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-EIGHTH MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

DAY ONE 

The verbatim transcript of the Meeting of the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health held 

at the Adam’s Mark, St. Louis, Missouri, on February 

7, 2005. 
 

 

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C O N T E N T S 

February 7, 2005 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 12 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR

DR. LEW WADE, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

NIOSH PROGRAM STATUS REPORT 16 

MS. HEIDI DEEP, NIOSH 

DOL PROGRAM STATUS REPORT 40 

MR. SHELBY HALLMARK, DOL 

SITE PROFILE REVIEW – BETHLEHEM STEEL 86 

DR. JAMES NETON, NIOSH

BOARD DISCUSSION/WORKING SESSION 

GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT 68, 153 

ADJOURN 234 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 235 
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TRANSCRIPT LEGEND 

The following transcript contains quoted material. 

Such material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

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

an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 

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

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

word(s) when reading written material. 

-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 

of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 

reported. 

-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 

the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 

available. 

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

"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 

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

without reference available. 

-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 

failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 

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 

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 

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

Director 

The Vanderbilt Center for Occupational and Environmental

Medicine 

Professor of Medicine 

Nashville, Tennessee 

ESPINOSA, Richard Lee

Sheet Metal Workers Union Local #49 

Johnson Controls 

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Espanola, New Mexico 
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GIBSON, Michael H.

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union

Local 5-4200 

Miamisburg, Ohio 

GRIFFON, Mark A.

President 

Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc.

Salem, New Hampshire 

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

Director 

New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund

Albany, New York 

MUNN, Wanda I.

Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired)

Richland, Washington 

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) 

Ms. Heidi Deep, NIOSH 

Mr. Shelby Hallmark, DOL 

Dr. James Neton, NIOSH 

STAFF/VENDORS 

CORI HOMER, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH

STEVEN RAY GREEN, Certified Merit Court Reporter 
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AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS 

AHIRA, KEN

ALEXANDER, OLIVE M.

ALEXANDER, TERRY

ALLEN, GEORGE

AMANN, DEBORAH

ANBLE, JOHN, KTVI

ARRO, MICHAEL R.

BAFARO, MARILYN, NIOSH

BASCHERT, BETTY J.

BEATTY, EVERETT RAY, SR., FERNALD ATOMIC COUNCIL

BEHLING, HANS, SC&A

BEHLING, KATHY, SC&A

BELL, R. THOMAS, SC&A

BERRY, CHARLENE

BEST, CHARLINE

BEST, RAYMOND

BIEST, JOAN

BLANKENSHIP, CINDY

BOGNAN, JOHN

BOYD, JAMES

BLOSSER, FRED, NIOSH

BRALASKI, RITA

BRAND, ANSTICE, CDC

BROCK, DENISE, UNWW

BROWN, THOMAS, BSCAG

BRYANT, DOROTHY

BULGER, HAROLD

CALLAWAY MOOCH, FERNALD ATOMIC COUNCIL

CAVALESKY, SHIRLEY

CHISHOLM, MILLIE

COFFELT, EVELYN

CONRAD, JAMES

COTTER, GARY

COTTER, WILLIAM D.

COVALESKY, SHIRLEY

CROCK, JAMIE

CURTISS, JOANN & RICK

DANIEL, GWEN

DAVIS, JANETTE

DAVIS, RICKY, KTVI

DEEP, HEIDI, NIOSH 
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DEICHMAN, MATT, WBII-TV

DILLARD, HOMER & HALENE

DOLAN, JACQUELINE E.

DOLAN, WILLIAM E.

DORNFELD, DEBBIE, JIM TALENT

DOWNS, DEB

DREY, KAY

DUDLEY, MARTIN

EATON, CLARISSA, UNWW

ECHEMENDIA, AIDA

EHLMANN, PAT, UNWW

ELLISON, CHRIS, NIOSH

ESPY, RICHARD

FAGAS, JANE

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A

FRISCHMAN, BILL

FULKERSON, ROBERT

GARNER, DON

GENERI, MARY

GILLARD, LORRAINE A.

GRAHAM, MAYOR, CITY OF O’FALLON

GREEN, JAMES

GREUBLATT, B., UPI

HABBIG, JOHN K.

HAERER, BERNELL

HALLMARK, SHELBY, LABOR

HARGIS, JOHN

HARRIS, WALTER

HARRISON, KATHY

HART, ALISON, SENATOR HARKIN

HAWKINS, BRENDA

HEADRICK, WILLIAM

HEISTER, MELANIE, NCRP

HENNITS, DOROTHY

HERBERT, NICHOLE, NIOSH

HERTZ, DOROTHY

HINNEFELD, STUART, NIOSH

HOLLAND, MARTIN

HOLTMEYER-MAUNE, JERRINE

HODGES, CARRIE

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS

HORGAN, TOM, SEN. BOND

IRWIN, SUE 
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IVERSON, SI

JOHNSON, MARY L.

JOHNSON, PAT

KATZ, TED, NIOSH

KELLER, LILLIAN A.

KELLY, PATRICK, SC&A

KENOYER, JUDSON, ORAU

KIEDING, SYLVIA

KIMPAN, KATE, DOE

KLOTZ, STEVE, KTRS

KOENEMAN, BARB, UNWW

KOENEMAN, RAYETTA

KOENEMAN, TANYA, UNWW

KORDING, GLENN

KORDING, SHARON

KOTSCH, JEFFREY L., DOL

KRAICHELY, MARY, UNWW

LACKEY, MELBA

LAMBKIN, DON, UNWW

LAVERY, KEVIN M., KWMU

LEA, JEFF, KMOV

LEACH, BOB

LEAHMANN, SHIRLEY

LITTLE, JAMES

LYNCH, CINDY

LYNCH, HELEN

MACK, HUY, POST DISPATCH

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A

MCINTYRE, JOAN

MCKEEL, DAN, MD, WASHINGTON UNIV.

MCKEEL, VIRGINIA, VILLAGE IMAGE NEWS

MCNUTT, ROBERT

MESSALA, DAVE & JAN

MILLER, RELADA L., NIOSH

MILLER, RICHARD, GAP

MITAS, JIM, CONGRESSMAN AKIN

MOUSER, TERRI, UNITED NUCLEAR

MURPHY, DAN P.

MUSCKE, EDWARD C.

NAES, NORVILLE

NESVET, JEFF, DOL

NETON, JIM, NIOSH

NOVAK, JUSTINE 
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NUGENT, MARY, US GAO

O’HARE, FRANK W.

OJEDA, THERESA, KMOV

PATTON, JACK

PHEGLEY, RAYMOND, AIRPORT

PIPER, WILLIAM

PORTER, DIANE, NIOSH

PRESLEY, LOUISE S.

PRIEST, CHRISTINE

RACH, CHARLES L.

RAMSPOTT, CHRISTINE

RAMSPOTT, JOHN

REECE, DOYLE

REMPE, VIRGIL J.

RETKONSKI, RICHARD

REUSS, ANN

RINDALL, TINA, UNITED NUCLEAR

RINGEN, KNUT, CPWR/BCTD

ROBERTSON-DEMERS, KATHY, SC&A

RODE, BETTY

ROSENTHAL, JAMES

ROTH, CHARLES L.

ROTHROCK, AMY

RUTHERFORD, LAVON, NIOSH

RYAN, FRAN

SACKS-LONG, DONNA J.

SCHESLER, ELAINE

SCHNEIDER, CLARENCE

SCHNEIDER, MARILYN, UNWW

SCHRUMM, RUTH

SCOTT, SYLVIA

SEMARADI, ANDREW

SHANEHEN, JUDY

SOVAR, RICH AND EVELYN

SPICKETT, DAVID

SPICKETT, EVELYN

STEGER, RON

STEGER, RONI

STEINKAMP, JUDIE

STEMPFLEY, DAN, NIOSH

STROPES, FLO

STROUSSNER, DONALD A.

STUCKENSCHNEIDER, DOLORES 
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STUDT, ARLENE

SUERMANN, ZELDA

SULLIVAN, MICHELLE, WBII-TV

SWABODA, JAY, ST. LOUIS LABOR TRIBUNE

TASCHLOR, JOHN

TAULBEE, TIM, NIOSH

TEAGUE, CARLOTTA, NCRP

TENFORDE, THOMAS S., NCRP

THORNHILL, CHARLENE

THORNHILL, GEORGE

TOOHEY, R.E., ORAU

TURCIC, PETE, DOL

TYNDALE, TINA

UNDERWOOD, LEWIS, NIOSH

VACEK, PENNY, SENATOR GRASSLEY

VERHOFF, GWENDOLYN

VOGNER, JOHN

WALKER, ED AND JOYCE, BSCAG

WATSON, DAVID P., JR.

WHITE, WALTER, JR.

WIESEHAUS, JOHN J.

WINDISCH, ANTHONY

WOLFF, TOM

WOODS, JANET

YERINGTON, LASCA

ZAK ROSEMARY 

ZIEMER, MARILYN 
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P R O C E E D I N G S

 (1:05 p.m.) 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS

 DR. ZIEMER: Good afternoon, everyone. I'd 

like to call to order the 28th meeting of the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health. 

I'm Paul Ziemer, Chairman of the Board. The 

record will show that all of the Board members 

are here this afternoon, with the exception of 

Dr. Andrade, who is ill and could not make it; 

Dr. Anderson will be joining us later this 

afternoon by telephone hookup, who -- he's in 

Anchorage, Alaska today. 

For those who were not here at the morning 

session of the subcommittee, I'd like to remind 

you of several things. First of all, the 

sessions this week are being videotaped by 

Louise McKeel, who's with Village Image, and so 

if you wonder what the taping is, I -- well, it 

seems to have disappeared, but -- maybe she got 

all the footage she needed, but I was going to 

mention that I was expecting the taping to 

continue throughout the sessions, and maybe it 

will. 

We would request that if you have phones or 
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beepers that you turn them off while you're in 

the room here. We've had experience in the 

past where those have interfered with the 

proceedings and with the sound system. 

 Please register your attendance with us today, 

if you've not already done that. The 

registration book is at the entryway on the 

tables there. 

Also there are a number of handouts at the back 

of the room, including today's agenda, as well 

as a number of related items that you can avail 

yourself of as you see fit. 

 Our Designated Federal Official today is Dr. 

Lew Wade, and Lew, I'd like you also to have 

the opportunity to make a few remarks at this 

point. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like 

to welcome you all and thank you on behalf of 

Secretary Leavitt*. While he's only been on 

the job several weeks, I know that he's aware 

of this Board and its deliberations and his 

need to interact with this Board. And also on 

behalf of John Howard, Director of NIOSH, but I 

don't have to do much of that 'cause John 

Howard is here and in the front row. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Welcome, John. 

 DR. WADE: Again, I think it's terribly 

important that the Director be here to hear the 

deliberations of this Board. 

Let me explain to you why I'm in the chair. 

Larry Elliott has done a noble job of filling 

this role, but it's become ever more apparent 

that Larry needs to -- to sit in his chair as 

the OCAS director and interact with this Board 

on many important issues, and that would limit 

his ability to serve the role of the Designated 

Federal Official. So -- so I assumed that role 

so we can avoid either a real or an apparent 

conflict of interest that might exist between 

Larry in his role -- former role of DFO of this 

Board and his role as the director of OCAS. So 

I have the honor of -- of filling his position. 

Just a couple of general comments. I think it 

is terribly important that -- that not only 

does the Board deliberate and pass motions, but 

that the Board also creates a very full record 

of its deliberations. I would encourage all 

Board members to be sure that their thoughts 

are included in this record. As we get into 

the business of SEC petition evaluation, I 
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think it is terribly important that that record 

be as rich as it can be. NIOSH is striving 

very hard to have a process that is transparent 

and inclusive of information and position and -

- and let me start with the Board and ask you 

to see that that record is made as complete as 

possible. 

 That's all, Paul. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Lew. And in 

that regard, let me add a couple of comments, 

both as a reminder to the Board, as well as for 

information for the members of the public who 

may be here today, and that has to do with the 

voting procedures for the Board. 

There are actually 12 voting Board members, 

including the Chair, which means that we 

actually do not have a mechanism for breaking 

tie votes. There are 12 voting members if all 

are here and present, and we do hope when we do 

votes this week that we will have both Henry 

and Tony available by phone. Our procedures to 

allow us to have others -- other Board members 

vote in that manner if the hookup can be made. 

But in any event, for particular motions to 

move forward where a majority is required, a 
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tie vote in essence results in the failure of 

the Board to reach consensus. I simply point 

that out and remind you of that. 

Also I do want to point out that normally under 

Robert's Rules the Chair does not vote except 

in cases of a tie. However, this Board made it 

known early on in its own procedures that it 

wished to have the Chair vote in any event, so 

that in situations such as may be coming up 

where we have particular issues to vote on, the 

Chair's vote will be recorded, as well. 

Lew, do you have anything to add on the voting 

to make sure that we have covered that 

appropriately? 

 DR. WADE: I think even with 12 and with the 

Chair voting, there is a mechanism to pass a 

motion and then to defeat a motion, and a sixsix vote would defeat a motion. 

I would again repeat that it's not just the 

motion and its resolution, but also the record 

that's created that's terribly important. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Thank you very much. 

NIOSH PROGRAM STATUS REPORT 

We're going to proceed then with the agenda as 

you have it before you. The first item this 
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afternoon is the program status report from 

NIOSH, and Heidi Deep is going to bring that to 

us today. Heidi, welcome back. 

 And Board members, you do have in -- in your 

second tab, have copies of Heidi's 

presentation. And they are on the table, as 

well, for others who are here. 

 MS. DEEP: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. Good 

afternoon. As Dr. Ziemer mentioned, my name is 

Heidi Deep and I'll be presenting the program 

status report for -- for NIOSH. The purpose of 

this presentation is to present to you the 

progress that we have made, both long-term and 

short-term. 

 This slide illustrates submittals versus 

production as of January 31st, 2005. The blue 

line represents the cases that we have received 

from the Department of Labor. As you can tell, 

there's been a downward trend. We've been 

averaging between 200 and 300 cases per month, 

short-term. In January 2005 this number 

dropped below the 200 mark. 

The green line represents the draft dose 

reconstruction reports we sent to the 

claimants. This is an upward trend, and it 
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speaks for our production. And we've been 

averaging about 500 dose reconstruction drafts 

sent to claimants per month. 

The red line illustrates the final dose 

reconstruction reports we sent to the 

Department of Labor. This again is an upward 

trend, and since we last met in December this 

number has increased. I will go in more detail 

about these figures in the following slides. 

Since the inception of the program we've 

received a total of 17,912 cases from the 

Department of Labor as of January 31st, 2005. 

This chart breaks down the cases received by 

district office. The trend has not changed, 

for Jacksonville takes the lead at 36.7 

percent, Seattle at 31 percent, Cleveland 21 

percent and Denver at 11.3 percent. 

 These next few slides -- this is where I break 

down the numbers in the submittals versus 

production. This is the cases we've received 

from the Department of Labor by quarter as of 

January 31st, 2005, a quarter being every three 

months, quarter one equaling October, November 

and December. There's a downward trend here 

where we've maintained an average of 700 -- 
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between 700 and 800 cases per quarter, equaling 

about 250 cases per month. You notice for 

quarter two for 2005 this only includes the 

month of January where we've only received 190 

cases. 

 This chart illustrates the draft dose 

reconstruction reports we've sent to the 

claimants by month as of January 31st, 2005. 

This follows an upward trend, where you can see 

in the past seven months we've been maintaining 

an average of 500 Dose reconstruction reports -

- drafts to claimants. This means that we are 

out-pacing the number of cases coming in and 

we're reducing a backlog. 

 This chart illustrates final dose 

reconstruction reports sent to Labor as of 

January 31st, 2005, again illustrating an 

upward trend. In January 2005 we reported a 

record month of sending out 529 cases to Labor. 

Although we did drop in December, this may be 

related to a number of factors as these figures 

are claimant-dependent, meaning that once we -- 

we have to -- in order for a final report to be 

sent out, we have to have the signed OCAS-1s, 

complete the closeout interviews for the dose 
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reconstruction final reports to be sent. 

It's also important to point out that we have 

almost doubled the number of dose 

reconstruction reports we've sent in less than 

a year. 

In terms of Department of Energy response to 

requests for exposure records, we've requested 

17,827 exposure monitoring records for 

claimants, and then 17,332 we've received 

responses from Energy. In terms of age of 

outstanding requests, for 60 days or more 

there's 56; 90 days or more, 27; 120 days or 

more, 22; and 150 days, 57. It's important to 

mention that we maintain interaction between 

the Department of Energy monthly and keep up to 

speed on these outstanding requests. 

 This slide illustrates telephone interview 

statistics as of January 31st, 2005 where one -

- cases for which at least one interview has 

been completed, 17,540. This is just one 

interview, where you can have -- it's important 

to point out that there can be multiple 

claimants on a case. And then the interview 

summary reports sent to claimants, this number 

is higher because it includes multiple -- 
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multiple claimants on a case. It's 23,956, 

with only 475 interviews left to be conducted 

for claimants, but this number can also include 

-- could have less cases because of multiple 

claimants per case. 

The number of interviews conducted as of 

January 31st, since October of '04 we've 

conducted between 300 -- 300 to 400 interviews 

monthly, but this number is decreasing as you -

- as the number of cases coming in are 

decreasing. 

 Dose reconstruction statistics as of January 

31st. The cases in pre-DR assignment, 9,498 -- 

pre-DR assignment meaning that we're depending 

-- waiting for information from Energy, 

employment records, CATIs to be completed and 

site profile documents. Cases assigned for 

dose reconstruction, 1,102. 

 These last two bullets it's important -- I'm 

going to point out a statistic -- when -- for 

NIOSH, we have completed 41 percent of these 

cases, so of the 17,912, that's 40 percent -- 

40 percent of overall cases we've completed. 

So with that in mind, draft DR reports sent to 

claimants is 662. The final DR reports 
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completed, 6,650, which also includes the 

administratively closed cases. 

Cases completed by NIOSH tracking number. We 

expect the first 5,000 to hold a larger number 

of cases because of -- they've been in -- in 

our logs longer, but we do -- we have 

emphasized completing the first 5,000 cases 

because they've been in-house the longest. We 

have a special team working on these first 

5,000 on a case-by-case basis. It's also 

important to mention that the first 5,000 cases 

is dependent on coworker data, which is 

something that you already know. It's been 

mentioned in the previous Advisory Board 

meetings. And the first 5,000, we're almost 

halfway through in terms of completing these 

cases. 

 Administratively closed, which I mentioned 

previously -- the reasons why a case would be 

administratively closed, if we have not 

received a signed OCAS-1 within the allotted 

time period with the 60 days that the DR is 

sent out and then we allow another 14 days -- 

contact the claimant again, send out another 

OCAS-1 for them to send, and then we will 
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administratively close the case if we haven't 

heard back from them. But it's not as cut and 

dry as that. We try to make as many efforts as 

we can to get in touch with the claimants to 

make sure that they are understanding the 

process. But this totals 65. If you add those 

figures together it totals 65 cases that have 

been administratively closed. This -- this -- 

there has been an increase from eight to 20 

from December '04 to January of 2005, and there 

-- this is -- this figure is claimantdependent, so it all depends on what we get 

back from the claimants, their OCAS-1 signed. 

And also it's relative to the number of draft 

dose reconstruction reports that we -- we send 

out, which the number is increasing. 

Reworks which we get back from the Department 

of Labor to make changes whenever a claimant 

provides new employment information or changes 

in cancer information, they come back to us for 

us to reprocess the dose reconstruction, which 

-- we've received 525 and returned 307, meaning 

if you track the two figures, 525 minus 307, 

that's 218 that we have in-house as of January 

31st. 
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Phone calls and e-mails, number of phone calls 

OCAS has received, 36,323, and these are from 

claimants, authorized reps. ORAU has larger 

figures because they handle the CATIs, the 

closeout interviews and any SEC phone calls 

that have been recently processed, and it's 

139,347. 

 And e-mails, 5,784, but important to mention 

here that a claimant could contact us by e-mail 

and they may not provide all the information 

for us to provide status for them, but we'd 

definitely get in touch with them. 

SEC petition status as of January 31st, 2005, 

we've received a total of 17 SEC petitions, 11 

of which are active. Five of the 11 are 

qualified for evaluation, representing two 

sites, Mallinckrodt and Iowa Ordnance Plant. 

And six are -- six are closed. This 

information is published on our public web 

site, and it does illustrate the six closed 

petitions and the sites. 

And of active petitions, they represent the 

following sites you'll see listed down in the 

last five bullets which -- which sites it 

represents and the number of petitions. For 
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the Iowa Ordnance Plants the five have been 

merged into -- or four have been merged into 

one and one has been received in January. 

 Our accomplishments. In January we sent out 

over 17,000 activity reports to our claimants 

and authorized representatives, and we've -- we 

have met the goal of exceeding final dose 

reconstructions at 6,000, and we have -- we'll 

be submitting three SEC evaluation reports to 

the Board representing Iowa and Mallinckrodt. 

We've hired a statistician part-time, and in 

terms of the progress of site profile 

documents, we've approved since December 2004 

eight Technical Basis Documents and four 

Technical Information Bulletins. 

 This concludes the -- my program status report, 

and I'll be open for questions. 

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

floor for questions. Who wants to go first? I 

can't actually see everybody, but I'm looking 

across there 'cause I know that Jim usually has 

his tent turned up there quickly and -- go 

ahead, Jim. 

 DR. MELIUS: That was a signaling system. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 
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 DR. MELIUS: The numbers aren't great, but I 

noticed in your report on the DOE response to 

requests for exposure records that there 

appears to be some increase in those, 

particularly those over 90 days or more, 

compared to the last meeting. 

 MS. DEEP: For over 90 days, 27? 

 DR. MELIUS: It was 27 last -- well, if you 

total all the ones from this meeting, it's over 

100 over 90 days or more and at the last 

meeting we were about 60 or 70. I'm just 

trying to understand what -- that's just normal 

correspondence delays over the holidays or is 

that a -- a problem occurring with one or two 

sites? 

 MS. DEEP: Well, Hanford and X-10 kind of 

represents a hold-up for a lot of these -- the 

requests that are outstanding. But in terms of 

how long they -- why they've been delayed, we -

- like I said, we -- we keep a dialogue between 

DOE. Stu? 

 MR. HINNEFELD: I just wanted to offer that 

we're not -- we don't have any particular 

systematic problem with anybody. I think it's 

just normal fluctuation. 
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 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, thanks. My other question 

is -- again, I've asked it before, and that is 

the cases completed by NIOSH tracking number, 

and you've made some progress in the first 

5,000. Looks like you've taken off about 400 

to 500, something like that. By the way, thank 

you for giving us these graphs in bigger fonts. 

I can read the current ones. I can't -- sure I 

can quite make out the last ones, so looks like 

you've made some progress there, but it also 

looks like that progress is pretty much across 

the board. So if you look at the cases, the -- 

the 15,000 and the 16,000 cases, there's also 

been a lot of progress there, so -- 

 MS. DEEP: Yes. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- again, could you fill me in a 

little bit more on the first 5,000 and what's 

happening with them? You mentioned today 

something about coworker issues. Last time we 

heard about construction worker issues. I'm 

just -- I mean it's --

 MS. DEEP: Well, the first 5,000 we're -- we're 

-- we have a special team put together to 

emphasize working on the first 5,000, but we 

definitely are working on the overall -- all 
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the cases, but we're looking at cases, the 

first 5,000, to reduce the backlog and also 

because they've been in-house the longest. 

Something that was mentioned at the Advisory 

Board meeting in December is that coworker data 

is holding up a lot of the processing of the 

dose reconstruction reports for the claimants 

within the first 5,000 range -- 

 DR. MELIUS: Could you --

 MS. DEEP: -- and because of coworker data that 

we're waiting on. 

 DR. MELIUS: Could someone elaborate on why 

we're waiting for coworker data? 

DR. NETON: Yeah, this is Jim Neton. The first 

5,000 cases have gone -- have been gone through 

and we've accom-- we've completed the ones that 

were the ones that fit the efficiency process 

as being overestimates or underestimates or 

whatever. It turns out that a number of those 

that are in the first 5,000 are going to depend 

upon the completion of the coworker data 

evaluation. That is, we have no monitoring 

information for those workers and we need to 

substitute some surrogate exposure values. And 

ORAU is working towards that end, it has just 
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not progressed along as quickly as we had 

hoped. 

 DR. MELIUS: When you say work -- ORAU is 

working on that, how are they working -- how is 

that being produced? How do we -- what 

evidence of that do we -- I'm -- I'm not 

looking -- I mean is there a special report, is 

it a modification to the site profiles? 

DR. NETON: Actually they'll appear primarily 

as these Technical Information Bulletins -- 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

DR. NETON: -- that'll go out and they'll 

describe a -- a fairly well prescriptive 

approach as to how you deal with it for each 

site. Now whether those will get rolled up 

into site profiles eventually remains to be 

seen, but they will originally appear as 

special reports. They will appear on our web 

site. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Judson, were you --

 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) (unintelligible) 

or somebody else? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Judson Kenoyer. 

 MR. KENOYER: Let me -- let me add to that. 

I'm Judson Kenoyer from the ORAU team. Two of 
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the four Technical Information Bulletins that 

Heidi referred to are directly affiliated with 

the coworker data. They set the -- they set 

the baseline on how we're going to do it for 

external dosimetry and internal dosimetry. It 

establishes the process. So within the next 

two or three months, you will -- you will see 

the results of -- of some of that coworker data 

study. We're looking at -- we're working on Y12 data, X-10, K-25, Paducah and Hanford right 

now, so you'll see some results fairly soon. 

 DR. MELIUS: And is that the same effort as 

involving construction workers that Jim Neton's 

talked about --

 MR. KENOYER: No, that's -- that's actually a 

separate coworker study looking at the -- first 

of all, the data from Savannah River, and I'm 

helping lead a subtask group on that, so that's 

-- that's actually a site effort. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Larry Elliott? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I'd just like to add to Jim 

Neton's comments. Another way we're attacking 

the first 5,000 is we're -- we're giving a very 

concerted, focused effort to identifying cases 
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in those -- that first 5,000 where we don't 

think we can do dose reconstruction, where we 

haven't found any information to support the 

dose reconstructions, so we're -- we're looking 

at that, as well. 

 DR. MELIUS: And when is that -- I believe last 

time you referred to that work going on and 

some sort of report being due soon or something 

-- maybe I'm -- my recollection isn't that -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, in Livermore we mentioned 

this and we talked about ORAU providing us a 

report on the first -- their first screening of 

that 5,000. We have that report and we're 

working with ORAU to refine it, and in the 

course of the next six months they're to 

provide an additional report beyond that, so -- 

but we have the draft. We're working with them 

to refine the first report now. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 DR. MELIUS: Could I request that -- I think 

it'd be appropriate that we would -- the Board 

could get a presentation on actually all three 

of those, at the appropriate time. One would 

be this effort involving the coworker data. 

It's clearly something we're going to be 
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dealing with in the next couple of days with 

the SEC evaluation, so I think it would be 

useful to have a briefing there. 

Secondly, on the effort with construction 

workers -- again, I'm not quite sure on the 

timing on that, if that's as soon. 

And third, on the approach being used and the 

results of this effort to screen for those 

where dose reconstructions can't be done. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You've heard the request, and 

Board members, is there general agreement that 

you'd like that information? 

 It appears to be. Thank you. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: We'll certainly bring forward a 

report to you on the coworkers data issue and 

how we're approaching that. We'll bring a 

report to you on the attempt and efforts we 

have underway to identify cases where we can't 

do dose reconstruction that would constitute an 

SEC. We're not at the point ready to bring you 

anything on construction workers. The request 

for a proposal, which is the way the government 

goes about soliciting a contract to do this 

work, I think is going to be signed this week 

or next week, and that will put folks on task 
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to get this job done, so -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Could there be, however, a report 

simply describing what the process will be, or 

what -- I'm trying to understand -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, the process for 

construction workers is the same as the site 

profile development process. They're talking 

to workers. They're -- they're drafting a -- a 

chapter, if you will, or a Technical Basis 

Bulletin that speaks to construction trades 

experience on the particular site or sites in 

question. Our first two sites are Savannah 

River and Hanford, and certainly when we 

develop that a little more we can bring that 

before the -- before the Board. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. Is --

 DR. ZIEMER: Follow-up? 

 DR. MELIUS: One final thing along with that, 

it would be at least helpful to me, maybe to 

other members of the Board, when you're -- when 

we're doing some of these -- next round of 

presentations on some of these issues is to 

have some sort of estimate on -- of the -- 

those that are left from the first 5,000 or 
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some number, how they fit into different 

categories -- a third of them are X. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay. 

 DR. MELIUS: To the extent that you can do 

that, that's -- do that. I'm not looking for 

something, you know, 346 or something, but you 

know, a percentage so we have some idea of what 

 DR. ZIEMER: What the distribution is on those? 

 DR. MELIUS: Distribution is, yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That seems reasonable. Thank you. 

Other questions for Heidi or for the staff? 

Anyone have a question before Jim goes to round 

two here? Okay, Jim, I guess you've got the 

floor again. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I guess -- this is actually 

a question from last time, also. Can you 

update me on the status of ORAU's -- I don't 

know if it's a renewal, new contract, whatever, 

where that is and the amounts of money 

involved? 

 MS. DEEP: I don't have that information. 

 DR. MELIUS: Somebody have the information? 

 DR. ZIEMER: The question is the status of the 

ORAU contract. 
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 DR. MELIUS: I believe at the last meeting we 

were told it was being --

 MS. DEEP: A cost performance? 

 DR. MELIUS: -- and was being renewed and 

additional monies were being put into it and -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: The contract is --

 DR. MELIUS: -- being negotiated at that time, 

so you weren't --

 MR. ELLIOTT: The contract is a five-year 

awarded contract. The -- what we talked about 

last time was, at the point we're at right now 

where we're involved with ORAU in negotiating 

the next -- it's -- every six months there is a 

cost performance award fee. It's an 

incentivized, negotiated award fee. In other 

words, we place criteria about their 

performance in front of them and in order to 

achieve any award money they have to meet 

certain levels of that criteria. That's the 

incentive aspect of it. So that -- that is --

that's under constant -- almost constant 

negotiation for the future six months. 

We have -- we're about mid-year or mid-way 

through the five-year contract. We are -- we 

put money into the contract just -- in January, 
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and I'm not -- I don't have the figures with 

me. I don't know if Stu has them or -- Stu 

doesn't have them, either. We'll have to bring 

those to you at the next meeting or we'll get 

it before, but I don't have those final figures 

at this time. 

We -- the next -- this -- this modification on 

funding for the contract will take us through 

the next 18 months, and that will leave the 

final 18 months of the contract then will have 

what is called another contract mod where we 

look at the work remaining and we negotiate 

with ORAU on what the cost will be to complete 

that work and complete the final year of the 

contract. 

 DR. MELIUS: I would appreciate if you could 

provide that to us prior to the next meeting. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other comments or 

questions? Yes, Roy DeHart. 

 DR. DEHART: With regard to the administrative 

closed records, do those represent the cases in 

which an award has been made or a determination 

of no reward has been made? 

 MS. DEEP: The reasons why we consider a case 

to be administratively closed is if we haven't 
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received -- can you hear me? -- if we haven't 

received an OCAS-1, a signed OCAS-1 back from 

the claimants and they have -- how that works, 

they receive an OCAS-1 form in the mail 

whenever we send out the draft dose 

reconstruction reports. They read through the 

draft dose reconstruction, they get the OCAS-1, 

they sign it, they have 60 days from the time 

that is mailed out to the time -- from that 

time point for them to get it back to us. If 

we haven't received the OCAS-1 within the 60 

days, we send out another OCAS-1 with a letter 

explaining to them they have an additional 14 

days to send it back. Of the 65 

administratively closed reports that we have 

in-house, only one of them has been -- tended 

to be compensable where we've actually reached 

out to the claimant, who didn't understand the 

process, which was a survivor, and -- but of 

the 65, they tend to be non-compensable and 

they're single claimants -- cases. 

 DR. DEHART: Do you have any estimate of how 

many have been sent out total, even though you 

haven't received responses from those? 

 MS. DEEP: How many have been sent out to the 
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claimants? 

 DR. DEHART: Of the OCAS form for signature. 

 MS. DEEP: The OCAS-1 -- those -- that's 

included -- well, that -- you can assume that 

in the draft dose reconstruction reports that 

are sent to the claimants on a monthly basis. 

That's in --

 DR. DEHART: Yes, okay. 

 MS. DEEP: -- on the previous slides, up 

towards the beginning. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So this would be 60-whatever out 

of 6,000 or something? 

 MS. DEEP: For January there was 504 that were 

sent out, draft dose reconstruction reports 

sent to claimants, so with an OCAS-1. 

 DR. DEHART: That was what I was --

 MS. DEEP: So we're averaging about 500 a 

month. 

 DR. DEHART: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other questions? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Let me help Heidi out here for 

Dr. DeHart. Each time a draft dose 

reconstruction is sent to a claimant, an OCAS-1 

goes along. We have sent over 7,000 of those. 

If you count the ones we've sent to DOL and the 
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ones right now that we have in hands of 

claimants, that number's larger than 7,000. 

This 60 represents the population we have not 

heard back from. Does that help? Does that 

answer your question? 

 DR. DEHART: Yes, and I would suggest that that 

be titled that way. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Richard, did you have a comment? 

MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah, under the response to 

request, I'd like to see a breakdown by site. 

And the reason for that is I just want to see 

if there's any problem sites out there on the 

90 days and above. 

 MS. DEEP: Certainly. Responses? Is there any 

particular -- 60 days or more -- are you 

talking about outstanding requests? 

MR. ESPINOSA: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Rich is really asking are there 

particular sites that are represented there. 

 MS. DEEP: Actually there's two sites that 

stand out. For over 60 days or more, Hanford 

has 22, with Oak Ridge, the X-10 facility, 

having 18. These two facilities tend to hold 

the largest figures of all the other facilities 

within 60 day, 90 days, 120 days, 150 days or 
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more, for each one of those categories. 

 DR. ZIEMER: All the way through. 

 MS. DEEP: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MS. DEEP: Aside from -- yeah, Hanford and X-10 

tend to be -- hold a large number, except Oak 

Ridge, X-10, doesn't have any requests over 150 

days. They tend to be more in the 60 days and 

90-day category. They have 18 and ten, 

respectively. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Others? Okay, thank 

you very much, Heidi. 

 MS. DEEP: Thank you very much. 

DOL PROGRAM STATUS REPORT

 DR. ZIEMER: Shelby Hallmark is with us again 

today. Shelby, welcome back. He's going to 

report on the Department of Labor program 

status. 

MR. HALLMARK: Okay, am I on? Oh, good. It's 

my pleasure to be back to speak with the Board 

and with the audience here today. I'll try to 

move quickly through the slides -- if I can 

figure out how to do the machine -- 'cause I 

think you've seen these slides several times 

before and I'll try to hit the high spots, 
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maybe have some time for questions. 

Okay. All of these slides for the first 12 or 

so are Part B slides, and then at the end I'll 

have a couple of shots with respect to the new 

Part E program, just to talk a little bit about 

how we're getting that started. 

With regard to the claims received and the 

breakout by types of conditions here, these 

data are -- should be familiar with you from 

previous presentations. I would -- I would 

note that the percent of claims involving 

cancer is growing, as we would expect that 

would be the case, and that the other noncovered conditions we believe is a declining 

group. When we have fully established our Part 

E program and have our regulations in place, we 

expect that group to go away because that is 

really sort of an artifice (sic) of the 

separation between the old Part D program and 

the new -- and that -- and the current B. 

People who filed what were really Part D claims 

with us got into this category of non-covered 

conditions and got a denial from us. In the 

new world we'll treat all claims as Energy 

claims, EEOICPA claims. We'll find which side 
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the person belongs on and this group will 

disappear. And it will save us a lot of 

unnecessary paperwork and denials flowing 

around the system that really don't make a 

whole lot of sense. So hopefully that's one 

positive impact of the consolidation of the 

Part E program with -- with Part B. 

Case status -- here now again, as I've 

explained many times before, case versus claim, 

case relates to an individual worker; claim can 

be multiple if there are multiple survivors. 

That's why the numbers here are lower, 44,000 

versus 60-plus. The point made by this slide 

is basically that we are -- DOL's process 

remains current. We have a working backlog of 

cases being handled at the district offices for 

recommended decisions and at our final 

adjudicatory branch making our final decisions 

-- 95 percent, in fact, of all receipts have 

been resolved at the district office level, 

either by a recommended decision or referral to 

NIOSH, and 89 percent have gotten a final 

decision or referral to NIOSH. 

Have I gotten to the next slide here? Yes, 

there we are. Okay, this tells you a little 
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bit about the outcomes. As has been reported 

before, we're approving roughly 40 percent of 

the claims at final decision. But if you take 

out those -- those non-covered conditions which 

are the old Part D claims by accident in our -- 

in our program, then the approval rate rises to 

56 percent. That's -- that's been a continual 

circumstance in the program. 

With respect to cases -- to the responses that 

claimants have made to our recommended 

decisions in the district offices, this is the 

total outcomes since the inception of the 

program through January 13th, what's 

interesting to note here is that roughly ten 

percent of the cases involve some sort of 

request for further review or a hearing. 

That's, we think, an indication that the 

program is being administered fairly well in 

our district offices. 

 NIOSH referrals, obviously the NIOSH cohort is 

what the Board is particularly concerned with 

and so we'll get into a little more detail 

here. And I'm sure you'll note that our 

numbers and NIOSH's are never going to be 

precisely the same and, you know, if that -- 
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that -- that's a resolution I don't think will 

ever come in my lifetime. I think what I would 

note about this is that -- one of the things I 

would like to note is that when a NIOSH dose 

reconstruction is completed and returned to 

DOL, our goal is to do a recommended decision 

on that case within 21 days, and that goal has 

been -- was met during fiscal year 2004. In 

the first quarter of 2005, which ended just a 

few weeks ago, we dropped off -- we fell -- 25 

days, it rose to 25 days. I would ascribe that 

in part to the increased production that you 

just heard from Heidi with respect to NIOSH 

cases coming to us so it was a little more work 

for us to do. And also in part to our having 

diverted some of our staff to get Part E up and 

running as quickly as we could. So there has 

been some drop-off there. We don't intend for 

that to stay the case. We're going to get back 

down under 21 days for the rest of fiscal 2005. 

Correct, Pete? Am I right on that? Good, I'm 

glad to hear that. 

And it's also note-- worth noting from this 

slide that about 24 percent of the final 

decisions on dose reconstructed cases have been 
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approved to date. The approval rate at the 

recommended decision level is about 20 percent. 

NIOSH case remands, now in our -- my 

presentation last time in Livermore we talked a 

little bit about what we can tell the Board in 

terms of the outcomes of cases that have been 

reconstructed through the NIOSH process and 

where we're having to send them back when we -- 

from a hearing or a review of the record. And 

that's -- this number here is the number that 

we have gleaned -- that we're able to get our 

hands on. I think there were actually 20 or 30 

more remands to NIOSH that were -- that the 

case file could not be located at the moment 

that we did this survey, but I think this is 

close. About 300 have been remanded from our 

final adjudication board. 

And we'll talk a little bit about how that's 

broken out, and I know it -- as I say, it's of 

interest to you. One thing you'll hear me say 

is that I can't break it out the way we would 

like and I think you would like, which is which 

are errors by NIOSH and which are new evidence 

presented in our process. Very, very difficult 

to do and we'll continue to try to peel that 
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onion, but I'll give you what I can. 

You see here where these remands came from, 

about half from claimants objecting to our 

recommended decision and to the NIOSH data that 

supports the recommended decision, and about -- 

the other -- the 140 in the non-contested 

cases, that's where our final adjudication 

board is looking at the decision -- recommended 

decision from the district office on their own 

motion, in effect. And if they find a problem, 

would go ahead and proceed with it, even though 

the claimant has not raised it. 

All right, now why were these remands done out 

of these 300 remand. We've broken it into 

three categories here, which are -- I think 

primarily are drawn from the fact -- the way 

our adjudication process works and our 

regulatory structure works. A little bit 

difficult for me to explain -- or for me to 

understand, frankly -- the difference between 

application and methodology. Basically, 

methodology is a -- would be a remand where the 

individual is -- is asserting that the NIOSH 

methodology is not appropriate. And the reason 

why it's separated out from application of the 
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methodology, which is what that application 

shorthand means here, is that the application 

might be something where we would argue that we 

need to send it back and we would actually, at 

DOL, possibly look behind the dose 

reconstruction report that we received from 

NIOSH. 

With respect to methodology, if a claimant is 

arguing I don't think that the use of a 

comparat-- or coworker group is appropriate, 

we're not going to question NIOSH's use of that 

methodology because that's been established in 

their regulations. However, if the claimant is 

asserting you used the wrong coworker cohort, 

that would be an application issue and we would 

eventually make a decision about that, one way 

or the other. But in this case, these are all 

cases that would have been referred back to 

NIOSH for comment about those kinds of issues. 

 And factual of course is the biggest one, and 

we'll talk a little bit more about what that 

category means. These are the -- this is a 

breakout of the types of factual issues. As 

you can see, the biggest one is that one -- 

that more cancer, a different cancer has 
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arisen, an additional cancer has arisen, 

possibly between the time that the dose 

reconstruction report was completed and our 

final decision. Employment issue's another 

large one. The claimant may assert that there 

was an employment period not covered in the 

dose reconstruction, or not adequately 

explained by the report itself. 

Type of cancer issues, one reason or another we 

believe the wrong cancer has been applied in 

the report; district office IREP issue, that 

probab-- DO, that's what DO means, district 

office -- that could very well be an error on 

the part of our staff in applying the IREP, and 

I think it also could include some NIOSH 

issues. And frankly, I think that would be 

just one or two cases. Date of diagnosis, just 

possibly the onset date is -- is changed. And 

in three percent of the cases we got an OCAS-1 

that was not signed. This is the category that 

Heidi was discussing just now in terms of the 

administratively closed. We can't act on a 

case that hasn't been signed so it would be go 

-- it would go back to NIOSH. 

 It's important to note that of these remands, 
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the overwhelming majority do not -- have not -- 

at least of the ones that have been re-decided, 

have not changed the outcome. Only four have 

resulted in an acceptance out of the roughly 

140 or so that have been re-decided. Most --

the 167's the largest number, is still pending 

re-decision, but for the most part the -- the -

- I would describe this to a punctiliousness on 

the part of our -- our final adjudication folks 

to make sure that every T and I are -- are 

crossed and dotted, respectively. And many 

times that will result in NIOSH coming back, 

explaining in further detail what the basis for 

their report was, and the outcome remains the 

same. In any case, we will continue to do that 

and obviously that's important to the process 

that we -- that we -- we do in fact flush out 

all these issues. 

 Now I've gotten behind on my cheat sheets here. 

Excuse me a moment while I shuffle papers. 

Somebody turn the lights up 'cause I can't even 

read my big writing here. 

Okay. This gives you just the basic data with 

respect to our payments at this point and that 

-- obviously we're over the $1 billion mark 
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with respect to compensation and medical 

benefits. And the NIOSH claims, we've actually 

made 1,400 or so claim-- payments on cases that 

have been through the NIOSH process, which -- 

again, I would say suggests that while it has 

been slower than all of us would like to 

evolve, the NIOSH dose reconstruction process 

is in fact now working and has delivered 

benefit outcomes to quite a number of people. 

Obviously we still -- we all want to see it 

accelerate. 

I'll turn now to Part E very quickly. As you 

know I think, the Congress amended the EEOICPA 

in October to abolish the old Part D program 

that had been administered by Department of 

Energy and created new -- okay, so somebody had 

tried to abolish me here, I think -- abolished 

Part D and created a new Part E for us to -- 

which DOL would administer. We are in the 

process of beginning that administration. Part 

of what we're doing as an effort to address the 

key problem we face, which is that there were 

25,000 cases in the process waiting for us when 

it transferred from DOE, was to get up and 

running as quickly as possible. So we -- the 
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bullet here with respect to interim procedures 

refers to the fact that we have -- especially 

with the good work of our Solicitor's Office -- 

divined ways that we could start making 

payments before we even put regulations in 

place for the program, so we have what we call 

-- it's actually a preliminary procedure that 

we're using to make payments. We have done 

that with respect to a number of cases, which 

I'll show you in a minute. We've had some 

check ceremonies to get the word out that this 

is in fact occurring and we've had our first 

town hall meeting. 

Here are the stats on this program -- 23,000 

cases have already been transferred from DOE. 

And by the way, they're doing a very effective 

job of coordinating with us on this transfer. 

About 1,900 cases are still in the Part D 

physician panel process. The statute that 

abolished Part D said that it could continue on 

until the -- for the cases that were still in 

the panel process, and that's what's left of 

them now. And they will continue to spin out 

decisions which we can use under Part E. 

 We've made 159 recommended decisions and 97 
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final decisions, or we had as of last week 

sometime. We're only doing approvals under 

these preliminary procedures because we don't 

yet have in place the regs that would 

adjudicate disputes. But as you can see, we 

already have a respectable start and we expect 

hundreds more cases to be processed under this 

approach before we get our regs out, which -- 

about which I'll say a few things. 

 The regulations are currently in process right 

now. These will be interim final rules. They 

will be published -- we are certainly hopeful, 

as this would -- by the statutory target of 

late May, or earlier, if we can accomplish 

that. 

We have a task force that Pete Turcic and his 

team in the Energy Division have pulled 

together -- primarily again pulled from within 

our Part B ranks -- who are working to 

establish all the pieces that are necessary to 

create a brand new program like this, and I 

think they're doing an excellent job. 

There will be a series of town hall meetings, 

and I'll talk about that in a moment. 

Part B claimants. There's one -- one 
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significant revision to Part D in the October 

2004 amendments, has to do with the issue of 

residual contamination at AWE -- Atomic Weapons 

Employer sites and expanding the employment 

eligibility window with respect to those sites. 

We are working on that in conjunction with our 

development of the Part E regulations and 

procedures, and what this bullet suggests is 

that there are a small cohort of folks, roughly 

200 -- little over 200 -- who were denied under 

Part B -- the existing statute -- pre-existing 

statute -- because their employment began after 

the DOE contract period, but during a period 

that NIOSH has found that there was residual -- 

significant residual contamination at that 

site. Those individuals are going to be 

receiving notification from us within the next 

few weeks that they are in that cohort and that 

if they wish we will reopen the claim at their 

request, to be considered under the newlyrevised eligibility criteria. So that's moving 

ahead, as well, and we expect that to work out 

for us. 

 Last slide here, and I'll then open the door 

for questions, is just a quick look at the -- 
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at our plans for town hall meetings around the 

country to -- primarily to explain how Part E 

is going to work, what people who are in that 

program should expect from us. The first --

this is on the left side of the screen here are 

-- and the top of the right are sites we're 

going to be getting to in the next -- I'd say 

month and a half or two, at the most. The 

other locations to be announced would be -- are 

probably going to be the next phase after our 

final -- interim -- final regulations are 

issued so that we can explain in greater 

detail, and that -- some of those other 

locations will be returning to the larger sites 

so that we can explain how the full program 

will be implemented when it is in fact public. 

So that's -- that's basically where we are with 

respect to Part E and Part B, and I'll be glad 

to take questions. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Shelby. First Robert 

Presley -- oh, okay, Rich, you're first? Then 

we'll just go right around, Robert -- 

MR. ESPINOSA: Well, I just --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- Roy, Jim. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Just wondering how you're going 
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to notify the sites of the -- of the town hall 

meeting. 

MR. HALLMARK: How will we notify them? 

MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah. 

MR. HALLMARK: We --

MR. ESPINOSA: Are you going to publish it in 

the paper or... 

MR. HALLMARK: Right, we will -- our process on 

that will include a news release -- 

(unintelligible) who would be contacting 

Congressional delegations and local folks who 

are important to the program in each site, and 

typically we'll do that a couple of weeks 

before the event so that we have enough notice 

and information flowing out to the public at 

the site so that we can ensure that people are 

aware of it and that they are well attended. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Shelby, could I ask you when -- 

when you have these public meetings, please let 

the Board members know. It was -- you had your 

first one in Oak Ridge, and I read about it in 

the newspaper and got asked about it, so it 

sure kind of made it look bad on me that I 

wasn't even there. 

MR. HALLMARK: I'll take that under advisement. 
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We definitely want to do that. I think the 

first site -- we were anxious to get that -- 

that meeting done quickly and we weren't as 

well-organized as -- as we might have been. So 

we certainly want to make sure that you're 

aware of these items, we get it -- the 

information to you so that you can participate 

if you'd like when we come to your 

neighborhood. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Roy? 

 DR. DEHART: Workers who have developed cancer 

and are qualified under Part B I understand are 

also now qualified under Part E, thus it would 

appear to be only an administrative process to 

take care of their Part E claim. Are they 

being notified of that process of how to go 

ahead and file under Part E? 

MR. HALLMARK: That'll be -- those kinds of 

issues will be part of what we talk about at 

the town hall meeting, but with respect to a 

large number of them, they've already filed 

their claims under the old Part D, and those 

claims will be automatically deemed to be 

claims under Part E, so they don't need to do 

anything, individuals in that category. And 
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then we'll be in touch -- I think -- we've 

already sent out a letter to all our -- all of 

the old Part D claimants, the 25,000 that I 

showed in the slide earlier, indicating that 

we've taken over the program, that their claim 

will now be transferred automatically, 

requiring no further action on their part. And 

since roughly -- I'd say about 90 percent of 

the 25,000 who are in the DOE backlog are also 

Part D claimants, so a big number that you're 

thinking about are in the queue. 

 There's another subset of people who've filed 

under Part B and for one reason or another 

never filed under Part E. They will need to 

come forward to us and -- if -- if they want to 

proceed with the additional eligibility, and 

we'll be discussing how that can be done, as 

well. 

Right now we're -- we continue to receive 

claims and will take them at our resource 

centers in the major sites, using the old forms 

that DOE was using, until we get new forms in 

place through regulations -- but we intend to 

do that. 

Now let me just quickly say, it's not an 
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entirely administrative process. Because while 

approval under Part B is deemed to be automatic 

approval under Part E with respect to causation 

of the illness, you then need -- the 

individual, if it's a living worker, that 

individual would need to show their eligibility 

against the criteria for compensation under E. 

And for a living worker, that would be some 

kind of an impairment rating that translates 

into a -- an amount of -- a percentage which 

links to $2,500 per percent payment and/or wage 

loss compensation based on years when their 

total salaries were less than a -- the 

thresholds, so that has to be done. 

And with regard to survivors, many of the Part 

B recipients are survivors. First -- and this 

is very important for everybody to understand -

- they must be survivors within the definition 

of Part E, which is the traditional Workers 

Comp survivor, the narrower definition, which 

includes spouses and dependent children at the 

time of death. 

The second test is the survivor must show that 

the death of the worker was caused or 

contributed to by the condition which was 
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approved under Part B. We expect that in the 

large majority of cases that will -- that will 

be relatively straightforward, and the number -

- the number of cases that we're handling now 

are all survivor cases, the ones we're paying 

under our pre-reg approach are survivor cases 

where there's a death certificate that links up 

very closely, either to a Part B condition 

that's already been approved or to a condition 

that Department of Energy's physician panels 

had already approved in terms of its causation. 

All we need to do is that separate step of 

showing -- showing that the death was related, 

and that's -- that's how we're able to proceed 

on those. 

 DR. MELIUS: You answer-- actually answered 

most of my questions, but one left is, as a 

sort of a corollary to that, though, people 

that are not -- the people who don't meet the 

probability of causation test for Part B could 

still be eligible under Part E, also. And will 

that be taken care of in your regs and so 

forth? 

MR. HALLMARK: People who do not meet the Part 

B --
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 DR. MELIUS: They'll be eligible under Part B, 

but they will be -- they did not have 

sufficient probability of causation to have 

their claim accepted. 

MR. HALLMARK: That's something we'll have to 

address in our regulations, also. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let's see, I think Rich, you were 

next and then Leon. 

MR. ESPINOSA: On slide nine you have a little 

mention there of employment issues. What --

what type of issues is that? I mean -- it's 30 

percent. It's a high number. 

MR. HALLMARK: On the reason for the remand? 

MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah. 

MR. HALLMARK: The employment issues -- that 

would include, for example, a claimant who 

comes to our -- to a hearing or presents to the 

-- to our adjudicatory group evidence that 

there was a period of employment which was not 

directly addressed in the dose reconstruction 

report. Now that could be that information 

about that period of employment was newlydiscovered in the interim -- and this goes back 

to my point about trying to separate out errors 

in the NIOSH process from new evidence. The 
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employment period could be something new that 

was -- that's educed because a survivor found 

some information from a neighbor or relative 

that wasn't available when NIOSH did their 

interviews. Or it could be something that 

NIOSH missed. It was there in the file and it 

just didn't get addressed. Or it could be 

something that's actually addressed in the dose 

reconstruction report, but not clearly. We 

wouldn't have remanded it if the -- if our 

adjudicatory person could go -- could go back 

and look at the dose reconstruction report and 

say no, Claimant, you've raised a question 

about the period 1962 through '65 as a pipe 

fitter and here's where -- here's where the 

report shows that that employment was 

addressed. But it's possible that when our 

claims staff looks at it, they can't find that 

reference. We send it back to NIOSH. NIOSH 

comes back to us and says yes, that was 

incorporated but we didn't -- we weren't clear 

enough. Here's another paragraph that explains 

how that period of employment was in fact 

addressed in the estimation process. So that -

- those -- it's a whole range of possible 
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issues. And again, we would -- we're not 

giving up on getting closer to the evaluation 

of how many of these are -- are just errors 

from the NIOSH perspective versus things that 

fall out of the adjudicatory process. We're 

going to continue to work on that. 

It's interesting to note that in our -- of 60-

some-odd hundred dose reconstructions that have 

come back to us, we only have a little over 300 

which have been remanded to NIOSH, period, from 

the adjudication process. And that's about 

what, less than five, six, seven percent? It's 

a small number. It's -- and then obviously 

many of those are not errors, they are new 

evidence. So that -- I don't know what that 

seems to suggest. That would seem to suggest 

there is a relatively quality process going on, 

but it's obviously something that requires us 

to continue to look at it and look deeper. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Leon? 

MR. OWENS: Shelby, under the final decisions 

claims slide, my question's in regard to the 

non-covered employees. Is that a function of 

DOE not being able to verify employment, or is 
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it another reason? 

MR. HALLMARK: Not -- you mean the reason of 

not a covered employee, the reason for denial? 

MR. OWENS: Right, for the employees that are 

not covered. 

MR. HALLMARK: No, they would -- they would -- 

typically the reason they're -- that category 

would be individuals where, in one fashion or 

another, we have chased down and -- and reached 

a finding with respect to their employment, but 

we have determined that it was -- that they 

were not an employee of the site. For example, 

they worked for a construction firm but we 

don't place the construction firm at the site. 

And those -- there aren't -- there weren't many 

in that category who fall out altogether. The 

other -- the other employment issue would be 

individuals who came to work at the site or for 

a contractor or subcontractor, but after the 

period of time that was the DOE contract at an 

AWE. Again, some of those are the ones that I 

was speaking of who will be newly affected by 

the residual radiation amendment that opens the 

window for them in some sites. That's a small 

number, also. 
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MR. OWENS: Yes, sir. That was my question, 

particularly in regard to -- to the Paducah 

site. What we have found were there are a lot 

of the older workers who did work for various 

subcontractors building specific buildings, and 

some of those individuals have received letters 

-- have received letters stating that DOE has 

been unable to verify their employment. So 

right now we're in the process of -- those that 

are still surviving, of getting affidavits to 

support that position. So I do -- I do feel 

that there might be some subcontractors that 

performed work, not necessarily in the entire 

facility, but on specific projects that might 

have missed -- been missed. 

MR. HALLMARK: Well, that -- we have a 

exhaustive procedure to go as deep as we can on 

those kinds of cases. Just the fact that an 

individual receives a report from DOE saying we 

can't place the person doesn't stop us. We go 

to affidavits, we go to corporate sponsors, 

corporate entities in some cases, and we go to 

Social Security Administration and obtain wage 

records that we then try to put together with 

affidavits to -- to make a nexus with respect 
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to the particular work. 

Now it's not to say that there aren't -- there 

aren't going to be cases where all of that 

fails and we can't -- you know, and there's 

just not proof the individual actually worked 

there. But certainly we push all the envelopes 

that we can to come to closure on that issue. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Mark? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, looking on that same slide 

actually, final decisions, there's a category, 

insufficient medical evidence -- 

MR. HALLMARK: Uh-huh. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- 3,270 denied. Does that -- I 

wonder if there's any breakdown within that 

topic. Is it -- is it the case where a person 

couldn't provide any medical information, or 

were there access issues that they couldn't get 

very old medical records, or -- 

MR. HALLMARK: I would imagine -- typically 

that's a question where the individual's 

asserting that they have beryllium disease, 

usually with a pre-'93 diagnosis, and we find 

that the condition was not -- cannot be 

identified as beryllium disease. They assert 

cancer and we find it's a pre-- you know, 
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precancerous leukemia -- the sort of borderline 

issues where the individuals -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: So most -- most of those, though, 

the evidence doesn't support the condition that 

was --

MR. HALLMARK: Correct. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

MR. HALLMARK: In other words, that's as 

opposed to the non-covered condition group 

where we would deny because the individual 

presents with asbestosis and that's just not -- 

that's just not covered. These are people who 

are making a claim of one of the covered Part B 

conditions, but we've found they -- that they 

can't -- they can't prove the claim in that -- 

on the medical basis. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And then the -- the last bullet 

on that slide talks about POC less than 50 and 

cancers not related. What are cancers not 

related, as defined here? 

MR. HALLMARK: Help me out with this, Pete, 

cancers not related. I --

 DR. ZIEMER: Pete Turcic. 

 MR. TURCIC: That's the CLL. 

MR. HALLMARK: Okay, you have the one -- 
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there's one cancer that's -- that's identified 

in our structure as not being radiogenic, and 

so in -- technically speaking, it doesn't come 

under the POC process because of that treatment 

in the NIOSH reg. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. You have a follow-up, Mark, 

or --

 MR. GRIFFON: No, I thought that was the case. 

I just wanted a clarification on that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Other --

 MR. GRIFFON: Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- questions or comments for 

Shelby? 

MR. HALLMARK: We will attempt our best to make 

sure that the Board is -- is apprised as these 

town hall meetings are done, and I -- I'm not 

sure what the best way of our doing that is, 

but we'll work with -- with Lew and others -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Work with Lew and make sure that, 

as a minimum, perhaps an e-mail notice that 

there'll be something in a particular Board 

member's locality that gives them the 

opportunity to at least be there and observe 

and participate. 

MR. HALLMARK: Right. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. 

MR. HALLMARK: I do -- I do apologize that we 

dropped the ball in Oak Ridge and we certainly 

don't want to do that again. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you, Shelby. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT
 

We're a little bit ahead of schedule, and the 

Chair's been asked to consider allowing some of 

the public commenters who might not be able to 

be here later in the day to avail themselves of 

this opportunity to address the assembly, and 

I'm going to allow that. We do need to keep on 

schedule because we have a sort of a timecertain session at 3:00 o'clock. We will take 

a break at 2:45, but we have some time now that 

we can allow some of the members of the public 

who will not be able to be here later to 

address the group. 

I have the list of those who have signed up, 

but I don't know which ones are the ones who 

are not able to be there -- be here later, so I 

simply ask them to self-identify and we'd be 

pleased to have those speak at this time. They 

can use the mike here in the center and if any 
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of those are present, if you'll simply approach 

the mike and identify yourself, and then the 

Board and the assembly can hear from you. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Most of those 

people have already left -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm sorry? 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Okay, they came 

back. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, identify yourself, please, 

for the record. 

UNIDENTIFIED: Good afternoon, gentlemen. 

I thank the privilege to get up here and say a 

few words. We're just about ready to leave. I 

worked at the Weldon Spring plant. I was the 

second person hired out there. I worked in 

every building but three. It's a process that 

went all the way through the plant and I was a 

chemical operator. I have cancer, several 

different kinds of cancer. Some of the people 

that I work with, especially the ones that came 

from downtown plant, from the foremans (sic), 

they all passed away. I hate to say this, but 

a gentleman named Jim Mitulski, he was a 

foreman, Leo Pyres, several more. All these 

people worked on the Manhattan Project. They 
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came out to Weldon Springs and very 

knowledgeable what uranium did and what we did 

out there, but I hate to say this, but 

actually, gentlemen, we were used as guinea 

pigs. 

The only protection we had was a respirator, a 

film badge. That's the only protection we had. 

We urinated in a bottle every 21 days. If you 

got hot on one job, they put you on another 

job. I've got all the old -- all the records 

of mine from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I went over 

them with my fellow workers, the ones that's 

still living, and I can see why some of them 

did pass away. Their radiation level was very 

high. 

I live six miles away from the plant. What 

gets me, gentlemen, it took $900,000 to clean 

up that plant. That's -- it cost more to clean 

it up than it was built. Believe me, I've got 

all the information from the newspaper and from 

Oak Ridge, and when they made all their 

proceedings and everything, it just -- 

heartbreaking, when I go by there every day and 

see that plant there, and all the people that 

passed away. People like Charlie 
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Bradensteiner* was my fellow worker. He passed 

away a year ago. His wife had to sell her 

house to pay for her medical bills that Charlie 

had cancer. She did not receive one penny from 

the government. People like that really makes 

me feel really, really bad. 

This is why I'm down here today or whenever I 

can come and help other people who worked at -- 

for Mallinckrodt. I know the technology might 

(unintelligible) been there, but they knew what 

radiation that we had because they were down 

here on Manhattan Project all those years, all 

the foremen. They came from down there, came 

out there. They used to tell us what went on 

down in -- down there at the plant down there. 

 But gentlemen, I hope that something comes out 

of this so some of these other people can get 

some benefits out of it. Thank you. 

 DR. WADE: Excuse me, sir, would you -- 

UNIDENTIFIED: Bob, would you like to speak a 

word? 

 DR. WADE: Would you give us your name, sir, 

please? 

 MR. ROTH: Charles L. Roth. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you. 
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 MR. ROTH: Here's a gentleman, Bob Fulkerson. 

He was about the 15th or 16th went to work out 

there. He can tell you about the process. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Bob? 

 MR. FULKERSON: Bob Fulkerson, F-u-l-k-e-r-s-on. I'd just like to say we -- at Mallinckrodt, 

this is Weldon Springs. We took the raw 

material, changed it into liquid, then it went 

to orange, then it went to green and then we 

made metal out of it and went through the whole 

process out there. I worked -- I'd like to say 

something about the furnaces I worked in. 

We would fire these furnaces -- we'd put 

magnesium with the green salt and it was like a 

bomb, and it'd fire -- you'd heat these up to 

like 1,000 degrees. Well, it was okay as long 

as everything worked right. But there was a 

liner in these shells and a lot of times this 

liner wasn't perfect. And when this went off, 

it just literally blew up. And a lot of times 

we had to evacuate the whole buildings for the 

smoke and the -- and the -- and the dust and 

then we couldn't go back in sometimes till the 

fire department would clear it. And this 

happened once or twice a week. I think we had 
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seven furnaces, and a lot of smoke and a lot of 

dust. And like Charlie said, the only 

protective clothing we had was cotton -- white 

coveralls and cotton gloves. Had a mask that 

we put on when we felt like we needed it, which 

didn't do any -- smoke didn't do anything for 

it. And so that's I wanted to say something 

about the furnaces there, and there was a lot 

of dust and in the break rooms, floors were 

always dusty. We drank coffee in there. It --

it was -- it was not too good. And I think 

that's all I have to say. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Bob. Another gentleman 

approaching the mike here. 

 MR. SEMARADI*: Yes, I'm Andrew Semaradi. I 

worked at the airport. I don't want to take 

anything away from these Mallinckrodt people 

'cause they've been through it all. I worked 

43 years for a fueling company out there. We 

used to watch Mallinckrodt trucks come in and 

dump along that third runway. Most people 

don't know it's there. In 1995 or '96, my job 

-- I fueled for 30 years, 31 years, and then I 

was utility man. And any time they had 

anything that looked like kerosene or fuel or 
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anything, they'd call me. I had a suction 

truck used to suck this stuff up. When they 

started doing that construction on the east 

terminal, the new east terminal, they had -- 

they held that up for over a year because of 

the contamination in the ground, didn't know 

what to do with it. So anyway, somebody came 

up with an idea, I think they made a -- they 

called it a glycol recovery system. The glycol 

and all the water went into that. They never 

did use it for glycol recovery because it was 

so full of contamination, they couldn't. They 

had -- looked like a Esther Williams swimming 

pool up there that they put the glycol in, and 

I've got pictures where they had fire hoses 

going into this pump house down there that was 

taking it out of these containment pools and it 

was flooding down towards the airport. And 

once they opened up our fuel lines, that water 

all came down towards the terminal. And any of 

you people ever flew on an airplane, I'll 

guarantee you and I could show you today -- 

they fired me back in 2001, but I could show 

you today 'cause people still contact me, that 

this water -- you know, anybody who's a 
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hydrologist or geologist know that water goes 

down and oils and things come up. This is 

still coming out today. A guy called me 

yesterday and said that water, when it rained, 

it comes up. And if they set your bag down on 

that ramp, you're taking this home to your -- 

I've got a oil can that was eaten up in less 

than a year. And when we went to one of the 

Mallinckrodt meetings they had a radiation 

detector there and it set off the needle. And 

I've got samples. They tell me -- if anybody 

knows kerosene, it's as clear as water. The 

people at the airport say well, no, this is 

fuel. It's in the ground, came through the 

ground. It's still as black as my thing here 

is today and I had NIOSH out, I had OSHA. 

These people all contacting before they come 

out and there's so much cancer at that airport 

if -- the Teamster Union, the Machinist Union, 

I went to them trying to get a list of all the 

people -- I've probably got 100 people that I 

know that are dying of cancer. Now it might 

not be the cancer that you're talking about, 

but I'll guarantee you that Mallinckrodt dumped 

out there. And it might not just be 
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Mallinckrodt 'cause I know the National Guard 

and MacDonald Douglas and all them have. But 

we'd like to be included in some of this, too, 

because I've got two -- I had six operations on 

my arm. It ate my arm up. And I've been 

fortunate enough in my life, my doctors said, 

to get away from there and I got a -- I'm still 

living. There's so many people I know that 

have died, they die every week. And I've got a 

report here. I've got -- we forced TWA and the 

airport to run some tests and I've got 

radiation -- we can't get radiation reports. 

They won't tell us. 

 Now there's pesticides, DDT and things that 

have been banned since in the '70's that is in 

that ground water, and I've -- and like I say, 

if I could find one of these people from NIOSH 

were out there -- and they don't do a thing, 

DNR doesn't do anything, we're on our own. 

Nobody will con-- tie any of this together. 

And I'm fortunate enough I'm in good shape now, 

but I was ready to die a couple of years ago 

and -- but we're going to have other people 

come down here later tonight that their 

husbands have died and things, and I would like 
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to have the air-- 'cause we're a contractor. 

We got into this same thing, and I could show 

you -- and if we ever get a good -- anybody 

that's really interested, I've got enough 

people that will show you exactly where all 

this stuff is. Just like these people from 

Mallinckrodt, they could probably walk right 

out there now and show you exactly where this 

stuff is at. And it hasn't been cleaned up and 

it's a -- that airport expansion they're doing 

now, that big hole they dug down there, is just 

a way to get rid of the contamination at the 

airport. And once us people are dead, nobody 

will ever know what they're sitting on top of 

there. And that's my soap box I guess. Thank 

you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. It's -- Andrew. 

Yes, thank you, Andrew. 

Okay. Yes, sir? 

 MR. LEACH*: My name is Bob Leach and I put in 

about 13 years with Mallinckrodt in the uranium 

division, and I, too, worked at Plant 4 and it 

was one of the filthiest places I've ever 

worked in my life. And I also, like the other 

gentleman said, many a times I was inside those 
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furnaces to clean out where the molten metal 

had blown out, the uranium metal, and had to 

clean it up and get it ready for the next 

firing. And many times that molten metal would 

come right onto the floor of the area, and of 

course many of us were exposed to it. They 

always told us oh, this won't hurt you. It'll 

be out of your system within the week, and 

that's all we could find out about them. 

Now I -- I've got -- I've had prostrate (sic) 

cancer, which was removed. The cancer has 

returned. The doctor says I'll have it the 

rest of my life. I also had two skin cancers, 

but in my -- what I found out, none of this is 

covered under this 20-some cancers that they 

supposedly will cover, and I think it's 

ridiculous because it's many of us ended up 

with that type of cancer, but I don't know if 

we'll ever see anything or not. 

But I worked anywhere from 40 to 76 hours a 

week out at Weldon Springs because when they 

had that plant running seven and eight -- or 

seven days a week and more, you worked. And I 

was a supervisor a lot of the time, but I still 

had to be there all the time. And I put my 
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claim in in January, I believe it was, of 2002. 

But I just hope that they change how many of 

those cancers that they're going to cover 

because, from a selfish viewpoint, I think I'm 

entitled to it, too. 

But the one thing I wanted to bring out, I 

called Cincinnati, which -- to find out how my 

claim is going. I called them on August the 

30th, and it had never been assigned to medical 

at that time, and they said that they just 

didn't have the information they needed from 

site profiles. I called back in January, the 

14th, and the lady there -- and they're always 

very nice, don't get me wrong. They're very, 

very nice, but she said Mr. Leach, I might as 

well tell you that since you worked at Plant 4 

of the Destrehan and Weldon and the Weldon 

Springs records will not be finished until last 

part -- latter part of June, and then they got 

to go back to them and then if they approve it, 

then they have to go to the medical and -- for 

approval there. And I commented, I said what 

am I figuring on, another year? She said at 

least another year before we can get to your 

cases and -- but she said that they're doing 
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all they can, but that's what makes it bad when 

you worked at two different plants and they 

have to get the exposure records from both 

plants. 

Well, I commented to the lady, and it's -- if 

it's going to take this long, I'll probably be 

laying out in Jefferson Barracks Cemetery 

before they get this going. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Bob, for sharing that 

with us and -- lady at the mike, yes, please? 

UNIDENTIFIED: Do you have time for one more? 

 DR. ZIEMER: You bet. 

 MS. SHUMACHER-CORDING: My name is Sharon 

Shumacher-Cording -- excuse me while I pull 

this down. Shelby -- I forgot your last name -

- I take exception with what you said up there, 

and I got a little bit of I think we're 

slightly bashing NIOSH, and maybe that wasn't 

your intent, but that's what I read. The NIOSH 

folks have been nothing but super, super great 

-- to me, anyway. I don't understand a lot of 

what you said because they're approved over 

here, they're not approved over here. We do 

consider medical records. Oh, yeah? 

Burlington, Iowa -- was that two years ago, 
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gentlemen? One year ago? Yeah, it was a year 

ago -- we were blatantly, angeredly (sic) told, 

in no uncertain terms, by government 

representatives of both Departments, DOL and 

DOE, that medical records were not, will not, 

never will be considered in any of these cases. 

Now somebody at that meeting taped that meeting 

and I can get that transcript for you. We had 

a couple of experts from the DOE and DOL there 

that just wouldn't have any truck with us at 

all, whereas the NIOSH guys were nothing but 

kind. They were factual, they were up-front, 

across the board. So I kind of feel like I was 

lied to. 

My hus-- first husband worked at the Iowa Army 

Ammunition Plant in Burlington, Iowa from 

October of '66 until the move from AEC was made 

to Pantex. Material checker. Those guys were 

all over that facility. Yard L was considered 

the ship-in/ship-out yard for AEC. I didn't 

know until I appealed a denied decision claim 

that at the shipping point of going to Pantex 

all of the checkers handled the balls of 

uranium bare-handed, no protection at all. 

During the course of their employment for AEC, 
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the one gentleman from Mallinckrodt -- urine 

test, badges -- that was a joke. I will have 

some more comments for the SEC petition on 

Wednesday. I personally find it sad that the 

Iowa Army Ammunition Plant was not even 

recognized at your inception. From what I've 

sat here all day and watched and seen and 

heard, you folks are giving us your very best 

shot, during the very best you can with what 

you have to work with. And you are to be 

admired and applauded for that. Anybody gives 

you any static, just hit them over the head, 

because you really are trying. But the folks 

in Iowa -- and to a lesser degree, 

Mallinckrodt, because at least Mallinckrodt 

gets a site review, we don't -- I think. Did I 

read that right, Mallinckrodt folks, did you 

get a site review? Okay. Because we weren't 

known. We were the black hole. We didn't 

exist. But at some extent all of the 22 

accepted cancers, the cancer claims have been 

filed and all of them have been denied. 

Larry's case is 4895. I'm in my second appeal 

process. 

 You keep doing what you have to do and work at 
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it hard. I talked to this gentleman here this 

morning, and I have nothing but respect for you 

guys. But again, Iowa is being left out of 

your process, and if there's some way that the 

Ordnance Plant and Iowa can get added to your 

list -- because how can you in reality get a 

true -- true cross-case mix without all of the 

plants being included. But I think DOL and I 

need to talk. Thank you very much. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Your first name, 

ma'am, was -- was it Sharon? 

 MS. SHUMACHER-CORDING: Sharon. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Sharon. Thank you. 

 MR. THORNHILL: Gentlemen, could I have a 

couple of minutes? I'm not going to talk long. 

My name is George Thornhill. I worked at 

Mallinckrodt at Weldon Springs, and we had a 

meeting here about -- a few months ago and they 

called me and I was very excited to go because 

I thought I was going to get to see a bunch of 

my old friends. And I was just shocked when I 

got there what I seen. So many of them had 

cancer, and I want to thank God I don't have 

it. I'm one standing right here in front of 

you that, as far as I know, I don't have any 
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cancer. But I've been pallbearer for every one 

of my foremen I worked for out there. And I 

want to let you know, I've seen some very sick 

people that's suffered a lot. 

We worked out there in the pilot plant at 

night. It's like all plants, when all the 

bosses go home, then you do all the things you 

wasn't supposed to do in the daytime. I seen 

us put stuff in these plants that birds flew 

over at night and them birds would fall flat 

out of the sky and die -- boom -- because of 

the nitric acid and stuff that we was dumping. 

And we was just doing our job. None of us knew 

we was exposed to anything. We didn't know 

anything at all was going on. We was making 

$2.16 an hour, big money, but that's what we 

did. And I worked there till the plant closed. 

But I didn't realize that so many of them was 

getting cancer and that's what they died from. 

And thank you for your time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. We have 

about three minutes, if there is any further 

comment. We do have another public comment 

session later this afternoon. Yes, ma'am, 

please approach the mike. 
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UNIDENTIFIED: My dad died of lung cancer -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Would you state your name, please, 

for the record? 

MS. IRWIN: Sue Irwin. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Sue Irwin? 

MS. IRWIN: He lived three years after he was 

diagnosed with lung cancer, and we worked in 

nuclear plants from 1942 to 1957. And he was a 

very gifted welder, and because of this he was 

asked to work on the atomic bomb. And Dad said 

that it was so secret that not even his bosses 

knew what they was working on. And one of the 

sites that Dad worked on was -- he was working 

by hisself (sic) one night and a pipe broke, 

and he said he went in -- he went in to fix it, 

and he was saturated with nuclear waste. 

He suffered from lung problems all of his life. 

He always carried Luden's cough drops in his 

pocket, and then he was diagnosed with lung 

cancer and he died. 

But we have all of his medical records. We 

have information that he worked on six 

different sites, and I don't know what else it 

takes to prove that he was exposed to 

radiation. The last information we got, they 
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were still doing the dose reconstruction. So 

it's kind of a mystery, you know, why it's 

taken so long. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you for those comments. 

We're going to recess now for approximately 15 

minutes. We'll return and be addressing the 

regular agenda item, and then we will have 

another public comment session beginning at 

4:30. So I declare us recessed now till 3:00 

o'clock. 

 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 2:45 p.m. 

to 3:10 p.m.) 

SITE PROFILE REVIEW – BETHLEHEM STEEL

 DR. ZIEMER: Following our Board meeting in 

December -- or during our Board meeting in 

December, we had before us on the agenda the 

site profile from Bethlehem Steel -- or the 

review of the site profile of Bethlehem Steel. 

And if you look in your minutes, Board members, 

on page 31 you'll see how -- you'll be reminded 

of the Board's action on that. And that was 

the Board request that NIOSH and SC&A respond 

to each other's reviews of the report and that 

the Board requests that NIOSH res-- the NIOSH 

response address each of the findings and 
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observations, with particular emphasis on the 

first two comments on page 8 of the report and 

so on. And in essence, we asked NIOSH and we 

asked SC&A to work together to resolve some 

differences that were evident at that meeting. 

We had Board members present during those 

times, also, to observe the intertake (sic) and 

exchange on that. 

Today we're going to have a report from NIOSH 

which talks about those issues, and Dr. Neton 

will identify the issues that have been 

resolved between NIOSH and SC&A, will identify 

some issues where they -- there still is 

perhaps a disagreement or a difference in 

views, and there are a number of cases where 

NIOSH is specifically asking the Board to weigh 

in with its views on particular aspects of 

this. 

So with that as an introductory comment, I'll 

call on Dr. Neton now to present NIOSH comments 

on the SC&A review of the Bethlehem Steel site 

profile review. 

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

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm sorry? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Henry. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Henry, are you there? 

DR. ANDERSON: (Via telephone) Yes, I'm here. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. And Dr. Neton is just 

getting ready to make the presentation. 

DR. NETON: Thanks again, Dr. Ziemer. It's --

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

DR. NETON: -- my pleasure to be here in St. 

Louis this afternoon to talk about the 

Bethlehem Steel profile review, our comments on 

it. Dr. Ziemer gave a good part of my 

introductory remarks, so I think maybe I can 

speed things up a little bit here. 

I would like to correct one thing, though. In 

our interaction with SC&A we did not have 

members of the Board present with those 

interactions. I think you may have been 

thinking about the dose reconstruction report 

reviews. This was -- essentially we went off 

and unilaterally worked on our report, but did 

interchange and receive some feedback verbally 

from SC&A on -- on their thoughts -- on their 

written thoughts. 

And Dr. Ziemer's absolutely right, we've come 

to some -- some conclusions that are a little 

different than what I reported to last time. 
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There were -- in the report, to refresh 

everyone's memory, there were eight findings, 

seven observations, three procedural 

conformances identified, and six strengths, 

which were bulletized items at the back of the 

report, and I won't be discussing those today, 

for obvious reasons. But as we discussed 

earlier in the day, a finding, as defined by 

SC&A for purposes of this report, is something 

that represents a significant issue. It's 

likely, in the end of the day or the long run, 

to impact dose reconstruction. So this is the 

most serious nature of a finding or of a 

comment that they could make. 

 The seven observations were perceived 

weaknesses or deficiencies that we should go 

back to the drawing board, look at things, take 

a deeper, arm's length look at it and see if we 

really have covered that issue completely as we 

thought we may have. 

And there's three procedural conformance 

issues. These are discrepancies related to our 

own way of doing business, whether it's the 

regulation or our own internal procedures, have 

we really done what we said we were going to do 
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consistently across the board. 

I'm going to focus mostly on these findings 

today because these are areas that are more 

serious in nature -- at least identified by 

SC&A. They could impact dose reconstruction. 

I am going to, at the end, summarize our 

discussion on some of the observations and go 

over the procedural conformances -- issues. 

I will say that we've come to agreement on a 

large part of these findings, but there still 

remain some issues outstanding. And as Dr. 

Ziemer identified, we stand in front of the 

Board and ask their advice and opinion on this. 

There are a couple of areas, and I'll point out 

at the appropriate time what those are. 

 Written reports were provided to the Board, I 

believe last Monday, via e-mail, so the Board 

should have received them. I also believe that 

there are copies at the back table for members 

of the public to review. 

 With that, I'll just get into it, and I could 

think of no better way than to go over the 

findings individually, so that's what I'll do, 

but I will focus primarily on -- I'll focus 

more effort on the first two findings, which is 
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what's -- which is the direction we received 

from the Board. 

 The first finding focused on the personnel 

monitoring data. As was established at the 

last meeting, we have no internal dosimetry 

data for workers at Bethlehem Steel. There are 

no urine samples to go -- to rely on to 

establish what the exposures may have been 

between 1949 to '52, so we relied on air sample 

estimates. SC&A has called into question the 

appropriateness of those air samples. In a 

sense, they didn't say that the air samples 

were inappropriate, it's just that NIOSH didn't 

do a very good job explaining that they were. 

And the fact is, we actually -- we agree with 

that. 

We will -- as I indicate in the first bullet 

there, we do -- we do feel that the -- there 

are AEC documents out there that do support the 

use of air -- the air monitoring data that we 

used. If you recall last time, there were no 

air monitoring data available for the '49 and 

'50 time period at Bethlehem Steel, and we 

relied on the Simonds Saw and Steel air sample 

data, particularly the air samples taken on 
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October 27, 1948. Those we believe to be a 

situation -- and I think the report, SC&A's 

report, acknowledges this, if any of those air 

samples at Simonds were applicable, this time 

period was. There was no ventilation over the 

areas of the highest concentration and the 

radiological controls that were in place were 

probably about at their -- at their worst at 

that time. So we have these 40 or so air 

samples at Simonds Saw and Steel. 

And then for our report, we had about 114 air 

samples that we relied on for the Bethlehem 

Steel, characterization 51 and 52. Since that 

time, a number of additional samples have come 

to light, and the total number available to 

date is somewhere around 200, although there 

are a number of samples that admittedly is -- 

it's hard to read the data. It's a little bit 

shaky. But somewhere close to 200 is the 

number of air samples we have available. 

Why we say we believe that the AEC documents 

support the use of air samples is the actual 

October 27th report itself. It was the 

intention of the AEC personnel at that time to 

go and establish what the actual exposures were 
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to the workers in the facility. They went and 

took air samples that they believed were 

representative of various work locations, and 

established what's known in the business as a 

time-weighted average exposure. That in itself 

indicates that they had some confidence that 

the individual samples that were taken were -- 

were representative. 

In addition to that, we've uncovered some 

documents that are more modern in time frame -- 

in the 1970's, I believe -- where AEC has 

outlined their approach. The person who took 

many of these air samples, and actually took a 

lot of the air samples at Bethlehem Steel, was 

a person named Al Breslin*, who many of you may 

know had been at the Health and Safety 

Laboratory for a long period of time. Al 

Breslin is a recognized expert, in my mind, on 

air sampling. He established these programs. 

And in the written document that we provided 

the Board, we've gone through and identified 

the highlights of what Mr. Breslin's approach 

was at that time. They go through and discuss 

what's -- what are known as process samples, 

general area samples and -- and breathing zone 
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samples. 

Process samples -- and any of you who look at 

the air sample data, you'll see a P next to the 

air samples, that's a process sample that was 

taken to identify sort of the upper magnitude 

of the exposure. Even in Mr. Breslin's 

documentation he indicates that you should not 

use these samples to do doses or exposures to 

workers because they in fact -- no one received 

those exposures, they're high. An example of 

that would be putting an air sample right at 

the aperture of a furnace where a worker never 

really frequented, or right in the process 

stream of a rolling mill, whereas a worker may 

have had to have, because of physical 

constraints, been a foot or two away. 

We actually used those process samples in our 

profile. So there are a number of reasons why 

we believe they're representative, but we do 

agree that the profile needs to be revised to 

support this consideration or this conclusion, 

and we're certainly committed and will be doing 

that, and we've actually started the process in 

that way. 

This just speaks to what the finding itself 
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identified, that there were issues with 

quality. We had not defined the quality, 

applicability and reliability, and we're 

certainly going to do that. 

And then this connection to ICRP-75 was 

identified by SC&A. That's our -- a general 

guidance document for radiation protection of 

workers. In that general document there's a 

section on air samples and it does speak to a 

lot of these type of issues -- what is a 

quality air sample, how reliable are they, when 

-- how should they be taken so that you ensure 

that you've really covered the workers' 

exposures. 

One does need to remember, though, that for 

purposes of the compensation program we are not 

trying to accurately reconstruct every worker's 

exposures. We're -- if we don't know and have 

very little confidence on the accuracy of an 

individual exposure, we can rely on an upper 

value exposure where we're confident that no 

worker, or almost no workers were exposed 

above. So you have to distinguish between the 

accuracy of the dose reconstruction and the 

accuracy of the -- or the accuracy of the dose 
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and then the accuracy of the dose 

reconstruction. 

This just goes through some of the rationale as 

to why we believe their task spe-- well, of the 

-- they are appropriate for reconstructing 

doses, and I think I -- I -- this slide I 

presented last time. I'm not going to go over 

it in any detail, but you know, these were 

task-specific evaluations, included 

measurements at work locations where maximum 

exposures -- I talked about the process 

samples. 

Part of SC&A's report talked about the fact 

that these were short-term samples, which I 

believe tended to indicate to them that these 

were short-term samples and how could that be 

representative of the workers' exposure. The 

reason they were short-term samples is because 

that was the duration of the exposure. There 

are a number of 40-second samples taken at the 

rolling mill, at the face of the rolling mill, 

but that's the length of time it took for an 

18-inch bar of uranium to actually traverse 

through the rolling mill and be done. 

Again, the AEC Medical Division processed these 
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samples. I spoke last time about Dr. Naomi 

Harley who was responsible for many, if not 

all, the measurements that were taken at -- at 

at least Bethlehem Steel and provided a 

description of the quality control process or 

the -- the manner in which these were processed 

at EML. 

And for the reasons I mentioned above, we 

believe that they are more representative 

samplings, as defined by ICRP-75, than what is 

conventionally known as a general area sample 

that is just taken there to monitor the 

workplace to ensure that the controls you put 

in place are adequate. These are a far cry 

from that type of sample. 

This is a simple schematic of the layout of the 

rolling mill area at Simonds Saw and Steel. 

This is out of the profile that will be coming 

out shortly, but I put a little star here at 

all the locations where these -- there were 40 

air samples taken I think on this particular 

day. Two were controls, so there's 38 net 

samples, and if you count these stars, they 

won't all add up to 38 because many were taken 

in triplicate. Most notably there were 
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triplicate samples taken on either side of the 

rolling mill here, and some over here where the 

material's being transferred from the furnace 

to the rolling mill. 

 There's -- there's two -- two stages here. The 

first pass is called a roughing mill. You take 

a five-inch bar of uranium, weighs about 200 

pounds, push it through. You run it through a 

second time. The idea was to get about a 15 

percent reduction in diameter each pass, and 

then two passes through the -- two passes 

through the finishing mill and they're done. 

The highest air sample taken on each -- the 

highest average air sample taken is right here, 

the first pass through the rolling mill. It 

comes -- it came out of the furnace heated to 

about 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, very oxidized 

surface because in the early days they were not 

done in a salt bath. They were done directly 

in the furnace and pushed right through here. 

So this is where that 1,000 MAC air sample 

occurred -- 1,070 I think is the actual value, 

the highest recorded value at Simonds Saw and 

Steel. 

 The difference between this process and the one 
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at Bethlehem Steel is Bethlehem Steel is a 

continuous mill. There are essentially six 

stations like this connected sequentially so 

that when one puts the bar in at the first end, 

it goes right through and comes out already 

finished. None of this manual feeding through 

twice happens. It just goes right through the 

process. And that was done in the interest of 

speeding up the process, getting a better 

uranium product in a more timely manner. 

 Okay, finding number two -- and this is 

probably the most significant finding, in my 

mind, that appears in their report -- is that 

the triangular distribution was not 

statistically representative of the data -- of 

the Simonds Saw and Steel dataset. They also 

identify that -- they said the upper bound 

wasn't claimant favorable. 

Actually we -- we took a look at this in some 

detail, and it turns out that there are -- and 

we recognized this early on -- there are two -- 

are two underlying lognormal distributions for 

these datasets, one for the Simonds Saw and 

Steel data, one for the Bethlehem Steel data. 

What we tried to do is to have a one-size-fits-
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all with a triangular distribution to represent 

both 1949 to '50, '51 and '52. And in fact, in 

doing that, we tended to increase the exposure 

to the workers rather than decrease it, using 

the triangular. 

I'm going to just skip ahead real quick to the 

next slide so I can explain that, and then I'll 

come back. This is the lognormal distribution 

of the data for the Simonds Saw and Steel. 

This is a representation of the lognormal data 

for the Bethlehem Steel. First you can see the 

striking difference in the air concentration 

value, the tremendous difference. This is an 

order of magnitude or more lower than this, on 

average. And this is a representation of the 

triangular distribution. 

Now the assertion by SC&A that the upper end 

does not go beyond 1,000 is true. But what 

happens when you sample this triangular 

distribution, you can see that there is a large 

gap between the upper -- the values in the 

upper air concentrations for the measured 

values and our -- our -- the curve we actually 

used. So when you go through in the Monte 

Carlo process and sample this, you end up 
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sampling a much higher frequency of values at 

the upper tail than if you were to use the 

actual lognormal distributions. So in fact 

what ends up happening is -- I've gone back and 

looked at about five to seven cases that were 

done using the triangular, and this is a rough 

approximation, but the actual values for the 

probability of causation dropped by about 30 

percent if we were to take this curve and this 

curve and use them to calculate the workers' 

exposures. 

So again, this is not a statistically precise 

model. It is the model that was used for dose 

reconstruction purposes. 

Let me just go back now and talk about the 

second point, which I think is very relevant. 

SC&A, however, did make a very interesting 

observation, which is that this single facility 

distribution, this one-size-fits-all, may 

actually underestimate doses for maximally 

exposed workers. In other words, we sampled 

that whole distribution uniformly -- well, not 

uniformly, but in accordance with distributions 

-- frequency. What if a worker actually had 

his nose in rolling mill number one for ten 
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hours a day for 48 rollings? Then in fact it's 

correct, we would underestimate that worker's 

exposure. So in a sense, we conclude -- we 

concur with SC&A that the use of a frequency 

distribution is not appropriate, and we should 

go back and use something more representative 

of the highest exposed workers. 

In an ideal world, we'd like to go back and 

identify who were the highest exposed and who 

weren't. We've done that, we've looked at the 

job descriptions provided by claimants. It's 

virtually impossible to make a determination 

that would stick, I think. I mean you're 

getting the claimant's job description maybe 

the last year they worked, not when they worked 

in '48. They may have changed jobs multiple 

times. And in fact, most of the job 

descriptions that I've seen put them in a 

position where they would be highly -- could be 

highly-exposed, let's put it that way -- 

laborers, millwrights, people that were in the 

general plant environment and not like 

cafeteria workers necessarily. 

So to address this issue, we're going to model 

the air samples using the lognormal 
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distributions just as I indicated, distribution 

for Simonds and distribution for Bethlehem. 

But we're going to pick the 95th percentile 

value of that distribution and use that as a 

constant value to input into the dose 

reconstructions. We feel that this circumvents 

the issue of the highest exposed workers. It's 

claimant favorable for most workers and at 

least representative of the highest exposed 

workers. 

This particular graph just depicts the fact 

that these samples do fit a lognormal 

distribution very well; correlation 

coefficients approaching, you know, unity; you 

get similar if not better fit for the Simonds 

Saw and Steel data. 

Now one thing I want to point out, though, is 

SC&A report actually goes one step further than 

this. They say okay, the highest worker is at 

the 95th percentile. That seems reasonable. 

But how well do you really know that 95th 

percentile value. You only have three air 

samples at that upper limit. We agree that 

they were at the highest location. They were 

at rolling mill area number one -- three of the 
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five highest were at rolling mill number one. 

And so we were pretty confident we had the 

upper limit captured. 

 SC&A's approach is, let's say -- if we went out 

to the 95th percentile, which would be at 1.645 

on this chart here, and say NIOSH were to use 

this value, they're saying well, you don't know 

that value very well; you should put some 

uncertainty bars -- those of you who do 

statistical analysis would recognize you'd put 

error bars about this curve -- but they weren't 

even saying that. They weren't saying put 

error bars about this curve. Put error bars 

about this individual point. Very difficult to 

do. And in fact, in their discussion, one gets 

the feeling that there's no really good 

statistical way to do that. 

Well, we are going to stick with the 95th 

percentile for a number of reasons, and I've 

tried to outline these in three bullet items. 

One is that we believe that the rollings that 

were done at Bethlehem Steel in '51 and '52 -- 

they're much lower. We observed that with the 

air samples. But that the process used at 

Bethlehem Steel would result in lower air 
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samples, even in '49 and '50, if we had them. 

These are, (a), because they were finished 

rollings. Workers that we've talked to that 

worked in the plant at that time indicated that 

the six-inch bar mill, which had the six 

continuous rolling operations, only processed 

finished uranium. Matter of fact, the uranium 

that was actually produced at Mallinckrodt went 

to either Simonds Saw and Steel or Allegheny 

Ludlum for rough rolling. They rolled it down 

to about a two-and-a-half-inch bar. Then and 

only then would it go over to Bethlehem Steel 

to be finish-rolled down to a -- its ultimate 

diameter, about one-and-an-eighth inches. 

 Secondly, the furnace operation. Remember I 

talked about this gas-fired furnace operation 

at Simonds Saw and Steel. Even at Simonds Saw 

and Steel at the end of 1949 they abolished the 

use of that because they realized it was too 

messy of an operation. So it's unlikely that 

any rollings occurred at Simonds Saw -- at 

Bethlehem Steel just using gas-fired furnaces. 

There are indications that furnaces were used, 

but it's what's called a muffled furnace. 

There's no direct contact, and it essentially 
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was a pre-heater before they put it into the 

salt bath itself. 

The second and probably more important issue 

here is the time-weighted average exposure. 

Remember I said in October 27th, 1948 the 

purpose of collecting those 40 air samples at 

Simonds was to figure out what is the timeweighted average exposure to the workers. The 

time-weighted average exposure of the highest 

worker, using that analysis, was 190 times the 

maximum air sample -- air concentration. Our 

95th percentile will end up using somewhere 

close to 600. So we feel that there's a margin 

of safety or conservatism built into that 

number to begin with, even given that the 

processes are not completely similar. We've 

analyzed this and we believe that it's fairly 

representative. 

 The third thing, which we've just indicated -- 

and this is not in your report, but you know 

how you get these flashes when you're driving 

home at times? Well, we had air sample data 

for Simonds Saw and Steel. And in fact, it was 

ta-- they were taken -- there's much air sample 

data available for Simonds Saw and Steel, but 
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there were a number of samples taken in fairly 

close proximity to October 27, 1948. So we're 

pretty comfortable that -- remember, I said 

it's important that -- early time frames there 

was no ventilation, or little -- no ventilation 

over the highest areas, anyway. So these 

workers -- they took 60 air samples total over 

what, six different time periods, well after 

the 27th. We really don't know if these 

workers continued to roll steel or not -- or 

uranium. I'm assuming they did, but let's say 

they didn't, and their only exposure was 

October 27th, what would be coming out in their 

urine if they breathed almost 600 times the 

maximum allowable air concentration for ten 

hours on that day? This is the urinary 

excretion curve that would be predicted. 

Now here are the actual measured samples. So 

again, yet another proof or -- not proof, but 

indication that the -- the use of about 600 MAC 

is fairly indicative and in fact somewhat 

conservative representation of the workers' 

exposures at that time. 

I think all these facts taken collectively give 

at least NIOSH a comfort level that the 
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exposures of using 600 MAC is a fairly 

reasonable estimate. 

Okay. I'll move on. I know I took a little 

bit of time on that, but I think those were two 

 MR. GRIFFON: Can I just ask a quick 

clarification on that, Jim? 

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Did you run any -- any IREP 

models to compare how your outcomes came with 

just a constant value at the 95th versus your 

triangular distribution? I'm sure --

DR. NETON: I'm not sure exactly -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- I mean did they always improve 

the POCs or increase the POCs? Did you -- in 

other words, did you take the -- you said you 

examined using the lognormal -- or the -- the 

lognormal distribution -- 

DR. NETON: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- versus the triangular -- 

DR. NETON: I used two lognormals, though, one 

for Bethlehem air data and one for Simonds air 

data --

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. NETON: -- and when you use those together, 
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you will get a PC value that is lower every 

time. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. NETON: And the reason --

 MR. GRIFFON: Did you do a similar comparison 

with your constant value at the 95th, though? 

DR. NETON: Oh, the constant's going to go up 

because the effective air concentration's going 

to double. I think -- if you remember last 

time, the effective air concentration, which is 

really sort of what IREP ends up using, was 

about 334 MAC for the triangular. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. NETON: It's going to go up to about 600. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. NETON: I think these numbers -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: (Unintelligible) discussions of 

the effect of the uncertainty on driving the 

POC model, but I just wanted to... 

DR. NETON: Yeah, it turns out that the 

uncertainty distribution itself was -- it's 

equivalent of giving 334 MAC for the 

triangular. We will use -- don't quote me on 

this exactly -- it's about 600. We have to go 

back and make sure all the air sample data 
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we're using are appropriate and that sort of 

thing. 

 Okay. Finding number three talks about the 

selection of the minimum, mode, and maximum for 

table 2. There were two tables in the site 

profile, a lower table and an upper table. And 

what we did was, if any case would be -- appear 

to us to be over 50 percent for the lower 

table, we never bothered to use the upper 

table. The upper table is really the 

triangular distribution that we just talked 

about. It was the high table. The low table 

was based on Simonds -- or Bethlehem Steel 

actual air sample data -- much, much, much 

lower. The reason for that is, any cancer that 

was going to be compensable was -- I think 

almost with -- save one exception, was 

compensable under this low exposure model. In 

other words, the lung cancers, maybe the liver 

cancers, the ones that you would expect to have 

higher doses because of their metabolic 

behavior were all compensable under air sample 

concentrations similar to what happened at 

Bethlehem Steel in '51 and '52. You didn't 

need to have the Simonds Saw and Steel data in 
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there to drive that over compensability. 

 Anyone that looked like it was under 50 

percent, though, would have run under this much 

higher matrix that -- that looked -- that 

included the Simonds Saw and Steel data. And 

in fact, all of those cancers were also noncompensable under there. 

We never used it, though, to make determination 

-- it obviously was confusing to SC&A -- since 

it was not really used to deny any cases or to 

calculate any cases that would appear to be 

denied, we're just going to take it out. It's 

not -- it's not going to affect the 

compensability for any case or future analysis. 

It's just too confusing to leave in there so we 

just feel it's most appropriate to take it out. 

So that finding I think we're in pretty good 

agreement on. 

Finding number four is a little bit of a vexing 

issue for us. SC&A has talked about steel 

workers in a heavy environment may actually 

breathe through their mouth more than through 

their nose than either the general population 

or even the general worker. And honestly, I'm 

a little bit confused by the comments, because 
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they appear to say two things to us, but we've 

gone through and looked at this in some detail. 

If one looks at the ICRP-30 default values for 

heavy exercise, it assumes that a worker 

inspires at about three cubic meters per hour. 

That is a fairly hefty inhalation rate. And 

not only that, they assume that 50 percent of 

that time a worker is breathing through their 

mouth. So the comment that SC&A makes that we 

need to consider oro-nasal breathing I think is 

somewhat part and parcel built into the ICRP 

models. 

We did not have all the workers in the original 

profile breathing at the heavy worker rate, but 

we concede that yes, we don't know that, so 

we're going to assume all workers were heavy 

workers. 

Now I need to distinguish between heavy work 

and heavy exercise. This is an ICRP construct. 

It may be somewhat dense to folks, but the 

heavy work ends up being at 1.7 cubic meters 

per hour, and what that assumes -- and I just 

noticed there's a typo here -- it assumes 7/8 

light exercise and 1/8 heavy exercise. So if 

you'd correct that in your notes it'd be good. 
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But in a sense what this is -- it's a hybrid. 

It says I'm a heavy worker and eight -- one 

hour out of the shift, if I'm working eight 

hours, I'm going to be breathing three cubic 

meters per hour, 50 percent through my mouth. 

So it acknowledges that a certain percentage of 

the time when you're working, you're going to 

be doing that. 

I know of no job that breathes three cubic 

meters per hour. In fact, if you look through 

the ICRP values, I think for uranium miners in 

Africa they assume somewhere around 1.3 cubic 

meters per hour. I think uranium mining is a 

fairly demanding job, as well. So in some ways 

I'm puzzled why this was a finding because a 

finding means that -- that we've done something 

completely inappropriate and it really needs to 

be fixed, where I think this -- this falls 

more, in my mind, under the observation 

category where, you know, there's an 

indication. Maybe you ought to look further 

into this and do some more homework. 

 But nonetheless, we're willing to -- we're 

going to increase the model to 1.7 cubic meters 

per hour, which means that a percentage of the 
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time workers are going to be mouth breathing. 

Now one other way to read this report, though, 

it says that there's a table in there that 

talks about people who are habitual mouthbreathers. There is a certain segment of the 

population that breathes a good percentage of 

their -- through their mouth, no matter what. 

So by inclusion of that table, I'm not sure 

whether the SC&A report wants us to assume all 

workers are habitual mouth-breathers -- because 

there's no way in a compensation program we can 

go back and establish that for every worker, so 

that would then be the default -- or whether 

they're really just saying you need to maybe 

boost up this distribution here. 

 Now at this point NIOSH is standing with -- we 

believe the default value that's in ICRP for 

heavy work is appropriate. We see no real data 

or indication to the contrary here. But we're 

certainly interested in hearing the opinion of 

the Board on this. This one of these areas 

where we need -- we'd like to have some advice 

and discussion, and we're willing to reconsider 

this, depending on what the Board determines. 

Okay, finding five was the ingestion dose 
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estimates. We're low. They didn't include all 

the ingestion dose that a worker could have -- 

could have experienced by working at Bethlehem 

Steel. In looking at this, though, I think at 

the end of the day we were not in that much of 

a disagreement for the individual rolling days. 

On an individual day our air dispersion model, 

which just took all the amount of uranium in 

the air and deposited it on the ground, ended 

up with a worker ingesting about 20 milligrams 

of pure uranium. The SC&A report -- I wouldn't 

call it a recommendation, but suggested maybe 

an upper limit of 100 milligrams per day based 

on experience of workers in dusty trades like 

construction might be more appropriate. And we 

grant that. 

But if you look at this, though, this is 20 

milligrams of pure uranium. They are ingesting 

material in an environment that has a lot of 

steel dust around. If you talk to people like 

Ed Walker, he'll tell you that the uranium -- 

the iron dust in the plant was sometimes four 

inches thick. So in a sense what you're going 

to have is uranium deposited in this iron dust 

matrix, and so the fraction of the 100 
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milligrams that SC&A suggests, if it's around 

20 percent, which I think is probably an upper 

estimate, we're not in too -- not in 

substantial disagreement, I don't think, here. 

I think one thing SC&A does disagree with is 

how our dispersion model came about. We're 

going to take a look at that and revisit the 

dispersion of air and deposition on surfaces. 

But I think at the end of the day we're not far 

apart with SC&A's reported recommendations. 

Where we still had a disagreement, though, was 

the exposure from ingestion due -- and 

inhalation, for that matter, in between 

rollings. And I'll address that under finding 

seven. 

Finding six, the default particle deposition 

parameters were not claimant favorable. This 

again I don't think was based on -- and I think 

this, in my mind, more appropriately falls in 

the area of an observation, because there is no 

direct evidence provided by SC&A that particle 

sizes were smaller. They're suggesting that 

they could be. 

Well, we've looked at the default -- the 

definition of default particle sizes for ICRP 
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and, to remind the Board, that assumes a five 

micron particle size, which is fairly 

consistent with work that involves operations 

involving mechanical processes. But it's 

important to remember that that five microns is 

not a fixed value. It has a geometric standard 

deviation associated with it, so it does allow 

for the existence of other particle sizes. 

So we've looked at the ICRP recommendations 

here. We feel that it -- it bears to our 

conclusion that five is adequate. We also went 

and looked at some other facility -- publica-- 

published values at facilities. In fact, 

rolling milling operations. And again, five 

microns does not appear to be inconsistent with 

those studies. 

And one thing I've ignored here is Simonds Saw 

actually, in 1950, went and did a particle size 

study where they took floor samples -- I forget 

the exact operation, but it's not unlike what 

you would experience at the mill -- and the 

particle sizes were very consistent. And in 

fact, with the standard -- with the geometric 

standard deviation 2.5, which is probably 

fortuitous, but the particle sizes are very 
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consistent with using five microns. So in our 

opinion there is no reason at this time, unless 

future evidence comes to the fore, that we 

would change that value. 

Okay, this is what I talked about earlier 

where, you know, we did not have any exposure 

from residual contamination included in our 

model. In looking at this, we do now agree 

that we should include residual contamination. 

The evidence that we have to conclude that 

there was none was documentation indicating 

that they cleaned up between rollings. Uranium 

was a valuable commodity in metal at that time. 

And also we had an air -- a smear value. 

Remember I reported where they actually did a 

smear of the area before and after the rolling 

and indicated the area were clean. Well, the 

fact of the matter is, though, we only had one 

smear. And also from worker interviews that 

SC&A conducted, it led us to the conclusion 

that it would be pretty hard to clean up every 

atom of uranium and demonstrate it. So we do 

believe that there is credibility -- there's 

some credit that should be given for 

contamination in between rollings, and we stand 
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ready to do that. 

We haven't fixed on the exact model yet, but 

we're going to include both inhalation and 

ingestion. There are some ways to do this. We 

can have -- we can model the ingestion after 

representative intakes of dust. Remember we 

talked about this 100 milligrams of ingestion 

per day -- may be higher, I'm not sure exactly 

where that's going to be fixed. But it does 

need to be -- one does need to take into 

account the dilution that occurs as you process 

steel and it mixes with this uranium. The 

amount -- the fraction of what you're ingesting 

of that 100 milligrams per day will go down 

between rollings, so we'll -- we will take that 

into consideration. 

Also -- let's see intakes of dust -- oh, and 

then for the inhalation intakes, there are some 

published values that we're aware of for places 

like steel mills where -- you know, what is the 

dust loading in a steel mill just based on 

resuspension, no operations occurring, and what 

are people breathing in. And again, we can 

apportion the amount of the resus-- the 

fraction of the resuspension that's due to -- 
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due to inhalation of steel -- or iron oxide, 

essentially, versus the amount of uranium 

that's in that. So we stand ready to do that 

and we've already started working on an 

approach to -- to that. 

They did mention in their review that external 

doses need to be addressed, and we agree. We 

do believe they're going to be extremely small 

for residual contamination, but for 

completeness' sake we at least need to do some 

sort of a mention of that and cover -- cover 

the waterfront there. 

Okay, the last finding, external dose due to 

various models -- modes of contact, this is an 

area where -- and this shows up also in the 

observations, that workers make assertions 

about well, I was holding or I was carrying 

metal. Your model only assumes that I'm -- I'm 

one foot from it, you know, at a certain amount 

of time. So we've gone back and looked at this 

a little closer. If you look at the annual 

dose of the distribution, it's 133 rem on an 

annual basis. It's a huge amount of external 

dose, particularly shallow dose, to give to a 

worker. So -- and we compared this to a 
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situation like where workers were working at 

Fernald between '52 and '55. The highest 

exposure was ten rem. They processed 20-

something million pounds of uranium here and 

machined it. I think the highest that I can 

come up with is about 600,000 pounds per year 

production of processing of metal at Bethlehem 

Steel. 

So here we have a facility that did a lot of 

work, the doses are much higher than the 

annualized mean. But we also need to do a 

better job -- and I'll talk about this in the 

observations -- of communicating that to the 

workers. If there's any shortcoming that we 

have in our profile, it's -- it's we didn't 

communicate how we arrove (sic) at these -- how 

we arrived at these conclusions. 

Two years ago when we were putting this 

together, we wrote this, frankly, for a health 

physics group that was going to use this to do 

dose reconstructions. Now we understand fully 

that we need to go better and document why 

these -- these observations were used and how 

they speak to the sort of exposure scenarios 

that aren't exactly addressed. 
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I did a calculation -- if you take this mean 

value of exposure, it would be the equivalent 

to a worker either sitting on or carrying or 

holding an ingot of uranium for three hours 

every day. I mean so we allow -- I mean we 

don't say that the worker was in contact with 

it, but the equivalent dose would be delivered 

if three hours out of that entire day the 

worker was handling the uranium. So we don't 

believe that there's a huge issue here. 

The observations I kind of lumped on one slide. 

Observations one, two, three, four and five are 

really the result of questions, worker -- 

worker questions, comments raised during 

either, separate and apart from SC&A's review, 

the rollings after '52; or SC&A interviewing 

workers and workers saying well, I worked more 

than ten hours, or I -- there were cobbles and 

they cut these things and there were these 

short, episodic events that occurred. Those 

are the kind of things that are covered in 

these observations. And as I just mentioned, 

we need to do a much better job explaining why 

the model we're using -- why 600 times the 

maximum allowable air concentration for ten 
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hours a day is sufficient to cover those types 

of episodic events that may have occurred, and 

why our external exposure model sufficiently 

addresses these other incidents where a worker 

may have actually had to grab a bar for a 

while, that sort of thing. And it really is a 

matter of doing a much better job explaining 

it. 

Observation six questions why environmental 

exposure is not included. The fact is that we 

assumed all workers were occupationally 

exposed, so you know, the occupational exposure 

was the relevant metric. Environmental 

exposure when they're off work is not -- is not 

included, other than the fact that we will now 

add residual contamination, which I suppose one 

could consider that an environmental exposure, 

but you know, we assumed the workers were 

breathing very high occupational levels during 

entire work -- you know, the work episode. 

Seven questions photofluorography. We agree 

that we need to evaluate that, and we've 

already started on looking through the use of 

photofluorography at Atomic Weapons Employers. 

If you remember, we focused early on at 
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photofluorography at Department of Energy 

facilities where there was large masses of 

people being screened. We don't know if 

photofluorography was really used at Bethlehem. 

If there's any indication at all there was, 

we're certainly going to include it. Early 

indications are -- we looked at some Simonds 

Saw and Steel medical evaluations, and they're 

not. Now that doesn't mean Bethlehem wasn't, 

but suffice it to say that if there's any doubt 

at all, we're going to go ahead and include 

photofluorography as a -- as a means of 

exposure for medical -- medical evaluations. 

Okay. In the last slide, about -- there was -- 

there was three procedural conformance issues 

raised. One had to do with the ICRP-75 

guidance and I think I kind of discussed that a 

little bit. The other two had to do with the -

- SC&A's opinion that NIOSH was required to use 

worst-case exposures for these calculations, 

and in fact we're not. I mean we do claimant 

favorable assumptions when the technology can't 

inform us or science can't inform us. But I 

think -- I think the root of this observation -

- these issues were that it's -- we didn't do a 
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good enough job explaining the difference 

between a claimant favorable estimate and an 

intentional overestimate. 

 A claimant favorable estimate is when you have 

two equally plausible scenarios and both -- 

both seem reasonable, and one gives you a 

higher dose, we're going to pick the one that 

gives you the higher dose every time. 

For part of the efficiency process, though, 

we've developed some -- some procedures, OTIB-4 

I think is the one cited in the review, that 

provide intentional overestimates to what we 

believe to be demonstrably low exposure group -

- worker groups. You know, whether they were 

cafeteria workers or administrative folks, we 

will say okay, that worker group certainly did 

not have anything more than 100 times the MAC 

over their entire work history for all time, 

and demonstrate that even under that scenario, 

the PC value is certainly going to be less than 

50 percent. 

That's a very different -- different beast. 

And so there is really no good reason why we 

should use that -- that document and apply it 

to someplace like a Bethlehem Steel. 
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Okay. I know this is not really germane to the 

review, but the question comes up often is what 

does this really mean in terms of cases' 

compensability. So I just have a slide here -- 

I apologize, it's slightly out of date, but 

we've done most of the Bethlehem Steel cases so 

probably not that different today. But you can 

see there's an extreme bimodal distribution of 

compensabilities here. About 43 percent of the 

cases were over 50 percent already. These have 

not been all through the Department of Labor. 

These are the dose reconstructions we've done, 

so based on the doses that we've calculated, 

sent over to Department of Labor, we believe 

that this many are going to be over 50 percent 

at the end of the day. 

More significantly I think, though, is to point 

out that 44 percent of the cases, even given in 

the old profile, values are less than ten 

percent. Now the reason for this of course is 

the nature of the exposure. It's primarily the 

inhalation model that drives it. When you 

inhale uranium, uranium doesn't concentrate in 

the pancreas, it doesn't concentrate in the 

bladder or various other organs. So even under 
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these conditions, if this value were doing -- 

if these cases were to increase by an order of 

magnitude, factor of ten, it would not put them 

over 50 percent. This is not a linear scale. 

It's not five times this will get you over 50. 

It's not a linear scale at all, so these cases 

by and large would require more than ten times 

the dose. 

So what I'm really saying is, with these 

adjustments that we've made or will make and 

are considering and will consider, based on the 

Board's advice, we don't see a wholesale shift 

in -- in compensability from the Department of 

Labor's final adjudication, even if we do 

modify the -- when we modify these profiles, 

how some of these cases end up being changed is 

hard to predict, but I suspect that there will 

be some change in these cases, particularly the 

ones in the 40 -- 30 to 40 percent range, but 

we -- it's very difficult to calculate -- 

estimate that. It's a really individual -- 

there's so many parameters that drive that that 

I couldn't tell you that today, and in fact we 

haven't revised the model yet. But I just 

wanted to point that out. I think it's very 
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significant to point out this bimodal 

distribution. And in fact I think this is not 

going to be uncommon for many of the sites 

where inhalation exposure drives 

compensability, places like uranium facilities, 

plutonium facilities, that sort of thing. 

Okay, with that I've finished my formal 

remarks. I'll certainly be willing to take any 

questions. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Jim. We'll have a 

moment for questions here. I want to remind 

the Board that on the Bethlehem site profile we 

do need to reach a kind of closure. I'm 

hopeful that we will reach that closure before 

we leave St. Louis this week. 

The findings that Jim has gone through -- it 

appears that some of them have been largely 

resolved, but there are others where they -- 

where NIOSH has specifically indicated where 

they differ from SCA in terms of their view and 

where they have specifically asked -- for 

example, on page 6 of the narrative, not the 

power point presentation but page 6 of Jim's 

narrative, for example, in the second paragraph 

where it says NIOSH believes that the use of 
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the 95th percentile and so on adequately 

reflects the upper limit, but NIOSH is 

interested in hearing the Board's thoughts on 

this issue and is willing to reconsider our 

position based on the Board's recommendation. 

And there are several spots through the 

narrative where NIOSH has in fact asked for 

specific input. And in a sense, if the Board 

is able to address those issues, that will be a 

way of coming to closure. We have the 

opportunity to weigh in that we agree with 

NIOSH or we agree with SCA -- SC&A, or we 

believe that there's some other viewpoint or a 

mid view or whatever it may be, so we have that 

opportunity. And I hope as we begin to discuss 

-- and I think we can take some general 

questions -- and we may not be able to finish 

this yet today because we have a public comment 

session beginning at 4:30, but we can get 

underway here and we can ask questions, and 

then we can begin to deal with the specific 

issues and try to bring some level of closure 

to the Bethlehem site profile review. 

So with that comment, Dr. Roessler, I see you 

have a comment or question? 
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DR. ROESSLER: My comment, and then a question. 

My comment is that I think that this is a very 

good process. As an individual Board member, I 

don't have the time and I -- and most -- many 

cases, don't have the expertise to evaluate the 

-- what do we have, hundreds or thousands it 

seems like of pages that are coming from SC&A, 

so I think to have this point and counterpoint 

for us is very productive. And my conclusion 

from this is that a lot of the findings can be 

addressed by just explaining better what NIOSH 

did. Some of them there is a disagreement. 

And I think by putting it out on the table like 

this where we can actually look at the 

individual specifics on this site is a good 

process. 

My question, though, is is -- I'm thinking to 

the future -- is how -- how will this 

information we're getting from this particular 

site and the evaluation apply to future sites? 

Will this -- will NIOSH improve probably in 

explaining things? Will there be things that 

we resolve that will apply to future sites? 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's an excellent question and 

it's really a process question. And one might 
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reflect that this parallels the process for 

dose reconstructions. We basically at our last 

meeting set forth a sort of six-step process 

for how dose reconstruction reviews would be 

handled, and it may be that the Board would 

like to inaugurate a similar type of process 

for the site profile reviews where we -- we 

have an initial report of a site profile review 

that we then ask NIOSH and SC&A to go through 

this kind of process which involves both factfinding -- that is, are the facts correct; 

where there's disagreements, is it a 

disagreement on actual -- the science or is it 

simply a factual misunderstanding or what's the 

nature of the disagreement, and try to then 

reach some consensus on those issues where it 

is simply a misunderstanding or an 

informational issue versus those where it's a 

pure, valid, scientific disagreement on either 

how one interprets or how one should apply the 

particular situation. But I think we must 

have, as we proceed forward, not only how we 

come to closure on this particular review, but 

what will the process be for future reviews. 

And this provides an opportunity for us to put 
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a kind of template in place for that. 

 Dr. Melius. 

 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) I actually had 

questions on some of the specific points, I 

don't know -- excuse me. 

I actually had questions on some of the 

specific comments, so I don't know if people 

have some other -- Mark, do you have some 

general ones first? If not, I'll start. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I was -- I was actually 

just going to propose a process, at least for 

this phase, for this report, but if you want to 

 DR. ZIEMER: You might want to hear the 

question --

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- specific questions first then. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, so you might as well go 

first. 

 DR. MELIUS: And I'll start with comment -- SCA 

comment number two, I guess is where we're 

going through here. 

DR. NETON: Procedural conformance comment or -

-

 DR. MELIUS: Finding number two. 
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DR. NETON: Finding two, okay. 

 DR. MELIUS: Finding, yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: This is the triangular 

distribution comment? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, it -- do that. And I guess 

my question is going through -- if we're 

adopting this as a way of going forward, are 

you assuming that the -- then the interview 

information in this application of this 

approach would not allow you to distinguish 

between people that were say more highly 

exposed than others? You made -- made that 

comment when you were presenting this and that 

-- and I didn't know whether it was one based 

on the interview information you have from the 

CATI interview or from your follow-up to the -- 

in talking to the workers and some of the 

follow-up that -- the meetings we've attended 

in Buffalo and so forth. 

DR. NETON: That's a good question, and what I 

was speaking to was the -- the job category 

that is included in the application to the 

Department of Labor. There's a job title block 

and I forget where it appears, but -- then we 

look through the distribution of those, there's 
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543 and they were all over the map, but most 

all the workers indicated some type of job 

where one -- one could make a value judgment 

that they were fairly heavily exposed. So it 

really didn't seem to make any -- we couldn't 

tell from that where you -- where you draw the 

line, based on job title. 

 Now what you're speaking about is the CATI, the 

computer-assisted telephone interview. And 

first of all, I think roughly half, if not 

more, of our claimants are survivors, so that 

we're not going to get much information from 

them. So then you're left with the other 50 

percent, who are active claimants, former 

workers, and yes, you're right, we could -- we 

could, based on the statements collected in 

that interview, maybe come to a better sense of 

their exposure situation. 

How that plays out in an adjudicatory process 

and stuff is beyond me. I don't -- it would be 

very difficult -- we could, in a sense, parse 

out the ones who, like I said, well, I was a 

cafeteria worker and so I had no exposure. Now 

at that point then you're relying on the 

veracity of the claimant's statements and -- 
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and -- I don't know, that's an area where I 

don't want to tread. That's a policy type 

thing. But in our opinion, it would be very 

difficult to stratify them in the -- in the 

large mass. There may be some, some small 

percentage that you could, based on the 

interview, come to the conclusion there was no 

exposure. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, see -- see, what I'm 

struggling with is figuring out how this issue 

of which distribution to use and -- and how to 

use that distribution in terms of handling 

claims, how that interacts with individual dose 

-- individual claimants. 

DR. NETON: Okay. 

 DR. MELIUS: Because essentially what you're 

doing with Bethlehem is coming up with one 

approach -- one metric that applies to 

everybody, and you just basically just plug in 

how long they worked there and what organ 

system --

DR. NETON: Correct. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- they have cancer, and does not 

at all take into account anything about their 

type of job or any -- any other individual 
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information. And that may be all that's 

available and therefore you have to come up 

with some approach there. There may be other 

situations where -- where there may be more 

individual information available, better work 

histories or whatever. But what you've done is 

a very generalized sort of an epidemiological 

approach, you're just -- though applying it to 

claims as opposed to what you would do for an 

epidemiological study or some study to 

generalize about exposures there. And I'm 

trying to get the context in which we're 

supposed to then make a recommendation to you 

as will this -- is this correct, and -- 

DR. NETON: Well, the approach here is no 

different than what the original site profile 

had, which is one-size-fits-all. All we're 

suggesting is that --

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, no --

DR. NETON: -- that the values are going to go 

up for the '49 and '50 time frame and -- 

 DR. MELIUS: But what we're -- what we're tal-- 

discussing about is how to refine that, or 

should that approach be refined -- 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I agree with you, Dr. Melius. 
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 DR. MELIUS: -- in some way, particularly -- 

and this particular issue is very much an issue 

of just how to refine that in a very 

methodological way. 

DR. NETON: We're very interested in hearing 

the input from the Board on that. I will -- I 

will offer that -- remember I mentioned at the 

low exposure matrix, it doesn't take much 

inhalation exposure for a worker to move over 

into above 50 percent for -- for certain 

cancers, so does it really make any sense then 

to start stratifying and saying well, you had 

ten MAC exposure and you're over 50 percent, or 

you had 500 and you're over. It's sort of a 

economy there of efficiency -- the efficiency 

process. 

 DR. MELIUS: Right. 

DR. NETON: But we're certainly very interested 

in hearing the Board's input on this. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, additional comments or 

questions? 

DR. NETON: Dr. Ziemer, if I -- finish here. 

I'd just like to point out that we did not want 

to presuppose that the Board was in total 

agreement with SC&A's findings, by the way. I 
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mean just because we're in agreement does not 

necessarily mean the Board should be, I 

suppose, and so --

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

DR. NETON: -- I guess that's obvious, but -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, thank you. 

DR. NETON: -- I just wanted to state that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Mark? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I guess what I was going to 

propose was you know, try -- in an attempt to 

try to come to resolution while we're in St. 

Louis, I like how you phrased that, not right 

now, but while we're in St. Louis. I wondered 

if we could ask our subcontractor tonight to 

give a one to two-page, very brief summary 

response to these -- to what's been pointed out 

today, and I think that all the arguments are 

out there, so this can really be a brief 

response. They can even cite previous 

arguments they've made if they still stick to 

those, but they don't have to re-- you know, 

they don't have to elaborate them any further, 

but just a matter of saying we agree with 

NIOSH's modifi-- you know, resolution for 

finding number one, we agree with -- you know, 
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we disagree with finding -- number two 

resolution for this matter and it's -- and it's 

expanded on in our report A or whatever, 

something to that effect that they can put 

together on short order and then we can -- then 

we can, in our deliberations tomorrow or 

Wednesday, compare the two and say -- you know, 

that -- that'll help us with a rationale and a 

final resolution for this -- this site profile 

report, I think. At least it will --

 DR. ZIEMER: I think the Chair is going to ask 

the Designated Federal Official to make a 

determination on -- as to whether or not this 

can -- this is a kind of task, whether it's 

within the framework of the tasking of our 

contractor, whether the contractor would in 

fact be both prepared and able to do what 

you've just said, and -- 

 DR. WADE: Let's take them in turn. I think it 

is within the scope of the contract, but let me 

turn to Dr. Mauro. Would -- would you and your 

staff be able to devote time this afternoon and 

this evening to putting together this one or 

two-page summary? 

DR. MAURO: I guess the brief answer is 
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probably no, and the reason is -- first of all, 

let me say that I could see that a tremendous 

amount of work has been done on behalf of NIOSH 

to come to grips with so many complex issues, 

and now we're hearing a lot -- the positions 

taken by NIOSH -- the strategies. I don't 

think they are specific, but there are 

certainly strategies that have been outlined. 

I -- now I don't -- our team consists of a 

group of perhaps eight people, including 

numerous statisticians, internal dosimetrists, 

health physicists, industrial hygienists that 

collectively prepare our work and our work -- 

our report. I would think it would be 

presumptuous on my part to come forward with a 

position on such short notice without a 

deliberative process within my team. So I 

would say I'd prefer not to be put in that 

position at this time. 

 However, I believe we can -- our team can 

reconvene and -- to discuss these matters. Now 

the only question is again a process question. 

Were we to reconvene our team and I were to 

communicate -- and we were to communicate to 

the rest of the team our understanding -- which 
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I, by the way, I do fully feel I do fully 

understand, and the rationale behind it -- and 

there's also a lot of material that Dr. Neton 

had made reference to, very important material; 

for example, the information regarding the 

diameter of the particles, that is new data. 

So in effect, what we have here is a preview of 

what one would consider to be a -- either an 

addendum to the site profile, perhaps a rev to 

the site profile, that would contain a lot more 

descriptive material, the supporting 

documentation, the rationale. By way of 

process, I guess I would be thinking that we, 

our team, under the direction of the Board, we 

would not take any steps along these matters, 

would I guess be on the receiving end of a -- 

of a more complete offering as this is -- 

certainly this was a terrific overview and a -- 

but I think the proc-- the next step in the 

process is once that material has been 

assembled, let's say by NIOSH and presented to 

the Board, at that time I would say that Board 

may want to request that we have one of these 

meetings similar to the one we had at 

Mallinckrodt where we go through each one of 
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these. 

We would like, of course, an opportunity to 

receive that material, have a chance to 

deliberate amongst our full team, which 

includes the full spectrum of scientific and 

engineering disciplines, and then have a 

meeting with NIOSH, in a public setting similar 

to the Mallinckrodt meeting, where we can go 

through this list and perhaps at that point 

actually go -- check off okay, here's still 

something that might be outstanding. 

So I have to say -- to answer your question 

again, I -- I would say I would rather not try 

to do that this evening. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, John. I think the 

Board fully understands what that looks like 

from your point of view. 

And -- but -- and Mark, that also may play into 

what we need to think about in terms of our own 

process then and what the role of the 

contractor would be in this kind of situation. 

Jim? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I have a couple of comments 

on that. First of all, I personally would be 

interested in at least having some response, if 
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appropriate, from SC&A as to whether the NIOSH 

response did address their comments. I'm a 

little confused, for example, about finding 

number six, and it may be that I didn't 

understand and I was actually sort of flipping 

through my papers when -- trying to find this 

when Jim was doing his presentation, but it 

seemed to me, at least from my -- the previous 

presentation on this and the current presenta-- 

it wasn't clear to me that that -- that NIOSH's 

response did address what SC&A's actually 

comments were, which seemed to be more of an 

organ-specific issue, as opposed to a general 

issue about particle distribution. I may have 

misunderstood you, Jim, and -- and so forth, 

but I guess I would be interested if there were 

any other issues like that. 

If not, I think we need to -- I don't think we 

can expect SC&A to do a full response, nor 

should they. There's a lot here in the NIOSH 

response which I think is future work on their 

part, also. I think -- and what I take out of 

this is that they were going to make some 

modifications, however that will be done, to 

the site profile. I think then the Board has 
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to make a decision later on as to do we review 

that? NIOSH may -- may want a decision. How 

should that be reviewed? And that would be 

more appropriate, but I don't think we can come 

to closure on that, other than the sense of -- 

of I think we have to say yeah, we agree with 

the general approach NIOSH is taking on these 

issues. They're going to further explore some 

of these issues, get further information. I 

have some comments at some point where we could 

-- would reinforce what I think should be done 

on some of these issues. But again, I don't 

think we can expect SC&A and NIOSH to come to 

sort of full agreement and closure at this 

point in time. 

 DR. WADE: Just a general observation for my 

part. I think that the -- that both parties 

have come a long way towards resolving issues. 

I think SC&A is to be complimented, as are the 

staff at NIOSH. I think we've come a long way. 

 The question the Board has to contemplate is 

how far do you take this process and when do 

you, as you said, Dr. Melius, when do you say 

to NIOSH please go forward and do what you say 

and bring back that modified site profile for 
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the Board to look at again. So again, I think 

we're coming towards the tail of the curve. 

The question is how far do we go. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Other comments? Or questions? 

What -- what is the Board's pleasure on the 

specific questions that NIOSH has asked? There 

are one, two, three, four -- 

 DR. MELIUS: Could I ask --

 DR. ZIEMER: I see four specific places where 

NIOSH has asked for Board input. 

 DR. MELIUS: And on finding number six, Jim 

started to get up to respond, and then I think 

he --

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, sorry, Jim. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- may be responding to my lack of 

understanding, so --

DR. NETON: Yeah, I might have been not clear 

enough on finding number six, but the crux of 

the issue -- as our understanding -- is that 

there could have been smaller particle sizes at 

Simonds Saw and Steel that were not covered by 

the representative or default five micron 

particle size distribution. And I think what 

you see in their discussion is examples of the 

doses to various organs that could be higher if 
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the particle size distribution were skewed more 

towards the smaller particles. So it's not so 

much an organ-specific issue. It is is it 

plausible that the AMAD, the aerodynamic median 

activity diameter of the particles is 

substantially less than five microns, as 

specified in the default by ICRP so that our 

dose reconstructions are in error for -- to 

those organs that they've identified. But the 

crux of the issue is -- you know, we first have 

to establish is five-micron default acceptable 

or not. 

 DR. MELIUS: Thank you, Jim. That helps. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Wanda Munn. 

 MS. MUNN: It would certainly be helpful to me 

if we could articulate very specifically 

exactly what we've been asked to do today. If 

we as a Board could respond to those four, then 

perhaps we would have a -- we did say four, 

didn't we? Then perhaps we would have a better 

grasp of how much further this rather iterative 

process has to go on. There's significant 

concern, and I think justifiably so, that we 

will never have perfect information. We will 

have to decide when we have adequate 
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information to pursue in as fair a manner as 

possible. So perhaps we could start with 

articulating those four. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me identify the four, and it 

may be that you'll want to cogitate on these 

further this evening and deliberate more 

tomorrow, but the first of them -- I'm looking 

now at the narrative of Dr. Neton's 

presentation, not the power point part. I 

believe the first one is on page 6, the second 

paragraph. That is the issue of the -- the air 

sampling distributions. It's the triangular 

distribution versus the lognormal distribution 

issue and whether or not their selection of the 

95th percentile, I believe on the triangular, 

adequately reflects the upper limit of 

exposures for the workers. That's -- that's 

the first one. 

 And what they've said is NIOSH is interested in 

hearing the Board's thoughts on this issue. 

The second one is near the bottom -- 

DR. NETON: Dr. Ziemer, could I just interrupt 

one second, please? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

DR. NETON: It really wasn't on the triangular. 
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It was on the use of the lognormal 

distribution. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Use of the lognormal, but it's 

under the discussion of the triangular, yes. 

And then the second one is at the bottom of the 

page, and that is the selection of the -- the 

default inhalation mode. This has to do with 

the mouth/nose breathing issue. It's 

articulated at -- in the last paragraph of page 

6. And again, the last sentence says (reading) 

If the Board believes that the default 

inhalation mode for workers at Bethlehem Steel 

should be habitual mouth breathing rather than 

the default values recommended by ICRP, NIOSH 

will reconsider this position. 

So that would be the second issue. 

The third one is set forth on page 8, the 

second paragraph. Toward the end of the 

paragraph it says NIOSH believes the site 

profile adequately and appropriately addresses 

the particle size and deposition properties of 

uranium aerosols at Bethlehem Steel. NIOSH is 

interested in hearing the Board's thoughts on 

this issue and is willing to reconsider our 

position based on the Board's recommendation. 
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This is the issue Jim was just talking about, I 

believe, is the five micron default issue, and 

the possibility of higher doses from smaller 

particle size. 

Let me ask one clarification there, 'cause I 

don't recall, in the SC&A were -- was SC&A -- 

were you talking about a -- was it a .1 micron 

monodisperse or was it -- what was the size? 

DR. MAURO: No, I -- in that case the point we 

were making is that one micron AMAD as opposed 

to five micron AMAD could make a difference. 

And a little bit more rationale for the basis 

for selecting a five micron AMAD would have 

been appreciated. We recognize that ICRP does 

recommend as a default value, lacking better 

information, going with a five micron AMAD. 

But at the same time does not rule out using 

some smaller value if in fact it's appropriate. 

So I guess the point we were making there is 

we'd like to hear a little bit more about that. 

And now Jim has pointed out that there are some 

data, which is very interesting, where he's 

saying that he sees 2.5 micron AMAD particles 

and -- and I have to -- I -- since this is a 

subject near and dear to my heart that I -- I'm 
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familiar with and given the density of the 

particle, we're talking about a two-micron in 

diameter particle, then when you factor in the 

density of the material, which could be five, 

seven grams per centimeter cubed, all of a 

sudden we're talking about an AMAD that's above 

five. So I would say, on first blush -- now 

I'm almost like going back on what I said 

before, but it happens to be a subject I'm 

familiar with, I would very much like to see 

the information Jim has regarding the particle 

size, AMAD, and given the fact that we're 

talking about densities that are fairly high, 

his arguments about five micron AMAD becomes 

very compelling. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let me -- let me see if I 

understand now. On the five micron -- Jim, 

NIOSH is talking about an AMAD, aerodynamic 

mean diameter, which takes into consideration 

the density, does it not, of the particle? 

DR. NETON: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, okay. So -- so the only -- 

the only differential here is what one would 

select for the mean aerodynamic diameter and 

both assuming at lognormal distribution. You -
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-

DR. MAURO: I'd go as far as to say that this 

happens to be one of the ones where I think we 

got closure. This happens to be one of the 

issues that I think -- you know, not -- 

assuming that we have the data -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Be careful what you say. 

DR. MAURO: -- we have -- we have closure that 

is -- I think the -- given that the type of 

evidence that Jim has just made re-- is there, 

what I would say is that five micron AMAD as 

the default value for this particular exposure 

scenario we're talking about certainly seems to 

be appropriate and reasonable based on the 

information Jim just presented. 

I take the risk of saying that with my 

colleagues sitting to my left. I'm cert-- my 

sense is, though, that since this is a subject 

that I -- sort of out in front of, I -- I will 

take the liberty to say that I think we've got 

one here that we could put in the check column. 

Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And the main point, though, was to 

justify the selection of it then. Yeah, thank 

you very much. 
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And then the -- on page 10 -- on page 10, 

paragraph three, NIOSH does not believe it's 

necessary to adjust the external exposure 

values in the site profile. NIOSH is 

interested in hearing the opinion of the Board 

on this issue. 

So I believe, Dr. Mauro, those are the items 

that NIOSH has asked for specific feedback on. 

I think what I'm -- what I would like to do at 

this time, if the Board's agreeable, is allow 

you some time to think about these things. We 

have other work sessions later in the week. 

want to move on to the public comment session, 

unless Dr. Roessler, you have a pressing 

comment before we do that? 

DR. ROESSLER: I think so, because we just saw 

how easily one of these was handled by Dr. 

Mauro addressing this specific point that we 

were going to address. I find it really 

difficult to cogitate about the other ones, 

even overnight or over another day, without 

having some sort of general comments or 

instruction or guidance from SC&A. After all, 

they're our subcontractor. I think they 

deserve to give us -- 

I 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, and one of --

DR. ROESSLER: -- some guidance on --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- the possible responses would be 

not necessarily to resolve the issue at this 

meeting, but to instruct NIOSH and our 

contractor as to how they should go forward, 

and that's another thing you can cogitate on. 

I like to use that Indiana phrase, cogitate. 

Okay? Is that an Indiana phrase? It sounds 

like it, doesn't it? Hoosiers. I can say 

that, I'm one. 

GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT 

Now we have a public comment period coming up. 

Before we actually have public comment, let me 

introduce some folks who are here, and I hope 

we don't overlook anyone we should, and I'll 

ask them just to stand so they can be 

recognized -- and I hope I pronounce names 

correctly. Tom Horgan with Senator Bond's 

office -- Tom, are you still here? There's 

Tom. Thank you. Debbie Dornfeld with Senator 

Talent's office -- Debbie here? Thank you, in 

the back. Jim Mitus*, is it, Mitus, from 

Representative Todd Aiken's office. Jim, do we 

have that correct? 
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MR. MITUS: That's correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Welcome, all of you. 

Also here this afternoon we're pleased to have 

Mayor Graham, who is Mayor of the City of 

O'Fallon, Illinois, and he's requested -- been 

requested to attend and would like to address 

the group during the public comment period, so 

we'd be pleased to hear from Mayor Graham. Are 

you here, sir? Thank you. Please approach the 

mike. 

 MAYOR GRAHAM: Thank you very much for helping 

me out. I have a City Council meeting tonight, 

but I had some comments. First I'm going to 

start by showing you my correspondence over the 

last two years dealing with my parents. I grew 

up on the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in 

Burlington, Iowa. I lived there from 1948 

through 1966 when I graduated from the 

University of Iowa. I want to thank the 

committee and especially Senator Harkin and 

Senator Bond for the work they are doing and 

making me informed. 

I just am going to be fairly brief. Both of my 

parents worked at the plant. I worked at the 

plant. My uncle and aunt worked at the plant. 
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I have a brother and sister that worked out 

there. My father worked on Line 1, which was 

the top atomic energy line, security clearance, 

that -- for those 30 years. My mother worked 

on various lines. 

What I'm trying to get at is there was a lot of 

exposure out there. My parents would have 

taken a job at that plant at that time even if 

they'd known the exposure, because that's -- 

that's how it worked. They grew up during the 

Depression. They came up and wanted to work. 

 But what we're upset about is the process, and 

I know you're trying to get through that. It's 

very disconcerting to have thousands of people 

-- I grew up there, I know many of the people 

that worked there. I knew many of the people 

that have passed on. To have to go back and 

reconstruct a medical history back to 1948, 

provide that information, mail it in and then 

receive response after response back saying 

that at that particular plant they cannot 

provide the exposure for those people. They 

don't have any records. So it's very 

difficult, as I talk to people in my home town 

and they're saying well, here we are. We 
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provided it. 

We can prove that these people died of cancer, 

which is one of the criteria. But at the same 

time, on the -- and I'm going to say the 

government, and as part of the government, I 

understand; it's frustrating for both parties. 

Okay? But the reconstruction of the exposure 

cannot be done. Many of these people -- I 

actually worked out there on these lines -- 

would be yellow. They would turn yellow from 

the products we handled -- their face, their 

hands -- and none of this has been explained to 

this date. 

In addition to that, actually growing up on 

that ordnance plant -- and it was a wonderful 

place to live, I'll tell you that now. But in 

my back yard I could see the test shells that 

they fired out there. Some of them did contain 

test traces of radioactivity. Everyone at that 

ordnance plant ate from the gardens. Now we 

all have heard of Chernobyl and we know that 

there have been medical problems from the windcarried radioactivity in those areas. I've 

requested on many occasions the -- I think 

they've done soil samples. None of those are 
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forthcoming. 

My point is is that all these people have been 

hurt. They don't want anything free. We don't 

really -- you know, I'll live fine. My parents 

are dead. That isn't the point. What they're 

upset about and what you need to understand is 

that it took all of those years till 2000 till 

this was disclosed to them, all these medical 

problems they've had for all these years. 

 And I appreciate what you're doing, but when 

they send these form letters out that this is 

full of, I think that I am of average 

intelligence. Now some people would argue 

because I'm a mayor, so I'll just tell you that 

now, but I don't think the average person can 

go through this process and file most of these 

claim forms, even though you've provided the 

800 numbers. You call the 800 numbers, many of 

the people are part-time. So if you call for 

Mary Ann today or Tom tomorrow, they'll tell 

you well, they will be working next Thursday. 

So it's just -- the process needs to be cleaned 

up. The program needs to be -- if you're going 

to send out and say look, if there's cancer 

involved, you're going to be paid -- and I have 
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several letters that say that -- then if they 

prove cancer, you know people are upset, just 

give them the rules, the criteria, and let's 

move forward. People deserve answers and I 

think that's what you're doing. Thank you for 

your time today, sir. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And thank you, Mr. Mayor, for 

being with us today. 

We're going to proceed with the public comment 

period. I would like to point out if you do 

wish to make comments that if you have 

particular issues that deal with your own -- 

with a case, if you're a claimant or relative 

of a claimant, we -- we would ask that you not 

ask this Board to, in the public forum, deal 

with your case. You're welcome to share with 

us your story, but if you have particular 

issues, be sure to see one of the NIOSH staff 

people so that they can follow up with you 

after the meeting. You know, if you want to 

know where some document is or what has to 

happen next in particular cases. We're more --

this Board is here to hear your comments, but 

we are not in a position to answer, in the 

public forum, questions about particular cases, 
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is -- I hope you all understand that situation. 

So we're going to proceed -- 

UNIDENTIFIED: Excuse me, there was a lot of 

people that came in on a bus and what time does 

that bus leave, 6:30? 

 DR. ZIEMER: The question is, there's people 

that have come in on a bus? 

UNIDENTIFIED: Okay, we were wondering about 

the time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me tell you how many names I 

have here. I have -- I have 27 people who have 

asked to address the assembly, and we -- we 

have -- we have set aside an hour and I think 

we can go over that if we need to, you know, go 

a little longer than that, but you need -- if 

you are addressing the assembly, you need to be 

fair to your fellow addressees and -- and save 

time for them, too, so -- and -- 

MS. BROCK: Dr. Ziemer --

 DR. ZIEMER: Denise, yes. 

MS. BROCK: I was just curious if anyone would 

mind if the people that rode in on a bus -- we 

provided some public transportation, but it 

does leave at a certain time. I don't know if 

that would be 6:00 or 6:30. If anyone would 
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mind if those people went maybe first or if we 

started running over before the bus -- so the 

bus doesn't leave without them, if they could 

make comment? 

 DR. ZIEMER: That would be fine if --

MS. BROCK: I think there's only ten, so -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: If those that are the bus group, 

if you would take it upon yourselves to come to 

the mike first -- who are the bus -- the folks 

on the bus? Would one of you just start -- you 

need to indicate who you are and then 

sequentially just come to the mike. 

 The Chair must excuse himself briefly, and I 

will be back. It's not that I don't want to 

hear what you say, but the Chair must take a 

comfort break. Lew, if you will -- 

 DR. WADE: Sure. 

 MS. DANIEL: My name is Gwen Daniel and I'm 

speaking for my husband, Carl Daniel, who 

worked at the uranium division of Mallinckrodt 

from 1954 to '66, and then he worked downtown 

at the Mallinckrodt -- at the Mallinckrodt 

plant in the plants, and he died of cancer four 

years ago, of lung cancer. 

I myself -- I know this isn't brought up, but I 
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went to school out at the Weldon Spring School 

during the '50's, and a lot of my classmates 

have died of cancer and I -- myself included. 

I haven't died yet, but I have had mouth cancer 

and had to have part of my jawbone removed, but 

apparently there's a lot of residual 

contamination out there and was during the 

'50's. That's all. 

 DR. WADE: Could I have your name again, 

please? I'm sorry, ma'am. Your name? 

 MS. DANIEL: Gwen Daniel. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you. Other bus riders? Okay, 

let me get the -- let's just go down the list 

then according to the time that you signed in. 

The next name that I have is Fran Ryan. Is 

Fran with us? 

MS. STROPES*: This -- this is Fran Ryan, my 

sister, and I'm reading her comments. 

Three of my -- my name is Fran Ryan, and mine 

is Flo Stropes, and I'm the elder sibling of 

our father, Frederick Summers*, who worked at 

Mallinckrodt in the '30's, '40's, '50's and 

'60's. He was a very excellent employee. 

Three of my family members worked at 

Mallinckrodt. Back in 1943 Mallinckrodt 
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workers were told they were performing a 

partic-- a patriotic duty. Unfortunately, 

without their knowledge or consent, they were 

being exposed to unacceptable levels of 

radiation. This has been compared to human 

experimentation that took place in 

concentration camps during World War II. 

Many of these people helped make the atomic 

bombs that ended World War II. And later, 

nuclear weapons that protected America during 

the Cold War. In 2000 the compensation program 

was set up to help workers and their survivors. 

 The difficulty arises in proceeding -- in 

providing the burden of proof. The reason for 

it is the company records are missing or 

destroyed, and doctors are retired or dead. In 

2005 Senator Christopher Bond introduced a bill 

which would help ease the burden of proof for 

former workers at Mallinckrodt Chemical 

company. Senator Bond's measure was 

unanimously approved by the Senate. We are 

forever grateful to Senator Bond for all of his 

assistance. 

When I was 22 I watched my father, Fred 

Summers, die. I took care of him at night 
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after I came home from work. I gave him pain 

shots, which is one of the hardest things I've 

ever done. Then some six years later I watched 

my sister Annie -- she worked at Weldon 

Springs, as well as Destrehan -- become sick. 

I will never forget the Saturday morning 

walking in with my mother, and my three-yearold nephew running up to us saying "I can't 

wake Mommy. I even tried waking her with my 

drum." And then his 16-year-old sister coming 

in and saying "I think Mom is gone." My sister 

should not have died that young and left these 

young kids. Even they were never the same 

again. 

Since some of the reports came out I've had to 

relive these memories again, causing great pain 

once more. The injustice of course in my 

sister Annie's case is that if the reports 

would have been public, she wouldn't have -- 

she would have -- wouldn't have lived but her 

suffering could have been made eased more. 

I have watched my other sister, Delores 

Stuckenschneider, suffer through cancer twice 

and always live with the fear that it will come 

back. She worked also at Weldon Springs and 
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Destrehan. 

 After 9/11 President Bush was quick to offer 

the survivors $1 million. America didn't cause 

9/11. It was caused by terrorists from Saudi 

Arabia. This proves that we are a generous 

country. In contrast, the atomic energy 

workers have been waiting five years for 

compensation. In fact, some have died waiting. 

They are made to feel like criminals in a court 

of law. They are waiting for compensation for 

something that was caused by their own 

government, without their knowledge or consent. 

I would suggest that while you are in town you 

visit Weldon Springs and see for yourself what 

a toxic waste site it is. None of us here, 

myself included, would have -- and myself, my 

sister -- would have been here if it hadn't 

been for my father and those who worked with 

him at -- in the '40's. He helped to make the 

bomb components that ended World War II. What 

would have happened had they not done that? 

And let's not forget the men who worked in the 

'50's and helped to win the Cold War. 

When I was sitting with my dad taking care of 

him at the end, he kept saying "bill of 
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lading," and it stuck in my mind and all those 

years it never made sense until those reports 

came out. And I think maybe he wanted to tell 

me this. I don't know, I can only guess. What 

I do know is that my father was one of the 

great generations of Americans. He worked at 

Mallinckrodt's in the '40's, '50's and '60's. 

He taught his five children a lot about 

responsibility, loyalty and love. The atomic 

energy workers have shown they're patriots. 

Now is the time for you to show them you 

appreciate what they did for America. 

I did not write any comments, but I'd like to 

make a few. I want to know who -- who was 

running the show at that time? Why weren't 

these protected with safety measures? I'm a 

nurse and I've been a nurse over 60 years. We 

have lots of ways that we protect thing, you 

know, that -- that you're -- that you're 

exposed to. If -- if that had been done, would 

you be here today or would we be here today? 

 DR. WADE: Thank you both very much. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Who's next? We still 

have more people from the bus? 

 DR. WADE: No, we have no bus people. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: No more bus people, okay. Dan 

McKeel? Dan is from Washington University St. 

Louis. 

 DR. MCKEEL: Yes, sir. Good afternoon. I'm a 

pathologist at Washington University, and I was 

also here in October at the 2003 meeting. But 

today I'd like to briefly address just three 

aspects of the Mallinckrodt Special Exposure 

Cohort petition that you'll hear about tomorrow 

and discuss. 

The first is that I really am quite puzzled and 

very disappointed that the Mallinckrodt SEC 

that we're going to hear about appears not to 

cover MCW uranium division workers who worked 

for the same company but did not work at the 

Destrehan plants 2, 4, 6 or 7 from 1942 -- from 

'57, but who did work at Weldon Spring and/or 

Hematite. And I also -- and those people 

worked in the '50's, and then this also does 

not cover the construction workers, the 

truckers who worked for MCW uranium division 

for multiple agencies, the Atomic Energy 

Commission, ERDA, Department of Energy, at any 

of those three sites covered at any period. 

And I think this is very unfair and very 
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unjust. 

Now perhaps that's going to be done in the 

future, but I really think it should be done 

with this proposal. 

I also believe that the Mallinckrodt site 

profile should have included and should include 

in the future multiple technical basis 

documents, not just the one for the Destrehan 

Street facility, but also for Weldon Spring and 

Hematite. The latter two components have not 

appeared on the NIOSH docket. I did see one 

paper today that said that it was being 

prepared for the end of April this year for 

Weldon Spring. Nor have the site profiles been 

posted on the OCAS/NIOSH web site. 

I was made aware that there was a site profile 

meeting last week at the Weldon Spring 

Superfund interpretive site. And I guess my 

comment is that if these kind of meetings are 

being held about the Weldon Spring site, or 

Hematite, that they should be advertised and 

that all the stakeholders should know about 

them. And I wonder why this meeting wasn't 

made -- made known-about. 

Last time I addressed the committee I was 
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concerned about two articles by ORAU'S Dr. 

Elizabeth DuPree-Ellis, and I questioned then 

why those two documents were not included in 

the Mallinckrodt site profile. I definitely 

think they should be included in this new Rev. 

1 of the Mallinckrodt Technical Basis Document 

that I understand was extensively discussed 

last month at the TBD review held at the 

Cincinnati NIOSH office. I've attached these 

two copies this time so that if you wish to 

include them, you may do that. 

But I am struck by the fact that SC&A, who 

prepared the draft evaluations of the SEC 

petition, found that NIOSH was unable to do 

adequate MCW dose reconstructions for 1942 

through '48, and that they came up with the 

interesting conclusion, I thought, that the -- 

although they had dose data from 1949 to '57, 

they had to ask the Board for advice because 

they questioned the validity of the data. And 

these kind of considerations tell me that my 

fall 2003 concerns about missing and inadequate 

MCW dose data in the ORAU scientific papers 

were quite on target. 

 For that reason, and others, I believe that the 
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entire MCW cohort, '42 to '57 inclusive, should 

be awarded SEC status and receive compensation 

without further fruitless attempts to do 

accurate dose reconstructions with flawed or 

missing radiation dose data. 

My final point is a brief procedural concern, 

and that is that on Friday, I believe, 

approximately 570 new pages of documents 

pertinent to the SEC petition for Mallinckrodt 

were placed on the -- on your web site, just a 

few days before this meeting today. There was 

a disclaimer that the draft SEC evaluation by 

SC&A had not been even reviewed by the Advisory 

Board. This late posting was reminiscent of 

what happened before the -- before the -- the 

2003 meeting when the TBD was approved and 

posted on the NIOSH web site on October 24th, 

just four days prior to the 28th/29th meeting. 

And I would simply suggest that this time 

period is insufficient to allow careful 

consideration of these reports by either the 

public or the Board. 

 Anyway, thank you very much. I appreciate the 

work you're doing. I do appreciate your 

letting us comment. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Dr. McKeel. The Chair 

would like to comment -- in terms of the 

posting of the SC&A reports -- that at the time 

of the Bethlehem Steel report the Board was 

operating under a policy that we would not post 

these in advance of the Board meeting. This 

was objected to greatly by the Bethlehem Steel 

people, some of whom are here in the audience 

today, and the Board revised its policy to make 

the document, in its draft form, available to 

everyone at the same time it became available 

to the Board. That is -- that is why it was on 

the site and, in the interest of public 

transparency, the document becomes available to 

everyone at the same time it becomes available 

to the Board. So I hope you understand why 

that is. We had not reviewed it yet, either, 

and that's why the disclaimer. It's the 

report. We're glad to have input from you or 

anyone else on the report, but that's the 

reason. We want to make everything available 

that we have for our deliberations. 

Let me continue now. We have Mr. Ed Walker. 

Ed actually is a Bethlehem person. Ed? 

 MR. WALKER: Thank you, Doctor. It's a 
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pleasure seeing you all again. I want to thank 

you for the opportunity to talk in here and 

from what I've heard there's a lot of people 

here that have almost the same issues that we 

have up at Bethlehem Steel. So I've cut my 

speech in half, which I'm sure'll make y'all 

happy, but there -- there are a few issues and 

-- and maybe tomorrow, so if there's a public 

speaking period I may have a few more. 

But really in respect for these people that are 

here -- I'm with Bethlehem Steel Group and I 

have cancer and I'm a claimant from Buffalo, 

New York. And I put my claim in in 2001 and 

I've been denied a few times. And the -- I'm 

here kind of to talk today on the site profile 

and the size of Simonds Saw facility, which 

they used. And I'd like to ask Dr. Neton a 

question. What size was the Simonds Saw 

facility, do you know, where they actually 

worked on uranium? Do you have any idea? 

DR. NETON: (Off microphone) The size of the 

(unintelligible) inch rolling mill where we got 

the high air samples? 

 MR. WALKER: Yeah, where the two rollers are 

at. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: For the record, I think -- we 

can't hear Dr. Neton's response. 

 MR. WALKER: Oh, okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: If you do want to respond -- 

 MR. WALKER: It's kind -- it's kind of 

important or I wouldn't ask. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I don't have the exact 

dimensions with me, but I'm sure we can obtain 

that. But as indicated in the drawing, there 

are -- there were two rolling mills positioned 

fairly next to each other, and a furnace and 

then a quenching table and a weighing station, 

but I don't -- I don't know the exact 

dimensions of that area of the facility. 

 MR. WALKER: Okay. I -- I went out there and 

visited the site. I took my wife for a ride 

one day, and we only live about an hour from 

it, and I couldn't get to it, either. It was 

blocked off, but I could see from a distance, 

and I would say the facility was -- probably 

wasn't much further than here from the wall in 

front of us and possibly to the side of us. It 

was just a section of a plant that had two 

rollers in it and it was on a mud floor and it 

had a platform so they could slide their 
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uranium or steel, whatever they had, by hand -- 

they put this up on the platform. And the 

reason I'm telling you the size of this 

building is because Bethlehem Steel building 

that we worked in uranium in was about 1,000 

feet long. It was around 30, 40 feet high and 

about -- I'm -- and this I'm kind of guessing 

at, I -- I have talked to people but it's kind 

of iffy; some say 70 feet wide, some say 50, 

but it was a pretty wide building. But after 

these bars that were rolled with uranium, which 

were a continuous rolling, as Jim Neton said, 

they would go onto a rolling table, and that 

was a series of rollers. 

Now this rolling table that I'm referring to, 

and I got this information from people that 

worked there. I was there myself. Some of 

them were more familiar, could give me a more 

accurate description. I got drawings at home. 

What actually happened, they had rollers and 

shears. This -- this rolling table alone, 

after it went through this six stands of 

uranium, is 375 feet long. To put that in 

perspective, that's about four times the length 

of this building. It was around 50 feet wide, 
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so I'm guessing maybe half -- this is just the 

roller bed inside the building. I'm guessing a 

little -- little wider than here -- here to the 

side, and it was all rollers. As the steel 

come off these hot -- out of these hot stands, 

it would roll out. There was dogs -- what we 

called dogs that would come up and -- this was 

all rolling, all the dust falling down, and it 

would put the steel aside and store it till 

they want, then they would drop it in and roll 

it down again. 

 Now we're told and Mr. Neton said that -- I've 

seen the reports, too, that says that this 

facility was cleaned up at the end of every 

rolling so it would be ready for steel rolling. 

Okay. 

 Underneath this rolling bed, which was about 

three -- three feet off the floor, was a 

basement. And in this basement -- it's eight 

foot tall, and all these gears and that that 

roll -- that move these bars from one side on 

this -- on this cooling table was operating to 

move this around. It was full of nothing but 

gears, shafts, chains and they had to clean 

that out periodically. They had five men to 
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clean that out. 

Now if you read the documentation, it says that 

if they finished their rolling by the next day 

when the shift came in, this place would be 

clean of uranium. The crew was usually five 

men, if everybody showed up for work. Most of 

the rollings were done on a Sunday. I cannot 

phantom (sic) -- I worked in the plant myself, 

I worked on the furnaces, I cannot phantom 

(sic) that place being anywhere nears clean, 

knowing how some of the workers worked down 

there. There -- there wouldn't be a chance -- 

any equipment you took in there, vacuum cleaner 

or anything, to clean up that area down below. 

That's a full cellar underneath this whole bed 

four times as long -- and I hope you understand 

my concern. There's -- this drops down. All 

the scab -- scaling fall off these rollers that 

goes down. This was never cleaned up. We 

can't go there today because the government 

went in and filled it full of concrete. That 

whole lower level, the whole floor that -- the 

place was filled in. So there are no records 

there. There's no way of getting them. 

And then the other problem I had -- and this 
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isn't taken in consideration in the technical 

base data. There's -- there's no allowance 

taken, no air samples taken down there, 

nothing. And it was just virtually impossible. 

There's wires, there's electric motors. That's 

all buried in concrete. So no readings could 

be taken, no readings were taken. 

Now these guys that worked down there, it 

wasn't (unintelligible) standing next to a bar 

going by you for ten hours. This was every 

night that they went in. So I don't believe 

you can get a dose construction (sic) out of 

something like that. 

 Then constantly throughout the documents it 

talks about machining and grinding. What's 

worse than machining and grinding on uranium? 

I've talked to men that worked there. There's 

billet preparation before they could even roll 

these things. They would be going through 

grinders and -- like 50 tons. There's never no 

air samples taken where this grinding was done. 

And you have to remember, Bethlehem Steel had 

no equipment at all to protect themselves, 

either to breathe or eat the stuff, 'cause it 

was in the air. 
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 And we're talking about the air samples, and 

this is not a lie. I was 18 years old when I 

worked there, and I would go in there and every 

man at the end of the shift -- every man that 

come out of there, when you would cough it was 

like licorice. You would cough for maybe 20 

minutes when you come out of there with black 

stuff. And I'm sure there's ore dust in there. 

I mean I'm not going to argue that. A lot of 

it -- may be more than that, but we had no idea 

how much uranium was mixed in with it. 

Every -- every man in my locker room I can 

remember as a kid, and I can still remember, 

just got brought up to me, in the corner of 

their eye was black, a dot, like sleep in your 

eye. They'd come back from the job carrying 

their tool bag, just -- just like somebody had 

taken chalk and covered their face black. And 

this was every day. And again, some of it -- 

and probably a lot of it -- was ore dust, but 

what about the people that worked in uranium? 

So -- and my contention is this kind of stuff 

wasn't monitored. 

 So the billet preparation room where they -- 

when they got these billets, they had to prep 
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them, and this is mentioned -- this isn't 

something that it's my little story. This is 

mentioned in the declassified documentation I 

got. There's nothing mentioned in the dose 

reconstruction at all about any air samples 

taken at the billet preparation. If you're 

going to prep 50 ton of steel, that wasn't done 

ten minutes before you -- you started up the 

rollers. That had to be done maybe days 

before. 

 There's so many uncertainties in the Bethlehem 

Steel plant that I don't know how you could 

complete a dose reconstruction, you can modify 

it all you want. And the one bad thing about 

it is, it was last June -- we -- I've been 

getting denied 15 months I've been denied on a 

technical base document that supposedly had a 

site profile on it. Last June we had a meeting 

and I was told -- and it's documented -- that 

that's the first time anybody ever spoke to 

anybody worked at Bethlehem Steel. I got a 

crew of 15 -- around 15 people together. We 

had a meeting. We explained this kind of stuff 

-- not quite to this detail that I have now 

because you constantly learn every day -- but 
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that's the first time that NIOSH ever spoke to 

-- I was being denied for 15 months on a 

technical base document that had none of this 

stuff in it. 

Not only that, I ate that stuff. And I had a 

display out at that meeting. I sat there and I 

ate my sandwiches and stuff. It was never 

mentioned in the technical base document. Then 

all of a sudden, we -- we redone the technical 

base document and it was included. Why wasn't 

it included when the document was first put out 

15 months earlier because reports from Simonds 

Saw said that you can't get a proper dose 

reconstruction without ingestion. Now if you 

had had a document from Simonds Saw and you 

were reading it and you based our site profile 

on it, you would have -- have to have seen it. 

So -- well, I've used up my own time, so at 

that -- our group and the group I represent 

from Buffalo just would -- maybe if you can get 

me an answer before I leave and go back to 

Buffalo. Just how long do we have to wait? 

We've been waiting -- shouldn't this stuff been 

done when the program started? Here we are 

four years later and we've gotten no place at 
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this point. Until the audit came out and we 

got some people digging in and finding out this 

information, it meant nothing, what I said or 

anybody said went on. We were just -- we were 

cut right off. And I think this is a wrong in 

the most fundamental value in American justice, 

really, for the Bethlehem workers and for these 

people down here. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, Ed. Let's see, 

Brown -- is it --

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 

(Unintelligible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm sorry? Is it Rena -- Rena 

Brown? I'm -- I'm having trouble reading the 

writing here. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 

(Unintelligible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Huh? 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 

(Unintelligible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. Tom? 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) I pass. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. Thank you. Delores 

Stuckens? 

 MS. STUCKENSCHNEIDER*: Stuckenschneider. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Stuckenschneider, okay. I didn't 

go past the line here. Okay. 

 MS. STUCKENSCHNEIDER: I am Delores 

Stuckenschneider, and first I would like to 

thank you for coming to St. Louis again. I'm a 

former employee of Mallinckrodt Chemical Works 

and worked at the Destrehan and Weldon Springs 

plant for nine years. Before I read my 

statement, I want to thank Senator Bond for all 

the help he's giving -- is trying to give us to 

obtain this compensation. I really appreciate 

it. And my heartfelt thanks to Denise Brock, 

who's worked so hard for all of us for the last 

several years. 

The first time I heard about the compensation 

was in the St. Louis Post Dispatch on January 

12, 2001, four years ago. Former Secretary of 

Energy Bill Richardson said, quote, This 

compensation that has bipartisan approval is 

for workers who were sickened or died from 

exposure to radiation or other hazardous 

substances while working on nuclear weapons. 

He added, quote, This is the law. It is an 

entitlement program not dependent on 

appropriations, and this is going to happen. 
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He also stated, quote, Workers need to contact 

us, but the burden of proof is on the 

government, not the workers. We will help 

workers determine their eligibility. 

 But four years later, we're still waiting. 

When I read the article about the reason for 

the compensation, I was shocked. Then it 

turned to anger and disappointment that my own 

government has put me and others in harm's way, 

without our knowledge or consent. I couldn't 

believe it. I lost a father and a sister 

because of this. 

I'm having trouble seeing today, too. 

I attended the first meeting held here in St. 

Louis at the Millennium Hotel July the 26th, 

2001. There were representatives from the 

Department of Energy and Department of Labor 

present. I understood them to say that they 

would be able to get our employment records, 

medical records, and even records from 

insurance companies on medical bills we paid 

years ago. When I sent in my application it 

said to enclose employment records and medical 

records. 

After three requests by mail and phone, 
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Mallinckrodt sent me a certified letter stating 

they had no record of me working for them. 

couldn't believe that, either. 

Finally the Department of Labor sent to Social 

Security for the dates. This delayed my 

application from moving forward for several 

months. With my application I sent the 

surgeon's report, pathology report showing it 

was a rare type of breast cancer, and X-ray 

reports, all of which I thought was enough to 

prove I had cancer. I was later informed I 

needed a letter from my oncologist stating that 

he administered chemotherapy to me after the 

surgery. They also wanted to know what chemo 

drugs he used for both cancers, and wanted the 

stage of the lung metastasis. 

 My oncologist's secretary told me he said, 

quote, They should know that a metastasis to 

both lungs is stage four. 

I understood the burden of proof would not be 

on the workers, but it's getting to the point -

- oh, why bother. And I think if it had not 

been for Denise Brock getting involved, a lot 

of us would have given up. 

After I graduated from high school I applied 
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and was accepted for a position at Mallinckrodt 

Chemical Works. I was overjoyed, and when I 

found out I would be working for the Atomic 

Energy Commission, that made it even better. 

had just turned 18 years old, and I thought it 

was so cool that I was going to be investigated 

by the FBI and they were going to check my 

school, family, friends and neighbors so I 

could have a secret clearance to work there. 

The pay was good, and I would be working in a 

company my dad and sister worked at. How much 

better could it get? 

As I found out later, working there came with a 

high price and we paid it. My dad and sister 

are now deceased, in my opinion because of 

their employment at Mallinckrodt. My sister 

died at the age of 39, leaving two young 

children, and my dad died at 68. 

My dad worked at Mallinckrodt in the shipping 

yard area at the main plant for 45 years, from 

1917 to 1962. He died at age 68 of lung 

cancer. My dad had no desire to retire at 65, 

but was told he had to. Unless someone can 

prove otherwise, I am convinced now that his 

last X-rays at Mallinckrodt showed he had spots 
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on his lungs and this was the reason he was 

made to retire. I have been stonewalled in my 

attempt to get his medical records from the 

Department of Energy under the Freedom of 

Information Act. 

 While working at Mallinckrodt I don't remember 

my dad taking sick days. He didn't believe in 

them. And he never complained of feeling bad. 

It was only after he retired that he told us he 

didn't feel well. I have no medical training, 

but I think I have heard lung cancer cannot be 

detected on an X-ray for several years. If Dad 

had known what he had had earlier, he had a 

better chance of surviving. At 67 he went to 

surgery, but the surgeon said the cancer had 

traveled through his whole body, and he died 

six months later. 

I have heard from plant workers who said that 

they knew they were taking part in making 

atomic bombs, but they didn't know the dangers. 

As I worked in the office, I had no idea this 

was the ultimate goal, or that I was in any 

danger. We were told not to discuss our job 

with anyone, at work or at home. 

I received 91 pages of my medical history at 
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Mallinckrodt. Now, since I've learned the 

dangers we were exposed to, I realize why we 

received a physical every year, and records 

were kept of our sick days and the nature of 

our illnesses. I was surprised that it 

supposedly showed my radiation exposure from a 

film badge. I didn't wear a film badge. I 

wore an identification badge showing I had a Q 

clearance, and I took it home every day. To 

the best of my knowledge, I never turned it in. 

A few times I would forget to bring my badge, 

and since I worked in the plant area I had to 

get a guest badge from the security guards. 

This might be where they got the exposure 

information. When I got this badge I did the 

same as I did with my identification badge, and 

that was to put it in my purse or pocket. I 

took it out when I had to pass the security 

guards, so this would be the only time it was 

out in the open. It's hard for me to find 

their claim monitoring my exposure credible. 

I understand your purpose here today is to 

focus on the Destrehan plant, and I hope you do 

what is right for the workers here, and also at 

Weldon Springs. I think many of us worked at 
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both plants, and since both plants were 

Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, I can't understand 

how or why the Destrehan plant site profile was 

completed over a year ago and Weldon Springs 

hasn't been started yet. 

I submitted my application July 27th, 2001. It 

wasn't until April, 2004 that my claim finally 

made it to the last major process to 

completion. I'd call and check on the status 

every three or four months, and my last call 

was January 3rd of this year. I was told by 

someone at Oak Ridge Associated Universities 

that they're waiting on a couple of documents 

before they can begin the Weldon Spring site 

profile, and it might be started in April of 

2005. Then I have to wait who knows how long 

to have a physicist examine it. Now I'm told 

there's a conflict of interest and it's on 

hold. 

I don't think I'm the only one who feels that a 

fair reconstruction dosage is impossible to get 

on Weldon Spring employees. Unless you were 

actually there in the plants, there's no way 

one can tell or even guess what the employees 

were exposed to and in what way. Weldon 
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Springs is now a seven-story-high tomb of 

radioactive waste and is called a, quote, 

tourist attraction, unquote. The fact that the 

plant and all its contents were buried tells me 

the whole area was contaminated and too 

dangerous to move. If you have never seen it, 

I hope all of you will take time to go and look 

at it. And if you feel safe, maybe take the 

steps to the top of the mound. Frankly, I 

wouldn't trust it myself. 

At Weldon Springs I was a clerk-typist in the 

Plant 6 office. My office was connected to the 

plant area by two inside doors. Plant workers 

came in the office, as did office workers into 

the plant. I recall putting on paper coverings 

for my shoes, which I didn't always remember to 

do. I don't recall worker -- plant workers 

having a change of clothing when they came into 

the office. Almost everything we worked with 

or handled came directly from the plant area. 

I would like to mention that a lady I worked 

with in the same office at Destrehan and Weldon 

Springs also had a rare type of breast cancer, 

the same as I did. I am the first one in my 

family to have breast cancer, and she told me 
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she was also the first in hers. Coincidence? 

I don't think so. 

I mentioned this before in a statement I read 

when you were here in 2003 about all the dust 

that accumulated on our desks daily, and I had 

to walk outside between the plant and the main 

building several times every other day to 

relieve the switchboard operator. And like 

some of the other women, the nylons I wore, 

which were mandatory, were short-lived. They 

would tear and shred. Mallinckrodt had start 

reimbursing us for them, so they did know what 

was causing this. The odor coming out of the 

stacks was sometimes overwhelming, and it's 

kind of scary now to know what we were inhaling 

this all the time. 

It's good that the government is finally 

acknowledging what was done to the nuclear 

workers and giving the compensation, but 

unfortunately it can't bring back employees 

that have died. It can't give back the years 

of suffering cancer (unintelligible). I hope 

the present government -- or anyone, for that 

matter -- learns from this that no one has the 

right to put anyone's health or lives in danger 
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without their knowledge and consent. It really 

upsets me that we are waiting so long to 

receive this compensation. This is surely 

bureaucracy at its worst. It's sad that 

several employees that I know of have died 

since the compensation has started. I am 

hoping that the present government will show 

compassion and make restitution for the wrongs 

that were made to the nuclear workers before 

any more former workers pass away. 

Last, but certainly not least, I would ask that 

you pass the administrative SEC that Denise 

Brock has petitioned. The SEC has got to cover 

all the years that work was done for the Atomic 

Energy Commission at Destrehan and Weldon 

Springs. It really is the only fair and right 

thing to do. Thanks for listening. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Delores. Next I have 

Anthony Windisch. 

MR. WINDISCH: Given that much documentation 

about radiation exposure has been lost or 

destroyed, I can really appreciate the 

difficult task that you, the committee, are 

having with dose reconstruction. In trying to 

do dose reconstruction, did you study the work 
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habits and the environment of those many 

workers who have already died of cancer? And 

would any person who worked in that same 

environment have enough radiation to also die 

of cancer? Please consider that in view of 

lost or destroyed documentation. It's one 

thing to play with graphs and everything else, 

but us people out here who are waiting for a 

decision by -- by your -- your people don't 

really understand a lot of those charts and 

what they mean. 

The bottom line is that many of our coworkers 

have already died of cancer, and we're 

wondering if we have to be dead before we have 

any chance of getting compensation. Thank you 

for the job you're doing, and thank you for 

your attention. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Anthony. Next I have 

Janet Davis. Or Janette, maybe, Janette Davis? 

It appears to be Janette or Janet, Janette. 

MS. DAVIS: Yeah, I wonder who put my name 

down? Well, I'll say a little bit 

(unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: One of your friends signed you up, 

did they? 
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MS. DAVIS: Well, they might've. I did work 

for Mallinckrodt since 1951 until 1959, and I 

was down at Destrehan for about seven years, I 

guess. And then I went out to Weldon Springs 

for two years. 

One thing that kind of irks me is about hearing 

that things are lost. I worked in the lab. I 

did a lot of testing on everything there was -- 

well, down at Plant 6. I was there when they 

closed down because I couldn't get a ride out 

to Weldon, and I tested everything that we 

really knew what the radioactivity was there. 

It was on record. Whatever -- whatever 

happened to it, I don't know. And being's I 

was the last one -- one of the last ones down 

at Plant 6, I did a lot of testing out at 

Weldon Springs, and we knew what the 

radioactivity was out there. I don't know what 

happened to the records. 

And I was one of the dumb ones that I kept one 

of my check stubs, and I know what my check 

clock -- the clock card number was because I 

was so proud of that check. I was making a 

little bit more money than my husband was then, 

and I kept it. And for some reason, I told my 
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family, keep this because I don't know -- if 

something ever happens and I'm gone, that 

you've got something that I worked there, and I 

still have that stub today. 

Mom told me way back, she said Janette, is -- 

is it really safe there, and I said well, sure, 

Mom; they say it's low grade radiation, radio-- 

ation, and she said they remember people that 

used to wet a little brush and they painted the 

numbers on a watch and it was called radium, 

and -- are you going to have any trouble with 

this? No, I -- no trouble. Well, here I am. 

I did a lot of work in the spec lab and, as I 

say, I couldn't get a ride out to Weldon so I 

was one of the last ones, and I learned every 

job there was in the lab, and it was up to me 

then whenever things came through that I would 

work in that particular little area. I think I 

will write down a lot of the things. Someone 

said to me today, you know, you really ought to 

write a lot of that down because a lot of those 

people aren't here today, and I guess I'm 

getting to be one of the last ones. 

I've got a lot of things wrong with me, and you 

know what, they can't find out why. And I'm 
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told well, you're going to have to live with 

it, and I have been living with it for many 

years. I couldn't go to work because I can't 

drive. I have vertigo real bad, and -- been to 

the doctors at Barnes, still get the answer, 

can't help you, you'll have to live with it. 

So I really don't know if any of that pertains 

to this or not, but I'm here listening, and -- 

I did worry about Weldon, though, about things 

getting into the wells. Maybe I'm saying 

things I shouldn't say, but I'm being honest. 

Oh, and I did -- and when I did work down at 

Plant 6, one of the last jobs I had is -- they 

had sewers, and I didn't know what the sewers 

were. And they told me that they were the 

holes, and they had like either bricks in them, 

and I guess they flushed a lot of the -- would 

we call it sludge or -- this liquid into these 

sewers, and then it was my job at the very end 

to test those before they were flushed into the 

river. Well, one time I ran like the devil to 

try to get somebody over me because boy, did I 

have a high radium conte-- or uranium content. 

And in those days -- oh, it was too late; it 

was flushed. And I was told that -- that would 
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have been in the '50's -- about $10,000. There 

wasn't said -- too much said then that it was 

the uranium that went in there, but -- I could 

go on, just little things that I saw. 

I saw the trucks pull out and the stuff would 

be steaming that would be in the truck, and I 

think back a lot about a lot of that. And that 

was a hot spot then. That was hot in the north 

-- in north St. Louis. I don't think people 

realized what they were living around. And one 

time we had a big tank blow up. We didn't know 

what it was. We were told to stay by our job. 

And you weren't supposed to talk too much to 

the other people. You had your work to do, you 

did it, and -- so you stay -- I was doing 

spectrographic work and I stayed by it. And I 

thought gee, I really ought to let my folks 

know that I'm going to be late, you know, 

getting home. And so when things kind of 

quieted down and I called Mom and she said 

well, gee, I know exactly what happened. I 

said well, I can't tell you what it's about, 

but I'm going to be here for a while. And it 

was on the news and the radio and -- you know. 

But that was an empty tank that blew and blew 
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the wall out and it -- it was interesting. 

Interesting work. 

I did get a call from one of the reporters from 

the Post Dispatch a couple of years ago, and I 

said well, Mister, I really can't talk this 

over with you. If you show me your 

credentials, why -- and then maybe I can. And 

so then when it was in the paper and they told 

the different parts per million and different 

things, well, then I felt well, I guess it's 

out now so it's okay. 

But it was fun watching them when we left Plant 

6 and they had the little model of what Weldon 

Springs was going to look like. We were going 

to have a lot less contamination in the system 

because that was glass instead of what we -- 

what we had in Plant 6 that was metal. And it 

was -- those were just a few of the things I 

knew, but thanks for giving me your time. I 

didn't know I had so much I could talk about, 

but if you have any questions, I'll be glad to 

help you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Next, Louis Mc-- McKeel, 

McKeel. Louise? 

 MS. MCKEEL: I guess I'm the videographer and I 
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don't normally speak, but I do think I will now 

because I've collected a lot on this particular 

topic and about Weldon Spring. And I have some 

feelings, if not all the facts that Dan has. 

Actually I want to say, too, that I have quite 

a few facts at my house because I counted up 

154 filing drawers in my house. Not all of 

them are on the Weldon Springs topic, but I 

could tell you the exact number and then you'd 

know exactly how much we know. But we -- Dan -

- I'm going to go on about this just a little 

bit. 

Dan began by going to Busch Wildlife to just 

relax after the 80-hour week that he has at 

Barnes Hospital. And I said Dan, you know, 

there might be a little problem out there. And 

he was very believing and saying -- I mean 

we're part of people who've been in nice 

neighborhoods, good schools, we're not used to 

the government fudging on us. We thought we 

knew the people in the government. Some of 

them are our ancestors and stuff like that. So 

we weren't expecting the worst. 

But then I got him interested in just looking, 

and now it's several years later. And I think 
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Dan is really angry. I think he's more angry 

than I'm about to confess myself, but we think 

that the basic thing that we have noticed, just 

as citizens who started out going to Busch 

Wildlife Reserve, is that the Department of 

Energy and all the people associated, everybody 

who belongs to an agency in this room, is 

kidding us, me and Dan and a lot of the people 

here. And by this time I have a lot of tape to 

show you all, talking about things and the way 

-- I mean I just made some notes at lunch, and 

I know you're bored and the bus is leaving, but 

I also have spent a lot of time behind the 

camera and I'm going on a little bit. 

We're al-- Dan and I are always looking for 

facts and statistics. I can brag that I got an 

A in statistics in social work school at 

Washington University for my master's degree in 

social work, so I know a little bit about it. 

And I'm interested in it, besides. Maybe 

that's why I even take up topics like this. 

I want to say, too, that Dan and I have been 

married 43 years, and I think the -- we had 

what I believe I heard lately, a beautiful 

ambition to try to be a good doctor and try to 
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deliver health care to the community and the 

world that we knew at that time. And we really 

haven't deviated from that just a whole lot in 

the 43 years, and I can still stay that. 

And it's in that spirit that I'm kind of 

appalled at what I got on my yards and yards, 

my miles, no less, of videotape. But anyway, 

some of the things that bother me, just from 

this morning, and I'm a little bit off the 

street. I don't know everything here, but 

things that just concern me a lot -- dose 

calculation could be accurate. I mean 

everybody seems to just forget that fact that 

it's -- that it is -- that you don't have the 

records. They seem to just let that go by. 

But there should have been records. There 

could have been records. If I'd been a 

secretary in anybody's office in this room and 

I'd lost the records, I think I'd have been 

fired. And especially important records that 

have to do with people's health, with their 

lives, with their death and with their -- their 

families for a generation or more to come. How 

could you lose such records? What is that? 

Unless of course it might be a little 
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deliberate, it occurs to me, after I tape a few 

miles of videotape about it. 

And I see selective memory here. I mean, you 

know, if it's beneficial on one side, well, 

then you might be able to do that. But if it's 

not beneficial, then you probably can't, and on 

and on. 

But anyway, the dose calculation's based on 

badges. You know, the people standing here in 

-- in various feet of measurements of yellow 

cake, I hear and things. A badge doesn't 

necessarily even measure all of that. And 

badges can malfunction. I know every little 

thing that you have can do that. A lot of 

times we've been hearing where people just 

didn't wear them all or most of the time. 

Certainly I have heard that people working in 

these conditions weren't told. And I really do 

not believe that they were. Some, perhaps, but 

probably not. Even -- even the most -- the 

least educated people who I've talked to about 

this have common sense. And they just weren't 

-- that nobody appealed to their common sense, 

and that angers me just as a wife and mother 

and human being on the planet. 
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Anyway, they didn't wear -- a lot of times they 

didn't wear their badge during the most 

dangerous parts of the job. Some of this is 

rumor, but then again, I think there are people 

here who could probably confirm some of that. 

Another thing about -- I think they didn't 

check the arithmetic on adding up about the 

badges. I mean everything is fluffy about the 

numbers on this thing. It's well, you know, it 

might be -- but it is not concrete. There is 

not the data. There is not a level of fact 

that I think that most people could expect from 

-- from an ordinary secretary. And I believe, 

as a taxpayer -- I feel doubly vulnerable. I 

think that what could be going on here is a way 

to try to appease and try to make it seem and 

put these folks off and you know how hard it is 

to get here and everybody's dying and all these 

other problems, delay, I guess we could get to 

-- in psychology you can go through the defense 

mechanisms and you can use all of those to get 

out of the situation. But the point being that 

when -- the fact really is that the taxpayer 

might become vulnerable to this after all. 

They might wind up needing to pay more for 
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these people than everybody here seems to kind 

of think that they might get out of. And that 

would be bad for me, the taxpayer, my kids, and 

then basically everybody in the room and all 

that, but taxpayer might need to pay for that. 

 In the meantime, the taxpayer needs to pay for 

28 meetings to discover what I feel plainly and 

boldly and perhaps meanly and crassly are very 

fluffy thoughts about not addressing the basic 

human needs of the workers in this room, in 

this nation, and probably in the world. So I'm 

just going to say that on my first day here, 

and maybe I'll hear some things that'll make me 

feel better. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, Louise. Next 

we'll go to William Headrick. William I 

believe has some overheads, too, that he's 

going to use. Is that correct, William? 

MR. HEADRICK: That is correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: All right. 

MR. HEADRICK: I have a power point 

presentation loaded on the computer. Should I 

come up and start it or... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let's -- I think Chris is going to 

help you out here. 
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(Pause) 

MR. HEADRICK: Thank you. First of all, I'm a 

little young to have worked at Mallinckrodt or 

Weldon Springs, so I put together a slide 

presentation and this is from a letter that my 

mother wrote for the July 9th, 2003 meeting 

which she wasn't able to attend because of 

illness. 

My mother was Shirley Joyce Headrick and she's 

currently deceased. 

She was born on July 28th of 1935. She passed 

away November 15th of 2004. She worked at 

Mallinckrodt from August 5th, 1953 at the 

Destrehan Street plant to August 15th, 1959. 

I'll get into August 15th, 1959 a little more 

in a minute. At that day she was transferred 

to Weldon Spring where she worked until 

December 31st, 1967. 

This is a synopsis of the letter, which I'm 

going to read to you. Your letter telling of a 

meeting of Mallinckrodt claimants to be held on 

Wednesday, July 9th, 2003 at the Iron Workers 

Local No. 396 hall 2500 59 St. Louis from 6:00 

to 10:00 p.m. has been received. It is my hope 

to be present, but the health condition of 
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myself and my husband may not permit our 

attendance. If you want to read the following 

into your record, please feel free to do so. 

I am one of the former nuclear workers from 

Mallinckrodt Destrehan site and Weldon Springs 

who has lung cancer. On August 14th, 2002 

surgery on my left lung, with removal of a 

bronchioloalvaolar carcinoma, commonly known as 

Carr's carcinoma, left, my left lung was 

performed. Right lung tumors are inoperable 

due to proximity to veins and artery. Only one 

percent have this type of lung cancer, and 

probable cause are pollutions or radiation, 

with surgery as the only recourse. Chemo or 

radiation treatments are not effective. 

 Having seen the November 24th, 2002 article in 

the Post Dispatch, contacted you for assistance 

and information in filing a claim. Following 

is the summary of events which followed. 

 December 18th, 2002, U.S. Department of Labor 

acknowledges receipt of claim for benefits 

under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness 

Compensation Program of 2002. 

January 30th, 2003, Department of Energy, 

Washington, D.C. acknowledged application from 
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assistance from EEOICPA. 

March 3rd, 2003, U.S. Department of Labor 

advised DOE cannot confirm employment history, 

nor can Mallinckrodt, Incorporated. 

 Actually, they told her she didn't work there. 

However, she contacted the Social Security 

Administration to corraborate (sic) the 

employment information. Now nobody wanted to 

believe her documents that showed she'd worked 

there. 

March 14th, 2003, EEOICPA writes DOE advised us 

they have no information on you. 

April 2nd in 2003 she telephoned DOE and was 

advised when Weldon Spring facilities closed 

contaminated records were shredded and not 

available. 

 June 16th, Social Security records pertaining -

- received proving that she was a Mallinckrodt 

employee from 1953 through 1967. 

June 11th, 2003, Department of Labor 

acknowledged full support for my claim record, 

copy of case file referred to NIOSH for 

evaluation of dose reconstruction. 

She was shocked to read, quote -- from NIOSH, 

when done for research purposes, dose 
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reconstructions may take months to years to 

complete. In compensation programs a balance 

between efficiency and precision is needed. 

When the process is fully implemented it will 

be possible to develop reasonable estimates of 

the time needed to complete a dose 

reconstruction. 

June 25th, 2003 NIOSH received case file 

showing Department of Labor has determined her 

employment and health condition are covered 

over the EEOICPA Act. NIOSH plans to request 

radiation exposure information data from DOE, 

who had already advised her that the 

information was destroyed due to contamination. 

Here's her opinion that was included in the 

letter. 

All of this sounds like delay tactics and 

cover-up with money spent on bureaucratic 

procedures. If records of my employment were 

destroyed due to contamination, am I also waste 

material to be destroyed? How does $200 

billion for massive cleanup of sites, $70 

million for radiation dose estimates, compare 

with $150,000 per worker with cancer who 

breathed alpha or beta-emitting isotopes, as 
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well as being exposed to gamma radiation. 

Radiation exposure was given a very low 

priority, and protection standards negligible 

compared to today. Refer to Missouri Resource 

Review, Volume 8, Number 21, summer of 1991. 

We definitely need Special Exposure Cohort 

status. Shirley J. Headrick. 

Now, since then my mother's passed away, and 

she's asked me to pursue this for her. Give 

you a few of the dates. August 14th, 2002 was 

the diagnosis date. This is after they'd 

removed half of her lung. June 16, 2003, claim 

received from DOL. June 25th, 2003, letter 

sent to claimant. August 25, 2003, telephone 

interview, we're moving fast here, doing good 

work. October 15th, 2003, report sent to 

claimant. What happened for a year? August 

18th, 2004, conflict of interest letter sent to 

claimant. November 15th, 2004, claimant passes 

away during cancer surgery. January, 2005, I 

received a letter from NIOSH. Dose 

reconstruction not started. No explanation. 

They haven't felt like starting it since August 

14th, 2002. 

 Employment information while she was at 
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Mallinckrodt. Enlarged lymph node removed in 

1958 by Mallinckrodt physician at Barnes 

Hospital. Barnes physician and Mallinckrodt 

all refused to share records with the employee. 

My mother assumes that the records were 

destroyed -- or I should say assumed. 

Dosimeter badge and records destroyed at 

Destrehan site after medical exam. She assumes 

this. She knows that they took all of her 

records away from her and took her dosimeter 

badge. And on August 15th, 1959 they 

transferred her to Weldon Springs. This is the 

same day they confiscated all of her records. 

A note about her job. Her desk had to be wiped 

clean from black dust that covered it daily. 

She didn't know what the black dust was. 

A few notes from her employment that she was 

able to keep. They didn't confiscate these. 

Black dust eats holes in nylons. Black dust 

eats holes in car paint. Miscarriage in 1957. 

This is after her employment. Twelve years 

until next pregnancy. Birthing problems. Son 

in hospital after birth, barely survived. Many 

birthing problems and sick offspring, similar 

to other of her coworkers. 
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I note on Federal government efficiency. Dose 

reconstruction has not started in January of 

2005, yet we have a letter from NIOSH claiming 

it started August 14th, 2002. Two letters, 

conflicting dates. DOE claimed records were 

shredded due to contamination of facility, so 

the facility was closed and they couldn't 

verify employment because they shredded the 

records and destroyed the dosimeters. This was 

received April 2nd, 2003 from DOE. 

I'll let you read what you will into that. 

That's what my mother had asked to be read to 

you on July 9th of 2003. It's now only a year 

and a half later and we have not progressed 

actually one second past July 9th of 2003, as 

far as I can tell from listening to the 

discussions today. Maybe we've spent a few 

more billion dollars. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Dr. Hendrick (sic), 

sharing that. I recognize your frustration. 

We have one individual who's one of the bus 

riders that would like to speak. Are you 

approaching the mike now? And please state 

your name for the record, please. 

UNIDENTIFIED: First of all, I want to thank 
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you for giving me a chance to talk. I worked 

for Mallinckrodt --

 DR. ZIEMER: Could you state your name, sir? 

Could you state your name for the record, 

please? 

UNIDENTIFIED: Can I -- I'm sorry? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Give us your name, please. 

 MR. MUECKE: Edward, and the last name's 

spelled M-u-e-c-k-e. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 MR. MUECKE: I worked for Mallinckrodt -- I 

started in 1947. Now I was asked today if I 

hate the company. Truthfully, no. I had no 

reason to hate the company for not telling me. 

As far as I was concerned, they -- they did 

hold things back. I didn't know what I was 

doing and I didn't mention what I was doing, to 

anyone. In those days you didn't do it because 

the Russians didn't have the bomb. But the 

building that I originally worked in, the sign 

on the outside, it said that the first uranium 

produced in the first atomic bomb was produced 

in this building. Well, I stayed in the 

radiation department from 1947 and I -- ten 

years later I -- well, I went from Plant 4 -- 
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was knocked down and I went to Plant 5 that was 

built and was going to be one of those things 

where the air is going to be -- well, it -- at 

Plant 4 I should say it was deplorable. I mean 

it was the worst of all. 

We had -- they gave you a respirator, but it 

was so heavy you would never wear it. And none 

of us wore it. We didn't know -- we were 

mixing what we called green salt and mixing it 

with magnesium. And when you put those into 

what they call a bomb shell, we had no -- in 

the Plant 4, we had nothing to pick up that 

dust, no ventilation at all, you know -- or 

vacuum, I should say, to pull it away. 

 Well, when they -- we moved from there down to 

Plant 6E, they tore that building down, that 

Plant 4. When they tore that down -- they 

wouldn't do it today, but they just knocked it 

down and they took all the bricks -- hauled 

them all away. Then they came in and took 

eight feet of -- approximately eight feet of 

dirt -- of bricks and all out, and they went 

down and they came in with fresh dirt and put 

dirt in there. They then came and asphalt that 

-- and if you go down there today, it's a 
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parking lot. 

 Now that Plant 6E that was so good, well, when 

I went down there -- it was, in the beginning 

it worked real good. And all this air that you 

were taking in from dust and all, they had big 

containers that -- bags, we called them, and 

what they had on the outside was air blowing in 

there. And what that air was doing, as it 

moved up and down, was knocking that material 

loose and it'd fall into these drums and they 

were hauled off to the airport. Well, I'd go 

along -- I was utility men (unintelligible) and 

we'd go along and I'd say to the foreman, I'd 

say that one section up there, I cannot -- 

well, it was collecting the dust. It had an 

electric eye in there and the electric -- 

anything breaks that beam shuts the thing down, 

so I go to the foreman on a Monday and I said, 

in particular -- I went to him and I said I 

can't keep that thing on automatic. The thing 

will not stay on automatic because it was being 

-- breaking that -- you mean to tell me we 

worked on Saturday time and a half, Sunday 

double time, and you come to me on a Monday and 

tell me that you want to shut that thing down? 
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Put that thing on manual and forget about it. 

 Now the person outside here, he's breezing 

along thinking boy, I'll get a big breath of 

air. He takes a big breath of air, he's taking 

all of that (unintelligible) what we were 

putting out into the air. He didn't know it. 

That's when they moved that Plant 6E out to 

Weldon Springs. Well, I had too much seniority 

at that time to go to Weldon Springs, so I 

stayed there. 

And the media asked me if I disliked them. No, 

I must have liked them a little bit because I 

spent 50 years with them. 

I want to thank you for the time. Thank you. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you, sir. Next we have Mrs. 

Tyndale. 

 MS. TYNDALE: My name is Tina Tyndale. My 

husband's name is Franklin Tyndale. He was 

employed at ABB, the former Mallinckrodt plant, 

from February, 1992 through June of 2001 when 

the plant closed. He will be here tomorrow to 

talk about his position, the exposure and that 

type of thing. I'm just here to tell our 

story. It's very difficult for him to talk 

about. 
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He worked a lot of seven-day, 12-hour shifts. 

He also started body-building while employed 

there. He was in excellent health. For the 

body-building he consumed large amounts of 

water, mostly at work, since this is where he 

was most of the time. He never was told that 

the water was contaminated. 

He also worked on the scanner where the rods 

had to be activated to check for proper 

enrichment. This area had the highest dose of 

radiation in the plant. 

In July of 1998 he noticed a bump on his upper 

thigh. He went to the doctor and was told it 

was a hematoma from lifting weights and not to 

worry about it. He had it checked again in a 

couple of months and was told the same thing. 

I grew more and more concerned because it kept 

getting bigger. He went back in February of 

'99. This time he was sent to a surgeon, who 

did an MRI. The surgeon told us at that time 

he didn't think it was anything to worry about, 

but he could have it removed in a month or two 

if he wanted. The following week the surgeon 

called and said they'd changed their minds, 

they wanted to remove it immediately. I knew 
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in my heart that someone else had looked at 

that MRI and saw something the other doctor had 

not, and it wasn't good. This is when our 

nightmare started. 

They did the surgery a few days later. While 

Jim was in recovery the doctor came out to talk 

to me. He wouldn't answer any of my questions. 

He only looked at me and said he needed to keep 

his patient's spirits up. I knew instantly 

that it was cancer. He didn't have to tell me; 

I knew from his behavior. I just didn't know 

at that time it would be one of the most 

rarest, most aggressive forms of cancer known 

to man. Most doctors will never ever see it in 

their entire career. That is why it was 

misdiagnosed for so long as a hematoma. 

The doctor walked off and left me standing 

there with all these questions and no answers. 

I'll never forget that feeling. I was in a 

panic. I was scared and I was sick inside. 

went outside and cried hysterically, finally 

realizing the doctor wasn't going to tell him 

anything until the biopsy came back the 

following week. I knew I had to go in his room 

and act as if everything were okay. As soon as 

I 
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I entered the room, he knew that something was 

wrong. He could tell I'd been crying. When I 

looked up at him there was panic in his face 

and he kept saying what is it, what is it, you 

know something I don't. I had to lie and 

convince him that I was just tired and, you 

know, I -- I didn't know anything. Inside I 

was physically sick. All I could think about 

was him dying. 

 The whole week waiting for the biopsy was hell 

because I couldn't think about anything else. 

I just kept praying they were wrong, it must be 

anything but cancer. 

When we walked into the office for the results 

of the biopsy, the doctor sat on a stool. He 

spun around and he had this horrible, sad look 

on his face. I could literally see the tears 

in his eyes. He couldn't even talk. It took 

him about two or three minutes, and all he 

could say was I am so sorry, you are so young. 

That came out of his mouth before telling him 

he had the cancer. And he just kept saying I 

am so sorry. 

We sat there. We couldn't even speak. We 

couldn't do anything. It was just devastating. 
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He finally said it was ovular sarcoma*, a very 

rare, very aggressive form of cancer. There 

was no talk about helping him get through it. 

There was no talk about, you know, he was going 

to pull through it, we were going to take care 

of this, we were going to -- you know, there 

was none of that. He just kept saying I'm 

sorry. I mean he basically handed him a death 

sentence. 

The whole visit is just a memory of pain, 

sadness, anger -- because I knew instantly that 

he got it out there at that plant where he 

worked. There was no doubt in my mind. There 

was no cancer in his family. He was too 

healthy. 

The problem was, no one in this area even knew 

about sarcoma. We kept -- contacted all the 

major hospitals. The doctor tried to find a -- 

a cancer doctor, to no avail. There was no one 

here that could treat this cancer. So we had 

to start going to M. D. Anderson in Houston. 

We went down there on the first visit, and when 

the doctor walked in he sat down and he said 

we're shocked that you're here. We can't 

believe you're alive. I said what do you mean 
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by that? And he said sarcoma usually kills in 

four to six months undiagnosed. He had already 

had the knot for ten months. I was even 

scareder (sic) then. At that point I didn't 

know if he was going to live a few more days, a 

few more weeks. 

They decided to do surgery again. We got to 

come back home for I think it was three days. 

He said he wanted him to come home and be with 

his family for a few days before the surgery. 

So we came back home. We went straight back 

down there. We were only home for a day, I 

think. 

We got married that Sunday, in fact -- got 

married that Sunday, March 28th, '99. We left 

for Houston Monday morning. Our honeymoon was 

spent at M. D. Anderson Hospital with him 

recovering from the surgery. 

They say that the surgery went well. They 

biopsied all the tissue that was left in his 

thigh. They took out his whole quadrant. He 

has a huge -- you know, there's no muscle or 

anything there, it's -- his leg is just all 

indented. He had to stop body-building. It's 

just been, you know, very devastating for us 
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financially, emotionally. 

They made us come every three months for the 

checkups for the first two years. We had to go 

to Houston every three months. Depending on 

the copays and deductibles and the trip, 

sometimes those trips were about $4,500 each. 

I mean it just financially took everything he 

had. 

After two years they put us on six months, and 

they told us that the fifth year we could 

change to a year. Before that even happened, 

they saw changes in the MRI so they put us back 

on three months. You know, it's just a 

constant. Every time we go there we never -- 

we never know if they're going to say it's 

metastasized. 

This form of cancer metastasizes to the brain 

and to the lung. And when and if it does, 

there's very, very little chance of survival, 

and that's what we're faced with every day, 

because the cancer is so rare that there have 

been no long-term studies. So what they're 

telling us is their good guess. So we're 

looking at probably, after five years, 30 to 50 

percent chance that it will metastasize. 
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So as I stand here right now, having to come 

here and even beg for, you know, compensation 

we shouldn't have to do, you know, I know in my 

heart that at any given time we could have to 

go to Houston and stay there for 12 months of 

chemo and radiation. We can't financially even 

do that without this money. It won't be 

possible. We would have to stay here, and that 

will be a death sentence for him, because they 

can't treat it here. It's extremely important 

for him to be compensated. 

He is so afraid of this he will not take out a 

loan. We cannot get a house. We cannot get a 

car. We cannot do anything. We can't even use 

the credit cards because he knows that if 

anything happens to him, I'll be left holding 

all that and I can't do it. You know, these 

trips are -- are just outrageous for him. He 

stays so depressed for a whole week. The whole 

trip down there, the whole time we're there, he 

doesn't talk, he doesn't leave the hotel room 

to even eat, we order in. I mean he doesn't 

even speak he is in such a depression until he 

gets the word from the doctor that the cancer's 

not returned yet. 
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And that's what our lives have been like since 

he worked at that plant. It's just -- it's 

hard -- it's hard for me to comprehend why we 

all have to keep coming here and doing this and 

getting denied, because the excuses just aren't 

good enough for me anymore. The bottom line is 

you all know all the people who have died and 

are still dying today, and nobody's doing 

anything about it. That's just outrageous to 

me, you know. It's time for all these people 

to be compensated for the hell they've been 

through and their families. It's really time 

to stop all these excuses of there hasn't been 

a site profile and there has -- what more proof 

do you need than death everywhere? Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you for sharing a very 

difficult tale. 

Let me just sort of inform you all where we are 

at the moment. We have one bus rider who 

wishes to speak, and the gentleman -- okay, 

yes. 

 MR. VOGNER: My name is John Vogner. I worked 

for the uranium division downtown, and also at 

Weldon Springs. And I've been trying to get 

hold of my medical records and I've got all 
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kinds of runaround. I've called Paducah and 

Oak Ridge and everyplace else, and I had a time 

establishing the fact that I had worked for 

Mallinckrodt. I originally wrote to 

Mallinckrodt for my health record and also my 

employment record. And after bugging them back 

and forth and everything like that, I finally 

heard from a lady down there and she sent me a 

copy of my employment. 

Now while at Mallinckrodt at the Destrehan 

plant on the river there, we had pitchblende 

coming in at that time from the Belgian Congo. 

And from what I understand, that was pretty hot 

stuff. I was in and out of tanks and stuff 

like that, working on level indicators and 

things on that order. And I worked all through 

the plant with Mr. Windisch that brought this 

up, and like I say -- I mean where are my 

records at? Was I hot enough they decided we'd 

better get rid of these things or what? And 

that's what I'm worried about. Am I supposed 

to drop dead so my wife has to go ahead and go 

through all of this stuff? Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. We have 

approximately a dozen individuals left, half of 
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whom have asked for five minutes each, some 

have asked for ten minutes each, and some 15 

minutes, which tells me we have well over an 

hour yet. What I would like to find out is 

whether any of those who have signed up plan to 

be here either tomorrow or the next day and 

would be willing to do their comments at one of 

the -- we have several other public comment 

periods coming up tomorrow and Wednesday. If 

there are those, I would suggest -- if they -- 

if they're willing to. We can certainly stay 

as long as we need to, but if there are some 

who would be willing to postpone their comments 

to one of the later sessions, that might help 

some who are not able to do that and who may 

need to leave. 

Are there any who signed up that might be able 

to do their comments -- could you tell us your 

name? 

 MS. MAUSER: Terri Mauser. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Terri? Thank you. Any others? 

 DR. WADE: A lady over here. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Where? 

 DR. WADE: The lady right here. 

UNIDENTIFIED: My name is Donna 
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(unintelligible) and (unintelligible) tomorrow. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Donna, thank you. Any 

others? 

 MR. SCHNEIDER: (Off microphone) I'm Clarence 

Schneider and I'll wait till tomorrow. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Clarence. 

 MR. BOYD: (Off microphone) James Boyd. 

 DR. ZIEMER: James? Thank you. 

UNIDENTIFIED: My name is (unintelligible) and 

(unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's fine. Any others that 

would want to postpone? Okay, fine. Let's 

proceed then. Let's see, actually the next -- 

you can go ahead, ma'am, and then I'll catch 

the others. 

MS. CROCK: My name is Jamie Crock and my dad 

was employed by Mallinckrodt. He's been 

deceased for about seven years, but he was 

employed by Mallinckrodt at Destrehan and at 

Weldon Springs. Again, as everyone else has 

said, I would like to thank you for this 

opportunity to talk. My first question to you 

is have any of you been to Weldon Springs to 

see that site? 

I don't understand how the government can spend 
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the millions and billions of dollars that they 

have spent --

 DR. ZIEMER: That may be the phone 

(unintelligible), and sorry, we'll get this 

corrected here -- a voice from somewhere -- 

cyberspace. Sorry for the interruption. 

MS. CROCK: That's okay. I don't understand 

how the government can spend billions of 

dollars to clean up a site and not help the 

people who worked there. These people invested 

a lot of time and energy to help the government 

be able to do what it needed to do, and the 

government has basically deserted them. We've 

been at this for probably five years, and all 

we keep doing is getting mail. We've spent 

enough money in mail between us and NIOSH and 

dose reconstruction and all of those people 

that you could have paid the $150,000 and saved 

yourself a lot of mail and time. 

But anyway, he -- my dad had radiation-induced 

cataracts at the age of 40. He had skin 

cancer. He hauled uranium waste in his car. 

He would take us as children and show us where 

he delivered it to and put it in bunkers in 

Busch Wildlife area. And we still live with 
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this today because we have the house that he 

built when he was employed by Mallinckrodt, and 

he -- I'm sure he brought that home from work 

with him every day. He was a payroll 

specialist. He was in the plant. He would 

have to try to read time cards that were 

completely covered in dust. So like I said, 

basically it's just, to me, all of you people 

being here tonight in this big fancy room, we 

could be helping a whole lot of people. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Shirley Cavaleski? 

Shirley? Is Shirley not -- not here, perhaps 

has left. Okay. 

 Frank O'Hare? Michael Amro? I'm having a 

little trouble reading this one. It's a short 

name, looks like an A-m-r-o, Anro? Okay. 

 Rosemary Zack? Thank you. 

 MS. ZACK: Yes, I worked for Mallinckrodt from 

1957, April of 1957 through December of 1966. 

At that time -- I worked for document control 

when I first became an employee there for a 

number of years, and I do know that one time -- 

and I also filed in the technical library, and 

I do know that at one time I accompanied a 

guard out in the back of the plant and we did -
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- there was an incinerator there and they did 

burn some -- as I was told, it was declassified 

documents. I don't know exactly what we 

burned, but I do know that we did that. 

And when I was in -- 1963 I did suffer a 

miscarriage while working there, and I've had 

three operations -- I've never had cancer, but 

I've had three operations and had non-malignant 

tumors removed. And I have at the present time 

a cyst on my spine and I also have a cyst on 

one of my kidneys. It's monitored by my 

doctors once a year by MRI. And I just wanted 

to bring that to your attention and I guess 

that's it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you very much. Mary 

Jennon -- Jennon, is it? Is that close? 

 MS. JENERRY: Mary Jenerry. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jenerry, okay. Thank you. I like 

the sound of that, Mary Jenerry. 

 MS. JENERRY: Yeah, and I worked in -- for 

Mallinckrodt in 1957 and '58 and in 2000 why, I 

had kidney cancer. I had to have my kidney 

removed. And while I was working at 

Mallinckrodt why, there were a lot of things 

that went on that I -- I didn't think anything 
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of until all this came about. I've seen like 

yellow dust in the cafeteria, and I've seen men 

come in with covers on their boots, but I -- I 

mean I thought we were completely safe. I 

loved Mallinckrodt. 

The guards would go from one station to the 

other, so I don't know, maybe they were out in 

the plant. I'm sure they were. I have seen 

them bring -- one time they brought some frogs 

in and, you know, it was just being like funny, 

showing them to me and they were from one of 

the ponds out there, and they were so deformed 

that I even had to turn my head. It was 

horrible. And -- well, I guess that's about 

it. 

I drank the water out there. I've seen the -- 

out at the pipes I've seen yellow smoke, but I 

didn't know what it was. I think the building 

-- probably the whole building probably had 

contamination in it, but I wasn't aware of 

that. I was young. I was totally trusting and 

I loved working for Mallinckrodt. But now 

every six months I have to go for a blood test 

to see if I -- my other kidney's working. So 

hopefully everything'll be okay. Thanks a lot 
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for your time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Mary. Germine 

Holtmeyer*. 

 MS. HOLTMEYER: ... and --

 DR. ZIEMER: Gerine, I'm sorry, I got that 

wrong. 

 MS. HOLTMEYER: That's okay, everybody has 

problems with it. My husband's name was Robert 

Holtmeyer. He worked at Mallinckrodt at Weldon 

Springs in the '50's and early '60's, and he 

was diagnosed with cancer when he was 49 years 

old, colon cancer. And the doctor said that he 

had had it for years. He was a seemingly 

healthy man with parents and grandparents that 

lived into their eighties. 

The day he came home from the doctor with a 

diagnosis of cancer, I collapsed and screamed, 

That damned Mallinckrodt Chemical, and he 

replied -- and I can still hear him -- I know, 

I know. It was a fear he lived with, mainly 

because he had lost many Mallinckrodt coworkers 

and carpool buddies by now, all due to cancer. 

He was able to walk one of his three daughters 

down the aisle, but never got to see his 

grandsons. 
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I was told that my husband's records were also 

destroyed, and I had to go through Social 

Security and everything to get records to prove 

that he worked there. My claim has been 

denied. However, I have appealed and I'm 

appealing to you right now, please help us. 

Thank you. 

 Oh, I'm sorry, my sister-in-law is with me, and 

her husband also worked there and she asked me 

to get up and say a few words for her. He was 

also my husband's buddy and in the carpool, so 

they had something in common. He worked there 

in the '50's. He was a maintenance man and 

whenever there was trouble somewhere, he was 

called to fix it. He had a boil on his leg -- 

and I saw a picture of it and it was so gross -

- he had a boil on his leg and it would burst 

and burn, and his skin would turn yellow. 

 One time something was leaking at work and it 

exploded, and he had to climb up a ladder and 

pull another man out to save him. Hard telling 

what that was he was exposed to. 

We had ten children. When he died I had five 

of them to raise by myself. He was 55 years 

old when he died. Thank you. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. That 

completes our public comment period. And 

again, I -- the -- one, two, three, four, five 

individuals who volunteered to postpone till 

tomorrow, we will have you on the schedule then 

first thing tomorrow. 

Is there another comment? 

MR. SEMARADI: I was on that list earlier. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. Maybe -- maybe we -- 

maybe you were out when we called your name. 

MR. SEMARADI: Yeah, well, I -- Andy Semaradi. 

I came in earlier and you guys -- after your 

break there and before we -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MR. SEMARADI: And while I'm on a -- while 

these people are on a roll here, I'd like to 

know -- I had NIOSH, OSHA, everybody out there 

at the airport. This is a different thing, but 

like the man said a while ago, he loaded the 

trucks that dumped at the airport. And I know 

for a fact that -- I've got test results, I've 

got samples -- this stuff was dumped out there 

and we've been -- now this man here come up -- 

he had a good presentation on what he was doing 

there. When you're having a hearing like this, 
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how long do these people have to wait? 

Shouldn't this company here have an answer for 

you when you have this here going on? I mean 

I've been fighting since 1996 trying to get 

information from the government on what it is. 

And according to my right to work hazard -- 

workplace hazards, access to your exposure 

records, 29 CFR -- these guys from the NIOSH 

will tell you -- these companies are supposed 

to keep your records 30 years after you leave 

employment. And instead of these guys waiting 

for you to pay them $150,000 or $250,000, can't 

you sue Mallinckrodt because they don't' have 

their records? It says in the rules here 

you're supposed to have the records. I mean 

isn't there a different way? I'm going to go 

after them on the waste water -- individuals 

can sue the government for discharges. Now 

I've had hazwopper* training. I know what I'm 

supposed to do and what I'm not. Now when they 

tell me to pick up contaminated, polluted 

radiation water and dump it into Coldwater 

Creek out there into Missouri and it goes into 

the river, I'm violating the rules and the laws 

if I do anything, but NIOSH, OSHA, DNR, nobody 
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wants to help these people, and it's about time 

-- you know, you people -- I think you've all 

got a good idea that you're wanting to help the 

people, but when you're having a hearing like 

this, when this man puts a presentation up and 

you're going to be voting on something, the 

other company doesn't have an answer, you know, 

how long do they have to wait? It's going on 

forever and it's about time to get something 

done. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

MR. SEMARADI: And why can't they sue 

Mallinckrodt? And if anybody looks, we've had 

air sampling done at the airport. We've had it 

-- okay, what have you got, Washington 

University does it, somebody else does it, and 

what do you -- when you go down to Barnes 

Hospital, what do you see? A Mallinckrodt 

wing, a Monsanto wing, a MacDonald-Douglas 

wing, and these are the people that polluted, 

so they're giving millions of dollars to these 

research places and there's nobody going to do 

a thing about it because that's where their 

money comes from. It's about time you people 

started paying somebody. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. That will then 

conclude our session for today. Let me remind 

you that the Board will be in session all day 

tomorrow -- I'm looking for the agenda. I 

believe we start at 8:30 in the morning. 

 DR. WADE: 8:00. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Or 8:00 in the morning, providing 

all the equipment works well. There are some 

public comment sessions on the schedule 

tomorrow, so I hope many of you will be able to 

be here. Thank you very much. We're recessed 

till tomorrow. 

(Whereupon, an adjournment was taken to 

Tuesday, Feb 8, 2005.) 
235 

C E R T I F I C A T E OF COURT REPORTER
 

STATE OF GEORGIA
 

COUNTY OF FULTON
 

I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court
 

Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the
 

above and foregoing on the day of February 7,
 

2005; 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
 

2nd day of March, 2005.
 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REP9 TE1k 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-21`2