THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

convenes the 

WORKING GROUP MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

CHAPMAN VALVE SEC 

The verbatim transcript of the Working 

Group Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health held in Cincinnati, Ohio on 

April 10, 2007. 
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C O N T E N T S 

April 10, 2007 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO 

NIOSH REPORT 11 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 131 
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TRANSCRIPT LEGEND 

The following transcript contains quoted material. Such 

material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

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

an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 

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

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

word(s) when reading written material. 

-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 

of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 

reported. 

-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 

the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 

available. 

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

"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 

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

without reference available. 

-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 

failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 
 

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

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D.

Senior Science Advisor 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Washington, DC 

BOARD MEMBERSHIP 

CLAWSON, Bradley

Senior Operator, Nuclear Fuel Handling 

Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory 

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 

POSTON, John W., Sr., B.S., M.S., Ph.D.

Professor, Texas A&M University

College Station, Texas 

ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

University of Florida

Elysian, Minnesota 
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IDENTIFIED PARTICIPANTS
 

BLOOM, CINDY, NIOSH/ORAU

BROEHM, JASON, CDC WASHINGTON

CHANG, CHIA-CHIA, NIOSH

DOWNS, AMIA, NIOSH

ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A

MELO, DUNSTANA, SC&A

NETON, JIM, NIOSH

ROLFES, MARK, NIOSH

WU, PORTIA, SEN. KENNEDY 
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P R O C E E D I N G S

 (9:30 a.m.) 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO 

DR. WADE: Okay. This is Lew Wade and -- and my role 

is serving as the Designated Federal Official 

for the Advisory Board, and this is a meeting 

of a workgroup of the Advisory Board. This 

particular workgroup is focused on the Chapman 

Valve SEC petition. This workgroup is chaired 

by Dr. Poston, who is here in the meeting room. 

Members are Griffon, Clawson, Roessler and 

Gibson. And I've identified all of their 

presence on the telephone. 

What I'd like to do is start around the table 

here and do introductions. I'll start with 

members of the NIOSH team and extended team, 

then we'll look for representatives of SC&A's 

team, then we'll look for other federal 

employees that are on the call, we'll look for 

worker/worker representatives, members of 

Congress or their staff who are with us, and 

then anyone else who would like to identify 
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themselves. 

As we do the introductions, particularly the 

NIOSH team, the SC&A team and the Board 

members, I'd like you to identify whether you 

have any conflicts relative to this site -- 

that is Chapman Valve. 

 MR. ROLFES: My name is Mark Rolfes. I'm a 

health physicist with NIOSH. I have no 

conflict of interest. 

DR. NETON: I'm Jim Neton. I'm with NIOSH. 

have no conflict of interest. 

 DR. POSTON: John Poston, Texas A&M. I have no 

conflicts. 

DR. MAURO: John Mauro, Sanford Cohen & 

Associates. No conflicts. 

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

No conflicts. 

 DR. MELO: Dunstana Melo, SC&A. No conflicts. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Larry Elliott, NIOSH. No 

conflicts. 

 DR. WADE: It's back to Lew Wade. Other than 

Ray, who's here and working, no one else is in 

the room. 

Let's ask on the line for other members of the 

NIOSH team to identify. 

I 
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 (No responses) 

 Other members of the NIOSH team? 

 (No responses) 

 Other members of the SC&A team? 

 (No responses) 

 Board members, starting with workgroup members, 

Mark Griffon? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Mark Griffon, no conflicts. 

 DR. WADE: Brad Clawson? 

 MR. CLAWSON: Brad Clawson, no conflicts. 

 DR. WADE: Gen Roessler? 

DR. ROESSLER: Gen Roessler, no conflicts. 

 DR. WADE: Mike Gibson? 

 MR. GIBSON: Mike Gibson, no conflict. 

 DR. WADE: Are there any other Board members on 

the call, other than the workgroup members? 

 (No responses) 

Okay. Other federal employees who are on the 

call by virtue of their employment? 

 MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS. 

 DR. WADE: Welcome. 

 MR. BROEHM: Jason Broehm, CDC Washington 

office, no conflicts. 

 DR. WADE: Other federal employees? 

MS. CHANG: Chia-Chia Chang, NIOSH Director's. 
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 DR. WADE: Any other federal employees? 

MS. DOWNS: Amia Downs, NIOSH. 

 DR. WADE: Welcome. Any workers, worker reps, 

representatives of petitioners? 

 (No responses) 

 Members of Congress or their staff? 

 (No responses) 

Portia, I know you're with us. 

 (No response) 

Is Portia still with us? 

 MS. WU: Yes, I am. 

 DR. WADE: Okay, good. Thank you for joining 

us. 

Anybody else who would like to be introduced 

for the record? 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun Makhijani from 

SC&A. I just joined. 

 DR. WADE: Welcome, Arjun. 

MS. BLOOM: And Cindy Bloom is on the line -- 

 DR. WADE: Okay. 

MS. BLOOM: -- from the ORAU team, and I have 

no conflicts. 

 DR. WADE: And Arjun, you're not conflicted at 

this site, I assume? 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, I have no conflicts. 
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 DR. WADE: Okay. Anybody else who needs to be 

identified? 

 (No responses) 

Again, by way of telephone etiquette, if you're 

not speaking, then mute your instrument. If 

you are speaking, speak into a handset as 

opposed to a speaker phone. And be aware of 

background noises where you are because they 

become background noises and distractions for 

all of us. So with that, John... 

 DR. POSTON: Thank you. What I would like to 

do today, and the goals for today are fairly 

simple -- there's been a couple of communiques, 

one from SC&A and one from NIOSH, that we need 

to talk about. I'll play my cards face-up. I 

think there's no problems. What I would like 

to do is hear from John and -- and from Jim 

because the report from NIOSH we have not read. 

And the goal today would be to wrap this up and 

bring it to the full Board in the May meeting 

in Colorado. 

Those are the goals for today. I hope this can 

go fast, but I want to make sure that everybody 

has a chance to express their opinions and so 

forth. 
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John, you want to start or – 

NIOSH REPORT 

DR. NETON: We can do that, then there are 

actually --

 DR. POSTON: Or, Jim. 

DR. NETON: -- three -- two issues I guess that 

we -- in my mind that we need to talk about. 

One is the adequacy of the exposure -- internal 

exposure model matrix and there's been at least 

two correspondences back and forth between us 

and SC&A. Then the second issue is that -- is 

related to the document that we sent out 

yesterday afternoon. It talks about sort of a 

reasonableness evaluation of the exposure model 

itself and does that bound most or all jobs in 

the machining operations in the uranium 

facility. 

 DR. POSTON: Well, that one of course has the 

most interest because some of us haven't read 

it. 

DR. NETON: Right, and I -- I -- we're prepared 

to provide a brief summary of some of the 

salient features in here. Maybe we can start 

with the exposure model, SC&A's evalu-- 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, perhaps I could sort of set 
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the stage and then we'll mature into the more 

recent material that I think addresses some 

very focused issues. 

And when you step back, when all is said and 

done, the -- the fundaments of this exposure 

matrix that was developed is -- is based on 

approximately 40 bioassay samples, and also 

quite a bit of film badge data. I don't 

believe there is any issue -- now please, 

anyone chime in -- regarding external dose 

reconstruction. There's lots of data. Just 

about everyone was badged. We do know there 

were some individuals that were not badged, but 

by and large there's a -- a complete record -- 

a fairly complete record for external so I -- 

unless anyone feels that that needs to go on 

the agenda for some discussion, I feel as if 

that is -- has been taken care of. 

The -- with regard to internal exposure, we 

have these 40 bioassay samples. We believe 

that the -- the -- and they're expressed in 

terms of mass, milligrams per liter. By and 

large, one of the issues that emerged during 

the course of this -- these discussions was 

well, are we certain that we're dealing with 
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only natural uranium, and there was some 

discussion whether or not it was possible, 

based on some sampling that was done in 1990, 

that there might be some enriched uranium that 

was also there. 

I think we, SC&A -- and again I please ask -- 

like for example, Arjun on the line, if he has 

any perspective on this. We believe that 

though there was some -- some -- a couple of 

samples that showed possibility that there was 

some enriched uranium in some of the sa-- one -

- at least two of the -- in two of the samples, 

we don't believe that that -- it -- the weight 

of evidence appears to indicate that -- that if 

those are real values, they did not occur as a 

result of the activities that took place during 

the contract period, 1948 to 1949. We believe 

that if -- the evidence appears that -- that 

during that time period the only thing -- 

materials that were being handled by Chapman 

was natural uranium to support the Brookhaven 

reactor. If there was some residual levels of 

enriched uranium, it was -- it may have been 

associated with work that occurred previously 

for various reasons that we don't need to go 
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into right now but occurred before the contract 

period, or perhaps after. So I think that that 

issue is -- by and large meets our 

satisfaction. That is, it no longer is an 

issue that we're concerned with. 

Finally is -- is the matter of -- and this is 

the -- the issue that I think that the -- the 

petitioners were especially concerned with, and 

that is we have 100 workers -- approximately 

100 workers -- that worked at the facility for 

about a year and -- the period -- the period 

covers about a year and a half as the -- the 

area mo-- time period of most importance, and 

we have 40 bioassay samples. And the question 

becomes whether or not those 40 bioassay 

samples by -- in and of themselves are adequate 

to allow NIOSH to build an exposure matrix to 

place and upper bound on the -- all workers so 

that we could be sure that no workers' 

exposures are -- are underestimated. And the -

- and when we looked into this, we -- we broke 

that issue up into two questions, is -- one is, 

the matrix itself makes use of a chronic intake 

-- assumes that all workers are chronically 

exposed at a given level. But there's one set 
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of workers in the -- that also works -- in 

addition to the chronic exposures to airborne 

uranium, they're also exposed to a -- a spike 

associated with a fire. 

Now the issues that emerged during the course 

of our review had to do with -- I think that 

we've all bec-- are very comfortable with the 

chronic portion; that is, the baseline intake 

that was assumed that occurred over 

approximately a ye-- over a year. In fact, we 

consider that to be a con-- very conservative. 

That is, basically the intake rate that 

everyone is assumed to experience chronically 

is assu-- is -- is a relatively high value 

based on the bioassay results and other data 

that Jim is probably going to talk about a 

little more later. And al-- in addition, it's 

assumed that that exposure occurred -- not only 

the time period between January and November 

when -- well, really April and November when 

the machining was going on. It was assumed to 

extend from January of '48 right through April 

of '49, so -- so the ge-- the basic model, in 

our opinion, extends the period over which 

exposures occur to a period that probably is -- 
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is quite conservative. So in the end, where 

we're coming down is that the -- for the 

chronic exposure time period -- exposure 

scenario, the -- the -- or the consensus at 

SC&A is that yes, that is quite claimant 

favorable. 

Which leaves us with the last piece, which is I 

think the reason we need -- which has to do 

with short-term acute exposures, and there are 

two aspects to that that have been a matter of 

quite a bit of discussion and exchange recently 

of e-mails, work that Dunstana has done, work 

that Jim and NIOSH has done, and the two issues 

have to do with -- one, I call it the issue 

related to fires, fire -- or fires. And the 

other has to do with issues rela-- whereby some 

acute exposures could have occurred. 

And the other issue has to do with the 

possibility that there was -- and we believe 

there was -- an incinerator that was used to 

roast the turnings and other material -- 

uranium and oxidize it. Both of those types of 

activities or occurrences have the potential to 

cause a spike in the exposure, some short-term 

period. 
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There -- the -- so perhaps the best way to deal 

with this is to first talk a little bit about 

the fire and where we stand right now regarding 

that and some of the issues. And then perhaps 

we could then move on to the incinerator, if 

that's acceptable. 

With regard to the fire, the issue that arose -

- and this is an issue that I brought up and 

that Dunstana helped out with -- is that there 

was a urine sample -- set of urine samples 

collected on July 11th, 1948. Tho-- for seven 

people. And those urine samples were collected 

because there was a fire. In other words -- 

and it seems clear that that was the reason 

they went and collected those urine samples. 

The problem we ran into is that well, when did 

the fire occur? Because, you know, if you know 

what the -- and if -- and amongst those seven 

individuals where those seven samples were 

taken, the highest one was .08 milligrams per 

liter. So on that basis you could say well, if 

you observe .08 milligrams per liter on June 

11th, 1948, you could probably back-calculate 

what was the acute exposure from the fire that 

must have occurred in order to cause the .08. 
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And here's the point -- first place where we, 

you know, had some discussion. 

NIOSH has adopted the assumption that the 

exposure occurred on June 10th. Our point was 

well, you know, from the literature, it looks 

like the exposure could have occurred earlier, 

maybe as early as June 1st. And we -- we very 

simply looked at it and said well, what would 

the intake have had to have been if the intake 

occurred on June 1st -- or the 2nd or the 3rd -

- as opposed to June 10th. And if -- if you 

say that that's plausible, then all of a sudden 

the intake -- the acute intake associated with 

the fire -- if it was on June 1st, for example, 

would have had to have been 50 times higher 

than if the intake acute occur-- occurred on 

June 10th and still get .08 milligrams per 

liter in urine on June 11th. 

Now Jim has provided us with material -- I'm 

almost through and I'll let you take it over -- 

I'm sort of just trying to set the table and -- 

so everybody's on the same page. 

Now Jim has provided material in the -- a 

previ-- the one before the one that came out 

last night -- that said okay, we have three 
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reasons why we believe June 10th is the right 

date and therefore the intake for the acute 

intake from the fire is -- is the correct 

value. And the -- the one that -- the three 

reasons, and they're really independent 

reasons, as I see them, is that -- one is if 

that intake occurred earlier and it was 50 -- 

for example, June 1st, and it was 50 times 

higher, the dust loading would have had to have 

been in the hundreds of milligrams per cubic 

meter and these fire fighters would have had -- 

would have experienced dust loadings for an 

extended period of time, perhaps eight hours -- 

on that order -- on the order of several 

hundred milligrams per cubic meter. And we 

agree that that is a very unlikely scenario. 

That is, you can't -- a person -- from the 

literature that we've reviewed, you really 

can't have a -- persons in a room for eight 

hours with the dust loading of 200, 300, 400 

milligram per cubic meter. You can't -- just 

from a respiratory distress point of view. So 

that was the first argument that was made, and 

we agree with that argument. 

The second one that Jim pointed out and we 
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followed up and looked into was that in 

addition, if the person let's say was exposed 

to this acute exposure on June 1st or 2nd or 

3rd as opposed to the 10th, that means on the 

next day -- you know, the -- let's say it was 

the 1st, then on the 2nd, the concentration of 

-- of uranium in urine would have been there. 

It wasn't measured, but it would have been 

there, would have been very high. Would have 

been above one milligram per liter. Now -- and 

Jim's point being that well, we don't see 

people very often getting above one milligram 

per liter, and when we do it's usually 

associated with highly soluble uranium -- you 

know, the UF4s and UF6s -- not -- not oxides. 

And we went into the literature -- you know, 

like you did -- and said yeah, that's true. 

I've got -- in fact, I've got a stack of papers 

here. I -- I got in touch with [Name Redacted] 

and I said [Name Redacted], what have you got, 

and he sent me some stuff and I said son of a 

gun, there you go. 

So bottom line is, we accept those two lines of 

arguments why it really could not have been 

much earlier than June 10th. 
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But then there was a third reason, and to this 

day -- and to this day I don't understand it, 

and Dunstana and I have been looking at it -- 

and Dunstana's here because she's been doing 

some IMBA runs to try to come to grips with 

something, and I guess the -- those two reasons 

alone are probably enough to save the day, so 

to speak, in terms of supporting your position, 

but I'd very much like to get a better 

appreciation of what -- what NIOSH refers to as 

the curve-fitting issue. And I -- in -- in 

brief, the re-- if -- see, to me, if you have 

just one sample from a worker and you get a .08 

mil-- milligrams per liter, and you don't have 

any more after that, you really don't know -- 

you know, I don't see where the curve-fitting 

comes in. And -- and with that -- and now 

maybe we sh-- and at that point I'll turn it 

over to Jim and then we'll get to the -- the 

other issue, the -- the incinerator issue a 

little bit later 'cause I'd like to air that 

out a little bit, although I don't think it's -

- it is center -- is as center -- it is as 

center stage as it was before because your two 

other arguments are very compelling, but I'd 
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still like to go over it. 

DR. NETON: Okay. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: John -- John, before you turn -

- I haven't talked to you for -- this is Arjun 

and I have not talked to you for several days, 

but I -- I have a question about our conclusion 

or the conclusion that you stated. The several 

hundred milligrams per cubic meter depends on 

the assumption that it's type S. 

DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Whereas if it is type M, the --

and we don't know which type it is because both 

assumptions are used in those calculations, so 

it isn't an actual idea of what was present in 

the air, and -- and actually the type M would 

be the more common used in dose reconstructions 

because it would be used for all -- essentially 

all -- or most organs other than lung or 

respiratory tract. So we're not actually 

talking about an assumption of several hundred 

milligrams per cubic meter. There's a range, 

depending on solubility. So -- so I don't 

think it is as physically implausible as you've 

stated it. So I -- I think the evidence is 

much more ambiguous. 
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 DR. POSTON: I disagree with you, Arjun. You 

and I and others went to Chapman Valve and 

talked to the people. We had testimony from 

the people that the ro-- that the uranium came 

in in the form of rods -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. 

 DR. POSTON: -- that it was machined in the 

form of rods --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. 

 DR. POSTON: -- that it exited in the form of 

rods, and I find it a little difficult to say 

that all of a sudden it's going to go into some 

other kind of class. 

DR. NETON: I think particularly if there's a 

fire. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: No -- no, the -- I -- 

 DR. POSTON: I don't think there's much basis 

for what you said. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, I -- I didn't say that it 

came in the form other than rods and went out 

in the form of rods. I'm saying that when 

there is a fire, there's normally a mixture of 

solubilities. It won't be type F, certainly, 

but it could very well be a mixture of type M 

and type S. If you look -- if you try to fit 
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the air concen-- or compare the air 

concentration data at Fernald with bioassay 

data, and there is plenty of both for uranium, 

you actually don't come up with a uniform -- 

with a uniform idea that somehow there is type 

S in the metal area at Fernald. On the 

contrary, there seem to be quite a lot of type 

M or in the old, you know, class W and class Y 

mixtures at Fernald --

DR. NETON: Well --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- so I -- I think that -- that 

there isn't a -- a clear measurement that when 

you have fires it's always all type S. I don't 

agree with that -- with that implication of 

what you said. 

DR. NETON: Well, I think I can -- I might be 

able to clear something up because that might 

become less relevant if I can try to explain 

our position on -- on this issue. We've been 

talking past each other, I think, and I hope 

that today we can get this resolved. 

DR. MAURO: But before you do that, I -- I 

guess I -- I have been operating on the premise 

that it's a fire. If it's a fire, it's got to 

be an oxide --
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DR. NETON: I would say that --

DR. MAURO: -- always an oxide is an S. 

DR. NETON: Arjun's --

DR. MAURO: But that's not correct, you know -- 

DR. NETON: Arjun -- Arjun has some -- some 

merit in his argument, but I think the 

overwhelming majority of this material would be 

insoluble material in a fire, and I -- I've 

done this at Fernald where we've taken air 

samples of oxides in the plant. We published 

an article in Health Physics several years back 

where it was -- my recollection is 90 percent 

type -- it would have been type class Y at that 

point. Any time you're dealing with uranium 

oxidized surface -- surfaces, it's -- it's more 

insoluble than -- than M, so the overwhelming 

majority would be an insoluble form, in my 

opinion. 

But -- but he has -- it may -- let me explain 

to you what we're doing here and this may make 

that argument unnecessary. 

The first thing I -- I think we've mentioned 

this before is that the chronic exposure model 

where we modeled in the acute fire is only 

applied to people who were not sampled as part 
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of the fire. In other words, we're assuming -- 

this will apply to all workers except the fire 

workers. So if a person has a sam-- a urine 

sample from the fire, one of those seven 

samples, we would model that as an acute 

exposure and give them the highest intake that 

would result -- plausibly result from that 

bioassay sample. In other words, we -- we 

could go back to June 1st. That's not 

precluded. And if you read closely, the site 

profile says that. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. 

DR. NETON: So you know, if you have seven 

people who were exposed in a fire, and we 

believe those were the people that were working 

the cleanup of the fire -- we don't think they 

were actually fighting it, they were cleaning 

it up -- you can go back to June 1st and give 

them an exposure. 

What we're trying to cover with this chronic 

model is a situation where a person is working 

on the line, machining and such, and happened 

to be involved in the fire, we didn't know it, 

so he got a chronic exposure model with an 

acute exposure scenario thrown on top of it. 
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DR. MAURO: Uh-huh. 

DR. NETON: And when you model it that way, the 

highest overall intake for the worker is a 

result of the chronic model with an intake on 

June 10th. 

DR. MAURO: Uh-huh. 

DR. NETON: Because as you move that acute 

intake further and further back, it lowers the 

chronic exposure model to such a degree that 

the overall intake is smaller. And that's --

that's the whole point of our analysis. 

So you really have two scenarios here. You 

have one -- okay, I'm a fire fighter, I could 

have been exposed, you would model that as an 

acute intake and give them credit to go back to 

June 1st. 

DR. MAURO: Not -- not a problem, 'cause we 

have a bioassay point. 

DR. NETON: We -- we would use a default model. 

A default model is for people who we have no 

bioassay from the June fire, and we also 

believe were line workers who were chronically 

exposed. And that's where this best fit comes 

in. The best fit constrains you to use the .03 

values at -- I've forgotten how many points 
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now. We've assumed that there were -- Cindy, 

help me out here. How many bioassay points did 

we model, three? 

 MR. ROLFES: Four. 

DR. NETON: Four? Thanks, Mark. 

MS. BLOOM: Four, yeah. 

DR. NETON: So there were four bioassay points. 

We assumed that for each of those sampling 

points, the highest measured value of all those 

four urine samples was -- was measured. So 

you've given everybody .03 -- 

DR. MAURO: Right. 

DR. NETON: -- and so if you're excreting 

continuously .03 milligrams per cubic meter, 

and you superimpose this spike on top of it -- 

DR. MAURO: Uh-huh. 

DR. NETON: -- and I think Dunstana's last 

report agreed with that, that the best fit 

model for that scenario is June 10th. It gives 

them the highest overall -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Hey, Jim --

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- this is Mark Griffon. I -- I 

have no problem with that approach in general. 

I even stated that at the last meeting. I'm 
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looking at the IMBA runs now, though, and the 

one thing -- as we're discussing M and S, the 

one thing I'm not sure of is I would have 

probably modeled the acute as an -- more of an 

S anyway and the chronic as an M, and it looks 

like it's not done that way in these models. 

Is that -- am I incorrect on that? I'm just 

glancing at these now, so -- 

MS. BLOOM: These were both modeled as type S 

based on the fact that that was what the 

concern was in the SC&A report, but you could 

certainly do it for type M and you'd come out 

with a similar fit. 

 The other thing is that of the 40 bioassay 

results, that represents the highest result 

from the fire and the highest result from -- 

from the workplace, and most results were much 

lower than that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, right, right, no, I --

MS. BLOOM: So I think that, you know -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I understand that, but I don't 

see a mix of solubi-- I was thinking, you know, 

of the chronic one as a type M and the -- and 

the acute spike would be a type S, and I don't 

even know how to do that in IMBA, quite 
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frankly. I -- but, you know -- 

MS. BLOOM: You can actually separate -- 

 MR. ROLFES: You can certainly do that. 

MS. BLOOM: -- the models in there, there -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

MS. BLOOM: -- are ways to do it, but --

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

MS. BLOOM: -- I --

 MR. ROLFES: But we're choosing the -- the 

solubility class that results in the highest 

dose to the organ of interest, so -- 

MS. BLOOM: Right. 

 MR. ROLFES: -- if we were choosing two 

separate solubilities, that wouldn't 

necessarily be claimant favorable. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I -- I -- I'm looking at the way 

the data fits, though, if you're talking about 

how this -- the -- anyway, yeah, okay. 

DR. NETON: I understand what you're saying, 

Mark, and --

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- we can certainly -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I understand. I'm not sure it's 

going to make any difference, I was just 

curious, the way it was modeled here. You 
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know, if you're talking about best fit and 

you're -- and you're saying that likely the 

fire is supposed to result in more type S 

material --

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- then arguably the acute spike 

should have been modeled as a type S. That's 

all I'm saying. 

MS. BLOOM: And the acutes are -- but I -- but 

I think what we're looking at is claimantfavorable models of -- of type M or type S that 

result in the highest dose to the worker. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I -- I agree with wi-- that 

the --

MS. BLOOM: And so I don't think that we're -- 

this isn't really looking at best fit. If I 

was going to do a dose --

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MS. BLOOM: -- reconstruction in modern day, I 

would use the date that gave me the -- I -- 

that -- that the information indicated was the 

best answer. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

MS. BLOOM: I wouldn't try to be giving the 

largest dose. Because our program's a little 
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bit different, my goal is to give the -- the 

largest dose within the realm of possi-- of 

reasonable possibilities. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And you're --

MS. BLOOM: And so -- so there's a number of 

ways that are reasonable to fit the data. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. But you looked at that com 

-- all I'm asking is did you look at that 

combination idea --

MS. BLOOM: Did I --

 MR. GRIFFON: -- 'cause I don't see that as one 

of the --

MS. BLOOM: -- combine type M and type S -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

MS. BLOOM: -- to see if I could get even 

larger doses? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, larger -- would that have 

resulted in a larger dose, you know -- 

MS. BLOOM: I did not do that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- 'cause I could see it would 

affect the intake, but then you're running an S 

for the dose as well so that would be lower 

doses and --

MS. BLOOM: Yeah, I don't --

 MR. GRIFFON: -- you didn't do that? I'm --
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MS. BLOOM: -- I don't believe --

 MR. GRIFFON: -- just curious 'cause that would 

definitely change things. I'm not sure it 

would be -- this might be the most claimant 

favorable --

MS. BLOOM: Yeah, I don't believe that -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- and I agree with your approach 

in general. I'm not -- I'm not arguing the 

approach. 

MS. BLOOM: Yeah, Mark, I don't believe it 

would because when you model the type S as an 

acute intake, you're going to be taking -- 

you're go-- your predicted urine is going to be 

-- well, it'll be a little bit lower, I guess, 

from the type M --

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, yeah. 

MS. BLOOM: -- it might be a little bit higher, 

but --

DR. NETON: It's -- it's not intuitive right 

now to me as to which way it would go. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, not intuitive to me, ei-- 

DR. NETON: 'Cause you would -- you would have 

a larger intake of type S for sure, based on 

the -- this -- the .08 -- eight microgram 

sample, but then the dose delivered to the 
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metabolic organs --

 MR. GRIFFON: Exactly, the dose will be lower. 

Right? Yeah, right. 

DR. NETON: -- will be lower and I don't -- I'm 

not exactly sure how those -- those would offset. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, right. 

DR. NETON: It may end up being about the same, 

I don't know, but I -- I think we can certainly 

look at that. I mean if that's something that, 

you know, is -- is a -- recommended for us to 

do, I guess --

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, and -- and again, I don't 

think that takes away from the overall appro-- 

I agree with the --

DR. NETON: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- nature of your approach, so... 

DR. NETON: I guess that's what I'm thinking is 

that that doesn't invalidate our approach and -

-

 MR. GRIFFON: No. 

DR. NETON: -- does that all of a sudden make 

it an SEC issue. I think not, but --

 DR. POSTON: Yeah, I just want to make sure 

that we're all -- that I understand what's 
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going on, Mark. This is not a showstopper in 

terms of us moving on. This is just a 

curiosity? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, it -- it's not -- yeah, I 

just want to -- you know, if -- if the argument 

is that you're trying to generate the most 

claimant-favorable doses from what I would 

argue is fairly minimal urinalysis data, then I 

think we'd better check this and make sure that 

this -- you know, it seems like this is 

probably the most claimant-favorable approach, 

but you might want to check that combined 

solubility question and -- and make sure, but 

not a showstopper, no. 

 DR. POSTON: Okay. Thank you. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. I think you'd 

also get a better fit for type M for an earlier 

-- for an earlier assumption of a date for the 

fire rather than for type S. 

MS. BLOOM: You don't. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: You don't? Oh, you checked 

that? 

MS. BLOOM: No, I looked at the chi squared 

values, I looked -- and you know, it -- it's 

not a huge difference in this, but you don't. 
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 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. Thank you. 

 MS. WU: This is Portia Wu from Senator 

Kennedy's office. Would it be all right if I 

asked a couple of questions in here at this 

point? 

 DR. WADE: Surely. 

 MS. WU: And I -- I apologize, I actually need 

to leave at 11:00 to brief the Senator so I 

wanted to get these points in now. 

 You know, just as a lay person, obviously, I -- 

I don't understand some of these -- these 

rationales, and particularly on the -- you 

know, sort of the three justifications, it sort 

of seemed like well, the first two were -- were 

deemed dis-positive because you were saying 

well, it's very unlikely that people would have 

really high exposures, we just don't see that. 

And you know, just because something happens 

infrequently doesn't mean that it couldn't have 

happened here, and so I don't quite understand 

why, you know, there -- it must be the case 

that the fire was June 10th and it couldn't 

have been -- not June 1st because those values 

would have been off the charts, why couldn't it 

have been June 5th or June 6th. 
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Knowing how a lot of workplaces work often, you 

-- you know, you say okay, then these people 

need to be sampled, but it doesn't always 

happen immediately, the next day. When that --

MS. BLOOM: We're not saying that the fire 

couldn't have happened a different date. This 

is the coworker model. This is not the model 

that you would necessarily choose for the 

individual. 

 MS. WU: Okay. Well, that's what -- another 

question I had is I -- I sort of got confused 

when we seemed to shift from one on the acute 

exposures to the -- to the more -- more general 

one, so I -- I wasn't -- it did seem to me, 

though, that you -- it was being resolved that 

it was unlikely that the fire was on an earlier 

date. Is that not true? 

MS. BLOOM: I actually believe that we've seen 

a new reference that indicates that the fire 

might have occurred earlier. 

DR. NETON: It could have been at the very end 

of May. This is Jim Neton, Portia. I 

apologize, maybe I -- I caused the confusion 

here. 

 MS. WU: Yeah. 
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DR. NETON: But it -- it is our position -- I 

think that's been the source of some confusion 

between --

 MS. WU: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- NIOSH and SC&A that we could go 

back earlier, we will go back earlier if we 

know the person was a fire -- involved in 

cleaning up or fighting the fire, and assign 

the most favorable date we -- we can find. 

 MS. WU: Uh-huh. 

DR. NETON: But when it comes to someone who 

was -- was -- was working on the lines, you 

know, machining, we have routine bioassay 

samples. We would use those and assume they 

were chronically exposed, then also give them 

credit for having participated in the cleanup 

of the fire. Since you have this chronic 

bioassay sample data, it makes a little 

different scenario as to what their intake 

would have been from the fire. 

 MS. WU: And -- and why is it that these other 

people would not also have some level of acute 

exposure? I mean if they were around, even if 

they weren't fighting the fire. 

MS. BLOOM: We've used the largest bioassays to 
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account for -- for all the exposures, but it's 

obvious that most of the bioassays are less 

then ten micrograms per liter -- I think 35 of 

them are ten or less. We're using 30s and 80s 

to derive this coworker model, so I think we've 

been very generous already in assigning 

intakes. 

 The other thing is that it's pretty clear that 

the operational period was probably a little 

bit shorter than we've assumed, and probably on 

the order of a factor of two shorter than we've 

assumed in the site profile, although there's -

- there's no black and white evidence, it's 

only in dark grays and light grays. 

 MS. WU: Uh-huh. 

MS. BLOOM: So -- so we're giving the benefit 

of the doubt to the claimant, and by the time 

you add up all these benefits of the doubts, it 

becomes a very generous model to assign intakes 

with. 

 MS. WU: I -- I understand that and I recognize 

that, you know, there are -- there are a lot of 

vagaries and one has to make the best 

assumptions possible. 

If you wouldn't mind if I asked one or two 
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questions about the other pieces that were 

raised, one is this sort of -- the enriched 

versus -- versus not uranium, and I know that -

- that you -- you said that it seemed like you 

were satisfied that basically the enriched 

uranium was not from work in the contract 

period. I just know that, you know, there were 

-- I was trying to figure out what has been 

done to track down where that probably came 

from? I don't know if that's NIOSH's 

responsibility, not SC&A's, but I just want -- 

was hoping someone could flesh out a little bit 

more because I know people have been looking 

into this, you know, what sources were looked 

through, what documents were retrieved, what -- 

you know, if people talked to the people who 

did the cleanup as -- as well as everything 

else, so... 

 DR. POSTON: I think Jim has an answer. 

DR. NETON: Portia, this is Jim Neton. There's 

two things that we've done. One is -- I don't 

remember if you were on the call the last 

working group meeting, but we -- 

 MS. WU: I had to jump off. I was on for the 

first part. 
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DR. NETON: Okay, the fir-- one of the first 

pieces was that it -- the covered exposure 

period is defined by Department of Labor in 

conjunction with Department of Energy. We --

NIOSH does not make that determination as to 

what the covered period -- time period is. And 

we agreed at that last working group meeting to 

send a letter to Department of Energy and the 

Department of Labor to inform them of our -- of 

the discussion that we had with workers at -- 

you know, during our worker outreach meetings 

at Chapman Valve, that there appears to have 

been some other activities that may have 

resulted in this enriched contamination. That 

letter was written by Larry Elliott to Pat 

Worthington of the DOE and Mr. Pete Turcic of 

Department of Labor on March 1st of this year, 

and we sent it to them asking them -- that -- 

you know, providing them this information, 

asking them to re-evaluate the covered period 

in light of these -- these -- this information. 

The second piece, and Mark Rolfes, sitting to 

my left here, is prepared to talk about what 

we've done internally to try to track down some 

information. 
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 MS. WU: What was your response? What was the 

response you got from the first one? 

DR. NETON: I'm not aware that we've had any -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: They're meeting -- this is Larry 

Elliott. They're -- they're meeting at DOL 

today. We have an OCAS representative at the 

meeting where they'll be discussing the covered 

period for this facility and several others, 

and we await the outcome of that discussion 

today. 

 MS. WU: Thanks, that's helpful. Now, I'm 

sorry, the second piece you mentioned? 

 MR. ROLFES: Yes, Portia, this is Mark Rolfes 

from NIOSH, and we've on several occasions sent 

correspondence to Bechtel National's legal 

department requesting information during the 

remediation time period in the '90s, and we 

were also requesting other pieces of 

information such as dosimetry records and 

laboratory analyses and such. And we are 

awaiting a response from Bechtel National's 

legal department at this time. 

DR. NETON: Okay. We've also gone back to 

ORAU, who is our main contractor on this 

program, and actually generated these results -
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- a different part of their program -- to try 

to pull out the -- any available records that 

would give us a hint as to what these samples 

represented, and there's nothing that they 

could track down that would help us flesh out 

this issue any better. That's where we're at 

in our own internal review. 

 MR. ROLFES: We've -- we've tried to put 

together as many pieces of information to -- to 

-- we -- we've evaluated this in quite a bit of 

detail to look to see if there was any 

possibility of enriched uranium being on-site. 

 MS. WU: Right. 

 MR. ROLFES: However, it's really this only -- 

only the single sample that we found that 

indicates that it could have been 2.16 percent 

enriched uranium. Because given the design of 

the Brookhaven National Laboratory's graphite 

pile, everything supports that it was run on 

natural uranium during the time period that 

Chapman Valve produced -- I'm sorry. It was --

it was running on natural uranium in the early 

'40s. At a later date, in the late '50s, it 

was switched to an enriched uranium. However, 

there's no indication that that enriched 
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uranium was produced by Chapman Valve, so... 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Mark, this is Arjun. There 

were two -- in SC&A's report we argued that 

there were two samples indicating enriched 

uranium, one with a 2.16, but the other was 

called consistent with natural uranium. We 

don't believe it's consistent with natural 

uranium, so I think that that is a point on 

which we do have a disagreement. 

DR. NETON: Right, Arjun, but at the same time 

I don't think either of us (unintelligible) -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, it's just -- just a point 

of clarification. 

DR. NETON: Okay. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: I think -- I think it -- NIOSH 

consistently said that there was only one 

sample when there's actually -- I -- I believe 

that NIOSH's own publication off the sampling 

results indicate there were two enriched 

uranium samples. I mean we've -- we've -- so I 

-- I think, just in the interest of accuracy of 

the record, there should be something said 

about that. 

DR. NETON: Well, we don't know that it's 

enriched, either. I think there's some debate 
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about that. If this --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: That's what the sample 

indicates in what SC&A has written, and I'm 

just reiterating that position in order to say 

that there's not an agreement about it. 

DR. NETON: Right. We did try to go back and 

get the original analytical datasheets for this 

because we don't know whether this was alpha 

spectroscopy or some geranium -- germanium or 

sodium iodide measurement and, you know, the 

uncertainty of that -- we don't know what the 

overall uncertainty of that measurement is. 

And it certainly could be considered natural 

uranium if the uncertainty's fairly large. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And Mark, this is Mark Griffon, I 

just wanted to -- did -- did you say you were 

waiting a response from -- from Bechtel? 

 MR. ROLFES: Yes, that's correct. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, okay. So you don't have 

anything either way. Did you contact, by any 

chance, Envirocare? 

 MR. ROLFES: No, we have not. 

 MR. GRIFFON: The waste was shipped there and I 

was curious -- you know, it was only ten years 

ago. They may have a record of the volume 
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shipped and the enrichment levels on the 

manifesting, which may be of interest here, and 

I don't think that'd be that difficult to run 

down, but --

DR. NETON: Again, I guess I -- I'd point out -

- I mean I -- that's something that we can 

track down, but --

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- I think we -- we were in 

agreement, at least last time, that the covered 

period as defined by Department of Labor I 

think is -- represents natural uranium 

exposure. These other pieces, if they 

(unintelligible) --

 MR. GRIFFON: The other pieces will be 

considered separately? Is that --

DR. NETON: -- considered -- yeah, considered 

in --

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

DR. NETON: -- a separate evaluation. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, okay. 

 DR. WADE: Portia, you had another point? 

 MS. WU: Yes, and it's -- and I appreciate and 

-- and thank you for the work that you've done 

thus far to try to get to the bottom of this 
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enriched uranium thing. I think that is 

something we're going to be interested to keep 

following and we'll follow up with DOL and -- 

about what -- their discussions. 

But the final point which, you know, we've 

raised exhaustively in our member letters has 

been this kind of disconnect with the -- some 

of the external sampling and the -- and the 

urine samples, and we remain concerned that, 

you know, we don't have actual bioassay data 

for some of the people who might have been the 

highest exposed. I know that you have all said 

that well, we're making a lot of other 

assumptions about people's exposure and 

therefore we can, you think, make very 

claimant-favorable estimates, but just so you 

know that that continues to be a source of 

concern for us and for our constituents, that 

that -- you know, that's a gap there that shows 

maybe you really can't accura-- estimate these 

things accurately. So -- so those are sort of 

our main concerns. I'll obviously continue to 

listen in on the discussion, but I appreciate 

everyone's taking the time to hear our 

concerns, and I know that Senator Kerry and the 
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delegation has raised these with you as well. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you. We appreciate your being 

with us. 

DR. MAURO: Jim, there was one aspect to this 

that we really haven't talked about yet, and 

that has to do with perhaps more than one fire. 

I think that the -- I think that this issue of 

the date of the fire I now understand. But 

then there was some feed-- well, there's 

literature that says that fires are fairly 

commonplace in these types of facilities, and -

- and -- and I know that Dunstana has made a 

few runs just to see is it possible that could 

have had -- because they were separated out in 

time -- these four samples were separated out, 

and I guess it was Aug-- there were several 

months in between each sampling period, these 

four sampling periods, and in theory there 

could have been a number of spikes and then go-

- go away and you would not have picked them up 

in the next sample round, so -- and then -- so 

one of the questions we raised, and when we met 

with the representatives, was were there any 

other fires. And the answer we received from 

the folks we talked to was they don't recall 
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any, but as Arjun has correctly pointed out, 

you know, these weren't people that were there 

all the time and would have -- and also the 

evidence seems to be that the only large fire 

that was memorable was the one that occurred in 

June of '48, early June '48. But we did raise 

this question regarding, you know, there could 

have been other fires that could have sneaked 

in, delivered a high intake and then the 

activity in the urine would have gone away and 

you would not have picked it up in the next 

sampling. 

DR. NETON: I disagree. 

DR. MAURO: Okay. 

DR. NETON: It might not be above the detection 

limit, but it would certainly add to the 

baseline --

DR. MAURO: Uh-huh. 

DR. NETON: -- of what's coming out. I mean 

you're going to have something there. And I 

would agree that it would not maybe be above 

.010 detection limit, but you -- this happens 

all the time. You can -- you'll get some 

baseline there and it might be .03, and that 

will be added to the chronic exposure itself, 
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so I don't --

 MR. ROLFES: Sure, any --

 DR. MELO: Yeah, but actually the contribution 

of acute intake after certain while is -- is 

nothing compared to the --

MS. BLOOM: Could you speak up, please? 

 MR. GRIFFON: We can't hear you. 

 DR. MELO: Sorry. The cont-- the contribution 

of the urine -- the contribution of acute 

intake in urine after certain while is mainly 

for type S is --

 MR. GRIFFON: Excuse me, John? 

DR. MAURO: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Whoever's speaking, we -- on the 

phone we're not hearing very well at all. It's 

very low. 

 DR. WADE: Hold on a second, we're going to 

make an adjustment. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, thank you. 

(Pause) 

 DR. MELO: So thank you. So this is Dunstana 

Melo speaking. My point is, the contribution 

of acute intake in urine samples after certain 

while, especially for type S compound -- so 

this contribution is very small and -- compared 
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to the -- the contribution of chronic intake, 

so if you have -- and my point is on that time, 

in '48 -- in the '48 years, the -- the 

uncertainty on the measurements, on urine 

measurements -- urine -- measuring in urine 

samples were very large. We can -- we can 

believe in that. And also to use this IMBA 

code to -- to -- to be -- to design a model of 

-- of exposure, you need -- well, you need 

several measurements in order to have a 

reliable model or matrix of exposure. And I 

was looking at the files that you sent to us 

and so you are using a linear distribution and 

actually when you have a large uncertainty you 

need to use the lognormal distribution. And 

also you -- you are using a scattering factor 

equal to one, and actually you have a large 

uncertainty in the measurements and you are 

dealing with measurements of different people, 

and so the -- the recommendation -- the ICRP 

recommendation and all the recommendation for 

use of IMBA in these situations when you don't 

have the measurements of ju-- of one pers-- one 

-- all the measurements from one worker and 

also -- and we don't have the -- the 24 hours 
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excretion and -- well, all the uncertainties 

related to the -- to the analysis and sample 

preparation and sample measurement and the 

enter -- and enter the individual variations, 

you need to use a scattering factor equal to 

two, so --

DR. NETON: Well, let me stop you there real 

quick 'cause I think -- I agree with you if we 

were doing an individual dose reconstruction 

for a person exposed at a plant and we had 

their bioassay data. We would need multiple 

samples, we'd have to take all this into 

consideration. But in dose reconstruction it's 

a little different. We took, of the 40 

samples, the highest sample recorded in all the 

people and used that, and I think that 

represents -- it's clear in my mind -- bounding 

value. 

 DR. POSTON: You applied that to every -- 

DR. NETON: We applied that to everyone. So --

so this is a much different application of a 

dose assessment than you would have if you were 

doing an individual dose reconstruction at a 

plant and he had exposure. Sure, you'd take 

two, three, four, five (unintelligible) samples 
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and look at the variability in the scatter. 

When you take the highest sample ever recorded 

on the 40 and -- and most of them -- I think 

there were only three or four above detection 

limit, of the 40. We took the highest one of 

.03 and applied it to every person and came up 

with a 70 MAC -- 70 times the Maximum Allowable 

Air Concentration product model, and then it -- 

and we'll get into this later. If you start 

comparing that to what is really experienced in 

machining operations at DOE facilities, I think 

-- we think that's a fairly reasonable 

approximation and assumption that we've 

applied. So what you're saying is very -- is 

valid for individual dose reconstructions. We 

try to get the exact number for a person. 

That's not what we've done here. 

 DR. MELO: Yeah, I know, but why -- sorry. Why 

you didn't use the scattering factor equal to 

two if -- since we have a large uncertainty? 

DR. NETON: Well, we took the highest value -- 

 DR. MELO: I understand -- I understand that -- 

that it's for non-- non-monitored workers, but 

even though, it's a large uncertainty in this 

matrix (unintelligible). 
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DR. NETON: I understand, but we didn't even 

take the 95th percentile, we just took the 

highest sample, so it's a bounding analysis is 

what we would call that. And if you start 

putting scattering factors on top of -- of the 

highest value and such, you get -- I think you 

put yourself into a -- an unreasonable 

estimate. 

 DR. POSTON: You get the opposite question: 

Why did you use the two? 

DR. MAURO: What -- when I think about this and 

I say okay, what I'm hearing is -- or yeah, 

maybe there were -- in fact, there's no doubt 

it was assorted, the types of exposure. You 

know, no one was exposed in a flat line. So 

what are you -- but if you integrate -- let's -

- let's put aside now the -- the fire, the 

single fire, that's taken care of. What I'm 

hearing you're saying, and I think this is 

really where the judgment comes in -- it's a 

judgment call -- you take the integrated 

exposure, total number of atoms -- you know, of 

becquerels inhaled over that year and a half, 

you get -- you get a number, they're not -- 

it's in the reports, you get a number. Now 
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you're saying that listen, we're going to 

assign that number, that intake, to everybody. 

Now -- and -- and you're saying that -- and 

that's -- that's assuming that for that one 

person out of 30 that got the .03, it backcalculates -- that -- that's the chronic 

intake, so you -- in effect, what you're saying 

is that even if there were these occasional 

spikes, if you were to -- you know, the 

integrated exposure is still not in real-- in 

other words, you don't really expect that the 

integrated exposure for anyone is going to be 

greater than that integrated exposure. That's 

notwithstanding the fact that there might have 

been some other fires. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, we're not saying that 

everybody was exposed to 70 MAC the whole time. 

DR. MAURO: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: We're saying that -- essentially 

it's a time-weighted average, if you want to 

look at it that way. 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, in fact, I'd prefer thinking 

in terms of we're going to assign to everyone a 

certain number of becquerels inhaled over that 

year and a half period and give it to 
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everybody. We don't know how they got it. We 

don't know if they got it like this -- you 

know, everyone got it the way they got it. But 

you're saying the weight of the evidence and 

looking at the literature, looking at the 

operation, looking at the bioassay data is that 

by giving everyone that -- even if there were 

intermittent small -- small fires, it -- it's 

not going to result in a time-integrated intake 

over the course of that year and a half greater 

than that -- and this is a judgment call. 

DR. NETON: Right. 

DR. MAURO: This is a place where all the 

people sitting around the table, all the folks 

involved have to feel about yeah, we're doing 

the right thing by these workers by making that 

assignment 'cause I don't think there's a 

definitive answer to this except the weight of 

the evidence and the judgment of the scientists 

that looked at it. And I guess, you know, when 

I talked to Dunstana, I guess from the last email I received -- is it your sense that that 

intake -- that time-integrated intake is in 

fact an estimate that would prop-- that would 

cover some individual spikes that may have 
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occurred all along the way? Other words, 

there's enough conservatism built into that 

that if there were some additional small fires 

that may have gone unnoticed and unrecorded, 

that there's enough I guess excess in the 

chronic that would accommodate those occasional 

spikes. And I think that's the heart of the 

matter here. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, well -- well, let Dunstana 

answer first I guess. 

 DR. MELO: Yeah, I think that's -- it's -- it's 

-- yeah, it's a puzzle for us because if -- if 

we -- if there is some -- if there are some 

additional fires, additional intakes, I think 

it would be very hard to -- to be reflect in 

those urine samples, urine measurements. 

DR. NETON: I disagree. I think -- chronic -- 

chronic exposure is nothing but a series of 

intermittent acute exposures, you know, and the 

more intermittent exposures you have, the 

better approximation the chronic model is. 

DR. MAURO: Uh-huh. 

DR. NETON: Now if you're saying -- 

 DR. MELO: Yeah, I a-- I ag--

DR. NETON: -- you've shown that for one is 
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okay --

 DR. MELO: -- I ag-- I agree with you, because 

I think you are very -- in this matrix, the 

chronic intake is very conservative, and if you 

have some small acute intakes -- well, actually 

the chronic intake takes into account small 

acute --

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 DR. MELO: -- everyday small acute intakes, but 

small acute intakes. I'm not sure about fires 

and large intakes. I think that the number of 

measurements are not enough for us to -- to -- 

to be so confident to say that these acute 

intakes didn't occur and that was my point, to 

-- to design that -- that route to simulate 

those acute intakes since the -- in the SEC 

petition the petitioners were saying that 

during the operation of Chapman Valve there are 

some additional acute intakes, so that was the 

reason, just to show that it would not be 

reflect in the urine measurements. It was not 

the -- I --

DR. NETON: Did you -- did you model it, 

though, with the chronic exp-- on top of the -- 

I agree with you that the amount coming out in 
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the urine is going to be small, and -- and 

actually even below the detection limit. I'll 

agree with that. But what you're going to have 

to do is -- is at some point suppress the 

chronic intake for the -- that small 

incremental value, and then when you multiply 

that times 20 years, you -- you're going to -- 

you're going to -- that small suppression of 

chronic intake will result in a -- in a fairly 

large reduction in intake if you assume it 

happened over a long period of time. You know 

what I -- understand what I'm saying, is a very 

small reduction in a chronic intake will result 

in a very large -- could result in a very large 

reduction in overall intake because you have to 

-- and have mass balance. You can't inhale two 

sources of intake and then have the chronic 

model still being the same. It has to go down. 

Unless you've done that calculation, I haven't 

seen that result. I mean I -- I understand 

what you're saying, but if you -- those 

calculations, I would suspect that you're going 

to end up at the same point. You can only 

excrete so much out in the urine from those 

intakes, and -- and (unintelligible) -- 
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 MR. ROLFES: Any previous intakes are going to 

contribute to future uranium excretion, so what 

we're doing is what -- what NIOSH is assigning 

results in the highest internal dose that we 

can interpret from these bioassay data. We're 

assuming that a person is chronically exposed 

for 16 -- I can't remember off the top of my 

head -- 16 months. Rather than to try to do a 

best estimate of someone's dose, we're 

assigning a more claimant-favorable dose by 

assuming that they were in fact chronically 

exposed for several months rather than 

evaluating two separate acute intakes. 

Now if we were trying to do a best estimate, I 

would agree with your concern. But we're not 

trying to do a best estimate. When we would do 

a best estimate, that would result in a lower 

internal dose. We're assigning a claimantfavorable internal dose that is much higher, 

so... 

 DR. POSTON: I -- this -- this is all very 

interesting from a scientific standpoint. I 

could sit here and listen to all this all day. 

But I guess the question is, and you said it in 

your report, is -- is what NIOSH has done 
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claimant favorable, and it seems to me that's 

the answer -- the question that needs to be 

answered. In your report, regardless of your 

criticism of what was done, that was your -- 

your -- your answer. As far as I know, John 

has the same answer. So we can argue about or 

discuss how one would do these reconstructions 

on an individual basis or a group basis or so 

forth, but maybe I'm the one who's off base, 

but it seems to me that the question that needs 

to be answered, is what NIOSH is doing claimant 

favorable, and if the answer is yes I think we 

should move on. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I -- actually this -- this 

discussion's given me some deja vu. Jim --

Jim, we've done this before. 

DR. NETON: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I think I'm fine with the 

model approach. The only question I have wi-- 

with Chapman here, and I raised it at the last 

meeting, was -- it's more of a -- a question of 

are -- do you have enough sampling information 

to be confident, and I think, you know, 

possibly with the other references that you're 

going to discuss --
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DR. NETON: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- on top of -- on top if this 

urine data, then I think we can be convinced. 

DR. NETON: Right, that was a --

 MR. GRIFFON: But right now, I mean you're -- 

you're hanging your hat on -- I -- I know you 

took the highest values, but they're -- they 

are from different people and in fact, if I 

look at the data right, there were only three 

machinists that were ever sampled and I -- and 

I do think they have low samples, but 

nonetheless --

DR. NETON: To tell you the truth, Mark, if you 

look through the -- the log-in entry sheets, I 

don't know how many more machinists there were. 

Looking at this (unintelligible) -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, there -- there weren't a 

lot of pe-- I -- I agree, there's not a lot -- 

if you look at the log sheets -- the external 

log sheets, anyway -- I -- I didn't see -- 

DR. NETON: Well, if you look at the log sheets 

-- the external log sheets that have job 

descriptions --

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. NETON: -- I'd be hard-pressed to find more 
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than a couple more machinists. 

 DR. POSTON: Mark and other members of the 

workgroup --

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. POSTON: -- would -- is there objection to 

moving on and having -- listening to what Jim 

has to say about his evaluation? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I mean if you -- I just 

wanted to put that -- that question on the 

table, the representativeness. The model I 

think I'm -- I'm -- I'm satisfied with if -- if 

SC&A is. I'm --

 DR. POSTON: Well, unless there's objection, 

then I'd like to move on and have Jim -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: You can --

 DR. POSTON: -- review his report. Do I hear 

any objections? 

 (No responses) 

Jim? Okay. 

DR. NETON: I -- I understand what Mark is 

saying and I agree with that, and that was the 

whole point of this next phase, which was okay, 

we have a model built on 40 bioassay samples 

and if we look -- this is sort of backwards of 

how you normally do this, is you have air 
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sample data, then com-- you bioassay and use 

that as the gold standard. We've taken 

bioassay and developed a model and now we're 

saying does this model pass the reasonableness 

test in terms of what happens at uranium 

machining facilities in general, because there 

are only so many processes that can happen when 

you work with uranium metal. 

We know that at Chapman Valve they worked with 

four-inch-long by one-inch-diameter slugs. 

That's what they worked with. They did a lot 

of it, thousands of these, but they machined 

them. They -- they came in and they put slots 

in -- drove little buttonholes and that sort of 

thing. So what's -- and Cindy Bloom has put 

this together, and I apologize for the late 

delivery, but there's a lot of information in 

here and it took some time to put together. 

So what we have here in -- in this report, and 

I'm sure most people haven't had a chance to 

read it, is a summary of what could be gleaned 

from the literature that we have in our site 

research database. And it summarizes air 

concentration data, for the most part, and some 

bioassay data for 14 Atomic Weapons Employer 
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facilities, if you count Chapman Valve, and six 

DOE facilities where machining of uranium 

occurred. There's a lot of data here. I don't 

want to go through all of it. I'll -- I'll 

kick it off and then maybe Cindy can chime in -

- and Mark, as well -- as to their opinions of 

this. But I've reviewed this and I -- I think 

-- a -- a few key things to look at are the 

Chapman -- I mean the NUMEC analysis that was 

done -- it's an expansion of what was in the 

original site profile, that starts on page 6 of 

this document -- where there was a NUMEC 

incinerator. It was in the '60s time frame. 

And this data -- Cindy, was this data provided 

to us at the Chapman Valve worker outreach 

meeting? I believe it was. 

MS. BLOOM: It was. 

DR. NETON: That's right, so this was provided 

to us by workers or some former workers from 

Chapman Valve who -- at least in their mind, I 

think -- thought that this would be 

representative or reasonable to use as a 

comparison to what might have happened at the 

furnace at Chapman Valve. And there's no doubt 

that roasting of uranium occurred, and this was 
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a similar operation here at Chapman. And I 

think there -- there are bioassay samples as 

well as air samples on page 7, and the 

incinerator operators' urinalyses ranged from 

37 to 68 micrograms for normal uranium, which 

is in the same ball park as what we look-- what 

we look-- we used for Chapman Valve. And in 

addition, the Breathing Zone samples that were 

collected, as you see in this table from -- in 

the 1966-'67 time frame, the average values are 

not that out of line or somewhat consistent 

with the value of 5,000 dpm per cubic meters 

that we would assign for type S for Chapman 

Valve, remembering that what we are assigning 

is a time-weighted average, essentially, 

exposure. But we don't -- we -- we don't -- we 

would expect that there would be excursions 

where changing the incinerator glovebox 

filters, for example, is 15,000 dpm per cubic 

meter here. Okay, but how oft-- how long does 

that operation occur and how long does it exist 

and that sort of thing. 

 DR. POSTON: Are we focusing on the last column 

on the right? Is that where -- 

DR. NETON: The second column in on the right 
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would be the 14,798 -- I'm just pointing out 

that there are excursions above what we would 

assign on a time-weighted average basis, but 

the trick here then is to figure out what the 

duty factor is and how often did someone -- how 

long did it take to change a filter and -- and 

that sort of thing. These values are not out 

of line with what we are using in our model -- 

this is what I'm saying -- we based that on 

bioassay samples. 

The next one that I would point to is the one 

that John Mauro brought up. That's the -- I'm 

starting on page 10, I think, is the famous -- 

now-famous Adley document. It was the Hanford 

operations where they -- they did a lot of 

processing of uranium in the remelt -- what 

they called the remelt facility. 

Cindy has done a good job summarizing the data 

on page 12, and here we see almost all the 

samples are consistent with -- with our 

operations, except when you get down into the 

oxide burning area about two-thirds of the way 

down you see some fairly high excursions in 

terms of microgram per cubic meter. Now those 

values are larger than the 5,000 -- let's see, 
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we would assign -- 3,300 would be our 

assignment. So if you look at the 98,600 value 

-- you know, it's roughly 30 times what we 

would -- we would assign. However, again, this 

is a -- this is the high end value we defined, 

and this is shoveling oxides that is still redhot. And again, how long would that occur. I 

would argue that, you know, this is where -- 

this is where some judgment comes into play. 

How long did a person actually shovel this -- 

per week. And if we can assume a one-hour per 

week shoveling period, then that comes right in 

line with what we would use for our timeweighted average exposure. 

None of these are hard and fast. Again, you 

know, we don't have a time-weighted average 

amount that Chapman Valve has said that they 

shoveled. Now one thing to keep in mind is 

that these operations produced much more 

uranium than Chapman Valve, as far as the 

source term -- much larger source term. If you 

look at the Chapman Valve source term -- you 

see these calculated later in this document -- 

we actually know -- we can actually -- based on 

the lo-- the loading of these slugs into the 
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Brookhaven reactor, it -- it appears that 

something around 56 tons of uranium were 

actually processed at Chapman Valve. 

 Now that sounds like a lot of uranium. The 

reality is, that would fit into about 60 drums. 

You know, a drum -- a drum of UL3 will hold 

about a ton of uranium, at least in my 

experience. Now this is metal, so there's 

nothing -- but it's not -- you know, it's not 

massive quantities of uranium like were 

processed at Fernald or at this Hanford 

facility, so the source term is much smaller, 

meaning that the number of turnings and 

roasting operations will have been more 

limited. But if -- we're going to eventually 

have to come to some sort of agreement as to 

how long this person actually was involved in 

doing this. In my mind, this report -- if you 

look through it, this 98,000 number is -- is 

sort of an upper ceiling. I have not seen much 

higher than that. If one looks on page 15, 

this represents -- one thing I would point out 

is there's a fair amount of data out there. 

These -- these are not made-up values, these 

are real data samples taken at facilities that 
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were machining uranium and -- and processing 

and -- and roasting the chips. If you look at 

the Fernald dataset you will see a fairly 

similar distribution where many of the values 

fall within our model. But again, there's a 

90,000 dpm repairing the inside of the furnace, 

there's a 50,000 over the front of the furnace. 

Again, if one can come up with a duty factor of 

how long someone did this operation, I think 

it's -- it's not inconsistent with our model. 

We have not come up with that factor yet, but I 

think based on some inferences, we should be 

able to do that. 

At any rate, we have some bounding values here. 

There are bounding values here for furnace 

operations, and I just pointed out a few of 

these that are there that don't necessarily, 

you know, demonstrate that our model is 

inconsistent with what happened at uranium 

facilities. 

DR. MAURO: What I see here is -- and I 

understand where you're going with this and -- 

MS. BLOOM: Can you speak up, please? 

DR. MAURO: Certainly. This is John Mauro. 

What I -- what we have here is the chronic 
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intake that's been adopted is certainly 

conservative, and the argument that's being 

made here is -- you know, as a time-integrated 

exposure, yeah, we -- you know, we can just 

about capture anything that might have 

occurred, and we -- like for example, the 

previous conversation -- well, if -- 

 MS. HOWELL: I'm sorry, this is Emily. I think 

that wherever the telephone mike is placed on 

the table, we're having trouble -- when 

conversations shift from one person to another 

-- picking up what's going on. 

DR. MAURO: My apologies. This is --

MS. CHANG: Actually -- this is Chia-Chia 

Chang, it sounds like there's another voice in 

the background. I don't know if it's in the 

room or in the hotel, but -- 

 DR. WADE: No, it's not in the hotel. Some --

someone -- each of you consider your 

situations. Someone's engaged in background 

discussion, sort of over their shoulder, and we 

can hear that. It's a woman's voice. So 

please, mute your -- your telephone. Don't be 

involved in -- in side discussions. We're 

hearing a woman engaged in background 
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discussions and it's not in this room. Thank 

you. 

DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. I'm speaking 

directly into the mike now. Does that help? 

MS. BLOOM: Not really. 

DR. MAURO: No? Then --

MS. BLOOM: It's hard to hear all of a sudden. 

UNIDENTIFIED: Is it on? 

 DR. WADE: Well, wait a minute, we're going to 

have a technical person look at this. 

MS. BLOOM: We can hear Lew really well. 

DR. MAURO: Is that a little bit better? 

 (No responses) 

No? No. Is it on? 

(Pause) 

I'm trying again. Testing. Is that better? 

MS. BLOOM: That's better. 

 MS. HOWELL: Much better. 

DR. MAURO: Okay, we found -- we found a live 

one. Let me see if I can explain -- and here 

is, again, a judgment call. Okay? What we're 

saying here is that the chronic intake is of 

such a magnitude that it really takes into 

consideration an awful lot of the variability 

and the uncertainty and places sort of like an 
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upper bound on just about -- most scenarios. 

And the only place where special consideration 

is given is that early June fire. 

Now are -- I didn't -- now this is a judgment 

call again. Are we pushing the boundaries of 

that all-encompassing chronic by saying -- and 

in fact, not only does it capture all of the 

sawtooth variability that may be occurring on a 

day to day basis for all workers -- all 100 

workers, but it al-- but it also captures the 

possibility that there may have been some 

workers there that were handling this ash, and 

I think this is a tough call. Is the ashhandling, which we know was there, we -- now 

granted that we don't know the magnitude of the 

exposures and the duration of the exposures, 

but also granted that we do know that it could 

have been a substantial -- at least for some 

short period of time, and this is more of a 

question for everyone around the table. Does 

this warrant another special treatment the way 

we gave the fire a special treatment, because 

it may be such a nature that it might kick us 

over. I don't have an answer to that. 

By the way, I do not consider that to be an SEC 
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issue. This is -- in other words, you have the 

data, and it's really a judgment call now, do 

we feel that we've done an adequate job in 

placing an upper bound by assuming that if 

there was ash-handling that the chronic 

exposure assumption is more than adequate to 

account for it, or do we feel that no, maybe we 

better add in another spike or a few -- you 

know, to deal with that. I see that as a 

judgment call that is what I would call a site 

profile or exposure matrix question as opposed 

to something that is -- you know, what I would 

call an SEC issue. Again, that's my judgment 

of the situation, but from looking at the 

numbers, Jim, some of them are very high -- 

DR. NETON: Right. 

DR. MAURO: -- and I don't know if you were to 

add in a few of those -- that's saying with a 

duty factor that is consistent with the level 

of activity that took place at Chapman, but I 

think it's worth -- worth looking into and -- 

and -- and coming to a sensibility that you 

feel is right. 

DR. NETON: I think we're on the same page 

here. I present this -- this information more 
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from a -- you know, let's stimulate discussion 

here, because we obviously are not coming to 

conclusion that this is -- this is definitive. 

But what it does do, in my mind, is show that 

there are plenty of data sample points out 

there that one can generate bounding analysis -

- bounding scenarios, at least, then how 

bounding, you know, are these scenarios that 

we've provided. It's -- it's open for 

discussion, I'll agree with that. 

MS. BLOOM: My apologies for getting this out 

so late and for not clearly answering that 

question, but I did look at a lot of this 

information. There's some in the -- the Adley 

document, John, that you mentioned in terms of 

the amount of time that people spent shoveling 

ash in various programs. For the smaller 

programs, I've seen numbers on the order of 

three minutes spent in shoveling ash. In 

larger programs, NUMEC had dedicated 

incinerator operators who spent half their time 

with the incinerators. The -- in the Adley 

document, my recollection is that the numbers 

were less than an hour -- well less than an 

hour a day --
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DR. MAURO: Yeah, I think it was .3. 

MS. BLOOM: Right, and when you consider the 

volumes that we're talking about at Chapman, 

you know, you just can't -- it can't take that 

much time. I used to load an incinerator at a 

hospital where we -- we -- as a technician we 

burned low level radioactive waste and we would 

load on the order of ten, 20 2-gallon drums and 

boxes that were 1.5 cubic feet each and -- and 

various other things in there that were 

incinerable, and that was maybe an -- a onehour operation, if that. And I have a feeling 

that the volume that I was dealing with was 

much larger. Cleaning out the incinerator, it 

was all a hand operation. It wasn't, you know, 

a chute operation or anything like that, and it 

didn't take that long. So I -- I would ha--

based on my experience both from a personal 

nature and looking at all the records that are 

available, I can't imagine that this was more 

than a one-hour a week operation. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun, I -- I don't 

have a personal judgment about, you know, how 

long the chip burner loading and unloading 

operations might have -- might have lasted, but 
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I do know -- or if I'm -- I'm doing this from 

memory because I'm not in my office, but the 

Fernald 98 probable-plus MAC operation is 

documented -- if I'm remembering correctly -- 

as having lasted five hours, and 98 probable 

MAC was an average over the five hours. It was 

not the maximum measurement so (unintelligible) 

DR. NETON: Wait a minute, which -- which value 

are you talking about, Arjun? 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, I'm not talking about a 

fire, I'm talking about a maintenance operation 

that happened periodically with a burnout 

conveyor, and there was a 98,000 MAC -- 

MS. BLOOM: It's not MAC, I think you're 

talking dpm per cubic meter. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Maybe it was dpm per cubic 

meter (unintelligible) -- 

DR. NETON: Yeah, it could -- 98,000 MAC -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, no -- well, I -- I don't -- 

I don't remember. I'm not -- I may have it -- 

I mean the document's actually in the -- in the 

SEC petition and I'll try to bring it up. I 

have that with me. But I believe it was 98,000 

MAC. We've talked about this before. 
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MS. BLOOM: 98,000 -- you don't see anything 

much above 300 MAC for -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well --

MS. BLOOM: -- even maybe -- maybe an outlier -

-

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well --

MS. BLOOM: -- would hit 1,000 MAC. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- I -- I can check all this 

pretty quickly. I believe it was 98,000 MAC -- 

DR. NETON: But Arjun, was this -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- (unintelligible) an average 

over five hours. I think we brought this up a 

number of times. 

DR. NETON: What was this operation? 

MS. BLOOM: I mean that would be grams per 

cubit meter. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, yes, it'd be -- the-- as 

I remember, I calculated the annual exposure at 

70 dpm per cubic meter was achieved in a little 

over one minute, so I think that was it. The -

- the --

DR. NETON: Well --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: That was a Fernald measurement. 

I -- it's not my number. It was their number -

-
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DR. NETON: Well, but what I --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- and it was their document. 

It wasn't a highest measurement. 

DR. NETON: But is it a comparable operation? 

What kind of operation was this? 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: As I said, it was -- in my mem-

- according to my memory, it was the cleanout 

of a burnout -- it was maintenance operation, 

cleaning out burnout conveyor in a particular -

-

DR. NETON: Okay, the burn-- the burnout 

vessels are somewhat different than the 

furnace. We have --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: I -- I'm -- I'm just -- I'm 

just putting it on the table because a lot -- 

you've compiled in the 20-odd pages a lot of 

different operations and presented data from a 

lot of different operations to argue for the 

plausibility --

DR. NETON: Right, but --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- of a number. 

DR. NETON: -- we're trying to make -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: And so I'm -- I'm trying --

just -- just a minute. I'm -- I'm -- I'm 

putting this number on the table in that same 
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spirit is that you -- you -- there is -- there 

are very high measurements that are higher than 

the ones we're talking about here, and if we're 

going to say that we've compiled and done a 

survey of the data, including Fernald, then we 

ought to have a complete list of these things. 

As I said, I don't have a personal opinion 

about --

DR. NETON: Arjun, you --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- about how long these 

operations lasted. 

DR. NETON: -- you need to consider the thrust 

of this document. The title is "Review of 

Internal Exposure Related to Uranium Machining 

Operations" --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- and we -- we expanded that to 

include the roasting operations because -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. 

DR. NETON: -- that's part of machining. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. 

DR. NETON: If it's a manufacturing of dingots 

or -- or derbies or something, I -- I would 

suggest that it may or may not be relevant. We 

need to consider that. 
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 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: 'Cause we do have here a complete 

page of air dust samples taken at a uranium 

furnace at Fernald over a several-month period, 

and the largest sample we have here is 92,984 

dpm per cubic meter --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Uh-huh. 

DR. NETON: -- by far the highest sample. So -

- and we -- we can certainly consider it. I 

mean I'm not saying we shouldn't look at it. 

But we need to consider the relevance of -- of 

that particular sample to what we're trying to 

accomplish here, which is the sam-- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: I'm not -- I'm not stating that 

it is relevant or not relevant. I'm just 

saying so long as you're doing a survey and 

saying that some things are credible or not 

credible, that -- and -- and using Fernald 

measurements I think we've brought up a number 

of times, and it at least ought to be part of 

the deb-- (broken transmission). 

DR. NETON: It would help if you could -- 

MS. BLOOM: I -- I do think that -- that while 

I tried to find everything that could possibly 

be relevant to this issue, I think it really is 
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important to consider the -- the information in 

terms of whether it's a reasonable estimator 

for Chapman or whether it gives us an idea of 

how high these types -- you know, how high 

types -- incinerating -- incineration types of 

operations can be. But I think when you're 

talking about burnout furnaces and other 

things, you're talking about sizes that are 

much longer -- larger. You're talking about 

source terms that are much higher, and -- and 

so that has to be taken into consideration. So 

-- so in that light, I would take what you say, 

Arjun, certainly with -- that's an example of 

something that has to be definitely bounding. 

I think -- you know, the number you're -- 

you're stating is on the order of ten grams per 

cubic meter of uranium, which to me seems an 

inconceivable amount to be exposed to for any 

extended period of time -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, then we have to throw all 

the Fernald measurements out because this is 

part of their documentation. 

MS. BLOOM: Well -- and I would like to -- 

Arjun, I'm not saying that. It seem-- I'm 

telling you --
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 DR. MAKHIJANI: If it's inconceivable -- if 

it's inconceivable, then everything at Fernald 

is inconceivable. 

 DR. POSTON: No, Arjun, that's --

MS. BLOOM: No, no, no, wait, wait, wait. I'm 

saying that -- that in the argument that SC&A 

has presented they're saying a -- an exposure 

on the order of hundreds of milligram is a 

large exposure. So you're talking a factor of 

100 higher than that. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Not my number. 

 DR. POSTON: Arjun, it would be very helpful if 

you would provide that document. You said you 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: I have -- I have provided it 

before to NIOSH and I will do so again. 

 DR. POSTON: Okay, because you're -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: It's part -- it's part of -- 

 DR. POSTON: -- because what you're saying is 

you're --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- the Fernald petition. 

 DR. POSTON: What you're saying is that this is 

your recollection, and that's -- it seems 

inconceivable, so --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, I (unintelligible) to 
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bring it up. 

 DR. POSTON: -- it would be nice to have that 

documented. 

 MR. ROLFES: Yes, Arjun, I think it would be 

more appropriate to provide the document to us 

before the meeting so that we can discuss it. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: I have provided it before and 

I've cited this number during Mallinckrodt and 

I will do so again. 

MS. BLOOM: It's the Fernald petition that it's 

included with, Arjun? 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: I be-- yes, I believe so, and 

I've also provided it independently of the 

Fernald petition. 

MS. BLOOM: Okay. Thank you. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I -- I don't deny you 

couldn't stir up some very large con-- I 

remember -- I remember when I was at Fernald 

when they would actually vacuum the inside of a 

dust collector. I mean you got huge values in 

there. But you know, it was an instantaneous 

type exposure. Uranium settles out fairly 

quickly. As a matter of fact we have, in this 

document, a fire that happened over a drum at 

Fernald cited. And if I recall, within 40 
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minutes those samples dropped down from 

thousands of dpm per cubic meter to hundreds of 

dpm per cubic meter once the fire was 

extinguished. Uranium being a heavy metal, of 

course, it drops out of the air fairly quickly. 

To sustain something like that for five hours 

just -- it would have to have some mechanical 

agitation going on to do that. We'll look at 

the document. 

DR. MAURO: This is John. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: I may be wrong. I -- I'm just 

-- I'm going to bring it up and then we can 

talk -- come back to it. 

 DR. WADE: We got it. 

 DR. POSTON: We understand. 

DR. NETON: It's on the record. Okay. I'm not 

sure much what else to say other than I -- I 

agree with John's take on this, that we -- we 

have values here that -- that provide what we 

believe to be bounding estimates. The matter 

is then, in our professional judgment, is -- 

are the values that we've assigned in the 

matrix, do they encompass those bounding values 

or not, and it's going to come down to figuring 

out and making a -- a judgment as to how long a 
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person worked with briqueting operations or 

furnace operations. 

I will say, in light of -- the spirit of full 

disclosure, that we are -- there's another 

document out there that we're waiting on. I 

really don't like springing documents on 

people, but I ran across in the last week or so 

-- there was a Nuclear Science and Technology 

article that was published in the -- the early 

'50s I think that talked about the Brookhaven 

reactor and the loading of the slugs. There 

was a nice little piece in there about what 

Chapman Valve did for that operation. And 

that's where, you know, you read about the 4-

inch slugs and what they did. They milled 

those little grooves in the side and -- and 

that sort of thing. But in that document was 

cited a H. K. Ferguson report issued in 1948 -- 

I think it was '48 -- that talked about a 95-

page report that they wrote that covered the 

Chapman Valve piece of the operation, including 

health and safety requirements and things of 

that nature. We tried to get that document. 

It's of course hard to get, but so far they've 

not said no. I mean it does exist somewhere, 
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and that may shed some more light on it. But I 

think, even without that document, we can make 

some -- some bounding valuations here, so -- I 

-- I would agree that I -- I don't know that 

this is an SEC issue. It's a matter of how -- 

how adequate the model is as a bounding 

document and whether we incorporate some of 

these pieces that are in Cindy's review to add 

a separate exposure piece for uranium 

operations -- uranium burning operations or 

not. It's -- it's (unintelligible) -- 

 MS. WU: This is Portia Wu again from Kennedy's 

office. I guess the question we have from the 

Hill is sort of -- you know, I know some of 

these are SEC issues and some of them are not, 

but to the extent that there are outstanding 

requests for information with some other 

departments or these other reports, I think 

it's important to have as much of this be 

considered by the working group as possible, 

just from a perspective of that makes people on 

the Hill and also the claimants feel most 

comfortable. I understand the working group 

wants to move ahead and we appreciate that, 

trying to move ahead and get to it quickly. 
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But at the same time we'd like to feel like 

everything's being considered. I've got to go 

brief my boss now, but -- but appreciate 

everything that's been said. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you. Give our regards to the 

Senator. 

 MS. WU: Will do. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: I have -- I have the document. 

It is on page 294, starting -- of the Fernald 

petition. It is from Kline* to Starkey*, 

December 7th, 1960. It -- it has burn--

operator cleaning under burnout conveyor in dpm 

per cubic meter, the high was 3.1 million, the 

low was 500,000, and the average was 1.3 

million. That was one set of readings. And 

the year earlier readings that I was finding 

were a high of 9.3 million dpm, low of 4.6 

million, and an average of 6.8 million. So the 

average was 97,000 times MAC. And so I -- my 

memory was correct. I'm not growing as old as 

fast as might be imagined. 

DR. NETON: And I guess I'd ask the question, 

is that -- is a cleanout under a burnout 

conveyor relevant to Chapman -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: That's a separate question. I 
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wasn't asserting that it is relevant. I'm just 

saying that -- I just want to, for the record, 

since there was a question as to whether this 

is conceivable or not, these are -- these -- in 

the millions of dpm per cubic meter are Fernald 

measurements a -- a dozen years later than the 

period in question. 

DR. NETON: Okay. 

 MR. ROLFES: The source term is several orders 

of magnitude different and -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: That's not the point. 

 MR. ROLFES: -- the operations are not similar, 

so... 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: The source term for -- I have 

argued many times that it is wrong to consider 

a production source term for a population and 

mix it up with the potential for individual 

exposures unless you can show that the times of 

operation for individuals are lower. I know 

that is being argued, but I think the basis to 

say (unintelligible) hour per week, half an 

hour per week, two hours per week appears to me 

to be pretty slender. Whether it's an SEC 

issue or not is not a question, but I think it 

should be clear that there are no data from 
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Chapman Valve itself. And to infer from 

medical incinerator personal experience from, I 

don't know, the 1990s and back-extrapolate into 

1948 as -- as one of the first (unintelligible) 

arguments appeared to me to be pretty thin 

gruel. 

MS. BLOOM: I don't think I was making an 

argument that that was a -- the same operation, 

but I certainly would make the argument that 

loading an incinerator, which this was a -- the 

-- the operation is not very different since 

the 1940s. I don't know about you, but when I 

was growing up my family had an incinerator 

that they routinely loaded and unloaded. That 

was a smaller one. The hospital I worked in 

was a much larger one. I think the time for 

that amount of work, even though it's a 

personal experience, certainly is relevant to 

an operation like this where -- where this 

particular incinerator we're talking about was 

described as a small chip burner. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, I agree the time is 

relevant. It's just a question of how it shall 

be established, and I leave -- you know, I -- I 

just -- I'm putting -- I'm not saying how it 
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should be established. I'm just saying I'm 

putting that -- that question is on the table 

(unintelligible) --

MS. BLOOM: And I agree with that, and -- and 

what I was trying to say is that I'd looked 

through many documents and looked at -- at 

times which I have not summarized here, but 

there are -- there is information about the 

time it took to load some of these things and 

to -- to clean out the ashes, and that 

information is in records. It's not 

particularly for Chapman, but -- but I think 

that, based on what we know about the operation 

at Chapman, I think there's some reasonable 

assumptions that can be made. 

 DR. WADE: Okay. 

 DR. POSTON: I have -- I have -- I guess I'm 

the person that has questions as to what's the 

path forward here. We have a situation where 

we've had some new documents that we haven't 

had a chance to review. We have a potential of 

having another document that may shed light. 

We now have a statement from people on the Hill 

that they want us to consider all the data and 

so forth and -- after they have also said they 
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wanted us to get on with it, so conflicting 

instructions based on the situation. So I'm 

not sure how to proceed. Maybe someone with 

more experience -- this is my first experience 

-- if someone can help. 

 DR. WADE: I can, but go ahead, Jim. 

DR. NETON: I think -- you know, I only brought 

up that other document because I thought it 

might, you know, eventually help refine this 

and I don't want to spring that out at the last 

-- 11th hour. But I think, even without that 

document, there's enough information here to -- 

to have a -- to show that we have an ability to 

bound these exposures. And -- and I agree with 

John -- I think John still might agree with 

this, that it's not an SEC issue at that point. 

It's just how much more refined we can make it. 

DR. MAURO: The only thing I'd like to add for 

this discussion is when we see very high 

airborne dust loadings, the extent to which at 

about the same time there may be some bioassay 

data -- now I don't know whether or not some of 

the-- in fact, Arjun, this is a question for 

you -- and when you were looking at the records 

for Fernald where you observed some very, very 
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high uranium dust loadings, are there 

concurrent bioassay samples? Because one of 

the things I ran into in reviewing -- and this 

is interesting -- some other sites, they often 

refer to air samples where they captured what 

they called a brick in the sample, a brick 

being a relatively large particle -- not a 

brick, but a relatively large particle -- that 

has a lot of activity and it -- so all of a 

sudden you've got this very high number in 

terms of becquerels per cubic meter, but it's 

on a particle that's large -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. 

DR. MAURO: -- and it's not respirable. Now I 

don't -- now -- and I think that -- and I'm not 

saying that's what happened. I'm saying, 

though, if there's some bioassay data that's 

coupled up with the same time period, the same 

activities, that would help get a -- a richer 

insight into -- into this number. 

DR. NETON: Well, first, I'd be surprised if 

they weren't wearing respirators in an 

operation like that where they knew there were 

large dust loadings, so the bioassay might not 

be very informative. But I did 
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(unintelligible) --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, I -- I -- I don't know -- 

the individuals are not identified in this 

memo. There is a date of the operation and a 

plant number, so it may be possible to go and -

- and check. I -- I can't see that it says 

whether people were wearing respirators or not. 

It may. I have-- I haven't reread the whole 

thing. 

DR. NETON: But my point is, even if we saw low 

urine values, we couldn't -- the argument could 

easily be made they were wearing respirators 

and they're not relevant if we knew or not. We 

do have those urine samples that I pointed out 

earlier on from NUMEC, which was a -- a furnace 

operation. Those values are within the realm 

of what we defined. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Jim, was that a ventilated 

operation at NUMEC? 

DR. NETON: It was described as primitive. Now 

I'm not sure what that means. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: It was in the mid-'60s. 

DR. NETON: It was in the '60s, that's correct. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, I -- I think that it 

might be useful, since it is an important part 
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of this argument, to determine whether it was a 

ventilated operation or not. 

DR. NETON: We could certainly do that -- or 

try to determine that. 

 DR. WADE: This is Lew. Let me talk a little 

bit in response to the Chairman's sort of 

query, that --

 DR. POSTON: Our fella needs a break. No? Is 

that okay? Okay, sorry. Go ahead. 

 DR. WADE: So this is Lew, so -- again, and 

I'll try and present my thoughts, in no way 

trying to force an outcome or a judgment 

because that's really for the working group. 

There -- there are really two options that you 

face. We have a workgroup meeting coming up in 

May, early part of May. Following the normal 

procedures of a workgroup, it is possible that 

this workgroup could go to that May meeting and 

present its thoughts and findings to the Board, 

with a recommendation that the Board vote on 

the Chapman Valve SEC petition at that meeting. 

Now again, remember that the way this Board has 

done business, the workgroup is not bringing a 

recommendation. The workgroup is bringing its 

findings, presenting them, the full Board 
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debates them and then the full Board takes -- 

takes a vote. So you could go to that meeting, 

present your findings, reports made available, 

and encourage the Board to vote on this SEC 

petition in May. 

Second point is that you could feel there are 

enough loose ends -- and you know, you've 

identified two or three of them now -- you 

could feel there's enough loose ends that you 

want to tie up those loose ends before you come 

to the Board, present and suggest a vote. You 

could try and tie up those loose ends before 

May. If not, then you'd be looking at the 

likelihood of July, the July meeting, for this 

workgroup to present its findings. 

Now again, that's up to you. We always face 

the pressure of 100 percent completeness versus 

timeliness. You know, we've heard the 

arguments, the impassioned arguments that there 

are people affected by this who will die 

between now and July, in all likelihood. And 

you know, we have to -- we have to feel that 

pressure. On the other hand, these people have 

a right for a complete and an appropriate 

decision. So I mean the workgroup faces that 
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now. It'd be wise to talk about that now. But 

again, your options really are to bring a 

concluding discussion to the workgroup in May 

or to continue to work to -- to wrap up these 

loose ends and look at a date later than May, 

likely July. 

 DR. POSTON: Do we have any opinions from the 

other working group members as to how they feel 

we should proceed? 

DR. ROESSLER: This is Gen. I've been 

listening to a lot of comments here, and I 

think a lot of it, in my view, has been a 

little off-track. I'm not quite sure -- I 

don't have a good idea in my mind as to where 

we really stand. I feel like Jim didn't get a 

chance to completely finish his report, and I 

don't know whether there's time to do that 

today. 

 DR. WADE: Yeah, there is. Other workgroup 

members want to comment at this point? We're 

not necessarily trying to reach conclusion, but 

get a sense of the workgroup. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, this is Brad. I've been 

listening to all this and it seems like -- you 

know, we -- we get into this all the time. We 
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have a lot more information that comes in and 

stuff, but the most important thing we've got 

to remember is when we give a finished product 

before the Board we want to make sure that we 

have all of our bases covered. That's just my 

personal opinion, but -- 

 DR. WADE: Your personal opinion matters. 

 MR. GIBSON: This is Mike. You know, I know we 

need to be timely and -- and give our -- our 

findings to the Board and so the petitioners 

can have a timely, you know, vote on their -- 

their petition. But it just seems to me that 

this -- from the beginning and in every case, 

this coworker data modeling from different 

sites and different operations -- I just feel 

we almost have to go down every path. I mean, 

you know, it seems to me every -- every 

different site does things differently. They 

may do preventative maintenance at different 

frequencies. They may do operations different, 

and I think it's important to get every issue 

on the table so we can make sure that we do 

really find a -- a true upper bound and 

something that's fair to people at a different 

site. 
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 DR. WADE: Okay. Mark? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I'm not sure -- I'm sorry, 

I'm not sure that I'm quite ready for the path 

forward discussion, but I think -- I think 

there's a few more things to discuss today. 

And I -- I -- you know, a couple of them 

involving -- I still have follow-ups on my 

representativeness question. I'm looking at 

this report today that was -- you know, that's 

on the O drive and -- and you know, I -- I 

think I just have a few follow-up questions on 

that. I'm -- I -- I do appreciate Jim's 

statement about the -- the enriched uranium. 

That -- that issue may go away for me because 

my -- my real issue on that is are we missing 

the boat on what was done at Chapman. Was 

there a wider window of production involving 

other materials, and if that's being kicked to 

DOL and outside of our purview at this point, 

that -- that satisfies me, so that's a big 

thing that's off the table, I think maybe. And 

with that in mind, I think we may be able to -- 

you know, after this meeting we may -- we may 

have a fair amount on the table. I think that 

that -- that document that Jim mentioned would 
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be -- might be very helpful if we can get out 

hands on it before the May meeting because that 

may put everything into context. The only --

one question I had on the document you posted 

or -- and that Cindy put together was, you 

know, it looks to me, glancing at it, that a 

lot of this stuff was done in the '52 through 

'55 time frame and are we confident that the 

operations would have been -- you know, that 

the operations would have been, you know, 

consistent with Chapman operations in '48. I 

imagine there was a learning curve in those 

early years and might -- you know, arguably 

might have been a little sloppier in the early 

years as far as, you know, exposures. So that 

would be my only question on that end. 

MS. BLOOM: I -- I think as I looked through 

the data, Mark, there was a variety of use of 

safety practices and it wasn't necessarily 

consistent for any particular time period or 

any particular facility. It seemed more to be 

-- you know, if I had to tie it to something, 

if the job appeared to be a one-time job where 

they were doing machining on a depleted uranium 

casket which wasn't part of their typical 
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operations, it looked like there wasn't 

ventilation that was -- was employed for that 

particular operation, which occurred in later 

years -- I believe in the either late '50s or 

early '60s. But I -- at some of these sites 

the material that was being machined was 

enriched uranium, so the -- so the -- 

somebody's got two phones going on? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I don't know what --

MS. BLOOM: So -- so in that case, the 

activities are going to be higher unless -- 

unless the data's presented in mass 

concentrations. You know, anywhere from a 

factor of two to 100 higher than we'd be 

talking about here, just to try to get into the 

same unit. So ther-- there's -- this is -- is 

to give people an idea of what was happening 

out there. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MS. BLOOM: Not any one site is absolutely 

identical to what was happening at Chapman. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MS. BLOOM: I would be the first to say that. 

But I -- my feeling as I went through all these 

documents is that the preponderance of evidence 
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indicates that the Chapman Valve exposure 

matrix is reasonable and favorable to the 

claimants, that -- and that definitely there's 

a certain amount of professional judgment that 

goes into that call. And we --

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

MS. BLOOM: -- we all come from different 

backgrounds and --

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I gue-- I guess the one -- 

the one thing that I would say is this -- going 

back to my question on representativeness of 

the urinalysis -- I mean I -- I still look at 

this and say, you know, machining operation and 

we've got three machine -- machinists ever 

sampled out of your 40 or whatever urine 

samples, and when I look at that list, Jim, 

that we were talking about, the external badge 

data, I look at the -- what I would call 

operational jo-- now this is very -- you know, 

just doing it here while we're on the phone 

call --

DR. NETON: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- and not counting inspectors, I 

was counting, you know, foremen, helpers, all 

operational jobs that I could find, and it 
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looked to be about 30. I -- I agree it's not a 

-- you know, it's not a huge population from 

what we have here for the data. But you know, 

thi-- this question that came from -- I think 

it originally came from the -- the Senator's 

letter, was the highest externally exposed were 

not monitored for urinalysis, and the 

hypothetical argument was that well, you know, 

they -- it wouldn't necessarily be true that 

the highest external exposed person was likely 

to receive the highest internal exposure, but 

when you look at the -- these sheets and the 

job types, you -- you do tend to ask yourself 

'cause they include the brusher, the centerless 

grinder, other machining type operations. And 

so the only question I would have is okay, we 

got three machinists out of these 40 samples, 

you know, are we really -- you know, I know 

that we're -- every -- all the data you have, 

Cindy, I agree you've -- you've been claimant 

favorable -- you know, I think very claimant 

favorable. The question is, were they not 

monitoring, you know, the six or seven 

machinists that were in the dirtier -- dirtier 

operations. And I have no reason to believe 
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that, except for this external data that kind 

of suggests that some of these individuals that 

have high externals were -- and -- and jobs 

which I would think, at least looking at the 

job titles only, seem to imply a high poten-- 

or at least as high as these others, potential 

for internal exposures and they weren't 

monitored. So then I would say well, okay, 

we've got this other set of data and, to the 

extent we can, I think we -- you know, I -- I 

still think it's probably something that we can 

bound --

DR. NETON: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- 'cause you've got all this 

other -- other facility data. But I would 

argue this H. K. Ferguson report that you just 

mentioned, Jim, if that's going to give us an 

insight into not only operations but although -

- although -- also health and safety during 

that time period of 1948. 

DR. NETON: (Unintelligible) 

 MR. GRIFFON: Then you can -- then you can 

bridge the gap back to '48 and say okay, I've 

got urine data, got all this data from the 

early '50s that suggests we're in the right 
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ball park. On top of that we've got this other 

report that says, you know, this is what they 

were doing and how they were doing it and it's 

consistent with what we see in this -- in these 

reports from the '50s. That would --

DR. NETON: I can't guarantee we're going to 

produce that report --

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, right, right. 

DR. NETON: -- and I only brought it up because 

I didn't want to spring it out in a -- in a 

week or so --

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- and say well, you knew about 

this -- when did you know about it kind of 

thing. 

 DR. POSTON: Mark --

 MR. GRIFFON: But --

 DR. POSTON: -- and the -- and for the working 

group, I didn't intend asking the question to 

bring a determination to this. What I was 

trying to ascertain is how to use the time that 

we have remaining today most effectively, and I 

-- I have no problem delaying any kind of 

decision, those kinds of things, so that we can 

explore -- Gen pointed out that she didn't feel 
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like that Jim had a chance to finish his 

presentation. Mark, you indicated that you had 

some questions that you would like to ask. And 

so I would like to proceed along those paths so 

that we make sure that the working group has 

all the information they feel like they need. 

And if the H. K. Ferguson report should surface 

and -- and we can review it, then I think that 

would be a huge asset to -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. POSTON: -- this whole thing, so that's 

where I'm coming from. I was just sort of -- 

since I'm -- this is my first time, I was 

asking for help. 

 DR. WADE: Which now you have, so I think now 

you know how to use your time. 

 DR. POSTON: So I think we prob-- even though 

it's -- it's 11:15 and lunch is almost over the 

horizon, we probably need to take a break. 

 DR. WADE: Going to try to take ten minutes and 

then be back. Okay? We're going to mute the 

phone and un-mute it back in ten minutes, which 

by my watch is 25 after 11:00, Eastern. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: John -- John, I'll be signing 

off. 
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DR. MAURO: Okay, Arjun. Thanks. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Thank you. 

 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 11:18 a.m. 

to 11:28 a.m.) 

 DR. WADE: Okay, let me make sure that -- that 

all are out there. Brad, are you with us? 

 MR. CLAWSON: Yes, I am. 

 DR. WADE: Mike Gibson? 

 MR. GIBSON: Yes, I'm here, Lew. 

 DR. WADE: Mark? 

 (No response) 

Is Mark back on? 

 (No response) 

Mark, are you with us? Are you muted? 

 (No response) 

 Gen, are you with us? 

 (No response) 

 Gen Roessler? 

 (No response) 

 On the line, un-muted? 

 (No response) 

 We'll wait another second for -- a minute or so 

for Gen and Mark. 

DR. NETON: Well, while we have a second, Mark 

-- or Brad, rather, did you end up getting a 
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copy of that document that I mailed out 

yesterday afternoon? 

 MR. CLAWSON: No, I did not. I was going to 

ask you for that. 

DR. NETON: Well, I -- I sent it to you and I 

looked at my e-mail quickly this morning and I 

got a message undeliverable thing, so I'll try 

to send it to you again. It is out there on 

the O drive if you can access it, but when I 

get back to the office I'll resend it. 

Hopefully your address is valid, there's just 

some hiccup in the system. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, yeah, if -- yeah, I'd 

appreciate that. I've also got a -- I'll sit 

down with Larry, but maybe at another time. 

I've got to be able to get access to the O 

drive. I haven't been able to do that yet. 

DR. NETON: Okay. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Thanks. 

 DR. WADE: Mark, are you with us? 

 (No response) 

Mark? Gen? 

DR. ROESSLER: I'm here. 

 DR. WADE: Okay. Only missing Mark. Mark 

Griffon, with us, possibly on mute? 
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 (No response) 

 We'll wait another moment. 

(Pause) 

 Mark Griffon? 

 (No response) 

John, you can begin. I'm sure Mark will be 

with us shortly. 

 DR. POSTON: Well, I'd like for Jim to continue 

to summarize his report. I think it's 

important that everybody have a chance to read 

it, so I guess that's going to dictate some 

delay in some of our decisions, but we 

certainly want to have him summarize what -- 

what's in the report for us, so we'll finish 

that up. 

DR. NETON: Okay. Well, it wasn't my intention 

to go over the entire report today because 

frankly this just came out yesterday and I -- 

I've read it and I -- I really intended this 

morning to just highlight what I did, which was 

the NUMEC and the Fernald and -- and some of 

the particulars about Chapman Valve. Unless 

Cindy might have more that she wants to say, as 

the author, that she can fill in some of the 

holes that I may have -- may have left. But I 
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really don't have a lot more to say about the 

specific other, you know, 12 or 13 sites that 

we've covered. I guess I would leave it to the 

-- to the working group to -- to read the 

document and -- and come to their own 

conclusions rather than me lead them down that 

path. 

 DR. POSTON: If we have questions is it 

appropriate to address them to you or to Cindy? 

DR. NETON: Well -- well, both. I'll try to 

answer them as best I can, but Cindy is -- is 

the author who will -- will have to help me in 

certain parts, I'm sure. 

 DR. WADE: If an individual workgroup member 

wanted to ask a question to Jim, that'd be 

fine. 

DR. NETON: Oh, you mean after the meeting 

or... 

 DR. WADE: Right. 

DR. NETON: Oh, yeah, please forward them to me 

and then I'll make sure that they get answered. 

I thought you meant right now. 

 DR. POSTON: No. No, I was thinking -- 

 DR. WADE: Some people --

DR. NETON: I'm good, but not that good. 
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 DR. WADE: -- are studying -- are not going to 

be able to study until after the meeting, so 

individual questions -- but again, if there's 

anything that then warrants workgroup action, 

then we'd have to get the workgroup together. 

We can do that by phone. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, ple-- everything e-mail 

directly to me and I'll make sure that we -- we 

get the appropriate answer out to the entire 

distribution list. 

 DR. WADE: Mark, are you with us? 

 (No response) 

 Mark Griffon? 

 (No response) 

Okay. 

 DR. POSTON: Next thing I wanted to do was 

address Mark's questions. 

DR. MAURO: Well, while we're waiting, I wrote 

down some notes as to -- right now I've 

identified three items that sort of emerged 

from this roundtable discussion. Cert-- and 

please let me know if I got them right. It 

sounded like there was still a little bit of 

discussion in this type M versus type S 

mixture, whether or not in fact if you -- you 
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know, looking at the -- the urine data for the 

.08 and this business of the .03 and somehow if 

you assume it's all type S or maybe a combo of 

type M and type S, you could actually come up 

with an intake scenario that might be a little 

larger than the one that you guys elec-- folks 

selected. Is that a correct characterization 

of the conversation that I overheard? 

DR. NETON: I think that's correct. We need to 

investigate that and, you know, right now we 

have two scenarios, pure type S, pure type M. 

We could look and see if -- if a combination of 

type S for the fire, M for the machining 

operations resulted in some higher dose. We 

can -- we can do that and we may end up -- if 

it did, we might -- likely would end up adding 

a third exposure scenario. If it's lower, then 

we would just stick with what we have. 

DR. MAURO: The second item I have is the 

degree to which that M. K. Ferguson report may 

enrich our understanding of the history of the 

site. To the extent that become available, that 

would be great. 

And the third item I have is of course whether 

or not it is prudent to factor in an additional 
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spike for the incinerator contribution or -- or 

whether the current base-- baseline chronic 

exposure is more than sufficient to accommodate 

that potential spike. 

Those are the only three items that I -- that I 

wrote down as requiring some action, none of 

which is an SC&A action item, as I understand 

it. But I -- am I correct that those are -- 

are there other items that I might have missed? 

 DR. WADE: Well, I think we have Mark's issue. 

DR. MAURO: Yeah. 

 DR. WADE: Mark, are you with us? 

 (No response) 

 Still not. 

 DR. POSTON: I have -- I have a question, that 

I probably should know but don't. Mark was 

focusing on the machinists, but based on the 

information I read about fabrication of the 

rods for -- the fuel rods for Brookhaven and 

their encapsulation and so forth, it seems to 

me that the people with highest potential 

exposure were not the machinists but the 

centerless grinder people. 

DR. NETON: Correct, I think -- I think on 

machinists he would -- he would include the 
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centerless grinders and -- 

 DR. POSTON: He would include them? 

DR. NETON: I would think so. 

 DR. POSTON: Because those are the people that 

have generated --

DR. NETON: Right, and we've -- we've run into 

that before, and our opinion is 70 MAC air 

continuous exposure for a centerless grinder, 

based on what we've seen at other sites, is not 

unreasonable. 

 DR. POSTON: So that was a -- would be a 

chronic exposure? 

DR. NETON: It would be -- we would assign them 

a chronic exposure of 70 -- it essentially ends 

up being a time-weighted average exposure of 70 

times the Maximum Allowable Air Concentration. 

 MR. ROLFES: And we do have bioassay data, as 

well as film badge data -- 

DR. NETON: We have --

 MR. ROLFES: -- for the centerless grinder and 

(unintelligible) operator (unintelligible). 

DR. NETON: Yeah, Mark's -- I think Mark's 

position was that we don't know that we've 

captured all of the site -- all of the 

machinist operations and there may be some out 
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there that are dirtier -- this has become -- 

this has been an issue across a number of sites 

is when you have a set of bioassay data, do 

they represent the upper end of the exposure 

scenario. In modern era, I would say yes. I 

mean it -- normally when you sample workers, 

you don't go and try to sample the low end. 

You sample either the high end or what you 

would believe to be a representative 

distribution. That's a scenario that, with 

these old sites, we're never going to be able 

to definitively prove one way or the other. 

 DR. WADE: Mark, are you with us? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. WADE: Okay. Mark, what -- what happened 

is we were just sort of binning issues and John 

Mauro went through a put three on the table -- 

and John, I might ask you to do that again, 

briefly -- and then we were waiting for you to 

define your issue. John. 

DR. MAURO: Yes, just as a -- keeping track, I 

wrote down a minimum -- minimum of three items. 

One I'm calling the type M versus type S 

combination scenario, which may very well 

result in some organ exposures that are higher 
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than the current exposure matrix, and it's my 

understanding that NIOSH is going to look into 

that. 

The second one is the M. K. Ferguson report, 

the degree to which it can be obtained and 

provide further information that could help us 

get a richer understanding of the -- what was 

going on at Chapman in those early years. 

And the third one I have is the potential for 

the exposures from incinerators or incinerator 

use to have enough of a potential contribution 

as a spike or occasional spike that warrants it 

being added to the scenario, similar to the way 

in which the June fire was added to the 

scenario. That's something that -- that I 

think we left as worthy of further exploration. 

So I -- I only had those three, but certainly 

there might be more and -- that need to be 

added to the list. 

 DR. WADE: Mark, and people were looking at 

your issue of representativeness of the data 

and starting to debate it, but best 

(unintelligible) --

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think I heard Jim Neton 

as I -- as I just came on was -- 
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 DR. WADE: He was talking about centerless 

grinders versus machinists, and so do you want 

to define your issue and -- and possibly 

trigger some discussion? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I -- I think it's pretty well -- 

I think it's pretty well defined. I -- I think 

-- I haven't had a lot of chance really to look 

at this paper, and I apol-- I looked on the O 

drive last night. It wasn't there, and then I 

think it took a day to get on or whatever, but 

it -- it's here this morning, but if -- you 

know, my -- my question -- and I think Jim was 

-- was framing it well, was that, you know, it 

doesn't -- you know, am I convinced that they 

were monitoring the highest exposed people for 

internal exposures. I'm -- I'm not necessarily 

convinced. 

And then the second part of that is, however, 

can we, with other data that we have relevant -

- you know, applicable to this time period -- I 

would -- I would throw that on top -- and it -- 

it might be that you've covered that in this 

report. You know, with that oth-- other data, 

can we still bou-- nonetheless still bound -- 

bound the -- the, you know, potential exposures 
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here for the Chapman employees. And I -- I 

think -- you know, all -- I -- I think the 

evidence is leaning toward the -- the fact that 

you -- you have enough information to be able 

to bound that -- those internal exposures based 

on, you know, representative machining sampling 

from various facilities over this time period. 

So -- but I would leave myself a little -- I -- 

I would like to reflect on this paper a little 

more. I haven't had -- I've been looking at it 

while you've been talking, but -- 

intermittently. 

 DR. WADE: You'd -- you'd ask --

 MR. GRIFFON: And -- and tha-- I -- I guess 

that's where I would stop this, is that -- I 

mean for me, that would -- that would -- and 

the -- the H. K. Ferguson report would really I 

think be very -- well, we may get it and say 

oh, boy, we thought this was going to be 

something --

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- it's not, but it -- it could 

really be helpful in making sure that, you 

know, yes, we're -- we're -- we're correct that 

-- you know, we're correct in assuming that 
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these other facilities are -- were doing pretty 

much things the same way as we thought Chapman 

was doing them, you know, and therefore we -- 

we're confident that these samples are 

bounding. But that -- you know, I think -- I 

think we might have enough. My concern was 

that the Chapman data itself I think -- you 

know, I wasn't convinced that the highest 

exposed people were monitored for internal 

exposures. 

 DR. WADE: Okay, so you would add a fourth to 

John's list and the fourth is that more of an 

in-depth review of the white paper provided by 

Cindy last night. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I suppose so, or just a chance 

for us to -- you know, I think that -- I think 

a lot's there and I think I -- at least for 

myself, I would like an opportunity to look at 

it a little closer. 

 DR. WADE: Okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: But I also would a-- you know, as 

I said, I -- I think it seems to support their 

-- their conclusions, so... 

 DR. WADE: If possibly I could have just a 

brief terminology discussion. I was talking to 
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John before and there are relatively new Board 

members involved, and those of you who have 

been around this table having these debates 

throw around the term "is it an SEC issue or 

isn't it," and I think a little bit of clarity 

there would be in order as you sort of look at 

your path forward. And -- and without being 

too wordy, you know, people come and petition 

the government to say you should add the -- a 

class of workers to the Special Exposure 

Cohort. That means they would be paid -- if 

they could show that they worked at the 

facility for sufficient amounts of time, if 

they had one of the covered cancers. There'd 

be no need for dose reconstruction. The 

premise is because you can't do dose 

reconstruction, and the -- the bar that's set 

by the regulation is can the government 

demonstrate that it can bound dose with 

sufficient accuracy, or go beyond that. And 

there are always two parts to that. It's the 

bounding dose, but then it's tempered with the 

sufficient accuracy. This -- this Board has --

has come to find itself in situations where the 

bounds were so unreasonable that they didn't 
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pass the test, so it's bound with sufficient 

accuracy. 

If it can be demonstrated that you can bound 

dose with sufficient accuracy, then 

theoretically it's not an SEC question. You --

you deny the SEC petition and you get on with 

doing dose reconstructions. 

Some of these more esoteric issues you're 

talking about would have to be ironed out as 

you would do dose reconstruction, and John has 

defined the term that we call those "site 

profile issues," instructions to dose 

reconstructors. 

So the big question a group like this faces is 

can doses be bound with sufficient accuracy for 

the workers covered by this petition. If the 

answer to that is yes, then the recommendation 

logically would be to deny the petition and get 

on with doing dose reconstructions, which would 

require you to work these more detailed issues 

to closure. But that's what you face, and I'm 

sure that's boring to most of you but may be 

enlightening to -- to some. Okay? 

 MR. CLAWSON: Lew, this is Brad. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Also -- oh. 
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 DR. WADE: Yes, Brad. 

 MR. CLAWSON: I -- I was just wondering, you 

know, and I read this in reading through this 

Chapman report and stuff, I've heard that we've 

got one sample with high enriched uranium and 

one -- now I'm hearing today that we don't. 

Have we come to closure on that? 

 DR. WADE: I would say yes. I -- I think 

everyone would agree that there are -- there is 

one, two samples -- the terminology might be 

debated, but I think everyone agrees that those 

samples represent an exposure outside of the 

time period involved in this petition, outside 

of the time period for which this is a covered 

facility. I don't think there's any debate 

about that. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, I just wanted to make sure 

that I was clear where we were going with that. 

 DR. WADE: Okay. Thank you, Brad. 

 DR. POSTON: Mark, did you have additional 

comments, questions? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, ju-- just -- after Lew's 

discussion of SEC and site profile issues, I 

think John Mauro's list that you just raised, I 

think that first one, the M and S solubility 
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thing, since I brought that up, I believe 

that's a site profile issue, not an SEC issue. 

I mean that might -- it might or might not 

affect intakes and, you know, the site profile, 

but it's not going to affect whether you can 

bound a dose, so --

 DR. WADE: John is nodding his head. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- just to put that on the table. 

Okay. 

 DR. WADE: And we don't know the M. K. Ferguson 

report -- I mean there's reason to believe that 

we won't be surprised by it, but until we see 

it, we don't know it. And I think the spike 

for incinerators, the question is if -- if it's 

determined that you need a spike for 

incinerators, then there does appear to be 

information available on which to base -- to 

make that exposure matrix determination. 

 DR. POSTON: That would require some sort of 

assumption -- how often the furnaces were 

cleaned out, those kinds of things. We don't 

know that. 

DR. NETON: But we -- we don't know that for 

Chapman Valve. We have evidence from other 

facilities -- similar facilities -- to what 
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that time frame is. But I would suggest that 

the time is somewhere between almost zero and 

full time, and we ha-- we know what -- we know 

what the concentrations are. 

 DR. POSTON: That's quite bounding. 

DR. NETON: Well, what I'm saying is they could 

be bounded and it -- it's -- probably full time 

is overkill, but you know, I think we could 

certainly get to a point where we'd all agree 

that a certain value was a reasonable amount of 

time, whether it's half-time, one hour or 30 

hours. I think -- I'm confident that we could 

come to some agreement as to what a reasonable 

length of time would be, and then we would 

apply that air concentration that we observed 

at these other facilities, maybe the high end, 

and see if our model -- current model would 

bound that. If not, we could make adjustments. 

DR. MAURO: I -- I think it also would be 

worthwhile addressing Arjun's point regarding 

this -- this outrageously high -- 

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

DR. MAURO: -- outlier, sort of like -- you 

know, something has to be said when -- you 

know, when you are confronted with a scenario 
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like that to understand it within the broader 

context and where it's applicable and where 

it's not --

DR. NETON: Exactly. 

DR. MAURO: -- it's going to be very important. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I agree. 

MS. BLOOM: I just looked at that number that 

Arjun had quoted and it looks like the person 

was removing the plate beneath the burnout 

conveyor belt, and the dust was falling on 

their head when they removed the plate and 

that's where the breathing zone was taken. So 

certainly in that scenario, somebody's pouring 

uranium oxide dust down on you, you could 

envision a concentration that high. 

 DR. WADE: That said, it needs to be looked at 

and put in context, that's all. 

 DR. POSTON: Anything else? 

MS. BLOOM: The only other thing is that report 

is H. K. Ferguson, not M. K. 

DR. MAURO: Oh, it's H. K.? All right --

DR. NETON: Right, it's H. K. Ferguson. 

 MR. GRIFFON: On the H. K. Ferguson report, do 

you have any sense, Jim -- I know you said that 

you were still trying to loca-- I mean you have 
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some leads on this? Is this something that we 

might actually get before May or -- no way to -

- no way to figure that out, I guess. Right. 

DR. NETON: Difficult to -- to say. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: What we've -- what we've seen so 

far is there was an initial citation on -- on 

the OSTI database that suggested that the 

report was available through NTIS. We were 

working at it from two ends, and NTIS -- it's 

not available at NTIS right now, but I guess -- 

the inference I got was that the report may be 

available, but some other database holder has 

to release that report -- has to agree to 

release the report. I'm not sure why, but -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

DR. NETON: -- I'm -- I'm hoping that we can 

get it, but if not, you know, that's the way it 

works. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. All right. 

 DR. WADE: So one thing you could do is you 

could pick a date two weeks out from today and 

say let's plan on getting together, the 

workgroup, on the phone. Jim can report on the 

Ferguson report. Mark will have had a chance, 
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and others, to review Cindy's report. Jim can 

talk about M versus S and spikes for 

incinerators and -- and then make a judgment. 

 But there's something for the -- for the sake 

of completeness and information, Dr. Poston 

will not be available at the May meeting, so if 

the workgroup decides to bring its conclusions 

forward -- which I think should still be on the 

table -- then the workgroup members will have 

to decide how that would be done. You've all 

participated in the discussions. You're all 

capable people. That decision would have to be 

made. 

 DR. POSTON: Does that make sense to the 

working group, the members, that we'll try to 

find a time two weeks roughly from now to have 

another meeting and -- it'd have to be by 

telephone, I think. 

DR. ROESSLER: It's good for me. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, that'd be fine with me, 

John. This is Brad. 

 DR. POSTON: Okay. 

 DR. WADE: Let's try and do it right now while 

we're -- all the -- the parties are here. 

 DR. POSTON: Get the Blackberries out. 
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 DR. WADE: 'Cause if it doesn't happen now, it 

gets tough. So -- okay. So you know, you're 

looking at two weeks from today is the 24th of 

April. That's a week before the -- the Board 

meeting. 

DR. ROESSLER: I'm clear. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Good for me. 

 MR. CLAWSON: What day was it? 

 DR. WADE: The 24th of April, that's a Tuesday. 

DR. NETON: Morning would be better for me than 

the afternoon, but the day is okay with me. 

 MR. CLAWSON: I'm -- I'm in union negotiations, 

but if it wasn't going to take too long, if we 

could do it first thing in the morning, I could 

probably be able to spend a couple of hours 

there. 

 DR. WADE: Well, given your time zone, I think 

we could work. Is Tuesday okay for you or 

would you rather Monday, John? 

 DR. POSTON: I'd rather Monday. 

on --

I have a class 

 DR. WADE: What about the 23rd? John has a 

class on Tuesday. The 23rd? 

DR. ROESSLER: I'm clear as long as it's in the 

morning. 
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 DR. WADE: Okay, so the morning of the 23rd, 

what if we were to say 9-- 

 MR. GRIFFON: (Unintelligible) me, morning's 

good. 

 DR. WADE: -- 9:00 o'clock Eastern time, which 

is God knows what time out there in your part 

of the world -- are you two hours or three 

hours behind Eastern, Brad? 

 MR. CLAWSON: Two -- two hours, that'd be 7:00 

o'clock my time. That'd be fine. 

 DR. WADE: So 9:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time 

on April 23rd for a phone call of the 

workgroup, and I think we know the agenda. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

 DR. WADE: Seems like a very reasonable path 

forward. 

 DR. POSTON: Okay, we're going to say for two 

hours -- I'm sorry, Lew -- did you say? 

 DR. WADE: Well, we'll -- we'll say three hours 

because sometimes two hours is three hours, but 

no more. 

 DR. POSTON: Okay. At that time then what 

we'll do is we'll discuss the -- hopefully the 

H. K. Ferguson report, have further discussion 

on the report that was sent out yesterday by 
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Cindy Bloom and Jim Neton, and then decide how 

we're going to go forward in terms of the May 

meeting. If we decide to bring something to 

the Board, then we would need a volunteer with 

more experience than me since I'm -- have 

another commitment. 

 DR. WADE: Or several. Or several 

(unintelligible). 

 DR. POSTON: Anything else we need to discuss? 

 DR. WADE: I don't think. I think it was very 

productive and very focused. I appreciate 

everyone's time and effort, particularly your 

travel here, Dr. Poston. I think it was good 

that you were here to -- to lead this 

discussion. 

Anything for the good of the order that needs 

to be said? 

 (No responses) 

Okay. 

 DR. POSTON: Thanks for your time and -- talk 

with you in two weeks. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you. 

 (Whereupon, the meeting was concluded at 11:53 

a.m.) 
______________________________ 

131 

1 CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER 

STATE OF GEORGIA 

COUNTY OF FULTON 

 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 

Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 

above and foregoing on the day of April 10, 

2007; 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 

12th day of June, 2007. 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102