Any questions? 

 (No responses) 

 MR. HENSHAW: Compensability by gender, 37 

percent of claims for male workers were compensable, 

only four percent of the cases for female workers. I 

don't know for sure what the explanation is for that, 

but I think a good guess would be probably low dose, 

probably less years of employment than the males. 

About -- somewhat slightly less than half of the claims 

-- of the completed claims for females were breast 

cancer, by the way. I think it was like 46 percent. 

Well, this takes me to the last slide, so I 

guess to summarize, we will have projects underway 

within the year addressing the three priority one 

topics on the Board's list. We have other research 

projects already underway or in planning. The 

completed claims results, some surprises, but again, 

the results are undoubtedly skewed by the dose 

reconstruction efficiency process and also possibly by 

the incomplete data. We'll continue to monitor the 

data for trends and anomalies and of course we will 

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keep the Board updated as more and more data comes in. 

Thank you very much for your attention. I'd 

be happy to take any additional questions. 

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

interesting presentation. Let's see, we've got a 

question here from Dr. DeHart. 

 DR. DEHART: Russ, when you were talking 

about multiple primaries -- skin cancer, primarily 

squamous cell and basal cell frequently are associated 

with primary -- multiple cancers. Is that in keeping 

with your data or do you exclude -- if they both -- if 

they're multiple cancers and the -- three of them and 

all three are squamous cell, how do you handle that? 

 MR. HENSHAW: Multiple skin cancers were not 

included in the skin cancer-specific results. I 

initially tried to include those cases, but it's --

decided it really wasn't appropriate to do that. You 

know, we can try to do it -- look at it that way in the 

future if you'd like, but the problem is, many of the 

skin cancer cases are not just squamous cell or not 

just basal cell. (Inaudible) have three or four sites, 

two basal cell carcinomas, one squamous cell. Then the 

problem, you know, arises which model do you put it in, 

and then if you only count it as -- you know, most of 

them are compensable, so do you count it as compensable 

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for basal cell, non-compensable for squamous cell, you 

know, and so on. I finally -- I looked at that really 

about a dozen different ways, and I just finally came 

to the conclusion that it would be more honest and 

clean to just simply exclude all multiple primaries 

from cancer model-specific rates. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I have a question and a 

comment. One's just more out of curiosity, but when 

you run into sort of the limits of Analytica 2 in doing 

-- when you have such a complicated dose -- exposure 

situation, what do you do if you can't... 

 MR. HENSHAW: I don't think --

 DR. MELIUS: I mean does it just slow it down 

or is it a question of you're just -- it's just unable 

to handle that... 

 MR. HENSHAW: The awareness of the problem 

occurred when we discovered we had claims in the hopper 

with rows that exceeded IREP's capacity. We have not -

- we have not gotten to those yet in the dose 

reconstruction. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay, so it's not -- hopefully 

you'll have the Analytic 3 that --

 DR. ZIEMER: You have a comment? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, my comment is related to 

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the issue of your review of the occupational studies 

and the other issue that you're not dealing with, 

though, I think it might be possible to -- at least you 

should consider in that is this question of interaction 

with other occupational exposures. If you're going to 

be doing anything as part of that -- part of the work 

that you are doing with the occupational health studies 

I think sort of cataloguing what information might be 

available and thinking -- it's just going to be hard to 

separate out the two issues entirely, and I just --

rather than saying you're ignoring it, I think that 

you're really -- I would hope that you're sort of 

subsuming it under the other -- other issue because 

there are -- particularly as we're dealing with IREP, 

there are ways -- different ways of thinking about the 

other occupational exposures, for example, that add 

more uncertainty to -- to your -- the model and so 

forth. 

 MR. HENSHAW: To be honest -- well, I think 

that's a good point and when we get to the point where 

we can begin a study of occupational -- a review of 

occupational studies, which we intend to have the 

literature review this year, the feasibility study, I 

think that's a good point. I think we can try to look 

at that, as well, to the extent that it's feasible to 

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do that, but I agree with you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Henry and then Gen. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Just one thought that I had 

that would be an interesting, difficult to interpret 

analysis, but not unlike some you have here, would be 

to look at the overall distribution of the types of 

cancers you have, almost to a proportional ratio like 

you do a proportional mortality and look to see is the 

distribution, if you age-adjust it, is the distribution 

of cancers in those that you have here different than 

you'd expect in the general population or does there 

seem to be more lung cancers, fewer, is liver 

disproportionately represented in this group. I think 

that would be -- treating this as a selective cohort 

coming through, would be interesting to see. Are 

claims -- are, you know, people putting in claims 

because they believe a specific cancer is radiationrelated, or is it just every cancer that's occurred, 

somebody has filed. I mean I think that would be 

interesting to see, as their -- prostate looked to me 

to be about right, the breast cancer's -- if you look 

at, you know, incidence not mortality -- probably is 

not out of line for the age groups here. But some of 

them seem to be a little bit more than you might 

expect. 

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 MR. HENSHAW: I absolutely agree, and I 

intend to do that. There will be some obstacles to 

overcome as we do that. You know, what do you compare 

it to -- you know, this data -- which block of this 

data. You know, the way this data is modeled is not 

the same as the way the data's modeled in NIOSH-IREP 

and so on, but I agree, it's a -- it's a rich dataset 

to look at from that point of view and I definitely 

intend to do it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I must have missed something 

there. Henry, it's not clear to me what it -- what are 

you suggesting be compared in that case, because these 

are all -- I mean this is not a normal population to 

start with. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Right, but what you do is you 

have 1,000 people or 1,000 cancers --

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. ANDERSON: -- and you say seven percent 

of those were liver cancers --

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, the relative numbers of each 

one --

 DR. ANDERSON: Right, and then you look at 

the general population where -- and age-standardize and 

say in the general population it's two percent. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I gotcha. 

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 DR. ANDERSON: And therefore you may -- and 

then, one, looking at compensation, you may say gee, 

there seems to be an excess of a cancer that isn't 

compensated at all in this group. That would give you 

some leads to look into some of the epi studies to see 

-- 'cause these are all pretty well vetted for what 

type of cancer it is, other than those that are 

unknown. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Of course the underlying 

question then is is a population group of cancer 

individuals have this a priori -- should it have the 

same distribution? 

 DR. ANDERSON: Well, I mean that's -- that's 

part of the discussion of it, but at least you might 

look to see --

 DR. ZIEMER: A starting point. 

 DR. ANDERSON: It's a starting point to see 

whether there are some of these. You would expect to 

see in this population the radiation-sensitive cancers 

ought to be over-represented. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. ANDERSON: And those that aren't, ought 

not to be. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Now if those are rare 

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malignancies, then percentage-wise it isn't going to be 

very easy to see early on, but I think that's what 

you'd like to look as -- more for the consistency in 

this database with what you know in the epi studies 

rather than get into quantitative measures. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Roessler? 

 DR. ROESSLER: This discussion in the last 

part of your presentation bothers me because even 

though you have qualified the interpretation, many 

times numbers like this are carried forward without the 

qualifications and I think, other than scientific 

curiosity, this really doesn't mean much at this point 

and we ought not make too much of it. As you've said, 

the small database, the efficiency process has 

certainly made this a very -- not representative 

population, even of the workers. And as I looked at 

one of your slides where you presented the numbers with 

regard to age, I keep wondering if because this is a 

claimant-friendly process, that's just the normal 

incidence of cancers with age and has nothing to do 

with the radiation exposure. My point is, let's not 

make -- have to be careful not to make too much of the 

interpretations at this point. 

 MR. HENSHAW: Your point is well taken. I 

mean absolutely. Hopefully no one will run up -- run 

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off and try to use this to affect regulatory decisions 

or anything. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other comments or 

questions? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you again, Russ. We 

appreciate your input to us. 

We are actually approximately an hour behind 

schedule. At the beginning of the meeting I indicated 

that we might have the opportunity for public comment 

if we were ahead of schedule. What I will ask is if 

there are any who signed up for public comment who 

would find it very inconvenient to do their comments 

this evening, which is the scheduled time -- if for 

whatever reason, we can certainly accommodate -- yes, 

are you on the list, sir? 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: If you prefer to give your 

comment now, we'll be glad to hear --

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Use the mike, please, and 

identify yourself for the record. 

 MR. COLEMAN: I'm Thad Coleman. I worked at 

PRTR for four or five years. That was a plutonium test 

recycle reactor, a very hot place. Numerous times --

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let's say you're a supervisor of a building. You have 

50 or 60 pipe fitters (Inaudible) work with one welder. 

Only one welder has the qualifications to go in and do 

the welding. Well, how many of those pipe fitters you 

going to burn out before the welder's burned out in the 

same place? And whenever you do burn out, the 

supervisor would come in -- give me your badge and 

pencil; he took them and went and got me another set, 

go back in. Well, after I took all I could, I got sick 

and went home. 

Well, they come out to my house to see if I 

couldn't come back. They needed the welding done. 

Well, with one welder, there was no way they were going 

to get it done. But I had to go back in and do the 

welding. I was overexposed many, many times. 

Another thing they did there melting lead 

with an acetylene torch, making shields. Well, lead 

is very bad. We couldn't do it in the shop 'cause it 

would contaminate the whole shop. They moved me 

outside. You still had to melt it with -- I said why 

don't you buy me a ventilator, a up-sucker to pull 

these fumes away? Oh, it costs too much. I said I'll 

tell you, I'll pay for it, you put it in. They 

wouldn't do it. 

Today my lungs are full and I'd like to get 

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somebody to tell me what is in there. Is it lead 

poisoning, zinc poisoning, (Inaudible), brass poisoning 

or what is it? They can't tell me. They say you've 

got asbestosis. Well, that's one they don't pay. I 

would like to have them prove that mine is not -- what 

it is, because they can't -- I welded around the fumes 

and the lead-based paint and stuff for over 60 years. 

You get a lot of fumes in that much time. Yes, I had 

asbestosis 'cause I spent seven years and eight months 

in the south Pacific aboard ship a lot of times working 

around (Inaudible), but it wasn't this asbestos 

(Inaudible). My lungs are not asbestos today. I've 

got something wrong. What is it? Can you tell me? 

I got a letter from a little gal said your 

statute of limitations expired, you don't qualify. 

That's a very poor excuse, if you ask me. I took it 

over to my doctor this morning and told him -- I had an 

appointment at 12:30, 12:15. I said Doctor, I just 

don't agree with this letter. But how are you going to 

overcome it? What can we do about it? 

Medicare gets a bill and it costs me $449 a 

month for my secondary insurance. Medicare won't pay 

it. My insurance won't pay it. Well, then I got to 

pay the damned bill. We need somebody -- a coordinator 

in here to try to get this -- justice done. I know 

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this is important to do all this, but it costs a lot of 

money. We're suffering like hell trying to get -- stay 

alive, and sometimes I can't even talk, but you can't 

even get a doctor to go in -- I got one doctor that I 

think the world and all of him. He's Dr. Clipper and 

he's helping me a lot. But I -- I just choke up too 

bad to talk. 

I would like to have somebody to tell me what 

is in there. My lungs -- they said oh, your lungs are 

gone. Well, now my teeth's gone. I just had them 

pulled out day before yesterday. Is there any place 

you could send me or tell me where I could go to get 

somebody that could give me an answer? 

 DR. ZIEMER: This Board probably can't answer 

your question, but maybe -- maybe some of the staff can 

direct you to who you should be in contact with. It 

appears to me that this is -- is this one of the 

workmen's compensation area ones that's --

 MR. COLEMAN: Well, I don't know -- workmen's 

compensation, what is that, money? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well --

 MR. COLEMAN: I told them I don't want to be 

the richest man in the graveyard whenever I die. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I doubt if you will under 

workmen's comp, but let's -- let's find out and maybe 

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after the meeting find out if there's someone here --

certainly a doctor's diagnosis becomes a part of this, 

and then I don't know where in the system we plug this 

gentleman in, but we'll see if we can find somebody to 

at least assist you. 

 MR. COLEMAN: I would just like to get to 

where I can get my breath and breathe. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Thank you. 

 MR. COLEMAN: That's all I'm after. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Appreciate your comments. 

 MR. COLEMAN: And the first thing they give 

me, they say fill out another form. Well, hell, I've 

filled out 50 of them. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. COLEMAN: And they look at me -- how many 

cigarettes you smoke a day? I never smoked a cigarette 

in my life. How much alcohol do you consume a day? I 

never used a drop of it. I was a healthy, very strongwilled man. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MR. COLEMAN: And I thank God because I'm the 

only one left out of my whole group that I worked with 

a few years ago, and I'm the only boy that's left out 

of ten kids, one girl. No, all I need is somebody that 

knows what to do to get my breath. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

 MR. COLEMAN: Thank you for listening to me. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Are there any others that prefer 

to speak now? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: It appears not. Fine, then we 

will recess until 7:00 this evening. We will reconvene 

in this room and all are welcome to join us at that 

time. This will be exclusively a public comment 

period. Thank you very much. 

(Whereupon, a recess was taken.) 

INTRODUCTION

 DR. ZIEMER: Good evening, everyone. I'd 

like to ask you to please take your seats. We'd like 

to get underway right away. 

Thank you all for coming tonight. This is 

the public comment session for the Advisory Board on 

Radiation and Worker Health. My name is Paul Ziemer. 

I serve as the Chairman of the Advisory Board, and the 

Board is very pleased to be here in the RichlandHanford area tonight for this particular meeting. 

Our meetings have very specific focus, but we 

always have an opportunity for public comment, an 

opportunity to learn about what's going on with respect 

to individual people as far as it impacts on this 

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program. 

Before we have the actual opportunity for 

many of you to speak, I thought it might be of use if I 

took just a few minutes and familiarize you with the 

responsibilities of this particular Board. Our 

responsibilities are quite well-defined, and to some 

extent they are limiting in terms of what we are able 

to do as a Board. And I want to make you aware of what 

it is we do, and you can put that in the context of the 

larger program that many of you are already familiar 

with. 

The program -- the workers compensation 

program that we're talking about here tonight is 

actually administered by several different entities --

the U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Department of Health 

and Human Services, the Department -- Energy Department 

and also the Attorney General. So these various 

Secretaries of the various Departments, all of their 

agencies have a role in this process. 

Independent of those agencies is this Board, 

called the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

Health. The individuals on this Board largely are 

independent of those agencies. I say largely because 

actually some of the members of the Board may work for 

one of the subsets of an agency. That is, we have some 

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individuals here who are associated with some 

Department of Energy facilities. But in terms of our 

day-to-day responsibilities, we are independent of the 

program and serve as an oversight type of agency or 

really board. And I want to familiarize you with our 

responsibilities. 

First of all, the Board itself -- its 

composition is defined by law. It's -- the law 

specifies that the Board will be comprised of up to 20 

individuals. These individuals, incidentally, are 

appointed by the White House, by President Bush, and 

the White House actually determines the number because 

they make the appointments, so there are not actually 

20 individuals, as you will see. There are a dozen of 

us at the moment. The White House also designates the 

Chair of the committee. 

And the other specification in the law is 

that the individuals on this Board are to represent 

certain facets of the interested community as far as 

this law is concerned. And by that I'm talking about 

labor, I'm talking about medical, I'm talking about 

radiation safety or health physics types of 

individuals. So there are technical, medical, labor 

individuals. The individuals do not necessarily 

represent specific groups, but have that kind of 

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background so they can bring to the table the 

perspective of say labor or medicine or the technical 

community. 

These are the members of the Board. As I 

indicated, I serve as Chair. We have a designated 

Federal official, Larry Elliott, and Larry, as I 

introduce each of you -- even though they have 

placards, you might not be able to see the placards. 

So Larry Elliott serves as the Executive Secretary and 

also heads up the dose reconstruction program or the 

Office of Compensation Analysis for NIOSH, which is, as 

you know, part of the Department of Health and Human 

Services. 

Then we have Henry Anderson. Henry is not 

back from dinner yet, so -- should not have gone 

alphabetically, I guess. 

Tony Andrade, who is with Los Alamos National 

Laboratory; Dr. Roy DeHart, Vanderbilt University; 

Richard Espinosa, Los Alamos -- you'll see in each case 

an indication of their particular background. Mike 

Gibson with Babcock & Wilcox; Mark Griffon has his own 

consulting firm; James Melius, New York State Labor's 

Health and Safety Trust Fund -- Dr. Melius; Wanda Munn, 

who's retired but here -- one of your local people from 

here in Richland; Charles Owens from U.S. Enrichment 

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Corporation, Paducah, Kentucky; Robert Presley is 

actually retired, but is still there in Oak Ridge --

retired and working again, so to speak; and Dr. Gen 

Roessler is retired from the University of Florida and 

now living in Minnesota -- in Lake Woebegone, is it? 

Yes, right. 

The role of this Board is -- as I suggested, 

is specified and it's pretty well-defined. We have a 

role in the development of guidelines on the 

probability of causation. That's that calculation for 

the likelihood of a cancer or health effect being 

produced by radiation exposure. We have a role in the 

development of the guidelines for the dose 

reconstruction process, so the first two bullets simply 

summarize those responsibilities for reviewing the 

guidelines as they're developed, and those guidelines 

have been developed and the Board has, in a sense, done 

those. 

We have an ongoing responsibility to assess 

the scientific validity and quality of the dose 

reconstructions that are being done. This is an 

ongoing process and the Board is underway and actually 

has its own contractor now to assist in this process. 

And then there's a role for evaluating and 

assessing both guidelines and petitions that have to do 

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with what is called the Special Exposure Cohort. This 

is a rulemaking which is still in process and the Board 

has played an ongoing role in that process, as well. 

So basically what you see here on this slide 

are the responsibilities of this Board. 

The Board does not deal specifically with 

individual cases. We are not a Board that listens to 

appeals or even reviews individual cases. We may, as 

part of the determination of scientific validity and 

quality of dose reconstructions, we may as part of our 

audit process, look at specific dose reconstructions 

that have been done to assess -- and in fact we will be 

sampling a certain fraction of the work that is done by 

the Federal agency, by NIOSH, to determine the quality 

of that work. But we ourselves do not -- if you are a 

claimant, this Board will not be specifically reviewing 

necessarily your particular claim. And in fact, if you 

have claim issues, they would be referred to the agency 

that is responsible for processing that claim. 

That completes those slides. I want to, 

before we start the public comment, just make a couple 

of additional observations. And that is that the 

comment period, as far as the Board is concerned, is 

really simply intended for us to hear from you. We're 

not operating in a mode -- sort of a question and 

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answer mode because we -- we do not have access to your 

specific case. Those, you know, are confidential. And 

so we are not in a position tonight to answer specific 

questions you might have. However, if you have a 

question on your case, if you have a particular 

question or concern, we certainly will make sure that 

it gets addressed by the agency, whether it's NIOSH or 

Labor or DOE, or make sure that we get you in touch 

with the right person to do that. 

We are interested in learning about how 

effective this program is or where it is not effective. 

We're interested in hearing whatever your experiences 

may be that you're welcome to share whatever you wish 

with us because that helps us get a feel for how this 

program is working. So we do listen to a lot of 

personal experiences. Not that we can necessarily 

address them ourselves as a Board, but they do help us 

in the context of trying to assure that the Federal 

agencies involved do correctly and rapidly -- although 

the speed is not always where one would desire, but at 

least to be moving along on addressing the issues that 

individuals might have. So any commenters are free to 

talk about both their personal experiences as they 

wish, but please understand that we're somewhat limited 

as a Board in how we can deal with you on an individual 

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basis. But we do want to hear your stories and 

experiences, and please -- if you have issues, we will 

try to help make sure that they get addressed, even 

though we may not be able to, as a Board, address them 

individually with you. 

 PUBLIC COMMENT 

Now with those preliminary comments, I have 

already a list of individuals who have requested to 

speak. And I think because of the size of the room and 

the configuration -- although we have already set up a 

mike near the back, I think it would be better if those 

who wish to address the group would come up here to the 

podium where you can be seen better. And also if 

you're a little nervous, it gives you something to lean 

on, so that always helps, too. 

Oh, I do need to announce two things. One is 

that for our public record we do like to have a record 

of all who are in attendance, so there's a sign-up 

sheet if you haven't already done this. It's in the 

back and Cori, who's waving her hand back there, is the 

keeper of the records and she will point you to the 

right place to record your attendance with us tonight. 

And then if you have -- if you do wish to speak and 

haven't already done so, we ask that you sign up there. 

And this just helps us keep the flow going and make 

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sure that we get everyone who wishes to speak. 

So I'm going to return to my seat now and 

I'll get the record there and we'll get underway. And 

please excuse me if I don't pronounce the names right. 

I can feel for you, mine gets pronounced incorrectly at 

least half the time, also. It looks like Gai Oglesbee. 

Is Gai here? Gai's with National Nuclear Victims for 

Justice from here in Richland. Gai, could you -- would 

you be willing to use the mike near the front so we 

can... 

 MS. OGLESBEE: (Off microphone) Oh, okay. 

That one up there? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, please. 

 MS. OGLESBEE: Okay. I'm from this area and 

I work with a lot of people across the nation to try to 

help all I can because I am very experienced and 

knowledgeable by now after many decades. My own 

daughter is a claimant, as well, who suffers with 

beryllium exposure and the effects of cancer, so it's 

pretty disheartening sometimes, so -- I've had cancer 

and her father has had cancer. We all worked at 

Hanford. There's nine people in my family that have --

are battling with cancer right now. 

Before I get started -- this is always a 

show-stopper because you can't see it -- I know you 

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can't, but this is what radiation exposure looks like, 

people. And I'll give your Chair a copy of it. A 

friend of mine did this after traveling to -- they're 

Russian farmers is what they are, by the Caspian Sea. 

And I know people that have mutations just like this in 

this country. 

Then this is -- I want to get this in, too, 

and again I'll give your Chair a copy. This is 

(Inaudible) that was found on Hanford by individuals 

appointed by the CDC that says dose reconstruction 

cannot be done here at Hanford. That is very emphatic 

information that's not being paid attention to. 

Then there is a survey done already of 

Hanford that lists what some of the construction 

workers and people are exposed to at Hanford. So there 

has been a survey done here -- many of them -- and I 

have copies of them if -- and I'll probably try to send 

them along. 

So let me begin here by saying in my case the 

agency employees are traditional agency defendants with 

conflicts of interest with a point of view that is so 

confrontational I have decided the incidents and 

quarrels must stop. I didn't enter this to be put-upon 

and I've -- it's cost me a lot of money to get where 

I'm at right now in time and energy and my own 

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finances, and I live on a fixed income. So I was an 

unmonitored employee, especially after I disclosed the 

events that happened to me at Hanford B plant 

(Inaudible). There are many in this room who know my 

story. I support them and they support me. 

Because the escalation of my historical 

issues a high-ranking government official, the former 

Secretary of Energy, Hazel Leary (sic), came to 

(Inaudible) by April 17th, 1996, which was indeed her 

obligation anyway, and she knew that. Secretary Leary 

(sic) decisively enforced her initiatives. 

Consequently, her subordinates were disciplined for 

their adversarial role against me. Because of this 

error of adjustment, I processed through -- there is a 

contract -- I -- as I processed through, I should say, 

there is a contract in place that forbids the Hanford 

contractors and the USDOE from violating the terms of 

agreement. If one agreement's violated, the rest are 

still intact, so this became a problem for me with some 

of the agencies and agents that I had done business 

with before in my past. 

In a private meeting before I testified 

before the USDOE Assistant Secretary Environmental 

Health and Safety, which was Dr. David Michaels, I was 

encouraged to apply for EEOICPA provisions after being 

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informed that my history would not affect my right to 

apply. USDOE contractor Oak Ridge Associated 

Universities disqualified themselves already due to 

their recognition of conflicts of interest about a year 

and a half ago. The USHHS subsidiary, CDC-NIOSH, 

employees seem to be unable to get a grasp on the 

concept of conflicts of interest where I'm concerned. 

Because of my background, knowledge and 

experiences, I know for a fact that health physicist 

evaluations are not considered expert in any illegal 

(sic) adjudication process I am aware of. My expert 

witness is a high-profile Ph.D. peer who heads a team 

of ten international experts. The preparation of my 

expert witness evidence cost $24,000, and that was done 

several years ago. 

NIOSH insists that the expert witness do not 

outrank their scientists and methodology. Well, 

perhaps the time will finally come when we test the 

NIOSH employees and the USDOAC employees -- employee 

Admiral Rollow's perspectives in Federal court. 

Consequently, for lack of better -- a better phrase 

that is powerful enough to -- definition enough to use, 

Dr. John Howard, Director of NIOSH, and I are in a 

pissing contest -- excuse me, but that's what it is --

regarding what he feels in his right -- is his right to 

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dismiss my generic dose reconstruction. I am informed 

that the only evidence NIOSH would accept is imaginary 

USDOE contractor HEHF X-rays. Obviously I have failed 

to explain historical circumstances over and over again 

to the NIOSH agents. I should not have to explain in 

the manner that these agents have required. I am 

wholly aware that I am not finished with my medical 

monitoring, as that is an ongoing reality that I must 

manage for the rest of my life, but Dr. Howard insists 

that I shall obey his agency code command and sign his 

waiver, or else. 

The Interactive Radio-Epidemiologic Program, 

IREP, that was created by Dr. F. Owen Hoffman, is 

challenged as an unreliable methodology. The generic 

causation has already been deemed unreliable for 

individual causation purpose by peers -- peer experts 

and also by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who 

explain in their decision that Dr. Hoffman's theory is 

not all that is needed to reconstruct the dose of 

radiation-exposed workers and vic-- or victims, 

whatever you want to call them. 

My point is, because I am the only person in 

the world who can release any of my original personnel 

records regarding my case issues, I cannot be 

absolutely sure that the records that are being 

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processed by the agency employees are the same records 

I submitted. It appears NIOSH and USDOE employees are 

relying on slush files -- what's been deemed slush 

files provided by unassuming USDOE record-keepers. The 

$500 box of records I compiled have been lost, 

rediscovered, lost, rediscovered, recopied, reestablished, lost again and rediscovered in the USDOE 

mail room, according to the witnesses. Because of this 

rhetoric, the originals I submitted in early August, 

2001 were ordered returned to me, so I have the 

original copies of what I originally sent. 

I have custody of high-profile expert witness 

testimony. That is a court record which is included in 

my files I released for this EEOIC purpose. The 

experts verify that I am irreparably damaged by 

ionizing radiation and components. I have filed a 

claim with the USDOL and the USDOE. This was 

originally supposed to be presented to just the 

Advisory Board, these quotes. I'm very alarmed by some 

of them. Resigned -- this is Secretary Robert Card 

testimony that was sworn before the Senate committee 

March 30th, 2004. In that -- in a quote that was very 

alarming to many of the survivors, the quote said 

additionally given, the medical benefits are available 

in most state workers compensation systems for living 

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applicants. We are moving applications filed by living 

applicants ahead of those filed by survivors. Finally 

given that the statute requires us to provide all 

available information, including a dose reconstruction 

from relevant Part B applications, we are setting aside 

these Part D applications where Part B dose 

reconstructions are pending. 

Now Senator Grassley, as you know, is very 

heavy into this situation. And I also have made some 

quotes because I was challenged today by Mr. -- or 

Admiral Rollow, and I want to read -- these aren't my 

statements -- sworn statements. These are Senator 

Grassley's sworn statements. It says (Reading) Nothing 

can make up for the illnesses these workers developed 

because they were exposed to toxic substances without 

their knowledge or consent. 

That's me. Today they wear their battle 

scars in the form of illnesses and disease and --

diseases, the least of our -- our government can do is 

try to compensate them, compensate them quickly and 

compensate them before they die, but that -- but that 

is a problem. The program is moving like molasses. 

Thousands of workers or their survivors are in limbo 

while their requests for help sit in offices here in 

Washington. We need reform with -- with accountability 

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and results. 

Now he goes on to talk about the Science and 

Engineering Associates known as SEA, which is a USDOE 

contractor. This company's employees are the ones 

processing the compensation claims of sick workers. 

What we found should make Congress think twice before 

forking over more money to the Energy Department, 

especially without any guarantees that things will get 

better. Mr. Chairman, I want to note that the Navy and 

SEA don't want these numbers to come out. They stamp 

the words business confidential and priority in big red 

letters all over their invoices. Sometimes people in 

government contractors who feed from Uncle Sam's trough 

forget who they are working for. They're working for 

the taxpayers, not themselves, and they should not be 

trying to hide the way they're using taxpayer money. 

The Energy Department's seeking $33 million 

in FY '04 appropriations transfer, plus $43 million for 

its FY '05 request, totaling $73.3 million or $77 

million. The Department of Energy's plan to eliminate 

the entire backlog of applications will be 2006, 

commonly referred to as a path forward plan. 

Let's see -- SEA is charging exorbitant 

amounts of money for questionable results. An aide 

position at SEA bills the government at a rate of 36.9 

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or $36.09 an hour that comes up to $72,180 a year. 

That's a lot of money for someone who makes copies, 

sends FAXes and puts files in filing cabinets. Then 

they get their 40 percent an hour benefits. And people 

who do the bulk of the case preparation work at SEA are 

the nurses who examine compensation claims and get them 

ready for the physicians and make a decision. Now how 

is it that when I have an expert witness and a ten-team 

international team of witnesses that a nurse -- and I 

don't really -- I don't want to offend the nursing 

profession, but I don't see where that is a reliable 

source. Sorry, they don't know what we know and what 

anybody else knows, but that's the way it works. And 

they're making $90.51 an hour for nurses' work and 

about $181,000 a year. The highest-paid SEA official 

on the project is Richard Cutshaw, the program manager. 

SEA is billing $264 an hour for the -- his time. Let 

me be clear so there's no confusion. I said $264 (sic) 

cents per hour. That comes up to $401 -- $200 --

$401,280 a year. Mr. Cutshaw costs the taxpayer more 

than the salaries of Energy Secretary Abraham and Labor 

Secretary combined. He costs more money than the Vice 

President, and SEA charges just a bit more for his work 

than the salary of George -- President George W. Bush. 

Mr. Cutshaw's counterpart at the Labor Department would 

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be a GS 14 director or district director who costs 

about $135,000, including fringes. Only in the 

government contract can people make so much money and 

perform so poorly. If this were the private sector, 

these people would not be -- would get canned and be 

out on the street. Now we know how much the Labor 

Department folks are getting paid. We don't know how 

much SEA employees are getting paid. We only know how 

much the company is billing the taxpayers for their 

work. 

And in excerpt quotes, USDOE Admiral Rollow 

explains that I have misunderstood all the issues and 

that if I repeat any of the conversation we had this 

afternoon that I can be charged with slander. I would 

say, Admiral Rollow, that you don't know where I've 

been or what's going on and you need to find out 

because your -- your people are handling my case right 

now, and you assured me that they were. 

Can Admiral Rollow handle a job after making 

a statement such as this? Is everybody wrong and 

Admiral Rollow right? It is Senator Grassley's sworn 

statement and other of his associates investigative 

findings, it wasn't mine. I have before me several 

sworn statements regarding the conduct of the USD 

employees that are before me to ponder. I'm not quite 

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ready to talk about those yet, but they're pretty 

disturbing, I can tell you that, that involves me. 

My daughter Carol is also an EEOICPA claimant 

who battles with the health effects caused by cancer 

and respiratory problems after being exposed to the 

harmful toxins at Hanford and Rocky Flats. In 1993 

Carol was notified by the USDOE she was exposed to 

beryllium because a coworker died after developing the 

disease. Gai Oglesbee, Subtitle B and D claimant, 

National Nuclear Victims for Justice. And I will give 

your Chair a copy of what I have here, and I have many 

more -- any many more records I want to send you. I 

have over 75,000 records accumulated. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. Our next 

speaker will be Thad Coleman, and Thad -- oh, that's 

the individual who -- I think Thad already addressed us 

this morning -- or this afternoon. Thank you. 

Louisa -- is it Jahnke? Louisa Jahnke. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm sorry? 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: You want to use this mike here? 

Oh, okay. Thank you. Did you have someone else you 

wanted to speak in your behalf or --

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. E. R. Samser, 

Samson, Samser -- E. R. -- you might have to correct me 

on the name, sir, when you get up there. He's from --

Samson from Kennewick. 

 MR. SAMSON: Well, there's quite a few people 

here tonight I know, but anyway, I've worked around 

here many a year and everything, but I'm not going to 

talk about that. 

I am so thrilled that this group that's here 

now has give us more information in one day than we've 

had in four years here. Now that's pretty pathetic, 

really. That's the thing that's disturbing me. 

They've got a lot of money they're spending and 

nobody's telling us nothing. And I mean it's bad when 

you call Seattle and they say well, can I get -- I want 

to see where my list is of my -- on my plan that -- as 

I wrote to you guys about, and they say well, we'll 

have to see if the examiner's got time to work with 

you. I've seen the examiner one time in two months. 

The rest of the time, he never comes on. 

Here we are trying to find out what's going 

on. I think I have a pretty good claim, you know. I 

worked all over the -- every area out there and 

everything. My nose is half gone and everything, but I 

don't -- I don't let that bother me. What I want to do 

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is -- we got a little group of people here that a lot 

of their husbands has all passed on and whatever, on a 

fixed income. I want some of them people. I'm not 

worried about me, I'll make it. But some of these 

people that needs the money and everything, you know, 

especially on the medical end of it. So I'm going to 

close by just telling you that. I think we need some 

more help like you give us today would help a bunch of 

things around here. Catch you later. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you for your comments. 

(Applause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Again, I'm having a little 

trouble reading the writing. It's -- the last name 

appears to be M-o-u. Is it -- could be a Charles W. 

Moore, maybe? 

 MR. MOORE: (Off microphone) That's me. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Is it Moore? 

 MR. MOORE: (Off microphone) I'm not a Ph.D. 

there and I wrote that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, you must be a medical 

doctor. It looks like a prescription to me. 

 MR. MOORE: (Off microphone) No, I'm not 

(Inaudible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: Anyway, it's Charles Moore then, 

is it, from Yakima? 

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 MR. MOORE: Correct, from Yakima. I worked 

23 years on the Hanford project. After 23 years I was 

fired because I have asbestosis. I've never received 

any compensation whatsoever about that, but that's not 

why I came here to talk to you. I come to talk about 

reconstruction of the dosage, and I have a whole bunch 

of documentation that I want to give the panel. I have 

one here that's got my name on it. It's a five --

four-page document about my personal exposure, but it's 

not what I come to talk to you about, nor will I read 

it. 

But I have a document here that I received 

under public disclosure showing my dose rates from --

oh, boy, I had cataracts removed the other day and it 

changed my eyesight a little bit -- from 1950 to 1972, 

and it kind of lays out what I've received. And then I 

went through my documentation and here's a document 

here that says mine was withdrawn. Here's another 

document that shows that I received a lot of radiation 

in a year that is not on the first documentation. They 

forgot to put it on there. And here's another document 

exactly the same. 

So I don't want to talk too long. I just 

want to say that there is no way we can reconstruct 

dose radiation from years ago because they didn't keep 

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track, nor did they give a damn -- excuse my 

expression. 

Here's another document from Battelle, says 

that my documents has been changed, altered. This is 

kind of one of my favorite ones. It says that I had 

contamination on my nose in dash five building. I took 

a shower, changed clothes, and I left the building and 

the alarm went off. It wasn't on the tip of my nose; I 

had alpha particles in my nose. That's kind of a good 

example of what we had to contend with out there. 

Here's another document that says that --

primary the same thing. It is not on the computer 

sheet with the dates. Another document, deleted. And 

here's a nice little document. Remember your weekly 

radiation dosage that you signed the bottom of each 

week? A lot of you remember those, don't you? Well, 

this is not my signature. Somebody forged my signature 

on this one. So how can we reconstruct something if 

the left hand doesn't know what the right one's doing? 

Here's another one about the same as the 

other one. So I just wanted to give the panel these 

documents to go through and look at and tell me if they 

can figure dose radiation from what we received out 

there. And I thank all of you, and have a good day. 

(Applause) 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, Charles. Next 

we have Randy Knowles. Randy's with PACE and -- here 

in Richland. Randy Knowles. 

 MR. KNOWLES: (Off microphone) I had intended 

to speak on behalf of Mr. and Mrs. Williamson, but (on 

microphone) their son's here and I think it's more 

appropriate that you hear from him --

 DR. ZIEMER: That would be fine. 

 MR. KNOWLES: -- instead of me. 

 MR. WILLIAMSON: My name's Jim Williamson. I 

was just writing notes as I heard my name called, so 

you have to understand I'm not really ready because I 

didn't know I was going to speak tonight. But I'm 

speaking on behalf of my mom and my family and my dad's 

name was John Williamson and some of you know him as 

Jack. He was hired in 1987 -- 1967 and he worked for 

25 years. He retired in 1993, and that same year he 

was diagnosed with cancer; 1996, a few years later, he 

also had part of his nose cut off, like the gentleman 

said earlier with him. And two years after that, he 

was screened for asbestosis and it was confirmed he had 

that. And in '99 he was diagnosed with myelodysplastic 

syndrome and finally myelomonocytic leukemia in August 

of '99. And I remember -- I mean I vividly remember --

I have four kids and I remember this day with my dad 

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more than I remember my kids being born, but I remember 

the doctor looking at my dad and saying John, you have 

a disease -- a rare disease that has no cure. You have 

one year to live. I mean it was just a -- I replay 

that many times in my life. 

Again, here's where I'm not quite sure... 

But anyway, my mom had LNI claim and it was from the 

State of Washington and it was -- they won the claim 

with the State of Washington and it was one of the few 

or maybe the only ones with the Hanford cancer-related 

cases that has won in the State of Washington, but in -

- for the Federal, for some reason, it's -- it's not 

working, for some -- we just don't understand if -- if 

it's one of those cases that the state is paying and 

they're supposed to have some kind of process where the 

cases that are -- that are easy to process and 

everything's already done, and I -- and I don't even 

know how many years ago it was, three, four years ago, 

my mom's still trying to deal with this and it keeps 

getting backed up or they call her and they're doing a 

phone interview and my mom doesn't -- my mom's here so 

I can't say anything bad about my mom, but she doesn't 

have -- she doesn't have a clue on those kind of 

questions or the way they're asking the questions. So 

I teach school and I take off school and I go over and 

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I try to help my mom with the questions and it's just -

- it's kind of unfair -- it's very unfair, and I feel 

for the -- all of you that are in here that are going 

through that, that are dealing with this stretched out 

and stretched out. Again, I -- I don't know what it 

is, four years, five years -- seems like a long, long 

time that we're dealing with this process. 

So again, I just -- if it -- to me, if it 

happened at the State of Washington and they've already 

gone through and they say yes, it's -- he died of 

cancer and I -- and then how come at the Federal level 

it's -- I don't know, we need to check it out a little 

bit longer and spend another four years. Anyway, it's 

-- sorry for being unorganized, but I didn't know I was 

going to be speaking tonight. 

(Applause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you very much, Jim. 

Next we have Ken Staley. Ken Staley, is it? Ken? 

 MR. STALEY: (Off microphone) Here or up in 

front? 

 DR. ZIEMER: We'd prefer in the front, if 

you're willing. 

 MR. STALEY: (Off microphone) (Inaudible). 

I think maybe I'll talk into this. My name 

is Ken Staley. I come back here in 1946. I come out 

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here in the '40's early when they were building 

Hanford. Uncle Sam knocked on the door and I got hurt 

in the south Pacific. I come back in '46 and started 

working at Hanford and there isn't an area out there 

that I haven't been in. 

And I think probably that I've looked around 

the room here and seen a lot of people that I know have 

worked there, but it's very obvious to me that when we 

first started working out there, you were allowed 300 

millirems a week. You were allowed 50 a day or 300 a 

week. My contention is, no one explained where that 50 

went and you were able to pick it up the next Monday, 

or the next -- the next week. 

I understand from my son-in-law now they're 

allowed only 100 a week. Am I getting to everybody? 

Well, I'll tell you what. The people have moaned and 

groaned about these down-winders. I happened to have 

worked in that 108-B building, the P-10 project. I 

have four children by my first marriage, '47, '49, '51 

and the one born in '53. It so happens that not only 

me, but my friend of mine's daughter was born the same 

time in '53 that the down-winders are hollering about 

this stuff that went up the stack, that beautiful 

yellow smoke. She's been in a wheelchair over 30 years 

with MS. Her girlfriend, born the same time, over the 

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same period of time, is in the ground. I have asked 

several people, did I contribute that to them. 

And this building, this 108-B building that 

I'm talking about, this other electrician is in the 

ground, and I went in there. I said Art, what in the 

world have they got these scales in here for? Well, he 

said, Boat, he -- my name is Boat, Steamboat. He said 

they weigh this heavy air before they let it go. I 

said what the hell they let it go for -- excuse the 

French. Once in a while I speak French. He said but 

they weigh it so they know how much they've got. 

Now I know -- I go around the room and I know 

a lot of these people go around 240 to shortcut over to 

the coast. They see this beautiful orange-yellow smoke 

go up the stacks in the 200 areas. What is it? I'll 

tell you what it is -- contamination off the slugs that 

they've taken the stuff off them. Where does it go? 

Out in the prairie. Now they're worried about the deer 

and the rest of them having it. Well, I wouldn't eat a 

deer from out there anyway, but my contention is this. 

This gentleman that's sitting back here that I worked 

with for years, if you've noticed his beautiful nose --

1973 he had a speck go up his nose; it took them five 

hours to get it out. They went in with chemotherapy 

and burnt on him. It come back on the lobe about a 

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year later. If you look at his beautiful face, it's 

going to cost $40,000 to get it rebuilt. There hasn't 

been one iota finances to help this gentleman out --

none -- whether the Medicare or the -- what will take 

care of it, but they're not getting off their duff here 

to help anybody that has been irradiated with this 

stuff. 

I've got beautiful arms here. It's not from 

the sun. It's from different things that you get into 

out there. I've never smoked in my life. I have to 

admit I put them on -- swinging graveyard in the bars 

once in a while. But security was so tight at the time 

that this happened in the '50's and the early -- late 

'40's that five of us had a glass of -- one pitcher of 

beer down at the old Rec Hall down here, and I happened 

to be the last one in. This is telling you how tight 

security used to be. I was the last one in with this 

little glass sitting there and I said gosh, that's for 

saving it for me. You better be good 'cause we were 

about to drink it. I sat down and said see those two 

fellas sitting at the bar up there? I said yeah. He 

said that one guy's been shooting his mouth off of what 

he's been doing out there. And I hadn't finished that 

glass of beer and he grabbed him bar and he said he's 

fired, come on. 

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Now this is how tight security is and nobody 

-- and I'm sure around here a lot of them know what I'm 

talking about, but I know there's a woman didn't want 

to get up here, used to be my neighbor, and we were 

interviewed from the State Radiation Department, three 

of us, Ray Samson, myself and Louise Jahnke. She has 

pictures of her husband. For the last five years he 

was dying of radiation poisoning. She don't want to 

speak. 

We were interviewed three years ago by 

Seattle Times -- three years ago, Bobby Pittman, Ray 

Samson and myself. Bobby Pittman had radiation so bad 

when he come out of that danger zone, they fieldstripped him, scrubbed him and buried the truck. Now I 

know a lot of you people working out there know what 

I'm talking about, burying radiated equipment. Before 

my friend Bobby Pittman died, he was on chemotherapy 

three times a week. Now if you think that's fun, try 

it. 

I'm not going to get up here and preach 

because I preach Fridays. I don't know religion 

preaches Fridays, so I'm going to get down. But I do 

want you people to know that they're very, very slow in 

compensating these widows and some of these other 

people out here, and it's very obvious that somebody is 

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filling their pocket up other than taking care of these 

widows. I have a unit of about 12 or 20 people -- I 

think it's real close to 20 people -- that we are 

talking about, widows. I'm looking at a few of them 

around here. What they're living on? I had one of the 

people say -- I had to loan this woman $100 so she 

could eat for the rest of the month. Is that fair 

because her husband died of this stuff? Not really, 

fellas. 

I've heard this early morning session where 

they were talking about Paducah, this wave and -- I 

think I heard, in the whole course this morning, 

Hanford mentioned only twice. What are they waiting 

for? These men and women come in here to understand 

what kind of stuff has been going on out there, and 

these people at NOSHA (sic) down there or whatever they 

call it, I don't think any of them -- I don't believe 

any of them have ever been across that 300 area line 

toward the radiation and know what they want. 

I have a claim number. I have been denied. 

I had a sample taken out of my arms that are so 

beautiful, but they took it in the wrong place. It 

come back benign. My case number's 2398. I've heard 

nothing but it has been denied. So it kind of makes 

you wonder, and the woman down there was a little bit 

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impudent with me. I said don't worry about it, they 

still make lawyers, and that's a heck of a way to be. 

I'm not going to preach anymore because I 

know there's other people got better stories than mine, 

and I thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Ken. 

(Applause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Next I have Michael Henning. Is 

it Michael Henning? Michael Henning is -- I think 

that's Henning. Anyone with a name similar to that? 

Okay, perhaps is not here. 

Richard Miller, Government Accountability 

Project. 

 MR. MILLER: (Off microphone) Why don't I 

pass for now, Dr. Ziemer? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Donna Beecroft. Donna? 

 MS. BEECROFT: I wanted to make a comment on 

dose reconstruction. In January of 1943 we moved here. 

My dad was one of the first people to be a reactor 

operator out at Hanford. 

In those early years you probably know that 

the rods -- the nuclear rods were changed by hand, so 

whenever the reactor slammed, Dad would go in and put 

on these white gloves and white suit and go in and take 

these rods out and they were disposed of. The gloves 

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came off and went into a big bin and the white suit 

went into a big bin, and all of the beautiful equipment 

like pliers and wrenches also went into a bin and 

everything was buried. 

One time one of Dad's coworkers tried to 

sneak a wrench home in his lunch box and was fired 

immediately. And my dad was not a person ever to take 

anything that didn't belong to him, but he thought that 

was so severe because I don't think in those days they 

understood anything that they were up against. This 

was -- this was fun, it was wonderful, it was exciting 

and we loved living here. 

We didn't come and ask for this money. I was 

approached and asked if we would apply for it, and I 

feel like we have not been treated well and we never 

asked for it. My dad worked -- when the reactors went 

down, sometimes Dad worked three shifts in a row, and 

they were -- they had a limit, and I don't know if it 

was seven minutes or 12 that they were supposed to be 

inside the reactor, and the -- but -- and then Dad 

would come out -- seven minutes, and Dad would come out 

and take off his gloves and his suit and put it in the 

bin that gets thrown away and put on a new suit and new 

gloves, and go back in again. And he wasn't supposed 

to do that, but they did it over and over because when 

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that reactor went down, you didn't say well, my time is 

up. You know, you kept on working, and they kept on 

working and a shift -- back-to-back shift. 

It's the first time Dad ever heard of a TV 

dinner. They had these dinners and they'd just heat 

them right up and it -- it was fun, it was exciting. 

He liked it. And he didn't know that he was getting 

sick, and some of his friends died. The first one was 

Jack Spadey and another one was Earl Sealey, and I 

happen to know them because -- I mean I knew them 

personally, and so -- and I'm sure a lot of others did, 

too. 

Anyway, now when I -- I call, they tell me 

well, we are looking at -- this is ten months -- ten 

months Dad's been in dose reconstruction. We're in 

dose reconstruction, but I'm wondering, you know, how 

in the world are you doing dose reconstruction when Dr. 

Charles Moore who spoke to you, his record's from 1950 

to 1976, and do you think they did a better job in 

record-keeping back in 1940? Let's see, 1943, that's 

when Dad started working, before they even had robots 

to change those rods. He was changing them with his 

hands. And you say you're going to do -- Dad knew what 

he was doing was illegal. He wasn't supposed to be 

taking that -- he'd -- he'd go on the geiger counter, 

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it'd tick -- when it ticked so hard that he couldn't 

make it quit ticking by showering and scrubbing and 

soaping, when he didn't quit ticking, then he didn't go 

back in anymore. But he came home like that. 

Now I don't want you to think we're a pitiful 

little family, because we're not. And we are proud of 

what my dad did and we're proud of him. We're proud of 

Hanford. We love it and we've enjoyed our lives here. 

It cost us to be here, but it's worth it. But this 

wasn't just Dad. 

When he comes up with bladder cancer, he had 

years of chemotherapy, changed his personality, it's 

taken a toll. I have three brothers and all three of 

them have thyroid problems and have had to have -- one 

of them's had the thyroid removed, maybe two. My only 

sister had breast cancer. My mom died of cancer. I 

seem to be the only one who made it just great, but 

anyway, the dose reconstruction, that's my point. 

I don't think it's honest or fair to say 

you're going to do dose reconstruction. You can't do 

dose reconstruction. They didn't keep those records, 

and you know they didn't write down when the dosimeter 

had a higher number than was legal. They didn't write 

that down. They wrote down something that was legal. 

And why is it that DOE has recognized that it's 

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impossible to do dose reconstructions at other sites, 

but not at Hanford? I don't think it's fair. 

We didn't ask for the money. I was not -- I 

was contacted. I didn't come and ask for it. But now 

that it was offered, and it's been what, nearly three 

years or -- over -- well, and -- and as far as I know, 

there isn't anything's been done on it, and it seems 

like it's a dead end. And I appreciate the opportunity 

to speak to you. 

(Applause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, did Michael Henning come 

back to the room? Yes. 

 MR. HENNING: My name is Mike Henning. I've 

worked out there since 1978 and --

UNIDENTIFIED: (Inaudible) 

 MR. HENNING: My name's Mike Henning. I've 

worked out there since 1978. I've worked pretty much 

every building that's there. I was working as a QC 

inspector, inspecting pipes they broke and everything 

else, and going in the tank farms and doing that sort 

of stuff. And I have had my reconstruction done. I 

filed it in 2001, December 2001, and they came back and 

said that I had so many rem and that it was less than 

the 50 percent required. 

Well, they didn't say what the 50 percent 

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required was, where it had to be five rad or 50 rem or 

whatever it was supposed to be. They didn't never tell 

us -- tell me in the letter or anyplace else that I 

know of what that criteria is. And where do they come 

up with this criteria, pull it out of their hat? I 

don't know. They don't tell you that, either, where 

they got these criteria for making these -- for 

rejecting you or whatever. And I -- I've had lymphoma 

cancer five or six years ago -- six years ago, and it 

hasn't come back again, but I don't know whether it 

will. 

You have people ask you whether or not you're 

clear from the cancer. Well, I was clear before I got 

it, so I don't know. 

So I just -- I think they need to inform 

people a little better about what criteria they're 

using and where they got their criteria and give --

like I said, they said I didn't meet 50 percent. Well, 

what was 50 percent? I don't know. So thank you very 

much. Oh, and I am glad you guys are here. 

(Applause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank your very much. Your 

comments are noted. The issue of communicating is one 

that we hear fairly regularly and it's something that 

is certainly being worked on. 

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Let me ask if there are any other individuals 

here who did -- who did wish to speak but did not get 

an opportunity to sign up on the sign-up sheet? 

Sir? Please. We have a little time, so we 

can take additional... 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) 

gentleman says he signed up and he hasn't been asked to 

speak yet. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Am I missing a -- I may be 

missing a sheet. Please go ahead, sir, and we'll -- we 

have time, we'll get you next. 

UNIDENTIFIED: Well, I want you to know I'm 

only 86 years old. I came here to Hanford in 1944. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And give us your name, for the 

record, please. 

 MR. SHATELL: Charles W. Shatell. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 MR. SHATELL: And I came here with the DuPont 

Company, but as far as radiation work is concerned, I 

wasn't involved in any until 1948, and from 1948 I 

worked for the Jones Company and -- or the contract 

under Jones, and we did radiation work for all the 

reactors. And so finally with -- well, I ended up with 

cancer. And in 1978 we used 400 men -- 400 exposure --

radiation exposures of 400 men in 100-N when we were 

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changing all the valves out. And of course now 

everybody thinks this film you've got on your badge was 

-- tell you how much radiation you took, and that is 

not so 'cause most of the times that we worked in 100-N 

on all those valves, it was beams from material that 

was in these valves. And a lot of -- well, I guess 

that when the fuel elements had a rupture and then 

those -- those partly -- is -- gets into the valves and 

you get a beam from them, and that's what you get most 

of your radiation from was the beams from ruptured fuel 

elements and whatever. And I don't know how many times 

I've talked to people since I've been in this cancer 

business, and they think this film badge on here tells 

you how much you get. Well, that's not so. 

Well, anyhow, in 1978 we did all this work 

out here at 100-N. And as I say, we used 400 -- the 

exposure of 400 men. And right at the last of the 

valves, we run into cobalt 60. I don't know whether --

how many of you know about cobalt 60 or not, but 

anyhow, we had a rupture -- fuel element, evidently --

and we had a valve that read 550 R, which is pretty --

pretty rough. And that day that we run into this valve 

that read 550 R, everybody left. And you couldn't 

blame them. All the engineers and everybody that we --

was taking over the thing, they all left. They didn't 

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want anything to do with 550 R. 

So we -- when we took the contract from Jones 

to do these valves, we anticipated that we might run 

into some high reading radiation, and so we built boxes 

-- lead-lined boxes, even up to the point of threequarters of an inch thick of lead -- that when we cut a 

valve out we could put it in that and then you could 

handle it. But this cobalt 60 -- and I didn't know 

that they was even using cobalt 60 as a fuel element, 

but I guess they were. So we run into this valve that 

was reading 550 R and so what do you do? You can't 

even get close to it. 

So the plumbers and the fitters are the ones 

that had jurisdiction over these valves. We had 

decided that we would take 300 MR per week. That was 

it. And anybody caught going over that amount on their 

own, like putting their things in their hip pocket or 

whatever, they would get fined $1,500, so most of them 

-- nobody ever went over it that I know of. 

And so I know that I was one of the -- I was 

the general foreman over the group and any time we had 

something that was reading 550 R, I wanted to be damned 

sure that somebody didn't do something wrong, so I went 

with them all the time whenever we had something that 

was -- reading that hot. And so I happened to be -- I 

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happened to be one of the people that did one of the 

operations that -- we decided how we were going to do 

it and got it all set up to take this valve out. And 

we got young -- agile young fellas. The boy that could 

go by the valve and put a choker on it in three seconds 

-- he had three seconds. In three seconds you would 

get 300 MR. He had to do it in three seconds, so he 

did it. And I know I was up above with a electric 

hoist with a hook hanging down and he hooked the choker 

onto the -- onto the electric hoist. 

So anyhow, then the welder that cut the 

bolts, he had a cut torch with a six-foot handle and he 

was able to take his 300 in one minute, and he cut the 

four bolts -- cut the nuts, the bolts off, then they 

dropped out. 

In the meantime, we had this valve hoisted 

up, pulled the pipe apart and whatever and we hoisted 

the thing up. And the job that I did was nothing. I 

put a plastic bag over the valve as it come up through 

the floor. And -- because if that particle that read 

550 R dropped out on the floor, you'd been in a hell of 

a shape, so that's what I did. And I put that -- that 

plastic bag on the valve, and it come right up by me 

and I had three seconds to do it, and I did it. 

And so two years later, that's when I found 

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out when I had a four plus four cancer in my prostate, 

and it was really -- I'd never had any cancer before or 

anything like this. I've been a pretty healthy guy all 

the way down the line, so anyhow, when this new 

urologist come in, he got a bunch of new equipment and 

he -- he found this -- with the biopsies, he found this 

cancer on my prostate and it was four plus four. Now I 

don't know whether -- how many of you know what four 

plus four means. They told me that five plus five 

would kill you, so it was -- pretty hot thing. 

So anyhow, now I signed up for this deal for 

the Hanford setup, and when I signed up for it of 

course they needed all this information. The Jones 

Company that I was -- worked with, every day that 

anybody worked on any of our radiation, we had a log 

book that was fixed up every day and wrote down exactly 

what everybody did, how much radiation they took and 

location and everything. The reason we did that was 

because we got sued two or three times for people 

saying they did this and did that -- just like your 

down-winders or whatever now that stuff drops into you 

out of the sky. But anyhow, those log books, when I 

left there we had a whole filing cabinet full of them. 

And Jones Company, when they left out there, they give 

them to DOE and brought them down here to DOE. If they 

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could get those log books, that'd solve a lot of 

problems for these people as to what they did, where 

they did it and how much radiation they took and the 

whole works. So -- but they tell me they can't find 

them, so I don't know. 

But anyhow, I signed up with this thing and 

I've been going through all the -- the -- for the NIOSH 

and the whole works, and in 2002 I spent $10,000 on my 

cancer. Now the shots that they gave me -- I know that 

gal from DOE says what? The shot I took every four 

months was $2,400 a shot, and it didn't take too long 

to get up to $10,000 bucks when you do that. But it 

did the work. It got my cancer way down, PSA was way 

down. But I still got -- the doctor said oh, hell, 

your PSA is down, you don't need any more shots. I 

said no, I want a biopsy to make sure. So we had a 

biopsy and find out sure enough, I still got a little 

bit of cancer left. So we're thinking the $2,400 shots 

-- it was $2,360 when we started but $2,400 now, and 

(Inaudible). I can't under-- this nurse says did you 

ever have gold pumped into you, and I said no, I never 

did. She said well, you just did. At that time the 

shots was $2,360. 

So anyhow -- so now I've went through all 

your NIOSH and I've went through telephone interviews 

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and I've went through the whole works, and finally I'm 

back to the deal now where they want to know actually 

how much money I spent, so maybe they're getting ready 

to pay me, I don't know. But I asked that -- the girl 

that is the first gal under -- oh, the head of the DOE 

-- she wrote me a letter and told me about (Inaudible) 

four plus four cancer, and she knew it was high, and 

she put her phone number on there, so I figured if 

anybody puts their phone number down, they expect you 

to call them. So I did and I called her and I said 

well, what I want to know is when are you going to 

start paying us some money so we can get -- get this 

thing back in shape again. And she said well, that's a 

different story. She said we put in for that program 

every month into the White House, and Mr. Bush turns 

her down every time. He said they've got insurance, 

let their insurance take care of it. Sure, I've got 

insurance. But my insurance now is up to $530 bucks a 

month and it's going to go higher. You can bet your 

life on it. And each time I get a letter from the 

insurance company that says -- and they turn their --

turn me down, but they said we're taking it under 

advisement. So finally they come and pay it. But with 

$530 a month, that's getting up around $6,000 a year. 

And so I think it's time that NIOSH or whoever's doing 

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it would be start recognizing the fact that the 

insurance companies can't be expected to pay for the 

whole thing. 

And then another thing, that other $40,000 

that they had there was -- I don't know what that was 

for, for a person. And every time I talk to anybody, 

how's your cancer doing? So it -- that $40,000 was to 

take care of whatever happened to you, I suppose. But 

I think -- I think that radiation, as far as Hanford 

was concerned, we did a lot of it. And all the records 

was kept and everything and I'll say one thing for the 

DOE. When we had suggestions, they did them. We told 

them how to clean the radiation down and before we'd go 

in, and for a higher radiation they would clean the 

place up first, and that was good. And they got us 

blankets with -- lead-lined blankets to where we could 

stop these -- the beams from hitting you. So I'll say 

one thing for them, they were -- they were cooperative 

with us on the thing. 

But since you have a group here of these 

people, I think there's one thing I would -- I'd just 

like to add before I quit. Quite a number of years ago 

it came out in the paper that anybody that had 

leukemia, radiation didn't -- was -- didn't have a 

thing to do with leukemia. And it was -- and it was 

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believed. People believed it. So this boy, that HEHF 

doctor here, I don't know what his name was because he 

wouldn't tell us, but we've -- from the plumbers and 

fitters, we decided that we were going to -- wasn't 

going to take 5,000 MR a year, we was only going to go 

-- take 3,000. And so we had an awful time getting it 

through, but they -- our international president said 

no, you're going to take 5,000. I said well, come on 

out and take it, if that's the way you want. 

So anyhow, they -- we talked to a nurse. 

She's dead now, God help her. She would come and take 

blood samples of our people that was -- we were going 

down in the -- like at 100-N, down in those holes, and 

they get 300 MR in about eight minutes. So we would 

take a blood sample of the boys that went down in those 

holes and this doctor that came along, he brought his 

microscope out and he would take this plate and make a 

plate of the blood sample. They would go in and do 

their job at high radiation and eight minutes, and come 

out and we took another blood sample right after they 

come out and he made a plate for it. And after looking 

at -- a lot of people never looked in a microscope 

before, but I have, and we looked at it -- at the 

plates. And this doctor said you see that? When 

you've got leukemia that's what your blood looks like. 

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So it was pretty much proven that radiation upset your 

blood system, too. So what we did, too, we went a week 

after that and took another blood sample of the same 

people and their blood was back to normal again. So 

that's were we came up with the 300 MR. That's all we 

took. 

So I just hope some time or other that they 

start paying us to get back even again because -- oh, 

one other thing. I just got a letter from them. I 

complained to them about -- that they didn't have any 

doctors or people that interview us from the Hanford 

project, so they sent me a list of the people from --

they said all you've got to do is just put a circle 

around the ones you want to talk to, so that's what 

they did. And this one guy I talked to, he had never -

- he didn't even know what a tube reactor was. He'd 

worked in labs all his life, you know. And so as I 

say, they cooperate with you pretty well. But it's 

been quite a few years since -- since this thing's been 

going on and I hope I outlive the cancer. I don't know 

whether I will or not, but -- but anyhow, I'm still 

taking the shots. And these shots that they give you -

- any of the women in here that's over 50 years old 

know what I'm talking about -- you have hot flashes. 

Yeah, you do, you have hot flashes. And I mean -- so I 

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told the doctor, I said God, those hot flashes -- he 

said oh, hell, I got a pill for that, so he give me 

some pills for it. And also this thing that you're 

taking, you take this shot and you -- these hot flashes 

you have, your skin just burns up, you know, and -- but 

you get red spots and green spots in front of your 

eyes. That's what -- that goes with those shots. So 

you -- so I'll tell you, it's -- it's quite a -- it's 

quite a thing to go through that, and I just hope that 

-- that they get their act together. They say they're 

up in the million dollars now that they've give to 

people in -- in the Hanford project. I hope they --

 DR. ZIEMER: We had those discussions. Thank 

you. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 

(Applause) 

I think they cover everything 

but hot flashes, actually. Just -- thank you very much 

for your comments. 

The other gentleman that -- is over here, 

yes. 

 MR. DAVID: My name is John David. I'm a 

sheet metal worker. I'm fortunate enough right now to 

represent the sheet metal workers here in this area, 

sheet metal workers Local 66. And I think it's pretty 

evident to anybody that's had an opportunity to hear 

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people speak here that this record -- dose 

reconstruction just absolutely, totally does not work. 

Now I can remember working out there where 

this gentleman worked, and I can remember working with 

that gentleman right there, and he's a sheet metal 

worker and his father was a sheet metal worker. And 

whether you're a sheet metal worker or a pipe fitter or 

whatever you did out there, you took a whole lot of 

dose. And it's pretty amazing to me that -- and I can 

remember people called timekeepers, and that's all 

their job was, they kept track of our dose. Now where 

all these books went is pretty amazing to me because 

they've got stacks of books everywhere out here and 

they've got every record in the world. And I'll 

guarantee you if I did something wrong out there, they 

could find every record on me they -- and they could 

probably replicate it in -- just like that. But when 

it comes to finding out for these people's medical 

issues, they can't find squat. Now there ain't nothing 

-- you can't call it anything other than unadulterated 

bullshit. 

(Applause) 

 MR. DAVID: Thank you. And these people need 

to be taken care of. Now I don't -- you guys can 

travel all around the country, and I want to thank you 

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for coming here, I want you to know that, and every one 

of us here want to thank you for that. But bottom 

line, you've got to give these people what they have 

coming, plain and simple. And they've put all this 

paperwork together. They've done everything they're 

supposed to do, and they're just waiting for somebody 

to do what they're supposed to do. 

And this gentleman here, Mr. Elliott, I've 

had the opportunity to see him and his people come 

through here, and his people that are sitting over 

here, I've seen them and I've seen them here multiple 

times. But hey, the rubber's got to meet the road 

sooner or later. And people are not going to continue 

to accept from you that hey, we're working on it, 

because working on it just don't cut it. And so all 

these people that are saying that they're trying to do 

something, what are they trying to do? 

Now I'm no genius. Okay? I went to two 

years of community college and I went to an 

apprenticeship, and I'm proud to tell you that. But I 

can figure out that this site needs to be a special 

cohort site, and I don't know how long it's going to 

take your Advisory Board or the NIOSH or whoever else 

it is to come up with that. 

Now these people around the country, these 

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other sites, they've got that. And you're just going 

to continually just talk to them and talk to them and 

talk to them -- okay? -- and they're not going to get 

anything and these people are dying, and that's 

horrific. 

Now I had the opportunity to work out there 

for 14 years. I don't have anything wrong with me, I 

don't think. Okay? So you -- you got -- you just got 

to bite the bullet and accept that and create this --

make this a special cohort site. You can't beat around 

the bush any more than you already have. You 

determined now that you had your dose reconstruction 

project complete in October of 2003. You can't prove 

to anybody that you're getting anything done. 

I'd also like to say that I happen to have 

the opportunity to represent a gentleman that's had his 

head opened up twice. Well, he's not eligible. He can 

only go through the State of Washington LNI program. 

Well, the last time it was, here last October, he got 

his head opened up, that was $250,000 to our health 

care plan. That's the second time it's happened. Both 

times, fortunately, the tumors are benign. He's not 

eligible, and he's going to get some more of these 

tumors 'cause he's got to go in every six months and 

he's got to get checked. He's 50 years old. He's got 

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to have malignant tumors before he can get any money? 

A quarter of a million dollars. 

This gentleman over here says he's told that 

hey, our health care plans will provide it -- provide 

for us, and our health care insurance premiums are 

going through the roof, which the government has a 

responsibility to address this. 

I also had an opportunity to work with a 

gentleman that he came here at the last time Mr. 

Elliott and his group of people were here, and he was 

so serious about this that he told Mr. Elliott that you 

could go exhume my dad's body right now, I'll give you 

permission. My sister and I will do that. Because 

there's no records of my father ever being 

contaminated, and I will guarantee you you will find 

plutonium in his system today. Now that's a pretty 

serious thing when somebody would be willing to allow 

their parent to be exhumed. And there's probably other 

cases just like that. 

Now I also would like to say and I'd like to 

thank Eunice Godfrey and the people that are over in 

that office that are trying to help these people of 

this community, because they have one of the most 

thankless jobs that I could ever imagine having. And 

they do a fantastic job of working with what they have. 

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But you people and the people that are supposed to be 

helping these people have got to do something to 

actually come up with something. And so this gentleman 

over here doesn't have to tell you about the horrific 

medical expenses he's experienced and 86 years old, 

which I'll go out on a limb and say it's pretty amazing 

to me that he can afford that. And go back and tell 

whoever it is you've got to tell wherever you've got to 

tell, because apparently they're not here, that this 

can no longer go on any longer. 

And again and lastly, I'd like to thank you. 

I know that everywhere you go you're probably hearing 

the same story. I don't know if you get paid for what 

you do or whatever, but whatever you're getting paid, 

you're probably -- you're earning every penny of it. 

But you're going to continue to get this until you 

finally and -- give these people what they're asking 

for, and that's simply just what they're supposed to 

get. This program was created in 2000, said hey, come 

on, sign up. And it's unacceptable to anybody that 

here four years later we have these minuscule numbers 

that we get a chance to read in the papers that we've 

compensated people for. Comparative to the amount of 

people that have applied for this program, it's -- I 

don't think that you could -- anybody could really say 

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that it's done its job so far. 

So again and lastly, thank you for coming and 

please take this message back. Not for me, not for 

you, for all these people and for all these people that 

aren't here tonight that -- they have died and their 

survivors are trying to get this compensation, and 

thank you. 

(Applause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. Another 

gentleman approaching the mike -- give us your name, 

sir, and... 

 MR. MITCHELL: My name is J. L. Mitchell and 

I worked out at the project for 33 and a half years. I 

worked in all the areas and all buildings with various 

types of material. In fact, the night that the plant 

blew up, I was the one that ran the sample and I was 

told that the samp-- we didn't have that much americium 

in the project. And we pulled another sample and in 

between the two, then she went -- the plant went. And 

I got contaminated and so did the rest of the crew that 

was there. We really got a shot of americium. 

I also worked with the thorium and beryllium 

and all of that over the period of time that I was in 

the plant. And I -- we always wore badges, but the 

badge only reads when it's coming directly to you. If 

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you have the badge pinned here and you turn this-a-way, 

well, your body's getting the reading instead of the 

badge. So it's not a -- really a true reading there, 

and I was never satisfied with -- they put the air 

sample up and then they'd take it down the next day and 

they let it set 24 hours while it decayed before they'd 

take the reading. But in the meanwhile, we was in the 

lab all the time getting it all the time and we never 

had no decay period. So there's really not a accurate 

reading that -- I don't think, because if we had been, 

it wouldn't be as many people is sick -- that are sick 

from the -- the things that they went through out there 

and they taken. And so I'm here to just let them know. 

And as I read in the Reader's Digest, the article about 

McCluskey was really not accurate because they left out 

some things and I don't know who dictated to the 

writer, but I'm the man that ran the sample and I'm the 

one to know what happened. And I just want people to 

know that that write-up wasn't really like it was 

supposed to be because it was too much left out. I 

don't know if it was covered over or left out, but it 

really wasn't accurate. And I'm here because I would 

like to get compensated for my sickness and for the 

suffering and I put myself through. And if it's any 

ways possible that I could get some help with this 

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reconstruction because I've been contacted by attorneys 

from a southern state -- and I won't call the state --

about my sickness and they wanted to know was anybody 

doing anything for me. And they asked me about the 

asbestos and I didn't even know about it, and they said 

they was in the area and took X-rays and I had 

something in my lungs and they figured it was asbestos, 

and this is what they was writing me about and they 

wanted to get an answer from me. Well, I don't know 

what it is, so what can I tell them? So I'm just kind 

of between a rock and a hard place, but they keep 

calling me and talking to me about it and they said if 

-- if they don't do something about it pretty quick and 

they was going to take over -- they was going to take 

over the -- for my -- and be my attorney, and without 

me even knowing what was going on. So I would, you 

know, just like to know, is it other people outside the 

state that know more about things than we do right here 

in the tri-city area? 

And I realize I been in Arkansas taking care 

of my mother for about five years and I really haven't 

kept up with everything because I wasn't here. And if 

I had gotten any mail there and she got ahold to it, 

ain't no telling what would have happened because she's 

suffering with Alzheimer's. But really something 

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really needs to be done because it's a lot of people 

out -- out here that worked out in that area and we got 

a lot of radiation that we shouldn't have gotten. But 

we got it and so what we going to do about it? And 

thank you. 

(Applause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: I have one more individual that 

signed up. It's Hank Hartley. Hank Hartley? 

 MR. HARTLEY: Good evening. My name is Hank 

Hartley. I did have the pleasure of serving on the 

Hanford Health Effects subcommittee with Dr. Henry 

Anderson for about six years. For about six and a half 

years I have managed the Hanford building trades 

medical screening program, and I wanted to touch on I 

guess four subjects. I'll start out with Charlie. 

I worked for Charlie many years ago, the pipe 

fitter general foreman who came up here a little while 

ago and talked. I was one of those young guys that 

used to run down there and attach the chokers, and 

Charlie would tell them to be careful of the shine. 

Well, I didn't know what shine was, so we went over to 

100-H one day to get some valves out and Charlie said 

see that wall over there? I said yeah. He says you 

got to run like a son of a gun and get over there --

and I did. And then we ran in and put the chokers on 

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and got it out. 

Anyway, the only thing I've ever really had 

is a little bit of skin cancer, which the doctors burn 

off about every three months or so. A little acid fell 

on my shoulder in the Purex building -- PNO galley --

and I had a cancer removed from it. It was about 30 

years ago I got that on me. But anyway, so much for 

that. 

What Charlie was talking about is these guys 

(Inaudible) shine. I have seen a lot of fellows that 

are not even nearly Charlie's age that are gone -- of 

all -- of all crafts, of all unions, of all workers of 

all types, production and construction. 

The other subject I wanted to talk about was 

this dose reconstruction. So many times in the past I 

wanted to know what my dose rate was or how much did I 

get, and they never could really quite tell me. Now 

hopefully -- I'm hoping that today they can establish 

some way or some means of being able to tell us what 

our dose assessment was. I don't know how they're 

going to do that. Maybe if they have people that did 

receive doses and you worked near them or in the same 

building as them, maybe they can do it, I don't know. 

I hope that they have means and methods of doing it. 

The other thing I was going to talk about was 

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-- so many talk about -- people talk about the downwinders. Well, you know, I had my doubts a little bit, 

too, a long time ago. But time passed and I've 

listened to a lot of people talk, especially Gail at 

the meetings I attended, and Ken Staley and Mr. Samson. 

And anyway, I've been married a few times, but I 

married a lady that used to live out in the Waluke 

Slopes. She got 47 acres out there. I told her to 

sell the property. I don't even want to live near 

that. But what happened out there, during the green 

run there were people out there, innocent people living 

out there just doing their thing, and there are areas 

out there that has been documented where people 

absolutely died for no real reason. And I'm talking 

about like Ritzville, Connell, all the little outlying 

lands that are down wind from Hanford. 

Well, anyway, I didn't much believe a lot of 

these stories until you actually, like in my case, get 

married to someone and they talk about it. And there 

were a lot of strange things that took place out there 

with animals, vegetables, women drinking milk when they 

were -- I don't know, six, seven, eight years old and 

developing breast cancer. And those women that 

couldn't tolerate milk from a cow drank goat's milk, 

which was even worse. And I attended a meeting on that 

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up in Spokane, and that was documented about the green 

run that got on the grass and the cows ate it and the 

animals got it up. 

Anyway, there was a fella that lived out near 

Eltopia, he was a Navy SEAL, and he has kept records of 

-- of deaths of people in and around the area that are 

hard to explain, and mostly they were cancers. And a 

lot of them didn't have cancer in their family, but 

they lived out in the blocks, we call it, down wind 

from Hanford, and they had pretty bad cancers. 

Then there was this -- another individual who 

-- he's about my age, I would say. He lived out on his 

grandfather's farm when he was very young, and the 

grandparents used to go out into the wheat stubble and 

find weather balloons. And these weather balloons were 

released about the same time as the green run and they 

would come over and fall down into the wheat stubble. 

Well, the folks would go out there and pick up the 

balloon. It'd have a little note that says if found, 

please return to your Federal government and tell us 

where and when and what and how. They did. 

They thought they were doing their duty to 

their country, and they were. But by the same token, 

they were sort of being -- I call it experimented on, 

you know, what through this release through the 

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balloons and the green run stuff that went over the top 

of them. Well, most of those people died of a strange 

-- brain stem cancers and things like that. A lot of 

those people died from it. 

And I read about it where so many times it's 

written off, saying oh, well, you know, they had to 

have it somewhere. Or there's people that live other 

places that get it; you know, you can't blame it on 

Hanford. But why so many people in such a small little 

area? I mean that becomes the question, to me; why so 

many deformed animals in that area, vegetables, things 

like that. It makes you wonder. 

Now from my wife's property, which I don't 

own, you walk up to the top of the hill and what are 

you looking at? 100-N, 100-H, all the places that 

Charlie told me to look out for when we were working 

out there as a pipe fitter. So I just wanted to touch 

on that, that the whole thing is related not only from 

the workers at Hanford, but from the people that live 

down wind from Hanford, and they suffered serious 

consequences. 

There were cases that I have noticed, having 

been a construction worker, Hanford's Health Effects 

and the building trades medical screening, where there 

were sometimes -- all the people on one side of a 

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block, for example, in Ritzville, would die, but the 

people on the other side didn't. Something to do with 

the prevailing wind -- I mean who knows? I'm not a 

scientist. But I wholly concur with David -- John 

David who just got up from sheet metal, and I sincerely 

hope that some good things come of these meetings. And 

I just want to tie it all together, Hanford, downwinders, all the people that have suffered one way or 

another because -- perhaps because of a lack of 

knowledge. 

So many people are afraid to come to EEOICPA. 

I refer a lot of people here from the medical 

screening. They're afraid that they can't remember the 

details or who they worked for or when or where or 

what. But there are ways -- I want to let the public 

know, there are ways of finding out where you worked 

and who you worked for. It takes a little research, 

pension records, Social Security, affidavits from other 

people that worked around you. 

Now Charlie -- speaking of Charlie, there are 

many people who could use Charlie as a person who could 

sign an affidavit for them, and I have signed myself 

four or five affidavits for widows whom I worked with 

their husbands in various areas. And now that I saw 

Charlie again tonight, it brought it to mind. He might 

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be able to help with a lot of these other people who 

are looking desperately for someone they worked for. 

They come to me and they say gee, Hank, everybody I 

worked with is dead. You know, he was right. They 

have been dying at a rapid rate, and they're at that 

age where they do naturally die at this time because a 

lot of them are World War II vets. My father is dead. 

He worked out there. A lot of those guys have passed 

on and they're not around to do affidavits and say that 

yes, I worked with this individual at 100-K, 100-D, 

HHR, whatever, they were there. But I think Charlie 

would be a good person who still has good faculties and 

he could sign affidavits and help people to prove where 

they worked, and that's one of the bugaboos that the 

people are worried about. 

I tell them, regardless of your fear, call 

the resource center in Kennewick. Those ladies down 

there will help you. They will help you with the 

paperwork. They're very good at what they do. They're 

personable. I've had many, many, many individuals come 

back to my office and tell me how personable those 

ladies were, how good they were, how they -- how 

helpful they were and how resourceful they were. I 

mean they really work hard. And personally, my hat is 

off to Judy Goudy, Teresa Hammer, who are the 

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caseworkers there, and Eunice Godfrey, their manager. 

I mean they -- those ladies have really done a great 

job and I'm here to give them a hand. 

(Applause) 

 MR. HARTLEY: I guess that's all I had to 

say. This is kind of impromptu. I was kind of nervous 

coming up here. Usually I can talk a little bit 

longer, but I'll try and let Charlie be the longer 

talker. Thank you. 

(Applause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thanks, Hank. We are running 

short of time, but there was another individual -- yes, 

sir, if you would approach the mike and give your name. 

Use the mike so our recorder can pick it up here. 

Thanks. 

 MR. YATES: Yes, I'm Roy Yates and I'm an 

electrician out at Hanford. And I did have colon 

cancer and it was stopped, you know -- or caught before 

it spread throughout my body, but I did have to take 

nine months of chemo. And right now I have on stage of 

osteoporosis. You know, they detected it in my back 

and hip and the doctors, you know, point for a man to 

have it at my age of 56, you know, it had to be the 

chemo that affected the thyroid and -- but I'd like to 

add a few notes here that -- I worked at Purex and at 

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the plutonium finishing plant and while I worked at 

Purex, you know, I witnessed, you know, a lot of 

inconsistencies, such as, you know, we had commingling, 

and that was throughout the 300-- or 200 areas and --

and that the rad workers would routinely check, you 

know, the code site, you know, for any contamination. 

And during one check they up and found hot spots on our 

chairs in our shop -- one of our chairs. And these are 

the same chairs we sat in, you know, with our coming 

and going-home clothes. And after that there, a couple 

of our more rowdiest electricians, you know, complained 

to DOE and at Purex we got that commingling stopped, 

which made, you know, management kind of upset, but --

this was for taking breaks and stuff. It was fast to 

get surveyed out of a zone and -- and not change out of 

your whites. 

And at the same -- as time went on, we ended 

up finding contamination on our whites after not being 

in anywhere where we should have got contamination, and 

it came to be that we were getting hot coveralls back 

from the laundry and -- so that was another episode 

that -- all the stuff is probably -- no records kept of 

it, you know, and Rockwell mission, you know, to its 

managers, was do what it took to keep the plant 

running. 

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And I was told as electrician at times to, 

you know, do things that I thought was unsafe 

electrically just to keep, you know, different 

components running. And consulting with a radiation 

technician that I worked with, both at Purex and then 

moved on to the dash -- you know, plutonium finishing 

plant, enlighted (sic) me with activities about their 

equipment. They had monitors that, you know, they 

turned off because they'd cause nuisance alarms, and 

then they had inaccurate monitoring of records of other 

monitors. Then they had -- these monitors also 

consisted of aluminum parts, and when they had them in 

the corrosive environments of -- of areas of Purex, 

they -- they tend to fail that way. And I witnessed 

this working on the equipment in those areas myself 

that components were badly corroded. And so we were 

exposed to another element right there with all the, 

you know, toxics (sic) of the corrosions that went on. 

And I guess -- like I said, I just -- I knew 

this meeting was -- somebody told me this meeting was 

coming up, but I didn't know about it until, you know, 

just -- just this -- you know, earlier this evening, so 

that's about as prepared as -- I did get my -- I did 

record, you know, my -- my cancer, you know, into the 

ONOSH (sic), you know, reporting. And I got my -- my 

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report back that said I was denied because I didn't 

have, you know, the percentage it required. But I 

still feel like under, you know, other testimonies and 

-- and what I'm stating here that -- that we were 

getting shines and other stuff that -- like I'd get 

that shine, too, because we went to, you know, the 

canyon where we had to work on the crane and the 

component you were working on is what they would, you 

know, kind of, you know, time kept what you were 

facing. But in back of you, you had the crane hook 

that was putting off a lot more dosage and a lot of 

your monit-- or a lot of your timekeepers didn't 

account for that, and that was coming from your back. 

So there was other -- oh, various activities of this 

nature that I feel like I didn't -- you know, what's on 

my records, you know, probably didn't account for 

everything that I was exposed to. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

(Applause) 

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

Richard Miller, are you wanting to speak today yet 

or --

 MR. MILLER: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. There will be an 

opportunity again tomorrow for public comment. 

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Let me ask one final time, are there any 

other individuals -- I know we've gone past our time --

was advertised as going to 8:30, but -- you have 

another lady? Thank you very much. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Inaudible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, right. Well, let's give 

this lady a chance and then you'll have the 

opportunity... 

MS. VAN DYKE: Hi, my name is Catherine Van 

Dyke and I am not a public speaker so you'll have to 

excuse me, but I've been feeling led throughout the 

whole meeting tonight to get up here and share. I was 

a quality control inspector out at Hanford for ten 

years, and I quit to come home and take care of my 

little boy and be an at-home mom. When I come home 

from being employed out there, I worked at several 

different areas out there, I had ongoing health 

problems and was in communication with the journeyman 

that I worked side-by-side with all those years who has 

a cousin disease compared to what they were finding or 

treating or still are currently treating me for. 

He has scleroderma, which is a connective 

tissue problem. They've been treating me with lupus, 

but I've never really been textbook for anything. I 

went and applied for the former Hanford checkup and I 

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am beryllium sensitized, which really took me by 

surprise after many years of ongoing testing and 

putting us in a financial situation of many medications 

and many different testing. I am currently going to 

National Jewish once a year. I go next month for lung 

biopsies. I did have high lymphocytes showing and 

everything. But my main concern this evening is to 

mention to you -- and I do have a claim with you guys. 

It has been approved as far as the beryllium 

sensitivity goes for ongoing testing. 

But I'd also like to have you take a look at 

the fact of all my other health problems from all the 

other things that I've been exposed with. I just 

cannot seem to find a physician or someone to place it 

all together as all the multiple problems that I have. 

I am 45 years old and I am permanently disabled, and it 

has been a real struggle for me. And I thank you for 

coming and -- and I just want to make you aware of 

where I'm coming from. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

(Applause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now this -- this is --

 MS. JAHNKE: Louisa Jahnke. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, Louisa. 

 MS. JAHNKE: My husband worked out here for 

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40 years. He came -- he came out of the Marines, went 

to work for Hanford. I have documented where he --

which building he worked in, every building he worked 

in and what he done. He was exposed to asbestos, 

beryllium, and I have papers on where there was two 

accidents out there that he was in in radiation. And 

this is the way he ended up, completely paralyzed. 

I have letters from five doctors that said 

they did not know what was wrong with him. They 

couldn't diagnose beryllium or -- or anything that he 

had. And if you men would look at this picture, I had 

to change his diapers every hour. It was rough. Just 

think if your wife had to do that for four years. But 

I loved him, so I did it. And I just can't get no 

place on these people. They won't do nothing for me, 

and I'm still paying the hospital bills. Can you 

imagine that? I'm still paying them. Social Security 

don't go very far, so I sure wish you would do 

something about this. I thank you. 

And I want to tell you something. My kids 

were all born and raised here. My youngest son, they 

found beryllium in his lungs. He never worked out 

there. He went to Seattle to Dr. Dakari, probably some 

of you know him, and Dr. -- the doctor came down here 

to Hanford. They found beryllium in his lungs from 

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Bill carrying it home on his shoes, washing the 

clothing all together. That's what the doctor said. 

Can you imagine that? So I wish you would take care of 

at least one of these. I appreciate it. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 MS. JAHNKE: I made it. 

(Applause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, all who 

participated and all who attended this evening. The 

Board will be meeting again tomorrow. I should 

emphasize to you, our meetings are completely open, not 

just the public period. They may be a little boring at 

times, they may be exciting, but you are welcome to all 

the meetings tomorrow. There's a lot of information, 

as one of the earlier gentlemen pointed out, our 

various presenters providing the Board with information 

to help us 'cause we are learning, too. And so you're 

welcome to join us again tomorrow. 

Our session begins -- what time does our 

session begin? The formal part of the session will 

begin at 8:30 and we continue through the day tomorrow. 

There will be a public comment period in late morning 

tomorrow, as well. 

Again, thank you and good night. 

(Meeting adjourned 8:50 p.m.) 

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1 C E R T I F I C A T E 

STATE OF GEORGIA )

)

COUNTY OF FULTON ) 

I, STEVEN RAY GREEN, being a Certified Merit Court 

Reporter in and for the State of Georgia, do hereby certify 

that the foregoing transcript was reduced to typewriting by me 

personally or under my direct supervision, and is a true, 

complete, and correct transcript of the aforesaid proceedings 

reported by me. 

I further certify that I am not related to, employed by, 

counsel to, or attorney for any parties, attorneys, or counsel 

involved herein; nor am I financially interested in this 

matter. 

WITNESS MY HAND AND OFFICIAL SEAL this _____ day of May, 

2004. 

___________________________

 STEVEN RAY GREEN, CVR-CM 

 GA CCR No. A-2102 

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