The following pages have had redactions made to them and 

are identified with yellow highlights and the abbreviation 

‘piid*’ which stands for ‘personally identifying 

information deleted’. 

Page 84-85, Page 89, Page 91, Page 108, Pages 115-116, 

Pages 122-123 

The following pages have had redactions made to them and 

are identified with yellow highlights and the abbreviation 

‘cfid*’ which stands for ‘commercial/financial information 

deleted’. 

Pages 146-147 
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-SEVENTH MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

EXECUTIVE SESSION 

 

The verbatim transcript of the Meeting of the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health held 

at the DoubleTree Club Hotel, 720 Las Flores Road, 

Livermore, California, on December 13, 2004. 
2

C O N T E N T S

 

December 13, 2004 

CLOSED SESSION -- DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 

INDIVIDUAL CASE DOSE RECONSTRUCTION REVIEWS 

DR. LEW WADE, NIOSH 

-- CASE REVIEW PRESENTATION DR. JOHN MAURO, SC&A 

 --INDIVIDUAL CASE REVIEW DISCUSSION 

 FULL BOARD, SC&A, NIOSH 8 

ADJOURN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 

COURT REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE. . . . . . . . . . . .178 
3

TRANSCRIPT LEGEND 

The following transcript contains quoted material. 

Such material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

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

an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 

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

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

word(s) when reading written material. 

-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 

of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 

reported. 

-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 

the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 

available. 

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

"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 

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

without reference available. 

-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 

failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 

In the following transcript (off microphone) 

refers to microphone malfunction or speaker's neglect 

to depress "on" button. 
4

 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 (PRO-TEM)

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D. 

Senior Science Advisor 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Washington, DC 

 

 

MEMBERSHIP

ANDERSON, Henry A., M.D. 

Chief Medical Officer 

Occupational and Environmental Health 

Wisconsin Division of Public Health 

Madison, Wisconsin 

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 
5

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 
6

AGENDA SPEAKERS

(in order of appearance) 

 

Dr. John Mauro, SC&A 

STAFF/VENDORS

CORI HOMER, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, Certified Merit Court Reporter 

 
7

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS

BEHLING, HANS, SC&A 

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A 

HALLMARK, SHELBY, LABOR 

HINNEFELD, STEVE, NIOSH 

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS 

KATZ, TED, NIOSH 

KOTSCH, JEFF, LABOR 

MCGOLERICK, ROB, HHS 

NESVET, JIM, LABOR 

NETON, JIM, NIOSH 

NUGENT, MARIAN, U.S. GOV’T ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

PORTER, DIANE, NIOSH 
8

1 P R O C E E D I N G S 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

(1:00 p.m.) 

DR. ZIEMER: We're on the record for the closed 

session. For the court reporter, if you would, 

state your name and your affiliation and we'll 

just send the mike on around. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Okay. Liz Homoki-Titus with 

Health and Human Services. 

MR. MCGOLERICK: Robert McGolerick with Health and 

Human Services. 

MR. NESVET: Jim Nesvet, Office of the Solicitor, 

Department of Labor. 

MR. HALLMARK: Shelby Hallmark, Labor. 

MR. KATZ: Ted Katz, NIOSH. 

MR. KOTSCH: Jeff Kotsch, Labor. 

UNIDENTIFIED: Rob (unintelligible), NIOSH. 

MS. NUGENT: Marian Nugent with the U.S. Government 

Accountability Office. 

MR. HINNEFELD: Steve Hinnefeld with NIOSH. 

MS. PORTER: I'm Diane Porter with NIOSH. 

MR. FITZGERALD: I'm Joe Fitzgerald with the SC&A 

team. 

DR. MAURO: John Mauro, SC&A. 

DR. BEHLING: Hans Behling, SC&A. 

DR. NETON: Jim Neton with NIOSH. 
9

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. Now I want to make 

sure that everybody at the table has the 

various materials that we need. First of all, 

you should have a booklet from SC&A which is 

the compilation of their findings. It's a 

plain-covered booklet. Inside it says audit 

findings, task four, first 20 review cases. 

That material that's in the binder should be 

replaced, I understand, by something that looks 

the same but it's simply stapled together. So 

-- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MS. MUNN: Everything that's in the binder? 

DR. ZIEMER: No, the first packet in the binder that 

-- 

MS. MUNN: Thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- is kind of the summary. What do we 

want to do with those, pull the old ones out -- 

is that correct, John or Cori? 

MS. HOMER: Pull them out. 

DR. ZIEMER: And are we giving these old ones to 

somebody? 

MS. HOMER: You can give them to me. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Just pull out the old one and 

Cori will collect those so that we have 

accounted for them. And that should be 
10

replaced with this updated material that looks 

the same. Now does everybody have -- or anyone 

that didn't seem to get the new insert? This 

is a separate, plain-covered folder. Pull out 

the first section, replace it -- everybody okay 

on that? 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 Then in addition there's a packet called NIOSH 

preliminary comments on SCA review of dose 

reconstructions, so you should have that. And 

then in connection with that, you have the 

secret decoding sheet, which is the number -- 

the case number, one through 20, and a crossreferenced NIOSH ID so you can cross-reference 

that with the cases that you actually reviewed. 

That sheet with those two sets of numbers needs 

to be turned in at the end of the session today 

because this is -- this is the secret code, 

relates these numbers to the real case numbers. 

Okay? Anyone who lacks that or the NIOSH 

document? 

 Now one of the questions that has arisen is the 

extent to which the Board wishes to review each 

case individually versus having an overview and 

kind of a summary report at the front end. I 

believe that SC&A felt that it might be helpful 
11

just to do an overview summary. Is that 

correct, John or Hans? But -- but they're 

willing to do either. One of the concerns was 

if we go through each case, case by case, that 

we may run out of time. But I leave it to the 

Board. Do you wish to step through the cases 

individually at the front end, or would you 

rather hear the overview first? 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 Okay -- comment, comment, comment. Okay, Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: I would like to hear the overview first. 

I guess to say this -- I mean it would be 

helpful in future meetings, if we're going to 

be doing this, is to have both this summary and 

the NIOSH report or response, whatever you want 

to call it, ahead of time 'cause -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

DR. MELIUS: So I'm a little bit at a loss as to how 

we proceed here 'cause we may have to go into 

some individual case findings. But I think it 

would be helpful to hear an overview first and 

then move on from there. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let's get feedback from others on that, 

too. Wanda, are you addressing that issue, as 

well? 

MS. MUNN: Yeah. It would be preferable from my 
12

point of view to have the overview. As a 

matter of fact, there is some question in my 

mind whether an individual case report is in 

fact what we wanted to do. It had been my 

understanding that that's why we broke the case 

load up into smaller bits, so that each one of 

us could be familiar with what had transpired 

with a given number of cases, rather than 

having to devote our energies to the entire 

group. I'd prefer the overview. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Tony? 

DR. ANDRADE: I also would prefer the overview. And 

during the overview, if whoever's prepared to 

give that could tell us if any of the 

discrepancies they've found were such that any 

of the POC's were pushed close to .5. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let -- let me see if -- we've heard from 

three people that they'd like an overview 

approach to start with, and we can always go 

back and look at individual cases. What about 

the rest of you? 

 (Pause) 

DR. ZIEMER: There seems to be a consensus that we 

proceed with the overview. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I just have a question for the 
13

Board. Are you all going to be interested in 

providing this document publicly when you have 

this discussion publicly? 'Cause I'll be more 

than happy to start redacting it so that we can 

get copies for the public discussion. Yes? Is 

that all right? 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm not sure we even know. I've not 

even seen what's in this document, so -- 

DR. MELIUS: Can you ask that again in about an hour? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Sure. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I think that'd be -- 'cause I'd 

hate to have you do all that work and -- you 

know, it may... 

DR. ZIEMER: Then John, if you would kick it off, or 

however you want to proceed. 

 (Pause) 

DR. MAURO: (Off microphone) I'd like to start off 

by sort of setting -- setting the table, so to 

speak, which I think would be helpful. Are we 

live here? 

(Whereupon, difficulties with microphones were 

addressed.) 

DR. MAURO: Thank you. I'm going to take my time a 

little bit up front to set the table. I think 

it's important to set context. 
14

 We received our set of cases, and -- and then 

we put together a process that we discussed I 

believe at our last meeting whereby the process 

we had elected to do was to -- after a small 

core group of SC&A elite people reviewed the 20 

cases, we distributed the cases amongst our 

what I call case managers. We had about seven 

case managers. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 Each case manager was asked to review each case 

-- and I'm trying to get to the next slide, but 

that doesn't seem to be working for me. 

DR. NETON: Push the red button on top. 

DR. MAURO: The red button? 

DR. NETON: Make sure that's off. Make sure the red 

button's off, then pull the trigger. 

DR. MAURO: Oh, I've got it. Okay. There we go. 

 In effect, this is our contract regarding task 

four. We are to -- and it's specifically for 

basic review, so we were asked to perform a 

basic review of 20 cases, and this is our 

checklist of criteria. It's -- I'm not going 

to go through it in detail, but one of the -- 

from this morning's discussion when we 

considered matters of scope, how much are we 

doing, did we do too much, did we do too 
15

little, our marching orders were in effect 

delineated based on this statement of work. 

And then of course the judgment becomes, within 

the context of those marching orders, do you 

folks feel that we in fact did accomplish for 

each case these line items that we were asked 

to examine, and of course did we go into enough 

depth. So -- but these were the marching 

orders given to the seven case managers. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 We went through the review cycle. Each of us, 

quite frankly, had to come up to speed. 

Namely, we had to review not only the -- the 

file that was provided to us, the disk, the CD 

with -- with the -- with all of the supporting 

material, but of course in -- in just about all 

cases we also had to review the site profile 

that stood behind it. Now on some cases the 

site profile review was well under way, if not 

completed, when we began our work. In other 

cases, it was not -- it had not begun. So in 

effect, to a certain degree, a mini site 

profile review was performed for each case, to 

the extent that we could. 

 Quite frankly, I felt that except for a couple 

of instances, we were able to perform what I 
16

considered to be an effective review in spite 

of the fact that the site profile review had 

not been completed. I'm going to point out a 

couple of exceptions, and one of them is 

Savannah River, when we get to that. We'll 

move on. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MR. GRIFFON: John, going back to that last slide, 

any reason for the highlighted ones? Were they 

(unintelligible) -- 

DR. MAURO: Good question. I did not highlight 

those. The -- the edi-- the -- I -- no. 

 Okay. Given that mandate that was previously 

shown, we in effect had three fundamental 

objectives when we got into this, is that -- 

you know, there's all the DOE data that's out 

there that was provided as part of the record. 

And of course there is the CATI interview that 

we had. And so our starting point was okay, 

let's take a look at the dose reconstruction 

report. And in effect what we really asked 

ourselves was the input file that's used as 

IREP that's in the back of every -- I don't 

know if you folks have all had a chance to look 

at some of these dose reconstruction reports. 

The very back of every one of them has the 
17

input file that is used for the dose recon-- 

for the IREP line. So the way we visualized 

our mission was to determine whether or not the 

numbers that were in the table that was used as 

input were in fact valid scien-- in fact, the 

two big issues are scientifically 

valid/claimant favorable, and compatible and 

consistent with the -- the records that were 

sup-- that are behind them, namely the DOE 

records, the CATI interview. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 We also asked ourselves did they follow their 

own procedures. By the way, an interesting 

side of this is that while this work was going 

on, simultaneously we were reviewing the 

procedures. So in a funny way the -- though 

we've broken up our program into effectively 

three task areas, task one being the site 

profile review, task three -- we're going to 

jump over two; two is -- really is a recordkeeping so that's really not something we need 

to talk about right now. Task three is the 

procedures. There's a stack of about 30 

procedures that are what I call generic 

procedures that have universal applicability to 

all dose reconstructions. And then of course 
18

task four, which is the actual review of the 

dose reconstructions. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 Well, they really all come together when you're 

performing a dose reconstruction review, and 

you need to be familiar with all parts of the 

process. Namely, you need to be familiar with 

the procedures. You need to -- that -- that 

were used. You need to be familiar with the 

site profile in order for you to perform an 

effective review of the actual individual 

cases. 

 Now what we tried to do is convince ourselves 

that we understood each line item input that 

was -- the input to IREP, each dose calc-- each 

line item dose and its uncertainty, and the -- 

and the scientif-- scientific validity of the 

approach used to come to that number, and we 

try to duplicate that number ourselves -- or as 

many of them as we felt we needed to duplicate 

to convince ourselves that we understood what 

was done by -- by NIOSH and its contractors, 

and that was essential and within the context 

of the records, the DOE records, the CATI, the 

procedures. And also places where there was -- 

certain technical judgments had to be made 
19

where the analyst had to -- where there was no 

cookbook form to follow but where he had to use 

some scientific judgment, and whether or not 

that judgment is valid. So this sort -- as -- 

was -- this is how we came out of the gate. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 Now -- 

DR. ROESSLER: Can we have a question on that slide? 

Could we go back to that slide? 

 (Pause) 

DR. ROESSLER: My question deals with your note, and 

I'm not sure that -- I'm not clear on the -- 

how you evaluate this with regard to the POC, 

and I think Tony had a question earlier -- 

DR. MAURO: Oh, yeah, it's very important. I'm sorry 

to interrupt. 

DR. ROESSLER: Yeah. Okay, my question is -- 

DR. MAURO: We did not. 

DR. ROESSLER: Well, when -- in our group, when we 

got the three reports, one of them did show 

that your team had compared the POC that had 

been developed, compared to the one that your 

team member developed. Another case, the POC 

that your team member had developed was not 

given, but during the discussion this was 

brought up quite a bit. You know, this would 
20

affect the POC. You know, I just want a 

clarification on just how does the POC come 

into play as you're doing this. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: It should not have. Our mandate is not 

to make a statement regarding the POC. Our 

statement is simply was a good job done in 

doing the dose reconstruction, scientifically 

robust and claimant-favorable when necessary, 

when appropriate. We did not and we should not 

have -- there should not be any words in our 

report anywhere where we make a statement 

regarding the significance of our dose findings 

with respect to Probability of Causation. If -

- 

MR. GRIFFON: John -- 

DR. MAURO: -- there's words in there to that effect, 

they really should not be there. 

MR. GRIFFON: Well, I just want to point back to our 

scope here, part C, number two, the basic 

review. (Reading) Verify dose calculations are 

appropriate for purposes of determination of 

POC. 

DR. MAURO: Right. 

MR. GRIFFON: So you -- it's a -- I mean it's a -- it 

has to come up in some way, I believe. 
21

DR. MAURO: Yes. Within the conte-- within the 

context of what we're trying to accomplish and 

the -- the -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. MAURO: -- reconstruct doses for the purpose of 

using as input into the POC calculation, yes, 

that's within our mandate. So that, for 

example, if -- if some simplifying assumption, 

efficiency assumption is made -- okay? -- we 

did look at that efficiency assumption as being 

reasonable, given -- give the fact that the -- 

our -- the intent is eventually to run a POC 

calculation, but we did not make a judgment 

whether or not the -- we -- we would -- we 

would make an assumption whether or not we felt 

the -- that number was reasonable, 

scientifically defensible, claimant-favorable, 

consistent with the CATI, consistent with the 

records, consistent with the procedures that 

were -- but we di-- as they're designed to be 

used to -- to con-- to reconstruct doses that 

eventually will be used to run a POC. But we 

never evaluated whether or not -- if we found a 

problem with a number, we did not take a 

position on whether or not that would have a 
22

significant effect or not on the POC. That was 

outside of our mandate, cle-- at least within 

our understanding of our mandate as delineated 

in the previous slide. So we -- we should not 

have gone anywhere near any statement saying 

the degree to which it might affect the POC. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ROESSLER: Well, you brought up another word, and 

that's "efficiency". And this is kind of a 

general question and I don't know the answer to 

it. When NIOSH employed the efficiency process 

to a case, and then you knew that and you knew 

based on information that you had, did you also 

then apply the efficiency process or take that 

into consideration and let's say be less 

critical of detail on that particular case 

because they did employ the efficiency process? 

DR. MAURO: Absolutely. Perfect example is there are 

two Bethlehem Steel cases which were granted -- 

the claim was granted, and the calculation of 

dose was limited to a very limited number of 

pathways. In other words, they would look 

simply at the inhalation dose to the lung and 

stop at that point and not consider the 

external exposure from -- from -- from the 

source that the -- the -- so when we -- when we 
23

were reviewing -- and you'll see a slide here, 

in fact I think it's the fifth -- the fifth 

case we reviewed -- when it was self-evident 

that there really was no need to go any further 

in terms of the rigor and level of analysis, we 

-- we would re-- review the position taken by 

NIOSH: Hey, listen, we stopped at this point 

because there really was no need. The only -- 

the only degree that we -- we -- we reviewed 

said do we agree with the inhalation dose, are 

there any problems with the inhalation dose. 

We agree that, given this inhalation dose, you 

know -- you know, the -- and the fact that they 

stopped the -- and the -- the dose at the point 

that they did. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Let's -- for example, let's say they -- they ran 

their calculations, limited it to the 

inhalation dose from -- of uranium and -- and 

came up with a PC of greater than .5 and 

stopped at that point, we did not question 

that. We just convinced ourselves that yes, 

they -- they evalua-- and -- and they evaluated 

the airborne dust loading correctly using the 

data -- or incorrectly, if we were critical. 

They evaluated the inhalation dose correctly, 
24

and we reproduced the dose to the organ of 

concern by running IMBA. So in effect, what we 

did is if it turns out that the -- the -- the 

analysis was NIOSH needed to first try to 

reconstruct what the airborne dust loading was 

for the worker, what the exposure 

duration/inhalation rate was for the worker, 

what the organ -- the dose to the organ was to 

the worker, and we would check each one of 

those steps and the back-up documentation for 

it that would be contained in all of the 

references that were cited in the dose 

reconstruction report, and also in the site 

profiles. To the extent that we could come to 

the point where we felt that they reconstructed 

the dose to the org-- to the lung correctly, 

and on that basis we agreed with their dose, we 

did not -- and then we -- we stopped at that 

point. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

We did not ask whether or not they should have looked 

at some external dose. We took it on faith, on 

face value, that they got a PC of greater than 

.5 'cause we never ran the PC calculation to 

see if in fact that's true. Okay? I think 

that's important. So -- so we don't make any 
25

statements regarding whether or not they 

converted their dose to PC correctly or not. 

Okay? 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I have a related question. That's 

how do you know from looking at the file that 

that's what they did? Or -- and there may be 

other instances at the other end of the 

spectrum where there's very low exposures and 

maybe they don't do as precise a job or -- I'm 

not sure -- is there some notation in the file 

or some no-- note or... 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, the dose reconstruction report 

makes it very clear: We stopped at this point 

because there was no need to go on. 

DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

DR. MAURO: The words -- every one where they 

stopped, they say that. In fact -- yes. 

DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

DR. ANDRADE: John, just one more quick question, 

same slide -- but you don't have to go back to 

it, at the very bottom of your note -- and by 

the way, I appreciate the clarification about 

the fact that you all are not commenting on 

POC. But you did say that for select 
26

discrepancies SC&A did quantify the resultant 

impact on the assigned radiation organ dose. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: Yes. 

DR. ANDRADE: Okay. I guess throughout your 

presentation if you could give an example of 

that -- 

DR. MAURO: Oh, yeah. 

DR. ANDRADE: -- I'd -- I'd appreciate that. 

DR. MAURO: Well, I'll give you one -- right -- well, 

you'll see -- we broke the work up -- I took on 

all the AWEs, there were five of them, and the 

other -- the other 15 were distributed amongst 

the other six members of the team. But the 

person that was responsible for overseeing the 

QA of everything is sitting at the back of the 

room is Hans Behling, so he's intimately 

familiar with everything 'cause we did go 

through a QC process. 

Now I'll give you an example of one case where -- for 

example, Blockson Chemical Company -- in fact, 

it's the first one -- where a person had a 

prostate cancer, and we reproduced the doses 

that were -- that are in the table in the back 

of the dose reconstruction report and -- for 

every pathway, from inhalation, external 
27

exposure, resuspen-- what-- resuspension, 

residual radioactivity, all of the pathway -- 

X-ray, we reproduced every number, or we tried 

to reproduce every number and get to the point 

where we say we agree that that -- that -- that 

dose is correct, or we believe there's an error 

in that dose. Turns out in Blockson you'll see 

major errors. We believe there -- for example, 

we -- we -- one of the pathways is that the 

worker is standing next to a drum filled with 

natural uranium -- yellowcake -- and there's a 

dose calculation that's -- an estimate is made 

of the dose to the organ of concern from a 

worker who'd be standing next to that, and 

there's a dose presented. We reran -- we ran 

MicroShield and MCNP to see if we could 

duplicate their doses and convince ourselves 

that -- the numbers that were correct, so -- so 

yes, so we -- we ran the calculation, and it 

turns out that we came up with a dose that's 

five times higher than the dose that was 

reported in the report. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

We did that for everything. That is every dose 

that's reported, we attempted to duplicate it. 

And when we could not duplicate it, we try to 
28

find out what's wrong. In many cases we -- and 

on more than one occasion I would actually call 

up some of the folks at NIOSH, say listen, I'm 

having a real hard time matching an inhalation 

dose using IMBA. And to be honest, when we 

first started, I'd never used IMBA before, so 

it -- I was concerned. I -- listen, I thought 

I understood what I was doing here. I ran IMBA 

and I'm missing your number by a very large 

amount and maybe I'm doing something stupid; 

help me out. And they did, they helped me out. 

We walked through the case. In some cases, I 

was doing it wrong. In other case I uncovered 

some errors. So we're at the point now where 

our team is comfortable with running IMBA. Our 

team is very comfortable running any of the 

external dosimetry codes because we've been 

doing that for a long time. But IMBA is the 

new player on the block for many of us -- 

except for Joyce Lipstein*. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Joyce -- Joyce is our internal dosimetrist and she -- 

in fact, she runs a different code than IMBA. 

So what we would do is I would run IMBA, I'd 

get a number, and then I'd call Joy-- Joyce, 

run this scenario for me -- or I'd e-mail her -
29

- and then she'd run it and -- and see if I got 

the same result. So we got to the point where 

we had lots of ways of cross-checking. But we 

did try to match every number in the -- in 

these tables at the back. And -- and when we 

couldn't match them, we tried to figure out why 

we can't match them. Is it something that we 

don't understand, or is there possibly an 

error. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

If you -- in attempting to capture on one slide -- 

well, really two slides -- this is the overview 

slide that is -- it -- it covers two pages. 

You'll see that -- and we'll go back again. 

It's a two-page slide that is the overview 

slide. 

Okay. What we found is that for the 20 cases, almost 

all of them had some significant problems, 

except for perhaps five. You'll see that the 

ones that were -- where we basically said look, 

no problem, say no concern. Let's see, on this 

page there were some significant problems, in 

our opinion from our review, on all -- the 

first 12 and the -- on this page, so we only 

found one, two, three, four that we say we -- 

we agree with, for all intents and purposes, 
30

entirely. The other 16 we have varying degrees 

of criticism or concern -- maybe that's a 

better word. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

And in some cases we consider -- for example, the 

first two, Blockson and Huntington, I did those 

mys-- I did -- in fact, I did the first five, 

found some what I considered to be major 

errors, and what I believe to be major 

breakdown in quality. Okay? In those -- in 

those cases, something was wrong. I think it's 

an important finding. 

Other cases we found that -- and Hans'll talk a lot 

more about this. The problem was more that the 

author of the dose reconstruction got confused 

in following the procedures. As I mentioned, 

one of the things we were doing, while we were 

doing this, is reviewing the procedures. Now 

it turns out -- and Hans'll speak to this -- 

the procedures are very, very complex and it's 

no easy task to figure out what procedure 

applies under what circumstance. You have to 

go through -- oh, perhaps a foot of material to 

start to put the puzzle together of oh, okay, 

this is how we're supposed to reconstruct the 

doses associated with external exposures when 
31

you're below -- below the limits of detection 

at Savannah River in this time period. It's -- 

and it's -- so it's very di-- it was very di-- 

in my opinion, it was very difficult for the 

dose reconstructor to fully understand the 

procedures and then follow them. So we found a 

lot of what I would say errors where there -- 

they did not follow their own procedures. And 

I think the reason for that is there are some 

problems with the procedures, and Hans will 

speak to -- speak to that. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

I'm trying to -- I'm trying to capture -- 'cause 

there's so much detail when -- we could -- we 

could spend an hour on each case. We -- we -- 

for -- a good way to group it is for the AWEs, 

there -- a generic protocol was set forward. 

Blockson -- Blockson -- in Blockson and 

Huntington, for example, the whole thing is 

based on the site profile, so we went in and 

looked at the site profile. And I have to say 

that I found major errors that went both ways. 

Some of them resulted in an over-estimate of 

the dose by 4,000 -- from an internal dose. 

Other errors underestimated -- other pathways 

underestimated the dose by perhaps a factor of 
32

five or a factor of ten. I believe that -- and 

that would be for those first two. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Then -- of course the Bethlehem Steel, we could 

probably put that off -- the next three are 

Bethlehem Steel. Well, you've seen the 

Bethlehem Steel critique. We've got -- we've 

got a concern with the -- the fundamental 

approach 'cause all of the doses for Bethlehem 

Steel come right out of the -- the site 

profile. So there is -- there is no data. I 

mean for -- for the first five, there are no 

data on those workers. Everything comes out of 

the site profile, so the site profile's the 

whole ball game. And so we review those site -

- so I -- I did a review of Blockson and 

Huntington. Of course we know that Joe and his 

crew did a review of -- of Bethlehem Steel. 

And basically the criticisms that -- that we 

have of Bethlehem Steel are virtually identical 

to the criticisms that we put in our report on 

Bethlehem Steel, and perhaps we'd be better off 

holding that off until tomorrow when we discuss 

Bethlehem Steel. 

So then -- then when we move on and we move into the 

-- the actual cases where the majority of the 
33

ex-- of the exposures were not -- were not 

based on the site profile but were based 

partially on the site profile and based on 

actual DOE data. And in those cases, to try to 

give you a big picture on it, if you break it 

out between the kinds of problems we 

encountered with external dosimetry and the 

kinds of problems we -- we observed regarding 

internal dosimetry, they came to -- external 

dosimetry, it was clear that the authors, in 

many cases, were confused; that -- that weren't 

quite sure how to reconstruct the external 

doses based on the procedures that were laid 

out before them and I'd like Hans to speak to 

the -- some of the conc-- some of the problems 

we encountered in -- in the fact that it did 

not do a -- use a consistent approach or the 

correct approach. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

There was -- another category has to do with the Xray exposures. We found that though there was 

a very nice procedure written by Ron Katherine* 

to reconstruct the doses from X-rays, we found 

that it was not used consistently. An example 

would be the -- the way in which it's supposed 

to work is if -- if -- let's say the organ of 
34

concern is the bladder. Okay? Now there's a 

very nice procedure that allows you to 

determine what the dose is to the bladder from 

a chest X-ray, and it's usually about one one -

- let -- about 1/100th to 1/500th of the dose 

to the chest. But we found that in some cases 

they simply used the dose to the chest as if it 

was the dose to the bladder because it was 

claimant-favorable. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Now in my opinion, I don't think that should have 

been done. In other words, someone could say 

well, that's claimant-favorable. But it seems 

if you have a procedure -- if you have a 

procedure that says this is how you calculate 

your dose to the bladder, you follow that 

procedure. And another problem we ran into 

with regard to the X-ray was that if you go 

before 1960, the procedure says -- prior to 

1960 photofluoroscopy was commonly used as 

opposed to just traditional chest X-rays. And 

in many cases -- not all cases, but in many 

cases the -- the reconstructed dose ignored 

that and never gave -- and that's important 

because I think the doses from the 

photofluoroscopy are at least ten times greater 
35

per exposure, if not more, than the X-ray. So 

what happens is there -- we -- we found lots of 

inconsistency. We found errors, calculational 

errors, sometimes major errors. We found 

inconsistencies in the way in which the 

external doses were reconstructed from either 

employing the efficiency procedures that were 

laid out -- and there's a big pile of 

procedures that -- that have been published. 

Or we found errors in going from the records 

that were provided by DOE and translating those 

records into the input parameters into IREP. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

I'm trying to think of other broad categories of 

error -- in fact, I'd like to ask Hans to come 

up and help me out. He -- quite frankly, he's 

a lot more familiar, since he checked 

everything. And I'm trying to capture a sense 

of where the problems are, but I -- we do feel 

strongly that there are some quality problems 

in -- across the board. We only found four or 

five that I would say were -- had no problems. 

The rest had problems that in some cases were -

- showed a very -- a complete breakdown in 

quality. 

I'm not going to say, though, that there will be one 
36

reversal. I cannot say, standing here before 

you, that any of the -- if we were to redo any 

of these doses of -- and -- from scratch, 

replace all the input parameters for -- input 

to IREP, then run IREP, whether we would go 

from a non-compensable to a compensable. We're 

not in a position to say that. All we're going 

-- all we did in our report was point out 

places where there were some minor problems and 

some major problems in the way in which the 

dose reconstructions were performed. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Hans, I -- I know you -- you may want to add 

something. I tried to do something in a -- in 

an overview. 

DR. BEHLING: If I may, I guess I wasn't really 

prepared to do a -- an abridged version. I was 

fully prepared to do all 15 of the non-AWE 

cases, and I also was in a position to perhaps 

take select number of the 15 and then go 

through each of those with some level of 

detail. But at the pleasure of the Advisory 

Board, we're going to try to obviously avoid 

even talking about a single individual case and 

just summarily talk about some of our findings. 

But I just want to go over a couple of things that 
37

were just brought out a few minutes ago by 

different members of the advisory committee as 

to what it is that we did. In fact, one of the 

things that we did do was to not necessarily 

address the magnitude of an error. If there 

was an error which we felt was either a failure 

to adhere to a procedure or protocol, or if it 

was a nominal arithmetic error, I didn't really 

care too much if it was a millirem that slipped 

a decimal point or rem, but the fact that the 

error existed was the key issue. And in some 

instances, while we weren't concerned about the 

POC, we wanted to at least identify the 

magnitude of the potential error in some cases 

where the error could have translated into 

something as much as ten, even 15 rem into an 

organ dose. So as on a footnote stated in one 

of the slides that John previously reported, 

SC&A did quantify the resultant impact of the 

assigned radiation organ doses in select cases, 

and that was strictly to give you some 

understanding as to what potential impact such 

an error might have made on the POC. And 

without necessary -- going through any 

speculation, I believe that there are at least 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 
38

a couple of instances where the POC as 

calculated by NIOSH was sufficiently high, in 

the 40's, where perhaps a dose of ten rem could 

very easily translate into a compensable case. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

The other issue that I wanted to briefly address that 

was more or -- more or less generic are a 

couple of the others -- one of the things that 

I'm not sure I knew what the answer was in 

response to a question raised by -- are the 

members really familiar with the dose 

reconstruction report as we received it in 

behalf of the 20 claims. Now I do have one 

claim that I selected which is very typical of 

the other 15 that I looked at that I have for 

distribution with the Privacy Act issues 

stricken, and I was hoping to be able to 

actually distribute that dose reconstruction 

report to the Board here so that you can sort 

of get an understanding of what it is that we 

started out with, what is the information that 

we had when we started our dose reconstruction 

report. And quite honestly, in one of the 

slides maybe I'll have a chance to show it, I 

do have some concerns about the report itself 

in terms of the brevity and -- and the limited 
39

information that's available. And for us to do 

a dose reconstruction -- and as stated in one 

of the footnote, we did a 100 percent 

verification of each and every entry, so that 

when you look at a dose reconstruction report 

-- and the one that I have with me here as 

about 300 dose entries, so that means verifying 

300 entries, and they're not easy to verify 

because what you get in the dose reconstruction 

report as Attachment One is nothing more than a 

citation of numbers. You have no idea whether 

entry one through 15 was a dose that was -- 

that reflects an actual empirical dosimeter 

dose, whether it's a missing dose, whether it's 

a internal dose, you have no idea. And so our 

starting point when we looked at these dose 

reconstruction was to first identify which each 

-- what each of those entries represented in 

terms of the typical categories that one looked 

for. And if it's -- if it's the Board's 

approval, I would like to distribute one of 

those claims and the dose reconstruction report 

associated with that claims (sic) to the -- 

each of the members so you can have an 

understanding of how difficult it is and how 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 
40

time-consuming it is to -- to duplicate and 

verify each and every single number, because 

the -- the report itself, in many instances, 

confines itself to a one or two-sentence 

statement about how these numbers were derived, 

without specifying the -- necessarily the 

procedure that was used or the parameters that 

modified the particular dose reconstruction. 

And so you essentially go through a blind 

process that starts out with numbers that you 

don't really fully understand, and you have to 

now identify the procedures that was used, the 

parameters that was used. You then check the 

numbers and you determine whether or not there 

is a consensus among the people in our group 

whether that was a correct number to use. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

While Dr. Ziemer was out I'd mentioned to the Board 

that I have a particular dose reconstruction 

report that I had sanitized with regard to the 

Privacy Act that I would -- with your 

permission, of course -- distribute among the 

members so that the members have an 

understanding of what it is that we start out 

with, because that would answer an awful lot of 

questions about the complexity and the time 
41

that is required for us to duplicate that dose 

reconstruction and essentially define whether 

or not we agree with the findings. And if it's 

-- if it's with your approval, I would like to 

pass out this report. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, I've not -- I have no objection. 

Does the Board wish to see that? 

 (Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: While that's being passed out, could I 

ask a general question? There's a number of 

cases where you have identified actual 

apparently calculational errors? 

DR. BEHLING: Yes. Yes, sir. 

DR. ZIEMER: What I'd like to ask, and I haven't had 

a chance to read all of Jim Neton's stuff, are 

there some errors that have been identified 

that NIOSH agrees were calculational errors? I 

mean if it's simply an error -- 

DR. NETON: Yeah -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- that somebody made, I assume you 

would look at that and say oh, yeah, we made an 

error and you would... 

DR. NETON: Sure. There were several cases -- a 

number of cases -- I can't quantify exactly 

right now off the top of my head -- where 
42

missed dose may have been inappropriately 

calculated. But you'll see in our comments 

that SC&A also made calculational errors, as 

well. And also there was a -- a reasonable 

misunderstanding of our procedures. I'll admit 

that they're complicated and complex, but they 

misunderstood to the point where they were 

stating that we were off by a factor of two in 

dose. If you looked on the IREP input sheet, 

it would appear under two different radiation 

categories as two separate doses. Those are 

listed as errors of factors of two. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

You'll see those kind of issues throughout the review 

process. 

DR. BEHLING: Yeah, I need to make also a comment 

here with respond-- in response to what Dr. 

Neton just mentioned. The original report that 

you have with the 20 cases was in fact a draft 

report. And in fact, the slides that I would 

have shown you that correspond to this have 

been amended to some extent. So in agreement 

with what Dr. Neton just said, there were a 

couple of errors. We were in a very, very real 

rush to get that to you, and it was only when I 

actually summarized those particular cases that 
43

I realized that those -- there were several 

cases that I personally did not necessarily 

have a -- an oversight role in it. And when I 

collated the data in each of those reports into 

a single page for the purpose of this 

presentation, I recognized there were a couple 

of errors and -- and it is in fact just a draft 

report. We knew it was a draft report. We 

also solicited comments from the members of the 

Board here, with the expectation that a final 

report will correct those errors. So yes, in 

fact if you compare the slides that you were 

given here, the abridged version, with the ones 

that are in our three-ring binder, you will see 

a few differences where in a couple of 

instances the numbers have changed, the 

explanations have changed, and in some cases 

even the yes or no -- is it claimant-favorable, 

is it scientifically valid, have gone from yes 

to no and no to yes in a couple of instances. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

And I also want to mention in context with the types 

of errors, we were not partial in terms of what 

we considered an error. There were many 

instances where we found a -- in a dose 

assignment that we didn't agree with, even 
44

though it was highly claimant-favorable, most 

notably among the occupational medical 

exposures where again -- as John already 

pointed out -- was a convention approach of 

saying oh, let's go with the highest organ dose 

and -- and call it claimant-favorable. Well, I 

don't really believe that should be done 

because claimant-favorability is really based 

on instances, or it should be used in instances 

where you don't have the data, when in doubt, 

when there is an absence of data, lean towards 

the claimants as -- as a gesture of -- of 

favorability. But when you, for instance, have 

an occupational medical dose and, as John 

mentioned, the target organ is the bladder or 

the testes or the rectum or the colon, why 

would you use another number that's -- doesn't 

reflect that -- that dose. And this was a 

consistent finding we have and in many 

instances this would say well, you're not 

claimant-favorable. No, I think we're 

interpreting the procedures as they should be, 

and that is when you have the information, use 

it. And claimant favorability is not designed 

to -- to misuse it or just to pretend you're 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 
45

claimant-favorable when in fact, you know, the 

POC's never going to even approach 50 percent, 

use the real number. In fact, in some 

instances we believe that claimant favorability 

as it was being done may actually come to haunt 

you because in the event that a person -- let's 

say has a POC of 40 percent, and an error was 

done, and then among the 40 percent that was 

derived by NIOSH you were extremely generous or 

NIOSH was extremely generous, excessively 

generous with the dose, but then only to find 

out that a serious error was made that in -- 

when you compensate now for that error, puts 

you over 50 -- the percent level, would be 

likely that NIOSH would say well, wait a 

minute, we're not going to be as generous as we 

started out to, so let's have the original 

report back and we're going to have to withdraw 

that -- that claimant-favorable assumption 

about occupational radiation exposure or 

something else, and we're now going to have to 

accept the notion that we were more generous 

than we should have been. And I think -- those 

are the two -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 DR. ZIEMER: Obviously we have already had cases -- 
46

1 DR. BEHLING: -- (unintelligible) -- 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: -- like that I believe where the second 

cancer occurred -- 

DR. NETON: That's true. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- so in a different process -- 

DR. NETON: I'd just like to comment on that, 

briefly. I think this is -- this is a 

situation where one needs to take into context 

the volume of the claims that we're processing. 

SC&A has laboriously reviewed 20 cases and in 

fact expended far more energy than we spent 

processing them in the first place. In that 

review it is true that we were claimant 

favorable, but actually that used -- the 

process in our dose reconstruction regulation 

that allows us to use worst-case assumptions to 

process claims in an efficient, timely manner 

to give the claimants an answer earlier than 

later. And in doing 6,000-plus cases that 

we've done, we don't have the luxury to sit and 

labor over every one. And when one generates 

spreadsheets that process these calculations, 

it is much more time-efficient to insert the 

highest organ dose. And yes, as a factor of a 

hundred, you're talking about .1 rem -- 
47

millirem versus ten millirem, we're not giving 

them 15 rem, I believe it's part and parcel to 

the efficiency process in getting claimants a 

timely answer to their dose reconstructions. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. BEHLING: I would like to make a comment to that 

effect, however. If you have a table and the 

table is the ultimate source for your 

information and the table says 83 millirem to 

the lungs for a chest X-ray for a certain time 

period, then on that same table two slots down 

you have the dose to the bladder, I don't 

perceive that as a efficiency process. You're 

going through the same motion. You're looking 

at the same table, but electing to use an 83 

millirem dose to the lung when in fact the 

person in question has a bladder cancer. And 

you can't say oh, well, that saved us a step 

for -- for a few millirem which wouldn't make 

any difference. The truth is there on that 

same table is the exact dose you should use for 

the -- for the cancer in question. 

And it's not a process of efficiency in this case. I 

certainly understand efficiency. If -- if it's 

likely that you're going to save a few hours of 

time to do, for instance, an internal dose 
48

assessment based on urine data or -- and you 

realize it's not likely going to make much 

difference, you can default to a -- a high five 

for -- for Hanford or for -- for Savannah River 

or -- or the standards of reactor/non-reactor 

radionuclide inventory, I understand that. And 

that certainly will save you tremendous amounts 

of time. But when you have a table that gives 

you specific organ doses, and the organ in 

question is the bladder, why would you choose 

something other than the bladder? It makes no 

sense. It certainly isn't time-efficient. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MR. HINNEFELD: Just as a matter of explanation, 

whether something is efficient or not depends 

upon the process you're using to develop the 

dose reconstruction. So it's not a fact that a 

dose reconstructor will necessarily manually 

look at that table, pick the number off the 

table and write it on the IREP input sheet, but 

rather chooses a selection button and -- on a 

worksheet or a tool in a worksheet will then 

pull up a string of doses -- you know, he'll 

say from this year to this year, medical X-ray 

on a maximizing approach, and it will pull up a 

number and put it in the spreadsheet. So I 
49

understand what you're saying. But in order to 

know whether the work process is efficient or 

not, or whether the decision was an efficiency 

process, you need to understand the work 

process that the dose reconstructor followed. 

And in fact, it was efficient. And at various 

times it's become -- it's -- the tools have 

been more refined so that it's a less grossly 

over-estimating efficiency, but the actual 

process was efficient to choose that, even 

though it doesn't seem like it by looking at 

the table. When the dose reconstruction was 

done, it was efficient to choose that number. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: It's okay -- we're -- we're -- 

MR. HINNEFELD: Now I think we're probably qualified 

(unintelligible) -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- (unintelligible) process where the 

end result is not going to change. I know that 

scientists get more bothered by this sort of 

thing, and this occurs -- I've read through all 

of the -- all of the dose reconstructions, and 

that occurs in a number of cases where a 

scientist will say that doesn't make sense when 

you -- you could have done it this way. But 

again, it doesn't affect the result. 
50

DR. BEHLING: And chances are many of them don't. 

But I took a very different viewpoint -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: No, I under-- I understand where you're 

coming from on it, and they've explained where 

they're coming from in terms of the approach to 

achieve the correct answer from a claim-- from 

a compensa-- compensation point of view as 

opposed to the sheer science of it. 

DR. MELIUS: Could I -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim has a comment. 

DR. MELIUS: Could I ask a question first? It's 

nothing to do with the point/counterpoint. I'm 

trying to understand the written reports, 

though. And -- and if somebody can clarify for 

me, I think I understand this. SCA developed 

these individual dose reconstruction reviews. 

There was conference calls that the individ-- 

the Board members, as assigned, participated 

in. You know, I did for -- for my four cases 

and so forth. Believe NIOSH staff also 

participated in those -- those conference 

calls. 

DR. MAURO: They were physically at the meeting. 

DR. MELIUS: Physically -- okay. So -- so they were 

at the meeting. Then the reports -- draft 
51

reports, individual dose reconstruction review 

reports were written up and submitted to -- to 

the Board. I believe NIOSH received them at 

the same time. Okay. So the first opportunity 

for NIOSH to review these written reports as 

contained in this report that was handed to us 

today -- correct, Jim? Is that... 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

And if I'm looking at this report -- and I'm just 

going to pick one as an example here, case 

number two. I have the summary from SC&A and 

it looks like there were seven issues that -- 

that they -- they raised in their review. 

Okay? You -- NIOSH responded to two of those 

seven issues, I think -- if I understand this 

right. So is that -- I just -- sort of 

procedural process so what I want to know is is 

that saying yes, these other issues are -- not 

are they important, but are they legitimate, or 

did you have time to respond to everythi-- I'm 

just trying to understand what's -- 

DR. NETON: It's the latter, Dr. Melius. We -- we 

just didn't have time to digest 300 pages of 

information in the several weeks that we were 

allotted, and I think we tried to capture that 

in our last sentence here that these should not 
52

be considered complete review but rather early 

comments on some issues that could be readily 

addressed. In some cases we recognized very 

quickly that there was a misunderstanding by 

SC&A of our approach. They made calculational 

errors. There's a difference of opinion on the 

use of ICRP versus ICRP-60 things -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

DR. NETON: -- so we commented on those as 

appropriate. But we're not willing to say that 

silence on those remaining issues implies that 

we agree with them at this point. 

DR. MAURO: Could I -- by way of -- 

DR. NETON: It might. There are some issues that we 

-- we do agree with, but at this point we're 

not there yet. 

DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

DR. MAURO: There's a process issue I think that we 

really have not talked about. What you have 

before you -- and some of you have the full 

set. Paul, I think you have the full set. 

Jim, you have the full set you asked for. 

Right? So there -- other -- other folks have 

the full set. 

All right. At the time we delivered that full set, 
53

then we went forward and started to prepare our 

presentation. Now it's a very long 

presentation. We haven't really started yet, 

but we're trying to not do that 'cause it's 

going to be painful. I mean it's a long -- and 

now -- but what is useful, and I'm going to 

suggest this as part of -- as the process, is 

when you get to each case -- for example, 

here's Blockson. Okay? And everyone has the 

same format. This might be a -- a useful tool 

-- okay? -- to get through the process. When 

all is said and done, what -- what I -- for 

example, I did Blockson -- here -- here are the 

-- if I was to say on one table here's what I 

found out, I'm not going to go into the details 

now, and the next page goes on -- here are my 

concerns -- okay? -- and I list them, the 

concerns I have. Now if you want to know more 

about any of these concerns, you can certainly 

go into the report. But what would be very 

useful as -- by way of processes, is whether or 

not -- and I think -- I'm trying to think in 

terms of -- the -- what's the end of the 

process? I think the next step in the process 

-- and this could be a -- time-consuming is, as 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 
54

Jim pointed out, we may have misunderstood. We 

may have made an error. Or you may agree, and 

we have already found numerous places where we 

feel we need to make some corrections that -- 

that need to be made. So we can issue -- for 

example, right now we could issue an errata 

sheet -- we'd say replace this page with this, 

this page with that -- where we found problems. 

We're ready to do that. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

But then Jim correctly may take a position regarding 

one or more of these criticisms, and we're very 

anxious to hear what they are. And let's say 

-- let's say -- and I realize that won't be a 

small job. But I think in the end -- will the 

next step in the process be reissuing our big 

report to the Board and to NIOSH, making the 

changes that we want to make based on the 

errata sheets that we've already prepared and -

- and reviewing the commentaries and -- that 

Jim would provide and then we would put out a 

final report? Or do we stop at this point? 

I'm not quite sure, you know, the process you'd 

like to proceed. We'd be the first to admit 

that we may have taken a position -- like for 

example, I'm very familiar with the Blockson 
55

case. Quite frankly, I believe that is one of 

the places where I found -- I believe I found 

some major errors. But I also made some 

judgment calls. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Let me give you a good example of a judgment call 

that I think is worthy of a debate amongst the 

Board and to discuss. In the end, the way in 

which the inhalation dose was calculated for 

this particular claimant was there was some 

data re-- on bi-- urinalysis data, which -- and 

the -- the information said that we have some-- 

we have something like ten or 20 urinalysis 

samples that sort of capture the range of 

concentrations of radionuclides of uranium in 

urine, and it ranged -- I'm going to point to 

this bullet in particular -- it ranged from 

zero to .017 milligrams per liter. 

Now that range, based on my calculations -- which I 

believe are correct, and they were checked -- 

corresponds to an intake of anywhere from zero 

to 240 picocuries per day. So what are we 

saying? We're saying well, we have a claimant. 

We don't know what his intake was, his chronic 

intake was while he worked at the Blockson 

facility. But we do have some generic data on 
56

urinalysis that says some people had zero 

picocuries per day and others may have had as 

high as 240 picocuries per day. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Now the way in which NIOSH elected to reconstruct the 

internal dose to this worker was to use a 

geometric mean of 24 picocuries per day, which 

-- which is not the highest value. It's 

someplace in between the two. Now I believe it 

turns out to be the geometric mean, I'm not 

quite sure, but my reaction to this was, you 

know, I'm a little bit concerned. We have a 

limited amount of measurements that go from 

zero to twenty-- zer-- basically zero to 240 

picocuries per day as chronic intake that this 

population of workers experienced, some close 

to zero, some may be as high as 240, some may 

have been higher than 240 because there's only 

a limited population of numbers. 

Now to pick 24 as the geometric -- as the -- as the 

value, at least the geometric mean of the value 

for this particular worker disturbed me. And 

in my mind, I would have said -- in fact, I 

wrote this up in the report -- I probably -- 

you know, given the mandate, I probably would 

have done something along the lines of saying 
57

let's take the upper 90 percentile of that 

distribution because that would error (sic) on 

the side of the claimant. I would be -- rather 

than use 24 picocuries per day, with -- with an 

appropriate one sigma, which is sort of like 

the -- the median of this distribution, which -

- you're really not giving the benefit of the 

doubt to the claimant now. You're basically -- 

that's claimant-neutral. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

In other words, I would argue that taking that tact 

(sic) -- and by the way, this is a recurring 

theme that we see throughout all of the cases. 

Whenever the dose is reconstructed, they work 

with the geometric mean that applies to the 

whole work population, and then they say that 

applies to my claimant. Now I see that as 

claimant-neutral, and we may have a difference 

of opinion here, Jim. I'm almost done. I 

would say there's got to be another way of 

picking your distribution that would be more 

claimant-favorable and keeping with the theme 

as laid out in the procedures, that perhaps you 

wouldn't go with the geometric mean. Maybe 

you'd pick a fixed value at the 90 percent 

level as opposed to going with this -- 'cause 
58

it seems to me that this approach is -- I call 

it claimant-neutral. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ANDRADE: John, before you go on, and before I 

even make my own comments, I know Mike has been 

wanting to make -- why don't you go first, 

Mike? 

MR. GIBSON: Well, it's -- it's going back to a 

different issue. Hans talked about on this 

case here that he handed out that he had to go 

back and personally look up 300 and some 

datapoints to verify that this stuff was 

correct. That gives me great concern about 

quality assurance of NIOSH and ORAU having a -- 

an auditable trail for this data. And if they 

did, how much time would that save on these 

dose reconstruction audits and how much money 

would that save that we've been talking about 

all morning? 

DR. BEHLING: In fact, that's one of my statements at 

-- at the end of the Hanford claims where I 

summarized a couple of comments that reflect 

this very issue. And a few minutes ago we 

heard from Dr. Neton that in some instances we 

may have spent more time verifying the numbers 

than the original dose reconstruction, and I'll 
59

explain you why. I mean when we do this, I 

have to first decipher what was done, and it's 

almost like a crime scene situation where you 

have to figure out what goes where and what is 

meaningful, what's not meaningful. Certainly 

as -- and this is the very reason I handed out 

this particular dose reconstruction report for 

you to look at. In the back you will see the 

Attachment One, which has I believe 300 and 

some-odd entries, and you have no idea what any 

of those entries represent. And you have to go 

in there and say let me see now, what do -- 

what does the first series of entries 

represent? Is it the real TLD dose, the film 

dose, is it the missed dose, the neutron dose 

or -- which process did they use in terms of 

the neutron dose, is it the neutron/photon ray 

shield? All these things, all these parameters 

-- the original dose reconstructor, he knows 

what he wants to do, but I can't read his mind, 

and so I have to now, in verifying each and 

every number, go back -- in many instances the 

reference given for doing something is we used 

Technical Basis Document such-and-such, with no 

page number, no table number, no number for 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 
60

defining what the parameters. I have to now go 

back and say did he use a -- a neutron 

correction factor -- the ICRP neutron 

correction factor that has this value? What 

was the -- the neutron/photon ratio at this 

location? That takes more time than the person 

who did it. And then I have to go back and say 

do I agree with the number, and then write my 

comments. To answer the question did we use 

more time, yes, I'm sure we did, and there's a 

justification for that. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. NETON: Well, let me just say a couple of things 

before we go too far away from John's issue 

with the urine sample -- could I, please? If I 

go ahead? 

First I'd just like to address Hans's issue that I 

think SC&A themselves admit that there was a 

learning curve involved. Occupational 

radiation dose reconstruction is an arcane 

science, understood not by very many. And I 

think they would agree that many people on 

their team had a steep learning curve to 

understand that. But yet they're there, and I 

suggest it's a strength of the program that the 

sufficient document was there for them to 
61

reconstruct every single line of every code. 

Not once have I heard them come back and say we 

cannot figure out what you did here based on 

your documentation, so -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: Could I -- could I just -- 

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

DR. MAURO: -- (unintelligible) on this point? You 

could have made it a little easier on us. 

DR. NETON: Absolutely. But again, we're striking a 

balance between processing 17,000 cases, giving 

people a timely answer. When it goes to final 

adjudication and the claimant has an issue, we 

can sit down and leisurely reconstruct it at 

that time. But the audit trail is there, I'll 

submit that. 

Number two, John's issue with the urine samples. 

This is a case where SC&A again has failed to 

pull the thread on the available data. We did 

not base those intakes on that population on 

individual bioassay samples, but rather on the 

multiple bioassay samples that were taken on 

those people. They are intakes based on 

samples over a period of time. In fact, 21 out 

of the 25 people -- and this, again, is 

addressed in our write-up -- 21 out of the 25 
62

people had multiple samples, indicating that 

these were in a higher-exposed population. We 

believe that this is representative of the most 

likely exposed group at Blockson Chemical, and 

there indeed are not hundreds of other people 

that this is representing. These are the 

workers. So I think it's -- it's inappropriate 

to say that this does not represent the actual 

worker exposures. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: I understand what you're saying. In 

fact, I spoke to David Allen about this, but 

from reading the report -- see, to me, I -- I 

look at the report, I look at the data. We did 

not have actual access to individual 

measurements -- almost done -- so given -- 

given that the information we have is that some 

25 samples were taken from ten individuals -- 

DR. NETON: Multi-- 21 people. 

DR. MAURO: I forgot the exact number, you have it 

there, good. 

DR. NETON: Twenty-five people, 21 appear on more 

than one urinalysis report. 

DR. MAURO: Okay. Now, what I do is now -- now here 

I am trying to stay -- get the job done. I say 

let me see if I can reconstruct the 24 
63

picocuries, and I -- and I said -- and I was 

able to reconstruct -- I was able to get to 

240. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. NETON: Right. 

DR. MAURO: So I said gee, I'm getting to 240, but I 

can't get to 24, so I called David Allen and we 

had this conversation, and David said well, we 

believe -- the reason we didn't go with the 240 

is we believe the zero to 240 was already your 

critical group. And see, I'm used to the world 

where when you're do your risk assessment, dose 

assessment, you work from the point of view of 

the critical population group. That is, you 

say -- if you don't know -- if you have a 

population of people and you want to 

reconstruct their dose or risk to an individual 

and you don't have any information, you -- you 

-- the way I look at it is you err on the side 

of the claimant or you try to say well, what 

would be a reasonable upper end reconstructed 

dose. And in my mind, from looking at the 

data, 24 was not the right number. 

But now you're taking the position -- and this is a 

good -- and this is worthy of mention -- 

DR. NETON: Right. 
64

DR. MAURO: -- that is, if it turns out that that 

population that was sampled was already a 

subset of the total population, which was the 

high end group -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. NETON: That's exactly right. 

DR. MAURO: -- I'd be surprised that you'd get zero 

for some of them. 

DR. NETON: Right. But that's exactly right, John. 

And I guess I take exception to the fact that, 

based on that observation where you couldn't 

pull the thread far enough, conclusions were 

drawn -- such as a total breakdown in quality I 

think is an inappropriate conclusion. 

DR. MAURO: Well, not on this one. I didn't say that 

on this one. 

DR. NETON: Well, but you point it out as a poster 

child for an issue and I raise that objection. 

DR. MAURO: No, I -- I -- there are other places 

where there was -- I made it very clear when I 

-- when I started, this was an issue that I 

felt was worthy of debate, but it's a judgment 

call. I made a judgment call. I felt as if 

taking the geometric mean of the zero to 240, 

without any other information, is not -- is 

claimant-neutral. I did not say that this was 
65

1 a breakdown in quality. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

But there are other places -- for example, the 

external dose calculations -- that I believe -- 

DR. NETON: Let's discuss that, the drum. 

DR. MAURO: The drum, yeah. 

DR. NETON: SC&A modeled it using MCNP. We also did 

that. We did not have a lot of confidence in 

the MCNP calculations so we went and actually 

used a drum that was surveyed at a site and 

used that value. I'll admit that that value's 

lower than the MCNP value, but I think the jury 

is still out, and it's not definitively proven 

by SC&A that their value was correct and ours 

is wrong. 

DR. MAURO: I'd like to comment on that, and I think 

this is productive. I'm not -- this is not a -

- you know, a -- what we did is when we could 

not match the external dose from the drum from 

Blockson, we said what's wrong here? Maybe we 

don't understand the geometry, the densities, 

the material that the container is in. So we 

called Jim and said Jim, could we talk to the 

author of the work -- the MCNP calculations. 

And we found out from our conversations with 

Dr. Hertell* that his instructions were when 
66

you model the external dose from the uranium in 

the drum, only model bremsstrahlung, don't 

model the other photons coming off the uranium 

series radionuclides because they're not going 

to penetrate the drum barrier. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Now that was the instructions that -- that's what we 

were told. 

DR. NETON: Okay. But John, you're ignoring the fact 

that we didn't use the MCNP calculation. 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, but that was a factor of two. 

DR. NETON: Right, but listen. MCNP calculations are 

notoriously poor for modeling bremsstrahlung. 

Bremsstrahlung is a very difficult radiation 

type to model. 

DR. MAURO: No, brem-- disagree. I respectfully 

disagree. 

DR. ZIEMER: Now look, I'm going to interrupt here at 

this point 'cause we could have these debates 

on hundreds of points here. 

DR. MAURO: Absolutely. 

DR. ZIEMER: One of the -- one of the things that we 

have to come to grips with is that there are a 

number of observations, and I think you need to 

be careful as to which are observations versus 

-- you know, if something's a calculational 
67

error, that's straightforward and people can 

handle that. You have a certain view on that, 

and -- and it's fine to point that out and then 

NIOSH can say well, this is important or it 

isn't and here's how we deal with it, and there 

may be a number of those kind of issues. And 

there's nothing wrong with the contractor, even 

though you may -- and you may point out, we 

didn't have all the information. This is what 

it looks like from what we gathered. That's -- 

that's part of an audit -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, I guess that's how -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- you know, and we can go back and 

forth and you could go through all kinds of 

iterations on this till everybody agreed on 

every point, but that's not the point of the 

audit. 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, I guess that's what -- I'm looking 

for some guidance. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

DR. MAURO: We deliver -- in other words, you have -- 

DR. ZIEMER: I think if we get the factual things 

out, if there's other things like this that 

arise that maybe -- if NIOSH comes back and 

says well, they didn't have all the 
68

information, fine. You point it out based on 

what you have, what it appears. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Let me get back to Mike. 

MR. GIBSON: Thank you, Paul. I'm beginning to feel 

more like a juror than having a presentation 

(unintelligible). I was just reiterating what 

Hans had mentioned to us. My question, and I 

want it on the record, and I would like an 

answer from NIOSH or ORAU (unintelligible), is 

there an auditable trail so that the -- our 

contractor does not have to waste time 

verifying every piece of information and they 

can indeed do an audit rather than a complete 

dose reconstruction? 

DR. ZIEMER: And I think Jim was saying there is a 

trail, but it's not necessarily -- 

DR. NETON: Yeah, all I can mention to you is that we 

have documented procedures that can be used by 

auditors to reconstruct our doses. Now if we 

were to have increased the size of our dose 

reconstruction, say to 100 pages instead of an 

average of seven to ten, that would slow down 

the processing cases and delay timely decisions 

to claimants, but it is -- there is an audit 

trail. There are procedures, there are 
69

guidelines -- I think Hans mentioned 30. So 

we've done a great deal of documentation in 

this program. They are issued as rev numbers. 

When a new rev comes out, there is -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Audits may, as audits often do, take 

long to -- 

MR. GIBSON: Is it a -- is it a transparent audit 

trail? 

DR. BEHLING: May I make a comment on that? As Dr. 

Neton as said, it can be audited because, after 

all, that's what I did. But it wasn't easy. 

Now the first thing that I would like to 

recommend, which would be a very minimal 

effort, is to take the Attachment One and for 

each dose entry define what that represents. 

Entry number one through 25 is truly the dose 

that was determined from actual records, DOE 

records, film badge data, let's -- let's have 

that. This way I don't have to question 

whether or not that number represents something 

from medical or something else. That would be 

very, very easy thing to do. 

But the thing that does concern me to some extent is 

the fact that the difficulty in auditing this 

dose reconstruction report, from my point of 
70

view as a health physicist, and hopefully a 

qualified health physicist, how -- how is this 

viewed, for instance, when a claimant gets it 

and says this is your closing interview with 

you; you've received your dose reconstruction 

report, what do you think? I mean I can't 

imagine what they will think in looking at this 

and saying I don't have a clue what it says. 

And then also the issue of internal QA. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. WADE: Let's just summarize where we are. I 

think we've established that -- that even in 

your opinion, there is an auditable trail. The 

question is -- the trade-off is how much effort 

is spent by the people preparing the original 

estimate to allow for that audit to -- to 

happen, or for the -- the dose reconstruction 

to be understood by others. 

Now we would very much like to hear from the Board on 

that, if there are opinions you would like to 

give us. Then I think we need to move on. 

DR. ZIEMER: Tony? 

DR. ANDRADE: Absolutely, I agree with Mike. I know 

it doesn't sound good to you, Jim, but whenever 

a number is put down, there should be a minimal 

reference rather than just, you know, noting 
71

1 that there are procedures that have been used. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. NETON: It's tied to a specific procedure. 

DR. ANDRADE: I know that a specific procedure may be 

cited, but I'm saying if -- for example, 

there's a number and it corresponds to low 

energy photons or X-rays, that should be 

stated. Or if you used MCNP or if you used -- 

or somebody used MicroShield or somebody -- if 

you used an actual measurement, whatever. 

That, I think, could be -- that would be very 

useful. 

Second is that in the quality assessment business 

things are usually put into three categories. 

Okay? And those categories are results -- I'm 

sorry, findings, results and observations. And 

they all have a very specific meaning. And 

John, you know, I take your -- your example 

down there on -- on the -- on the urine data, 

and you have -- you have a valid concern -- 

okay? -- that can be addressed by Jim and 

company. 

However, your very first one up there, that's a 

philosophical disagreement. I mean that goes 

down way at the bottom. That's an observation, 

to me. I mean when they're using an S type 
72

release, that to me is very claimant-favorable. 

And if you don't -- I mean not you personally, 

but your -- your agency personally doesn't 

agree with maybe a prospective look in which a 

claimant may come back and say well, there's 

another error and that might lead to 

complications, well, that's their problem. 

That's not your problem. That should be an 

observation. To me, that is very claimantfavorable. So it's the way you want -- it's 

the way one looks at it. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: (Off microphone) Can I (unintelligible)? 

DR. ANDRADE: Sure. 

DR. MAURO: There's just one little -- one -- one 

brief paragraph. You see, if you're doing a -- 

the dose calculation to an organ and you assume 

it's class M, you're being claimant-favorable 

other than -- if you're doing a dose 

reconstruction from inhalation from -- and you 

assume it's S, you're being claimant-favorable. 

DR. ANDRADE: Yes. 

DR. MAURO: If you assume it's class -- and -- but 

you're doing a dose calculation to the bladder, 

you assume class M, that's claimant-favorable. 

But something interesting is happening here -- 
73

bear with me. What we -- what was done is they 

collected data from urinalysis and -- to -- to 

de-- and it's the urinalysis data that they're 

looking at now. Now when you're -- when you're 

looking at data that was a urinalysis data, 

what do you assume is the condition or the type 

of material -- in other words, are you being 

claimant-favorable -- here's my question. Are 

-- are you being claimant-favorable if you say 

I have a certain number of picocuries per liter 

in the urine, and I want to predict what was 

inhaled -- okay? -- am I being claimantfavorable by assuming S or by assuming M? 

Because, remember, it's in the urine because 

it's -- because of its (unintelligible) -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ANDRADE: Its ability to get in -- 

DR. MAURO: -- so it's not -- it's not -- and this is 

-- so I agree with you on the simple problem 

where you have airborne levels, you're going to 

model internal dose, you pick your M or your S 

based on the organ. However, when you have 

urine data and you're trying to predict what 

was inhaled and what assumptions regarding the 

chemical form or transportability, it's not 

self-- it's not immediately apparent to me 
74

whether or not -- now I think that that's a -- 

and it might be -- and now it might be an 

important issue, and I'm not quite sure -- we 

stopped at that point. See, one of -- one of 

our frustrations is -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, S is soluble. 

DR. MAURO: Regarding solu-- or -- no, slow versus -- 

slow versus -- right. 

DR. ANDRADE: John raises -- John raises a very good 

point; you know, how does it get into the 

urine? And that means that it would be F. 

Okay? But the thing is, you know, Jim and crew 

probably were thinking, you know, the best 

thing we can do is just assume that these 

people swallowed the damned stuff -- okay? -- 

and that -- again, like I said, you know, you 

can't read his mind, but it is very claimantfavorable. 

DR. NETON: We have a direct reference for 

yellowcake, which is what was produced at 

Blockson, that indicates a half life of about 

140 days in the lung, which is very close to 

type M -- 

DR. ANDRADE: Oh, okay. 

DR. NETON: -- and that's what we used. 
75

1 DR. ANDRADE: Okay. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. NETON: Thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: Mark? Jim? 

MR. GRIFFON: So that could have saved a lot of 

heartache if that was known up front -- a 

reference, maybe. 

Anyway, I agree with Tony's notion on the finding, 

observation -- finding, observations -- and I'm 

missing the last one, but it might have helped 

in all of these 'cause I think in the dose 

reconstruction report each author had a little 

different style of -- 

DR. MAURO: I agree -- 

MR. GRIFFON: -- presentation. 

DR. MAURO: -- right. 

MR. GRIFFON: It might have helped us digest some of 

these -- some of these -- some of the lowerlevel ones maybe we wouldn't have such 

heartache over and -- and this ongoing debates 

and findings -- you know, maybe we could -- 

could have paid more serious attention to some 

of those. So that, in -- in going forward, I 

think that would be a reasonable way to present 

things. 

I also think the -- getting to the auditable trail, I 
76

too had that same problem, and I think -- I 

think we need to try to strike a balance, and 

SCA probably has some recommendations for that, 

as to how best NIOSH can -- maybe with a 

limited effort -- make it more auditable. 

We're not trying to, you know, make this 

impossible. But when I went through those 

external doses, too, I had the same problem. I 

found myself X-ing things and trying to match 

them with the text, and a simple extra column 

saying that these were calculated based on 

missed dose, these were calculated based on TLD 

badge -- you know, this section was from the 

ambient dose, yeah, that would have saved a lot 

of, you know, unnecessary effort, and it's a 

pretty easy fix on their part. So I think if 

you have a series of recommendations like that 

-- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: That's one -- that's one of -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, right. 

DR. MAURO: You see how -- we have a last slide that 

-- 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim? Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: Again, going back to our process for 

digesting all of this information, and would it 
77

be helpful if -- as -- when SCA presents this 

to us that we have these issues divided into -- 

there'd be technical issues, maybe significant, 

less significant ones. There are going to be 

miscalculation errors that were found, be 

second. And there'd be sort of procedural 

issues that would have come -- some of which 

may be due to confusion over the procedure, 

some may be people not following the procedure, 

and us getting an overview of what's going on 

in 20, you know, dose reconstructions. That 

may be sort of what we're more interested in. 

Some of the technical issues we're going to say 

yeah, we need to go back and talk about that, 

and we probably ought to schedule some time at 

a meeting to do that. Others saying look, you 

know, okay, it's reasonable -- it just isn't 

worth the effort, you know. NIOSH made some 

sort of judgment and that's fine for -- for 

going forward. But -- and I think some of the 

-- the procedural sort of stuff and stuff, I 

think we have some back and forth between NIOSH 

and SCA, hopefully without a, you know, a 

mediator or a -- someone to break up the fight 

that we could -- could sort of try to get some 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 
78

stuff resolved so by time it gets to us to talk 

about it at a meeting, we have some way of sort 

of summarizing it, getting into these 

categories, and then deciding how to -- how to 

proceed and so forth -- as well as sort of 

being able to follow things as -- as they go 

through time. And -- I mean some of these 

issues I think will get clarified as the 

procedures get improved by NIOSH or at least 

get the writing for the procedures to -- or 

they develop new procedures that SCA, you know, 

maybe understands some of them better and so 

forth, then I think it'll be a much more 

efficient process and really get at what we're 

trying to get at, which is the -- you know, the 

accuracy of these dose reconstructions. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: That's a good point, and let me add 

something to that, John. If you look at the 

reports we got and put it against the criteria 

as you've summarized, I've noticed that there 

was a lot of inconsistencies amongst the 

various reviewers on these items. Some of them 

addressed some of those items. Some of them 

addressed only the dose. 

DR. MAURO: Right. 
79

DR. ZIEMER: And it seems to me it would be helpful 

if -- if, for example, we were able to say out 

of the 20 cases reviewed -- I mean if you had 

this information on all of them -- we found 

that in 19 cases NIOSH received and requested 

all the needed data, or we found that NIOSH 

appropriately addressed their work history and 

events reported by the claimants. Some of the 

re-- some of the reviewers addressed that, some 

did not. That would help us see if -- it's the 

quality of everything, not just these -- the 

focus here has been very much on technical 

issues, some of which are sort of scientific 

debates. But we have a whole list of quality 

things, which may have been looked at but have 

not always been reported on. So I'm wondering 

if we can think about that kind of an overlay, 

and also the categorization of the findings. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: This business of the data has been 

frustrating because we just crossed the line 

into the site profile reviews. In other words, 

we're not performing a site profile review, and 

very often the site profile review is the place 

where -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, on some of these that's the case 
80

and I understand, and some of these wouldn't 

apply then and you could simply state that. 

Yeah, okay. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Roy? 

DR. DEHART: As I read through a number of the 

reconstructions and the audit that was done on 

those, it appeared that -- although one could 

classify it as technology, it often seemed to 

be more philosophical and opinion than really 

an error in the performance of the original 

document and could -- 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, I -- 

DR. DEHART: -- can we -- 

DR. MAURO: I would agree with you. 

DR. DEHART: -- address that? 

DR. MAURO: I would agree with that. I believe the 

most important -- most -- I would say 80 

percent of our comments were based on what we 

believe that an error was made. Okay? We 

believe that the wrong procedure was followed 

or an arithmetic error was made. But there is 

a sub-- a smaller part, and thi-- and I pointed 

this out because that is a philosophical one, 

and as -- it goes a little more than 
81

philosophical, is what is the intent of the -- 

when you read the words in 42 CFR 82 and then 

you read the words in the procedures, OCAS-1 

and 2, it begs the question whether or not when 

you are doing your dose reconstruction do you -

- do you try to come up with the best estimate, 

with uncertainty, on the dose that the person 

got, or do you come up with a reconstructed 

dose for a person which is claimant-favorable, 

it errors (sic) on his behalf. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

In general what I've found in the cases that I've 

reviewed when -- when -- you know, when there 

was no data -- and this usually happened on the 

AWEs, and we're going to hear a lot about that 

tomorrow when we talk about Bethlehem Steel -- 

a distribution is created that represents the 

facility. In this case here, it was a 

distribution on urinalysis. Here's the 

measurements we saw, and it's in -- it's in the 

technical background document. In the case of 

Bethlehem Steel some distribution is 

constructed of the airborne concentrations of 

radionuclides throughout the facility. Okay? 

So -- and this tries to characterize the 

radiological environment that -- that -- for 
82

the entire facility, goes from here to there, 

with some geometric mean. Then the question -- 

here's the philosophical question. Given that 

setting and given that you have no data on the 

individual, and you have no information on 

where he worked, what do you? Do you assume 

that that person -- every person that you're 

going to reconstruct a dose for is the average 

person that experienced a dose, exposure 

situation, that represents the full range from 

zero to 240, so therefore you go with the 

geometric mean and an appropriate standard 

deviation, which would be claimant-neutral? 

That's what was done, by the way, in our 

opinion, in constructing -- Jim is not -- this 

is -- this is good -- this is good. We're 

doing what we're -- we're supposed to be doing 

here. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

I feel that if you -- if you don't have any 

information regarding the worker and where he 

worked, and -- but you do have information on 

the distribution of the airborne concentration 

that might have existed throughout this entire 

facility, I would argue -- and this is a 

philosophical argument and one that has to be 
83

an interpretation of the statute and then the 

regulations that implement it -- do you assume 

claimant neutrality, assign the geometric mean 

and geometric standard deviation that was 

observed for the facility, or do you assume 

that no, we're going to assume that this worker 

that we have no information on happens to be 

working at a station in the facility where we 

know was a high end. We're going to see this 

tomorrow. We're going to be talking about 

Bethlehem Steel. We're going to be talking 

about roller location number one. If it turns 

out that the person happened -- this person 

that -- this claimant happened to work there, 

his distribution of -- his exposure is going to 

be a lot different than let's say the foreman, 

who may have worked the whole place and his job 

was to walk around the whole facility 'cause 

then he would have experienced a distribution 

that was representative of the full 

distribution. But if he happened to be a 

worker that worked at roller location number 

one, or in this case -- see, this person you 

have a real problem with because he -- when we 

looked at his CATI and it turns out he was a -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 
84

1 he was a piid*, I believe it was called -- a 

2 piid*, which means, we believe -- but I could 

be wrong -- it means he was the guy piid*. 

Okay? That puts him up close and personal 

3 

4 

5 piid*. Right? 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

Now -- all right, that means that, you know, this is 

not your average guy. This guy is someone who 

happens to have a job where he's going to 

experience the high end tail end of the 

distribution. Now -- so that's why I had a 

problem with the 24. I would still have a 

problem with the 24 if we had no information on 

what his job was because what you're doing is 

you're assuming he's claimant-neutral, but in 

this case I think it's a problem because we've 

16 found out he's a piid* and now unless -- and 

now I believe -- like I said, the piid*. Now 

that puts him up here. That puts him closer to 

the 240, if that was his job. So here's 

something that I think is important for all of 

us to come to grips with. When we have 

information regarding the worker, or should we 

try to get information by talking to coworkers, 

here's where -- here's where the rubber meets 

the road. How far do we go to get a better 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 
85

handle on the claimant's actual working 

environment when we don't have any bioassay 

data or external dosimetry data, such as the 

case with AWEs? How far do we go to find out a 

little bit more about this guy's job? Because 

if it turns out at Bethlehem Steel he was the 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

piid* -- by the way, that's the case for the 

Huntington -- the next one after this is the 

Huntington plant; it turns out that guy was a 

7 

8 

9 

piid*. And using the full distribution made 

sense for him because it's -- 'cause based on 

10 

11 

12 the write-up, piid*. He was sort of – piid*. 

But this guy, he was a piid*, and that placed 

him in a location where he was probably toward 

the high end of the distribution. I think that 

this is an important issue that's cross-cutting 

how you approach the problem when you don't 

have the bioassay data. Okay? And this really 

is an AWE issue. 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Now John, let me in a sense answer your 

question. You don't pursue it. That's not the 

auditor's job to pursue the -- 

DR. MAURO: Just raise the issue. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. Your job is to raise the 

question. It may or may not be a valid 
86

question. In your mind, it is. And if it is, 

you can raise it. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: That's all I did here. 

DR. ZIEMER: You can attempt to categorize it. It's 

-- it's not a cut and dried error. 

DR. MAURO: Nope. 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm not sure if it's a concern, but 

that's why categorizing these things would 

help. If it's a concern or an observation, 

then it goes back to NIOSH and they can deal 

with it. Ultimately, you don't have to solve 

the problem. 

DR. MAURO: I didn't try. That's why I call it 

concerns. 

DR. ZIEMER: No, no, I'm -- and maybe that was 

rhetorical, do you follow up. And I think on 

many of these kinds of questions where it's not 

clear-cut, there's differences in opinion on 

what assumptions one should make, you -- you 

can -- you've looked at it in a somewhat 

different way, and that's helpful. And NIOSH 

can evaluate that and say what should we do 

with it. 

DR. MAURO: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: Maybe nothing, maybe something. I think 
87

1 Mike's next, and -- 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MR. GIBSON: But these -- this, to me, it doesn't 

seem like it's a matter of opinion. I mean if 

NIOSH was going to do an adequate dose 

reconstruction on the individual to see if they 

were indeed compensable, then that should not 

have been left blank for -- as a blank question 

for them to bring out. It should have been 

looked at before a dose reconstruction was 

done. I mean it's their job to -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, in any event, I'm saying it's not 

their job to -- to search out that information. 

They raise the question. 

MR. GIBSON: I understand, but it should have been 

looked up before a dose was rendered for this 

person by NIOSH or ORAU. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, the only thing I would add on, 

Paul, to -- to your -- and I agree with the 

categorization would really help. The one 

thing I notice in our -- in our debating back 

and forth, you know, sometimes there -- there 

have been some things which might even be 

considered opinions, and I've heard NIOSH reply 

that -- well, you didn't pull the string 

enough. So I think the ground rules have to be 
88

a little clearer, you know. Sometimes the 

auditor has to pull the string in order to make 

the case -- that it's a finding, for instance. 

And I would say -- you know, in this case what 

comes to mind with me -- and the same goes for 

Bethlehem Steel tomorrow, what comes to mind 

for me at first glance is -- I don't know if 

this was a triangular distribution or a 

lognormal, whatever it was, if you use your 

upper distribution for this worker because you 

felt he was in a more highly-exposed area, did 

it make a difference from the organ dose 

standpoint -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: Well, it would here. I mean sure. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- and would it make -- do you think it 

was -- so then, if I found that out, that's -- 

that's a minimal level of effort further down, 

I think, for the auditor to do. And if it 

would make a significant difference in the 

organ dose, then I'd say that that might be 

bumped up in terms of your degree of importance 

in your finding versus observation versus -- 

you know. 

DR. NETON: But we've got to keep in mind that these 

are not individual samples. John keeps 
89

pointing out that it was 250 picocuries per 

day. That was one sample of a series of 

samples that was used to calculate an intake on 

an exposed worker. So what his intake was was 

not based, more than likely, on that one value. 

It's a dose reconstruction, so you can't say 

that the -- they range from this to this and so 

that guy had 240 -- I mean he may have had a 

lower exposure than the guy who had multiple 

samples that were over a longer period of time. 

You cannot make that leap of judgment there. 

It's not possible. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 DR. MAURO: Well, I -- in defense of my position, my 

position is -- is simple. He was a piid*, 

which puts him in a more exposed situation. 

And that being the case, given this range -- as 

best I could judge, it seemed to be 24 -- 

should have been closer to the 240, or some 

effort made to put this person in the setting 

that he was at where his potential for exposure 

could have been several-fold higher. I'm not 

saying it's going to change -- it'll change a 

dose -- it would meet the geometric mean of a 

dose direct-- directly proportional. What it 

will do to your probability of causation, I 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 
90

1 have no idea. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MR. HINNEFELD: I'd like to try just one more comment 

on this issue. Okay. The largest urine sample 

-- highest urine sample number was collected 

from a person who also had other urine sample 

data. Okay? His intake was calculated using 

the entirety of the urine data. So his intake 

would not correspond to 240 picocuries per day, 

which would be what you would assume if the -- 

you only had the one data block. 

DR. MAURO: Okay. 

MR. HINNEFELD: So the intake for that person is not 

240 picocuries -- 

DR. MAURO: Oh, okay. 

MR. HINNEFELD: -- per day. It is some other number. 

DR. MAURO: Okay. Okay. 

MR. HINNEFELD: And the dos-- and the intakes and the 

distribution of intakes that are in the site 

Technical Basis Document are based on -- okay, 

employee number A, let's do the best fit of his 

intake; employee B, let's do the best fit of 

his intake -- those daily intakes, chronic 

exposure assumption -- and say given that 

distribution of intakes, what is the mean and 

what's the standard deviation? And it was 
91

lognormal and it was -- it was not -- it does 

not go up to 240. So that highest urine sample 

by itself is not relevant. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

DR. MAURO: Okay, so -- 

MR. HINNEFELD: It's the intake of the highest 

exposed person. 

DR. MAURO: Oh, so you're say-- okay -- no, I hear 

what you're saying -- this is good. So you're 

saying that if we -- you're trying to come up 

with a high end estimate of what the chronic 

intake would be for someone who worked there 

for ten years, and you're going to -- you know, 

for a long period of time. Assuming 24 

picocuries per day is certainly an upper end 

estimate of what a person might have 

experienced, piid*, because -- I mean in effect 

-- that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking 

for -- 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, I departed from your -- 

MR. GRIFFON: I think he's saying they did an 

individual estimate for that individual. 

Right? 

MR. HINNEFELD: Right, that -- I kind of departed 

from your point of should this person be -- the 

distribution or higher in the distribution, 
92

that's not what I'm trying to address. What 

I'm trying to address is the distribution 

doesn't go up to 240 per day. The distribution 

is based upon the fitted urine samples from -- 

from that person, and he had more than that one 

urine sample. So when you fit an intake that 

best fits all of his excretion data, it's not 

240 pic-- it's not 240 per day, it's something 

smaller than that. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MR. GRIFFON: So could -- this is -- I'm just using 

this as an example, understand. I didn't even 

review this case. But it seems to me is this 

an opportunity where in the rep-- NIOSH's 

report it could have stated individually 

calculated intake. 

MR. HINNEFELD: I think it does. 

MR. GRIFFON: It does. Okay. 

MR. HINNEFELD: I think it does. I think it says -- 

MR. GRIFFON: In other cases (unintelligible) -- 

MR. HINNEFELD: -- intakes were -- 

MR. GRIFFON: -- (unintelligible) you would say -- 

MR. HINNEFELD: The distribution of the intakes was 

generated from this dataset of 21 people -- or 

25 people, 21 of whom had more than one sample 

-- something like that, so distribution of 
93

1 intakes was generated from that data. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let's -- we've been going for two hours 

here. Let's take a comfort break and we'll 

return. 

(Whereupon, a recess was taken.) 

DR. ZIEMER: We'll come to order. John, where are 

you in your presentation? 

DR. MAURO: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

DR. ZIEMER: Use the mike, use the mike. 

DR. MAURO: What we basically have here is we took 

the report -- which I don't know how many pages 

it is -- tried to boil it down to each case, 

two slides. In other words, this first -- for 

example, we're looking at the second case right 

now, Huntington Pilot Plant, and tried to boil 

it down to the -- whatever the 20 or 30-page 

report is -- to two pages. And I don't think 

it's -- we're not going to go through each one. 

I think that we'll be here a long time. 

But what might be worthwhile is maybe we could do the 

following: Hans and I may want to pick a 

couple that we think capture some of the places 

that we're especially concerned about, some 

issues. In other words, this particular case 
94

reveals an issue that we think might be 

important. And I know I have a couple that I'd 

like to air. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

I did mention before the problem that I had with this 

distribution which has applicability to just 

about all the AWEs. 

DR. ZIEMER: I might suggest as we go through these, 

there are some issues that really are sort of 

generic because of -- they are related to site 

profiles, and we can't discuss site profiles as 

a topic right now. We're restricting ourselves 

to dose reconstruction. 

DR. MAURO: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: But a number of those, such as Bethlehem 

Steel -- maybe Huntington is in that category -

- where I think the issue that is being raised 

by SCA is perhaps with the basis -- or the 

basic issues of the site profile -- 

DR. MAURO: Also -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- for example, aside from the site 

profile issues, maybe the doc-- maybe the dose 

reconstruction itself is okay -- or not, but -- 

DR. MAURO: In -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- you know, if it wasn't for those 

underlying assumptions, then the profile in 
95

1 other respects may be fine -- or not, but -- 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, well -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- what I'm -- what I'm thinking here is 

if there are basic issues that you can identify 

as being really site profile issues, so that 

they're not discussed with each case -- in 

fact, they could be identified even in a rollup. For example, on the Bethlehem Steel case, 

I assume you'll have the same issue -- 

DR. MAURO: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- on all of them. 

DR. MAURO: Absolutely. 

DR. ZIEMER: And it could be cited in whatever the 

roll-up form is that -- that this is -- the 

concern here has to do with the assumptions or 

(unintelligible). 

DR. MAURO: You'd rather not do that now, you're 

saying? 

DR. ZIEMER: I'd rather not debate the site profiles 

here. We're -- per se, because that's not our 

-- (unintelligible). Now obviously -- and if 

Huntington is the same way and you don't have 

the -- you don't have a document that's the 

site profile review, but if the -- if the issue 

being raised is really one that applies to all 
96

of those, it seems to me that maybe -- that we 

can just identify that's what it is. We're not 

going to solve it right here. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MS. MUNN: You've lost your mike. 

MR. GRIFFON: Maybe put it closer -- 

MR. PRESLEY: Paul, pull your mike up closer to your 

mouth. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, no, it's (unintelligible), although 

the green light's not showing. Is that -- it's 

a red light. 

(Whereupon, difficulties with microphones were 

addressed.) 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, my suggestion was that we not 

spend a lot of time on issues which are the 

site profile issues more than a particular 

case. Do you understand what I'm saying? 

DR. MAURO: Okay, that -- 

DR. ZIEMER: And -- 

DR. MAURO: -- that being the case -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- I mean you can still identify it, but 

-- 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, the first five -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Is that -- does that make sense to the 

rest of the group? Because otherwise, we can -

- we can have this long debate about something 
97

which is really -- for example, what are the 

Bethlehem Steel assumptions? And I'm not 

saying you shouldn't identify that as the issue 

for a particular case, but the resolution of 

that may have to do with the review of that 

particular site profile. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: Okay. Well, then -- 

DR. ZIEMER: On the other hand, if it's a site 

profile you're not reviewing anyway -- 

DR. MAURO: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- you can still raise it, but it's 

generic -- it's going to occur, for example, to 

every one that comes up from that particular 

site, if that's the case. 

DR. MAURO: Huntington is an example of an AWE where 

the dose reconstruction is entirely based on 

the site profile. It is a site profile that we 

have not yet been authorized to review. 

Whether or not you want to go through the quick 

findings or move on, this is basically the 

bottom line of the findings for Huntington, but 

they're all related to the site profile as 

applied to this claimant -- so it's always as 

applied to the claimant because it's the organ 

of -- if you'd like to go through this quickly, 
98

then we can ski-- then after this comes three 

Bethlehem Steel. All of the Bethlehem Steel 

are very similar. It's a critique of the 

Bethlehem Steel site profile, which we did 

review. We probably would want to jump over 

those. There really is no need to go -- but I 

do -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: We’re going to do that tomorrow -- 

DR. MAURO: We're doing that tomorrow. 

DR. ZIEMER: And on Huntington you may or may not end 

up -- it's certainly not on our list now, I 

don't believe, and it may be that you wouldn't 

do the Huntington as part of your process. 

DR. MAURO: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: But your -- your reviewers do review it 

as part of the dose reconstruction. And 

insofar as you identify something which you 

think is related to the site profile, I would -

- I see no reason why it shouldn't be 

identified as such. But it seems to me -- and 

again, let's get feedback from the group. It 

seems to me that that's a kind of category that 

you identify -- it's not necessarily -- it's 

not a calculational error. It's not a -- 

DR. MAURO: Well, it is in the site profile. You'll 
99

see that calculational error in the site 

profile. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: In -- 

DR. MAURO: But not -- but not -- 

DR. ZIEMER: In the dose reconstruction, per se. 

MR. GRIFFON: I know what you're saying, Paul, but I 

think we may run into quite a few of these 

since they're -- you know, the efficiency 

method was applied. So like Savannah Rivers, 

they're applying the high five, and that's the 

site profile really where it gets into the 

details of how they -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Right, and I think -- it's my 

understanding that right now on those like from 

Savannah River, they have reviewed them with 

the assumption right now that that is -- 'cause 

that site profile's not complete, so they're 

saying that given that site profile, this dose 

reconstruction was done -- or wasn't done, but 

-- they're not debating the site profile in the 

dose reconstruction review. That's all I'm 

saying. It can be identified as a potential 

issue, but it seems to me that the debate on 

the individual case shouldn't focus on that, 

but simply point out that that's the issue 
100

1 that's being -- 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: I understand now. 

DR. ZIEMER: That's my personal opinion. I certainly 

can be overruled by this august group. 

DR. MAURO: I guess I'm still not quite sure -- would 

you like to go through these elements of the 

dose reconstruction for this claimant that we 

feel was in error or not? It's -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Does the group want to hear this? Yes? 

UNIDENTIFIED: It's up there, let's go. 

DR. MAURO: Okay. It'll be quick. The Huntington 

Pilot Plant processed nickel that contained 

enriched uranium. When the doses were 

calculated to the person who was working 

processing the nickel, one of our finding is 

that well, the uranium -- the enriched uranium 

that came along with the nickel that was being 

processed at Huntington, we believe there was a 

possibility -- very real possibility, based on 

some work we have -- some research we did -- 

that there could have been some other 

radionuclides present beside uranium -- 

enriched uranium. They could have -- it could 

have been recycled uranium and it could have 

been some technetium, neptunium, plutonium -- 
101

and plutonium in the nickel which was not 

explicitly addressed. The report -- the dose 

reconstruction for this person is silent on 

that, does not factor in this particul-- any 

possible exposures from those radionuclides. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

We did find an error when IMBA was run. It's simply 

an input error. That is, we try to re-- we -- 

we took a look at the -- the exposure scenario 

and we reconstructed the inhalation exposures, 

and we found that there was an error made in 

the input for the IMBA run that had over-- 

overestimated the dose by a factor of about 

3,000. 

We -- we also found that there's some question -- 

don't have an answer for this -- that we 

believe it's possible this particular worker, 

the period in which he -- over which he was 

exposed, this ten-year period, may have really 

extended longer than that. It's the -- the 

supporting literature for his work history was 

ambiguous, so it might be possible that in 

addition to the exposures this worker 

experienced while working with this 

contaminated metal, the nickel -- processing 

this nickel, did not necessarily end when they 
102

stopped processing nickel because he continued 

to work at that facility after the processing 

of nickel ended, but there may have been some 

residual radioactivity in the facility that he 

was exposed to for many more years afterward, 

but it's not apparent from -- from reading it 

that that's -- there's contradictory 

information in the literature, so there -- 

that's -- that's another question. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Could I ask on those cases, isn't this a 

Department of Labor determination, Jim? Or 

what did we do on that? 

DR. NETON: That's correct. This is a Department of 

Labor issue, but I would point out that a 

review of the -- sorry -- a review of the -- of 

the file, the analysis record, indicated that 

the Department of Labor attempted to verify the 

additional employment and was unsuccessful. So 

the Department of Labor made that determination 

a priori that that employment was not 

considered covered under the Act. It's a nonissue. 

DR. MAURO: So it -- so -- 

DR. NETON: The Department of Labor evaluated that 

additional employment and determined it was not 
103

1 covered. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: Okay. Even though he might have been 

exposed to residual radioactivity from that 

operation. 

DR. NETON: Yes, 'cause they determined that he 

wasn't there. 

DR. MAURO: Oh, I -- 

DR. NETON: He's not covered. 

DR. MAURO: 'Cause I could show you a place where he 

said he was there. 

DR. NETON: Just because he said he was there, the 

Department of Labor tried to validate it or 

verify it and could not, and so he couldn't... 

DR. ZIEMER: Shelby? 

MR. HALLMARK: Shelby Hallmark, Department of Labor. 

Just briefly, if I could say -- the discussion 

today has indicated to me that there are 40,000 

interlocking variables here and 5 million 

pieces of discussion about each one of them. 

We would like to see the Board and its contract 

focus on what it can work on and be productive 

about. Decisions made by the Department of 

Labor are the Department of Labor's legal 

decision. And I would say that the Board and 

its contractor should simply walk away and roll 
104

1 off those issues. You have enough of your own. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: I'll move quickly through -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, thank you. 

DR. MAURO: We believe there was a five-fold 

underestimate on the external exposure to the 

enriched uranium contained in these bird cages 

where they store the processed uranium, for the 

same reason that I mentioned earlier regarding 

the bremsstrahlung issue that we -- where we 

believe that the -- there -- the exposure from 

the uranium -- the decay series radionuclides, 

the short-lived progeny of uranium series was 

not taken to consideration, just 

bremsstrahlung. As -- as a result, we came up 

with a dose from external exposure which was 

five times higher. 

MR. GRIFFON: John -- 

DR. MAURO: One of the recurring -- yes? 

MR. GRIFFON: I'm sorry, I just -- just a general 

comment in a lot of the reports I've seen of 

yours which I was thinking about on the break, 

and it appears twice in your slide here -- an 

overestimate by a factor of over 3,000. 

DR. MAURO: Yeah. 

MR. GRIFFON: You know, it would be helpful to me if 
105

-- if that was three picocuries instead of 

.001, that's different than three -- you know. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MAURO: What they -- it was supposed to be 5.7 

picocuries per day -- 

MR. GRIFFON: But if you could just state, you know, 

what are the -- 

DR. MAURO: I'll tell you, 'cause I -- 

MR. GRIFFON: -- what are the hard numbers. 

DR. MAURO: I'll tell you the hard number. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. MAURO: The input into IMBA for inhalation should 

have been I believe 5.7 picocuries per day over 

a ten-year period. Now that would have been 

the correct input. Instead, what was put in 

was 14,000 picocuries, which is the total 

number of picocuries the person inhaled over 

ten years, but it was put into the box in terms 

of picocuries per day. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, right, right. 

DR. MAURO: So as a result -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Which happens, having run IMBA. 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, it just -- yeah, it was a mistake. 

In fact, I -- and this was at a time when I 

wasn't quite sure whether I was running IMBA 

correctly, so I called David Allen up and he 
106

1 said yeah, you're right, you caught one. So -- 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MR. GRIFFON: My point more was, in going forward, 

any time you're going to do something like that 

it'd be helpful to say -- 

DR. MAURO: It's in the report. Oh, yeah -- the -- 

the -- I -- we try to reduce the report down to 

just one -- the best we could. 

Let's see, one of the recurring problems -- and this 

goes to the reconstruction of doses from 

residual activity on the ground. Very of-- 

very often at these AWE facilities we found 

that at least -- that there was no radiation 

surveys taken until many years later, well 

after the operation ceased, and when they were 

about to either decommission the facility and 

decontaminate it. For example, not until 19-- 

here's a person exposed in the 1960s, and then 

-- and they were trying to reconstruct what the 

possible exposure was to the individual from 

residual radioactivity that was on the ground. 

And data was gathered from surveys taken in 

1978, and then they would assume that that 

external exposure that they measured in 1978 

applies to the -- 1960 when the person was 

working there. I have a problem with that. 
107

That is -- because what we have is this long 

period of time when natural attenuation would 

have reduced the contamination level. So to 

assume that the level of residual contamination 

in 1960 is the same that it was in 1978 when 

the measurements were made -- I believe I've 

run across that on a couple of occasions -- is 

a problem. Some effort needs to be made to say 

well, if we're measuring this in 1978, what 

might it have been in 1960 when the person was 

working there. So that's a problem that I run 

across. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

And I think that sort of summarizes the -- some of 

the problems I ran across on -- on Huntington. 

Bethlehem Steel, the list of issues are exactly the 

same issues that are -- that we're going to be 

talking about tomorrow, so there's no need to 

talk about that, so I'm going to skip over and 

go to Hanford. 

In fact, what I'd like to do at this point is turn it 

over to Hans and -- to pick -- pick, though -- 

if anyone has a particular case you want to go 

into, we'll go into it, but we have one sort of 

our favorite in terms of showing insight into 

categories of problems that we -- that we -- 
108

are recurring, you see. And -- and if -- Hans, 

if you want -- if you have a few in mind -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

DR. BEHLING: Yeah, I'd love to actually start with 

the first Hanford -- 

DR. MAURO: You want me to back up? 

DR. BEHLING: -- 'cause I think that's much more 

informative -- backwards. 

DR. MAURO: Am I going the right way? No, one more. 

That's it right there, right? Okay. 

DR. BEHLING: Yeah, in fact this was the first claim 

that I personally went through totally on my 

own, and it was a difficult one because this 

was a person who obviously spent a total of 

14 piid* years at the Hanford site. He was in the 

piid*. He was monitored both for 

external/internal exposure, and was diagnosed 

with colon, POC of 40.45, so he's fairly well 

up there. And the question is, how well is 

that number representative of the true organ 

dose. 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

And as you see in the second column on that table, 

these are the actual doses that were in fact 

assigned by NIOSH. These are not my numbers, 

these are NIOSH numbers. The first entry is 

6.811 rem for a photon dose. The next one is 
109

neutron dose, and so forth and so forth. And 

the only number that really stands out very 

high is the internal dose at 16.986. And 

again, as Dr. Ziemer had mentioned, there are 

some instances where we are defaulting to a 

methodology that does not involve empirical 

dose measurements or bioassay measurements. 

And in this case, this guy was in an area that 

is considered a reactor area. And based on the 

Hanford site profile, he was given the benefit 

of doubt by being assigned 28 radionuclides 

intakes, an acute intake on the first day of 

employment and dose calculation was made using 

a protocol that was designed by NIOSH, and that 

number is -- therefore is a hypothetical 

internal exposure number as opposed to an 

empirically-derived internal. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

But let's go through some of the issues. As you see 

in the column up top, we have scientifically 

valid, claimant friendly -- no, claimant 

favorable, and procedurally compliant. And you 

see a few no's already in the photon column. 

And the principal reason for that is defined 

here under column of photon dosimeter dose, 

failure to include uncertainty. And for those 
110

of you who have the table in front of you, you 

can actually go to the claim itself and look in 

the back and see that for the entries that 

define photon -- empirical photon doses that 

were done in his behalf, the doses are entered 

as a single determinate value, as opposed to 

having a second parameter defined as an 

uncertainty. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

And I want to just briefly mention that this 

deficiency was something that was consistently 

found in other claims. And it's not so much 

any oversight on the part of dose 

reconstructor, if I can at least make some 

speculative assumption as to why. If you look 

at the implementation guide, as it stands now, 

there is a very, very lengthy, detailed 

procedure that is defined -- that defines 

uncertainty and how to do this. And in looking 

at the cases that I had, this -- for this one, 

number six through 20, and I (unintelligible) 

all of them, even though there were other 

people who -- who were party to this process -- 

I realized that nobody ever does an uncertainty 

on empirical dosimeters, and the reason being 

is it's next to impossible. It's very 
111

difficult to do. And let me just give you an 

overview as to what the difficulty is. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

In the early days, as in this case, this person may 

have been monitored by film dosimeters. And 

the procedure in implementation guide one says 

once you determine the sigma value for each and 

every single dosimeter reading -- meaning that 

for any one given year there may be as many as 

52 film dosimeter readings for which he has to 

determine what the sigma value is, and then 

collate that through error propagation and come 

up with a value for that year that says -- 

let's assume it was 1,200 millirem plus some 

sigma value. That is a very, very difficult 

thing to do, especially when you're dealing 

with film dosimetry data that go back in the 

'40's, '50's and '60's. It's virtually 

impossible. This person elected not to include 

uncertainty. 

Of course that's claimant unfavorable, because now 

you're basically saying this is a fixed value, 

which is a dosimeter value, but it has no 

uncertainty associated with it. And as I said 

before, this is a problem that occurs routinely 

among the other claims. 
112

Other people who have elected to look at this and say 

that's next to impossible for me to do, I'm 

going to simply multiply the actual dosimeter 

dose by a factor of two, knowing that that's 

likely to represent a 95th percentile value, 

which frees me or prevents me -- excludes me 

from having to define the uncertainty. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

So those were the two options that some people either 

failed to include uncertainty, which is 

certainly claimant unfriendly, or simply 

multiplied all dosimeter readings by a factor 

of two, assuming that represents an upper bound 

95th value which precludes the need for 

uncertainty. 

DR. NETON: I just have one -- one brief comment 

there. Oftentimes in these dose 

reconstructions we allow for a dose conversion 

factor that will reduce the measured film badge 

dose to the actual organ. For instance, the 

colon would not receive the same dose as the 

badge measured on the chest. And so we, in 

that case, ignore that dose conversation factor 

and assume that that difference overestimated 

the dose and over-assigned the dose that would 

be included in the uncertainty distribution. 
113

DR. BEHLING: Well, I -- I admit that will certainly 

offset -- in many instances the simplification 

process almost takes away the complexity that's 

built into the system, such as the need to 

convert an R dose or a HP10 dose into an organ 

dose by simply assuming that that value 

applies. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. NETON: Well, that's correct, and these are 

efficiency measures that we take where we just 

-- rather than propagate that uncertainty 52 

times, we put a higher dose in ignoring the 

dose conversion factor and -- 

DR. BEHLING: Except that it's never identified in 

the protocol -- 

DR. NETON: Well, that's an issue that is raised that 

we hear. We hear that very loudly. 

DR. BEHLING: Further down you see missed dose. And 

again I want to clarify, missed dose does not 

mean we don't have the records. Missed dose, 

by definition, according to the implementation 

guide, is nothing more than a person who was 

monitored but whose TLD or film badge comes 

back as a zero read. In other words, he was 

below the lower limit of detection, and the 

assumption therefore is, generally speaking, 
114

that we define his missed dose by taking the 

low limit of detection -- which is a floating 

value. In the early days the low limit of 

detection for film badges may have been as high 

as 40 millirem for a given cycle. In later 

years it was reduced to ten and even lower. So 

the protocol, generally speaking, for missed 

dose is to look at the person's individual DOE 

records. And for this guy, the number of pages 

that I had to go through were about 200 and 

some-odd pages, and you look at each individual 

dose entry for every cycle. Most -- hopefully, 

in many instance, they went from weekly to 

monthly, so for every year you have at least 12 

values to look at in saying how many zeroes did 

he get and how many times do we have to now 

account for that zero dose as a missed dose. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

And in this case there were -- I believe this person 

only looked at the summary DOE sheet, which 

gives you, for the 200 and some-odd pages, a 

simple summary up front that says between -- or 

let's say this guy -- well, I don't want to -- 

I do have the dates up there, which is all 

right, I guess, in a closed session here. But 

25 he started in piid*, and you will see the entry 
115

for piid* as the -- as the external whole body 

deep dose for that year, but you don't really 

know if that was in a single month or spread 

over a full 12 months. So in order for you to 

really do a missed dose, you have to really go 

to the individual dosimetry data that defines 

each month or each cycle as a measurement. And 

as it turns out, as you can read under missed 

dose, there were problems with '92, '93, '94, 

and there was a failure to include missed dose 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 for a period of over piid* years in one 

instance, the stretch from piid* through piid*. 

And I counted the number of zero dose that he 

should have used in converting to a missed 

dose. There were approximately 100 zero reads 

which were missed. 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Also there's a issue of how do you define the dose 

that is classified as a missed dose. Right now 

we have only protocol or guidance that says if 

the dose comes back as zero, you apply the 

missed dose calculation. Well, that creates in 

itself a problem because in some instances, 

even though we have come to the conclusion that 

the LOD for some of the early film dosimeters 

may have been as high as 40 millirem, they 
116

reported down to one or two millirem. Which 

means that if the person did his homework, 

under current guidance he would say well, one 

millirem is greater than zero; I don't have to 

apply it. But guess what? If he was given the 

LOD over two, he would get 20, he would get 40 

divide by two for that period. He would get -- 

if he had zero dose he would get 20, but if you 

actually look at the dosimetry record and you 

see an entry of one or two -- and I provide 

some information to some of these -- he will 

actually be cheated -- he'll get less for a 

real dose than a person with a zero dose. And 

so there's another procedural problem that 

doesn't define the need to account for missed 

dose under conditions when the -- the actual 

dosimetry record identifies a value that's less 

than LOD divided by two. Is that understood? 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

Same thing -- as I said, with neutron doses we have a 

whole (unintelligible) -- as I said, I went 

very, very systematically through all the DOE 

records and identified neutron doses, and 

again, he missed piid* years of missed neutron 

dose. 

23 

24 

25 Lastly, occupational dose, and we've touched on that 
117

briefly already. My estimate for -- for his 

occupational medical exposure is only 17 

millirem, so I'm not always consistently just 

looking to see how I can increase it, but I'm 

trying to comply with procedures. When you 

have the data, use it. And if you want to 

default to some higher value, at least make 

some explanation, which I didn't see here. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

But in this case, as I said, I was somewhat concerned 

by the simple fact that the POC for this 

individual, based on the current dose 

estimates, was as high as 40, and I see an 

awful lot of missed doses here that will 

certainly add -- now I didn't run the POC 

calculation, which was not part of our charter, 

but it's possible -- quite possible, that he 

may approach or even exceed 50 percent. 

DR. ZIEMER: Hans, on your chart where you have the 

column called procedurally compliant -- 

DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- for example, on missed dose, when you 

say "no", are you indicating that NIOSH did not 

comply with their own procedures, or you think 

the procedure itself is faulty? What do -- 

DR. BEHLING: Well, it's probably a combination of 
118

things that involve a complexity of procedures, 

which makes this kind of error almost a -- a 

high probability. But in this case -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, let me ask it a different way. On 

the first one, photon dose, I think Jim said 

that you're using the whole body value as a 

surrogate for the organ, since it 

overestimates. Is that contrary to NIOSH's 

procedure or are you saying that you believe 

the proce-- this column says it's not compliant 

with the procedure. 

DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: And I'm interpreting from what Jim said 

that that is the procedure. 

DR. NETON: No, I don't think that's specifically 

called out in the procedure, but that is an 

approach that is used fairly commonly to 

circumvent the elaborate uncertainty 

propagation that we use. 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm just trying to get a handle on -- 

DR. BEHLING: (Unintelligible) it's procedure, not 

compliant. The answer is, you're trying to 

offset one efficiency by overestimating 

another. In other words, the failure to 

incorporate into the IREP code an uncertainty 
119

1 measure for each of those (unintelligible) -- 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay, I see what you're -- 

DR. BEHLING: -- (off microphone) doses, partially 

offset by a DCF that has been arbitrarily 

assigned one. And clearly when you talk about 

30 to 250 keV, the dose conversion value for an 

AP (unintelligible) to the colon is 

considerably less than one. 

DR. NETON: That's correct. 

DR. BEHLING: (Off microphone) So therefore you're 

trying to compensate one against the other, but 

the procedures don't say that that -- 

DR. NETON: The procedures don't say that, but we do 

have latitude with the individual do-- it's a 

guidance document. It's not a procedure. The 

implementation guide is not a procedure, let's 

-- let me state that. So a dose reconstructor 

does have some latitude to use his judgment to 

efficiently process the case. But I hear you. 

It's a very valid -- 

DR. BEHLING: If it were stated, I would accept that. 

DR. NETON: No, I agree. 

DR. BEHLING: I'm not a nit-picker. I'm just looking 

to state whether or not a procedure was 

followed, and -- 
120

DR. NETON: I hear you, and we totally agree that we 

need to do a better job with that. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

DR. BEHLING: I have several others, but you know, as 

I said, they all follow things that involve 

errors that are arithmetic, the -- the freedom 

and maybe subjective nature of individual dose 

reconstructors to -- 

DR. ZIEMER: I did want to also ask, and maybe Jim 

can answer, the one that he pointed out where 

if the doses are below half of the minimum 

detectible but are still recorded -- 

DR. NETON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- is there -- in fact, does the 

procedure -- 

DR. NETON: I think we do -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- call for us to use the -- it seems 

like it's -- 

DR. NETON: The procedure's silent on that, and it's 

a valid point, that we do need -- 

DR. ZIEMER: It probably doesn't change things very 

much -- 

DR. NETON: It makes a minimal impact on the dose 

reconstruction. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- but it could. 
121

DR. NETON: But it does need to be more specific and 

spell out that it is our opinion that if it is 

below the limit of detection that we should -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: You would go ahead and assign -- 

DR. NETON: Absolutely. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- the value rather than using -- 

DR. NETON: Correct. 

DR. ZIEMER: It seemed to me it was a valid point. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, and I think that was a valid point 

that -- where there were just -- you know, we 

were silent in our documentation. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, thanks. 

DR. BEHLING: I have several more, but it's up to the 

Board to decide whether or not you want to hear 

any more or -- I do have one 

(unintelligible) -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Are you talking about the other Hanford 

ones, or just some other -- 

DR. BEHLING: Well, I have -- I selected five, with 

the assumption that John might have two or 

three and I might have five instead of the 15. 

But again, this is a decision that you will 

have to make. As I said, I'm prepared to do 

more if you would choose to go through several 

other claims. 
122

DR. MELIUS: Can I make one comment? Just that we 

need to leave enough time that we -- I think we 

need to resolve two issues. One is how are we 

going to -- how is the Board going to report on 

this at our public meeting tomorrow; what are 

we going to say? And number two, how do -- how 

-- we go forward from here with all this 

paperwork that then comes with what changes 

procedurally needs to get done? 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

DR. ZIEMER: Let's allow about 15 more minutes for 

specific things, and then at 4:00 we'll start 

to address that, if that's agreeable. Mike has 

a comment here. 

MR. GIBSON: I think we also need to spend a little 

bit of time trying to determine how that our 

contractor and NIOSH is going to carry on 

dialogue so that when we get to these meetings 

we can have constructive meetings rather than 

what seems to be more like arguments. 

DR. MELIUS: That's what I mean with what do we do 

with it. 

DR. BEHLING: Let me talk about the claim involving 

23 piid*, Rocky Flats. The person was employed 

24 for about piid* years, various locations. His 

25 job description is defined as piid*. He was in 
123

fact monitored externally/internally and his 

cancer was rectal cancer with a very low POC of 

less than one percent. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

This one is a case where I believe we have a problem 

with the interpretation. I chose this one 

because it depicts some of the problems with 

too many procedures that are sometimes very 

difficult to -- to identify. And let me go to 

the next slide, because I think we can 

summarize what those problems might be. 

Yeah, in this case -- this person has a missed 

external photon dose that was defined in a 

very, very convoluted way. He went through a 

procedure, and I think it's -- I don't have it 

in front of me. It's the procedure entitled 

"Maximizing External Dose". In other words, 

it's intended to give the dose reconstructor a 

handle to say let's skip the trivia and let's 

go -- and to maximize the dose in order to 

avoid certain things, such as the issue of 

uncertainty. And what that procedure calls for 

is -- and I think it's right here, I defined 

the procedure, the -- ORAU-OTIB-0008. What 

that procedure tells you is that for -- for 

missed dose, you can use LOD instead of the LOD 
124

over two. In other words, if for that 

dosimeter period involving let's say film, the 

LOD was 40 millirem, the conventional approach 

using the implementation guide one would say 

take the 40 millirem for each zero dose divided 

by two and assign 20 millirem as the external 

whole body dose for that individual. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

To avoid the issue again, I'm sure, of uncertainty -- 

because when you use that approach you then 

have to also use uncertainty of 1.52, even for 

-- for a missed dose, just let's go and give 

him a slightly higher one by simply using the 

LOD. Give him the full 40 millirem if that was 

the LOD for that time period. 

In that same procedure there's also an issue of 

simplifying dosimeter dose, real dose, that 

says if you have -- let's say in -- in the 

first cycle you have zero dose, you would say 

what is the LOD; and if it's 40, that's what 

you'd give him for that cycle -- let's say 

January 1 of that year. The next month let's 

say it's February and the guy has 100 millirem 

of real dose, that's measured, it's recorded. 

The procedure there also says instead of 

worrying about the uncertainty, which is quite 
125

complex, let's just double the dose and be 95th 

percentile sure that that dose will cover the 

uncertainty associated with that 100 millirem, 

so he would be given 200. But that multiplier 

of two, or dose correction factor, is not to be 

used in combination with the LOD. So what this 

person did, he took not only the LOD of 40 

millirem -- let's say, for an example -- he 

multiplied times two and said I'll go with the 

80. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

And then he said -- in error two, he integrated that 

procedure with implementation guide one that 

says but in accordance with implementation 

guide one, I'm going to divide it by two. 

First he multiplies it by two, then he divides 

it by two. And so you have a situation here, 

and it's strictly a -- I don't want to be 

cynical or laugh, but you have a situation here 

where it's clear the dose reconstructor was not 

fully aware of how to implement one procedure 

at the expense of something else. There was 

some maximizing procedure that says let's put 

this in fast-forward and be done with it by 

taking LOD instead of LOD over two. Well, this 

guy used LOD and then multiplied times two, and 
126

then he divided by two. In the end he got the 

right number, but only by accident. Only by 

accident. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Let me see, other issues are onsite ambient dose -- 

one of the things that I did want to mention is 

that onsite ambient dose, when it's used, is 

usually through a default mechanism. But I -- 

and I'm going to have to ask Dr. Neton for 

clarification here. I don't know how ambient 

onsite dose was calculated at the various 

sites. I can only imagine that those were 

environmental onsite film or TLDs that were 

hung up or at various buildings or -- and so 

forth, but it's likely that they represent the 

deep dose. Is that correct? 

DR. NETON: That's correct. 

DR. BEHLING: Okay. And that protocol would be very, 

very adequate if in fact the tissue in question 

or organ in question were in fact one that was 

a deep organ. When -- when that num-- when 

that protocol falls apart is if the cancer in 

question is a skin dose, and I have -- and one 

of the cases here, in fact, I provide a ratio 

value of empirical data where the shallow dose 

-- that is, the 7 milligram per centimeter 
127

square skin dose -- and when you look at that 

and compare it to the HP10 deep dose, they're a 

factor of almost ten apart, which means that in 

certain circumstances the use of onsite ambient 

dose, if in fact the cancer in question turns 

out to be a skin cancer, it's going to be 

considerably off lim-- off the mark. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. NETON: Excuse me, Hans, I do just need to say it 

depends on the site. I mean if they're -- for 

instance, like an accelerator facility where 

there's -- there are plumes of beta-emitting 

radionuclides circulating about, it would not 

just be the deep dose, but I don't have the 

data at the tip of my fingers. But we'd have 

to look at that individually, but we would not 

just ignore the deep dose if there were indeed 

circulating beta emitters in the air. 

DR. BEHLING: Yeah. I'm only basing it on my own 

experience since I used to be affiliated with a 

nuclear power plant operation and I was in 

charge of the health physics program at Three 

Mile Island, and of course environmental doses 

were usually measured by hanging TLDs onsite, 

off-site, and it was the deep dose that was 

recorded, not the shallow dose. And it's 
128

strictly a minor issue that I just wanted to 

bring up that may have selective application in 

-- in cases of skin cancer. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: But not for this particular claim. 

DR. BEHLING: Not this one, but it just happened to -

- to strike my -- my fancy here when I looked 

at -- I have something circled about onsite 

ambient. 

Again, in this case the occupational medical dose was 

the lung and -- was the rectum, but for 

occupational medicine -- occupational medical 

dose they were to calculate for the rectum and 

again they used the lung, but I guess we heard 

from Dr. Neton, apparently there is some 

guidance that I haven't seen that says that 

it's perfectly okay to assign 80-some millirem 

for a dose that in reality should have been 

less than one millirem. But you know, if this 

is something that NIOSH has -- has deemed 

acceptable as part of the efficiency process, 

I'm certainly not going to argue with it, 

except I didn't see it as a procedurally 

compliant approach. 

Is there any -- anything else I can -- I did want to 

just briefly come to maybe a final slide which 
129

summarizes my concerns, and if the Chairman 

agrees, I can go to the slide. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Sure. 

DR. BEHLING: Okay, summary conclusions. And again, 

these are my opinions. I'm not going to say 

that I may not be in error, but let me say 

this. I have had now the privilege of being 

very much involved under task three, which has 

yet to be discussed, which is a review of all 

the procedures that are applied to the dose 

reconstruction process. And I've also -- under 

task four, did seven of the dose reconstruction 

and very, very carefully QA'd some of the 

others, so that among the 15 that you see in 

front of you I have a fairly intimate knowledge 

of all those 15. 

And what I've drawn to as a conclusion is that you 

can categorize some of these errors as simple 

arithmetic errors, and we've seen sample of 

that. 

There are errors resulting from use or misuse of 

procedures -- and again, I think Dr. Neton has 

pointed out maybe it's not as much misuse, 

except that there's this guidance that we 

haven't seen and were not aware of, and I will 
130

certainly strike those -- those statements if 

it turns out that there's guidance that says go 

ahead and use the lung dose when in fact the 

organ in question turns out to be testicle 

cancers -- testicular cancer or prostate cancer 

or something else. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Failure to follow procedural guidance, as I said, 

there are certain guidance, and I believe they 

were written for a purpose and the purpose is 

to apply them. And part of the concern that we 

always have is consistency. And I've always 

wanted to be able to do one thing, and that is 

take one particular claim and then hand it at 

randomly to 20 different dose reconstructors 

who are currently out there, without them 

knowing that there's 19 other ones doing the 

same thing, and so to see how consistently are 

they going to process the same individual 

claim. And as a QA measure, so to look at it, 

say we -- how -- we have 20 independent people 

concurrently doing the same thing using the 

identical procedure, how consistent are their -

- and I think it's important that these dose 

reconstructions do follow some pattern that 

ensures consistency so that there's reasonable 
131

numbers that you can expect when you hand 

somebody a -- the raw data, the DOE documents, 

et cetera, and assume that well, maybe not down 

to the millirem, but maybe plus or minus 15, 20 

percent would be in reasonable approach to 

assuming that that is the level of consistency. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

And there lastly, four, there are some inconsistency 

with which procedural guidance is applied among 

the individual claims, although that's just 

what I just talked about or finished up. 

So my gut feeling at this point is how do you account 

for these errors that we've observed in these 

first 20 cases, and it's reasonable to assume 

that for some complex dose reconstruction you 

have to be willing to put an awful lot of time 

into 300 pages worth of DOE documents, to go 

through all of the -- in fact, some of the 

earlier documents -- I've looked at whole body 

count data. They don't give it to you in 

nanocuries, body burden, as you would today's 

world if you have a sophisticated system. You 

put the guy in front of a Canberra, whole body 

counter, and it spits out to you how many 

nanocuries of cesium, cobalt, iodine, et 

cetera, et cetera. 
132

In the old days I looked at data that gives it to you 

in counts for each radionuclide, and I assume 

it's full with half max-counts under the peak 

of a sodium iodide crystal. But without a 

calibration factor, you have no clue what that 

means. While you can standardize it by looking 

at the K-40 and say if the guy weighs 200 

pounds he should have maybe 120 nanocuries of 

K-40 and scale in accordance, but that's a 

protocol that would require an awful lot of 

effort -- an awful lot of effort. And so my 

gut feeling is that many of these errors were 

done as a result of being in the position where 

they have to finish so many per unit time, and 

the people simply said I'm going to take a 

shortcut here and not necessarily go into 

individual cycle dosimeter readings, but I'll 

just look at the summary sheet for the -- from 

the DOE and say this is the year's total 

without knowing whether that year's total 

represents a single cycle for one month or 

evenly spread over 12 months. So time is 

obviously an issue. Familiarity with the proc-

- the procedures is another issue. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 There are some procedures that I have to tell you 
133

I've looked over and I keep asking other people 

who are in our group, whether it's John or 

others, and I say tell me what you make of it; 

I'm not going to tell you what I think, but I'm 

at this point very much perplexed as to whether 

or not I'm -- I'm properly interpreting the 

procedure. And I don't consider myself a 

novice at this. I've been around and so many 

of the other people at SC&A, and we're not in 

consensus about how to interpret some of these 

procedures. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

For instance, I'll give you an example so that Dr. 

Neton will know. When you talk about -- for 

instance, the site profile for the Savannah 

River Site, you will see -- under the neutron 

columns you will see specific statements about 

maximum missed neutron for a given year, which 

represents the LOD and the number of cycles 

that usually represents that time period. And 

they may say 300 millirem neutron dose, but 

it's uncertain to me whether or not you now 

have to multiply that neutron dose with a 

neutron dose correction factor or the ICRP 

correction factor. These are things that I'm 

not sure. And I'm also convinced that the 
134

other people who have been tasked to do this 

are not convinced that that number is not the 

final number, that you have to multiply this in 

some cases -- like 1.91, which is the neutron 

dose correction factor that represents the 

ICRP-60 versus the earlier version, et cetera. 

So there are ambiguities in the procedures 

that, no matter how many times I read, I'm not 

sure I personally would not make a mistake that 

wouldn't be caught by somebody else and says 

you misinterpreted the procedure. So that's a 

key issue. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 And -- and lastly, and this is my own personal 

complaint a little bit, is the format and 

brevity of the dose reconstruction report. 

We've already touched on that. As I said, it 

would be very helpful for SC&A to at least take 

the Attachment One data and all the dose 

entries and at least identify what they 

represent. That would be a tremendous help, 

because part of the major up-front work, and 

especially when you have as many as 300 or 400 

dose entries, is to figure out what is the 

first few entries represent, which category -- 

missed dose, dosimeter dose, you know, whatever 
135

it is -- and that would be very helpful. So -- 

and alongside with that is that it would also 

be not something that would cost NIOSH an awful 

lot of additional help -- hours, but it would 

also cut back on NIOSH's internal QA because 

now you also have a paper trail. So when I 

look at a dose reconstruction report that's 

been signed off and I find these errors, my 

first question is how did this pass internal 

QA? And I cannot imagine an internal QA that 

can look at the current format and be convinced 

that all these numbers are truly what they 

should be because they would, in essence, have 

to go through the same exercise that I have, 

which is a very time-consuming exercise, to 

convince themselves that in fact these numbers 

represent real numbers that we're willing to 

stand behind, if challenged later on. So I 

think there's a need to maybe modify the 

current dose reconstruction report to include a 

little more -- as I started to say out, it's a 

cold trail, but a good bloodhound will still 

ultimately find the victim. What I'd like to 

see is a fresher trail. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, John and Hans, for your 
136

1 reports today. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

You have -- in a sense, you're blazing a trail, as 

well. NIOSH has had to develop procedures and 

you've found that you've had to develop some 

procedures on auditing as you went, too, and 

that's not always easy to do. And we also are 

developing procedures, one of which is figuring 

out what to do with this report. 

Now let me -- let me start out by saying that it's 

clear, based on some comments that we've heard 

this morning in the open session, that there 

are folks that want this report -- redacted, 

but this report -- which I must say it seems to 

me, even if the case numbers are taken out, by 

giving all the demographic information, the job 

description, work locations, the employment 

dates, the type and diagnosis date of cancer, 

won't people be able to figure out who many of 

those folks are? Have the attorneys really 

figured out that this is okay with the case 

number off of it? 

DR. MELIUS: I think the -- well, go ahead. 

DR. NETON: I think what we've done is we provided 

the individual reports and they'll be available 

tomorrow morning to the general public -- 
137

1 DR. ZIEMER: The individual reports being what? 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. NETON: Provided by SC&A, the dose reconstruction 

review reports -- the individual cases -- case 

reviews. Those are going to be available to 

the general public tomorrow morning. 

DR. ZIEMER: Which ones? 

DR. NETON: The 300-page binder full of -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, the whole volume? 

DR. NETON: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, that may be even worse. 

DR. NETON: Well, that's -- it's been redacted. It's 

been through our FOIA office and completely 

redacted and -- 

MR. GRIFFON: So if they could redact that, they can 

redact this. 

DR. NETON: I suspect, yeah; I don't know. I'm not 

familiar with the status of that report that 

you have in your hands as far as redaction. 

Maybe Liz can -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, this is not redacted at present. 

This is one Liz was offering to redact. 

DR. NETON: Liz -- there's a question about the SC&A 

rollup report that the Board has in their 

possession. Is it our intent to redact that 

and have that available to the public? 
138

1 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: This document? 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. NETON: Uh-huh. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I've done the redactions on it. I 

have one -- 

DR. ZIEMER: What -- what's the nature of a 

redaction, other than removing the claim 

number? What else goes out? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: The cancer diagnosis date goes 

out, employment periods goes out. There's 

employment periods within the actual statements 

that goes out. And (unintelligible) -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay, does the job description stay 

in? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I believe the job description will 

stay in. I contacted our FOIA office to get 

this cleared -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. I was concerned that the -- 

what's here -- 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

-- 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I -- okay. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- I'm not a FOIA officer. That's 

why our FOIA office is looking at this. We can 

have it ready, if you all want to be able to 

discuss it in the public meeting, to have 
139

redacted versions available for the public 

tomorrow. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. That's very helpful. Now another 

thing that I heard sometime along during the 

discussion, I think John said that SC&A was or 

is preparing some errata sheets, which tells me 

that you think there are some additional 

changes yet so that this might not be the 

document that you would want out on the street, 

either. Is that -- 

DR. MAURO: That's correct. In fact, the slide 

presentation, the tables that you're looking 

at, there are differences between the summary 

tables that you have here and some of the 

tables that are in the 300-page report, because 

in the process of preparing this we caught -- 

so we -- we're in a position now where -- 

DR. ZIEMER: So the big report -- 

DR. MAURO: Is -- is -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- may have some errors that -- 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, we -- yeah, we -- we would -- we 

would like to submit an errata sheet or some 

replacement pages to correct errors that we 

know. But now there's another layer here. Jim 

has made -- has responded to many of our 
140

observations and findings or areas of concern. 

Now the question becomes would you like us to 

put a report out that reflects that feedback 

from NIOSH regarding our findings, or would you 

prefer -- we would of course like to have an 

opportunity to at least submit a revi-- the 

errata sheets or replacement pages, and then of 

course independent of that, Jim may have his 

commentary, which would also be put public. Or 

we could wait until we get Jim's material and 

consider that -- you know, how -- 'cause -- 

'cause -- you know, so we'll -- we'll do any of 

the -- an -- any one or combination of these, 

whichever you feel is best suited for the 

process. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Dr. Ziemer -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Well -- yes? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- let me just add something to 

that, because we have prepared the 300-page 

document. We've redacted it. It's ready for 

public distribution. But if they're going to 

make changes, then that needs to go through our 

FOIA office to be redacted before it can be 

provided publicly tomorrow. So if you have 

sheets that are going to go in the discussion 
141

for tomorrow, we need them as soon as possible 

'cause we're talking about a three-hour time 

difference, you know. Our FOIA office is gone 

at this point. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Shelby, you want to add to that? 

MR. HALLMARK: I would strongly urge that, given that 

there are changes that -- that are already on 

the table here, and presumably some more that 

may come out of the discu-- you know, the 

digestion of the discussion that's happened 

today, that the Board not issue these documents 

at this point. These are documents that are -- 

that are potentially going to be in the claim 

adjudication process, and I think we would be 

misleading individuals who may look at these 

and say well, my case is like that and there's 

-- they made these kinds of comments. I think 

the Board has a responsibility in an 

adjudicatory structure to be careful about 

those kinds of issues. And this clearly, to 

me, is premature. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Jim has a comment. 

DR. MELIUS: Well, not -- not to -- Shelby's -- I was 

trying to get more to procedurally where we're 

going from here, 'cause I think that's what we 
142

also need to be able to say tomorrow. And I 

think we need -- do need to have a process for 

NIOSH to complete its review of this document 

'cause I know -- if I understood Jim Neton 

correctly, they have not reviewed the -- the 

document, all the individual -- nor the summary 

of that, and then get together with SC&A and 

try to resolve issue, to the extent they -- 

they can be, 'cause I think they can be -- some 

of them can be. And I also think we need a 

report back, the Board does, that -- from SCA 

that reflects what they've heard from NIOSH, 

what errors they found from their internal 

review or based on what they hear from -- 

errors in this -- in their report. And also we 

had talked about earlier, which was this 

classification issue, put these errors in some 

context so we know what they are. Are they 

technical issues -- I mean I think Hans in his 

last summary conclusions have the categories 

except I think there's a fifth category which 

is technical issues. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

DR. MELIUS: Some of which are site profile, some of 

which are others -- 
143

1 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MELIUS: -- and so that we can understand them 

better, we can understand what to prioritize 

and how to make recommendations to NIOSH on -- 

on what to do with that. And so I would see us 

getting back a -- this big volume corrected, 

whatever errata sheets that come up based on 

what they found so far, what they get from 

their dialogue with NIOSH; a new summary report 

that reflects those changes, also, along with a 

way of classifying the findings in a way that 

puts it in a more useful form for us. They 

would then present that to us at the next 

meeting. We would take action on that in terms 

of a set of recommendations to NIOSH in terms 

of what may or may not need to -- need to be 

done. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me hear from others of the Board. 

There's a possible approach that Jim has 

suggested. Let's hear from others. Do you 

think that's the way to go or do you have an 

alternative and -- Robert, you can start. We'd 

like to try to get a consensus here, so we need 

to hear from more than one or two. 

MR. PRESLEY: I agree with Jim, except I would like 
144

to see this before we go to the next meeting so 

we've got a chance to study it. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. MELIUS: Oh, I -- yeah. 

MR. PRESLEY: This bringing stuff in at the last 

minute and us having to sit here and look over 

it, not knowing what it is, I'd like to have it 

at least more than a couple of days prior to 

the meeting. 

DR. ZIEMER: Who else? Roy, then Leon. 

DR. DEHART: This is a question. Having announced 

publicly that there will be a report, can we 

back out from that and -- with some excuse for 

-- that's acceptable? 

DR. ZIEMER: The report that's been announced I think 

is the release of the site profile report. 

DR. DEHART: Site profile. 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm not sure -- did we publicly announce 

something on this? 

DR. NETON: It was my understanding this morning, and 

I did mention that we were prepared to release 

the individual dose reconstruction reviews in 

their redacted form. 

DR. ZIEMER: But again, subject to the Board's -- 

DR. NETON: That's correct, yes. Yeah, that's the 

Board's decision. 
145

DR. MELIUS: I just think we should decide where 

we're going to go procedurally, then decide how 

we report and what we release or recommend 

being released again. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Roy -- oh, I'm sorry. 

MR. OWENS: I agree with Dr. Melius's approach. The 

only thing I might add is, and I believe I 

heard Dr. Neton say that there were some areas 

that NIOSH concurred with the findings by SC&A, 

and I'd like to see those areas at least 

identified in this overall strategy. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. And -- 

DR. MAURO: May I make -- 

DR. ZIEMER: John? 

DR. MAURO: -- one comment, please? Thank you. We 

-- we feel that the nature of the errata sheets 

that we would like to incorporate are not 

critical. What I mean by that is, we don't 

feel that the -- the extent, the nature of the 

changes, are so substantial that it is 

critical, you know. In other words, so if you 

-- if you folks feel that you would like to put 

out this redacted version, perhaps with some 

qualifier that it's still -- this is a step in 

the process -- that is, here is a product, a 
146

work product that was put out, it's been 

redacted; it is undergoing this review cycle 

with NIOSH. We -- I'm speaking for SC&A now -- 

we have no problem if you decide to go that 

route. That's perfectly fine with us. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

I would also like to point out that when we costed 

out our work hours per case -- in other words, 

the budget that we submitted -- we basically 

came up with an estimate, when all's said and 

done, that's going to average out to about 

11 cfid* work hours per case, and that includes 

basically cfid* hours for basic review, cfid* 

hours per advanced review, and they sort of -- 

'cause we have -- what's left -- you know, we 

have 40 more cases. We basically estimated for 

those 40 cases we're going to come in at an 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 average of cfid* hours per case. 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Now we are building a process now that's out of 

scope, you have to realize. We're building a 

process of iterative review between NIOSH and 

SC&A, working together to work out our 

findings. This is not within the scope of work 

in terms of -- and I'm afraid that's it's going 

to -- it's going to -- we're going to find 

ourselves in a situation where it's going to 
147

cost more than an average of cfid* hours per 

case if we go into this kind of cycle, which 

could be a protracted cycle. In other words, 

we're opening up an open-ended dialogue that is 

very hard to predict how long that's going to 

take. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Lew just reminded me that if the Board 

wishes to have this kind of iterative process, 

we have to, in a sense, approve that. 

Okay, Robert and then Tony. Oh, okay, Tony. 

DR. ANDRADE: Okay. Well, I'm sorry to have to be 

the one to have to break it to you, but indeed 

I believe that the iterative process has to 

occur. I just don't know of any organizations 

anywhere that do not submit documents to one 

another for factual accuracy checks. And stuff 

like this comment here that consideration for -

- in the Huntington Pilot Plant case, 

consideration should have been given to the 

possible presence of isotopes of technetium, 

neptunium and plutonium in the scrap nickel. 

Even though that, in and of itself, has no 

proprietary, personal information or et cetera, 

et cetera, it is basically misleading because 

NIOSH did up the enrichment of the uranium that 
148

was being handled to take into account those 

isotopes that were in the scrap nickel. So all 

of those things have to be taken into account 

when a report is issued to the public. That is 

indeed what is the product of factual accuracy 

checks. So we have to go that way. And 

issuing this kind of product at this point in 

time I think would do a disservice to the 

Board, to SC&A and especially to NIOSH. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Roy, then Jim and Wanda. 

DR. DEHART: I think the answer to my question was 

that we are not obligated to release, so I 

would join Tony and others in saying this 

should be cleaned up before we turn it over to 

the public. 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, and I would just concur in the 

sense -- I think for this first dose 

reconstruction review we need to complete out 

this part of the process. There wasn't time 

and I think there are enough problems just with 

the formatting of what we have received that I 

think it's worth the extra investment to get it 

in better shape. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thanks. Wanda? 
149

MS. MUNN: There's a litany of issues that one could 

either call micro-managing or could call 

legitimate oversight that this Board probably 

should agree that they will or will not 

undertake to look at. Anything we put on the 

street is going to be widely publicized and 

brought to our attention again and again in 

future months and years. This first decision 

about what is going to be issued with respect 

to actual claimant files needs to be as precise 

and as thorough as we can get it. To issue 

anything prematurely would be probably a 

serious mistake on the part of the Board, and 

potentially damaging to some of the claimants, 

regardless of how well-redacted the file might 

be. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

I would urge us to resolve some of the issues we have 

before us and identify what we feel the process 

should be between the auditors and NIOSH; 

identify whether some of these issues that we 

have laid out, whether these assumptions that 

are being made by both the auditors and NIOSH 

are accurate assumptions that we feel or 

correct, or at least make the decision whether 

that constitutes micro-management on our part. 
150

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. And then Henry, and then 

Mark. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I think we need to delay. And I 

think -- on the other hand, I also think 

tomorrow we need to say that we've had a very 

productive session. It's the first go-round 

and -- and it's not as far advanced as we had 

hoped, and that we don't have final documents 

to release. And I do think between now and the 

next meeting I would certainly like to see more 

of the responses and have that -- you know, 

either the document contain what the report is, 

the NIOSH response to it, and then I think we 

need to come up with a summary as to where we 

want to go forward -- or the final document -- 

I think there's probably changes on both sides, 

once they get together and talk. And if it 

costs a little more money, I think that -- I 

would rather have the process identified now 

with the first set rather than wait later. So 

I think we've got ample explanation for why 

this isn't ready to go out because it is not 

completely accurate at this point, so we don't 

want to get back into arguing about that. So 

I'd agree, I think we -- we delay; we just have 
151

to have -- what are we going to do between now 

and then. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: And incidentally, this comes at a cost 

not only to our contractors, but to NIOSH in 

terms of time and effort, and we should 

recognize that, as well. 

Lewis -- yeah. 

DR. WADE: Let me -- to the issue of cost, I think 

it's terribly important the Board decides what 

it wants to see as its process, and then inform 

us and us sit with the contracting officer and 

we can then approach the contractor, and we can 

determine whether or not it represents a change 

or an expansion in scope. But I think it's 

terribly important that the Board tells us what 

it wants. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. And then Mark and then Tony. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think -- I agree with this 

iterative approach that Jim was -- was 

discussing. I think at the end he -- the one 

thing he said also that I want to emphasize is 

that that final summary report is -- to the 

public is a Board report, it's our product. So 

even if we go through this iterative process, 

SCA submits a final report to the Board, we 
152

have to make recommendations from that final 

report in a public session, so I think we want 

to keep that in mind, that we have to have time 

to do that. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

As far as process, this iterative approach, I think 

we might want to -- also the Board members, to 

the extent possible, might want to be included. 

And -- and I'm thinking about the process we 

had before where each work group was involved 

with three or four cases up front, but then we 

really didn't have much contact with SCA or 

NIOSH after that. And I think that it might 

have been good to have that work group again 

look at SCA's final report before it came here, 

and maybe NIOSH's critique of that final, and 

come together and have some agreement on those 

before they -- they reach this -- you know, 

this point, and then a lot of those could have 

probably been resolved at the work group level 

rather than at the full Board level, so it's a 

possibility for iterative approach. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. We'll get a comment from Tony, 

and Jim, did you have another comment? And 

then -- we're getting close to a point where 

I'm going to ask for a formal motion to 
153

(unintelligible) -- and then Henry, okay. 

Tony? 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ANDRADE: I had -- I was going to provide a very 

-- some very specific suggestions for -- for 

process, but perhaps -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, if you want to formulate that in 

the form of a motion, that might help us here 

in a second. Let's see if -- 

DR. ANDRADE: Somebody else can go first. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- I can get some general comments on -- 

and maybe you can -- yeah, Jim, you were first 

and then Henry. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I would just comment that I think 

we also have to spend a brief amount of time 

talking about what are the steps for the second 

-- the next 20 which -- and how do we modify 

that approach, and I think some of the 

modification may have to do with the -- NIOSH's 

participation in that conference call, which 

was really their only chance to sort of 

interact. And I'm not sure if there's a better 

way of doing that or if there needs to be 

another step in there, but it was -- I think we 

need to look about that, but I think we need to 

deal with this issue first. 
154

1 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Henry? 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I -- I don't -- haven't made up 

my mind on this, but it seems that, you know, 

our review has steadfastly not wanted to 

attempt to say does this make a difference in 

the POC, and I do think, though, that probably 

as part of any formal release, NIOSH or 

somebody needs to say these were interesting 

discussions; would it have made -- you know, 

would the -- either proposed changes that we 

may be doing or recommendations, would it have 

made any difference in any of the cases. I 

think the public is going to know were the 

decisions good decision, regardless of how, you 

know, they were derived. And what we're 

looking for is consistency over time, so 

somehow -- and I think some of these -- it was 

interesting discussion, but the one where the 

POC was .45, I mean that is important for 

future where it may become important, but I 

don't know -- I'm just raising that as an 

issue. I'm sure someone's going to ask well, 

would it have made a difference? And we either 

need to, as a Board, say that isn't our job, 

but somebody -- are going to ask that so I 
155

that's -- to me, that's a stumbling block 

that's to the fore as we go forward. I'm not 

sure the Board wants to make that comment, but 

I know we're going to get asked that question. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: At the same time, it may be that it 

would make no difference in any of these 20. 

But if there are -- but it could have -- it 

could have some impact on future cases, yes, 

that's the point. And again, our charge is to 

look at the quality of the process, and if -- 

and actually, this Board and NIOSH and our 

contractor ultimately have the same goal, and 

that's that we have good, dependable dose 

reconstructions. And whatever we can do to 

make sure that that process -- and therefore 

good decisions on the claim-- for the 

claimants. 

I think if we could have a motion that sort of 

codifies what we've talked about here in terms 

of the process, what is -- what is it we would 

like to see our contractor do, NIOSH do and 

what -- what is -- what do we do? It may be a 

multi-pronged approach. You have a comment 

first, or a motion? 

MR. PRESLEY: Comment. 
156

1 DR. ZIEMER: Comment. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MR. PRESLEY: What Henry was talking about where we 

had to put that in there, I think that needs to 

be in one of the things that we tell SC&A and 

HHS, that will this finding make a difference. 

That needs to be part of it. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: I'm going to make -- I'm trying to get a 

motion ready so -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Tony, were you getting one together, 

also? See if they match up? Go ahead. 

MR. GRIFFON: While they're drafting motions -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, I think they both have some things 

written down we can -- 

DR. MELIUS: I'll do step one, you do step two. 

DR. ZIEMER: Go ahead, comment first? 

MR. GRIFFON: Oh, no, I was just a little off-topic. 

While they're drafting motions I was going to 

say it strikes me that we, as a Board, didn't 

have a lot of time to discuss the 20 cases 

today at all. We heard a lot, but you know, I 

noted seven large items that I felt out of 

these 20 cases that were at least significant 

issues for discussion amongst us, and at least 

four of them got hit, but -- but a couple of 
157

the bigger ones that I thought should have been 

addressed, which we might just want to think 

about or -- you know. One was missed dose 

versus unmonitored dose and how that was 

handled in some of these cases. I think there 

were some questions. Two was validation and 

verification of some of the data that was used 

for intakes, and also for -- for dosime-- or 

for external doses. Specifically that one can 

-- that goes back to some of the site profile 

stuff that was used, so it might tie into site 

profile review. That's why I didn't bring it 

up. And three, and a big one, I think, which 

really I was surprised it didn't come up in 

discussions today at all, was lack of attention 

to interview comments. I felt that in -- and I 

know that these were often efficiency cases, so 

maybe they -- they argue -- they could argue 

that, you know, we didn't -- we didn't pull 

that thread, so to speak, because the POC was 

(unintelligible) -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Are you -- 

MR. GRIFFON: -- low -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- talking about SC&A's report itself? 

MR. GRIFFON: No, I'm talking -- both. I'm talking 
158

about the original dose reconstruction, as well 

as the audit really didn't say much about -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Right, well -- 

MR. GRIFFON: -- some things. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- (unintelligible) one of the issues 

that I raised, John. It seemed to me it would 

make sense if we -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Had a checklist. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- had -- even if it's a checklist, that 

assured us that you have looked at those 

issues. 

DR. MAURO: One of -- in the cover letter to our 

large report, you may have noticed that I point 

out that the format that -- that's used 

differs. We feel that the format that was used 

in the Savannah River cases is the one that, 

after going through the process, is the most 

responsive. 

DR. ZIEMER: Be more standardized in the future. 

DR. MAURO: Standardized in the future, and our plan, 

given no other -- I mean certainly any guidance 

you folks provide on how you would like us to 

format it, we will follow that guidance. Right 

now we internally have discussed the matter. 

We felt that the format used for the Savannah 
159

River cases seem to have a structure that 

addresses the issues that are listed in our 

scope of work -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: It's more encompassing, yes. 

DR. MAURO: -- in a much more systematic way, so 

we're very much receptive to any guidance -- 

and that may be very helpful to us on the next 

20. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Yeah, and you heard the comments 

earlier today in terms of categorizing the 

findings in certain ways. 

Okay, Jim, you want to start us off? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, let me make this as a motion and -

- can friendly amend or hopefully we're talking 

-- one, I would propose that we recommend that 

-- first of all, that NIOSH complete its 

technical and factual review of the SCA report; 

that the SCA and NIOSH then have a meeting or 

conference call to try to resolve -- clarify 

issues, to the extent they can -- can be; that 

SCA then prepare their -- a report -- a new 

report to the Board that would address any of 

the issues raised by NIOSH and any of the other 

technical errors they found. That would 

encompass both errata sheets or changes to the 
160

individual dose reconstruction reports, as well 

as to a -- a sum-- a new summary report; that 

both of those include a better chara-- 

categorization of the findings into the 

categories that we -- we've talked about; that 

NIOSH would then -- would also have an 

opportunity to comment or, you know, somehow 

communicate to the Board any outstanding issues 

that were still left that could not be 

resolved. I don't think we can expect -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Who would communicate? 

DR. MELIUS: NIOSH. 

DR. ZIEMER: NIOSH? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

MR. GRIFFON: Unresolved issues. 

DR. MELIUS: Unresolved issues. And that both of 

those reports would get to the Board at least 

one week before our next meeting, which is 

early in February, so it's a tight timetable. 

MR. GRIFFON: I would just -- just one -- what I 

believe is a friendly amendment. 

DR. ZIEMER: Hang on. 

MR. GRIFFON: In step two -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Hang on. I want a second first. 

MR. GRIFFON: Oh. 
161

1 DR. DEHART: Second. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Who's on first. Okay, second is -- I 

have a second, first. Okay, now. 

MR. GRIFFON: Now a friendly amendment. In step two, 

NIOSH/SCA conference call. I would just add on 

that we might have those same work group 

members that worked on the cases integrated 

into that conference process. 

UNIDENTIFIED: That's everybody. 

UNIDENTIFIED: That's everybody, I -- 

DR. ZIEMER: That's everybody. 

MR. GRIFFON: Well, we'd just do it like we did 

before, is my point. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. We need to discuss that 

because logistically that may be an issue. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. Well -- 

DR. ZIEMER: 'Cause they may not be -- this doesn't 

sound to me like it's going to be structured 

case-by-case, or is it -- or do we even know? 

DR. MELIUS: We don't know. I -- let them do -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Perhaps -- and we can't have all of us 

on the phone at the same time. 

MR. GRIFFON: No, I know that. I know that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Perhaps John and Jim, if this motion 

passes and we -- we get to that point where 
162

there's some kind of a conference call or a 

face-to-face, you can let the Board know -- 

particularly what the agenda is -- and if in 

fact you end up discussing certain cases at 

certain set times -- although it seems to me 

that this is going to be very difficult in the 

framework. I -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MR. GRIFFON: Well, okay, this is -- the final 

product is the Board's, so -- I mean I just 

think there needs to be a step, even if it's a 

newly-formed work group to work with this 

process. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, either -- either that, a work 

group to take an early look at it, or the 

product comes back to the Board for review, 

we'll have it a week ahead of time under this 

motion -- or a week or more ahead of time. 

Okay, let that ride for the moment then. 

MR. GRIFFON: So it wasn't so friendly. 

DR. ZIEMER: Less friendly than you thought. Okay, 

we have a motion that's seconded. Comments? 

Tony -- Mike, Mike's first. 

MR. GIBSON: Another part, hopefully as a friendly 

amendment, as part of their resolving the 

issues that they have between NIOSH and the 
163

contractor, could we somehow have them make 

reference to the data they use so that there'll 

be a more clear auditable track for the 

contractor to use? 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Jim or -- or John, we need to -- 

I'm going to ask Mike to repeat that comment, 

and then you can tell us if that's feasible. 

MR. GIBSON: Just as part of your talks back and 

forth to resolve how you're going to deal with 

these issues, could part of the process be that 

NIOSH puts references to the data they use and 

where they got it from so that it'll be easier 

for the contractor to pull the string on the 

data, rather than go back to ground zero and 

look it up? 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, you would tell us the basis for 

each issue. 

DR. NETON: Right, I think that would be part of the 

review -- the review cycle. I mean just like 

we've done today, we've un-- you know, unveiled 

some issues that, you know, were sort of hidden 

in our process, and we would do the same thing, 

so I think that would be part -- part of the 

process. 

DR. ZIEMER: That would be built-in then. Thank you. 
164

MR. GIBSON: But as -- but as far as going forward 

and the future cases, if that was always part 

of the process, it would be there rather 

than... 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I think that that sounds to me like 

it's ultimately going to be one of the 

recommendations of this report, and we will 

certainly embrace any recommendations the Board 

would make to that effect. 

DR. ZIEMER: And let's -- I don't want to put that in 

this particular motion, but it would ultimately 

become part of a final report, probably, as 

opposed to what we do right here with this -- 

developing this. 

Okay, Tony. 

DR. ANDRADE: I wanted to comment that what has been 

proposed by Jim is fine, I think, for this time 

around. It's a bit -- it's a bit complicated, 

and I -- I would like to -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, it does, however, spell out the 

specific roles, so that's -- 

DR. ANDRADE: Yeah, it -- it does. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- it has a fair amount of specificity 

to it, so I think it's helpful in that regard. 
165

DR. ANDRADE: It -- it is. It is in that regard. 

But -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Did you have some other points, though, 

that you think should be included? 

DR. ANDRADE: No, I -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Did it cover what you were thinking 

about? 

DR. ANDRADE: Pretty much, except I had a couple of 

things that I -- I would like to see as we move 

beyond this first case. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. Jim? 

DR. NETON: I just have one question -- one question 

of clarification. It's not clear to me whether 

the Board is recommending that SC&A -- 

(Whereupon, Dr. Neton's microphone failed, and his 

subsequent comments were lost behind the 

comments of Board members whose microphones 

were still open.) 

DR. ZIEMER: I don't think we've asked that this be 

done. I think that -- that sort of question 

arose as a general matter, but I think in -- 

for example, in -- in Henry's comments, he -- 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) anybody's 

going to do it, I think that's a -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- he's sort of saying after we -- after 
166

1 all is said and done, does any of this matter. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. NETON: (Off microphone) We can certainly do 

that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Other comments or additions? Friendly 

amendments? Nasty amendments? 

I'll try to summarize the motion. I think our 

reporter has the exact words, or do you -- you 

want to read them back to us? Okay, he's going 

to read them back to us. 

(Whereupon, the court reporter repeated the motion 

previously made by Dr. Melius.) 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Rich? 

MR. ESPINOSA: I just have a little bit of a concern 

with -- since this is going to reflect on the 

Board, that I still kind of see a need for a 

working group in there, maybe during the 

meeting that SC&A is going to have with NIOSH 

or the conference call. I just think that 

there needs to be Board representation during 

the communications on that. 

MR. GRIFFON: Well, I would second that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, that -- okay, let -- let me 

suggest that -- that we act on this motion, and 

then we can do that as a separate action. Is 

that agreeable? This will be a motion that 
167

deals specifically with the report, and then we 

can -- is that -- if that's agreeable. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

Are you ready to vote on this particular motion? 

DR. WADE: Could I make a comment before -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Lew. 

DR. WADE: And once you make a motion and then pass 

it on to us, what I would do is to sit down 

with the contracting officer, discuss what 

you've asked of us, and then sit down with the 

contractor and determine whether or not 

there'll be any increase in cost associated 

with what we're asking. You might want to 

provide us thoughts on that now as to what you 

had originally assumed such a review would 

encompass in terms of scope, but we would take 

your recommendations and sit down with the 

contractor and discuss it. What we do when we 

have that information again goes to the issue 

of whether you would want us to move forward 

with additional cost to get this done, or 

whether you would want us to bring that 

information back to the Chair or to the Board. 

You don't have to tell us now, but I think you 

need to consider that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. I think the -- I think the -- 
168

the Board will probably have a gut feeling that 

this is not a major cost increase. Obviously 

it involves a meeting. There's some travel 

time for the contractor, some additional prep 

time and so on. But if you want to get into 

details -- you're not asking us to try to put a 

dollar limit on it. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. WADE: No, just what you said is -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

DR. WADE: -- consistent with what I... 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, that it's perhaps an incremental 

cost, but should be considered as a valid addon, if needed. 

Are we ready to vote now on this? Now if this motion 

passes, I assume that what will happen tomorrow 

in public meeting is that I would report this 

as the action. This motion would be the action 

of the Board that would be reported, and no 

other documents would be forthcoming. Is that 

-- is that the understanding? 

DR. MELIUS: I think with some process -- I mean some 

background for... 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes. Well... All in favor, aye? 

 (Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: All opposed, no? 
169

1 (No responses) 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Any abstentions? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. The motion carries. Richard 

-- no, who made the -- who -- yeah, Richard, 

you have a motion, which Tony's going to 

discuss. 

MR. ESPINOSA: I'd like to make a motion to propose 

that a working group be set involved with NIOSH 

and SC&A during the conference calls and 

meetings. 

DR. ANDRADE: I'd like to second that motion. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Any discussion? 

DR. MELIUS: I would just -- I'm sorry, Tony, you 

were -- were you going to -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, incidentally, this could be simply 

a subset of the -- no, if it's a -- if it's the 

working -- if it's the subcommittee, we have to 

announce it as a meeting, so you're asking for 

a work group. 

MR. ESPINOSA: I'm asking for a work group. 

DR. ZIEMER: An ad hoc work group. 

DR. MELIUS: I would just request that whatever gets 

done in terms of a work group not hold up the 

process, that we not get into a large 
170

scheduling issue 'cause it's really asking a 

lot to be done in a few weeks, given the 

holidays, and I just don't -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

MR. ESPINOSA: The only -- the only reason why I'm 

suggesting this is because it is the Board's -- 

you know, this is going to reflect on the 

Board. And because it's reflected on the 

Board, the Board should have representation at 

it. 

MR. GRIFFON: And if it's a group as opposed to two 

people for each case, I think the scheduling 

would be a lot -- a lot -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, we're talking about a work group, 

which means -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- it can't be more than five people, 

and maybe three -- would -- would be three, and 

probably what we want is -- if this passes, 

just several people to volunteer. We may not 

use them all, depending on when the meeting is 

scheduled. We don't want to have the meeting 

dependent on five individuals from this Board 

if -- if we can get by with say three. 

All in favor, aye? 

 (Affirmative responses) 
171

1 DR. ZIEMER: Opposed? 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Motion carries. Let me ask if we have 

several individuals who want to volunteer. 

Tony? 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) I'm not available. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Mark? Rich? Wanda? Mike? 

Anyone else? 

We will notify all of you -- or will make sure that -

- that -- once the date is set, I guess we'll 

try to make it work for all of you, but if one 

or two can't make it, we're going to have to go 

ahead. Mike, comment? 

MR. GIBSON: We've got to make it clear, if I 

understand this correct, that the working group 

doesn't speak for the Board. We just are 

participants in the process. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. And Liz, do you see any problems 

with this, having Board members there? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: (Off microphone) No, that's fine. 

You guys (unintelligible). 

DR. ZIEMER: Tony? 

DR. ANDRADE: This comment is really meant to address 

Dr. Wade's concerns, and also just a few 

thoughts that I had with respect to the -- the 
172

1 process that we're -- that we're engaging here. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

First of all, I would say that, number one, SC&A 

should be prepared to categorize its findings 

first, before they -- and perhaps reword these 

-- before the discussions take place with -- 

with NIOSH and/or ORAU. 

I would just like to suggest, you know, having been 

in the weapons quality arena for quite a while, 

there's -- there's many ways you can categorize 

things, but one way that we've found to be 

convenient is issuing CARS, FARS and RARS, 

which are -- that's a -- that's just a 

convenient way to say where corrections are 

needed, findings have been noted, or there are 

remarks or observations that have been found. 

And the first one really refers to significant 

findings of -- that are -- that are -- or 

corrections that need to be made because -- 

because the issues are -- are really adversely 

-- adversely affect quality. A finding is one 

that affects quality, to a certain degree. And 

a remark or an observation is something that 

could be just a philosophical difference 

between two organizations. 

When a correction is needed, it could be -- it could 
173

be either technical -- it could involve a 

technical issue or it can involve a procedural 

issue. In other words, a procedure has to be 

changed. Both are just -- both are very -- are 

very serious, so that's just a comment here. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

But anyway, the categorization should take place 

first by SC&A. Those should be accepted -- the 

categorizations should be accepted by NIOSH, 

and then the give-and-take take place during 

meetings and/or exchanges of information for 

factual accuracy. That's step two, and that 

can be an iterative process. 

Then this working group that we have just talked 

about can be involved during that iterative 

process to review and participate in 

discussions, and perhaps to serve to facilitate 

those discussions, such a final product can 

come forth for the full Board to consider in a 

later meeting, and I'd say those are the four 

major steps that I would put down that capture 

what Dr. Melius said, perhaps with a little bit 

more brevity. 

But that's the way it should go, and we really should 

think about that categorization. Like I said, 

there should be at least three. I've given an 
174

example of three that I've worked with. I'm 

sure that other people have ideas and Mark, I 

know you -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: And I'm not sure that it's going to be 

productive for us to sit here and define those 

categories now. Contractor can do that. I 

think they have the idea. I do want to point 

out to you that on a closed session we are 

pretty much bound by the stated time. We're 

past it, but Mark, you have something quickly? 

We need to come to closure. We're past the 

stated time of a closed session. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I just think -- one thing I was 

wrestling with was -- in the ongoing -- for the 

ongoing purpose, if we have a working group we 

can't, as a working group, participate in an 

ongoing fashion in the same task. It's by 

definition a subcommittee, I think, and this is 

what we wrestled with before. So you know, 

unless we rotate members or something like that 

to do -- for this first set, I think it's fine 

'cause it's one set of work, we can have a work 

group. But in an ongoing capacity, I've been 

wrestling with well, how do we -- I think the 

Board needs to stay involved. If we have an 
175

ongoing function, by definition it has to be a 

subcommittee. Then you're in open meetings and 

it just makes the whole thing blow up, so we 

might want to -- I would -- that's why I was 

talking about the -- in the ongoing capacity, 

having that -- those two people assigned to 

cases being involved in two steps in the 

process. One, preliminary discussions with 

SC&A; two, discussions after they had a final 

report, so that everybody sort of has a little 

more consensus coming into this final meeting 

with the -- with the work product. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. When you get into the rollup 

here, it's a little bit more -- 

DR. WADE: Let us -- let us consider that. We can 

move forward with this recommendation -- 

UNIDENTIFIED: Yes, yes. 

DR. WADE: -- and we can think about the 

(unintelligible) you're proposing and suggest 

ways of (unintelligible). 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's move quickly. Roy? 

DR. DEHART: This is a housekeeping issue. We have 

documents that we may not want to retain. What 

-- what should we do so that they can be 

properly destroyed? 
176

1 MS. HOMER: Give them to me; I'll take care of it. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

DR. ZIEMER: Cori will collect those. Okay, Henry, 

you have another item? 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I just wanted to say I think we 

initially thought about this process at one 

meeting we'd identify cases, the next meeting 

we'd review and have a report. And I think 

reality is it's probably going to take two 

meetings so that we can have the original -- 

the cases would go and we'd have the 

discussions, then we'd have a discussion of 

those cases here, and then final adoption and 

move forward at the next. I mean we'll still 

end up ultimately with one at -- one batch at 

each, but it'll be -- run over three or -- 

three period -- or three meetings rather than 

two meetings. I think -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Unless we gain efficiency along the way 

and the format becomes more clear and the 

review process is -- 

DR. ANDERSON: It seems to me at this point we need 

to have some Board discussion, and so the 

public -- we don't want to give them the 

expectation that -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh -- 
177

DR. ANDERSON: -- the selection tomorrow of cases 

isn't going to be -- final reports of those at 

the next meeting. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

DR. ANDERSON: So it's just public expectation as to 

when will things come out. 

DR. ZIEMER: Tony, can you serve as the Chair of the 

ad hoc committee, please? Thank you. Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: I have one last housekeeping issue. It 

is okay if we keep some of these reports, 

'cause we'd like to review that -- 

DR. ZIEMER: They just need to be confidential. I 

think the sheet that has the code on it 

probably goes back. Right? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, anything else -- oh, Lewis, yes? 

DR. WADE: I'd like to thank the Board. 

DR. ZIEMER: And thanks to Dr. Wade for assisting in 

the process, as well. 

We're recessing till tomorrow morning. (5:00 p.m.) 

(Whereupon, an adjournment was taken to Tuesday, 

December 14, 2004 at 8:30 a.m.) 
178

 C E R T I F I C A T E

STATE OF GEORGIA :

COUNTY OF FULTON :

 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 

Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 

above and foregoing on the 13th day of 

December, 2004; and it is a true and accurate 

transcript of the testimony captioned herein. 

 I further certify that I am neither kin 

nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 

have any interest in the cause named herein. 

 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 

23rd day of December, 2004. 

__________________ 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102