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 

THIRTIETH MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

DAY TWO 

The verbatim transcript of the Meeting of the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health held 

at the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel, Cedar 

Rapids, Iowa, on April 26, 2005. 
 

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C O N T E N T S 

April 26, 2005 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 9 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR

DR. LEW WADE, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

SC&A DISCUSSION CONTINUED FROM APRIL 25, ’05 10 

IAAP SEC PETITION 60 

PRESENTATION BY NIOSH, MR. LARRY ELLIOTT 61 

PETITIONERS PRESENTATION, MR. BOB ANDERSON 112 

DR. FUORTES 133 

BOARD DISCUSSION OF IAAP SEC PETITION 148 

MALLINCKRODT TECHNICAL BASIS DOCUMENT 227 

PRESENTATION BY NIOSH, DR. JIM NETON 240 

PRESENTATION BY SC&A, DR. ARJUN MAKHIJANI 288 

PUBLIC COMMENT 338 

ADJOURN 392 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 393 
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TRANSCRIPT LEGEND 

The following transcript contains quoted material. 

Such material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

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

an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 

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

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

word(s) when reading written material. 

-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 

of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 

reported. 

-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 

the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 

available. 

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

"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 

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

without reference available. 

-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 

failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 

In the following transcript (off microphone) 

refers to microphone malfunction or speaker's neglect 

to depress "on" button. 
 

 

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

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

BOARD MEMBERS 

CHAIR 

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

School of Health Sciences 

Purdue University

Lafayette, Indiana 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D.

Senior Science Advisor 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Washington, DC 

MEMBERSHIP 

ANDERSON, Henry A., M.D.

Chief Medical Officer 

Occupational and Environmental Health

Wisconsin Division of Public Health 

Madison, Wisconsin 

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

Director 

The Vanderbilt Center for Occupational and Environmental

Medicine 

Professor of Medicine 

Nashville, Tennessee 

ESPINOSA, Richard Lee

Sheet Metal Workers Union Local #49 

Johnson Controls 

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Espanola, New Mexico 
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GIBSON, Michael H.

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union

Local 5-4200 

Miamisburg, Ohio 

GRIFFON, Mark A.

President 

Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc.

Salem, New Hampshire 

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

Director 

New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund

Albany, New York 

MUNN, Wanda I.

Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired)

Richland, Washington 

OWENS, Charles Leon

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union

Local 5-550 

Paducah, Kentucky 

PRESLEY, Robert W.

Special Projects Engineer

BWXT Y12 National Security Complex

Clinton, Tennessee 

ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

University of Florida

Elysian, Minnesota 
 

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AGENDA SPEAKERS 

(in order of appearance) 

MR. LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH 

MR. BOB ANDERSON, PETITIONERS

DR. LAURENCE FUORTES, PETITIONERS 

DR. JIM NETON, NIOSH

DR. ARJUN MAKHIJANI, SC&A 

STAFF/VENDORS 

CORI HOMER, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH

STEVEN RAY GREEN, Certified Merit Court Reporter 
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AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS 

AMENELL, MARY

AMENELL, PAUL

ANDERSON, KATHLEEN, IAAP

ANDERSON, ROBERT, IAAP

BEHLING, HANS, SC&A

BEHLING, KATHY, SC&A

BLOSSER, FRED, NIOSH

BRAND, ANSTICE, CDC

BROCK, DENISE, UNWW

BUCH, CATHRYN JOANNE, IAAP

BUXIN, AMY, CONGRESSMAN LEACH

CHANG, C., NIOSH

DEEP, HEIDI, NIOSH

DEHART, JULIA

DETHERAGE, DEBBIE, IAAP

ELLISON, CHRIS, NIOSH

FAIRCHILD, FRAN, IAAP

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A

FLEMING, LEEANN

FUORTES, LAURENCE, UNIV. OF IOWA

GILDS, S.

GRAHAM, PAULA, IAAP

GREENE, ELLEN

GREENE, GARY

GULL, MARY

GUNN, DENNIS

HALLMARK, SHELBY, LABOR

HEISTER, MELANIE, NCRP

HINNEFELD, STUART, NIOSH

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS

HORGAN, TOM, SEN. BOND

IVERSON, SI

JACKSON, CARL L., IAAP

JORDAN, ERIN, DES MOINES REGISTER

KATZ, TED, NIOSH

KOTSCH, JEFFREY L., DOL

LEON, BETTY L., IAAP

LOVING, ANITA, IAAP

LOWRY, LORI, IAAP

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A

MATTSEHY, ROBERT, IAAP 
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MAURO, JOHN, SC&A

MCKEEL, DAN, MD, WASHINGTON UNIV.

MCMILLAN, DAN, U. OF IOWA

MCNEELY, MIKE, NIOSH

MEHAFFY, WANDA E., IAAP

MILLER, JAMES I., IAAP

MILLER, RICHARD, GAP

MONTGOMERY, THEODORE W.

MOORE, VAUGHN, IAAP

NESVET, JEFF, DOL

NETON, JIM, NIOSH

NICHOLSON, HOWARD

NUGENT, MARY, GAO

PIEPER, KAREN

PORTER, DIANE, NIOSH

PRESLEY, LOUISE S.

REED, JOANN, IAAP

REED, MARY, IAAP

RIDER, MARLENE, IAAP

ROESSLER, CHARLES

SCHAUER, DAVID, NCRP

SHELTON, JAMES L., IAAP

SMITH, ROSE

STONGER, JANE, IAAP

TAULBEE, TOM, NIOSH

THOMSON, KATHY, IAAP

TOOHEY, R.E., ORAU

UNDERWOOD, DELORES, IAAP

VACEK, PENNY, SEN. GRASSLEY

VENZKE, KRISHNA, U. OF IOWA

VORHICS, DAN, IAAP

WALKER, BONNIE

WEBB, E.D., IAAP

WEINREICH, REBA, IAAP

WILEY, SHIRLEY

WING, JENNY, SEN. TOM HARKIN

YERINGTON, LASCA, IAAP

ZIEMER, MARILYN

ZIMMERMAN, SUE, CONGRESSMAN LEACH 
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P R O C E E D I N G S

 (8:00 a.m.) 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS

 DR. ZIEMER: Good morning, everyone. I'm going 

to call the session to order. Thank you for 

being here today. We have before us a pretty 

busy agenda. I'd like to remind everyone, if 

you did not get a copy of the agenda or related 

materials, they are on a table toward the back 

there. Also be sure that you have registered 

your attendance if you haven't already done so. 

Let me call on Dr. Wade for just a few 

introductory remarks, as well. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, just -- 

just a few things to say. I thought yesterday 

afternoon we had a very good day. I thought 

there was -- there were significant issues 

discussed and a good discussion of the science. 

Again I remind the Board that creating a record 

of its deliberations, of its considerations, is 

terribly important to the support of any 

recommendations that it might make to the 

Secretary, and I would encourage you to do 

that. 

I would be remiss if I didn't thank SC&A for 

their contribution. They were given a very 
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difficult task with regard to the Iowa TBD and 

they responded not only with excellence from a 

scientific point of view, but professionally 

I've always been impressed with their response. 

So I thank them for their efforts. 

I also thank NIOSH for their efforts in 

bringing information to us to consider. 

 Again, remember the record is terribly 

important. 

I would also ask you to think about how this 

Board would normally do business. We're going 

to discuss an SEC petition today. It's quite 

possible that the Board might come to an 

intellectual decision and then want some 

paperwork generated. And you know, what that 

gets us into is tomorrow, and that's fine, but 

at our last meeting in St. Louis we ran out of 

time and were losing a quorum at the end of the 

day. I would ask you to think about those 

things as you plan your deliberations. I think 

it is terribly important that you finish with 

excellence what you've started with excellence. 

Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Lew, for those remarks. 

 SC&A DISCUSSION CONTINUED FROM APRIL 25, ‘05 
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We have actually some unfinished material from 

yesterday. We terminated discussion of the 

SC&A report and the NIOSH report in order to 

accommodate the public comment period, and we 

still have some additional comments that SC&A 

wished to make for the record -- and perhaps 

NIOSH, as well -- pertaining to the Iowa site 

profile and petition. So I'm going to give the 

floor to John Mauro and he in turn can have his 

folks -- I think Hans perhaps has some comments 

first, but John, you want to -- 

DR. MAURO: (Off microphone) Yes, I'd like to 

(unintelligible) Hans Behling. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Hans Behling is going to 

approach the mike. Thank you. And make some 

additional comments on the SC&A report. 

 DR. BEHLING: Are we on? Yes. Good morning. 

My name is Hans Behling and I'm one of the SEC 

(sic) members who had the opportunity to review 

the Iowa TBD Rev. 1, and I'm here this morning 

just to add a few more comments to things that 

were presented to you yesterday, principally by 

Dr. John Mauro. And I want to start out 

basically by looking at the slide that you're 

at this point probably very familiar with, and 
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this is the slide that identifies the post-'63 

monitoring data. You've seen it in other 

slides by other presenters, but this is the one 

that we have to work with so let me start out. 

It's -- in my opinion, this particular slide 

represents the single most important slide that 

characterizes the dose -- data that will be 

used for dose reconstruction. 

I also should note that the lower portion of 

that slide that starts with the actual 1962 and 

'63 monitoring data was not included in Rev. 1. 

It was, however, included in Rev. 0, which we 

were not asked to look at. I happened to come 

across that slide almost serendipitously, and 

I'll briefly explain. 

I was auditing a dose reconstruction report 

that was constructed with the TBD Rev. 0 as its 

principal document, and as a result of that 

dose -- dose reconstruction review process I 

came to note that this slide was actually very 

important, but unfortunately was not in the 

Rev. 1 TBD and as a result of that we did not 

really address it in our review of the TBD. 

So let me go briefly and explain why it's 

important. It's not only important for the 
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data it contains, but it's probably equally 

important for the information that it does not 

contain. Let me go and briefly point out some 

of the things that are uncertain, at least in 

my mind. In this particular slide actually 

that information's not even here. It was 

presented in one of the other slides. I'd 

forgotten that the data was not here. 

But in the other slide, in Table 8 -- and I 

believe that one of the Congressional staffers 

had -- or members had presented that slide -- 

it shows the number of total people who were 

potentially the people who may have been 

monitored but were not monitored. And I 

believe those numbers ran from 1962 in around 

1,040 and then oscillated between 600 and 1,000 

for the remainder of the year. And one of the 

first questions that I would ask is who were 

these people and what do they represent. Were 

they all of the workers at IAAP or were they 

people who were radiological or radiation 

worker types who should have been monitored. 

And that is a very important question. In 

general, you would like to know who your -- 

your denominator is, and in this case we don't 
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have that information. These are the numbers 

that I was hoping to identify, which 

unfortunately we did not have on our slide. As 

you see here -- yeah, as you see here, these 

are the numbers that are classified as moni-- 

workers who were not monitored, and -- and it's 

very important to understand who those people 

were. Was it in fact a population that 

includes secretaries, white collar workers, 

people worked behind a desk, or were those 

people who should have been monitored but were 

not monitored. So that's one of the chief -- 

chief questions that we should have an answer 

to. 

As you can see, in the first few years only 

about five percent of the people were 

monitored, and that escalates to about 26 

percent towards the end of the time frame that 

we have to concern ourselves with. 

One of the things that -- or the second thing 

that needs to be answered is who are the people 

who were in fact monitored, and I think those 

numbers we do have, which is your second 

column. Obviously we can conclude that the 

number of monitors were quite a few -- I mean 
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were few in numbers. We start out with 29 of 

about 1,000 workers and it goes to 41 and so 

forth, and there is a significant leap in 

numbers between '67 and '68, but still only a 

fraction. Only 14 percent were monitored. And 

of course by the time you reach 1972, that 

fraction is raised to about 26 or so percent. 

What is important -- even more than realizing 

that the numbers of people who were monitored 

were small -- is the question of who were those 

people. And I believe we have to look at that 

more carefully than has been given time for. 

In one of the slides yesterday by Tim Taulbee, 

he presented us a pie chart that suggested that 

the number of people were segregated by worker 

categories. And one of the things that comes 

to my mind is that these workers represent a 

broad spectrum of workers, and not necessarily 

the most exposed group of individual. And I've 

done a lot of work in other areas that lets me 

to conclude that what we're looking at here is 

not a sub-population of workers who were most 

exposed, but a cross-section of workers who may 

have been exposed. And this comes under the 

heading of cohort badging. 
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This was very popular in the '60's and '50's 

when people were essentially assigned a badge 

through an individual, and that individual 

represented your exposure. In fact, if we look 

at some of the data that was identified by the 

National Research Council who wrote a report 

called "Film Badge Dosimetry in the Atmospheric 

Nuclear Testing," in 1989 that was published, 

they give data that says on average, during the 

Pacific testing of -- program in the Pacific, 

about one out of 100 people were only badged, 

meaning that 99 of the 100 were not badged. 

 What I believe may have happened here is that 

we're not looking at -- for instance, in 1963 -

- 41 individuals who were the most exposed 

people; that is, Line 1 workers. What may have 

happened is that there were groups of people 

who each were given a certain number of badges 

to understand what the spectrum of exposures 

may have been. In other words, if I had -- 

let's assume I have 100 people, and 100 people 

represents five distinct groups of individual, 

not all of them obviously working in the same 

kind of job or doing the kind of things that 

would expose them. And I only have, for those 
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100 people with -- representing five groups, 

ten badges. What I may do is give two badges to 

each member of the five groups and therefore 

allow those two badges to represent that group 

of 20. 

What it does, in effect, is it does not 

necessary (sic) represent the most exposed 

population. You may have people who were 

modestly exposed. And when I look at that 

data, what I'm looking at may not be the most 

exposed population group at all. It may be a 

cross-section that represents different groups 

of workers. And when that information then is 

collated on the assumption that it does 

represent the most exposed population group, 

and in this case we have been led to believe 

that it is in fact the Line 1 worker, we may be 

looking at values that have been substantially 

reduced based on the averaging effect that 

cohort badging has as a built-in factor. And 

as I said, while the numbers of workers badged 

increases all the way to 312 at the end of 

1972, the fact of the matter is, if that still 

represents cohort badging -- even though the 

numbers improve -- you are still looking at a 
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dilution effect that is built into the issue of 

cohort badging 'cause you're not looking at the 

most exposed population but a cross-section of 

all workers who may be exposed. And that's a 

very important and significant issue that needs 

to be addressed and I don't have the answer to 

that. 

Let me also briefly talk about the last column, 

which identifies the doses. Those numbers are 

not the real numbers. In fact, those numbers 

represent what I had done in terms of 

manipulating the raw data which was presented 

in Table 7 of Rev. 1 and was also translated in 

some form or fashion into the Rev. 1 of the 

TBD. But they were amplified by what you heard 

yesterday were the photon dose correction 

factors which in essence amplified the recorded 

dose by a factor of about 2.26, which is then 

your new photon dose, and then that's also used 

as a way to establish what your neutron dose is 

by multiplying that value times .79 and 1.91 to 

establish what your neutron dose is. So what 

you're looking at obviously over here is a 

reconstructed or reconstituted dose. 

I have a question about the original data of 
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how those numbers came to be. And let me 

explain briefly why. We know that the 

dosimeters that were in use at the time was a 

two-element film dosimeter. And if we can 

assume that it represented the other types of 

dosimeters that were used throughout the AEC at 

that time, it was probably an open window and a 

shielded one that has either a 1,000 milligram 

lead filter or a silver filter. 

Now we all know, and it's fully acknowledged in 

the TBD, that those dosimeters had significant 

limitations with regard to the radiation fields 

that we were looking -- or are concerned about, 

namely low energy photons. And in this case, 

the principal photon in question, about 70 

percent of the dose is due to americium 241, 

which has a 60 keV photon, very low energy, and 

it's not very readily capable of penetrating 

that 1,000 milligram filter in order to 

register a response. 

The question I have is how was the original 

data deciphered. And to really answer that 

question, I need to also realize what were the 

basis on which these dosimeter readings were 

recorded, because they were not a constant. 
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When we raised that question in our review of 

the TBD, we -- we had concerns about the 

shielded component of the film dosimeter in 

being able to actually measure those low energy 

photons. And in response to that concern we 

were informally told that the approach taken by 

NIOSH in trying to actually make use of the 

monitoring data that you see here is that they 

used the open window, as well. And I don't 

know in what capacity, whether there was some 

kind of a algorithm or whether they used some 

kind of a formula. But the truth of the matter 

is that the dose, as it was recorded, has to be 

looked at very, very skeptically because we 

know for a fact that the method by which the 

AEC reported dosimeter data was quite variable, 

and I'm going to show you in the next two 

slides exactly what happened. 

You can see in this slide here the various time 

periods by which information was recorded. You 

can see, for instance, in the very early period 

that the skin dose was the open window, plus -- 

and I can't really see where I'm standing 

from... -- oh, open window and silver. I 

believe S stands for silver and that is your -- 
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your shield. It's a 1,000 milligram filter 

that sits over top. And of course your whole -

- whole body was the silver, meaning that it 

was recording only the deep dose. 

As you go down the line, you will see over the 

time the changes by which these infor-- this 

information was -- was made available. And as 

you can see down towards the end in -- in -- in 

the 1972 time frame, the skin dose was the nonpenetrating dose plus the whole body, and the 

whole body was penetrating dose and -- and slow 

neutrons and fast neutrons and so forth. 

What I'm telling you is that the way in which 

doses were recorded varied over time, which 

poses a significant problem in how you 

interpret that data. In fact, the next slide 

is something similar to that. And again, this 

comes from a -- from one of the records that I 

believe represents Hanford. And again you see 

the variations by which dosimeter data was 

recorded. And so until we have an 

understanding of how the actual dosimeter data 

that was used and you saw reported in the 

previous slide was deciphered, there's a 

significant question in my mind as to whether 
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or not the numbers that we started out with as 

a baseline really represents something that we 

agree with because of the variability by which 

recorded information was presented and is 

probably at this point available in the 

records. 

So I'll quickly sum it up because I'm probably 

running out of time here. There are a number 

of questions that I believe need to be 

answered. And until these questions are 

answered, in my mind there is some uncertainty 

about the pedigree of the information that's 

being used for the post-'63 monitoring data. 

And to add another level of concern is that the 

1963 post -- 1963 monitoring data, if there is 

some concern about the pedigree of that, we 

must also raise the question about how that 

affects the pre-1963 data because that 

information is deeply imbedded into the generic 

pit dose model. 

So at this point I would leave you with some -- 

some -- some concerns about what I'm -- 

addressed here regards to the monitoring data. 

I have some serious questions and I believe 

some of those questions need to be answered in 
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order for us to have a little more faith in 

that data as a tool for dose reconstruction. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Hans. If I may pose a 

quick question, either Hans or maybe Tim 

Taulbee can answer this, I got the idea from 

what I read that the badging at this facility 

was not AEC badging but was R.S. Landauer 

badging. Can -- and -- can -- can you answer 

that? 

 MR. TAULBEE: Yes, sir, you are correct. They 

were using Landauer badging. And a couple of I 

guess additions to what Dr. Behling was saying, 

when we made -- when we first began writing the 

initial TBD, we were not sure whether the 

Landauer film badge was a two-element badge or 

a four-element badge during the time period. 

After SC&A posed this question to us earlier 

this month, we began to try and do a lot of 

digging on this particular issue of low energy 

photon response, and we found they were using a 

four-element film badge that had an open 

window, a plastic window, an aluminum window 

and a lead/tin alloy. So we're quite confident 

that those dosimeter values were properly 

measured. 
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 Our adjustment factors that we have in the 

Technical Basis Document are additional 

overestimates, because that design of the film 

badge -- it was the Landauer J badge -- would 

have accurately measured this. And this is a 

situation where as SC&A and I -- and NIOSH have 

not had a lot of time to try and work these 

types of issues out, and this is information 

that we really just haven't had time to go 

through the factual, you know, comparison, as 

Dr. Mauro had mentioned yesterday. And so what 

you're seeing here is some disagreement between 

what we're doing, and this is just because of 

time in the rush process. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Understood. And stay there just a 

moment, Tim. In the case of Landauer -- 

probably AEC, too -- it usually was pretty 

important that the film badge supplier knew 

what the nuclide or the principal photon was in 

order for their calibration in fact to be 

correct 'cause they were -- they did use 

algorithms for these four readings. 

 MR. TAULBEE: That's correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Do you know -- is there any 

evidence that in fact Landauer knew that 
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americium was the primary photon of interest? 

 MR. TAULBEE: The only -- we don't have direct 

evidence that Landauer did -- did know that. 

What we do have is that the health and safety 

department at Iowa would expose badges and send 

them to Landauer and that we have QA type of 

checks along those lines, but I don't know 

exactly how the health and safety group exposed 

them. I don't know if they held them next to 

pits or whether or not they were exposing them 

from radiography. I'm not sure which way it 

was. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And finally, has anyone actually 

looked at the Landauer archives, because they 

archived their readings for most clients. 

 MR. TAULBEE: What we've looked at is the 

Landauer dosimetry reports. Dr. Behling was 

talking about the -- you know, the total 

penetrating or whole body type of dose. We 

have it broken down on the Landauer dosimetry 

reports by beta exposure, X and gamma ray, as 

well as thermal neutrons and fast neutrons. So 

we have that broken down, but other than that, 

no, sir, we have not gone through it with 

Landauer. 
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 DR. WADE: You have someone who wants to make a 

brief comment. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Is there a comment, sir? 

UNIDENTIFIED: Yes, sir. If you could go back 

to that one chart, the original chart you had 

up on the film badge monitoring, please, that 

showed 1962 through '72, I believe it was. I'd 

like to explain some things to you on this film 

badge thing that they're talking about and how 

it worked. 

On that particular chart -- go on back, ma'am; 

next one, go on back --

 DR. WADE: This is the -- the longest numbers 

by year. 

UNIDENTIFIED: Yeah. 

 DR. WADE: The first one you --

UNIDENTIFIED: Yes. Yes, sir, the very first 

one -- all right, that one right there. Oop, 

you just kicked her back there, darlin' -- run 

her back. All right. 

Now if you look at '62 up to 1967, you'll 

notice the film badge numbers are low. From 

1968 on you'll notice how the film badge 

numbers increased. What happened was in 1968 

the push started. From 1968 to 1972 we built 
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14,000 warheads. That averaged out to 28 

warheads a day. The people that you see 

starting in '62 and '63 that had film badges 

were the 1-100 X-ray people, some of the people 

in the 1-11 squash area, and some supervisors 

or foremans (sic) only. Then when the push 

started and we started having all of our alarms 

and monitor problems because of the radiation 

problems, they -- safety got all excited and 

started putting more film badges on people. 

That's why this increase is. This is when the 

problem started because we had so many units 

and the leakage from these units was setting 

off the monitors and setting off stuff and they 

couldn't get production out, and that's when 

they started tampering with the monitors. 

Now the film badge situation was at AX-1, the 

badge exchange. You had a double guard post 

there. The film badges was on a rack. The one 

door went to the 1-63, the 1-61, the 1-11 and 

the squash area. The other ramp went to the 1-

13, the 12, the 10, the 1-100 areas like that. 

All right. They picked up their film badges 

there and brought them back and they were 

placed there. Now what we was trying to figure 
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out was how could they take the film badges, 

after the 4:00 to 12:00 shift got off, pick 

them up, take them to the lab and read them, 

and still punch out on time. This was 

confusing us. So what the guards did one 

night, we set down and put pencil marks on 

them. So when they came down, picked the 

badges up, got back in his truck, drove to the 

lab and punched out on time -- which would 

allowed him something like seven and a half to 

eight minutes on the clock time. When Post 

North started the tour and got to the lab and 

checked, the film badges was in the waste 

basket. 

We weren't stupid. We knew things were bad and 

we knew there was problems going on there. We 

were not told -- we had to learn this on our 

own. 

Now they keep talking about the film badge 

situation. They only worked when they were 

recorded properly. You've got to remember the 

AEC was very, very good at rainbows and 

flowers, we called it -- fill it out and make 

it look good and make the paper look good; 

don't make waves. Everything goes. We get our 
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money for next year's operating expense. The 

big boys get their bonus check for all the 

units that went out the door. Keep your mouth 

shut, don't say nothing. 

Don't be going by this film badge stuff because 

it is not true and it is not accurate and we 

can verify this. They're starting this film 

badge thing, boys, don't count on it. These 

people lied. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Okay, we have 

some additional SC&A comments. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. I'm 

Arjun Makhijani. I won't continue for long, I 

just wanted to make a couple of quick points. 

They are in Section 6 of our review, Item 23 is 

very important because it covers a problem that 

affects the entire film badge record from 1955 

through 1974, which is that workers have 

testified that they did not wear the badges all 

of the time. NIOSH has taken this into account 

partly only by dropping the zero doses. 

However, it -- the zero film badge recorded 

doses. It does not address the non-zero 

readings on the film badges as to how much of 

the time those particular badges were not being 
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worn, and even though they recorded non-zero 

doses, so here's a badge being worn; you go in, 

it records the dose, but part of the time it's 

left outside. So there's a missed dose in the 

non-zero film badges that has to be filled in 

statistically. The only way you can fill it in 

statistically is to have a sufficient number of 

workers who can testify that they wore their 

badges all the time and you know their job 

categories, so then you can estimate from 

interviewing other workers roughly how much of 

the time that these other badges were left off. 

Otherwise, you don't know what proportion of 

the exposure the film badge recorded actually 

represents. And so far as we can see, NIOSH 

has not addressed this particular missed dose 

question. 

The second issue is the one of job categories, 

which I alluded to briefly yesterday. But we 

have looked at Dr. Fuortes's compilation for 

the whole period, which is not broken down by 

year, and we think there are considerable 

number of greater job categories than was 

indicated in the pie chart yesterday, which is 

not in the Revision 1 of the site profile, so 
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that was sort of new information. 

I talked with Kathy DeMers, who is reviewing 

that data, at some length yesterday about this, 

and we believe that until you can actually 

address breaking down these -- drop the zero 

doses and break these down into job categories, 

that you won't actually be able to know how 

representative these are and develop a 

claimant-favorable value. 

One or two more points quickly is that in our 

discussion with NIOSH, NIOSH agreed that the 

worker testimony that the pits were in -- at 

the pelvic area and not directly in front of 

the badge, NIOSH calculated an adjustment 

factor of 2.5 for -- for -- that is the doses 

in the pelvic area would be 2.5 times. Now 

this means that you actually have to go and 

adjust the film badge dose for many of the 

organs because the film badge would not be 

recording the organ dose, it just would record 

the dose where it was worn. 

And my final point which we raised in the task 

three report, Dr. Ziemer, which the Board just 

mentioned yesterday but has not been reviewed, 

in the chapter that Kathy and I wrote in that 
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we raised the question a number of times that 

when job categories are involved and you have 

survivor claimants and the employee has passed 

away, you really need the coworker information. 

Otherwise, without that, you can't actually 

know which job the worker did. And so it 

raises the question of whether you can actually 

reconstruct the doses for survivor claimants. 

So there are a number of uncertainties. I 

don't have time to go into it in detail that go 

into the -- how the dose record is actually to 

be used. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I wonder if Tim or any of the 

NIOSH people have some additional comments, 

follow-up at all? 

 MR. TAULBEE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There 

are a few points that I would like to talk 

about today to try and make some 

clarifications. And again, I'd like to, you 

know, recognize our SC&A colleagues. They've 

been trying to do -- understand what we've been 

working on for six months and they've been 

trying to do this in a period of a month, which 

is -- you know, they've done a tremendous job 

in doing so. But there's some areas where 
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we've got some miscommunication and I'd just 

like to try and clarify this so that we can, 

you know, try and move forward. 

In particular, I heard a lot yesterday about 

the work factor and, you know, that this was a 

-- this is an exposure of one meter for one 

hour a day. That's too simple of an 

interpretation of the actual work factor. 

There's a lot more going on with that in how 

the era dose rate was calculated, and so this 

is -- I urge people not to try and interpret it 

along that way. If you understood what it was 

that we had done through the whole calculation, 

you'd find that it matches with what Mr. Webb 

and Mr. Iverson were talking about yesterday 

and their exposure experience. It's fully 

compatible with that. It doesn't appear it on 

the surface, and I understand that, and this is 

an area where I think we need to discuss more 

with SC&A so that they can understand what it 

is that we were -- were doing with that 

particular work factor. 

 Another point that I'd like to bring up is the 

mention of incident reports. Yesterday Mr. 

Miller had indicated that we had -- there was 
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only 15 incident reports. NIOSH has reviewed 

over 200 incident reports at the Iowa Army 

Ammunition Plant. We've categorized 15 as 

being radiological-related. So there are a 

large number of incident reports that we have 

and we have reviewed along those lines. So to 

indicate that we just have 15 incident reports 

and therefore this is not a -- you know, 

clearly we have not looked at all of the 

records is not quite true or not quite factual. 

What I'd like to try and emphasize there is 

that many of the incident reports are regarding 

high explosives type of work, and that was one 

of the major production processes here at the 

Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. And in looking at 

this particular slide up here where you look 

at, you know, 95 percent not monitored, this is 

the total number of workers. This is basi--

these numbers, from the best that I can 

determine based upon organizational charts, 

include secretaries and white collar workers 

and explosives workers who you would not 

anticipate would be monitored due to their lack 

of radiation exposure. 

Part of why I made the argument yesterday that 
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workers -- the people that were monitored were 

among the most highly exposed group is due to -

- in large part due to our interviews with 

workers who described work activities, just 

like Mr. Webb and Mr. Iverson did yesterday. 

And when I went back to Cincinnati and I saw 

those workers' dosimetry reports, these were 

the people that were monitored. So this gave 

me assurance that we really are monitoring -- 

or monitoring data is representative of those 

people who were doing the work like Mr. Iverson 

and Mr. Webb described yesterday. 

Finally I'd like to talk a little bit about 

this slide some more here. Yesterday Mr. Mauro 

-- or Dr. Mauro mentioned that we would be 

assigning the geometric mean. What we'd be 

assigning is the whole distribution, the 

geometric mean plus the geometric standard 

deviation, so we would be giving credit to the 

95th percentile, as he was proposing. 

 The final comment I'd like to make on this 

particular slide is when I saw this yesterday I 

was quite shocked at how high those numbers 

were. There's a -- again, a miscommunication 

going on between SC&A and ourselves as to when 
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you apply the neutron to photon ratio. You 

apply it before you make the adjustment for the 

under-response -- or now that we know it's not 

really an under-response of the film badge, and 

so these numbers are actually elevated by about 

ten rem, at least the ones prior to -- or 1962 

and earlier. The neutron to photon ratio is 

applied off of the raw data, and then you apply 

the correction factor for photons and then the 

correction factor for neutrons. 

 And finally I'd like to comment a little bit on 

the work history that we heard talking about 

yesterday and Dr. Fuortes talking about where 

that information came from. I'm not sure we're 

talking about the same information of how I 

developed my pie chart. I was looking at the 

radiation exposure records, and there was a 

form filled out for each person -- and this is 

under one specific time period. It had 

"department" up in the upper right-hand corner. 

It didn't have job title, as Dr. Fuortes was 

mentioning yesterday. So I think we're talking 

about two different types of reports or forms, 

and so I just wanted to try and clarify that 

particular issue. 
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And the final thing that I would like to 

comment on is on the radon exposures, and this 

is something that NIOSH will go back and look 

at more. We talked more with Bill -- Dr. Fields 

(sic) last night, and this is something that we 

will try and track down a little bit closer. 

Thank you, sir. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Tim. Hans, you have 

another comment? 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes, I have a question about the 

most recent comment here where you say the 

neutron to photon ratio corrections that were 

imparted based on revised photon doses is not 

the methodology. Now it's my understanding 

that the neutron to photon ratio of .79 was in 

fact done by Pantex data which used the 

corrected photon. I assume the 802 Panasonic 

badge gives you a correct photon dose, and on 

that basis you end up with a 0.79 neutron to 

photon ratio. And since we know for a fact 

that the earlier two-element film badge was 

incorrect, I will stand upon my position that 

the correct approach is to use a corrected 

photon measurement and then use the 0.79 and 

the 1.91. Unless I'm very mistaken about the 
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Pantex data, that would be my interpretation. 

 MR. TAULBEE: With the Pantex data the low 

energy photons have been stripped out, and so 

therefore you wouldn't be trying to apply that 

correction factor back in. 

 DR. ZIEMER: John Mauro? 

DR. MAURO: Just one more point, and I think 

it's a very important point and has to do with 

this recurring theme of the geometric standard 

deviation and the geometric mean. Basically 

this has been going -- this has been an ongoing 

disagreement that has realized itself here 

whereby the general approach that's being 

adopted across the board by NIOSH when they 

have data to characterize an individual's 

exposure for filling the missing data is they 

will use the geometric mean and the geometric 

standard deviation within a -- let's say a 

lognormal distribution. Now -- and Tim is 

correct, that the approach they would use is 

they would use a distribution as representing a 

person. Our concern is when you do that, that 

means there's some -- there's a very real 

possibility that when you sample from that 

distribution and you try to reconstruct that 
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person's dose, it could be somewhat less or -- 

than the geometric standard -- than -- than the 

geometric mean or somewhat higher. Our 

recommendation or our position -- I think 

that's a better way to say it -- is that that 

doesn't necessarily give the -- it does not -- 

it's really claimant-neutral. Claimant -- I'll 

be -- giving the benefit of the doubt to the 

claimant would be to pick a fixed, high-end 

value, not a distribution, saying listen, we 

recognize there's uncertainty on this 

particular dataset and how applicable it is to 

a given person that we don't have data for. 

Our approach has consistently been -- this goes 

right back to Bethlehem Steel -- pick the upper 

95 percentile value as your fixed value 

representing that individual. Now what you're 

doing under those circumstances is you 

certainly are giving the benefit of the doubt. 

What you're basically saying we're 95 percent 

certain that the dose that we picked to 

represent that person is in fact -- there's a 

five percent chance it could be higher, but 

we're 95 percent certain that it's that high or 

less. So there's a big difference in -- when 
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you're filling in missed data to use a 

distribution with a geometric standard 

deviation -- mean and standard deviation as 

opposed to simply picking a deterministic value 

at the upper end. This is -- I think it's a 

fundamental issue and I think it's an issue 

that (unintelligible) an ongoing discussion. 

It is my understanding that at this very time 

NIOSH is looking at that concept of operation 

that would affect many sites, including Iowa. 

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

Neton is going to have a response here. 

DR. NETON: In principle we agree with -- I 

agree with John Mauro and NIOSH agrees with 

that concept, that where workers who -- you 

have a distribution and have no knowledge of 

the facility or their monitoring status, you 

would apply the 95th percentile. I think what 

we've asserted in the profile -- and this is 

certainly open for discussion -- is that the 

workers who we have badge data for, we believe 

were the most heavily-exposed workers, the 

highest-exposed workers based on what Tim 

stated yesterday, the fact that he interviewed 

workers, they matched up with -- by job 
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category. They appeared to be in the 

departments that had higher exposures, and also 

there was a AEC requirement, a "shall" 

requirement in an AEC document in 1963 and '68 

that workers who received more than ten percent 

of the annual exposure limit were required to 

be monitored. Now we can argue whether that -- 

they followed that, but that was the 

requirement at that time. 

Based on those three pieces of information, we 

believe that these did represent the highestexposed workers. So if that's the case, then 

assigning the geometric mean and the 95th 

percentile distributions about those values we 

believe would indeed be representative of the 

workers who were not monitored because they 

were, by definition -- if you accept that 

premise -- less exposed. 

 We're certainly open to discussion on this if -

- if there is a belief and a consensus that 

these workers were not the highest exposed, we 

are definitely in agreement that the 95th 

percentile of that distribution then would be 

appropriate. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, Jim Melius. 
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 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) This is a 

question for Tim (unintelligible) -- (on 

microphone) follow-up to -- it's actually the 

same question I asked yesterday but I just want 

to clarify that -- the pie chart you showed, 

you've really only -- as I understand it, 

you've only examined the departmental 

distribution for monitoring for one year and 

you are unable to tell us what the denominator 

is within those departments that are included. 

The percentages in the pie chart are just the 

proportion of all monitored workers. Is that 

still true? 

 MR. TAULBEE: That is correct, sir. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, Mark Griffon. 

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

Jim just hit on that one point, did -- and it 

was only for the one year that you have that 

department information? 

 MR. TAULBEE: Yes, sir. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. And -- and to follow --

one other... 

 MR. TAULBEE: I only did that for one year. We 

could do it for more years. That's what I 
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wanted to clarify. 

 MR. GRIFFON: So you have the -- the forms, the 

data for --

 MR. TAULBEE: Yes, sir. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- more years. 

 MR. TAULBEE: Yes, sir. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And on the incidents, the 200 

incident reports you have, do you have a time 

frame over which those -- were -- where they 

over the entire time frame we're looking at up 

here or was it a -- do you have any sense of 

when (unintelligible) -- 

 MR. TAULBEE: I believe they're 1959 through 

1974. 

 MR. GRIFFON: '59 through '74, okay. Thanks. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. Sir, did you 

have something pertinent to this -- 

UNIDENTIFIED: Yeah --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- issue? 

UNIDENTIFIED: -- this is addressed to Tim, I 

guess. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, state your name for the 

recorder, please. 

 MR. IVERSON: I'm Si Iverson. I talked 

yesterday. My name was just -- just mentioned 
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on film badges and -- and handling of the pits. 

Well, it was my experience we generally wore 

film badges for I think a month at a time. It 

may have been two weeks, but I think it was a 

month. And some people -- I mean were 

reassigned and -- and I -- sometimes I had 

badges when I was working around pits, and 

maybe for four weeks I didn't have one, and we 

had people move around. And we had so many 

different classifications and I'm not computer 

literate that well, but I can bring stuff up on 

a computer. I don't know how to go there -- I 

mean -- and job titles mean nothing because 

we've had several people transfer from one 

place to another just because it was more 

money. And they may have worked -- they may 

have been yard workers, they may have been -- 

been anything, laborers, and was able to come 

on the line. Why, you take a look at what job 

did they have when they wore the film badges. 

What was I doing when I wore a film badge? I 

mean I can't remember that -- that far back. 

have to go through medical records trying to 

figure out what areas I worked in and what I 

did. There is no personnel records of what we 

I 
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did or how we did it. Where are we going from 

here? Thank you. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you. I have to remind the 

group that this is not a public comment period. 

I think that --

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, we appreciate the input on 

these issues, but we need to confine this -- 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 

(Unintelligible) --

 DR. WADE: Right, since your name was 

mentioned, I think it's most appropriate. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. WADE: We also do want to hear things if 

they're relevant to these deliberations, but it 

is not a public comment period. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'd like to raise some questions 

for either Tim or even our own Board members 

who had Q clearance. I'm trying to understand 

the generic pit, and I wonder if you can tell 

us what publicly is known about the -- what can 

we know about the generic pit, without having 

to be taken out and shot after the meeting is 

over? 

 MR. TAULBEE: With regards to the generic pit, 

Mr. Chairman, the whole design of the generic 
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pit was in order to try and estimate an upper 

bound of the particular dose -- of a dose rate 

from an object that workers would have been 

handling. In this we worked with the 

Department of Energy. We looked at -- we 

reviewed a lot of classified information and 

they understood and I explained to them how -- 

or what it is that we needed to be able to do. 

We needed to be able to set an upper bound so 

that from that point we could then begin to do 

dose reconstructions. Because if you can't set 

an upper bound, then you don't have a starting 

point. 

And so from the design and the basis of that, 

we looked at the uranium pits versus composite 

pits versus plutonium pits. And clearly 

plutonium pits would result in the highest dose 

rate, and that was why -- that was one of the 

starting points that we did with that. 

 The other parameters -- all I can say, 

unfortunately, is the combination of those 

parameters in Appendix D of -- of no cladding, 

of mass, of thickness, of dimensions -- is all 

to maximize the dose rate, to come up with an 

upper bound. Okay? It's the combination of 
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those four parameters that result in an upper 

bound. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Mark? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I -- I think -- and I was in the 

-- the classified briefing, as well. I think -

- you know, I don't think any of us in that 

room disputed the great and time-consuming work 

that went into development of this generic pit. 

The question -- and I think Tim said it right -

- is this most likely has upper-bounding dose 

rate estimates. The issue I think before us is 

there's a lot of assumptions going from dose 

rate to worker dose, and that's where this work 

factor comes in and the use of film badge data, 

an enumerator divided by area dose, you're 

putting many assumptions into going from this 

dose rate -- this theoretical, generic pit 

model, which gives you a dose rate, is in fact 

-- most likely -- it -- it seems very upper 

bound, very conservative. The question then 

lies in the extrapolation from that to the 

workers' dose. How did the worker interface 

with -- you've got so many parameters in there, 

there's a lot of assumptions and I think some 

of us have questions in that part of it, so we 
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-- you know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I --

 MR. GRIFFON: But I think the generic pit 

question, the classified part of it, I think we 

were all pretty -- and I would ask SCA also to 

comment on that, but I think we're all pretty -

- came away from that feeling that it was 

fairly conservative model, fairly upperbounding model. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But is it true that a sharp 

physicist could take your dose rates and come 

up with a number of combinations of the four 

parameter-- is it four -- are you allowed to 

say how many parameters go into this? 

 MR. TAULBEE: There are four -- four parameters 

listed in Appendix D. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, those four parameters and 

could come up with a number of pit 

configurations or combinations that would 

produce that dose rate, but all of which would 

not be a real pit. This is a worst-case pit. 

 MR. TAULBEE: That is correct, sir. 

 DR. ZIEMER: In other words, you're saying that 

it gives dose rates higher than any pit ever 

used anywhere, sort of like -- 
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 MR. TAULBEE: They are higher than any dose 

rate of pits worked on at Iowa. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Now, are you allowed to say 

how much higher? 

 MR. TAULBEE: No, sir. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So we don't know if it's 

barely higher, ten times higher or a hundred 

times higher, that sort of thing. 

 MR. TAULBEE: I'm not allowed to disclose what 

that factor is. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Even to disclose --

 MR. TAULBEE: Yes, sir. 

 MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

Bob Presley (unintelligible) -- 

 (On microphone) This is Bob Presley. I can say 

that what they have is more than adequate for -

- for their dose reconstruction. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And Joe --

 MR. FITZGERALD: And Mr. --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- you were involved in that -- 

 MR. FITZGERALD: -- from the SC&A standpoint, 

too. I think our process was to challenge and 

to raise issues that would, you know, I guess 

challenge the question of upper bound, and I 

think we were satisfied after a series of very 
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probing questions that in fact that satisfied 

that -- that issue, so I don't think it's an 

issue with the conservatism on this thing. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now I gathered, though, that then 

coup-- you have to couple that with these work 

factors. 

 MR. TAULBEE: The work factor is how we go 

about trying to arrive at a more reasonable or 

more accurate estimate. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Now, I understood from 

comments made yesterday that there are issues 

related to the work factor that are also 

classified. 

 MR. TAULBEE: That's correct. The era dose 

rate and how we developed that particular 

value, which is one of the fundamental parts of 

the work factor, I -- I can't go into how we 

actually did that calculation. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, let me ask this a different 

way. Are we obliged to use that work factor 

with the generic pit? 

 MR. TAULBEE: No, sir --

 DR. ZIEMER: Is one obliged to use that? 

 MR. TAULBEE: That is our proposed method of 

how we would like to do dose reconstruction, 
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but I don't believe that we're obligated. I 

mean there could be modifications to that work 

factor or the methodology. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The large numbers we see here, 

though, and -- or saw in the chart are based on 

that work factor. 

 MR. TAULBEE: That is correct, sir. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, I'm going to pass on this 

for a mom-- did you have something pertinent to 

this particular issue, sir? This is not a 

public comment period. 

 MR. JACKSON: Well, I am a production worker 

from -- Carl Jackson is my name. I was 

production worker from -- on Line 1 from '69 

through '73 and I done assembly and so forth of 

these units and -- and in -- with the pits and 

so forth, and this one hour thing that they say 

that we're supposed to -- we was as close to 

those units as I'm standing right here to this 

microphone while we was working, and like I 

say, in the pelvic area. And we would be 

usually within maybe -- probably up to six 

hours a day being that close, or within maybe 

six foot or so. 

As far as the gentlemen -- the people wearing 
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the film badges, in the areas that I was 

working, why, I wore them some, but the 

inspectors -- our company inspectors nor AE&C 

(sic) inspectors was the ones that seemed to 

wear them the most. Now their time spent 

against the -- within the one yard one meter 

would be considerable less than a production 

worker because production worker would be there 

assembling and working on these and then they 

would come in for a few minutes and inspect 

them, and then they would be back away from 

them. So your film badges -- I think the 

majority of them were worn by the inspectors, 

who did not spend as much time against -- in 

that exposure area. I just wanted to comment 

on that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, thank you and in fact I 

think we understand, and this is why I'm 

raising some questions, because the work -- 

what's being called the work factor is perhaps 

almost a misnomer since it apparently includes 

another -- a number of other items that go into 

-- it's not a work factor in the usual sense, 

such as we use -- for example, in X-ray 

shielding design where it represents the actual 
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amount of time. As this gentleman said, 

they're working more than one hour a week with 

these so that -- that's some kind of a modified 

work factor that has been generated with some 

other secret items, so -- yes, Doctor. 

 DR. FUORTES: Yes, thank you. I just wanted to 

address the issue regarding the incident 

reports, the 15 radiologic incident reports. 

You're right, there are a couple of hundred. 

We actually provided you with those incident 

reports. Those came from Pantex at our 

request. We and Bill Field, our radiation 

health expert, were rather surprised that there 

were so few radiation incidents. And in fact, 

we had -- even from what we had heard from 

workers, we were surprised that the data in the 

boxes that we received did not reflect our 

perceptions of what a health and safety process 

in such a facility would -- would reflect. The 

vast majority of these incident reports were 

motor vehicle accidents, fires. They dropped 

bombs every now and again. And one thing that 

has to be made perfectly clear, this is not a 

complete record -- not even on the basis of my 

suspicion, but on the basis of the years 
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covered. There are missing years. So of these 

200 incident reports, that might be over a 

period of 15 years or ten years. It's not the 

duration of the -- of the operations. So there 

are intermittent years that are -- that are 

missed in those incident reports. Why data is 

missing, it's probably just because they're 

misfiled in boxes that we couldn't recall, but 

it's not a complete record. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Is Bill Fields (sic) 

here this morning? 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) I'll go get 

him. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The Board members did receive I 

believe a letter from Bill Fields within the 

past week. Board members, did you all? 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Yeah. 

 DR. WADE: We've got a copy here. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Fields is -- I think would be 

considered a radon expert by most, and I think 

it would be helpful to have a little bit of 

input from Dr. Fields, if we could, on the 

radon issue. 

Okay, well, perhaps later in the morning if -- 

if Dr. Fields does come to the assembly, we can 
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get some comments on that. 

 Board members, do you have other questions for 

either Tim Taulbee or for the SC&A team? 

Otherwise we're going to proceed with -- I see 

Dr. Fields (sic) -- I can spot him pretty 

easily, as you can -- Dr. Fields, I'm going to 

put you on the spot, but would you mind 

approaching the mike and -- first of all, if I 

could ask you to tell the Board a little bit 

about what work you have done in the radon 

field over the past number of years. 

DR. FIELD: I was involved with the first 

surveys that were -- the first surveys that 

were ever done in Iowa, just to characterize 

the radon distribution within the state. Since 

then I've been involved with case control 

epidemiology studies. I've served on the 

international pooling that pooled all the 

residential studies together, the north 

American pooling group. I'm on the World 

Health Organization, two working groups for the 

World Health Organization, chairing the 

committee on radon measurement mitigation, so 

quite a bit over the years. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Could you reiterate for us your 
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characterization or perhaps your opinion on the 

issue of radon in the Gravel Gerties and the 

related areas and what potential for radon 

exposure might occur there? And let me ask you 

that in this context. I assume you're familiar 

with the Watras house in Pennsylvania. 

DR. FIELD: (Unintelligible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: What -- what were the radon levels 

there? 

DR. FIELD: Oh, the radon concentrations there 

were in the thousands of picocuries per liter, 

I mean extremely high. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The radon levels in the next door 

neighbor's house were -- 

DR. FIELD: It was -- it was fairly low. Some 

-- some in the neighborhood were below the EP 

action level, so it's -- it's very hard to 

characterize a home based on -- based on what's 

nearby. In other words, like you're -- like 

you're alluding to it, you can't say just 

'cause one house is high the house next door is 

going to be high, also. That's a common 

mistake a lot of people make. 

 DR. ZIEMER: What can you tell us then about 

the Gravel Gerties? 
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DR. FIELD: Well, I -- I think it -- more so, 

what can I tell you about Iowa. Iowa has the 

highest radon concentrations in the nation, 

mostly from glacial deposits. And it's not 

that the radium is that high in the glacial 

deposits, it's just that the surface area is so 

great, so there's a large emanation fraction 

from the soils in Iowa. No other state 

compares to it. So there's a lot of variation 

within Iowa as far as radon concentrations. 

We did a survey about five or six years ago 

that was published in (unintelligible) Health 

Perspectives. In that survey we found that the 

range of outdoor radon concentrations -- this 

is a year-long concentration -- ranged from .4 

to 1.5. So the outdoor concentrations can be 

very -- very high in Iowa because of the source 

material. 

The -- what you find in Iowa generally is that 

you find 70 percent of homes and basements are 

above four picocuries per liter, and ten to 15 

percent are above 20. So those are normal 

residential settings. If you go to underground 

structures, like if you would go outside here 

and go in a utility -- utility service area, 
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they can be 200 or 300 picocuries per liter. 

It's very common, and it's a concern we have 

for workers that worked at these -- work in 

these areas. 

As far as the Gravel Gerties, they were 

underground -- pretty much all underground, 

plus they had the -- above the ceiling there 

was also gravel in case there was a 

criticality, that would -- that would drop, and 

we know all the reasons for that. But we don't 

know the emanation -- factors just for that 

material alone could be fairly significant. 

But to go back and reconstruct that would be 

difficult. All we can say is that it's higher 

than 1.5 picocuries per liter, which was the 

value that was suggested to be used. I mean 

that would be a claimant-favorable value if you 

were making that value represent outdoor 

exposure, and that -- that would be fairly 

claimant-favorable for even outdoor exposure, 

so I guess in summary the underground areas 

would be -- you know, they could -- they could 

be extremely high. 

What you -- what could be done potentially is 

go back and look at glass surfaces for imbedded 
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progeny and try to reconstruct it that way, but 

there's very few glass surfaces in those areas 

and you don't know the age of the glass, so 

you're not sure how representative that is. So 

that's -- that's a method that could be used 

and I suggested that -- to do that for the past 

five or six years and it hasn't been followed 

up on. 

 Without that, it would be difficult to go back 

today without the gravel and -- and to 

reconstruct that. The source is obviously 

going to be there, except for the gravel. But 

you don't know if the ventilation patterns are 

similar or not. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And the extent to which Pantex 

Gravel Gerties would apply here? 

DR. FIELD: Well, you -- the main -- the main 

factor with radon source material -- obviously 

the source material's not -- not in Texas -- 

the same in Texas as what we have here, so you 

know, it's really apples -- apples and oranges. 

Texas is rated as a very low potential for 

radon. Iowa's very high. So using that as a 

surrogate is not very logical. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. 
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DR. FIELD: You bet. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Board members, any questions for 

Dr. Fields (sic)? 

DR. FIELD: If I -- if I could while I'm here, 

I'd just like to make a comment about the cards 

and -- and the job descriptions and the 

departments. I'm not really sure it's clear 

where that information came from. As -- as you 

know, there's a lot of cards -- index cards 

that represent worker terminations. Or if they 

would change jobs, that would be reported 

there. There's also a summary, yearly 

radiation record for each employee that was 

terminated that does have the department up 

top. But I just want to caution you that the 

department that is being represented for that 

individual is probably not the department or 

may not be the department they were in when 

they received the exposure, so just a bit of 

caution to that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you very much. I 

think perhaps then we're ready to actually 

start today's agenda. 

IAAP SEC PETITION 

We'll begin with the presentation by Larry 
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61 

Elliott from NIOSH on the review of the Special 

Exposure Cohort petition by Iowa Army 

Ammunition Plant. Larry Elliott from NIOSH. 

PRESENTATION BY NIOSH

 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer, and good 

morning, ladies and gentlemen of the Board. 

And good morning, audience; welcome to this 

morning's discussion. 

I'm going to shift your focus a little bit this 

morning from the discussion around the site 

profile or Technical Basis Document and we're 

going to now focus upon the Special Exposure 

Cohort petition evaluation, our report -- our 

evaluation report of that petition, as well as 

the supplement. 

 My presentation this morning will cover several 

different areas relevant to that focus. I will 

talk a little bit about the petition itself, 

give you an overview and a time line on how we 

received and processed and worked up the 

evaluation for the petition. 

I will also speak to the evaluation process 

itself. I will present a reminder, if you 

will, to the Board of its role and its 

responsibilities under the statute and within 
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the regulation about contributing to the 

evaluation of a Special Exposure Cohort 

petition. And I will go over the supplement 

report that we provided since the last meeting 

of the Board in St. Louis, and I'll conclude 

with the summary findings. 

 The Iowa Army Ammunition Plant petition was 

submitted on June 15th, last summer, in a town 

hall meeting in Burlington, and the initial 

class definition is listed on this slide -- and 

I won't read it for -- for the audience; I'll 

let them read it themselves. But essentially 

it covered all of Line -- Line 1 and the 

various areas around the plant where AEC work 

was being done. 

We worked with the petitioners on the petition 

-- the basis for the petition to present a 

solid basis for evaluation, and that took us 

until October 20th, when the petition was 

qualified for evaluation. We work with 

petitioners to make sure that -- that all of 

the basis and background that is relevant to 

the petition is covered in the petition so that 

we don't miss anything and the petitioners 

understand what is required under our rule for 
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that basis. 

 The petitioners were then notified by letter, 

and a notice that the submission had qualified 

for evaluation was published on our web site in 

October of 2004. Next slide, please. 

NIOSH evaluated the petition using the 

guidelines that are set forth in our 

regulation, 42 CFR 83.13, so I draw your 

attention to that particular section of our 

rule -- our regulation. And the --

specifically, this section speaks to is it 

feasible to estimate the level of radiation 

doses of individual members of the class with 

sufficient accuracy. And if not, then we have 

to establish the second part of the test that's 

prescribed by the statute and by the rule, and 

that is, is it a reasonable likelihood that 

such radiation dose may have endangered the 

health of members of the class. 

NIOSH presented the petition evaluation report 

to the Board in St. Louis at your February 9th 

meeting. Again, the evaluation report proposed 

this following class definition, which was very 

similar if not the same as the initial 

definition that was provided in the petition. 
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 During NIOSH's presentation at that meeting it 

was stated that the revised -- I stated that 

the revised Iowa Army Ammunition Plant site 

profile that we had worked up was at the 

Department of Energy being reviewed to 

determine whether or not the manner in which we 

had characterized classified information 

created a classified document or not. That 

particular document was provided to the 

Department of Energy back in December -- or 

excuse me, January of this year for that 

review. And in addition, at the February 

meeting there were several issues that were 

raised by the petitioners that were not 

addressed in NIOSH's evaluation. 

 Can I just say here that -- that I believe 

that the Congressional delegation that we heard 

yesterday were -- were right on target, that 

they understood what was going on when they 

passed this law. They understood in fact that 

there were classified information that would 

have to be accessed. The statute actually 

speaks to that in the U.S. Code, Section 

7384(q), and specifically says that DOE has to 

give access to NIOSH and to this Advisory Board 
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to classified information in order to evaluate 

the addition of classes and to do dose 

reconstructions. So I agree, I think they 

actually understood what was going on with this 

particular work force and the nature of the 

work that they were doing. Next slide. 

On February 14th the Department of Energy 

completed its review of the revised site 

profile and sent NIOSH a hard copy of that 

reviewed site profile. When Tim Taulbee worked 

this up in a classified setting at DOE, he had 

to do so on a classified computer, and they 

would not release an electronic version to us. 

We -- we received a hard copy version. 

Then through the middle part of February to the 

end of February, as you see here, we had to 

create an electronic version again. This was 

somebody sitting at a computer in our offices 

retyping all of that information that Tim 

Taulbee had worked up in the classified secure 

setting. 

And then we had to incorporate and -- we had to 

reconstitute and incorporate all of the tables 

and all of the graphs and that kind of 

illustrative information that was not in the 
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text itself and add that to the site profile. 

This took a lot of time in order to make sure 

that those were accurately and adequately 

incorporated. Next slide, please. 

On March -- through the early part of March and 

even before, while the typist was working up 

the electronic version, we were reviewing the 

content. I find it somewhat distressing that, 

you know, our Q-cleared folks have to work 

through this in a secure setting. They're 

limited in number. We're -- we're not allowed 

to have everyone Q cleared in my shop, and so I 

have to rely on the good judgment and the 

professionalism of Tim Taulbee and Mark Rolfes 

and others who are Q cleared. Then we take 

whatever they -- their work comes out of that 

secured setting and we have to review it from a 

technical basis as well as a policy basis. So 

there were several people involved, after this 

secur-- this document had been deemed 

unclassified, in reviewing the technical basis 

and the policy basis that it presented. 

We did make some changes -- I need to reflect 

here that DOE did not redact any information, 

nor did it change the document in any way. It 
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simply -- they simply reviewed the document and 

found it to be unclassified. The changes that 

were made were made at NIOSH in my office, and 

they were made to improve the readability and 

to correct some technical errors that entered 

into the -- the development of the electronic 

version of the document. 

On March 14th I approved the final version of 

this document and I sent a copy of that 

document to the Advisory Board through Dr. 

Ziemer, and we also published it on our web 

site and we noticed -- announced its 

availability and provided it to the 

petitioners, as well. Next slide, please. 

On March 16th then Dr. Ziemer sent a -- a 

letter to the Board that indicated that DOE had 

informed NIOSH that this document was 

unclassified and it was publicly available. 

Our determination then was, from the document, 

that for cases where employment was post-1963 

we could do dose reconstructions and they could 

be done with full disclosure of information. 

The converse of that is bef-- prior to '62 we 

would be using information that we could not 

disclose, as you've heard from Tim Taulbee in 
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discussion of the site profile. 

On April 4th, 2005 the SEC petition evaluation 

report supplement -- this is in response to 

things that we heard and issues that were 

raised in the February meeting in St. Louis -- 

was -- was approved and submitted to the Board 

and to the petitioners and available to the 

public on our web site. 

On April 11th then the Board met via 

teleconference, and the Board voted at that 

time to wait and review the information on the 

Iowa Army Ammunition Plant at its Board meeting 

here today -- this week. Next slide, please. 

I'm going to go into the evaluation process 

now with you, and this is governed by the -- 

the evaluation of SEC petitions are governed by 

the statute, as well as the regulation that 

this Board helped us promulgate over a year ago 

-- under a year ago now, last May. And the two 

tests that must be met there are listed here. 

Again, is it feasible to estimate the level of 

radiation doses of individual members of the 

class with sufficient accuracy -- and let me 

reflect just a moment at this point on what 

83.13(c)(1) in our rule actually prescribes. 
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This is where we define sufficient accuracy for 

the Board, and I think it's important that as 

we shift your focus from the site profile to 

this SEC evaluation report to do so at this 

point, to provide you that definition. 

The definition of sufficient accuracy for 

handling petitions in determining whether we 

have sufficient information to do dose 

reconstruction is listed here under 

83.13(c)(1), (reading) Radiation doses can be 

estimated with sufficient accuracy if NIOSH has 

established that it has access to sufficient 

information to estimate the maximum radiation 

dose for every type of cancer for which 

radiation doses are reconstructed that could 

have been incurred by plausible circumstances 

by any member of the class, or if NIOSH has 

established that it has access to information 

to estimate radiation doses with more -- more 

precisely than an estimate of the maximum 

radiation dose. NIOSH must also determine that 

it has information regarding monitoring, 

source, source term or process from the site 

here the employees worked to serve as a basis 

for a dose reconstruction. 
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If we find that we cannot do dose 

reconstruction under those premises and those 

requirements, then we have to establish the 

second prong of this test, as required by 

statute. And that is, is there a reasonable 

likelihood that such radiation dose may have 

endangered the health of the class. Next 

slide, please. 

To continue on with the evaluation process, 

these are elements that are prescribed within 

our regulation, and we -- this presents the 

various information and types of material that 

were reviewed to make this evaluation. 

Certainly want to say that we agree that we 

need to look at the rest of the boxes, but at 

some point in line of that research effort and 

an evaluation of data, we have to make a 

conscious decision on timeliness and when we 

can move forward and present not only an 

evaluation report, but start doing dose 

reconstructions, as well. And so to determine 

the completeness of data -- data search falls 

into that -- that conundrum of making a 

decision about timeliness versus how much more 

do you search for. 
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 Now this doesn't mean that we have stopped 

searching or we will stop evaluating records. 

We will continue to pursue that, and I think 

it's even more important that we pursue that as 

we -- we've heard from our colleagues from 

Sanford Cohen Associates, as we've heard from 

workers, as we've heard from issues and 

concerns raised by Dr. Fuortes and by Dr. 

Fields (sic) at this meeting and at the 

February meeting. I agree that we need to look 

a lot harder at radon than we have in the 

current site profile. Next slide, please. 

Let me talk a minute about the Board's 

responsibility -- but before I do that, I want 

to offer this. I have been quoted as saying 

that I believe that this work force has been 

put in harm's way unbeknowingly (sic), and I 

want to just make that -- here for the record, 

I do believe that personally. I think that 

many of -- many folks across the weapons 

complex, across the AEC complex were put in a 

work environment without proper knowledge and 

understanding of the hazards that they faced. 

I think it's important, though, to realize that 

in the early times of this work force there was 
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limited knowledge about the type of exposure, 

the type of hazards that they faced, and we 

need to take that into account. 

I'd also like to thank at -- at this point, 

before we talk about the Board's role, I'd like 

to thank our colleagues at Sanford Cohen & 

Associates. Tim was very correct when he said 

earlier that they had a difficult challenge in 

trying to do in a month and a half essentially 

what it had taken us over six months to put 

together. And so we were working very hard on 

that, and lo and behold, they get a short 

amount of time to do their work. We appreciate 

their contribution that they've made and the 

scientific questions that they've raised, and 

we take those very seriously. I think we all 

want the same thing. We're all working toward 

the same thing. At least that is my hope and 

that is my desire and I'm moving toward that. 

Now let me move into the role and the 

responsibility of the Board. Your role and the 

source of authority for your role comes from 

the statute and also from our -- the regulation 

that you helped us promulgate last year, 42 CFR 

Part 83. Your main role here is to consider 
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and advise the Secretary of Health and Human 

Services on a petition to add a class to the 

Special Exposure Cohort. Next slide, please. 

To do so you need to consider the petition and 

the NIOSH evaluation reports, both the initial 

report and the supplement report. That is to 

be done at a meeting. You have -- this is the 

second meeting you will have done this 

particular deliberation on Iowa with 

petitioners and public present. You have some 

options. You can ask us to obtain additional 

information, or you can ask us to continue our 

evaluation of a petition. And I think from our 

February meeting that's what we heard, and we 

come back to address those issues in our 

supplement. 

You then have to develop and transmit to the 

Secretary of HHS a report containing your 

recommendation, and there's some specific 

requirements for the content of that report, 

and they are listed in here in this slide. You 

need to speak to the petition itself, the 

definition of the class that you're recommend-- 

your recommendations pertain to, whether or not 

you recommend to the Secretary to add the class 
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or not add the class, and you need to consider 

the relevant criteria for your recommendation 

under 83.13(c), as I read to you earlier. Next 

slide. 

Finally, we must all consider the privacy of 

these individuals and -- and not breach the 

Privacy Act or their privacy by any unwarranted 

or inadvertent action. So I'd just caution you 

on that, as I always do. Next slide. 

Now we'll move into the evaluation report, and 

I'll present just a summary. Some of this will 

be some of the same information that you've had 

in the February meeting. 

 The evaluation report that we presented to you 

in St. Louis spoke to three different classes 

based upon these three time frames: June of 

1947 to May of 1948, May 1948 to March 1949, 

March 1949 through the end of 1974. Next 

slide. 

We had to look, for this evaluation report, at 

a variety of information and data, and we had 

to make some decisions as to how far we dug and 

when we had enough to make a determination -- a 

summary of findings. Next slide. 

 Our petition evaluation report summary for June 
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of '47 to May of '48, based upon the data that 

was available to us, indicated that there was 

no radiation exposure for this time period. No 

radioactive materials or radiological processes 

existed at Line 1 in Iowa, and I think one of 

the petitioners confirmed that for us, as well 

-- Mr. Anderson at the last meeting. Next 

slide, please. 

 For the period of May 1948 through March of 

1949, in our evaluation effort we determined 

that there was a separate class here that had 

been -- that consisted of radiographers, those 

individuals who were using X-ray technology to 

evaluate the high explosive components and 

other components that were used to assemble the 

bomb, and we are still working up a -- an 

evaluation of that particular class, and we 

will present a evaluation report summary at one 

of your future meetings. Next slide, please. 

As regard to the third class, data availability 

for March 1949 to end of 1974, prior to 1955 

documents suggest that there were no nuclear 

capability at the Iowa facility. However, 

those documents were not definitive for us, and 

we were aware that records may have been 
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destroyed, mislabeled, mishandled, misfiled, et 

cetera. And since we have not been able to 

find direct evidence as to when nuclear 

capability, nuclear -- radiological materials 

were first introduced to the site, we have made 

an assumption that there might have been 

nuclear capsules as early as March of 1949. 

That would be the start of this class 

definition period. Next slide, please. 

 The feasibility of dose reconstruction for the 

period -- the class for the period of June 1947 

to May 1948, NIOSH has determined that no 

feasibility determination is necessary since 

members of that class received no radiation 

doses, as covered by this compensation program. 

 The feasibility of dose reconstructions for May 

of 1948 to March of 1949 -- again, this is for 

the radiographers -- is under way. It's an 

evaluation effort under way and we have not 

prepared a report for your review at this time. 

As regard to the feasibility for dose 

reconstructions for the third class, the class 

of interest today, March 1949 to the end of 

1974, NIOSH believes we have access to 

sufficient information -- source term, process 
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information, photon and neutron dose 

calculations -- to estimate either the maximum 

radiation dose incurred by any member of the 

class being evaluated, or to estimate such 

radiation doses more precisely than a maximum 

dose. The sum of information available from 

the site profile and additional resources is 

sufficient, in our opinion, to document or 

estimate the maximum internal and external 

potential exposures to members of this class. 

 Some technical bases -- source term, process 

information, both photon and neutron dose 

calculations -- for sufficiently accurate dose 

reconstructions for members of the class depend 

upon the use of classified information that is 

not available to the public for reasons of 

protecting national security. This limitation 

on transparency of NIOSH dose reconstructions 

for the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant we feel may 

undermine the credibility -- we recognize that 

it may undermine the credibility of such dose 

reconstructions for the claimants. And while 

it is scientifically and technically feasible 

to estimate the doses with sufficient accuracy, 

such estimates may not be able to be 
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substantiated in a transparent and publiclyavailable way. 

NIOSH sought this Board's advice on how to 

handle this kind of a situation in February at 

your St. Louis meeting, and we continue to seek 

that advice today. 

Let me speak for a little bit about health 

endangerment for -- for these classes. For the 

period of March 1949 to 1974, the -- while we 

say we can do dose reconstructions, I want to 

make sure that everyone realizes we recognize 

that the health probably was endangered by the 

workers (sic) in this -- in this facility, and 

these are the types of different exposures that 

we would recognize as contributing to that 

endangerment. 

While we talk about incident reports, we see no 

discrete incidents that would have involved 

exceptionally high levels of acute exposure or 

criticality incident level exposures. And the 

workers in this case we feel have accumulated 

substantial doses through chronic exposure to 

external sources of -- of radiation. 

Let me talk a minute about the supplement. 

This is the report that we sent to you in March 
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that responds to issues that we heard in St. 

Louis, and we tried to, in that report, address 

those issues. I'll briefly go through the 

issues and then I'll provide you a brief 

summary of our response to those issues. 

The issues that were raised in St. Louis in 

February are listed here on this slide and the 

next. The Revision 1 of the Iowa site profile 

was reviewed by DOE and found to contain no 

classified information and a question was -- 

has been raised how does this affect the 

transparency issues that were discussed in 

February. 

 Secondly, the SEC evaluation relies on data 

from Pantex workers exposed between 1993 and 

2003. And recent data collected at Pantex is 

felt that it cannot be considered as 

representative coworker data for Iowa plant 

workers, and this information is from the -- 

because this information was from a different 

time period which employed different work 

processes. 

Workers recalled situations where beryllium 

outer shells of the pits came off and would 

have to be glued back. This proves that 
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workers -- it was felt that this proves that 

workers handled bare plutonium pits, creating 

the potential for internal exposure. 

 Four, workers reported that they smeared the 

inside of hollow spheres consisting of what was 

known as "hot material," and this has 

implications for exposure to unshielded 

ionizing radiation. 

 Five, even after 1962, a low percentage of the 

work force was monitored for radiation 

exposure, and it is felt that this did not 

provide enough data to make accurate estimates. 

Now our response in addressing these five 

issues that were raised. With regard to the 

transparency issue and the DOE deeming the site 

profile unclassified, on February 9th when 

NIOSH presented its evaluation report to this 

Board I advised the Board that the Iowa site 

profile had been revised and was working 

through DOE in a classification review. We 

felt that we had all the information necessary 

to complete the revised document at the time 

the evaluation report was presented to the 

Board. However, we could not speak about that 

because we weren't certain that the manner in 
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which we had characterized that information in 

our site profile -- we weren't sure whether it 

would be deemed classified or not. And at the 

February Board meeting Board members and the 

public raised issues about due process and 

questions about how dose reconstruction could 

be done without full disclosure. 

 My limited understanding of this particular 

slide (sic) is presented on this slide, and 

I'll go through the slide and at the end of my 

presentation if there are questions about this 

decision or this determination, I'm sure that 

Liz Homoki-Titus, a representative of our 

Office of General Counsel, will be at the ready 

to respond to questions as best she can. 

But basically Friday of last -- last Friday we 

received information that legal advice from the 

Department of Justice had been proffered in an 

opinion, and it has been concluded that nondisclosure to the public of classified or 

restricted information does not qualify a class 

for addition to the Special Exposure Cohort if 

sufficiently accurate dose reconstruction is 

otherwise feasible using classified or 

restricted information. 
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The Secretary therefore has no authority 

legally to grant a Special Exposure Cohort 

petition based on classified or restricted 

information that may be used in evaluating that 

-- that petition or in doing dose 

reconstruction. 

Department of Justice has also indicated that 

access by claimants or the public at large to 

classified or restricted information on which 

HHS may rely in making its feasibility 

determination is not required for due process 

considerations. Petitioners will have the 

opportunity for an administrative review within 

the Department, as provided within our rule. 

And if the petitioner files a suit and the 

court concludes that it is necessary, the court 

can review the classified information in -- ex 

parte or in camera. 

DOE review, as I said earlier, did not redact 

any information from our revised site profile 

document. And while we at NIOSH feel that 

disclosure is an important program value, it is 

not an overriding limitation of scientific 

ability to conduct dose reconstruction. 

NIOSH now believes that the revised site 
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profile document, as it currently exists, 

allows for dose reconstructions for those cases 

that would be completed after 1962, and to do 

so with full disclosure. There will continue 

to be some classified information, NIOSH 

believes, while it's still feasible to complete 

sufficiently accurate dose reconstructions for 

cases before 1962. 

 The Special Exposure Cohort evaluation relies 

on data from Pantex workers. This issue was 

raised at your last meeting. Our response in 

our supplement speaks to the fact that area 

monitoring devices at Iowa could not measure 

the low energy neutrons, which necessitated the 

use of Monte Carlo N-Particle transport code 

calculations that were used to construct the 

low energy portion of the spectrum. Because of 

this, our recommended approach to estimating 

potential neutron doses for Iowa workers is to 

utilize the ratios of neutron to photon doses 

obtained from Pantex dosimeters during the 

period of 1993 to 2003. 

Based upon this Monte Carlo neutron proton 

transport code calculations and neutron -- 

nuclear track dosimeter type measurements at 
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Iowa, the measured Pantex neutron to photon 

ratio from '93 to 2003 is greater, by a factor 

of approximately three, than the actual Iowa 

data would -- would yield. Thereby we find it 

to be a more claimant-friendly approach than 

the use of the Iowa neutron measurement data 

alone. 

The third issue that was raised in St. Louis 

was that workers recalled instances where 

beryllium outer shells of the pit came off and 

would have to be glued back on. This was felt 

that it -- it indicated that the workers were 

handling bare plutonium pits. As noted in our 

evaluation report on page 25 of that evaluation 

report, this cladding -- all the pits were 

cladded, and the -- this precluded the 

potential for internal exposure. This cladding 

is in addition -- it's -- it's -- it's in 

addition to any beryllium outer shell material 

that may have encapsulated the pit. And so if 

the beryllium cladding were removed, the 

radioactive pit material would still have been 

encapsulated in cladding. 

 The cladding may have been thin, and it may 

have been warm to the touch, giving the 
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impression that the radioactive material, while 

attaching or gluing the cladding materials on, 

resulted in handling of bare pits, but that's -

- we don't believe the case. The activity of 

reattaching the out shells is more than 

accounted for in the revised site profile 

because the site profile assumes that there was 

no cladding whatsoever. This is a claimantfriendly assumption and we use that 100 percent 

of the time in our proposed dose reconstruction 

effort. 

The fourth issue that was raised was that 

workers indicated they smeared the inside of 

the hollow sphere consisting of what was known 

as "hot material," and that had implications 

regarding exposure to unshielded ionizing 

radiation. Our research of this process 

reveals the operation involves the removal of 

the explosive component from the ball to allow 

the capsule to be placed inside. And during 

the assembly operations thus the fissile 

capsule was not present, so no radioactive -- 

it was not radioactive at all. It would have 

been composed of non-enriched uranium -- if 

radioactive at all, it would have been composed 
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of non-enriched uranium, excuse me. 

If the ball were uranium, the beta dose on the 

skin of the hand and the forearm could have 

been significant, and NIOSH is continuing our 

research to estimate the skin dose for that 

region. 

I'd like to point out that -- however, the 

external dose to organs, other than the skin on 

the hands or the forearms, would be very low. 

So you know, the skin of the hand and the 

forearm would have been close proximity to the 

pits, but other organs and other sites on the 

body, the dose would have been very low. Next 

slide. 

Fifth issue raised, even after 1962 a very low 

percentage of the work force was monitored for 

radiation exposure. This does not provide 

enough data to make accurate estimates of the 

unshielded ionizing radiation. 

At the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, the primary 

production process -- as you heard from Tim and 

others -- was actually the manufacture of high 

explosive materials. And the AEC operation was 

the only operation that involved radioactive 

material, and several people were involved in 
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that aspect. We understand that. The testing 

of these high explosives in many instances did 

not involve radioactive materials; and where 

they did, they are documented. Consequently we 

feel that most workers at the plant would not 

have been -- was not necessary for most workers 

at the plant to have been monitored for 

radiation exposure. 

We believe that dose reconstructions can be 

completed using the Iowa coworker data that 

represent a greater potential for exposure. 

Those workers that were monitored, we believe -

- as you've heard in our site profile 

discussion -- represent the highest exposed 

individuals. I do believe that we will -- as 

we go through records and we look at additional 

information, you must recognize that it's 

possible that as we find that information it 

refines our ability and our estimates for dose 

reconstruction, so the -- the site profile that 

you have before you is an overestimate and it's 

claimant-friendly in that way. But as more 

information becomes available, that could drive 

the dose estimates down. Next slide, please. 

The site was also involved with the final 
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assembly of nuclear weapons. This is well 

known, and the Iowa plant simply assembled 

those components into final configuration with 

the explosives. They also did disassembly and 

they did surveillance, as we've heard. We 

believe that the workers who routinely handled 

the most radioactive materials were routinely 

monitored after 1963. 

Workers who conducted other non-assembly jobs 

were monitored until 1968 -- were not monitored 

until 1968, and as a result at Iowa the dose 

distribution developed from a moderate number 

of workers with the highest potential for 

exposure we feel is claimant-friendly, 

especially when applied to non-assembly line 

workers. 

In summary, our proposed class definition for 

this petition is presented here as all 

employees working at the Iowa Army Ammunition 

Plant Line 1, which includes Yard C, Yard G, 

Yard L, the Firing Site area, Burning Field B 

and the storage sites for pits and weapons, 

including those Buildings 73 and 77, from March 

of 1949 to 1974. 

And in this summary slide we characterize the 
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classes as we have identified them. From June 

of 1947 to May of 1948 there was no fissile 

material present so feasibility is not 

applicable, no health endangerment. From May 

of '48 to March of '48 we're in the process of 

making that evaluation, and that is yet to be 

determined. 

From March of '49 to December of '62, yes, we 

feel it is feasible for us to reconstruct doses 

with sufficient accuracy using our maximum dose 

estimate based on the site profile and use of 

the generic pit and use of the work factor that 

we have presented to you in -- in that report 

and here at this meeting. Therefore, because 

we can do dose reconstruction, the issue of 

health endangerment test is not applicable. 

From the time period of January 1963 to 

December of 1974, yes, it is feasible for us to 

do dose reconstructions, and that will be done 

with full disclosure of all information, as 

you've heard. And again, we don't have to 

address the second prong of the test. It's not 

applicable. 

I'll try to entertain any questions. I may ask 

for --
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 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Larry. Larry, can you 

say officially for NIOSH, aside from the 

feasibility of doing dose reconstruction, does 

NIOSH agree that nonetheless there was health 

endangerment for the two periods involved? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. I alluded to that earlier 

in my slide. We believe that there was 

exposure there --

 DR. ZIEMER: It's only non-applicable here -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: In the test. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It would not be required if you 

proceeded with dose reconstruction and this was 

not a Special Exposure Cohort. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: That is correct. To apply the 

two tests that must be met -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- we would speak to health 

endangerment if it was found that the first 

test, can we do dose reconstruction, was not 

met. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Also if I could ask, 

before we have questions here could we have any 

additional statements from -- from general 

counsel on the issue of transparency that you 

referred to in your slide? Is Liz here? Liz, 
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can -- can you add any -- or do you wish to add 

anything to Larry's statements on that issue 

for the Board? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I don't have anything to 

add. I --

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- know about as much as the 

slide --

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- so... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Okay, let's begin with 

Dr. Melius, and then we'll go to Mike Gibson. 

 DR. MELIUS: First I'd like to make one -- what 

I believe is a correction to what Larry said. 

I think, Larry, you stated that the Board had 

requested further evaluation and further 

information be developed on Iowa. I don't 

believe that is accurate. The Board, at the 

last February meeting, voted to approve a 

Special Exposure Cohort, and that was -- that 

motion is actually still active. I mean we -- 

we voted essentially to table it at our 

conference call until this meeting. We never 

did request this -- this information. I mean, 

again, I don't object to NIOSH developing it, 
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but I think it's inaccurate to say that the 

Board requested that you develop this further 

information. All of this is responsive to some 

of the concerns that others raised at our last 

meeting, but these -- the Board never really 

had an opportunity to ask for further 

information from --

 DR. ZIEMER: I think that's correct. It was my 

understanding that these were requests from -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Perhaps I confused you or I 

misspoke. I mentioned in one slide that you 

have -- that's an option available to you under 

your responsibilities. If I misspoke, I'm 

inaccurate. I agree, I --

 DR. ZIEMER: The five items that you followed 

up on came out of the floor discussions, I 

believe. Was that so? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I agree, the Board -- I may -- 

perhaps I did misspeak, but I was speaking -- I 

recall I was speaking to the Board's 

responsibility. That's certainly one of your 

options. If I misspoke, I will correct that 

now. The Board did not ask NIOSH to make the 

supplement evaluation report available. It was 

what we considered and we did, post the 
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February meeting, and we felt we needed to 

address those things. You're quite right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And let me also emphasize and what 

Dr. Melius says is correct, the Board's action 

remains its action. The only thing that has 

occurred is that we have not actually sent 

forward a formal recommendation in -- and there 

is -- a letter was referred to that was -- the 

Chair had to make a decision, when the new 

document appeared, as to what we should do, 

because our charge also requires that our 

evaluation to the Secretary be based on the 

petition review of NIOSH. And NIOSH was now 

reviewing -- or -- or reviewing a new set of -- 

new piece of information, so we had -- in a 

sense, we're almost required to look at, even 

though we had taken action and that action 

still remains in effect, unless changed or 

somehow altered at this particular meeting. 

Michael? I'll come back. 

 DR. MELIUS: And then I have some more, yeah. 

 MR. GIBSON: I guess the first question I 

obviously have is one that probably everyone in 

the room has a question and is there anyone in 

the room, government agency or otherwise, that 
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knows who asked the Department of Justice or 

how the Department of Justice got involved in 

making this legal determination that the 

classified information does not constitute a 

reason for a Special Exposure Cohort? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I do not know. I don't know if 

Liz can answer that question or not, but I do 

not know. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I can't answer that question 

fully because I don't have that information. I 

can let you know the role that the Office of 

Legal Counsel at Department of Justice plays 

for all Executive Agencies, and that may help 

guide how this opinion came from them. And 

this is actually public information from their 

web site. 

They function as the legal advisor to the 

President and all Executive Agencies, including 

being outside counsel to Executive Agencies, 

and they usually deal with legals that are 

considered particularly complex or of a novel 

legal question, which this is since this is a 

new issue. And they're also responsible for 

providing legal advice to departments on all 

Constitutional questions, which due process is 
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a Constitutional question. And I believe that 

the reason that this was followed up on is that 

it was brought to the Board at the last Board 

meeting, as many of you are aware, and you had 

a great deal of discussion about it. And 

although you didn't send a recommendation to 

the Secretary as a whole Board, we obviously 

try to follow up on issues that are -- you all 

consider important and we consider important. 

And since it was brought to you and Dr. Melius 

actually spoke to this a number of times on the 

record, saying that it was difficult for you -- 

us, I believe referring to the Board, to 

develop the regulations or system of whatever -

- whatever you want to call it, dealing with 

this for the whole program -- again, he says, 

he's talking about the context for the last 

petition was a single petition, and he said I 

think it's really up to the agencies, and 

particularly since we advise NIOSH, NIOSH to 

come back with the procedures that if they 

decide that's the best route, that should be 

taken. And I'm not saying we're adverse to 

that, I just don't think we can formulate it 

here. And since the Board was obviously 
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struggling with that issue, the Department, you 

know, wanted to provide the advice that you all 

apparently had sought. 

 MR. GIBSON: And where in this current 

legislation does it specifically give the 

Department of Justice the right to make this 

determination that the Secretary does not have 

the authority to grant Special Exposure Cohort 

based on... 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Again, I can only refer you 

to the role of the Department of Justice, which 

is to legally advise Executive Agencies on 

novel legal issues, which this is a novel legal 

issue, and apparently their opinion was sought. 

That's not authority that would be given -- I 

believe in any statute. I don't know that, 

though. But obviously the Department of 

Justice is the legal advisor to the Federal 

government and the Executive Agencies in 

particular through the Department of Legal 

Counsel. 

 MR. GIBSON: I understand that, but it -- it is 

not specifically addressed in the Energy 

Employees Occupational Illness Compensation 

Act. 
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MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I believe the only place the 

restricted information is addressed is the 

indication by Congress that the Advisory Board 

and NIOSH or Health and Human Services should 

have access to that information. 

 MR. GIBSON: And notwithstanding this opinion 

by DOJ, how can a claimant have a meaningful 

appeal to a dose reconstruction case when the 

Energy Employees Compensation Act does give 

them the right to appeal and ask for additional 

information, if they're not entitled to that 

information based on its classification? How 

can that be considered due process and fair -- 

a fair appeal? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: First off, the Energy 

Employees Occupational Illness Act does not 

give them the right to appeal a dose 

reconstruction. Those rights are provided 

through the regulations that are set up by the 

Department. We have an appeals process within 

HHS, as well as an appeals process, I believe, 

through the Department of Labor for dose 

reconstructions -- just so we're clear that the 

law does not give them that right. 

 MR. GIBSON: (Off microphone) I might 
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(unintelligible) --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: And I haven't studied this 

issue myself, but according to the Department 

of Justice opinion, as long as there's an 

administrative review and also then the courts 

can review the information in camera, that's 

met the question before. This is not the first 

program that's faced the question of rights 

regarding classified information. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Mike, do you have a follow-up on 

that at this time or... While -- while you're 

thinking, let me just add a comment here. 

It would appear to me that that opinion is 

directed toward the decision of the Secretary 

of Health and Human Services. It's not obvious 

to me that the Board cannot take into 

consideration issues of transparency in its 

recommendation. Whether or not the Secretary 

can use that or not --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: That's right --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- may be a legal issue, but -- 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- absolutely, it is an 

opinion directed at the Secretary. It only 

addresses the legal question of using nontransparent information. It doesn't stop any 
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discussions that you all may have on other 

issues, on science, on the sufficiency of dose 

reconstructions. Obviously you're an advisory 

board and your job is to advise the President -

-

 DR. ZIEMER: Our advice can be --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- or the Secretary on all 

issues. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- taken or ignored. The other 

part of that is -- well, it appears that the 

opinion states that such a classification 

cannot be based solely on the issue of 

classification, that there should be some other 

issues which are enumerated and which should be 

addressed in making a final determination. But 

the Chair sees no reason why that issue of 

transparency could not be raised if indeed we 

felt that continued to be an issue. 

Let's see, let's -- yes, a follow-up, Mike? 

 MR. GIBSON: But as it states in this handout 

that -- part of our role is to consider this 

and other information that we deem important to 

make this, and included in that is listening to 

the petitioners and their information. And 

based on what we've heard from them, I think 
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it's completely at odds with what NIOSH -- some 

of what NIOSH and ORAU's come up with on their 

assumptions and their dose reconstructions. So 

I believe with -- based on what the plaintiffs 

(sic) have told us and this issue that I have a 

great deal of heartburn about, lack of their 

due process, I believe we need -- we need to 

move on and -- and make the motion that they be 

granted the Special Exposure Cohort. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Let's continue the 

discussion. We actually have already taken 

such an action, so the issue would be whether 

that is changed. Charles Leon Owens. 

MR. OWENS: Mr. Elliott, what weight did the 

Department of Justice decision have in regard 

to NIOSH's supplemental report? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I'm sorry, would you repeat that 

MR. OWENS: What weight did the Department of 

Justice advice have relative to NIOSH's 

supplemental report? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: What right? 

MR. OWENS: Weight. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Weight -- oh, weight. It had 

none, because we finished our supplemental 
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report before we heard of this opinion. 

MR. OWENS: Okay, so I guess -- I'm just trying 

to understand the process by which the 

Department of Justice became involved, and I 

understand the comments from earlier, that you 

don't really know. And I believe Liz had said 

that she didn't necessarily know the process, 

either. I think, Dr. Wade, that the Board 

needs to have someone that can possibly provide 

information, because I think this issue will 

surface again as we go to the different sites. 

And I feel that it's an injustice for the Board 

not to have all available information, 

particularly something that is as critical as 

this, as it relates to confidentiality and the 

ability of dose reconstruction for the 

claimants. 

 DR. WADE: Understood. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Liz, did you have an additional 

comment? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I was going to say I will be 

more than happy to try to look into that and 

find out what I can and let you all know at 

your next Board meeting, but I don't have those 

answers right now. I don't have that 
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information and I can't give it to you. 

MR. OWENS: I appreciate that. But again, for 

something this critical, I feel that it's an 

injustice to the Board members and to the 

public for us not to have some type of trail to 

allow us information that's necessary. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 DR. WADE: I will also take that as a 

responsibility, Leon. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim Melius. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. I find it a little hard to 

believe that somebody in the Department of 

Justice is out there reading transcripts of 

public meetings and here's -- I make a comment 

and suddenly --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I'm sorry, I didn't -- 

 DR. MELIUS: -- issue an opinion --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- say the Department of 

Justice took this up themselves. I said that 

I'm not --

 DR. MELIUS: Well --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- aware of how it came to 

the Department of Justice so therefore I can't 

answer the question. 

 DR. MELIUS: Please, can you let me finish my 
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question? My question is, who -- did NIOSH 

bring this to the Department of Justice and ask 

their opinion? If not, do you know or does 

anybody know who did? 

And secondly, do we have a written copy of this 

opinion? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: As I just said, I don't know 

who brought this to the Department of Justice 

so I can't answer that question. I would 

assume that NIOSH could address that they did 

not, but one of them would have to respond to 

that for you. And there is no formal written 

opinion, although it is my understanding that 

the Department will have a formal written 

opinion. 

 DR. ZIEMER: How was this transmitted to NIOSH, 

verbally or -- when you say it's not a formal 

written opinion, what do you -- 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: The Department provided a 

slide -- the slide that you saw -- to NIOSH 

after clearing it with the Department of 

Justice to ensure that it was in line with the 

opinion the Department of Justice had provided. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The opinion originally came to 

whom and --
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MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: It came to the Department. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I would add -- I would add, in 

response to Dr. Melius's question, that I am 

not aware of any requests from NIOSH to 

Department of Justice through our Department on 

this issue. I would also say that we brought 

this issue of disclosure/non-disclosure to the 

table in February, feeling that the Board -- we 

wanted to hear the Board's thoughts on it and 

wanted to hear the Board's input and -- and 

give that full consideration. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, did you have a follow-up 

question? 

 DR. MELIUS: No, not at the moment, thanks. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, Wanda Munn. 

 MS. MUNN: As has been noted here already, 

clearly the Iowa site is not the only site on 

which the issue of classified data is going to 

come before us. Also clearly, from the outset 

of the formation of this Board under the law's 

instruction, the Department of Justice was one 

of the departments of the government that would 

be involved in this. It does not seem to me to 

be in any way detrimental to our purposes as a 

Board to have Justice rule on this matter. And 
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certainly here at the outset better than 

further down the road when we have encountered 

this problem on numerous occasions on numerous 

sites. 

Sorry, I'm doing the best I can with the mike. 

Therefore, I fail to see why this is seen as a 

threat. Regardless of how Justice rules on 

this issue, it seem to me sooner or later 

someone -- we or someone else -- would have had 

to request such a ruling. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Dr. Melius. 

 DR. MELIUS: Well, just to clarify, while there 

may be reasons for the Department of Justice or 

whoever to issue such an opinion, it's a little 

hard to deal with an opinion that comes down, 

you know, 5:00 o'clock on Friday, you know, 

just before our Monday meeting, that's not in 

writing, that we do not know the context in 

which somebody asked for this opinion, nor is 

it spelled out how it applies to the particular 

case that -- it's involved here, nor has, you 

know, NIOSH nor their legal counsel really had 

adequate time to try to address that and review 

it so that it can be of assistance to us. So 

you know, I guess Wanda may be right, it's 
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better to know about it now than later, but 

certainly the manner in which it was presented 

to us hardly is very helpful to our 

deliberations here. In fact it just adds 

further confusion. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Henry Anderson. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, Larry, I think you said 

that the Justice opinion really didn't impact 

on your decision, which changed between -- as I 

understand it, the recommendation on February 

4th, the first review that we actually acted 

on, and now, and you had supplemental 

information and while I can see the 

supplemental information is very helpful on the 

site profile concerned, the SEC petitions 

really are a time-specific thing. You have to 

-- you can't just -- as we've seen here, you're 

going to continue to look into the radon, 

there's -- this is an iterative process. But 

for the SEC petition, it is not. I mean we 

have to make a decision now, and -- and I guess 

my question is what -- on the NIOSH side -- 

changed so that your recommendation now on the 

petition is different than it was in February, 

if I understand it. 
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 MR. ELLIOTT: Our recommendation on the 

petition is the same as it was in February. 

The recommendation that we presented in 

February indicated that we could do dose 

reconstruction --

DR. ANDERSON: Okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- for that class. We raised the 

question for the Board's consideration and 

deliberation on how to deal with this issue of 

disclosure or non-disclosure pre-1962 -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Okay, that's -- I just wanted to 

be sure you had not -- I've heard the 

impression that you'd changed, but the reality 

is that it really hasn't changed. It's simply 

we now have, you know, some other people 

weighing in on the issues -- on the legal side. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: That's correct. Our -- our 

recommendation has not changed since February. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Michael. 

 MR. GIBSON: Not to drive it into the ground or 

play attorney -- which I certainly don't want 

to do -- but just for the record, does anyone 

in this room know if this decision came down 

via phone call, e-mail or face-to-face meeting 

from the Department of Justice? 
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 MR. ELLIOTT: All I can say in response to that 

from NIOSH is I received a phone call from Liz 

on Friday afternoon indicating that I needed to 

change my presentation today and add this 

slide, and that's -- that was -- that's -- the 

slide was sent to me by e-mail. That's all I 

can say from NIOSH's perspective. 

 MR. GIBSON: Secondly, I -- you know, I just -- 

you know, this process was set out to be -- to 

compensate victims of the Cold War that the 

government admitted has caused harm to, and to 

be claimant-friendly. And there is an 

adjudication process if you're denied your 

claim. And if you're denied access to the 

information, you have no due rights. This is -

- this is almost a Constitutional issue, to me, 

and I -- you know, I think it ruins the whole 

intent of the program. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Mr. Gibson is correct, this 

is--

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm sorry? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I'm sorry. I was just going 

to say Mr. Gibson is correct. At the last 

Board meeting the due process was brought up, 

which is why this would go to the Office of 
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Legal Counsel because they advise the 

government on Constitutional issues. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 

 MR. GIBSON: As a follow-up, again, I state I 

believe these people and everyone else in the 

nation that served this country has due process 

rights. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you -- thank you, Michael. 

Sir --

 MR. NICHOLSON: (Unintelligible) Nicholson. 

I'm with the University of Iowa. I just would 

like to know who provided you with the text for 

the slide that you miraculously -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Sir, this is not a public comment 

period. We're trying to -- 

 MR. NICHOLSON: (Off microphone) Just a simple 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- we're trying to ask the same 

question. Thank you. 

Now we are going to hear yet from the 

petitioners themselves, and Dr. (sic) Anderson 

is here I believe this morning. I'm thinking, 

though, we do need a break -- comfort break. 

I'm sorry --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Before you take a break could I 
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just add one minor comment to the record here, 

and it pales in comparison to what we're 

discussing, but yesterday I was referred to as 

Dr. Elliott and I haven't achieved that level 

of stature in my life and I just -- ethically I 

need to get that on the record so that Richard 

Miller knows I am not a doctor. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Mark has a comment. Thank 

you, Dr. Elliott. 

 MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Actually -- 

actually it's for Larry -- 

 DR. WADE: Larry, Larry --

 DR. ZIEMER: Larry had a question -- 

 DR. WADE: -- question's coming your way. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- from Mark. 

 MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) Yeah, I -- I was 

waiting for those similar line of questionings 

to stop, but -- (on microphone) I had a 

question on -- is this on? -- a question on -- 

actually the definition of the class and 

whether the claims that you have for Iowa, 

whether you can make a determination as to 

whether the people who have filed claims fall 

into that class definition 'cause I know that 

doesn't have high explosives workers in it, for 
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instance. They're trying to segregate the AEC 

-- the nuclear work from the high explosives 

work when they define their class. Can you 

make that distinction in the claims that you've 

filed? Do you have enough information on -- on 

 MR. ELLIOTT: The Department of Labor could 

make that distinction in their eligibility 

process. That's why they -- they establish 

that a person worked at Line 1. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, so -- so they do have 

enough information to make -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Evidently, 'cause they have been 

sending us claims, about 640 of them to date, 

so --

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

 DR. WADE: One comment before the break. I 

mean while this transparency issue is 

fascinating and we need to discuss it, it 

doesn't foreclose any options on the part of 

this Board. And I think it's terribly 

important that the Board continue its 

deliberations, if it wishes, on transparency, 

but also on the issue of scientific -- the 

potential to do dose reconstruction. It's 
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terribly important we discuss those issues and 

make the appropriate record. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we'll take a break. Try to 

keep it brief. We have a lot of ground to 

cover yet. Take about ten, okay? Thank you. 

 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 10:20 a.m. 

to 10:38 a.m.) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Could you please reassemble? 

We're going to call the meeting back to order, 

since we are indeed pressed for time. 

 PRESENTATION BY PETITIONERS 

We're going to hear from the Iowa petitioners, 

and specifically we'll give the podium to Dr. 

(sic) Anderson, if he's in the assembly. 

(Pause) 

MR. ANDERSON: All right, my turn. Thank you 

to the Board for giving us time and space -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Is the mike on? 

(Pause) 

MR. ANDERSON: All right, I'm dressed now. We 

can go ahead. 

 Members of the Advisory Board, thank you for 

having me back. It was so much fun last time I 

couldn't wait to come back and see you again. 

(Whereupon, members of the audience indicated 
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an inability to hear the speaker, requiring a 

pause for adjustments to the microphone setup.) 

MR. ANDERSON: All right. Good afternoon -- or 

is it morning? Hello, hello -- it works to the 

tap. 

Be advised that all information contained in 

this response is available from public sources 

and contains no classified information. The 

Cold War team has sacrificed health and even 

their lives to provide this great nation with 

safety, security for the Cold War years for all 

Americans. At this time and in memory of those 

team members who have passed on, could I ask 

all here today for a moment of prayerful 

silence, using those good words from long ago -

- each in your own words and each in your own 

way, let's bow our heads and pray, giving 

thanks to the memories of the heroic men and 

women of the Cold War team who have passed, and 

the sacrifices by their families. 

(Pause) 

Amen. Thank you. 

Members of the Advisory Board, Department of 

Labor and NIOSH officials, fellow former 

workers and their families from the Burlington 
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Atomic Energy Commission Plant, also known as 

the IAAP/BAECP. Today we are focused on the 

responsibilities of the Advisory Board outlined 

in the Section 3626(b), which is -- and I quote 

-- advise the Secretary on whether there is a 

class of employees at any DOE facilities who 

were exposed to radiation but for whom it is 

not feasible to estimate the radiation dose, 

and on whether there is reasonable likelihood 

that such radiation doses may have endangered 

the health of the members of the class. It 

would appear to me that we seem to have 

agreement on all aspects of that statement, 

except for the portion for whom it is not 

feasible to estimate the radiation dose. 

My story begins in the 1980's. I saw in the 

local newspaper, The Burlington Hawkeye, that 

one of my fellow shift lieutenants had 

contacted (sic) non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, fought 

a great battle and died. Then I was diagnosed 

with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, received 

chemotherapy at the University of Iowa. I'm 

here today yet. From other friends I heard of 

two other exempt employees at the safety 

department of Line 1 who had been in the same 
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areas as the two of us had also contacted (sic) 

non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and had been diagnosed 

at about the same time. One of them died. 

 The coincidence of four people having the same 

disease discovered within a short time seemed 

very suspicious, as our common ground was that 

we all worked at the plant at the same time. 

Here's a list of -- short list of names from 

the safety and security groups who numbered 

about 15 to 20 people over the five years that 

I worked at the plant. People like me, who 

were first or second into the closed, leadlined train cars and trucks carrying 

radioactive cargo to the plant. These are 

people I've known, worked with and heard about 

recently. 

 Physical security shift lieutenants, Edmond 

Sonny Ryder, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, died; Jim 

Selton, kidney cancer, living; Bob Flannagan, 

cancer, died; Alan Weeks, neurological disease, 

living; Paul Malloy, died; and myself, with 

non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Security training 

officer Guy L. Miller was also there, cancer, 

died; security chief Richard Lewis, he 

inventoried pits in storage areas, has cancer. 
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The safety members I remember, John Jameson, 

non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, died; Paul Cross, nonHodgkin's lymphoma, living. 

As a physical security shift commander and 

holder of clearances AEC-Q, DOD secret and 

crypto at that time, I remember meeting armed 

AEC couriers who protected the incoming 

shipments of radioactive materials at the 

exterior gates. I was the first person to open 

and climb aboard the locked, leaded cargo 

carrier. I was charged with comparing the 

serial numbers of each item with the manifest 

and signing receipt for the cargo for the 

company. 

To do so I climbed over and around and on many 

of the shielded white containers to get close 

enough to read each serial number while wearing 

my regular uniform, which then I wore home at 

the end of the shift. At home I was able to 

pick up and hold my two little girls before 

going to bed. 

Now I ask you, since Sonny Ryder and I were the 

first to enter locked and guarded trains and 

trucks to inventory by serial number the 

radioactive barrels, would I have not received 
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a larger dose -- simply by being surrounded by 

a number of pits -- than someone who was only 

around a single pit? Granted, they were 

covered. No security guard that some 200 of us 

were ever badged. 

I can't prove my dose, but NIOSH cannot, 

either. That's why there is an SEC petition 

coming through today, and it covers the years 

through 1974. 

In the fall semester of 1997 while taking an 

evening class at our Southeastern Community 

College, my instructor for man and the 

environment gave a class assignment to write a 

letter to a government official in response to 

an environmental issue, either in support of 

that issue or against it. I decided that I 

would use that assignment to ask Senator Harkin 

a question that has bothered me since being 

diagnosed in 1988. Did I get non-Hodgkin's 

lymphoma from working at the Burlington AEC 

Plant? 

 Since that letter-writing I've heard from so 

many people who have worked there or from their 

surviving spouses about the same coincidences 

of cancer that was repeated all too often. In 
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most cases the disease announced itself 15 

years after working at the plant. Sadly, at 

that time we could still not tell our doctors 

about the risks we faced. 

I was proud to have been a part of the Cold War 

team. Iowans have a long history of answering 

the call for our country. We are prepared to 

continue to answer that call if this petition 

is denied. It is only right to expect that our 

country would protect us, as we protected them. 

I note that the Board, while reviewing this 

IAAP site, has retained Sanford Cohen & 

Associates as technical experts to support your 

independent review efforts. However, the Board 

has to date been constrained in securing the 

services that would allow your technical 

experts to ask and answer specific questions 

involving Special Exposure Cohorts. I question 

why SC&A has been only brought on now. Why not 

earlier? Given that NIOSH issued its 

regulations almost a year ago, it's confusing 

why -- why now? Why not earlier? You people 

need tools to do your job. 

We have a high degree of confidence in the work 

of Sanford Cohen and we appreciate the 
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diligence of them in producing this preliminary 

site profile evaluation for your consideration 

in a mere four weeks. There are an unknown 

number of boxes that no one has looked at in 

storage. There are an unknown number of boxes 

sent from the IAAP to Pantex that are likely 

lost or mis-boxed. We don't know. And we have 

new information about neutron dose measurements 

by PNNL, but this data has not been released 

and has forced NIOSH to rely upon Pantex data 

instead -- that apparently needs to be 

corrected in my speech. 

 The uncertainty about whether data has been 

lost or found goes to the heart of how 

confident one can be about dose reconstruction. 

The position of NIOSH is that dose can be 

reconstructed after 1962 despite a small 

fraction of the workers being monitored. In 

support of this NIOSH states in the SEC 

supplement item five, quote, based upon a 

review of records, workers who conducted other 

jobs, not assembly and disassembly, around the 

fissile materials generally were not monitored 

until about 1968. This is an error. Security 

guards were never monitored at all at IAAP, and 
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were not considered radiological workers in the 

complex until the late '70's. Thus this group 

was not monitored as asserted by NIOSH. They 

should know from this -- they should know this 

from worker interviews. 

Quote two, as a result at IAAP the dose 

distribution developed from a moderate number 

of workers with the highest potential for 

exposure is considered claimant-favorable, 

especially when applied to non-assembly Line 1 

workers. Well -- unquote -- this is in error, 

as well. 

 First, non-assembly Line 1 workers include both 

high explosive manufacturing, which did not 

have meaningful potential for radiation dose, 

as well as disassembly and security workers, 

which did have significant potentials. Second, 

the conclusions about whether these badges 

represent these workers with the highest dose 

is more in the vein of a NIOSH guess than a 

validated statement. 

It is an assumption that those monitored were 

the most exposed workers, and that the readings 

derived were reliable, but not confirmed by 

SCA's review of the records. We know that many 
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workers were unmonitored, and many wore badges 

only part of the time. NIOSH faces a major 

impediment to asserting the representativeness 

of this data, because only a fraction of the 

radiation dose badges have codes that can be 

tied to actual job title or specific 

departments. As NIOSH has been informed, the 

only job titles identified came from employment 

termination records, and these are not reliable 

indicators of previous work history. Thus we 

are concerned that NIOSH is making unsupported 

generalizations. 

 For the post-1967 time period there's 

additional radiation badge monitoring, but 

there's no analysis linking monitoring to job 

titles or departments. Coworker models are not 

demonstrated to be workable in situations where 

there is so much uncertainty about job titles 

and departments. This is why an SEC is 

warranted through 1974. 

If NIOSH is relying on the University of Iowa 

electronic database, we have been advised this 

database has not been quality assured. The 

representativeness of the data is the very 

heart of a critical point. Did that selection 
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of worker dose badges accurately represent the 

exposed work force, and I've indicated it 

doesn't, or was it concentrated among certain 

job categories such as supervisors, foremen, 

inspectors and radiographers? 

The entire case for dose reconstruction appears 

to be biased on a house of cards. Data and 

information is alleged to exist, but not 

revealed. NIOSH offers reassurances that they 

have something to prove their position, but it 

is classified. NIOSH postulates that what the 

photon dose is based on monitoring of three to 

seven percent of the workers, and expects us to 

accept their dose reconstructions. 

We have lived our entire lives seeing how 

classification has been abused. We have seen 

how something that is thought to be even 

embarrassing and it's inconvenient to declare 

it classified in order to hide it. 

Between 1955 and 1962 records indicate that 

only eight to 23 workers in a work force of 

more than 1,000 were monitored for external 

radiation doses, and that included X-ray 

technicians. Neutron monitoring did not begin 

until 1962. Only 25 percent of the badges had 
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NTA film included to measure neutrons. This 

means that only 11 workers were monitored for 

neutron exposure from the years '62 to '67. 

I normally only speak about two sentences and I 

run out of throat. 

 SCA apparently discovered that Battelle did 

neutron monitoring at the IAAP in the '70's 

only after talking to workers for a few days. 

NIOSH was apparently unaware of this monitoring 

after spending years at the Iowa site. Even 

more troubling is that NIOSH hired Battelle to 

work on the site profile. Is this a case of 

the right hand not knowing what the right (sic) 

hand is doing? Should we feel confident that 

Battelle has uncovered all the rocks? I get 

the feeling the NIOSH scientists would rather 

come up with theoretical models in their 

offices rather than get out and talk to workers 

and get ground true -- level truth. 

Between 1970 and 1975, the high point in 

screening at IAAP, only 25 percent of the work 

force were screened for exposure to external 

radiation. We do not know exactly who they 

were or their location in relation to the 

radioactive sources. No new external data was 
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produced between Revision 0 and Revision 1 

because none exist. The data is bad and NIOSH 

needs to admit that. 

I note that NIOSH has found plutonium was 

shipped off site in drums. Although quantities 

were not large, how could that happen with pits 

when NIOSH asserts they were completely 

encapsulated? The stuff doesn't just jump out 

from it. Was this wipe sample from weapons 

components delivered to the plant? Is there 

evidence to support this, or is this just 

another NIOSH staff theory that -- which is 

back-fit to explain away an inconvenient bit of 

data and contradict their conclusion that 

plutonium pits were always encapsulated? If it 

was plutonium dust raised by a train or truck 

ride across bumpy roads at IAAP, how has NIOSH 

accounted for exposures to security personnel 

who went into trucks and trains to check the 

serial numbers? Where did the plutonium come 

from that was sent to Pantex? Has NIOSH 

reviewed the shipping information to find out 

what was in the drums? What percentage of 

health physics records have been examined by 

NIOSH that were shipped from Burlington to 
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Pantex in 1974? What percentage of those 

shipped has NIOSH even identified? What 

percentage has been lost or mis-boxed? 

I would like for NIOSH to provide a number for 

the Board and petitioners on the number of 

boxes of records shipped from Iowa to Pantex -- 

Albuquerque -- Federal Records Center. How 

many of those shipped have been found and how 

many of those have been found -- has your staff 

reviewed? What would the rest of the records 

show? What was the method used in the 

selection and review of records? Were we just 

cherry-picking here and just picking up the 

little things that we like to see that point to 

the ideal result? How much confidence should 

we have if there's a substantial percentage of 

records that are missing? After all, there are 

no internal dose records from '49 to '75, and 

scant external records in '50's and '60's. 

Please explain. 

Let me illustrate how dose reconstruction works 

using some sample props. This is theory. This 

is a Landauer film badge, the kind of badges we 

never wore. I got this from another source. 

Okay? Let me see if I can show our audience 
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dose reconstruction and how it should work. By 

using the canary in the mine shaft theory, the 

idea is that one person's film badge does the 

work for all. Let me help the visualization 

here just a little bit. 

(Pause) 

In this position -- let me hand Dr. Wade 

(speaker moves out of range of the microphone 

but continues speaking, then returns to the 

microphone). 

In this position my badge would be the same 

thing that Dr. Wade is receiving from the 

purple pit. I would have brought more pits but 

there's only one in the house. 

All right. Now in the next scene I will be the 

foreman for the group, or safety person. 

Remember, I still have the badge. Now I'm 

going to come walking in, walking back out. 

(Pause) 

(Off microphone) (Unintelligible) Lew, this 

thing fit? Everything (returning to 

microphone) working all right for you? 

 DR. WADE: Seems to. 

MR. ANDERSON: Everything seems fine. Okay, 

I'll go check the next pit. 
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 (Pause) 

Now the badge I was wearing in and back out, 

does that represent the dose that Dr. Wade is 

still receiving? Do we know? Is he 

comfortable that my badge represents his dose? 

I don't think so. I really don't. 

Now to illustrate the next point, that badge is 

in Texas. Does it represent what we're 

receiving now? I don't think it does. I think 

it represents the theoretical model of what 

could happen, what should happen. What did 

happen needs a piece of paper saying this film 

badge belongs to John Jones; this is what he 

received. Sit down and shut up. That's all it 

is. 

If we had those things today, we wouldn't be 

arguing, we wouldn't be discussing. Okay. 

I know that the Board has not received a 

portion of the SCA report container worker 

interviews, but I believe once published NIOSH 

will need to respond to worker experiences at 

the IAAP which conflict with their hypothetical 

work factor. For the pre-1963 cases NIOSH 

admits it has too few records, so it developed 

a generic nuclear weapons pit and applied a 
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classified work factor to estimate external 

radiation dose. NIOSH assumes workers were 

exposed to nuclear weapon pits a mere 15 

percent of the time, or one hour a day. That's 

bad. Worker interviews contradict that 

conclusion. This creates a credibility gap 

between the reality of the workers and the 

hypothetical estimates of -- by NIOSH 

(unintelligible) decades later. 

Congress did not intend that NIOSH create 

theoretical models and hypothetical source 

terms, no matter how claimant-favorable, 

because it lacks access to real world 

measurements. This is precisely the situation 

for which Congress created an SEC. There's 

nothing robust about the dataset for Iowa. 

While theoretical models may be okay for an 

academic paper, I cannot see how NIOSH can do 

anything more than a wild guess. We're 

learning that NIOSH's assumptions, no matter 

how well-intended, do not match the reality 

checks from the workers. 

A few worker interviews by the auditor 

uncovered so much information in such a very 

short time that it calls into question the 
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credibility of many of the assumptions by 

NIOSH. The only time NIOSH responds and 

discloses anything is that if we call on them -

- as if we call them on it as it was done last 

summer at the public meetings requested by 

Senator Harkin. How can we have believable 

information with a funny way of doing business? 

If we don't catch you at it, then you don't 

respond. Gee, it'd be nice to have this up 

front. 

 The cynical person might think this is a plan 

to wait us out until the mortician resolves 

this problem, or is this just plain old 

bureaucratic slight of hand. Is this just a 

promise for relief that was never meant to 

exist? I don't know. 

NIOSH's site profile uses different assumptions 

for those employed in the pre-'63 time period 

compared to those employed after. This creates 

inequities in the outcome of compensation 

decisions and casts doubt on its credibility. 

For example, a worker employed from 1958 to '62 

with pancreatic cancer will be compensated with 

a 58 percent probability of causation. But a 

worker employed from 1963 to '67 with 
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pancreatic cancer will receive a seven percent 

probability of causation. If you're one of 

those seven percent, it's not probable anymore. 

A woman with breast cancer employed for two 

years from '61 to '62 would get a 52 percent 

probability of causation. However, a woman 

employed five years, from '63 to '67, would 

have only a 16 percent probability of 

causation. 

 The irony here is that the risks did not 

increase or -- I'm sorry, the risks did not 

decrease from '62 to '63. The workers don't 

know that anything changed from '62 to '63. 

They're still doing the same jobs, a little 

more of it. But yet the numbers take a 

dramatic jump. Dose calculations result in an 

eight-fold reduction in probability of 

causation. That doesn't -- that doesn't meet 

with my approval. This is the product of using 

classified information, theoretical models and 

skimpy data. 

The Act was enacted -- the Act as enacted 

provide timely, uniform and adequate 

compensation, but this kind of outcome doesn't 

meet the test of uniformity. It doesn't meet 
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the test of anyone's fairness. And it sure 

doesn't meet timely. Since I started -- raised 

the first flag in 1998 -- '97, over 400 people 

have passed on, waiting for this moment. 

I was there. Fellow employees were there. 

NIOSH was not there. Pantex was not there. We 

are the reality of this situation. We were the 

canaries in the mine shaft known as the IAAP. 

And as I look back over time, all I see is a 

trail of dead and dying canaries that lead 

directly back to the IAAP. 

As the Board debates this important issue 

before them today and in the future, keep in 

mind the human faces of the people involved. 

Life is not just numbers on a paper. Life is 

flesh, blood and spirit. Remember many people 

are no longer here. Remember the sacrifices 

they made and will continue to make. Mostly 

remember how long we've already waited. 

I wish to offer my thanks for the active 

participation of Senators Harkin, Grassley and 

their staffs from Iowa, the continued interest 

of Representative Leach, and the ongoing 

concern from Senators Obama, Durbin and Bond as 

they, too, have constituents from the tri-state 
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area who worked at and were injured at IAAP. 

Personal thanks for my wife Kathleen for her 

continuing support over many years. It's been 

rough. 

 Again, I strongly urge the Board to act today 

to recommend the inclusion of all eligible 

workers in a Special energy -- Special Exposure 

Cohort. Enough is enough. The Board has seen 

enough foot-dragging, paper-hanging to last a 

lifetime. Please ensure that it finds its way 

to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt in a timely 

manner. 

Now Mr. Chairman, to sum up my response I 

direct the Board's attention to Dr. Laurence 

Fuortes whose years of work and dedication have 

brought focus and meaning to the Cold War team 

at Iowa. Dr. Fuortes is a medical doctor, 

professor at the University of Iowa, is 

responsible for the Burlington Atomic Energy 

Commission Plant former worker program. Dr. 

Fuortes has been working with the Cold War team 

for several years now, learning about the 

processes, risks and health outcomes 

experienced by the workers. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Thank you very much, 
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Robert Anderson. I -- I was wondering if 

you're available to help me teach students at 

Purdue University. 

MR. ANDERSON: I am retired. 

 DR. ZIEMER: He is retired. Very -- very good. 

Dr. Fuortes, are you going to add some 

comments? Please, use the mike or the podium, 

whichever you prefer. 

 DR. FUORTES: Well, I'm trying to address you 

guys so I think I -- I'll sit here -- or stand 

here and I'll try to be brief because many of 

the technical issues I think have been 

addressed by SC&A, but the former workers I 

think have done a great job of clarifying some 

of the concerns about the representativeness of 

data. 

 You know, following Bob I feel like to keep you 

guys awake and entertained I'm going to have to 

play the accordion and tambourine with my 

knees. Bob, that was fantastic and I think a 

very good example of some concerns regarding 

representativeness. 

You guys are doing a fantastic job and I'm 

amazed -- I know some of you guys haven't slept 

in your own bed in quite a while. You've been 
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traveling, addressing issues of the Department 

of Energy workers' health concerns for quite a 

while now. And we're here today, as you guys 

have noted, because of this change from the 

Rev. 0 to the Rev. 1 from the time when you 

really did make a recommendation that the SEC 

was appropriate. And I'm not an attorney, I 

don't play one on TV. We have real attorneys 

here. I can't cite the language of this 

regulation and Act, but I can -- I think I can 

repeat the intent. And the intent appears to 

be that SECs should be awarded where there's a 

lack of accurate and sufficient data from or 

relevant to a site from which to perform dose 

reconstruction accurately, fairly and in a 

timely manner. So I think there are a number 

of criteria other than just, you know, that 

there's the health risk and the feasibility. 

think that feasibility boils down to a lot of 

things that we have to consider in terms of -- 

of this process. 

 The accurate data assumes -- there are -- I 

think there are some assumptions. There's some 

difference in NIOSH's assumptions regarding the 

accuracy, validity, representativeness of data 

I 
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with some of -- some of the rest of us. 

 You noted that there is no new data since the 

April meeting in St. Louis, so what changed 

from Rev. 0 to Rev. 1? What changed was NIOSH 

a -- was asked, after critique of Rev. 0, to 

please talk to the workers because there were 

inaccuracies, that workers' histories really 

did not assumptions made in Rev. 0. On the 

basis of those worker histories, which were not 

many. I have to tell you that this -- these 

were small town hall meetings and a couple of -

- of follow-ups, but still they -- they did a 

good faith effort I think in responding to our 

concerns regarding Rev. 0. The response was to 

say okay, there are -- there are potential 

worst case scenarios involving naked pits or -- 

or radiation exposure. We'll adopt that in the 

era prior to any radiation badge monitoring. 

So only for the era prior to any monitoring at 

all. 

 Another statement in the -- or clause, I guess, 

in this SEC language is that any uncertainty -- 

or in the dose reconstruction, any uncertainty 

in dose is to be resolved in favor of the 

claimant. And I think -- SC&A said it -- that 
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everybody's -- has -- understanding that they 

made a great good faith effort in being 

claimant-favorable in the pre-1963 era. But 

post-'63 there are some -- some issues. 

Dr. (sic) Elliott -- Larry Elliott stated in 

one of his slides just a moment ago, workers 

who routinely handled the most radioactive 

materials were routinely monitored post-1963. 

Statement of fact. I -- I don't know. We also 

saw the table showing that in 1963 it was at -- 

'63, was it 29 or 41 workers monitored -- 41 

workers, and we have the workers telling us at 

least 120 were working in the bays? Well, that 

says that some workers with exposure were 

monitored, certainly. But the accuracy of the 

statement, workers who handled the most 

radioactive materials were routinely monitored, 

I think is not a factual statement. 

It's -- it's -- it's almost, to me, an attempt 

to sway the Board, the use of language. 

There's some very selective use of language in 

statements of fact that I would not agree are 

based on or supported by -- by the facts. And 

-- and it may be that it's a reflection of a 

different assumption of what the scientific 
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process is between my assumptions and -- and 

NIOSH's. But I had discussions with OCAS about 

this very issue, and the reason I'm concerned 

about -- that this swaying the Board is that I 

think -- we heard statements today of the Board 

being told what their duties are by NIOSH. My 

-- my impression was you guys are an 

independent board, you're like a scientific 

council. You don't respond to a -- a -- to 

NIOSH, you -- you address concerns and you -- 

you are -- are there really to be not just -- 

there -- being an advisory board is a difficult 

situation, but you're not there just to rubberstamp their decisions. And then you're doing a 

fantastic job I think of being very, very 

credible and -- and objective in this process. 

But I am concerned about some of those 

statements that I heard. It could be that it's 

just perceptions. 

 But perceptions really do mean something and 

that brings me to some of the other 

perceptions. I have to reiterate some of the 

history. NIOSH was advised regarding our 

concerns regarding the adequacy of exposure 

back in 2001, both -- repeated letters and 
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telephone calls. This isn't a six-month 

process of review. This is a four-plus-year 

process of discussion of -- of inadequacy of 

data. 

 In the meantime, what happened from Rev. 0 to 

Rev. 1? Hundreds of claimants have filed for 

cancer and every single one of those cancer 

claims that has been reconstructed has been 

denied -- every single one. I'm wondering if 

there is some implication that instead of good 

science dictating good policy we have a 

concern, at least a perception, that a policy 

might be dictating how we interpret data. And 

that -- that's a -- that's a concern I have 

here because now what's happened is that after 

Rev. 1 we have de facto SEC for all the workers 

prior to 1963. 

I've run all the IREP models for the 22 cancers 

and -- and it's a very generous model, so we 

have a -- basically a de facto SEC. Everybody 

but -- but squamous cell skin cancer, you know, 

is -- is going to show up in the IREP models as 

having a POC above 50 percent. 

Post-'63, no one. The only ones that come out 

are lymphoma and leukemia. That's work -- for 
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working 12 years, actually. So one year 

compensates the majority of people. One year's 

work compensates the majority in '62. Post-'63 

you can work for all the 12 years through 1975 

and you don't get compensated. 

So I just have some questions I wanted to put 

on the record, questions about the process. I 

-- I know -- not the process you guys are 

doing. I think this is a fantastic thing, but 

I think that some oversight of what's been 

going on in terms of the policy -- you guys 

brought up issues of Department of Justice. I 

agree with you, Dr. (sic) Munn, that Department 

of Justice has to weigh in. But if there's any 

implication that somebody is using policy from 

a political stance to affect the Board, I think 

that that's probably a concern, a perc-- even 

if it's just a perception, it's a concern that 

we should get on the record and I'm glad that 

some of you did note that. 

Last issues, I -- I think that you guys have 

really -- really addressed most of this, but -- 

but I do want to reiterate that my impression 

was, after reading the letter that the Board 

sent on, was that you made a decision regarding 
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recommending an SEC -- you had four bullets, 

and the second bullet was on the basis of 

concerns regarding the technical adequacy of 

data. I -- I did call OCAS to discuss this and 

I was told blanketly (sic) -- and I think that 

we saw the impression, the perceptions are 

different. OCAS seems to believe that the SEC 

was approved on the basis of transparency. I -

- I tried to make this point in St. Louis and 

many of you reiterated that in your 

deliberations, transparency is one issue and it 

has certain implications in terms of due 

process, and that may have implications at 

other sites, as well. But what we're 

discussing here is the credibility of a small 

sample of -- of whatever we talk about. If we 

talk about the highest exposed workers and we 

have zero in -- in disassembly workers or 

guards who were highly exposed, that's a very 

small sample. That's a zero sample. And if we 

have a -- a minimum of -- you know, 15 out of 

120 workers who worked in bays -- we know 

worked in bays, just statistically, that's not 

a large sample, either. So the 

representativeness of data I know did affect 
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some of the Board's decision last time. That's 

-- that was reflected in your letter. So I 

just want to get that on record that I think 

I'm hearing a difference in perception on 

several points regarding what NIOSH views as 

their role in establishing policy and what -- 

what I think the intent of the Act is. Thank 

you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'd like to give the Board members 

to -- the opportunity to raise questions, 

either from Robert Anderson or Dr. Fuortes. 

Michael? 

 MR. GIBSON: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

(on microphone) specifically to raise questions 

to them I guess just to follow up a little bit 

on what they're saying about the adequacy of 

the -- the records and stuff. I'd like to 

refer back if I could for a moment to the 

presentation on the IAAP TBD that I believe Mr. 

Taulbee had the other day. Specifically on 

page 13, the pie chart that was shown, I guess 

-- you know, in looking at this it raises a few 

questions that -- it says 40 workers from a 

single dosimeter cycle in 1965. I wonder why 

one particular snapshot in time was taken 
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rather than showing a year's worth of data. 

And secondly, you know, when you add in -- I'm 

a former DOE worker, and when you add in AEC 

workers into the mix, when you add safety 

people into the mix, just as Mr. Anderson 

demonstrated, typically those type of people -- 

they walk in and out of a room -- if once 

daily, it's for half of an hour, but more 

typically they -- the AEC people and DOE 

people, you might see them once a week. And I 

think that -- that lowers the overall value of 

the dosage of the workers that are in there for 

40-plus hours a week, and I'm -- so I wonder if 

perhaps someone could explain, you know -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Perhaps Tim Taulbee could clarify 

the question on -- did you understand the 

question that was being asked? 

 MR. TAULBEE: Yes, I did, Dr. Ziemer. To 

answer your question, Mr. Gibson, is the 

snapshot in time was just to try and get a -- a 

feel, because this was a question that was 

raised by SC&A of how sure were we about that 

the highest exposed workers were monitored. 

certainly could do it for all the dosimeter 

cycles over all the time from 1962 through 

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1974. This was just to give a relative 

snapshot so the people could get a feel that 

they were monitoring the workers, who I had 

interviewed, who I had talked to, and I saw 

those dosimeter names. I knew which 

departments roughly they worked in. I didn't 

know all 40 'cause I certainly didn't talk to 

40 different workers during my deliberations, 

and so I wanted to get a snapshot of that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I suppose the question would be 

how representative is this of the overall 

picture or how consistent is it from one time 

to another. 

 MR. TAULBEE: With the --

 MR. GIBSON: And secondly --

 MR. TAULBEE: I'm sorry. 

 MR. GIBSON: And secondly, just -- again, when 

you add in people that are in a room for ten 

minutes or in a room once a week, that seems to 

lower the overall value of the dosage of the 

people that are there weekly. 

 MR. TAULBEE: That's correct, sir. The safety 

and the AEC folks basically made up the vast 

majority of the zeroes, which we dropped out of 

the analysis. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Dr. Fuortes mentioned 

something about the -- he's run some numbers 

and you brought up the issue of the skin 

cancers in the one case versus the situation in 

the Special Exposure Cohort. I wonder if 

anyone from either NIOSH or perhaps ORAU could 

clarify the impact on -- if you had a Special 

Exposure Cohort that -- does that -- that 

excludes the skin cancers, I believe, and what 

would be the impact of one versus the other? 

DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton from NIOSH. Skin 

cancer is one of the non-presumptive cancers, 

as is prostate and few others. If -- if the 

site were to be a Special Exposure Cohort, 

those cancers would not be automatically 

granted compensation under the conditions of 

the statute. There are very large doses, as 

has been pointed out, in the early time periods 

of this model, particularly 19-- up to 1962. 

And in some of the runs I believe that Dr. 

Fuortes has -- has had us perform, it appears 

that skin cancers and even some prostate 

cancers are likely to be compensated under this 

program if the model stood as is. If -- if 

it's decided that dose reconstructions cannot 
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be done, I'm not sure what the fate of those 

decisions would be. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Mike, did you have a 

follow-up? 

 MR. GIBSON: Yeah, I just wondered if -- I'm 

not -- certainly not the scientific one. I 

just wondered if our contractor would like to 

make any response to what I was trying to get 

across with -- with Mr. Taulbee and how that 

may affect the overall results. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Someone from S-- yes, Hans 

Behling. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, I believe that Mike brought 

out the point that I was trying to make this 

morning, and that is the assumption of people 

who were monitored being representative of the 

maximally exposed worker group has to be 

questioned based on the fact that we have data 

here, at least on that pie chart, and 

testimonies presented by workers saying that 

the people who were really most likely to have 

been awarded a badge for -- for exposure 

monitoring were not necessary (sic) the pit one 

workers, and yet we are -- or the implication 

is that the data -- post-1963 data is in fact 
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those involving workers who were maximally 

exposed. And worse yet, it was that data 

that's imbedded into the pre-1962 pit model. 

So one has to be very careful about what we're 

looking at. And of course the concept of 

cohort badging that I was referring to really 

dilutes the exposures, at least for the 

maximally exposed individual group, meaning 

Line 1 workers, so one has to be very cautious 

here. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Wanda Munn has a 

question or comment. 

 MS. MUNN: A simple matter of clarity. I am 

not Dr. Munn. A simple nuclear engineer. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We're awarding degrees today. 

 DR. WADE: Paul, could I make just a very brief 

statement, just in terms of timing and to try 

and remove some of the timing pressure. While 

we're supposed to break very quickly, we can 

continue to work into lunch. We have the 

ability to bring lunch in if that's necessary 

and work through lunch. We can delay the start 

of the proceedings this afternoon to allow more 

time for this discussion to happen after lunch. 

While we have a busy agenda, including some 
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items on the agenda that don't relate to Iowa 

or Mallinckrodt on Wednesday afternoon, we 

could compress that activity and take more 

time. So it is terribly important that you 

make a complete record and I don't want you to 

feel time pressure. There are many things that 

we can do to give you the time that you need. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Indeed, if necessary we can 

continue deliberations even after lunch. 

There've -- there've been some conversations 

with some of the Mallinckrodt folks and they 

understand that and they're willing to delay 

the start of those discussions, as well, if 

necessary. 

 Jim Melius. 

 DR. MELIUS: I don't know if you want to try to 

settle -- I was not going to speak to the issue 

of lunch, so if you want to try to -- do you 

want to continue to deliberate now or -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think we can at least go till 

noon, if necessary, and --

 DR. WADE: More, if necessary. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- we were looking into the 

possibility of having box lunches available. 

 DR. WADE: It can be done. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: It can be done for Board members. 

What about others? They'd prefer not to eat 

out of those boxes then? 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 

(Unintelligible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Well, in any event, we --we 

can -- we can continue for a bit now, perhaps 

till the noon hour. Then we will take a break 

if we have not completed our deliberations on 

Iowa and we'll resume them after lunch. Again, 

let me ask for questions, and then I would like 

to take a moment and clarify what we need to do 

as a Board. 

 DR. MELIUS: Well, I really want to speak to 

the second point, so if there's -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: The second point being what we 

need to do. 

 DR. MELIUS: What we need to do --

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- and a recommendation that I -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me ask for any more questions 

or comments relative to the information 

provided by the petitioners. 

 (No responses) 

BOARD DISCUSSION: IAAP SEC PETITION 
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DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Then let me kick this off 

and Jim, you can add to it then. To clarify 

what options are before us or what actions we 

need to take as a Board, there is -- or remains 

a previous action which this Board took at its 

last meeting. I point out that that previous 

action was linked, to a certain degree, to Rev. 

0 of the site profile. So it may be that if 

the Board wished to retain that action, there 

may be some modifications that would be needed 

so that there was a more specific link to the 

updated site profile. But in essence, one 

option would be for the Board to retain or 

reaffirm its prior action. 

 Another option would be for the Board to in 

some way modify its prior action. There --

there are a number of ways in which such a 

modification might be formed. It might take 

the form of looking at action by years. 

Another action would be for the -- another 

possible action would be that the Board 

recommended that there not be a Special 

Exposure Cohort and that in fact concurred with 

the recommendation of NIOSH. 

Another possible option would be for the Board 
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to delay further action pending receipt or 

evaluation of whatever information or data or 

other -- well, let's say other information that 

the Board may wish to have to help it make its 

decision. 

So there are a number of possible options 

before us. As we consider those, I'd remind 

you also that, aside from the issue of 

transparency -- which I maintain still could be 

discussed and considered by this Board in some 

fashion -- it's important that we address the 

issue of the feasibility of estimating dose 

with sufficient accuracy. We may wish to go on 

record on the health endangerment issue, if 

that becomes part of the recommendation. I 

think we have in a sense done that, but 

nonetheless that would need to be reaffirmed. 

Perhaps the timeliness issue would come into 

play. These are things that we need on the 

record, regardless of the recommendation that 

we make, so that it can be made clear in our 

recommendation as to the basis for which we 

make such a recommendation. 

 Having said that, let me ask Jim Melius, who is 

always very articulate -- can I -- I can even 
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call him Dr. Melius and he will -- and I say 

this seriously -- to add some thoughts to this. 

You've thought about moving forward on this 

issue and I'd entertain whatever remarks you 

may wish to add. 

 DR. MELIUS: Thank you, Paul. I would --

 DR. ZIEMER: You'll have to address me as Dr. 

Ziemer, too, then. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. I would like to recommend a 

course of action, and I guess the premise for 

this is really the same premise we had at the 

last meeting in the sense that the Board, I 

think in reviewing these petitions and the 

evaluation of the petition, has to deal with 

the information before us at this point in 

time; that we can't sort of keep looking ahead 

to what might be done or what may be done at 

some undetermined point in time, nor -- I don't 

think it's fair to the petitioners, NIOSH or 

anybody involved to sort of keep doing that. 

So we base our recommendation on what's before 

us at a given point in time. 

I also would add that I think we have to be 

very careful of this transparency issue, also. 

And I think it -- I think we have to make it 
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very clear what the basis for our 

recommendation would be and that if we are 

going to use transparency that we word that 

very carefully. In fact, my recommendation is 

that at this point we do not do that until we 

have a better understanding of -- of the 

implications of that decision, and I'd like to 

offer a separate motion later on that -- to try 

to address that issue. 

So what I would like to recommend and what I've 

actually started to write up is really a 

modification to our last letter, what we 

adopted at our last meeting, and the 

modifications have to do with writing a little 

bit more detail on the basis for that 

recommendation, as well as trying to address 

some of the issues over, you know, time and 

what information we have -- have before us. 

And I guess -- I would be glad to read that. 

have it written here that -- I think we could -

- may be able to work out something and make 

copies available for people. 

 DR. ZIEMER: What I'm going to suggest is that 

you get your motion on the floor. We will have 

an opportunity to have some preliminary 

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discussion. Perhaps during the break -- the 

lunch break we can get it in writing. I think 

it would be important for us to have it in 

writing, and then formalize any action on such 

a motion immediately after lunch, if that's 

agreeable. Proceed. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. The motion -- the beginning 

of the motion really -- I guess you'd call it 

the preface -- is -- I think it addresses some 

of the issues that came up between these two 

meetings, and so the beginning is (reading) The 

Board recommends the following letter be 

transmitted to the Secretary of DHHS within 21 

days. Should the Chair become aware of any 

issue that in his judgment would preclude 

transmittal of this letter within that time 

period, the Board requests that he promptly 

inform the Board of the delay and the reasons 

for the delay, and that he immediately work 

with NIOSH to schedule an emergency meeting of 

the Board to discuss this issue. 

I recognize that -- just parenthetically -- 

recognize that we had talked about discussing 

this issue in more detail, but I think we need 

to --
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 DR. ZIEMER: Indeed, that's --

 DR. MELIUS: -- at least get some procedures -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- very helpful, regardless of 

what the recommendation is. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, right. Okay. The letter 

would be as follows, and this first paragraph -

- essentially the same as the one from the -- 

we adopted at the last meeting. (Reading) The 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, 

parentheses, the Board, close parentheses, has 

evaluated SEC Petition 0006 concerning the Iowa 

Ordnance Plant under the statutory requirements 

established by EEOICPA and incorporated into 42 

CFR Section 83.13(c)(1) and 42 CFR 83.13(c)(3). 

The Board respectively (sic) recommends a 

Special Exposure Cohort be awarded to all 

Department of Energy contractor or 

subcontractor or Atomic Weapons Employer 

employees who worked at the Iowa Army 

Ammunition Plant Line 1, which in-- 

parentheses, which includes Yard C, Yard G, 

Yard L, Firing Site Area, Burning Field B, and 

storage sites for pits and weapons, including 

Buildings 73 and 77, from March 1949 to 1974, 

and whom were employed for a number of work 
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days aggregating at least 250 work days, 

occurring either solely under this employment 

or in combination with work days of employment 

occurring within the parameters, parentheses, 

excluding aggregate work day requirements, 

close parentheses, established for other 

classes of employees included in the SEC. This 

recommendation is based on three specific 

factors. 

The first factor, all employees identified in 

the petition worked in one of the earliest 

environments where nuclear materials were 

handled. 

Factor number two, there are limited monitoring 

data available at this facility during the time 

period involved. Even when a personal 

monitoring program was implemented, most 

workers were never monitored and the 

representativeness of these data has not been 

established. In addition, personal exposures 

in some job categories with significant 

radiation exposures were never monitored. 

There are also serious uncertainties regarding 

the monitoring techniques in place at the time, 

with the evaluation of radon exposures at the 
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facility, with the basis for calculating the 

neutron to photon ratio, and with the 

evaluation of exposures from some sources of 

exposure, parentheses, for example, the socalled pits, close parentheses. These 

limitations and deficiencies cause a number of 

difficulties for performing individual dose 

reconstructions. 

Third factor, at our February meeting NIOSH 

concluded that it is likely that radiation 

doses at the Iowa Ordnance Plant during this 

time period could have endangered the health of 

members of this class. The Board concurs. 

Based on these considerations and our 

discussions and deliberations at our February 

and April Board meetings, the Board recommends 

that this Special Exposure Cohort petition be 

granted. 

And I'd like -- these are -- next two 

paragraphs are taken from our last decision. 

They're identical. 

(Reading) In addition, the NIOSH evaluation of 

the petition defines a class of employees who 

worked from June 1947 to May 1948 prior to the 

introduction of any radioactive materials or 
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radiological procedures at Line 1 of the Army -

- Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. For this class 

NIOSH determined that no feasibility 

determination is necessary because members of 

this class received no radiation doses as 

covered by EEOICPA. The Board concurs with 

this determination. 

Next paragraph, (reading) Finally, the petition 

and evaluation also addresses a potential class 

of employees composed of industrial 

radiographers who may have conducted 

radiography on non-radiological high explosive 

weapons from May 1948 to March 1949. NIOSH 

plans to issue a separate evaluation report 

addressing this potential class in the near 

future. In the context of this petition and 

evaluation, the Board concurs with this 

decision. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. You've heard the 

motion. Is there a second? 

 DR. DEHART: Second. 

 MR. GIBSON: Second. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Now just procedurewise, I would like the mover and seconder to 

specify that this motion is to take the place 
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of the action that the Board took at its 

previous meeting. Parliamentarian-wise, I'm 

not necessarily asking that we rescind that 

action since -- if this motion passes, it would 

in essence replace that, and that is your 

understanding? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yes, it --

 DR. ZIEMER: The mover and the seconder? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Then this motion is open 

for discussion and we'll -- we'll carry out 

discussion for about 15 minutes. If we're not 

ready for closure, then we will continue after 

lunch. Wanda Munn. 

 MS. MUNN: Now I know what Dr. Melius has been 

doing all morning busily on his computer. 

 I have concerns about his item number two until 

we have this in written format so that we can 

actually look at the wording. My concern is 

based on the fact that what we do here affects 

the cohort of the Iowa group, but also 

establishes some sort of standard by which we 

may make future decisions. I know it's very 

difficult for the petitioners to continue to 

have us withhold any final judgment, but it's 
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also difficult for them to understand that we 

have 200 different sites that we're concerned 

with, and people at each site. 

 That being the case, it is of real concern that 

NIOSH has given us their perception that they 

are capable of doing a fairly good job, as good 

a job as can be done, with dose 

reconstructions. And dose reconstructions, 

contrary to information that may be believed, 

does not mean that applications will be denied. 

Our experience with previous dose 

reconstructions does not support that. So I 

would like for us to seriously recognize that, 

should we accept what I believe I heard Dr. 

Melius say at face value, then what we are 

saying is we do not believe that NIOSH can in 

fact fulfill the requirement for just dose 

reconstruction. 

So I would -- although obviously we must 

discuss all portions of this, I certainly do 

not feel that -- that a final consideration can 

be taken until we have this in hard copy and we 

have discussed it further. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Actually item two I 

believe had a number of sub-parts to it. You 
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may want to look at specific ones of those. 

Also I hope it would be clear that one is not 

necessarily saying that NIOSH can't do what 

they say they can do. I think Dr. Fuortes 

perhaps raised a good point, however, and that 

is kind of the issue of equity through this 

cohort. If you use the dose reconstructions 

for those early years, the -- it's almost un-- 

a -- almost a default SEC because of the high 

doses, and there is that kind of issue built 

into what we've seen today. Perhaps unique to 

this facility, we don't necessarily know. And 

I think as Dr. Melius indicated, we are in a 

sense forced to work with what we have at the 

moment, which I -- I -- I have a fair level of 

confidence that if we had another ten years to 

get to Pantex and all these other places and -- 

we -- we could figure out all these things. We 

could even -- you know, there's just all kinds 

of things that brilliant people can do, given 

enough time. But time is of the essence here. 

I think Leon is next, and then Jim, you had 

another response. 

MR. OWENS: Dr. Ziemer, I just wanted to say I 

think that Mr. Anderson did an excellent job 
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with his presentation, as did Mr. Elliott for 

NIOSH. I speak in favor of the motion. This 

Board has had deliberations in St. Louis in 

regard to this Special Exposure Cohort 

petition. We've had deliberations here. We 

talked about this transparency issue. But to 

me the predominant issue now for the Board is 

credibility, and I think the claimants that are 

here deserve action. The petitioners deserve 

action. I think that the best available 

evidence, documentation, was presented by NIOSH 

-- that they had -- in St. Louis, and the Board 

acted on that. I think each time that we 

travel to a site, the decisions that the Board 

makes, the deliberations that they make are 

based on the available evidence at that time, 

the best science that might be available. And 

so once we made a decision, we need to stand by 

that decision. That's all that we do have is 

credibility. We're not the Department of 

Energy. We're not any of the other Federal 

agencies. And if we cannot maintain our 

credibility, then we lose the faith of the 

claimants to do the right thing. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, just two -- one -- one just 
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for clarification, regard to Wanda's question, 

was what I tried to do with that second factor 

was really tried to capture the major reasons 

why we doubted that -- had concerns that NIOSH 

would be able to do individual dose 

reconstructions and why we did -- we believe 

they were not feasible to do with sufficient 

accuracy, and essentially capture some of the 

discussions we've had here over the last two 

days as -- as -- for those reasons. And I 

agree, it -- I think it's a lot easier to 

address these issues when you have something in 

writing in -- in front of you. 

Secondly, I -- my understanding is that 

Congress did set a limit on evaluation of the 

SEC petitions, at least in -- as far as NIOSH's 

role, and I believe, if I'm correct, NIOSH has 

180 days from the time of certifying a petition 

to prepare and present an evaluation report to 

the Board. Is that correct, Larry? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: You are somewhat correct, 

correct. It's from the time of qualification 

for evaluation until we present a -- an 

evaluation report to the Board, 180 days. 

 DR. MELIUS: And even though that, I don't 
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think, technically applies to the Board's 

deliberations, it's certainly an implication 

for us not to -- not to stretch this out 

through a whole series of iterative processes 

and so forth, without good reason. And I think 

in some sense we are recommending in this -- we 

did last time -- that -- that at least for the 

radiographers there really is not enough 

information now to act. But I think we -- 

otherwise we really have to try to do this in a 

timely fashion, to the extent possible. And I 

also don't think that our action really 

questions the sincerity or the effort made by 

NIOSH's staff in doing this. I mean I'm very 

impressed with what they've done and in their 

openness and willingness to share with us what 

the limitations and -- as well as the -- the 

basis for what they've done. But again, we 

have to work with within the context of what's 

available to us at the present time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Henry, you have 

some additional comments? 

DR. ANDERSON: Yes, I just want to speak in 

favor, as well. And I think one of the things 

that our -- our job here is, as we're finding 
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out, there's no bright line of typically a yes 

or a no, or many of these are not going to have 

a bright line. I mean if there's absolutely no 

information, then it becomes clearer that most 

of those sites have been handled in the 

original legislation. So I think what we are -

- our job is to begin to define when is it 

sufficiently accurate. I think what NIOSH did 

a good job on is they have gone to the maximal 

side, and I think what we've seen in the 

display of the data is that that maximal number 

begins to truly press the sufficient accuracy 

issue. And so I -- I think, you know, the 

weight of the evidence in this instance is in 

favor of the SEC petition approval. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Michael. 

 MR. GIBSON: I also speak in favor of the 

motion. I don't question the abilities of 

NIOSH and the work that they've done. Based on 

the limited data, it is somewhat speculative 

and subjective. But I would also point out 

that in the limited amount of time that our 

contractor has -- has had a chance to look at 

this, they've -- they've presented, at least in 

my opinion, sufficient evidence that there's -- 
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is doubt whether a dose -- an accurate dose can 

be constructed. And so I think this has drawn 

on long enough and we've debated it and it's 

time to move on with the process. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Okay, others that wish 

to speak either for or against the motion? 

 DR. MELIUS: I just wanted to --

 DR. ZIEMER: Are you going to speak for the 

motion? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 DR. MELIUS: Just one point of clarification. 

The original letter included a fourth factor, 

which was the transparency issue. That's left 

out of this. And I believe that, based on what 

we've heard from the members of our Board who 

are -- have the appropriate clearances, from 

our contractor and so forth, that the factors 

that are outlined here are -- take into account 

the classification issue in a sense. It's not 

a factor in why we're -- why we're going 

forward with this particular petition at this 

point in time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And I might point out -- or remind 

the Board, although our original action did 
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mention issues of quality of data, there was 

indeed a bit emphasis on transparency. In 

fact, there were many of the members here who 

indicated that they voted primarily on the 

basis of the transparency issue, thinking that 

it was sort of immaterial on the others anyway 

since it was kind of a moot point. Now what --

with this motion, the focus has gone more on 

the other issues, the issues of the quality of 

information, the dose reconstructions 

themselves, the timeliness factor, those other 

factors which indeed are very pertinent to -- 

to the decision. 

We -- we recognize, based on what we heard, 

that the transparency issue itself could be 

problematic for the Secretary in any event. If 

indeed dose reconstruction were done, 

apparently even though there is that issue, an 

ultimate -- what's the word I'm looking for? I 

guess an ultimate challenge by a petitioner on 

a decision could go to the courts where 

classified information could in fact be 

revealed in an appropriate way, so that may not 

be an issue in any event. But now the focus is 

away from that and on to these other issues. 
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 Any further discussion -- I think in fairness -

- it's been asked that we have this in writing 

before we take action, and in order to keep 

everyone around here, come back after lunch and 

learn what the vote will be. We're going to 

recess approximately one hour. A few comments 

from Dr. Wade before we leave. 

 DR. WADE: Yeah, I'd like to make just three 

comments. Again, certainly without bias, just 

so the record is clear, this Board will make a 

recommendation to the Secretary and the 

Secretary will decide. In between, as laid out 

in the SEC rule, it states in 83.16 that the 

Director of NIOSH will propose and transmit to 

all petitioners a decision to add or deny 

classes of employees to the cohort. This 

proposed decision will take into account -- and 

I've read this to you before -- the evaluations 

of NIOSH, the report and recommendations of the 

Board, information presented and submitted to 

the Board, and the deliberations of the Board. 

So again, it's terribly important that the 

record be complete. 

Dr. Melius mentioned a 21-day clock that would 

start. I would put on the record for you that 
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I think the deliberations of this Board are 

terribly important, as in -- captured in the 

transcript, and we should have the transcript 

within a minimum of 14 days -- a maximum of 14 

days after the end of these deliberations; 

therefore, that's not inconsistent with Dr. 

Melius's motion. I think the Chair has to 

consider his own -- his own time frames between 

the 14 days and the 21 days. 

The other thing I would mention, and Dr. 

Anderson mentioned this issue of sufficient 

accuracy. Again I would point out to you from 

83.13(c)(i), radiation doses can be estimated 

with sufficient accuracy if NIOSH has 

established that it has access to sufficient 

information to estimate the maximum radiation 

dose for every type of cancer which radiation 

doses are constructed, and that could have been 

incurred in the plausible circumstances by any 

member of the class -- and it goes on. You 

need to be aware of that as you -- as you do 

your motion. 

Again, I present all that without bias. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's correct, and one of the 

constraints is that we do have to provide the 
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transcripts, so we put the pressure on our 

transcriber to get those available. Of course 

the Chair would -- would rather have a caveat 

that allowed the 21 days to be extended in the 

case that the Chair is off fishing somewhere, 

but -- but I won't insist on such a 

modification, so we'll try to meet the 21 days. 

 DR. MELIUS: We'll get you a satellite modem or 

something. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Mark. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I would -- I would just ask for 

the opportunity to deliberate a little bit 

after lunch, especially on number two. I think 

we need to -- I --

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, yes --

 MR. GRIFFON: -- think we need to --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- of course. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- go through some of those -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: We'll have the --

 MR. GRIFFON: -- prior to a vote. You said 

come back and vote -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- I just --

 DR. ZIEMER: No, no --

 MR. GRIFFON: -- think we need to --
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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, the point was, we will -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- explore those a little more. 

Right? 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- we will defer the vote until 

after lunch and have an opportunity to see the 

written motion, and any further discussion will 

be in order. So we will recess for lunch and 

then try to reconvene as close to 1:00 o'clock 

as feasible. 

 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 12:00 p.m. 

to 1:15 p.m.) 

 DR. ZIEMER: We're going to resume our 

deliberations now if you'd please take your 

seats. Board members, Henry Anderson is not 

with us for a while. He has -- something has 

come up and he will rejoin us about 2:00 

o'clock, but I think we will need to proceed. 

We -- we now have available to you the written 

motion that is on the floor. I'd like to make 

sure all Board members have a copy of the 

written motion, and this motion remains open 

for discussions or questions or comments. I --

I was -- okay, Wanda, please proceed. 

 MS. MUNN: First, thanks to Dr. Melius for 

being on top of this and having this ready for 
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us. Thank you, Jim. 

A couple of items for consideration. In the 

second paragraph where we so carefully call out 

the specific employees that are of concern, I 

nevertheless have some reservation. This plant 

on this site had many more workers who were not 

radiation workers than workers which were 

radiation workers. That makes it somewhat 

different than many other sites that we have 

seen and will be seeing. Despite this very 

clear definition of who the employees are, it 

seems to me that it would be worthwhile -- to 

make the record very clear -- to include a 

sentence that notes that only a fraction of the 

total employees at this site are covered by the 

designation here. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you for the comment. Let me 

point out that the words here correspond to the 

description in the petition from the 

petitioners, so I -- I guess I'm wondering if 

it's necessary to go beyond what was being 

petitioned and trying to define that any 

further. I'm -- I understand your point. Is 

it necessary that we do that is what I'm 

asking. 
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 DR. MELIUS: Can I just --

 DR. ZIEMER: Could you --

 DR. MELIUS: -- address that, 'cause I 

understand it, also, and with the -- the finish 

of that sentence, the second -- second phrase 

in it was (reading) and the representativeness 

of these data has not been established -- was 

when I was trying to capture that point. I 

mean it's -- trying to keep it relatively brief 

and accurate, and I think that captures what 

you're trying to address, also. 

 MS. MUNN: No -- no, it really doesn't. 

 DR. MELIUS: No? Okay, I --

 MS. MUNN: It really doesn't, because I want to 

make very clear to any individual reading this 

document 20 years from now that the individuals 

for whom this SEC applies are limited not only 

as described here, but by reason of the fact 

that they were employees of one certain segment 

of this site, not all of the site. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay, I -- okay. 

 MS. MUNN: I think that would be -- might not 

be absolutely necessary, but certainly in terms 

of clarification for individuals unfamiliar 

with our process or with this site, it would be 
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helpful in my opinion, and shouldn't be too 

difficult to add. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think you're certainly welcome 

to offer an amendment to that effect, or maybe 

you want to give that some thought and -- 

 MS. MUNN: I'll -- I'll compose a sentence to 

that effect. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- compose something, and we can 

come back to that. Did you have an additional 

comment? 

 MS. MUNN: Yes. Yes, I did. Second bullet, 

these are just editorial nits, hopefully 

clarifying ones. In the second sentence of the 

second bullet, (reading) even when a personal 

monitoring program was implemented -- I would 

suggest striking "most" and say "many of the 

nuclear area workers were never monitored," 

again reinforcing that we're talking 

specifically to radiation workers and no 

others. Semicolon, "consequently, the 

representativeness of these data cannot be 

clearly established." I don't think that 

changes your meaning any, does it, Dr. Melius? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me ask the mover and seconder 

if they consider that a friendly amendment or 
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do you wish to formalize it? 

 DR. MELIUS: Well, I believe that in what we've 

heard presented, I think "most" is accurate, 

and so I would say -- I would be acceptable to 

somebody saying "most of the nuclear area 

workers were never monitored," period, 

"Consequently, ..." 

 MS. MUNN: Fine with me. 

 DR. MELIUS: Is that... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, and that's okay -- 

 DR. MELIUS: I'm willing to accept that as a -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: So with the consent of the mover 

and the seconder, a friendly amendment that 

would say -- or add the words in the second 

bullet, second sentence, "Even when a personal 

monitoring program was implemented, most of the 

nuclear --

 DR. MELIUS: Area --

 MS. MUNN: "Nuclear area workers were never 

monitored," semicolon, "consequently the 

representativeness of these data can-- cannot 

be clearly established." 

 DR. ZIEMER: "Consequently" rather than "and." 

 MS. MUNN: Correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: "Consequently the 
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representativeness of these data has not been 

established." 

 MS. MUNN: I would prefer "cannot be clearly 

established." Because efforts have been made 

to cause them to be representative. 

 DR. ZIEMER: "Cannot be"? 

 DR. DEHART: I don't know that -- I don't know 

that that is -- is reasonable. Ten years from 

now it might have -- it might be. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It implies a future tense kind of 

thing, you're saying. 

 DR. DEHART: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It has not been. Whether it can 

be in the future is perhaps -- 

 MS. MUNN: Then "cannot be clearly established 

at this time." 

 DR. ZIEMER: Cannot -- is that agreeable, 

friendly amendment? 

 DR. MELIUS: I think it says the same thing. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Cannot -- cannot clearly -- cannot 

-- say it again, Wanda. 

 MS. MUNN: Cannot be clearly established at 

this time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MS. MUNN: And the last sentence of that same 
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bullet, we had referred in the earlier sentence 

to uncertainties, and it seems logical to me 

that we would call those uncertainties by that 

same term in that last sentence, rather than 

limitations and deficiencies. These 

uncertainties cause a number of difficulties 

for performing... 

 DR. ZIEMER: But -- mover and seconder, do you 

 DR. MELIUS: That's fine with me. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's --

 DR. DEHART: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- fine with you. So these 

uncertainties --

 MS. MUNN: Uh-huh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- cause a number of difficulties 

 DR. MELIUS: These limitations -- I would 

prefer that limitations be maintained in there. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Limitations and --

 MS. MUNN: Limitations and uncertainties, uhhuh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Agreed? 

 MS. MUNN: Uh-huh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: By the mover and seconder? Thank 
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you. Further --

 MS. MUNN: I have one -- one last word. The 

last line of the third bullet. It currently 

reads that (reading) At our February meeting 

NIOSH concluded it is likely that radiation 

doses at the AOP (sic) during the time period 

could have endangered the health of members of 

this class. 

 We determined that it could have endangered the 

health of some members of this class. I do not 

believe we can say that all members of this 

class were endangered. I recommend the 

addition of the word "some" before "members." 

 DR. ZIEMER: The "could have" probably has the 

same effect, I would judge. In keeping with 

the requirement of the regulation, the finding 

has to be that it could have endangered members 

of this class. I think we're trying to stay 

with the wording of --

 MS. MUNN: With the wording of the -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- the requirement, so -- 

 MS. MUNN: -- proper language. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- if you're --

 MS. MUNN: Fine. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Without objection, we'll leave 
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that one --

 MS. MUNN: That's my only comments. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Mark Griffon. 

 DR. MELIUS: Can I just add one --

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- hunk of that was from the last 

letter, that phrasing, so just -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Word for word, yes. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So it was the action at the last -

-

 MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Mark. 

 MR. GRIFFON: You can go on to someone else. 

was --

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Robert Presley. 

 MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. I agree 

with Wanda. There needs to be something put in 

the second paragraph to distinguish nuclear 

workers and the explosive workers in parts of 

the plant. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Do you feel that the addition of 

the word "nuclear area" that was added is in-- 

is not sufficient to do that, or are you 

suggesting additional wording? 

I 
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 MS. MUNN: It still doesn't quite put... 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right now the second sentence says 

(reading) Even when a personnel monitoring 

program was implemented, most of the nuclear 

area workers were never monitored; consequently 

the representativeness of these data cannot be 

-- cannot --

 DR. DEHART: Has not been... 

 MS. MUNN: Be clearly --

 DR. MELIUS: Be clearly established at this 

time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- be clearly established at this 

time. 

 MS. MUNN: Yeah, that -- I think that's not the 

-- the lack of clarification. The lack of 

clarification to which I referred originally 

was in the second paragraph, not the second 

bullet. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Right. 

 MS. MUNN: I was requesting the addition of -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh --

 MS. MUNN: -- another sentence --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- up in the --

 MS. MUNN: -- in the second paragraph. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: -- class of employees. 

 MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley again. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. Actually Wanda had 

volunteered I think to get us some words here 

in a few minutes that would be inserted, so 

you're -- you're agreeing with that. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yes, yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And at that point we'll determine 

whether that's a motion to amend or whether or 

not that's a -- a friendly amendment. Is there 

some clarification that could be added here, 

Dr. Fuortes? 

 DR. FUORTES: A minor clarification, or -- or 

I'm not sure that this needs clarification 

because maybe you already understand this, but 

this facility had a huge, huge population of -- 

of high explosives-only work force -- 

 MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 DR. FUORTES: -- and those we have excluded 

from the population. There is a smaller -- so 

it's a -- there's probably 36,000 workers who 

ever worked at the facility, of whom we assume 

about 3,400 were Line 1 or AEC workers, so 

we've already excluded the DOD work force. 

Within Line 1, however -- just to consider this 
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-- the language that you're using is something 

that would be very, very difficult for us to -- 

us and the Department of Labor and Department 

of Energy to -- to address because people's -- 

people went back and forth between the bays and 

the high explosives areas, and we don't 

actually have a track record -- all we have is 

the -- is the fact that they were eligible to 

be in that work area, but not a track record of 

what site they worked in over periods of time. 

So we -- we can discriminate -- 90 percent of 

the work force were only high explosives 

workers, but of that ten percent, that 3,400 or 

3,600, can't tell you for a fact was there a 

worker who only worked in high explosives 

during their -- their work history there. 

 DR. MELIUS: Can I speak to that --

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Jim? 

 DR. MELIUS: -- Paul? It was my recollection 

and understanding from the last meeting that 

the way we have this paragraph worded saying 

that the atomic weapons -- the DOE or Atomic 

Weapons Employer employees was designed to 

capture that -- that issue, and then it's 

really up to the Department of Labor, I 
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believe, to make a determination for an 

individual employee whether they fall into 

that. And I think we need to be careful about 

trying to further clarify that in a way that's 

going to sort of interfere with the legalities 

of making a determination of -- of whether or 

not somebody's eligible or not. I don't think 

we should try to further restrict it. I think 

the restriction and clarification is based on 

the -- what's -- what's in that paragraph. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't think Wanda was trying to 

restrict it so much as to point out that it 

really represents only a small fraction of the 

total work group, but maybe that's not our job 

to really do that. 

 DR. MELIUS: I should say inadvertently 

restricted, I think that's the -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Liz, please. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Where you use the word "or 

Atomic Weapons Employer," that has a very 

specific definition, and this is a DOE site, 

it's not an AWE site, so you may want to use 

some different language to describe what you're 

trying to say there, or indicate that you're 

not using the definition that that's given in 
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the statute, 'cause AWEs are contractor sites 

and this is a DOE site, I believe. 

 DR. MELIUS: Well, my recollection is you 

provided this language to us last time, or we 

lifted it from some -- someplace. I don't --

I'm not disagreeing with you, but... 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's certainly true that AWE is a 

very specific designation. This was not an AWE 

site, and the -- I want to make sure that we 

align with the petition itself. 

(Pause) 

Is it -- is it correct that if we use the word 

"all Department of Energy contractor or 

subcontractor employees" it would fully cover 

this cohort? Dr. Fuortes is indicating he 

believes that to be the case. 

 DR. DEHART: As is Mr. Elliott. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Mr. Elliott is indicating -- so 

without objection then we would strike out the 

words "Atomic Energy (sic) employees" since it 

probably does not apply -- or the -- we'd 

strike out the phrase "or Atomic Weapons 

employee." Thank you for that clarification. 

 Let's see, Gen Roessler is next. 

DR. ROESSLER: To fine tune a little bit, in 
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the second bullet, line seven where we're 

talking about the serious uncertainties, 

talking about radon, I think it should say 

"evaluation of radon levels" or "evaluation of 

radon progeny exposures." We might need --

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, that's... 

DR. ROESSLER: I might need some help on -- on 

whether that's proper. Dr. Field could 

probably advise us as to what the proper 

terminology is there. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Field? 

DR. ROESSLER: Without an S. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I thought I said Dr. Field. 

DR. ROESSLER: You did. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I didn't this morning. I was 

corrected. 

DR. FIELD: Yeah, I think if you just say 

"radon and progeny," I think that would say -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Will cover it? 

DR. FIELD: 'Cause you're measuring the radon 

gas. That's what's always been measured so 

far, not the progeny, but the progeny's 

actually what causes lung cancer. So if you 

just say "radon and associated progeny." 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, generically we -- the term 
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that we have here now is "radon exposures" -- 

DR. FIELD: Well, I think you can just say 

radon and radon progeny. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Without the word "exposures"? 

DR. FIELD: That would cover it, I think. 

DR. ROESSLER: Levels or --

DR. FIELD: Concentrations. 

DR. ROESSLER: Concentrations? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Radon concentrations. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The suggestion is to use the words 

"radon and radon progeny -- levels"? 

DR. FIELD: Concentrations. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Concentrations. Is that agreeable 

with the mover -- that's considered friendly? 

 DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Any more friendly or 

unfriendly amendments? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I --

 DR. ZIEMER: Mark. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Just -- in the -- in the second 

bullet there, I think we -- we ought to note -- 

in the first line, limited monitoring data 

available at the facility, and I -- I'd suggest 

maybe to amend that by saying either external 

or internal dose -- dose data, something to 
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that effect. I think we need to point out the 

-- we've been focusing our discussions on the 

external dosimetry, but earlier on we noted 

that there was very limited bioassay 

information throughout the -- the site history 

for throughout this time period. So I think 

that can be --

 DR. ZIEMER: So you're suggesting the addition 

of the words "external -- external or 

internal"? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, external or internal dose 

data -- I'm trying to be -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's probably --

 MR. GRIFFON: -- brief. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- that's probably friendly, but 

let me ask this question. The word 

"monitoring" itself can be even more inclusive 

than personnel monitoring. It can also include 

area monitoring. So as I read this term now, 

it actually is a broader term than if we added 

the words "external and internal," which then 

restricts it to personnel monitoring. We could 

say "external, internal or area monitoring." 

 MR. GRIFFON: I mean external or internal did 

not imply personal external or internal, you 
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know. I -- I guess I just wanted to make sure 

we didn't miss the -- the -- we -- maybe we can 

include it in another line, but I think it's 

important that we point out both the 

limitations of the external data -- external 

dose-related data and data related to doing 

internal dose calculations. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, are you suggesting we add 

the words "external and internal" at that point 

then, and does that not imply personnel 

monitoring, Mark? I mean external and internal 

personnel monitoring is what that becomes, does 

it not? Or not? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Maybe -- maybe we could say "used 

for determining external or internal doses," 

you know, parenthetically. Limited monitoring 

data available at this facility, parentheses, 

used for determining -- or used for calculating 

-- or estimating external/internal doses. 

 DR. DEHART: The second sentence refers to 

personnel monitoring. Look at that, does that 

take care of it? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I don't think this changes 

the intent. Can we just agree -- let's add a 

parenthetical phrase after "available at this 
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facility," paren, "used for external or 

internal dose determinations." 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Does that --

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

(Pause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Wanda, did you have any 

additional -- oh, I'm sorry. Yes, Mr. 

Anderson. 

MR. ANDERSON: Could I ask that we zoom in on 

the screen so some of us with bad eyes can see 

that at the back of the room? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

MR. ANDERSON: Just go to 150 percent or 

something. 

(Pause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Or in between, is that -- is that 

okay? 

MR. ANDERSON: Excellent. 

 DR. WADE: Liz. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Liz, did you have a clarification 

for us there? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I have a question for you 

all, just to make sure that we cover what you 

want. Back to the people that you're 
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recommending covering, right now you have -- so 

all Department of Energy contractor and 

subcontractor employees, and I believe if you 

look at page 20 of Larry's presentation, they 

recommend a definition that you may want to 

consider using, because it's all employees 

working at Iowa Ammunition Plant Line 1, which 

includes the statements -- and right now you 

only are specifically covering contractors and 

subcontractors. You're not covering Department 

of Energy employees. I don't know if you -- if 

that's what you intended, that's fine, but I 

just wanted to make sure we got exactly what 

you guys were trying to cover. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The intent is not to exclude 

Department of Energy employees, so a simple 

solution would be to cover all Department of 

Energy employees and their contractors and 

subcontractors. Or perhaps we can use just the 

wording here. Larry? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I would just, for clarification -

- we're back in the day of the AEC, and I 

believe the statute defines the AEC as a 

predecessor to DOE, so there were A-- in my 

understanding, there were AEC inspectors that 
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came into this facility, and we just want to 

make sure that the Board includes them. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. But we don't need to use 

the word "AEC" here, I guess, do we? You're 

using the word "DOE" in your document, the 

legit--

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I believe that the statutes 

says DOE and its predecessors, which AEC -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- is one of them, so if you 

refer to DOE employees, then you're -- you 

should be covering that whole (unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: So isn't a simple solution be just 

to put Department of Energy and its contractor 

and subcontractor, just add the words "and 

its"? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's do that. Thank you. 

Thank you, Liz. Jim? 

 DR. MELIUS: I'm actually not offering any 

friendly amendments, but -- so -- but the point 

I wanted to clarify and it's the point that 

Henry brought up earlier when we talked about 

the basis for the determination and -- in our 

discussion here and the regulation which we've 
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heard Larry and I think Lew refer to -- refers 

to radiation doses can be estimated with 

sufficient accuracy if NIOSH has established -- 

et cetera -- a maximum radiation dose for every 

type of cancer for which radiation doses are 

reconstructed that could -- could have -- 

incurred in plausible circumstances by any 

member of the class. Then it goes on to say 

that NIOSH can also develop more precise ways 

of doing the dose reconstruction. And my 

understanding from what Henry was saying this 

morning was -- point that -- sort of a broad 

line. We're trying to determine where that -- 

that line is and I think we in fact have 

determined that they cannot meet this -- this 

requirement, in essence, due to the reasons 

that we've laid out here in this -- in our 

communication to the Secretary. And I just 

wanted to clarify that and make sure that's 

what Henry was -- was -- that -- was trying to 

address. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I want to go back to Wanda and 

Bob's suggestion that there be additional 

clarification on the work force. Wanda, had 

you --
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 MS. MUNN: Oh, I'm still wordsmithing. I 

haven't gotten past the first clause yet. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Any other comments or 

modifications anyone wishes to make? 

A question Rich Espinosa -- here, Rich. 

MR. ESPINOSA: With the words added, nuclear 

area workers, I just want to make sure that 

this isn't going to narrow the scope for the 

people that have worked in there with 

maintenance and custodian (sic) and things like 

that, where they weren't going to be working 

directly with the pits, but maybe involved 

directly with the area. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me begin by simply observing 

that that particular bullet doesn't really 

define the worker group so much as it just 

points out that most of the nuclear area 

workers weren't monitored, sort of a generic 

statement, but it doesn't -- I don't believe it 

restricts or defines the group. Ask again the 

mover if they agree that that is correct. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. Did you have an 

additional comment? 

 DR. MELIUS: Well, it's a possible suggestion. 
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In what's the second paragraph there, the first 

sentence, Advisory Board and the -- (reading) 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health 

has evaluated SEC Petition 0006 concerning the 

-- you want to say the nuclear weapons 

production workers or nuclear weapons workers 

at the Iowa... I think that -- does that 

capture what you're trying to clarify, so we 

specify that this -- we're concerned with just 

the workers that were involved in nuclear 

weapons production at this facility, which is 

really what the petition's about. This is 

really who's eligible and I think it -- 

 MS. MUNN: Yes, although that may not 

incorporate exactly the kind of thing that 

Richard was just trying to -- to capture, and -

- and for that reason -- that's one of the 

reasons why I'm struggling with my language 

here. I want to try to fulfill that 

requirement at the same time that we make it 

very clear that this doesn't cover everyone who 

ever worked on that site. 

 DR. MELIUS: Well, my reading of this would be 

that the second sentence there, the Board 

respect-- respectfully recommends a Special 
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Exposure Cohort, and then we define that -- 

that cohort, is the one that's relevant for 

determining eligibility. And so the first -- 

first sentence is just a description of what 

we're doing. We reviewed a petition. We're 

just sort of specifying who it -- who it 

concerned in a general way, not in a way of -- 

that sort of defines eligibility. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We want to be careful that we do 

not redefine this cohort in ways that are 

different from the petition. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 MS. MUNN: Right, but the only thing that I'm 

suggesting that we do, and the only addition 

that I'm trying to make, is just a 

clarification to the uninformed reader that 

this cohort constitutes a small portion of the 

total number of employees who worked at this 

site during that period of time. That's all 

I'm suggesting. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Can I offer some wording, please? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Employees who worked in the 

manufacturing, assembly or disassembly areas at 

the Iowa Army Ammunitions Plant Line 1, and 
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that should take care of all the people that 

worked in the manufacturing, assembly or 

disassembly of the nuclear weapons. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That appears to me, Robert, to be 

an alternate definition of what is here, rather 

than what was -- Wanda's trying to describe the 

others, I believe. Is that correct, Wanda? 

 MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You -- you're describing the 

cohort itself in somewhat different words. 

Right, Robert? Yeah. 

 MR. PRESLEY: That -- that ties it down. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah, that -- that would tie it 

down. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Again I'm -- I'm a little 

reluctant to describe this cohort in words that 

are different from the petition. And I don't 

believe it addresses Wanda's concern here. Let 

me entertain a comment here while Wanda is -- 

Larry, as well. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I think you should consider using 

the definition that NIOSH has provided you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, which is what we have here. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Not the petition definition, 
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because --

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh --

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- there was some difference in 

the early -- the initial petition definition, 

if that's what you're using. I think that's 

where the AWE came -- I don't know, but we 

would just suggest that you use the petition 

definition that we've established and defined. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And your -- Larry, your 

definition includes all of what -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: All DOE workers, all DOE 

subcontractors, all workers -- the only group 

that's --

 DR. ZIEMER: Was that in your slides? Maybe --

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, it was in the slides. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: It was at the -- second to the 

end, that slide, next to the last slide. The 

only group that's not in that would be the 

radiographers. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And you can talk about that, as 

well, if you wish, but... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Can we agree then to use -- if 

there's a difference, we'll use what's in that 
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definition. It's -- yes, it's all employees 

working at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant Line 

1, which includes Yard C, Yard G, Yard L, 

Firing Site Area, Burning Field B, storage 

sites and -- for pits and weapons, including 

Buildings 73, 77 -- from March '49 to 1974. 

That would be pre-- well -- 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, the only difference is small 

B and a big B under burning field in what we 

have listed there, I believe. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MELIUS: And then I -- if I recall now -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: And we have to still say 

Department of Energy and its contractors and 

subcontractors. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MELIUS: I think we're... 

 DR. ZIEMER: So we're okay there. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Big B, huh? 

 DR. MELIUS: I believe the Atomic Weapons 

Employ-- I think we actually used some of your 

slides from the last meeting, Larry, the one 

where you laid out what was in the regulations 
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as to who was potentially eligible and so I 

think we just sort of threw in AWE as being 

sort of generally eligible and included it 

there and that's where that confusion comes 

from. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Clarification point, 

gentlemen. 

UNIDENTIFIED: Sir, at that plant they were -- 

they were known as A and Division B. If you 

were Division A, you were exclusively Army. If 

you were Division B, you were Atomic Energy 

Commission only. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, understood. 

UNIDENTIFIED: So if you could use -- maybe in 

a parenthesis or something -- Division B, that 

would incur (sic) everybody that worked 

Division B. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, understood. Nonetheless, I 

think we need to parallel the way the group has 

been defined by NIOSH so there's no question on 

that. Mr. Anderson. 

MR. ANDERSON: I was just wanting to clarify 

that my people, the guards, were included in 

that since it doesn't specifically say that, 

but I wanted to get your impression that it 
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does or doesn't. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Wanda? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Could I answer that for Mr. 

Anderson? Yes, it would include the guards, 

the security personnel -- 

MR. ANDERSON: All right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- and all associated workers who 

worked in Division B. 

 MS. MUNN: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Wanda? 

 MS. MUNN: The SEC petition includes production 

personnel, physical security personnel, you 

know -- that's in the SEC. 

A suggestion for the proposed addition, single 

sentence following the description of the 

employees, ending with SEC, in the second 

paragraph. 

"This cohort encompasses only a small 

percentage of the total number of individuals 

employed at this site over the period stated." 

 DR. ZIEMER: This cohort encompasses only a 

small --

 MS. MUNN: Only a small percentage of the total 

number of individuals employed at this site 

over the period stated. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Over the period what? 

 MS. MUNN: Stated. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Stated? 

 MS. MUNN: Uh-huh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now this sentence does not change 

the intent of the motion. It is presented to 

us as a sort of clarification, but -- Larry? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I would just offer this for your 

consideration. I would avoid using "cohort" in 

that sentence and use "class", because there's 

a huge confusion that there's multiple cohorts. 

There's one cohort, and what we're working 

through is to add classes to that cohort. 

 MS. MUNN: No disagreement. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me get the sense of the group 

on adding Wanda's sentence. 

 DR. MELIUS: Can someone repeat it to me then? 

 DR. ZIEMER: The sentence is "This class 

encompasses only a small percent of the total 

number of individuals employed at this site 

over the period stated." 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 

(Unintelligible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: And that is recommended I believe 

to be added after the -- at -- toward the end 
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of the second paragraph, after the SEC. Yes, 

Mr. Anderson? 

MR. ANDERSON: Another point of clarification. 

When you say "at this site," what are we really 

talking about here? Because --

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes --

MR. ANDERSON: -- we had an AEC facility within 

the physical boundaries of an Army facility, so 

when you say "at this site" -- when you mention 

IAAP, that includes 20,000 acres. If we 

mention AEC, then those 4,000 people -- I think 

we need to -- some (unintelligible) identify 

that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't know the answer to that, 

myself. 

MR. HALLMARK: I feel compelled -- Shelby 

Hallmark, Department of Labor. I'd like to 

just suggest that the sentence that Wanda's 

suggesting might be confusing -- at least it is 

to me -- because from our perspective at Labor, 

we -- I believe -- see the proposal, the 

petition group here, as encompassing all 

covered employees for the facility -- any -- 

any individual whom we would consider to be a 

covered employee under EEOICPA. So while it is 
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a small percentage of everybody who was on the 

entire IAAP facility, it's 100 percent -- I 

think -- of the covered employees under 

EEOICPA, so --

 MS. MUNN: Yes, that's correct. 

MR. HALLMARK: -- I just wanted to, you know, 

make that statement. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think you're suggesting it may 

muddy the water a little bit in terms of 

clarity. Yes, Leon? 

MR. OWENS: Dr. Ziemer, in all due respect, I 

ask that we move the question. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. The question's been called 

for. However, rather than vote to end debate, 

for a moment let me -- I want to get a sense of 

this last item. Does the Board wish to include 

it or not to include it? 

 DR. MELIUS: I think it's problematic. I 

understand the intent of what Wanda's trying to 

do, but I -- I have some concerns about 

accepting that particular sentence. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Just for clarity of decisionmaking, I'm going to consider Wanda's sentence 

as a motion to amend and ask if there's a 

second. 
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 (No responses) 

 There does not appear to be a second, so the 

motion dies for lack of a second, although I 

should add that I think everybody understands 

and agrees with the intent, but there is some 

concern that it might muddy the water. 

The motion as amended in very friendly ways has 

now been called for. Are you ready to vote on 

the motion? 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) 

(Unintelligible) ask that the motion be read in 

its entirety (unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's been requested that the 

motion be read in its entirety. 

 DR. MELIUS: I can do it from my notes, if -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- that would be --

 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Melius will read the motion 

now in its entirety, as amended. 

 DR. MELIUS: (Reading) The Board recommends 

that the following letter be transmitted to the 

Secretary of DHHS within 21 days. Should the 

Chair become aware of any issue that in his 

judgment would preclude the transmittal of this 

letter within that time period, the Board 
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requests that he promptly inform the Board of 

the delay and the reasons for this delay, and 

that he immediately work with NIOSH to schedule 

an emergency meeting of the Board to discuss 

this issue. 

I'm reading the letter. (Reading) The Advisory 

Board on Radiation and Worker Health, 

parentheses, the Board, close parentheses, has 

evaluated SEC Petition 0006 concerning the Iowa 

Ordnance Plant, parentheses, IOP, close 

parentheses, under the statutory requirements 

established by EEOICPA and incorporated in 42 

CFR 83.13(c)(1) and 42 CFR Section 83.13(c)(3). 

The Board respectfully recommends a Special 

Exposure Cohort be accorded to all Department 

of Energy employees and its contractor or 

subcontractor employees who worked at the Iowa 

Army Ammunition Plant Line 1, parentheses, 

which includes Yard C, Yard G, Yard L, Firing 

Site Area, Burning Field B, and storage sites 

for pits and weapons, including Buildings 73 

and 77, close parentheses, from March 1949 to 

1974 and whom were employed for a number of 

work days aggregating at least 250 work days, 

occurring either solely under this employment 
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or in combination with work days of employment 

occurring within the parameters, parentheses, 

excluding aggregate work day requirements, 

close parentheses, established for other 

classes of employees included in the SEC. This 

recommendation is based on three specific 

factors. 

One, all employees identified in the petition 

worked in one of the earliest environments 

where nuclear materials were handled. 

Two, there are limited monitoring data 

available at this facility, parentheses, used 

for external or internal dose determinations, 

close parentheses, during the time period 

involved. Even when a personal monitoring 

program was implemented, many of the nuclear 

area workers were never monitored; 

consequently, the representativeness of these 

data cannot be clearly established at this 

time. In addition, personal exposures in some 

job categories with significant radiation 

exposures were never monitored. There are also 

serious uncertainties regarding the monitoring 

techniques in place at that time, with the 

evaluation of radon and radon progeny 
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concentrations at the facility, with the basis 

for calculating the neutron to photon ratio, 

and with the evaluation of exposures from some 

sources of exposures, for example, the pits. 

These limitations and uncertainties cause a 

number of difficulties for performing 

individual dose reconstructions. 

Number three, at our February meeting NIOSH 

concluded that it is likely that radiation 

doses at the Iowa Ordnance Plant during this 

time period could have endangered the health of 

members of this class. The Board concurs. 

Based on these considerations and our 

discussions and deliberations at our February 

and April Board meetings, the Board recommends 

that this Special Exposure Cohort petition be 

granted. 

In addition, the NIOSH evaluation of the 

petition defines a class of employees who 

worked from June 1947 to May 1948 prior to the 

introduction of any radioactive materials or 

radiological procedures at Line 1 of the Army 

Ammunition -- Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. For 

this class NIOSH determined that no feasibility 

determination is necessary because members of 
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the class received no radiation doses, as 

covered by EEOICPA. The Board concurs with 

this determination. 

Finally, the petition and evaluation also 

addresses a potential class of employees 

composed of industrial radiographers who may 

have conducted radiography on non-radiological 

high explosive weapons from May 1948 to March 

1949. NIOSH plans to issue a separate 

evaluation -- evaluation report addressing this 

potential class in the near future. In the 

context of this petition and evaluation, the 

Board concurs with this decision. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. You have the motion. 

Are you ready to vote? 

Okay, all those who favor the motion, please 

raise your right hand. 

 (Affirmative responses) 

There appear to be none opposed. Any 

abstentions? 

 (No responses) 

The motion carries. Lock the doors so these 

people don't leave. We need -- we -- we have 

an additional item pertaining to Iowa. 

At our -- at our telephone meeting last month 
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the Board appointed a workgroup to draft a 

letter of regret, and we have that letter 

before us. This was drafted by Mike and 

Richard -- Mike Gibson and Richard Espinosa -- 

and Board members, you should have a copy of 

that letter before you now. This comes to us 

from the working group and therefore 

constitutes a motion before the Board. It does 

not require a second. It is now open for 

discussion. 

I should ask if all the Board members had an 

opportunity to read the letter. I know that it 

was just distributed earlier today, and I do 

want to give you opportunity -- yes, Rich, you 

have a comment? 

MR. ESPINOSA: (Off microphone) 

(Unintelligible) I have it because, you know, 

me and Mike worked on it, but I don't have it 

(unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: We have a hard copy -- an 

additional one, we'll get you one here shortly. 

You'll notice on --

 DR. MELIUS: I think I need one, too, Lew. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You'll notice on page two -- get 

an extra one for Dr. Melius. On page two, 
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second paragraph from the end, we need to 

insert a date. I believe the date to be 

inserted is the date of our telephone Board 

meeting. 

 MR. GIBSON: It was the 24th or the 25th, I 

just wasn't sure which -- 

UNIDENTIFIED: April 11th. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It was the Board meeting in -- by 

phone in March, full Board meeting... 

 MR. PRESLEY: April 11th. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You're right, it was April 11th is 

the correct date. April 11th should be 

inserted there. 

DR. ANDERSON: You could indicate it was 5:00 

a.m. for Wanda. 

 MS. MUNN: Please. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me ask if any Board members 

wish to amend in any way this draft? Dr. 

Roessler? 

DR. ROESSLER: Just a question on the 

terminology. The petition we just approved was 

for the Iowa Ordnance Plant. This document 

refers to both the Iowa Ordnance Plant and the 

IAAP. Is that the --

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think, that get used for this facility. 

DR. ROESSLER: We should probably pick one and 

stick with it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let's pick one and stick to it. 

Shall we call it Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, 

IAAP? So if we can modify this throughout to 

make it consistent, we'll add that. Any 

others? Yes, Roy Gibs-- Roy DeHart. 

 DR. DEHART: Turning to page two, this -- the 

most narrow or shortest paragraph, (reading) 

The Advisory Board's letter of 

recommendation... 

I would suggest we put in there clearly what 

the recommendation was for, the purpose -- for 

the cohort. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The Advisory Board's letter of 

recommendation approving -- or recommending 

approval of a Special Exposure Cohort -- 

 DR. DEHART: Designation. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- class -- designation? Any 

others? 

(Pause) 

There's a question on the grammar in the middle 

of the second page, the second sentence. 

(Reading) We relied on NIOSH staff, it appears, 
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who had not represented -- is that the 

question? 

 DR. WADE: No, we are not aware for the bias 

(sic) --

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, for the -- We are not aware 

for the basis -- aware of the basis, of the 

basis, is that -- and what was the other? Is 

that -- was that the only issue there, Lew? 

 DR. WADE: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 DR. DEHART: The last paragraph of the same 

page, two. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 DR. DEHART: I can't recall exactly what was 

said. Is this a correct statement as -- does 

anyone recall? 

 DR. ZIEMER: The last paragraph on page two? 

 DR. DEHART: Correct. Is that a -- is that a 

correct statement, (reading) The Board did not 

task SCA to review the SEC petition -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's correct, we tasked them to 

review the site profile for Iowa. There was no 

task to review the petition itself. That's 

correct, is it not, Dr. Wade? Yes. 

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procurement, because there was no procurement 

vehicle? 

 DR. WADE: That -- I don't know that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, the way the sequence of 

events arose, what we had from NIOSH, the new 

document was in fact the revised site profile. 

And so we asked SC&A to assist in the rapid 

review of that new document on behalf of the 

Board because that was the issue that -- where 

we needed some -- some assistance, so I believe 

this is correct as Mike has stated it. Mike? 

 MR. GIBSON: But as memory serves me correct, 

after this data came out a few days later, I 

believe it was NIOSH that asked our contractor 

to review the TBD. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Actually it was Lew Wade who made 

the request, I believe --

 DR. WADE: Correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- with my concurrence that -- 

that as soon as I got the document, we talked 

to Lew and asked that John Mauro be contacted 

to determine whether or not they could in fact 

do this. And yes, it's true that -- that Lew 

is employed by NIOSH -- not by OCAS, but -- but 

the request came with my concurrence on our 
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behalf, and his position as our Federal -- 

Designated Federal Official for this Board, and 

working within the existing task, yes. 

 DR. WADE: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Wanda? 

 MS. MUNN: In keeping with my nit-picking 

nature, could I request that you remove the T 

from that word? There's something about using 

the word "task" repeatedly as a verb that is 

disturbing to some of us. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Did not task SC&A --

 MS. MUNN: Could we say the Board did not ask 

SC&A? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Ask or request? 

 MS. MUNN: Yeah, either. 

 DR. ZIEMER: How about request? Is that 

agreeable that... Dr. Melius? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, the first paragraph on the 

third page, the last sentence of that. I 

believe that we have undertaken steps 

(unintelligible) -- and we will undertake steps 

to assure -- I think we need to refer to our 

actions at this meeting that we just took. One 

is that we did approve the Special Exposure 

Cohort petition and we did take steps to help 
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assure that -- at least the miscommunication 

that was associated with this last situation 

will not recur. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Basically you're asking to update 

this to refer --

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: What paragraph are you in? 

 DR. MELIUS: I think it's the first paragraph 

of the third page, (reading) The Advisory Board 

recognizes that the actions of NIOSH... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Michael, do you want to respond to 

that? 

 MR. GIBSON: Yeah, I -- I don't guess I have a 

problem with that. The only reason it was 

written this way is because at the time the 

Board voted to -- to generate this letter it 

appeared that --

 DR. ZIEMER: The action hadn't been taken. 

 MR. GIBSON: No, we have some regrets in what 

had taken place due to the -- the petitioners 

at Iowa, so... 

 DR. MELIUS: And I'm not -- I'm not suggesting 

that we take back the general intent or purpose 

of the letter. I just think we should update 

to say that -- that we have -- at least, 
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particularly in this paragraph, that we have 

taken steps, one, to approve the SEC; and 

secondly to at least try to prevent any 

miscommunication that -- and uncertainties 

around that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So it would then read "we have 

tak-- we have undertaken steps to assure that 

actions are followed up" and so on, is that... 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Is that what you're suggesting? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And Michael, are you agreeable 

with that? 

 MR. GIBSON: Yeah, I just -- I wanted -- in my 

opinion, I thought we wanted not only Iowa but 

-- this is to Iowa -- but to know that we 

wouldn't be caught in this situation -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: In the future --

 MR. GIBSON: -- down the road with something 

else. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Exactly, right. Any other 

changes? 

I would like to now -- do members of the -- 

does the general public have copies of this? 

 DR. WADE: The draft is on the back table, yes. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: The draft is on the back table. I 

think it would be appropriate if the letter be 

read. Lew, would you be willing to read this -

- conserve my voice? 

 DR. WADE: If you'd give me your -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: This is the letter from the Board. 

It's directed to the folks here in Iowa. 

 DR. WADE: (Reading) This letter from the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health 

is to express our sincere regret to the 

claimants and survivors from the Iowa Army 

Ammunition Plant for an additional delay in 

processing of their petition for the Special 

Exposure Cohort status. 

 During an Advisory Board meeting in St. Louis, 

Missouri on February 9th, 2005 a petition for 

exclusion -- for inclusion as a Special 

Exposure Cohort for a class of former employees 

of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant was presented 

by NIOSH and deliberated by the Advisory Board. 

Following the deliberations, the Advisory Board 

on Radiation and Worker Health unanimously 

passed a motion to forward a letter to the 

Secretary of Health and Human Services to 

recommend Special Exposure Cohort status be 
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granted to the defined class of employees for 

the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. 

The actions taken by the Advisory Board to that 

point were consistent with the duty and 

authority assigned to us as members of the 

public appointed by the President under Section 

3624 of Public Law 106-398. 

In its SEC evaluation report presented to the 

Board NIOSH established that it would have to 

rely on security-classified information to 

conduct dose reconstructions for employees at 

IAAP, and has determined that such data may not 

provide a viable basis for conducting dose 

reconstructions. The classified information 

that NIOSH could not release to the public for 

the protection of national security includes 

source term and process information needed to 

reconstruct radiation doses for employees. 

This limitation on the transparency of NIOSH 

dose reconstructions for IAAP employees would 

be likely to undermine the credibility of such 

dose reconstructions among the IAAP claimant 

population. 

 The SEC evaluation report which was signed by 

Larry Elliott stated, quote, NIOSH has 
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determined this limitation on the transparency 

of the NIOSH dose reconstruction program, 

imposed through the use of classified 

information, may be unacceptable for the 

purposes of conducting dose reconstructions 

under EEOICPA. For this reason, NIOSH finds 

that it is not feasible to estimate doses with 

sufficient accuracy (sic) for employees working 

on Line 1 AEC operations at the Iowa Army 

Ammunitions Plant in Burlington, Iowa during 

the years of 1949 to 1947, close quote. 

The Board, after evaluating the adequacy of the 

data for purposes of the SEC recommendation, 

parentheses, but without technical assistance 

from its audit contractor, close parentheses, 

and after considering the NIOSH position on 

transparency, and receiving advice from DOL and 

the public, voted on the following proposition 

(sic): 

Bullet, there are limited monitoring data 

available at this facility during the time 

period involved. These limited data cause a 

number of difficulties for performing 

individual dose reconstructions. In addition, 

a number of serious questions have been raised 
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about the accuracy and completeness of the 

monitoring data. 

 Bullet, NIOSH reports that data critical to 

performing individual dose reconstructions is 

classified and not available to the public at 

this time. 

 Bullet, following extensive efforts seeking, 

retrieving and reviewing all available 

information, NIOSH has concluded that it is 

likely that radiation doses at the Iowa 

Ordnance Plant during this time period could 

have endangered the health of members of this 

class. The Board concurs. 

Given these difficult circumstances and the 

importance of transparency to the dose 

reconstruction program, the Board recommends 

that this Special Exposure Cohort petition be 

granted. 

 Approximately seven days after the Board 

meeting DOE transmitted NIOSH's Revision 1 site 

profile for IAAP to NIOSH. None of the 

information contained in that site profile was 

deemed classified. NIOSH transmitted the 

revised site profile to the IAAP SEC 

petitioners several weeks later. Further, the 
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Board was advised that some of the data which 

NIOSH represented as classified by the 

Department of Energy in its Revision 1 site 

profile was not classified. 

We are not aware of the basis for NIOSH 

concluding that any part of its site profile 

would be classified. We relied on NIOSH staff, 

it appears, who had not represented the 

potential options with respect to transparency 

issues. We have been advised, however, that no 

information was declassified by the Department 

of Energy in the Revision 1 site profile. 

 The Advisory Board's letter of recommendation 

recommending approval of the SEC petition was 

not sent to the Secretary as the Board assumed 

would happen. 

The Advisory Board ratified a decision by NIOSH 

to seek assistance from Sanford Cohen & 

Associates, the Board audit contractor, to 

review the Iowa site profile on April 11th, 

2005. Sanford Cohen & Associates has had a 

short period of time to review the site 

profile, and portions of its report indicate 

the need to conduct further evaluations or to 

await declassification of notes. SC&A staff 
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was also delayed in its work by the absence of 

Q clearances. We recognize DOE for working to 

expedite these Q clearances once NIOSH provided 

the necessary information to DOE. 

The Board did not request SC&A to review the 

SEC petition or evaluation report, or its 

supplement, because there was no procurement 

vehicle in place to secure such review due to 

objections from the NIOSH Office of 

Compensation and Analysis Support. 

The Advisory Board recognizes that the actions 

of NIOSH were not consistent with the actions 

taken during the St. Louis, Missouri meeting on 

February 9th, 2005. Further, the Advisory 

Board has discussed this inconsistency and we 

have undertaken steps to assure that its 

actions are followed up with transmittals to 

the Secretary of HHS or convene emergency 

meetings if new information arises which would 

conflict with its previous recommendations. 

In closing, the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health expresses our regrets to the 

petitioners, claimants and survivors of the 

Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. 

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note, as I heard it read, the issue of NIOSH 

tasking SC&A -- that technically that was the 

Chair and the Designated Federal Official. 

That would have -- I'm looking to see where 

that is. I think that probably needs to be 

corrected here. 

 DR. DEHART: Bottom of two. Bottom of two. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Bottom of two. 

 DR. WADE: The Advisory Board ratified a 

decision by NIOSH. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, the decision was -- NIOSH 

did not make that decision, in a -- is that 

correct? I mean it was --

 DR. WADE: That's correct, I made that 

decision. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- the two of us that made the 

decision, so I think --

 DR. MELIUS: Just clarify that, probably. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm just looking to see where it 

is in this motion. 

 DR. WADE: It's the second page -- 

 DR. MELIUS: First sentence -- yeah. 

 DR. WADE: -- the next to last paragraph, the 

Advisory Board ratified the decision by NIOSH -

-
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 DR. ZIEMER: I see it now, yes -- decision by 

the Board's Chair and its Designated Federal 

Official, is what should be said there. 

 MR. GIBSON: Paul? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Michael? 

 MR. GIBSON: I don't mind -- I don't mind if 

the record's clear, but I think the point that 

-- at least I thought we were trying to get 

across is that we won't get caught in the -- in 

the short hairs next time, that we'll -- that 

there'll be a system in place that -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GIBSON: -- we'll convene an emergency 

meeting if we have to to -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, and this was taken care of 

by some specific words in the current motion 

that we have already approved, and I think we 

have on our agenda for tomorrow a more 

permanent solution to how we will proceed on 

these documents so that we don't get caught in 

that again. 

Okay, let me ask, Board members, now any other 

items on this? You've heard the full letter 

now, motion that's before us. Any other 

comments before we vote? 
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 (No responses) 

I do want to ask this question. Again, I saw 

the letter for the first time just a moment 

ago. At the very end of page two it said that 

there was no procurement vehicle in place due 

to objections from OCAS -- NIOSH/OCAS. Is -- I 

just want to make sure that that is correct. 

I'm not aware that they had prevented us from 

putting anything in place. Lew or Larry --

 DR. MELIUS: Well, let me address that because 

I can distinctly remember a meeting where I 

made that suggestion and Mr. Elliott strongly 

objected to the development of any procurement 

task order that was related to that particular 

item. And whether prevention is the right 

word, I'm not sure, but it certainly -- there 

was certainly strong NIOSH objection to it at -

- at the time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: At that time? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. I just wanted to be sure 

that that was indeed factual, because as a 

matter of fact, we are looking at putting such 

a vehicle in place with the help of NIOSH at 

the moment, though. Okay. Thank you. 
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Other items? Are you ready to vote then on 

this? 

All in favor of approving this letter now as 

slightly amended, say aye? 

 (Affirmative responses) 

 Any opposed, no? Any --

 MR. GRIFFON: I'll abstain. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- abstention? One abstention. 

The motion carries and this letter expresses 

the regrets of the Board to our constituents in 

Iowa. 

 The Chair recognizes Mr. Anderson. 

MR. ANDERSON: I appreciate -- as a petitioner 

I wish to thank the Board for their action and 

for the letter of apology, and I understand 

what happened and I really do appreciate the 

thought and concerns that each one of you have 

put into this. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Si --

 MR. IVERSON: As a former worker, I thank all 

of you. Thank you very much. 

 DR. WADE: We have Missouri people waiting, so 

UNIDENTIFIED: I want to thank all of the 

Board. You're so gracious and you've worked so 
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hard, and we appreciate this for all the people 

that -- that are sick and dying. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you very much. 

UNIDENTIFIED: And I want to thank Larry 'cause 

he put in his all, too. 

 DR. ZIEMER: They --

UNIDENTIFIED: He did his job, and we do thank 

each and every one of you. Thank you very 

much. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. We are going 

to proceed. We have Mallinckrodt folks sort of 

waiting in the wings to get underway here, so 

we are going to proceed on our agenda. 

 DR. WADE: So we can take Tom Horgan reading a 

letter from Senator Bond, once the room 

settles. 

 DR. MELIUS: Can we take a break before we -- 

at this time? 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 

(Unintelligible) proceed with the opening 

statements (unintelligible) -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, we can. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) -- and if you 

want to take a --

 DR. ZIEMER: We certainly can. 
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 DR. WADE: That's fine. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The Chair will recognize Tom 

Horgan, who will come and give us some remarks 

from Senator Bond's office. 

 (Whereupon, the discussion turned to a focus on 

Mallinckrodt until the public comment period.) 

 DR. WADE: And then it's going to be -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Are we taking a break or... 

 MALLINCKRODT TECHNICAL BASIS DOCUMENT

 DR. ZIEMER: We'll have the opening remarks 

here and then we'll have an opportunity for a 

break, so let us proceed. Thank you, Tom, for 

being with us today. 

 DR. WADE: Please, I would ask that we -- we 

respect now the beginning of the Mallinckrodt 

discussion. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Iowa folks, thank you for being 

here. If you have sidebar conversations, if 

you would do that out in the lobby, please, so 

we can proceed, we thank you very much. 

 Again, welcome, Tom, to the podium. 

 MR. HORGAN: Members of the Board, my name is 

Tom Horgan and I'm with U.S. Senator 

Christopher "Kit" Bond's office of Missouri. 

Unfortunately Senator Bond cannot be here today 
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due to votes that are taking place on the 

floor. There is quite a significant piece of 

legislation on the floor this week, of which 

Iowans and Missourians I'm sure are interested, 

and Senator Bond plays an important role in 

that bill. 

 Nevertheless, he wrote a statement to the Board 

which I would like to read and submit for the 

record. However, before I begin I would like 

to briefly mention a few things. 

First of all, a lot of the former workers from 

the Mallinckrodt site, particularly the 

downtown site, would like to have come up for 

this meeting, but they could not make the trip 

because a lot -- as you know, a lot of them are 

older and not well enough. However, I believe 

a few have made it up here and they may be 

filtering in around... 

Secondly, I communicated to Senator Bond last 

night and he was quite surprised to hear about 

the DOJ opinion on the 

transparency/confidentiality issue or 

classified issue that was issued at 5:00 p.m. 

Friday night. I didn't find out about it until 

the plane ride on Sunday night. At any rate, 
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he expressed an interest in learning more about 

the origins, facts and personnel surrounding 

that request and opinion. 

Finally, I do want to thank the kind people of 

Cedar Rapids, Iowa and the citizens of Iowa for 

their warm welcome and their hospitality. You 

don't get that everywhere you go, so I 

appreciate it. 

Now I would like to read the statement -- 

Senator Bond's statement to the Advisory Board, 

to be submitted for the record. 

 (Reading) Good morning. Thank you once again 

for taking time out of your busy schedules to 

attend this meeting to discuss and act upon the 

extremely important issues related to the 

Energy Employees Occupational Illness 

Compensation Program Act of 2000. I greatly 

appreciate your dedication and expertise in 

advising NIOSH on the administration of this 

statute. 

At your previous Board meeting in St. Louis 

members of this Board made a calculated 

decision to designate the former nuclear energy 

workers who worked at the downtown Mallinckrodt 

site from 1942 through 1948 as members of the 
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Special Exposure Cohort under EEOICPA. This 

decision was made primarily due to the absence 

of any employee exposure data upon which a 

credible dose reconstruction for these former 

workers could be calculated. I strongly 

commend the Board for this decision, which has 

brought long-awaited justice in the form of 

expedited compensation to these former workers 

who made extreme sacrifices in helping our 

nation win the Cold War. Your decision to 

designate these workers as part of the SEC has 

brought relief and closure to victims -- to 

these victims, who have waited for this result 

for over 50 years. 

Today this Advisory Board convenes once again 

to discuss designating the remaining employees 

who worked at the Mallinckrodt downtown site 

from 1949 through 1957 as members of the 

Special Exposure Cohort. I have met with many 

of these former workers and heard about their 

sufferings firsthand. Several of these workers 

whom I have had the privilege of meeting are 

now deceased. In total, over 40 of the former 

Mallinckrodt workers have died while waiting 

for dose reconstruction to be performed. They 
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are victims of what appears to be an endless 

bureaucratic process. 

In light of this, I urge this Advisory Board to 

designate the remaining former Mallinckrodt 

workers who worked at the downtown site from 

1942 through 1950 -- or excuse me, from 1949 

through 1957 as members of the Special Exposure 

Cohort. There are just too many complicating 

circumstances and too much unknown information 

regarding these former workers that make it 

impossible for NIOSH to proceed with dose 

reconstruction for the Mallinckrodt claimants 

with any degree of accuracy and credibility. 

As I stated to this Board at its February 

meeting, there are important documents 

regarding worker exposure and worker history 

that are either missing, incomplete or possibly 

destroyed. There are also documents that 

indicate that a significant portion of existing 

worker exposure data is inaccurate and 

unreliable. We also now know that there was a 

serious dust problem at the plant, which may 

have caused significant dust exposures. 

Furthermore, we have documented testimony from 

a former Atomic Energy Commission official that 
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states that the Mallinckrodt downtown site was 

one of the two worst plants in the country in 

terms of levels of radioactive contamination. 

The Mallinckrodt downtown site had levels of 

contamination that were over ten times the 

levels at the Paducah site, which was 

previously considered one of the worst and is 

one of the four original Special Exposure 

Cohort sites. 

What is perhaps the most disturbing about the 

entire EEOICPA process is the pace at which 

NIOSH and ORAU are proceeding with their 

responsibilities under the statute. We 

constantly hear from NIOSH and their partners 

at ORAU that it is definitely feasible to 

construct doses and compensate these former 

workers at the downtown site and other 

Mallinckrodt sites. Yet in reality, the 

NIOSH/ORAU team has actually performed dose 

reconstructions on only a small number of these 

diseased and dying workers. 

As of this week NIOSH has completed 

approximately 74 dose reconstructions out a 

total of 311 existing cases at the downtown 

site. So after several years and expending 
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over $74 million, NIOSH and ORAU have managed 

to dose reconstruct only 23 percent of the 

claimants at the downtown site. In terms of 

actual compensation of the Mallinckrodt 

workers, NIOSH record is even worse. There 

have been 990 total claims filed by former 

employees at all three former Mallinckrodt 

sites. Out of this total, NIOSH has 

compensated only 82, or roughly eight percent, 

of these claimants. Out of a total of 330 

claims at the Mallinckrodt downtown site, NIOSH 

has paid only 56, or 17 percent of these 

claimants. 

Now while I realize this Board is not tasked 

today with deciding on the Mallinckrodt Weldon 

Spring SEC petition, I share with you an 

interesting statistic. Out of the 168 claims 

filed by former workers at the Weldon Spring 

site, NIOSH has denied 148, or almost 90 

percent of these claims. These claims are 

being denied, even though NIOSH has yet to 

complete a site profile for the Weldon Spring 

site. 

I ask a question. On what basis are these 

people being denied? 
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In addition to all this information, it has 

been 18 months since NIOSH first released its 

site profile for the downtown Mallinckrodt site 

-- 18 months. Now NIOSH is still in the 

process of revising this document due to 

technical flaws. It should also be noted that 

it took NIOSH over three years to finalize the 

Special Exposure Cohort rule which maps out the 

process for adding any potential sites to the 

SEC. 

Needless to say, this is hardly an impressive 

record given the amount of time and money NIOSH 

and ORAU have been given to get these workers 

compensated under the statute. This extremely 

slow rate of dose reconstruction and 

compensation is not consistent with the intent 

of EEOICPA, which is to compensate these 

diseased former workers in a timely manner. 

But it is consistent with the fact that so many 

workers' records are missing, incomplete or 

inaccurate, which is why designating these 

workers as members of the SEC is the only 

practical solution. 

You could ask these victims to wait again in 

the hopes that records will appear, will be 
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accurate and will be useful. But for how long? 

Another three months? Another six months? A 

year? Longer? Keep in mind that a good 

portion of these workers, the ones who have not 

died, have already been waiting for dose 

reconstruction for over four years now. At 

some point this Advisory Board has to decide 

how much time NIOSH and ORAU can spend on each 

site profile and SEC petition to determine 

whether or not dose reconstruction is feasible 

for the class of employees included in the 

petition. Otherwise the Board runs the risk of 

allowing NIOSH and ORAU to violate one of the 

principal tenets of EEOICPA, which is to 

compensate these cold warriors in a timely 

manner. 

I would argue that a failure to compensate such 

a large portion of these workers almost five 

years after enactment is not achieving the 

intent of EEOICPA. Sadly, for many of these 

aging cold warriors time is a luxury they 

simply do not have. These former Mallinckrodt 

workers are some of the oldest former nuclear 

workers in the country. As stated previously, 

many of these former workers have already 
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passed on as a result of illnesses they 

occurred -- they incurred while serving their 

country. I believe it is long past time to 

compensate these former workers for the heroic 

sacrifices they made in helping America win the 

Cold War. Therefore I urge this Board to 

recognize their plight and designate the 

remaining workers at the downtown Mallinckrodt 

site, those who worked from 1949 through 1957, 

as members of the Special Exposure Cohort. 

This will give these former workers the 

compensation they need to pay their medical 

bills and to provide for their survivors. 

Please take the reasonable, prudent and just 

action and help these cold warriors who did so 

much for this great nation. I thank you for 

listening. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Tom, and I 

think Denise Brock was also going to make some 

preliminary remarks. Denise, would you like to 

do that at this time? 

 DR. WADE: (Off microphone) She's reading 

(unintelligible) Congressman Akin. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And this is, I believe, a 

statement from Congressman Akin, as well. 
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MS. BROCK: It is, but actually I also have a 

statement from Senator Talent. 

I would first like to thank the Board again for 

having me here and for your time. I'd like to 

thank members of the public, as well. And 

obviously I don't want to go into my full 

statement for you today. I'll wait till 

tomorrow. I just wanted to -- to read 

something from Senator Talent and from 

Congressman Akin. 

(Reading) Dear Mr. (sic) Ziemer, let me take 

this opportunity to thank the Board for their 

time and work in reviewing the Special Exposure 

Cohort status petitions for the Missouri 

workers. I appreciate and thank the Board for 

approving SEC status for those Mallinckrodt 

workers who worked at the downtown Mallinckrodt 

site from 1942 until 1948. While this 

designation is commendable, I must encourage 

the Board to also give the same SEC status for 

those downtown Mallinckrodt workers from 1949 

until 1957. 

 These workers have already waited too long for 

compensation and should not be made to wait any 

longer. This process has been too slow, and 
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that has discouraged a lot of people from even 

applying for compensation under the EEOICPA. 

I am frustrated by NIOSH's delay in recognizing 

the dose reconstruction is not possible on 

every case, and that workers from 

Mallinckrodt's downtown facility and in Weldon 

Springs should be included in the cohort. I 

will continue working with Senator Bond, 

Representative Akin, Denise Brock and other 

families of Mallinckrodt workers, and hopefully 

these cases can be dealt with fairly and 

promptly so that people get the payments they 

deserve in a timely manner. Sincerely, Senator 

Jim Talent. 

This next is from Congressman Akin. (Reading) 

Dear Dr. Ziemer and Advisory Board members, the 

Board's evaluation of compensation claims and 

dose reconstruction data pertaining to several 

sites in the Greater St. Louis area has been of 

great interest to a number of my constituents, 

as well as to me. As you know, the NIOSH 

Advisory Board recently made the decision to 

designate former nuclear energy workers who 

worked at the downtown St. Louis Mallinckrodt 

site from 1942 until 1948 as members of the 
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Special Exposure Cohort under the EEOICPA of 

2000. 

I commend the Board for this assessment, which 

finally brought relief to those who sacrificed 

for the security of our nation during the Cold 

War. An important decision lies before you 

today, whether the remaining employees of the 

downtown Mallinckrodt site from 1948 until 1957 

should be designated as a member of the SEC. 

strongly urge the Advisory Board to include 

these workers under the Special Exposure 

Cohort. 

There is no doubt that the lack of accurate 

data and missing information has created a 

situation that makes it virtually impossible 

for NIOSH to perform precise dose 

reconstructions. Simply put, these workers and 

their families have waited long enough for a 

decision to be rendered. I ask the Board to 

take reasonable and equitable action in 

designating these workers as members of the 

SEC. Thank you for your time in this matter, 

and I appreciate your diligence in evaluating 

this issue and for your service to our 

community. Sincerely, W. Todd Akin, Member of 

I 
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Congress. 

And again, I just want to state that I thank 

the Board so much for making the recommendation 

you did for '42 to '48, and I am extremely 

pleased for Iowa. I -- it was breaking my 

heart to give something to somebody and then to 

take it away like that, the emotional trauma 

that that puts on people was just unbelievable. 

So God bless you and thank you very much for 

that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Denise, for bringing 

those words from the Congressional delegation. 

We will take a brief break at this time and -- 

after which we will resume with the 

presentations on Mallinckrodt, which include 

presentations on the revised Technical Basis 

Document and some -- a report on the review by 

our Board contractors. So we'll recess now for 

about 15 minutes. 

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

to 3:10 p.m.) 

PRESENTATION BY NIOSH

 DR. ZIEMER: We're going to return to our 

session now. We're addressing the Mallinckrodt 

facility, and we're going to begin with the 
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presentation by NIOSH. Dr. Jim Neton is going 

to go over the -- the revision of the site 

profile. Jim, the podium is yours. 

DR. NETON: Okay, thank you, Dr. Ziemer. It's 

a pleasure to be back again to address the 

Board. I'm going to talk about Revision 1 to 

the Mallinckrodt site profile. To give you a 

little bit of history, as a reminder of where 

we are in this process, the initial revision, 

Rev. 0, of this profile was issued in October 

of 2003, about 18 months ago. And I think I 

addressed the Board back in the St. Louis 

meeting at the end of October, 2003, and 

provided them a summary of what the contents 

was of Rev. 0 at that time. 

SC&A has since, under their task order with the 

Board, conducted a review of that revision, and 

in January -- at the end of January 2005 issued 

their report. Subsequent to that they provided 

a presentation at the Board meeting February 

8th in St. -- is it St. Louis again, I guess? 

yes -- and it became clear that Rev. 0 was 

undergoing review by NIOSH at the time and we'd 

had ongoing discussions with SC&A. And so it 

was decided at the St. Louis Board meeting that 
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NIOSH and SC&A would work cooperatively. We 

would get the -- NIOSH would get the profile, 

Rev. 1, out the door as quickly as possible, 

and SC&A would be tasked to do an expedited 

review of Revision 1, and that has happened. 

So I am here to speak generically about the 

update to Revision 0 to you today. 

I think I went one slide too far and 

unfortunately this new projector doesn't 

recognize the reverse button on -- 

 DR. WADE: Here comes somebody who does. 

(Pause) 

DR. NETON: Thank you, Chris. The document --

the outline of the document remains exactly 

identical to what it was before. It's not one 

of these profiles that has eight -- or six 

individual chapters or Technical Basis 

Documents like the large DOE sites. It has 

eight separate sections, and these are the same 

sections that were contained in the original 

Rev. 0. 

 What's happened since Rev. 0 was issued, 

though, is the document has doubled in size. 

It is now -- it went from a 124-page document 

to a 250-page document. And unlike the Iowa 
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profile Rev. 1, there really are no major 

shifts in the -- in the concepts. It is really 

just a more complete representation of the 

information, more tables, more data, more 

instructions as to how to assign surrogate 

workers, that sort of thing. 

What I intend to do is go over briefly each of 

these sections. Since it's a 250-page 

document, I have roughly 30 minutes. I figure 

that's about seven seconds a page, so I don't 

think I can get into that level of detail with 

you today, so I intend to go over the 

highlights of what the document contains to 

give you a feel, and then entertain any 

questions. 

 Just quickly, the section that has changed the 

most I believe is this section five here, 

radiological characteristics, conditions and 

available data. Originally, in Rev. 0, that -- 

I think that was about 25 pages. It's now over 

70 pages, a lot, lot, lot more data about the 

radiological conditions and a discussion of the 

available data. 

Also the residual contamination section was 

marked reserved. That is -- that is now 
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complete and included. 

So the purpose and the scope -- and this is a 

standard, generic purpose for all site profiles 

-- is to assist in the reconstruction of doses 

for workers at the Mallinckrodt downtown site. 

It covers exposures for the seven plants listed 

here from April '42 through July 1958, and it 

now covers residual contamination from 1959 

through 1995. There's some new models in 

there, some res-rad runs -- residual radiation 

runs -- that allow NIOSH and ORAU to assign 

doses in these periods when production has 

essentially stopped, but there was 

contamination remaining at the site. 

New to this profile, though, is a discussion of 

how to reconstruct doses at the St. Louis 

Airport site, those operations that occurred 

between 1946 and 1958. If you recall, the St. 

Louis Airport site was essentially a storage 

facility for waste from -- from Mallinckrodt. 

It's appropriately named the airport site 

because it was near the airport. Essentially 

all the effluent -- the filter cakes, the 

byproduct material of the processing of the 

uranium ores was -- was placed there in various 
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states over time. 

Also the airport site, although dumping ceased 

there in '58, there is some instructions in the 

profile of how to reconstruct doses -- residual 

contamination doses from 1959 to '62. 

One thing I'd like to mention here up front, 

and I think this was noted in the SC&A review 

of Rev. 1, we do have exposure information in 

this profile covering doses prior to 1949. Now 

the Board did recommend that Mallinckrodt be a 

Special Exposure Cohort between 1942 and '48, 

and that has been passed on to the Secretary. 

However, we still have the condition that we 

have to reconstruct or need to reconstruct 

doses for non-presumptive cancers under the 

SEC. We believe that the data contained in the 

profile right now allows for reconstructing 

lower bound doses to these organs. We may not 

be able to maximize and figure out what the 

upper limit was, but in the situations where 

NIOSH can re-- can do a partial dose 

reconstruction and it appears that that 

reconstructed dose exceeds 50 percent, we're 

going to attempt that. So the profile doesn't 

say that, but we need to amend that with a page 
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change to state that's why those doses remain 

in the profile. As I said, if the lower bound 

dose is greater than 50 percent, it will be 

forwarded to Department of Labor. 

 A good example of this is the external doses 

were fairly high at Mallinckrodt in the early 

days, as we all know. And there are situations 

-- I'm aware of a particular case where by 

merely adding up the monitored external dose 

prior to 1949, there are cases that are likely 

to be compensable. Now that's a partial 

estimate. That's a lower bound dose on a 

person, and we may not be able to reconstruct 

the internal dose -- maybe we can -- but 

nonetheless, the person meets the criteria for 

a POC of greater than 50 percent. So that's 

the concept of why that's in there. 

I will take this opportunity to also say that 

I'm going to restrict most of my remarks to 

information that's in the profile relevant to 

1949 and later, or more contemporary, because I 

think it's more germane to the Board's 

deliberations at this meeting. We certainly 

are going to continue to work with SC&A in 

their review and take their comments to heart 
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prior to 1949, but you know, for -- to cover 

the matter at hand today, I'd just like to 

focus on the after-1949 time frame. 

Okay. So I want to step through fairly quickly 

the individual sections. Some of this you've 

heard before at the previous meetings so I 

won't dwell on it, but as we all know, 

Mallinckrodt started work around April 1942, 

the uranium operations. It was a chemical 

processing facility at that time and it was 

converted into a uranium operation. And 

remarkably, within about three months, almost a 

ton of uranium dioxide was being produced per 

day. It's an incredible, incredible feat to 

accomplish that, so there was a lot of 

activities going on and we don't need to 

discuss the high, high exposure conditions that 

existed in those early time periods. I think 

we're all fairly well acquainted with that. 

As the plant -- as time went on the plant added 

more and more types of operation. Eventually 

UF4 was being produced, and in '53 metal was 

starting to be produced, so a multitude of 

traditional uranium foundry type operations. 

So in the entire operating history -- 
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production history, '42 to '57, more than 

50,000 tons of natural uranium products were 

produced -- a tremendous amount of uranium 

products. More importantly, these products 

were produced, to a large extent, from ore that 

contained the daughter products or the progeny 

of the decay chain of the uranium series that 

provided some very hefty exposures, both 

externally and internally, to the workers. And 

I'll talk about that in a little bit. 

I'd like to discuss a little bit about the 

health physics operations. This is more 

relevant to today's discussion. A full scale 

health physics program did not exist at 

Mallinckrodt until '47, and did not really get 

underway until 1948 when -- when a professional 

health physicist was brought on board, as well 

as some more involved and intimate 

collaboration with the Atomic Energy 

Commission's Health and Safety Laboratory, 

which possessed some very, very reasonable 

expertise, some -- in the measurement of 

radiation in the work environment. They were 

some of the forerunners in this area. 

As noted in the previous meetings, 1945 time 
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frame -- there was no film badge prior to '45. 

Film badge monitoring program was established. 

Urinalysis was not existent until about 1948, 

at least to the point where there's a 

reasonable, somewhat routine monitoring 

program. So again, not to belabor the point 

from the last meeting, but early operations are 

-- are very difficult to characterize, but we 

see the advent of some better monitoring data 

in the later time periods. 

I mentioned by Mallinckrodt and the Atomic 

Energy Commission performed these air sam-- 

periodic samplings, other surveys and breath 

analyses, so you tend to have -- you can have 

data from both -- both sources, Atomic Energy 

Commission HASL -- Health and Safety Laboratory 

-- data and Mallinckrodt data. Again, the 

external dose is mostly from '46 on; records 

missing '42 to '45 -- I won't belabor that 

point. Most importantly here, the context of 

this profile is for the interpretation of 

existing records. 

This is a very different profile than Iowa, 

than Bethlehem Steel. This is a more -- what I 

would call traditional profile that tries to 
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set the stage for the dose reconstructors. It 

is an encyclopedia, a road map, a compendium of 

available monitoring information that, when one 

starts to do a dose reconstruction, one can go 

there and find out a lot of information -- 

detection limits, monitoring frequencies, 

characteristics, production processes. Again, 

it's 250 pages. A lot of this is text. It's 

descriptive text about processes that dose 

reconstructors would use. So in some sense, 

the proof of the ability of this profile to 

work lies in the dose reconstructions that are 

generated as a result of this. This is 

something I've said before, but I want to -- I 

want to clearly state that, because this is not 

a model, like the Iowa where you have the 

generic pit. This is I have some monitoring 

data, I have no monitoring data, how do I 

interpret that in the context of what happened 

at Mallinckrodt. 

Okay, the history of the site use. This is a 

short section that goes through the basic 

operations and I won't dwell on it. It goes 

through a description of all the different 

plants and the safety -- some of the safety 
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issues and problems that were encountered early 

on, some of the various decontamination surveys 

that were performed in the later years, and 

discusses something about the recycling. 

Mallinckrodt was a uranium manufacturing 

facility, but at certain periods -- I don't -- 

this is not to be confused with recycled 

uranium that contains plutonium. This is 

recycling of the effluent stream, to some 

extent, where they were interested in 

obtaining, for instance, thorium 230 and 

actinium 227 to provide to Mound Laboratories 

for other purposes. So they would occasionally 

go and -- I wouldn't say mine, but retrieve the 

collection of the informa-- or collection of 

the waste streams from -- at the St. Louis 

Airport site, bring it back and reprocess it 

through the system. 

And again, it talks about how most of the waste 

was taken to St. Louis Airport site after a 

certain period. It's -- it's the opinion in 

the profile that most waste didn't remain at 

the site for very long because it would 

accumulate and essentially get in the way of 

the production processes. 
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The next section is a description of the 

uranium refining process, quite a bit of 

relevant information. This is not unlike most 

uranium processes. There's only so many 

different ways one can make uranium. Most 

relevant to our discussion here is the later 

post-war period, 1950 to '58, maybe part of the 

'49 era, where -- Mallinckrodt was pretty much 

on a routine process of receiving ore from 

Middlesex, processing that ore and making 

various uranium products. What's happened 

here, when you get into the 1950 time frame is 

the processes tended to be more automated, and 

what you see are process improvements in 

relation to adding booths or coverage around 

work areas, attempts to reduce the airborne 

concentrations in those time periods. 

There's a lot of discussion in this profile 

about those types of activities that took 

place. There was a -- in 1950 an ore -- ore 

receiving station was there where ore was 

ground, just a lot more added to the automation 

of the process. 

 In the previous years, prior to say '46, we 

recognize that it was a very mechanical, 
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scooping type process. By this time period you 

have the -- essentially the plumbing, the guts 

in place for things to move forward in a more 

automated process so that manual handling, 

although it did exist, was minimized to a large 

extent. 

There's also discussion of the other processes 

that were involved. A lot I mentioned, also 

recovery of -- of some of the thorium 230 

material from the St. Louis plant. Also 

uranium was a fairly valuable commodity, so 

saw-- piles of saw-- not sawdust, but uranium 

dust from grinding operations, that sort of 

thing, were recovered and put back through the 

process. The mag fluoride slag that was -- 

that was generated as a result of -- of 

producing the uranium derbies themselves was 

recovered -- the uranium was recovered and put 

back in there. So a lot of different 

industrial operations that need to be described 

and they are described in some detail in this 

document so that one can get a flavor or a 

sense for the types of activities related to 

generation of airborne activity, that sort of 

thing -- whether these were wet processes, dry 
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processes, a lot of that can be inferred from 

the document. 

Important again, I mentioned the ores and other 

feed forms. After World War II, most of the 

ore coming in I believe was foreign ore. Some 

Canadian ore came in at ten percent uranium by 

weight. I believe Belgian ore was still coming 

in and it was extremely high in uranium. I 

think it was some -- somewhere around 65 

percent by weight uranium, I mean tremendous 

process, interesting to speculate the 

geochemistry of how something would -- would 

form in the earth in that concentration in one 

spot. 

So this is all described in this section and 

goes through the residues and the effluents. 

There is a section there dealing with -- there 

was a discussion at the Board meeting last time 

about how NIOSH is handling the exposure to 

non-uranium issues when you get into residues 

and effluents, and I'll discuss that a little 

later when we talk about internal dosimetry. 

They do need to be treated differently. By and 

large, the facility -- to our knowledge -- we 

only have available information related to the 
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uranium monitoring in urine, so one needs to 

make some inferences when we're talking about 

these special exposures to residues and 

effluents. I think you'll -- you'll hear some 

comments later from folks at SC&A about sperry 

cake. 

Okay. This is -- this is really to my liking, 

the meat of the profile, as a health physicist. 

This deals -- 75 pages or so of the 

radiological characteristics and conditions, 

and most importantly, what type of data do we 

have to be able to attempt to reconstruct some 

of these doses. 

Units, limits and recommendations, it's 

interesting that after '49 you're still in the 

70 dpm per cubic meter range for uranium as a 

preferred level or a tolerance limit. In this 

era, 300 milliroentgen per -- per month was 

considered to be the limit, so 15 rem per year 

was the exposure limit, and we have evidence 

that workers were being exposed in those -- in 

those -- at those levels. 

The radioactivity content and handling of the 

ore, uranium products and residues really just 

goes over and has some detail about what -- 
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what are the constituents of these different 

materials, and what should one use as default 

assumptions when doing dose reconstructions. 

For example, there's a section now dealing with 

ore that talks about a ratio of assuming 100 to 

one radium to uranium when the ore is -- is -- 

if you're in a production facility that was 

handling the ore. Fairly conservative upper 

limit because I think that's the highest value 

that was found in the tables. 

 Uranium products, of course we have available 

monitoring data for uranium in urine. There 

are also air dust samples that were taken about 

the facility, and then the residues and wastes, 

there are some tables in there for how to deal 

with the fact that workers may have been 

processing these thorium residues to be shipped 

back to Mound, what type of equilibrium values 

were used, that sort of thing. 

 Internal dosimetrically there are default 

values included in here about particle size. 

The profile right now assumes five micron 

particle size as a default based on some data 

that were taken by -- I think it was in the 

Eisenbud era, I've forgotten, where they came 
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up with a mass median diameter of around two to 

three, which roughly, for uranium density, 

equates to around five microns. 

Solubility, there's a table in there that talks 

about what solubility form should be 

considered. It is our intent, although I will 

agree that it's not clear in the profile but 

it's consistent with our other profiles, where 

we don't know the solubility in the particular 

operation we will assume the solubility class 

from an inhalation perspective that delivers 

the highest dose to the organ under 

consideration. That's been part and parcel to 

our program and we're going to continue to 

pursue that practice in -- in this -- in these 

dose reconstructions. 

 The compensation considerations I talked about, 

how does one handle these non-uranium -- after 

-- you know, after the uranium is extracted you 

have the residues; how do you deal with the 

composition of these materials based on the 

isotopic ratios of the radioactive elements 

that are remaining. 

 The airborne dust levels, there's -- there's a 

fair amount of dust level data, thousands of 
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samples. I'll talk to that a little bit. In 

the subsequent section there's a discussion of 

how one deals with these dust samples. There 

are enough dust data that have been collected 

by year to assign values in various facilities 

about the plant, and the profile -- I think 

there is over 40-something tables in there that 

list what dust levels to use by job category by 

year for various plants and facilities. 

We're still wrestling with the idea -- again, 

this is to be used by the dose reconstructors 

as a road map. One needs to be careful, and we 

had a discussion this morning about what is 

relevant, is it the geometric mean of the air 

dust distribution in a facility or does one use 

the 95th percentile. We maintain that if --

and we agree with SC&A. If you know nothing 

else, if you don't know what facility the 

person worked in and you have no other 

evidence, then you should use the 95th 

percentile of the air dust data distribution. 

However, as you'll see later in the -- in the 

years that we're talking about here, we have a 

fair amount of uranium and urine monitoring 

data that we can use to bracket these exposure 
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scenarios. And we need to take -- we will take 

advantage of that when we're doing these 

analyses, where appropriate. 

 Respirator use, just to mention briefly, we 

take no credit in the profile for respirator 

use, even though we know there were instances 

where respiratory protection was worn. It's 

just not possible for us to go back this far in 

time and make any kind of reasonable estimates 

as to what percentage of workers wore 

respirators and who wore them, so you'll see 

that. Now this makes it a little interesting -

- and I'll talk about later -- comparing the 

urine data to the air sample data because, for 

example, if you have urine data that is lower 

than the air sample data, one doesn't know 

whether that's because the urine data is not 

appropriate or whether the person happened to 

be wearing a respirator. There's a number of 

reasons why those values might not be able to -

- to balance. 

And there -- there are data in there, and this 

is new, a fair amount of additional radon 

monitoring data is in this profile, and there 

are radon levels by plant. Admittedly, they 
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are quite variable. Radon is, as we heard this 

morning, is very difficult to predict. Even if 

you know the source term you need to know such 

things as ventilation rate and process through 

-- through put, that sort of thing. But we 

believe we have sufficient radon data, as I'll 

show you in a few seconds, to be able to 

bracket at least the upper range of the 

exposures for radon by certain buildings. 

Okay, just to move through the radiological 

characteristics, internal dose considerations, 

there's -- there's a several-page discussion of 

surface contamination. There are not a lot of 

surface contamination values listed there. The 

ones that do exist predictably show some fairly 

high significant surface contamination levels. 

There is evidence of some decontamination bound 

to existing standards at the time that are 

included in there. But we don't believe, at 

least from an inhalation perspective, that 

surface contamination from resuspension is 

problematic for us because we believe that we 

have air sample data that would include the 

resuspension at that time. 
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So -- and this chapter also summarizes the 

information and available data based on the 

urinalysis data, the radon data -- breath 

analyses I might want to mention just briefly. 

Radon breath analysis has nothing to do with 

measuring the radon concentrations or inferring 

the radon concentrations or exposure to workers 

in the air at the plant. Radon breath analysis 

is an indirect technique to measure the radium 

226 body burden of the worker. The idea is 

that if you inhale radium 226 or incorporate it 

into your skeleton, which is the ultimate 

repository, you will eventually breathe out 

radon gas at a certain rate. And knowing the 

physiology of that and doing a few calculations 

and calibrations, one can infer how much radium 

one breathed in by the amount of radon one 

breathes out. So these are important, but not 

necessarily related at all to radon levels in 

the plant. That's going to be important later 

when I talk about some of the data gaps. 

Almost -- I'm not aware of any whole body 

counting data at Mallinckrodt, or lung counts, 

so we have no ability to rely on those to help 

bracket -- bracket the pictures. So we have 
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urinalysis data, a fair amount; we have radon 

breath analyses and we have radon data, which 

is not listed here but we certainly have a fair 

number of those. 

 External dose considerations, one has the gamut 

of exposures. You have beta exposures from the 

uranium, from the protactinium 234-M/and* 

daughters that grow in. You have gamma 

exposures from the -- from the progeny in the 

ore stream. When you have high radium 226 

values, you also have high gamma exposures from 

-- from the ore and the raffinate material, and 

these non-specific beta-gammas are just 

mixtures. So you've got a fairly complex 

mixture. 

In this profile, even though there are some 

high energy photons involved here, it is 

conservatively assumed that the exposures 

occurred in the 30 to 250 keV range, which -- 

if one is familiar with our radiation 

effectiveness factors -- would double the 

radiation effec-- it would multiply the dose 

times two, as far as equivalent risk from the 

exposure. 

Neutrons are not a major issue here. The only 
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instance where neutrons -- neutron -- there is 

no monitoring data for neutrons, primarily 

because it's just a low potential for exposure. 

One can generate some neutrons based on the 

alpha interac-- alpha end reaction with light Z 

materials like fluorene, so for instance, 

uranium tetrafluoride or thorium tetrafluoride, 

which I believe was made at one point at 

Mallinckrodt. One can do some calculations and 

in fact there is an appendix -- a table at the 

back that provides neutron dose rates from -- 

from the alpha end reaction for -- with -- with 

thorium that can be used to reconstruct some 

fairly small neutron doses. And there was a 

radium -- a radium beryllium source, I believe, 

used in a laboratory -- it was called a shotgun 

laboratory -- to do some non-destructive 

testing measurements, and that's discussed in 

the profile. 

Okay, moving along with external dose, film 

badges were -- were used to measure the 

external dose. We have a large number of those 

measurements. It was a standard, two-element 

film badge with a cadmium filter covering one 

side and an open window on the other side. Not 
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a lot of information about procedures for 

calibration, but we do have evidence that they 

were radiated and calibrated with a radium 

source, essentially a radium platinum-clad 

needle. It was the same film badge used 

throughout the processing of the plant, from -- 

we believe through the -- through the 

production days, anyway, from '49 to '57, for 

sure, the same dosimeter badge. 

Not much in the way of external dosimetry was 

provided. In the profile that essentially says 

we have to evaluate that on a case-by-case 

basis. That of course would only affect dose 

reconstructions for the extremities where there 

were large discrepancies in the fields that a 

worker may be engaged with, such as working in 

a glove-box or that sort of thing. 

 Occupational X-ray exams, like all profiles, is 

discussed here. We are assuming an annual 

chest X-ray, whether we have indication that 

the worker was ex-- had an annual chest X-ray 

or not, and we have no knowledge of the process 

of the X-ray equipment during that era, but we 

do have a generic Technical Information 

Bulletin that talks about what the likely 
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exposures were to X-ray exams during certain 

time periods in the past, and that's what's 

used here. 

Of interest here is that between 1942 and '44 I 

think pelvic exams were required for people 

working with fluorene compounds, hydrofluoric 

acid, that sort of thing, and I wasn't familiar 

with this but apparently fluorosis is an issue 

where if you have high exposure to the fluorene 

it tends to wreak havoc with your bones and 

your connective tissue. And so pelvic exams 

were used to look for the effects of fluorene 

on the skeleton. 

 DR. MELIUS: Pelvic X-rays, I believe. Right? 

DR. NETON: Did I say pelvic X-rays? 

 DR. MELIUS: No, you said --

DR. NETON: Oh, I'm sorry, pelvic X-rays, not 

pelvic exams, sorry. Thank you, Dr. Melius. I 

of course am not a physician, so -- yeah, 

pelvic X-rays. 

 DR. MELIUS: It had some of us wondering here. 

DR. NETON: Okay. Other data included in here 

at the end of the radiological characteristics 

are the number of workers by different -- 

different plants, number of hours worked, so 
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that one can have an idea -- if they're using 

surrogate data -- of how many hours per year 

one should use. In general, it's not -- 

although there's evidence that people worked 

additional hours -- Saturdays and overtime, 

that sort of thing -- somewhere in the area of 

40 to 45, 46 hours a week is -- is generally 

considered to be reasonable for these dose 

reconstructions. 

 And there's tables in the back that have 

delineated the job titles and the work areas of 

workers based on data from a number of sources. 

The bioassay records have job titles. The TLD 

and film badge measurements have job titles, so 

there's an effort in here to compile and list 

all of these job titles and work areas for the 

dose reconstructors. 

Now to get to the meat of the issue related -- 

the monitoring -- related to the monitoring 

data, I mentioned we -- there's a fair amount 

of data and I'm only summarizing what's 

available '49 to '57, although realistically 

there's not much more than this because prior 

to '49, as we all know, there weren't -- were 

very few samples taken. So between '49 and '57 
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there's about 8,860 or so uranium air samples. 

These are dust samples taken in the various 

facilities at the plant. This is the basis of 

these tables at the back that show what the 

concentrations of uranium may have been in the 

air, by facility by year. 

I talked about breath radon earlier. There's 

2,321 breath radon samples. Those would be 

used, as I indicated, to infer radium body 

burdens of workers, not radon air 

concentrations. There's about 7,200 film badge 

measurements, but I need to qualify that. 

 That's actually 7,200 person years of film 

badge data. In other words, these are annual 

roll-ups, so this is the annual film badge 

roll-ups for the workers during this time 

period. And if there were weekly or bi-weekly 

measurements, then this represents roughly 

somewhere -- could be 300,000 to 400,000 

individual film badge measurements, a large, 

large number of film badge measurements in this 

era. And as you'll see later, most of the 

workers were monitored with film badges at 

Mallinckrodt in these years. 

 There's 4,700 radon air samples, approximately. 
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I've indicated that radon is difficult to 

estimate because of parameters we talked about 

earlier -- ventilation rates and emanation 

rates and all those sort of things. But with 

these -- this amount of data, 4,700 samples, we 

believe that it's very possible to put upper 

limits of exposures by certain facilities for 

workers. And in fact, we've been using these 

data in -- to reconstruct some doses for lung 

cancers. The way our radon lung model works is 

if you've got some hefty doses that we've seen 

from some of these areas, it's sufficient in 

and of itself for compensation in many cases, 

and where we can we use that to our advantage 

to do dose reconstruction. 

There's a little over 13,000 urine samples that 

have been taken between '49 and '57, so it's a 

goodly number of samples. There was a routine 

program in place during this time period. It 

was not a routine program that was taken 

monthly. I would say that the sampling 

frequency was variable, but it is not unusual 

to have someone sampled every three to six 

months in that time frame. 

Okay, this is a breakdown of the individual 
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monitoring data, and we have a column here 

labeled workers. I should qualify that. These 

are workers as identified in the Mallinckrodt 

epidemiologic study that was conducted. And 

typically epidemiologic studies talk about 

white male workers, you know, in a certain 

facility. We believe that it's fairly 

indicative of the work force. There weren't 

many female workers allowed into the production 

area in those eras, or working in the 

production areas, so we believe this is a 

fairly reasonable indicator of the work force. 

And this is the Manhattan Engineering District 

work force. I don't believe this represents 

the entire Mallinckrodt facility or the 

chemical activities, but these are the people 

who were working in the -- in the Manhattan 

Engineering District operations. 

What you see here, though, is a very 

interesting picture. I think the lowest 

percent monitored, whether it's urine or film 

badge, is around 50 percent between 1959 -- '49 

and '57. So we have monitoring data on many of 

the workers, if not almost all of the workers 

in the later years. This gives us a fair 
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amount of comfort that we know what these 

workers were exposed to with the individual 

monitoring records, and in fact much of the 

site profile -- the 250 pages of site profile 

would not be relevant to many of these workers 

if we indeed have their -- almost their entire 

monitoring history. We're really just filling 

in some gaps, and in some cases may be no gaps. 

Now I mentioned the urine program was not a 

weekly/monthly type thing. I think if you look 

at this and add up the number of samples 

compared to the number of workers, you end up 

with maybe a couple of samples per year for a 

worker or something to that effect. But 

anyways, you have data. So if we have several 

urine samples per year on a worker, that is 

sufficient for us to bracket the worker's 

exposure to uranium in the plant. It doesn't 

matter to us -- at least the way we do this -- 

if there were incidents. The incidents are 

covered in the urine monitoring program. They 

would show up, and we can say that if the 

person was excreting this amount of uranium in 

their urine, then there is no way that an 

incident could have moved them above that 
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level, given certain constraints. So we intend 

to take advantage of that in this profile. 

Okay, this gets into chapter -- section six 

that talks about how you do these radioactive 

intakes and dose, and this is really where -- 

how do you use these tables that are in the 

back. You have these tables that delineate 

dust concentrations by facility by year. 

There's also tables that delineate intakes by 

year for urine. If you -- if you look, you can 

get -- based on the urine data that were 

available, ORAU went back and modeled what the 

intake per year would be in these facilities -- 

again, based on the urine samples that were 

available. This gives one the ability to 

compare intake per year based on urine, based 

on air sample, to get a feel that they're both 

in the same ball park. That will become 

important as I finish up my presentation to 

address this data integrity issue, I believe. 

This area here, the estimated intake using 

time-weighted daily average exposure, that is 

what is used. The time-weighted daily 

exposures, we know from the Bethlehem Steel 

era, is really just what was a person exposed 
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to throughout the duration of the day, not the 

peak concentration. And it's a way to get more 

accurate depiction of what a worker's intake 

was during the year -- or during the day. 

This needs to be looked at. We -- we -- if we 

only have these data here, without anything to 

bracket it using the urine data, then we agree 

with SC&A's assertion that the 95th percentile 

is more appropriate. If one, however, has 

urine data to help bracket the intakes, then 

we're not certain that then one really needs to 

go to the level of -- of using the 95th 

percentile, although -- you know, when there is 

a doubt, we will certainly err on the side of 

the claimant and be favorable and increase the 

dose. 

And again, these are how to use these tables 

where you have maybe spotty gaps in the data. 

They're instructions about how one would fill 

in those blanks. 

Okay, external dose is a very similar thing, 

although I will state that the external 

dosimetry section right now has sort of some 

bold letters on top that says right now do not 

use a surrogate -- do not use the data that's 
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in these tables for -- for anything other than 

limited dose reconstructions. And the reason 

is that ORAU has not yet completed the 

evaluation of the -- of the composite external 

dosimetry data that are available. I mentioned 

there were a large number of external dosimetry 

results -- I've forgotten how many -- the 

annual results by year, but the large number of 

results have not been tabulated and put into 

distributions usable by dose reconstructors. 

There are some data in there that give you a 

feel for what the doses may have been by 

facility, but we believe -- to do a better job 

-- those things need to be filled out in more 

detail and that's currently ongoing. 

I did mention, though, that this does not 

preclude us from doing dose reconstructions for 

workers who we happen to have complete 

monitoring data for. Again, the only reason 

one would use those surrogate tables is when 

you have an unmonitored worker, and in most of 

the time frames we have monitoring data for the 

vast majority of the workers. 

Okay. There are some indi-- there's some data 

in there about what type of exposure geometries 
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to use by job category, whether it's locational 

or anterior/posterior, isotropic, that sort of 

thing. And photon energy ranges are defaulted, 

as I mentioned, to three -- 30 -- 30 to 250 

keV. 

 Other external exposures, there's not much in 

here. I mentioned extremity dosimetry was not 

very prevalent, almost no data in that area. 

Submersion in a cloud we believe is only 

relevant to reconstruction of surficial organs, 

and that would be handled on a case-by-case 

basis. And the shallow dose -- right now there 

are beta dose windows that we believe are -- 

accurately depict the beta dose and we're 

taking those at face value and assigning them 

for shallow dose. 

Okay. A little bit at the end of the 

presentation about these data integrity issues 

that have been raised, and this is going to be 

discussed in more detail in Larry Elliott's 

presentation tomorrow, but I thought I'd 

briefly touch on it 'cause it certainly is 

relevant to our ability to reconstruct these 

doses. 

It was raised by the Special Exposure Cohort 
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petitioners, there's a couple issues, I mention 

two of them here. One was the practice of 

recording zero exposures for workers when -- 

when they were monitored, and our 

interpretation of that is they were not -- high 

values were not made zero, but they were 

recorded as zero if they were not monitored. 

 Internal Mallinckrodt regarding hiding worker 

exposure results, there's the Mont Mason 

information that talks about maybe not 

reporting something to the workers because it 

might upset them, or something to that effect. 

These things, in and of themselves, are 

disturbing. But we believe, given the amount 

of data and the variety of data that we have 

after 1948, that we have sufficient data to 

evaluate the concern. And otherwise, to do a 

validation almost of the datasets to make 

ourselves feel comfortable that we're not 

missing large chunks. Now I have a very brief 

example here to show you -- I hope you can see 

it. 

This is a hypothetical example. I was hoping 

to have a real world example based on 

Mallinckrodt. I didn't have time to get it 
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together. But we have -- there's three types 

of data, and I mentioned this at the last 

meeting. You could have air monitoring data, 

you can have urine monitoring data, and you 

also have the source term data. What happened 

at the plant, what type of mechanical equipment 

was there to generate airborne, that stuff. 

And one can -- can compare these three values 

to see that one has a consistent picture. Now 

I'm not suggesting that on a -- on a week-byweek basis, or even a month-by-month basis, but 

on an annual basis I think if we take the 

aggregate data, one can make a comparison. And 

again, I just made this up, so this is not a 

real plant six example, but let's say for 

instance that we had time-weighted air 

concentration data that tended to look like 

this, that started in '49 and trended down in 

'56 and we would think great, you know, 

engineering controls are being put in place. 

Maybe things are going down and everything's 

hunky-dory. 

Now we'll go look at the urine data and we see 

the urine data is indicating that the picocurie 

per year intake based on the available data is 
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way up here. Well, that would certainly raise 

a flag in my mind because it's almost 

impossible for these data to be lower -- to be 

-- this data to be lower than these data, for 

many reasons, as I mentioned. 

Now if we took a source term evaluation and 

compared it -- for instance, what were they 

doing -- there -- there are guidance documents 

out there such as new Reg. 1400 that were 

really there to say when do you need an air 

monitoring program, but one can sort of 

reverse-engineer the calculations and say what 

would be my predicted range of concentrations -

- and I apologize, I don't have uncertainties 

on here because this is a made-up example, but 

we could certainly do that -- and compare these 

two values, the source term, the urine and -- 

and the air data, and say do we have a problem. 

And this, in my mind, would clearly indicate 

that we have a huge issue. Something happened 

here to artificially lower -- lower the air 

sample data. 

So we can go through, based on these picocurie 

per year intake evaluations that have been done 

for the various plants to see at least if 
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they're consistent in the right area. They're 

not going to be perfect. I cannot guarantee 

that there wasn't one sample that has been 

discounted or something to that effect, but it 

at least gives you a feel that there was not a 

wholesale ignoring of important data or hiding 

or reporting things as zero that were very 

significant. 

So that -- that's the intent of what I wanted 

to talk about here. We have not done this yet. 

We certainly intend to go back and do this and 

demonstrate that we were comfortable with the 

datasets that we do have. 

Okay. With that, I think I've concluded my 

presentation. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Jim. I think 

we'll open this for questions and then we'll 

proceed. 

 Okay, Mark -- Mark Griffon. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I feel bad you didn't get any 

questions. 

DR. NETON: I was going to say, you weren't 

going to let me get off that easy, Mark. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Everybody's getting a little 

tired. 
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 The film badge data, I'm curious if you have -- 

you said annual roll-up data. Do you have the 

monthly data, also, or is it only the annual 

roll-up data available? 

DR. NETON: I think -- I don't think the 

monthly data are coded. Tim, do you know any 

more on the monthly data? I wish I knew. I 

believe that the data exists somewhere, but we 

have not -- they're not coded, they're not 

available at this time, but I think -- I think 

-- I need to check on this, but I'm pretty sure 

we do. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I guess another --

DR. NETON: I'm sorry, Dick -- Dick Toohey 

seems to --

 DR. ZIEMER: Dick Toohey is approaching the 

mike, ORAU. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Let me preface this answer with a 

well-known phrase, to the best of my knowledge 

and belief, we have the monthly data and it is 

being entered. And you know, it was in hard 

copy form so it's being entered into the 

spreadsheets, so it's not yet analyzed and able 

to be used for dose reconstruction, but it is 

on hand. 
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DR. NETON: Thanks. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Follow-up, Mark? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, not -- not so much -- kind 

of a different topic. On the -- you mentioned 

the urinalysis data. All -- all of that is 

uranium -- total uranium data or gross alpha or 

what -- what --

DR. NETON: Yeah, it's uranium data -- it's 

fluorometric, so it's a mass measurement, 

micrograms per liter, that sort of thing. It's 

a standard fluorometric technique. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And they -- and they didn't do 

any measurements for the other contaminants 

that you mentioned other than the breath radon 

for radium. 

DR. NETON: That's correct, the breath radon 

was measured for radium, so -- I think I know 

where you're driving here is we don't -- we 

don't have any bioassay data for the -- the 

daughter products that would have been 

concentrated in the waste streams, but we do 

have air data that was measured for alpha dpm 

per cubic meter, and the profile goes through 

and guides the dose reconstructor as to what 

ratios one should assume in those alpha dpm per 
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cubic meter measurements. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Based -- based on source -- 

source term percentages and -- yeah. 

DR. NETON: Source term percentages, but 

there's also the issue -- I know that the 

sperry cake issue, which is the reprocessing of 

some of the sperry cake to get the thorium 230 

for Mound -- I believe that's what it was for. 

Those ratios are somewhat different and we do 

have available data, and I know that Mark has 

some of those references, as to what the 

isotopic compensation of the sperry cake were. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I -- I actually just got 

these references. Janet Westbrook did follow 

up and -- from a -- I guess that was a 

workgroup call, I'm not sure what -- anyway, I 

had requested references on the concentrations 

of these other contaminants in the sperry cake 

and the airport cake, and I have them now. And 

I do have a question on some of -- I -- I'm 

wondering -- the sperry ca-- maybe you can 

speak to the sperry cake and airport cake and 

where that might have been an issue at the 

plant. Was it only in one area of one 

building, was it -- how -- how -- where and how 
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might it have --

DR. NETON: Yeah, I wish I could speak more 

intelligently about that. It was an effluent 

stream. I don't know that they had more than 

one sperry cake filter area, that would be my 

guess but I really don't know. Janet Westbrook 

would probably know better. It did end up 

going out to the St. Louis Airport site, but I 

-- I can't tell you exactly how widespread it 

was. I think it was relegated to one 

particular plant, but I need to check the 

profile and talk to Janet. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, let me ask a question that 

pertains to the Mallinckrodt monitoring data 

but may also apply to other sites, as well. 

Most of this time period, the late '40's, early 

'50's, I think the regs still were addressing 

perhaps weekly limits, something like that, as 

opposed to annual limits. I don't even recall 

when the switch-over occurred. But many sites, 

once they established that they had met a 

weekly limit, they felt they were pretty well 

done. And I've seen sites where they really 

didn't keep track of -- in fact, they would 

assign a badge number of some -- to a different 
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person with the same badge number and so on. 

Do you run across that in a site like this or 

are you able to uniquely identify -- is there a 

consistency where workers, for example, get the 

same badge number each month or week -- 

DR. NETON: I don't know about the exact same 

badge number, but we do have indications that 

the workers were monitored -- in fact, there 

are assertions in documents at Mallinckrodt 

that anyone who entered the Manhattan 

Engineering District area, the proc-- what we 

would call the process area, was required to be 

badged, visitors included. So all worker -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Did they maintain, for example, 

annual totals on them, even though that wasn't 

required, and... 

DR. NETON: I can't answer that directly. I 

know that we have the annual totals. I don't 

think that they were added up from the 

individual data because then we would have had 

it computerized. So they were added up at one 

point. Now I don't know whether that was done 

retrospectively by Mallinckrodt or not. But 

you're right, the exposure was 300 millirem per 

-- per month --
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 DR. ZIEMER: Per month. 

DR. NETON: -- in those time periods. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Mark? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Just a question, Jim, on the -- 

could you describe the -- I mean I don't know 

if it was the same over the -- I guess the main 

question is over the '49 to '55 or '57 time 

period, the -- the bioassay program for the 

uranium, what frequency of sampling -- I think 

they did Monday morning -- could you just 

expand on a little bit of (unintelligible). 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I can only tell you that it 

certainly wasn't like a monthly sampling 

program. It was -- it was quarterly, at best, 

to my knowledge, from what I've seen in the 

reports. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Mostly annual, is that -- 

DR. NETON: Some annual, some quarterly, maybe 

bi-annual, but it was considered a routine 

program. Now just because it was annual 

doesn't mean we can't do anything with it. In 

fact, that actually drives up our -- our missed 

dose estimates because you would then have to 

assume that, you know, when -- what the chronic 

exposure was that could result in an annual 
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exposure below that value. But yeah, I don't 

think more than a couple times a year was 

probably the average for workers, at most. It 

wasn't -- it wasn't what you consider like a -- 

a contemporary program today where you'd have a 

monthly urine sample that was taken after the 

end of the -- the weekend, that sort of thing. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Did -- did you interview any 

workers on -- on the bioassay practices, former 

workers, claimants? I think it -- I -- I think 

the TBD or the -- the site profile mentioned 

Monday morning sampling before they went on 

their shift, which -- which is understandable. 

DR. NETON: Right. Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I'm just wondering if -- you 

know, if they -- I've heard some stories, not 

necessarily at Mallinckrodt but other plants 

where they say they'd have a -- you know, 

they'd be off on vacation for two, three weeks, 

then they'd come back and that'd be the first 

thing they'd do, so I just wonder if -- you 

know. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I don't recall that ORAU or 

NIOSH has interviewed the workers on the urine 

program. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Dr. Melius. 

 DR. MELIUS: I've been puzzled by your last two 

slides, which is this presentation of this sort 

of hypothetical approach that you might use to 

address some of the data integrity issues 

raised by the petitioners, I believe -- 

DR. NETON: Uh-huh. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- if I understood that -- 

DR. NETON: Right. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- correctly. And if I understood 

you also correctly, you've not really ever -- 

you haven't done this yet. 

DR. NETON: That's correct. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. And theoretically, if you 

did do this, one could -- and found a 

discrepancy of -- of the type you show in your 

hypothetical slide there, hypothetical example, 

one could make an adjustment, but one could 

also end up with a situation where the 

discrepancies were so great that one would -- 

that would in fact support the charge by the 

petitioners and say that look, the data here is 

so terrible or whatever that we can't pretend 

to understand it. I mean I just don't quite 

understand the point of presenting a 
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hypothetical example of what you haven't done 

to supposedly explain the proc-- 

DR. NETON: I think this was -- this was 

presented in the original SEC -- and we're 

getting more into the SEC petition evaluation, 

but in the original SEC petition, when we got 

to the 1946 through '48 time frame -- '47, '48 

time frame -- we had monitoring data, but we 

didn't have a good handle -- there weren't 

sufficient monitoring data to bounce one 

against the other to validate that the data 

seemed appropriate. So it's our contention 

that in this time frame we do have sufficient 

data to do that. You're right, we have not 

done the analysis yet. I can say that we don't 

expect this to be the case -- I don't want to 

prejudge, but it appears from what we've seen 

so far, there's not been a detailed statistical 

analysis done, but from looking at the data, 

they appear consistent in the profile such that 

the intake per year based on urine data -- and 

it's in the profile, you can look at it -- and 

the intake per year based on the air monitoring 

data appear to be very consistent. I didn't 

want to show up here with a very incomplete 
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statistical analysis, so I -- I've just 

presented what -- what we will do with the -- 

with the analysis. 

 DR. MELIUS: With all due respect, I mean I 

just -- I mean it's very sort of misleading and 

confusing. I mean you either present the real 

data and let us evaluate it or don't present 

anything -- or leave it to the petition review 

-- evaluation review tomorrow, but I just -- I 

don't see what purpose this serves. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Other comments 

or questions? 

PRESENTATION BY SC&A 

Thank you, Jim. Then we'll proceed with the 

presentation by our contractor, SCA. Board 

members should have actually received that 

report -- well, you had the slides. The report 

itself was distributed earlier, some -- many 

that -- do we have the over-- the overheads? 

 DR. WADE: Yes, we have. They've been 

distributed. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Dr. Makhijani is going to 

make the presentation. Arjun, are you set to 

go? 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Mr. Chairman, members of the 
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Board, may I ask Dr. Neton a question -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Of course. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- about one of the charts? 

Dr. Neton, in the urinalysis -- in the chart 

where you had number of workers and number of 

urinalysis, were -- were those numbers of 

urinalyses per year or -- I didn't -- 

DR. NETON: No, I believe they were individual 

urinaly--

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, they were individuals who 

were monitored, so we can -- 

DR. NETON: No, no, they were individual 

samples, I believe. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: They were the number of samples 

and not the number of workers -- 

DR. NETON: Wait, wait, wait, wait -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- who were monitored. 

DR. NETON: -- I need to look at the slide 

again. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. It's -- it's -- 

DR. NETON: It's been a long day and I 

apologize. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: It's this one (indicating). 

DR. NETON: No, this is the number monitored, 

not the number of samples. 
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 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. Thank you. 

DR. NETON: That's correct, because there are 

many more samples than that. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. Thanks. I'm sorry, I 

was just -- I needed that clarification. 

We prepared this with my colleague, Tom Bell, 

who's not here. The background to this is -- 

this is the supplemental review -- if I could 

have the next slide -- of Revision 01. We gave 

you the review of Revision -- of the basic 

document, of Revision 0 in your St. Louis 

meeting in February. You know about the 

downtown site so I won't -- won't go over what 

Dr. Neton went through already. Next slide, 

please. 

We -- the background to this review is we began 

reviewing this shortly after the site profile 

was published, according to the direction of 

the Board. That was about in mid-March. We 

were asked to provide an early draft so we 

could get some feedback from the subcommittee 

and from NIOSH, which we did on the 5th of 

April. 

We provided the version you have for the full 

Board on April 18th. Since we were doing this 
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in parallel with the Iowa, which was a new 

document entirely, it was a very crushed 

schedule. We did not have time and it slipped 

-- actually to review some of the documents in 

the six -- five or six boxes that we were sent 

on CD. Subsequently Tom Bell and I reviewed 

some of those documents and I'll present a 

slide of some of the -- brief overview 

regarding the -- some of the documents in those 

boxes. 

Our review objectives were a little bit more 

compressed than our normal objectives. We made 

a comparison of our recommendations. If you'll 

go to the next slide, please. We -- we made a 

comparison of what we had recommended and found 

in Revision 0, evaluated NIOSH's response and 

evaluated the adequacy of data. We broke that 

up into two periods, 1942 to 1948 and 1949 to 

1957. 

In your -- in the report that you have there 

are three places where this time period is kind 

of addressed in a compressed summary form that 

might be useful to you that I might point out. 

In the preface I listed the sections. In the 

old review of Revision 0 and in this review 
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where we address '49 to '57, that might be 

useful for you. There are also bullet points 

in a summary table in the front of the review 

that you just have. There's a kind of a 

gridded table. They're not all called out by 

years, but where you don't see '42 to '48 

explicitly, you should generally assume that it 

would apply to '49-'57 and if there are any 

questions, I'd be happy to clarify. Next 

slide, please. 

 This revision did have a significant number of 

strengths, and I would agree with Dr. Neton, it 

really is much expanded. It's basically the 

same format, but there's a lot more detail. I 

also agree that section five contains a lot 

more data there. There's much more early data. 

There's been a very good compilation of data 

from the '42 to '48 years. There -- a very 

useful discussion of radiological conditions, 

more information on film badge type. We had 

said that there should be an approach defining 

surrogate worker cohorts and an approach has 

been described, with some limitations that I'll 

get into. And of course there are the new 

sections on the St. Louis Airport storage site 
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and on the decommissioning period. There are 

also important questions of detail. There were 

the questions of geometric standard deviations 

in Revision 0 that we had pointed out, air 

concentrations of Mallinckrodt versus AEC that 

have been partially addressed. And there are 

all those tables of isotopic ratios that I 

think would be very useful if the areas can be 

identified. Next slide, please. 

I give you a brief overview of the weaknesses 

that we found for the early period. Now I 

think Dr. Neton actually addressed all of this, 

so I would -- I would just not focus that much 

on this slide in that, as you will see in the 

report, we had said that the early period data 

can be used for minimum dose calculations for 

compensation but not for anything else. And if 

I understood Dr. Neton properly, they are going 

to amend the TBD with a page change saying that 

that's what the early data can be used for and 

not for the reasonable claimant-favorable doses 

or maximum doses. And we would be in agreement 

with that. That is in our report, that -- that 

early data can be used for that. So we would 

withdraw this criticism with -- with the new 
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information that I just heard. I mean we stand 

by the report that we have given you and we're 

pleased that Dr. Neton said that they're going 

to change the site profile. 

The 1949 to '57 period had a sort of longer 

list of weaknesses. NIOSH did not address a 

number of the key issues that we raised in 

Revision 0 to produce claimant-favorable doses. 

The question of oro-nasal breathing, the choice 

of solubility when using urinalysis data, the 

general use of Mallinckrodt versus AEC data in 

a claimant-favorable way, taking expert input 

on which jobs were heavy where the larger 

breathing rate of -- would -- should be taken 

into account for specific situations and 

specific jobs, potential for intakes through 

cuts and burns -- there are a number of issues 

of detail, some of which might apply to 

particular areas and some of which apply to the 

whole plant, that are still not addressed. 

There's a very significant question of 

incidents that is not addressed as to how the 

doses are going to be calculated from the 

incidents that are listed. The TBD is much 

stronger in that it actually talks about many 
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of the incidents, but dose calculation 

procedures are not specified in the TBD. 

Now in the supplement to the SEC evaluation 

report NIOSH actually describes a potential 

method to calculate doses from blowouts, and 

I'll address that in a separate slide. So we 

actually evaluated a little bit more than the 

TBD so we could take into account all the 

analytical procedures that NIOSH has set forth 

so you would have as much of that before you as 

possible. 

We -- the -- the radon adequacy -- there is a 

lot more radon data, but there are some 

questions about radon data adequacy that need 

to be more fully addressed. Specifically 

there's a document from Mallinckrodt itself 

that questions the adequacy of radon data for 

dose reconstruction purposes up to 1955. That 

-- that really needs to be analyzed better than 

the TBD would -- would lead us to believe, and 

I have some other remarks on radon data a 

little bit later. 

 In the internal dose in this period I would 

agree that there are quite a lot of data, and I 

had not seen some of the specific numbers that 
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were put up by Dr. Neton, but I was aware that 

there is quite a lot of information. There is 

the question of the interpretation of that 

external dose information, which I'll mention 

briefly as I go along. 

The question of the surrogate cohort 

determination is statistically a difficult one, 

and the site profile has still not specified a 

method. I know that there are tables in which 

categories are specified, but when you -- when 

you don't have certain kinds of information for 

a particular claimant, the site profile doesn't 

give you much indication as to how to proceed, 

and this -- this matter will consider -- 

concern survivor claimants somewhat more 

strongly than worker or employee claimants. 

And then there's the question of the timeweighting of the air data. Now as Dr. Neton 

has indicated, we did have a conference call 

with -- with NIOSH and some members of the 

Board, and -- and NIOSH did indicate that some 

of the issues, like the 95 percent values in 

the absence of other information, oro-nasal 

breathing and so on NIOSH is addressing on a 

generic basis and we're pleased that they're 
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doing that. They're not currently addressed in 

the site profile, but I -- but SC&A does want 

to recognize that NIOSH has said that they are 

addressing these issues. However, they're not 

currently available for dose reconstruction for 

Mallinckrodt claimants. Next slide, please. 

The question of time-weighting is very 

important and broadly applicable. We discussed 

it briefly a little bit in another context, but 

I thought to go a little bit more deeply here 

and actually do a sample calculation for you to 

give you an idea of what the range of numbers 

involved is. 

The Atomic Energy Commission did some time 

studies. The early -- this was a lot for 

industrial hygiene purposes, to install 

ventilation equipment, to reduce dust in the 

work place and so on. They had a number of 

these studies. There are -- so each operation 

was -- was timed, the -- some -- some air 

concentration samples were taken. Generally 

the number of air concentration samples were 

quite small. Some were breathing zone samples. 

We've had a discussion about characterizing 

those, but we have not specifically taken it up 
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in this context and I won't do that again 

today. If you go to the next slide I can give 

you a little view of the calculation that I 

did. There's a table in the report that goes 

into this in more detail. 

We did some calculations for this job category 

called bomb chargers. There's several type of 

jobs that are specified under bomb chargers. 

The bomb -- when you mix the -- mix the uranium 

tetrafluoride with magnesium flakes and there's 

an intimate mixture and that was put into a 

furnace and heated, and then at a certain 

temperature the uranium tetrafluoride is 

reduced to uranium metal and the magnesium 

flakes become magnesium fluoride. So the 

fluorene goes over from the uranium into the 

magnesium and you get uranium metal. And so 

this was the time-weighting data for the bomb 

chargers operation, so the mixing operation, 

the loading of the furnace, air concentrations 

while the furnace was not in oper-- was in 

operation, not in operation, so all of those 

detailed data are given in your report. I can 

point you to the page number if you'd like -- 

if you'd like to go to the report and refer to 
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the data. They are on page -- they're toward 

the end of -- on -- they're on page 28 of your 

report. There's a table there that will show 

you all of the data, and then there's the 

minutes per task and the total minutes per day. 

And there's a typical day of 495 minutes for 

this type of job category that is spelled out 

there, and I -- this is basically a 

reproduction from the background documents for 

this one item. 

This one item is listed in -- in the Technical 

Basis Document as one of the time-weighted 

average concentrations. So what I did 

basically is I took the first operation which 

lasts only one and a half minutes, mixing -- 

but it's 12 -- it occurs 12 times per day, for 

a total of 18 minutes, and I said suppose you 

ignore the uncertainties for all of the other 

operations, but just take into account the 

uncertainty for this one operation. I also 

postulated that since the worker would do it 

many times, they're not trying to go out into 

the tail of the distribution of the individual 

air concentration, which would be a rather 

large number, but I tried to calculate -- I 
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calculated the 95 percentile -- 95 percent 

upper confidence limit for the average of what 

the worker would experience. 

 Now normally that might not deviate a lot from 

the actual straight -- straight average, 

lognormal average. However, in this case, 

because we have very few measurements -- as you 

can see, for the mixing we have only three air 

measurements -- you cannot actually develop a 

very good statistical distribution so you have 

to make allowance for the fact of the small 

number of measurements, and because of the 

small number of measurements, when you calcu-- 

and the higher spread in the air 

concentrations, just the uncertainty for the 

mixing operation leads to a total intake that 

is two -- nearly two and a half times, two -- 

2.4 times the time-weighted average intake. So 

you can see the uncertainty makes an enormous 

amount of difference. 

In some operations, like the lunch room or the 

locker room and so on, the uncertainty doesn't 

make a lot of difference 'cause the air 

concentrations are quite low. But if you take 

the uncertainty in the air concentrations when 
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the furnace is operating, that itself leads to 

a total -- by -- alone, one uncertainty alone 

leads to a total intake which is 3.4 times at 

the 95 percentile upper confidence limit than 

this great average. So it's very essential to 

actually compute the 95 percentile -- 95 

percent upper confidence limit in order to 

resolve these uncertainties in a claimantfavorable way. Unfortunately it turns out that 

when you have a small number of measurements, 

this is not an easy thing to do, so we didn't 

try to -- you know, we didn't have the time 

actually to develop a full methodology. And in 

any case, this may be beyond our charge, but we 

did try to do some illustrative calculations as 

to why this is essential, and -- and we're glad 

that NIOSH is -- is looking into it. Next 

slide, please. Next slide. 

I think I've gone over this one, so we can -- 

essentially the -- the -- it's very important 

to -- can you go back? Maybe I didn't go over 

it well enough. Thank you, Kathy. 

So it -- the basic recommendation remains the 

same from before, that it is very important to 

develop these uncertainties. The one 
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difficulty that I'd like to point out in this 

context is that there are some special 

difficulties that arise in relation to survivor 

claimants. As I mentioned in the context of 

Iowa, as well, this is -- because when you need 

the job descriptions, often the families may 

not have the detailed job description and the 

job histories so you -- coworker data and 

interviews are absolutely essential, and -- and 

as far as we understood from the task three 

report, coworker interviews have rarely been 

conducted. As of January I believe 12 in the 

whole nuclear weapons complex from the 

applications that have been evaluated. Next 

slide, please. 

We evaluated the proposed method for 

calculating doses from blowouts. That is when 

-- when this reduction takes place, because 

it's an exothermic reaction, it liberates heat. 

In going from uranium tetrafluoride to metal, 

it happens very suddenly. It's already a very 

high temperature. This kind of accident was 

not only common at Mallinckrodt, it also 

occurred at Fernald and it -- not only in the 

beginning of the operation. This -- this was -
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- this was a continuing difficulty. 

NIOSH has proposed a method in that they've 

said that they can -- they can go to the first 

day after the urinalysis and assume that the 

blowout happened then and produce a claimantfavorable way of actually calculating that. 

And of course if there were just one blowout 

and no other exposures of any other solubility 

type than the single solubility type of uranium 

tetrafluoride, you could actually do the 

calculation in this way, provided the 

urinalyses were frequent enough. So there are 

a lot of provisos in this. So theoretically 

it's not an implausible approach, but can it be 

applied to the situation of Mallinckrodt. 

 The blowouts were -- did happen fairly 

frequently. I don't know what is the frequency 

of the blowout but certainly in some periods 

they would have happened more than once every 

three or six months, which is the frequency of 

urinalysis. So you have the question of what 

happens if you have multiple blowouts. 

Blowouts were not -- also were not the only 

type of accident. You also had uranium fires 

and that would generate some amount of type S 
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material, which is insoluble material, and so 

you'd have inhalation of insoluble material 

from incidents mixed up with type M material, 

which is more soluble, and the urinalysis data 

would be quite hard to interpret. 

Another problem is that the main intake is 

uranium tetrafluoride. Then you have most of 

the material that has been excreted rather 

rapidly in days and weeks, and what remains 

over a long period of time is a small amount of 

the uranium that would be deposited in the 

bone. And then you have very slow excretion 

from that that doesn't look that different from 

type S material. So the interpretation of this 

urine data in terms of actually relating it to 

blowouts would seem to be extremely difficult, 

even if you knew the dates of the blowouts and 

the frequency of the blowouts. That would be 

maybe possible to establish for employee 

claimants if they remembered when the blowouts 

would be. That's also a long time, but at 

least more plausible. I think it would be very 

questionable or very difficult, at least, in 

the case of survivor claimants because I can't 

imagine any way that the survivor claimants 
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would be able to provide data on what might 

have happened in regard to incidents. 

And so while the question -- the method 

proposed is, on its face, theoretically 

plausible, the number of difficulties for 

actually applying this to a practical dose 

reconstruction and -- and Dr. Neton pointed out 

that the TBD has to be interpreted in the 

context of actual dose reconstruction, but Dr. 

Neton, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't believe 

that an actual method has been developed for -- 

for a -- for this in terms of applying to any 

dose reconstruction. Am I right about that? 

DR. NETON: Not exactly. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. 

DR. NETON: This is a --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: That's what I understood. 

DR. NETON: This is a standard technique that 

one uses to bracket the dose -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. 

DR. NETON: -- from an intake --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, yeah -- so --

DR. NETON: -- and I just do want to say that 

it's irrelevant whether there are multiple 

blowouts or not --
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 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. 

DR. NETON: -- the -- if the urine sample 

represents a time interval of the exposure to 

the person --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. 

DR. NETON: -- from the date of the incident or 

any -- from the previous sample to the current. 

So whether there's three or four or ten 

blowouts in that time period does not really 

come into play here. That's not correct, what 

you stated. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, as I -- as I pointed out, 

in order to separate the various classes of 

material, if you're going to have a urinalysis 

that's very infrequent, it's very difficult to 

actually separate the intake from type M 

material and type S material. And because 

there's intakes of type S material, both from 

incidents and -- and routine intakes, actually 

coming up with a method for a claimantfavorable calculation that could be done, would 

in my -- in our opinion be -- be rather 

difficult, and I think the applicability -- as 

I've said, this method is theoretically 

plausible. It's not an incorrect method. This 
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can be applied to generate numbers. Whether it 

can be applied to generate numbers in the case 

of -- of Mallinckrodt with the frequency of 

data that exists and the variety of 

solubilities that were taken in by workers is -

- is questionable at the present time, in our 

view, and we would like to see the actual 

application of this to the circumstance -- 

circumstances of Mallinckrodt, especially as -- 

if six-month samples or annual samples, three 

months at best, is -- was the state of 

bioassay, then it would be complex. Next 

slide, please. 

 The external dose, the -- I gave an example of 

a situation where there's a lack of adequate 

shielding, and the question arises, as it did 

in Iowa -- you know, where the pits are close 

to the pelvic area and the badges were worn on 

the collar or the pocket -- there's a question 

of the organs that are being exposed. And 

there's a fair -- very good discussion in the 

TBD about installing shielding around digester 

tanks during pitchblende processing, and the 

question has arisen as to whether the film 

badge data would adequately capture the 
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geometry of the exposure, and we do think that 

NIOSH needs to characterize the geometry of the 

exposure -- this would not apply to all 

workers. They'd apply to the specific workers 

who were involved in pitchblende processing and 

in those particular digester tank areas. There 

would be other areas where similar geometry 

issues may arise and we have not had the chance 

to do full evaluation. 

In our review of Revision 0 we'd also raised 

some questions in regard to the interpretation 

of film badge data, the two-element film 

badges. NIOSH has provided more information on 

these film badges, but we just have not had the 

time to actually finish our analysis as to what 

we would recommend regarding the interpretation 

of film badge data and what needs to be done to 

properly interpret it. This would be something 

that Dr. Behling would have attended to. And 

as you know, it's just been a pretty crushing 

amount of work to do and we didn't want to 

prematurely say something and then not be on 

the mark. So that's why that -- that -- that 

piece of work is unfortunately not -- not yet 

complete. Next slide, please. 
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Tom Bell and I did a brief review of the 

documents. I made some notes on some of these 

documents, and Tom did, too. I -- so I decided 

to make a little bit of a slide. NIOSH has 

said that much of the data is captured in the 

existing TBD. Some of the data from 1953 to 

'58 are not captured and are going to be put in 

the revision of the site profile, so we did 

this brief review. 

I was able to confirm that some of the data I 

looked at were in the TBD. Please bear in mind 

it's very difficult to actually go through this 

data, which is raw -- raw -- quite a bit of raw 

data and relate it to what's in the TBD, which 

are a lot of average data -- averages with 

geometric standard deviations, intake 

calculations and so forth, so it's not a 

straightforward matter to actually make sure 

that this -- these data are incorporated. 

I looked at some of the external dose data -- 

now this would be useful only for surrogate 

data. If you have of course external dose data 

for a worker that are complete, then -- then 

some of these issues don't -- don't enter. But 

Table 33 on external dose does not have 1949 to 
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1952 data and including 1949 to 1952 data that 

are in these boxes, and I've been able to 

identify a couple of documents in this regard. 

And NIOSH has noted that some of -- the '53 to 

'57 documents are not yet incorporated. But 

one of the things that struck me in this review 

was that in the external dose data in this 

period there were a number of documents that 

actually only listed the job categories for the 

high exposures, above 200 or 300 millirep for a 

two-week period. So it's not clear how you can 

actually use this to marry it with job category 

data in order to come up with an actual profile 

of a particular job category in relation to the 

external doses. For some -- for some badge 

periods there are no job category data because 

all were below 300 milliroentgen in the badge 

readings. The -- so the job categories are 

there only for a small proportion of the data 

in the documents that I reviewed and I did 

review several of them. These documents are 

typically like 80, 90, 100, 100-plus pages. 

I reviewed a document in relation to radon. 

The last but one bullet, I'm sorry, has a typo. 

It says Table 26. It should say Table 25 of 
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the site profile, it's not Table 26. I 

apologize for the error. 

I tried to compare this document with Table 25 

for this particular -- this document relates to 

radon in the cloth storage room. I've given 

you the document number. I found that the site 

profile had actually averaged a number of 

different places in this general area. The --

the average given in the site profile is seven 

picocuries per liter, .07 time ten to the minus 

ten. The average for a five-month period from 

August 1st to December in this document was 

given as 0.5 times ten to the minus ten, or 

about seven times the average, but only for the 

cloth storage room. And this raised a question 

in my mind as to how the averaging of radon 

data is being done and whether we know which 

specific workers spent how much time in which 

of these areas. Now this is just one line item 

in the site profile that reads 

Feinc/Filter/Cloth Storage Room in Niagara C-3* 

and so on, and so it seems to be an aggregate 

of datapoints into a single average with a very 

large geometric standard deviation of 5.8. And 

then I could not exactly match it up with this 
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-- it may be inclusive or not inclusive -- it 

certainly raised a question in my mind as to 

how these averages in the site profile are 

being used and whether they are claimantfavorable. We just did not have time to go 

through the very large amount of air 

concentration data to do an evaluation. 

Let me sum up for you -- next slide, please. 

The -- we've already dealt with the early dose 

question, so I think we have some resolution 

there. There have been many improvements and 

much added data in Revision 01 of the site 

profile. We still believe -- SC&A still 

believes that there are a significant number of 

issues of varying difficulty that remain to be 

resolved before dose reconstruction other than 

a minimum dose can be done for the 1949 to 1957 

period in a reliable way. I'll just tick off 

some of those points for you. 

The question of the integrity of the data on 

dose reconstruction does need to be resolved, a 

hypothetical example notwithstanding. We raise 

this question not in the context of the SEC and 

any legal interpretation. I have come across 

issues of fabricated data in the nuclear 
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weapons complex in other contexts, and 

sometimes data that has no basis, numbers that 

are made up, has a significant effect. And 

sometimes when you evaluate them they don't 

have a significant effect, but you -- on -- on 

the total result, but you do have to make a 

thorough technical evaluation of the issue with 

the information at hand in order to be 

confident that the numbers you're coming up for 

exposures or releases, as the case may be, are 

-- are reliable or bounding, depending on what 

kind of calculation you're trying to do. So 

that's -- that's a piece of work that really 

remains to be done from the point of view of 

dose reconstruction. 

We don't believe that the data for -- for 

incident dose reconstruction is as yet adequate 

in terms of the frequency of incidents and the 

mixtures of the various types of incidents. 

The question of the Mallinckrodt versus the AEC 

data has been addressed for one datapoint only 

but not in general. 

There are a number of issues that I've alluded 

to in regard to survivor claimants that are 

really very important, given that this is a 
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site at which production work stopped in '57 

and there are a number of employees who are -- 

who have passed away. So the question of 

coworker information and job-specific 

information and how all the surrogate data are 

to be applied is extremely important. And 

unless it is resolved, I don't see how those 

dose reconstructions where surrogate data are 

needed and job descriptions are not easily 

available, not in the worker record, would -- 

would be available. Of course if they are 

detailed in the worker record this would be -- 

this would be a different matter, but it's a 

matter that needs to be explicitly addressed. 

 It's mentioned in passing in the report, but I 

just wanted to call it to your attention that -

- that the site profile does contain some 

discussion of -- of quality problems with 

respect to the bioassay data, at least until 

1951. I've cited the pages for you. It is 

worthy of review, partly because we did not 

find how -- how these quality data are resolved 

in terms of actual dose reconstructions. And 

as I said, we haven't had -- had the benefit of 

actually reviewing dose reconstructions so I 
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don't know if they are addressed well or not. 

There are still some specific issues, like 

sperry cake, whose intake potential needs to be 

addressed. We don't have the position that it 

was a big or not a big dose. All -- but we do 

believe that the intake potential from sperry 

cakes, given the specific radionuclides 

involved, does need to be addressed. 

There needs to be a statistical approach to 

cohort definition. 

 And a time-weighting method that is claimantfavorable needs to be developed. 

The report also contains some discussion of 

large particle ingestion which needs to be 

addressed. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. We have a 

little time for questions. Let me begin and 

I'd like to ask maybe both Jim and Arjun to 

help clarify for me this issue on the bioassay. 

My understanding, if you had -- let's say you 

had two bioassay samples, one three months ago, 

and let's say there was nothing there. And now 

we find something. And let's assume there were 

several blowouts in the middle -- or in between 

sometime -- it was my understanding that what 
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NIOSH would do would be to assume the -- 

probably the longest time interval that that 

intake occurred, for example, the next day 

after the clean bioassay, so that there was the 

longest chance for the excretion to get you 

down to where you find the sample, say three 

months later, and that you would select the 

worst solubility class that would deliver the 

highest dose. Am I understanding that 

correctly? 

DR. NETON: That's correct, we would pick the 

excretion curve that maximized the dose between 

those two samples and over-arched any -- you 

know, any --

 MR. GRIFFON: I think --

DR. NETON: -- (unintelligible) the exposure. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think you'd actually pick the -

- if I can clarify quick-- you'd pick the worst 

solubility class --

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- that would define the highest 

intake, and then you might apply a different -- 

DR. NETON: Well, you've got to be careful -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- solubility class to dose 

estimates? 
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DR. NETON: Yeah, you've got to be careful. 

You do a mixture of both. You find the highest 

intake and then use the -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I don't want to confuse people 

(unintelligible). 

DR. NETON: You need to do it both ways, based 

on solu-- the two different solubility classes 

that may be relevant, because you may get a 

higher intake for a radionuclide -- a 

solubility class that gives you a lower dose 

per unit intake, but the intake is much higher, 

that's what you would assume. So we do this 

both ways. We're very -- we do this routinely 

as part of our program. This is not something 

new that we're adding to the Mallinckrodt 

evaluations. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I wanted to make sure I understood 

that because I wasn't quite clear whether -- 

how important it was to know exactly when 

blowouts occurred, if in fact you could bracket 

with a maximizing kind of claimant-friendly 

approach to --

DR. NETON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- to gaining what would have to 

be the maximum intake. 
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DR. NETON: Correct. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, Dr. Ziemer, if -- if you 

were only talking about one type of intake and 

one type of solubility, this would not be an 

issue, as I indicated. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, in fact that's what I'm 

trying to get some additional clarity on. Even 

if there were multiple solubilities, would this 

address that issue? 

DR. NETON: Yes, it would. I mean you would --

you would overestimate the dose -- you know, it 

doesn't matter if you over-- if you -- 

overestimating techniques, you're going to have 

an overestimate of the dose. If you pick the 

worst solubility class and estimate it, that's 

-- you'll end up with the highest estimate of 

the --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Am I to understand you're going 

to apply a -- a class S or a class M, a type S 

or a type M to the urinalysis interpretation 

depending on how long an interval you have, 

because --

DR. NETON: No. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- some of it will depend on 

that. When you have continuous -- when you 
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have continuous intakes, there is no ambiguity 

that when you're going back from urinalysis to 

say air concentrations and intake that you 

would use generally type S 'cause you would get 

-- you know, you would get the lowest excretion 

rate and so on. When you have -- when you have 

incident intakes it does matter when you do the 

urinalysis relative to the intake and what the 

solu-- what solubility assis-- assumption will 

actually maximize your intake. The interval is 

important in that case, so it's not actually a 

straightforward matter to say that you're 

simply going to assume it on the next day or 

the frequency of blowouts doesn't matter, 

because if you do the calculations, the -- for 

incidents, the interval is important. 

The second point is that blowouts don't -- are 

not pure in terms of solubility because you do 

have metal particles that would be blown out 

and that would oxidize along with uranium 

tetrafluoride. And then you have UO2 in the 

site, as well as uranium chip fires, so we 

would -- we're not saying it's not possible to 

do this. We're -- all we're saying is that the 

data and methodological development as 
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presented in the supplement is plausible, but 

not sufficient, in our view, to actually carry 

out -- carry out a practical dose 

reconstruction. We'd like to see that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Dick Toohey. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Yes, I'd like to add some things 

Dr. Neton said and hopefully clarify it, 

although I'll probably muddy the waters a bit. 

The procedure we're talking about in this is 

assuming what the date of the intake could have 

been, the day after the last clean sample, and 

what the solubility class may have been, is 

what we routinely do for internal dose 

assessment for all cases where we are analyzing 

positive bioassay data. And we use the IMBA 

software to run a number of all plausible 

scenarios regarding intake dates and solubility 

classes, and we do not -- we are not interested 

in necessarily maximizing the intake. What we 

do do is find the intake pattern that fits the 

observed data and maximizes the dose to the 

organ for which we are calculating dose. 

Because if that organ is a metabolic versus -- 

or lung, say, then obviously type S, which 

stays in the lung, will be more claimant-
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favorable. If it's a metabolic organ, then a 

more soluble material is more favorable and the 

exact -- we don't know a priori, unless there's 

very good air monitoring data that we can pin 

the date down to, when that intake occurred or 

what the chemical form of the material was. So 

we look at all plausible scenarios with IMBA to 

calculate the most claimant-favorable dose. 

So really the objections you are raising are -- 

are just not relevant. We handle every 

internal dose assessment the same way. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: I do -- we do have some 

questions because if -- if you handle all 

internal dose assessments in the same way, we 

first of all said that in the specific case of 

Mallinckrodt the use of type M solubility was 

mentioned in Revision 0 and that this needed to 

be changed. It wasn't changed and -- but 

you've now agreed that this -- this -- this -- 

this is being done. It was not clear -- to us, 

anyway -- that in going back from urinalysis to 

intakes and to organs that the most favorable 

solubility assumptions are actually being used. 

DR. NETON: I think that was a 
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misinterpretation of Table 28 that lists type M 

material as an example, because we believe as a 

dose reconstructor that would be the most 

commonly encountered form of uranium in certain 

areas. But clearly in the earlier part of 

section six it lists the default -- default 

classes to be used for different solubilities -

- you know, different work place exposure 

conditions, and they're not all type M, so -- 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, and we -- this is -- this 

is clearly a matter -- I mean maybe it is a 

matter that we need to understand with further 

discussion. My understanding of the listing of 

the solubility tables, and I did look at those 

in the site profile, was that those applied to 

air intakes. And we do agree that when you're 

considering the intakes that there are gui-- 

that there is guidance in the TBD for the dose 

reconstructor to use the proper solu-- so I 

don't have a question about that. We -- and we 

did not raise a question about that earlier on 

because I do think we understood you properly. 

DR. NETON: Right. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: We did -- we did raise a 

question that in going back from urinalysis and 
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calculating an air concentration and air intake 

that would be -- an intake by the inhalation 

pathway, that -- that there did not seem to be 

a specific guidance and methodology to assume a 

more -- the most claimant-favorable solubility. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, we'd be more than happy to 

sit down with you -- SC&A and discuss this. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I think this methodology had 

been explained to the Board in the past, I -- 

at least that's the way I understood it. And 

Mark, I think you've confirmed that that was 

the case, yes. Richard? 

 DR. TOOHEY: I'd also like to add another 

comment on the issue of burns, whether chemical 

or thermal, in accidents and scenarios. 

There's a vast amount of literature in 

radiation accident management that shows that 

even burned skin is still a pretty good barrier 

against transdermal absorption. In terms of 

imbedded shrapnel, metallic particles in a 

blowout, for example, there's also now a lot of 

data available on Gulf War veterans who have 

imbedded DU shrapnel on what uptake may be and 

resulting doses from that. And I'm part of an 

NCRP committee, we're hopefully getting out a 
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final report for Council review on a 

contaminated (unintelligible) model that can be 

used, if necessary. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Our point in bringing up many 

of these issues, just so it is clear as to why 

they are there -- like the sperry cakes and 

burns -- NIOSH, in many of its TBDs that we've 

looked at, does raise issues where doses are 

just a few millirem. In order to put it to 

rest, if doses are a few millirem and if it's 

not an issue and if there is a barrier or 

sperry cakes are not an issue, these issues 

have been raised by site experts. I believe 

it's very important for the credibility of the 

program that they not be dismissed without an 

analysis being put --

 DR. ZIEMER: Very good. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- on the table. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You're quite right. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: That's the point. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Dr. Melius. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, in our last meeting there 

was a -- some -- a long discussion and issues 

raised about newly-discovered boxes of data, 
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and I noticed in your report, Arjun, that -- 

and it may be for NIOSH to answer this, but 

under your review of the five to six boxes that 

NIOSH has stated that '53 to '58 data are not 

captured and will be put in the next revision 

of the TBD. Given our experiences with 

Mallinckrodt last time and Iowa, I'd like some 

explanation of that. It may be 

straightforward, but -- what do you mean by not 

captured and then --

DR. NETON: That they have not been considered 

in -- in the Revision 1 that has been issued. 

They were not available at the time Revision 1 

was done. I'd remind the Board, the history 

behind this is that we were very close to 

issuing Revision 1 when Mallin-- when -- when 

the Revision 0 review came out and we committed 

to getting Revision 1 out as soon as possible, 

and that did not allow us sufficient time to 

review all of those boxes and incorporate them, 

although we're moving as quickly as we can to 

incorporate those data and put out, you know, 

the revision -- if necessary. It may end up 

being that those data are not as useful as we 

might think, I don't know. I have not looked 
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at the data myself. 

 DR. MELIUS: Thanks for the clarification. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Mark. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I got -- I have a -- a few 

questions and -- and perhaps some -- maybe 

ideas for reading for tonight for the Board, 

certain areas of interest in the -- in the 250-

page TBD, can narrow it down a little maybe. 

-- Table 13, this might be a question more for 

-- for Jim, is -- I think it's one of -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: This is TBD Rev. 1 is --

 MR. GRIFFON: Yes, page 195, if people have it 

-- measured daily weighted average exposure 

concentrations. Can you give me a sense -- it 

may be in this -- this report, it probably is 

somewhere, I mean it's a very volumous (sic) 

report. Can you give me a sense of the 

weighted average concentrations, what -- what 

is the -- sort of the end in this equation? 

How many samples were used to derive these 

weighted averages? I'm sure it varies, but is 

that in this report somewhere? 

DR. NETON: I believe so, but I can't -- I 

can't tell you that off the top of my head. 

It's a pretty large report and -- 

I 
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 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, yeah. 

DR. NETON: -- I was not the principal author, 

but --

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, if you -- if you --

DR. NETON: -- I can certainly get that 

information for you. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. That's fine. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: I don't believe that -- Dr. 

(sic) Griffon, I don't believe that the 

detailed data are actually -- in terms of the 

number of samples, are in the site profile. 

They are in the underlying documents that are 

available on the database, which is -- I 

pointed you to the -- to the table in our 

report on page 28, which is where that table is 

drawn from and -- and as you can see, the 

number of samples for each work -- work -- task 

is generally quite limited. I've looked at 

numbers of these, and they're typically two, 

three, four samples, sometimes only one sample. 

Of course when you have one sample, you can't 

do anything with that statistically. And --

and that would -- I haven't looked at all the 

data, of course, but that would be fairly 

typical, and you can't actually join all these 
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datapoints into one distribution because -- 

because each task has its own characteristic 

probability distribution for air concentrations 

that has to be characterized. That's why 

actually this is somewhat a complex task to -- 

DR. NETON: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I guess --

 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- come up with a --

DR. NETON: I'd remind the Board again that 

this is part of the analysis. This profile 

does not say use exclusively Table 13, plant 

six as verbatim and insert six dpm per cubic 

meter for 1956. It's part of the process of a 

dose reconstructor putting together the mosaic 

that is a dose reconstruction. If you have 

some urine data, you have some plant air data, 

you may look at other intervening years, but it 

does not necessarily commit the person to using 

these individual datapoints. Again, it's part 

of the toolbox for doing a dose reconstruction, 

and I still submit that the dose 

reconstructions themselves would stand alone on 

their own two feet, using this as their guide. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I -- I understand, Jim. I just -

- I think it's important for us to consider the 
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-- the -- there's a -- there's a volume of data 

here, nobody disputes that. I think we have to 

consider the quality of the data -- 

DR. NETON: Sure. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- and -- and the validity of the 

data, so that -- that's all I'm after -- 

DR. NETON: Absolutely. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- and I'm just using that one 

table as an example. I just picked one out of 

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- out of the 35 or whatever. 

The next question or -- and along those lines, 

just on the Table 13, I guess sort of what 

raised my attention to this was if -- if you 

end up having to use this as part of your 

reconstruction, if you don't have your end data 

and you end up having to use this to estimate 

intakes, you know, it -- it just -- what raised 

my question about the number of samples was 

there was a high degree of variability, at 

least in some of these jobs, from sample to 

sample, from -- from weighted average point to 

weighted average point. 

For instance, pilot plant technician, 1,940 in 
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'56 and then 9.2 in '54 makes me wonder if 

that's, you know, production related or, you 

know --

DR. NETON: Sure, and I think you'd find -- and 

maybe this is one of these profiles that 

certainly would benefit from a user's guide. 

You know, we talked about user's guides in 

these things to assemble these so that one can 

understand a little better how they would be 

applied in the field. But I think if you see 

our past practice, more than likely -- 

depending on the type of cancer that was being 

-- the organ that was being reconstructed -- 

one may go and find the highest dataset among 

all of those and use that in the dose 

reconstruction to demonstrate that the 

probability of causation is less than 50 

percent. 

So again, they're not -- this is not 

instructing one to use these individual 

datapoints where the N equals three or five or 

one or whatever. It's to give them a sense for 

the relative magnitude and the distribution, as 

you pointed out, and -- and use it in that 

context. So I guess it's very difficult for me 
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to sit here and say, you know -- to answer your 

question. This is --

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah -- no, no, I know -- 

DR. NETON: -- this is insufficient in and of 

itself. It's a compilation of all the 

available data at the site, but it -- it's part 

of a -- the toolbox for dose reconstructing. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I guess my -- my next, and maybe 

my last, I know it's getting late in the day 

here, question -- the -- the urinalysis data 

that you're using, is it CEDR database or -- or 

a -- a non-Privacy Act -- 

DR. NETON: It's CER database --

 MR. GRIFFON: CER database. 

DR. NETON: -- Center for Epidemiological 

Research, not CEDR, so it is identified -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: CER database, right, it's -- 

DR. NETON: Yeah, this is not off the -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- just has the names in it 

instead of the de-identified version -- 

DR. NETON: Correct. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- CEDR. Right? 

DR. NETON: Right, I'm not sure that -- I'm not 

-- this is -- may be on CEDR, as well, I don't 

know, but --
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 MR. GRIFFON: It is, it is, yes. 

DR. NETON: Okay, but this is the original 

ORAU-obtained data for their epidemiological -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: It may -- it might be slightly 

different. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Richard, additional comment? 

 DR. TOOHEY: Yeah, just to comment on that. 

Jim -- Jim's correct, it's the CER data, not 

the de-identified -- the CEDR, which we found 

of limited usefulness except for overall 

(unintelligible) --

 MR. GRIFFON: Because you need the names 

(unintelligible) of course, yeah. 

 DR. TOOHEY: But what we have done is check the 

names in the CER data from the old epi studies 

against the claimant rosters. And when we get 

bioassay data submitted from DOE or whoever -- 

what they claim filed, we compare the two -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

 DR. TOOHEY: -- and see if they jive. If they 

don't, then we start asking more questions and 

 MR. GRIFFON: So you do -- you do have --

 DR. TOOHEY: -- pull the strings till we get 

(unintelligible) --
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 MR. GRIFFON: -- some raw data that you're 

using to validate the database data. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. And that -- that -- then 

the last question, I guess -- and I -- I also 

agree with this reference, page 77/78 make for 

some interesting reading. The second paragraph 

on page 78 says that because of the questions 

regarding the validity of the samples, the 

apparent variations in the sample analysis 

methods, and even who was doing the analysis, 

the Mallinckrodt urinalysis data should be used 

with caution, at least when the data were taken 

from Barnes prior to about 1951. 

DR. NETON: Right, those data would be biased 

high. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And -- and -- well, that's your 

conclusion. 

DR. NETON: Well --

 MR. GRIFFON: And the previous page -- 

DR. NETON: -- what the records shows, but -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

DR. NETON: -- that was the problem with the 

Barnes data is their calibration values were 

low due to precipitation of the uranium out of 
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the standard solutions, so with a low 

calibration value, the values were increased, 

so I mean it's in the --

 MR. GRIFFON: I saw some discussion of 

contaminated blanks, but I -- I don't want to 

get into the -- you know -- 

DR. NETON: Okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: We can discuss that further I 

guess tomorrow or whatever. 

DR. NETON: Sure. 

 MR. GRIFFON: But it also sort of truncates it 

at '51, but on the prior page, page 77, it also 

says it is not clear who did the urinalyses 

from '50 to '54. So I -- I guess -- you know, 

some of -- some of these questions -- 

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: It just raises the question of 

are these -- are these data valid in the first 

place. I mean there's -- there's a lot of it, 

for sure. It does raise the question of 

validity. 

DR. NETON: Sure. 

 MR. GRIFFON: So... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Jim Melius. 

 DR. MELIUS: Just one brief comment along those 
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lines. You can sit down, Jim. This is a 

comment. We've been giving you a workout here 

back and forth, but -- but it refers back to 

actually a comment that Jim made earlier. 

With the Iowa site profile and petition we were 

trying to determine whether -- basically 

whether the model was allowing the calculation 

of -- or dose reconstruction with sufficient 

accuracy -- put it simplistically. And in this 

case with Mallinckrodt, we're weighing a site 

profile that's a toolbox, as you describe it, 

and as to whether that toolbox allows the 

reconstruction of a dose with sufficient 

accuracy, and that's a more difficult task and 

-- 'cause the problem is you use different 

tools on different individuals, and we don't 

necessarily have a good sense -- and maybe you 

don't, either -- of which tools are going to be 

most commonly used, as well as -- so all we can 

really do is sort of look at what is the 

strength and weaknesses of the various tools in 

there and figure out which are important tools 

and -- and -- and then make some sort of 

overall assessment. And so that's sort of the 

probing that's going on. I don't think it's 
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necessarily helpful to that probing to say 

well, this isn't going to be used all the time 

or this is going to be used -- you know, 

there's other tools, 'cause we've got to sort 

of judge each tool and then come to some 

conclusion as to how we deal with the -- the 

SEC petition. So I think that's -- I think 

what Mark was trying to get -- get at, 

basically -- and I understand it's a long day 

and it's sort of frustrating, but we sort of 

have to go through this, I think. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Go ahead, Richard, and reply. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Okay, if I may make a comment 

myself. Believe it or not, I agree with you. 

We -- it's a toolbox, and which tool is 

appropriate for a given claim is, to some 

extent, up to the judgment and experience of 

the dose reconstructor who is doing that dose 

reconstruction. Presumably they've got 

experience, they're familiar with bioassay data 

analysis and all that and they will make the 

best judgment. 

I do want to mention, though, that the tools in 

the site profile are tools intended for 

individual dose reconstruction, which may be a 
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minimum estimate for a likely compensable, a 

maximum estimate for a likely non-compensable 

case, or a best estimate for a case in the 

middle. Whereas sufficient accuracy, for 

deciding an SEC petition, is limited to at 

least putting an upper limit on the dose to 

each of the 22 organs. And a tool that maybe 

doesn't quite cut the mustard for a best 

estimate in one case may be perfectly adequate 

to put a maximizing limit on an organ dose. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other comments? We 

are going to resume our discussion on the 

Mallinckrodt site and related matters tomorrow 

morning. We also have a public comment period 

this evening beginning at 7:15, so we will 

return here at that time. 

I want to ask if there are any housekeeping 

issues we need to address -- thank you, Arjun -

- any housekeeping issues we need to address 

before we dismiss? 

Then we will recess until 7:15. Thank you very 

much. 

 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 5:10 p.m. 

to 7:15 p.m.) 
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 PUBLIC COMMENT

 DR. ZIEMER: Good evening, everyone. We're 

going to begin our evening public comment 

session at this time. The logistics and events 

of this day probably have impacted on the crowd 

this evening -- the crowd, or lack of a crowd. 

But in any event, we will proceed. 

 I'm Paul Ziemer, Chairman of the Advisory Board 

on Radiation and Worker Health. Ordinarily I 

spend a bit of time at the beginning of the 

public comment session talking about the role 

of the Advisory Board and exactly what we do 

and that sort of thing. However, for this 

particular group -- which I suspect tonight 

largely focuses on St. Louis Mallinckrodt folks 

and we've been to St. Louis a couple of times 

and have had public testimony from folks from 

the Mallinckrodt group. And of course most of 

the Iowa folks were here earlier and have 

probably left. But in any event, I think the 

Mallinckrodt people, the St. Louis people, are 

quite familiar with the role and operation of 

this Board so I'm not going to take the time to 

go through my normal presentation, although 

there are copies of it for those who may want 
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it. And I think those will be back on the back 

table, but in any event, we'll proceed just 

without that this evening, if that's agreeable. 

I am going to be looking for the sign-up sheet 

of those who have signed up. I perused it a 

moment ago. There were not too many names on 

there, but I think if Tom Horgan is here -- and 

there's Tom -- and Tom, in just a moment we'll 

give you the mike and you'll have the 

opportunity to speak to us, as well. 

I should point out that if -- if you did wish 

to speak and didn't have the opportunity to 

sign the sheet, you'll still have an 

opportunity, in any event, to address the group 

if you so wish. 

Actually the first one on this list here is Dan 

McKeel. Is Dan here this evening? He was here 

earlier. And I know that, Board members, Dan 

has provided us with some material that was 

passed out earlier, so if Dan isn't here this 

evening you at least have the material that was 

distributed by Dan -- and we'll give him 

another opportunity in a minute. 

 The other thing before I call other speakers is 

I would like to make sure that everyone here 
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attending is aware of what has transpired so 

far since our meeting opened yesterday. 

 Earlier today the Advisory Board approved a 

motion to recommend to the Secretary of Health 

and Human Services that the Iowa petitioners be 

designated as a class in the Special Exposure 

Cohort, and that motion was approved and will 

proceed on up to the Secretary of Health and 

Human Services. So I don't know if there -- 

there were some Iowa folks that had signed up 

to speak tonight, and it may be that they will 

not feel the need to do so, but I think we do 

have some Iowa names on the list, as well. 

We will hear then from Denise Brock, from Tom 

Horgan, from Dan McKeel -- all representing the 

petitioners in -- from Mallinckrodt, and I'm 

sort of looking over here to see who wants to 

go first, and if -- Denise, if you're prepared 

to go first --

MS. BROCK: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

ready in about 30 seconds. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thirty seconds, okay. 

MS. BROCK: (Off microphone) I'll just wait 

(unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: Then -- yeah, Tom wants me to tell 
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a few funny stories in the meantime, but we 

will just momentarily hear from Tom Horgan, 

representing Senator Bond. 

I do want to just double-check and see if any 

of these Iowa folks are here. Jane Stonger? 

Anita Loving? Jim Shelton? E.D. Webb? None 

of those are here then this evening, and that's 

understandable. They will have felt that their 

-- their need was completed already. 

Dan McKeel, I have already indicated to the 

Board that we have a document that was made 

available to us, and I understand that you also 

will have some additional comments for us this 

evening, so the Board does have your -- your 

document, as well. 

(Pause) 

 Tom Horgan, representing Senator Bond's office. 

Thank you for being with us tonight. 

 MR. HORGAN: I'm going to put this up here 

because I'm going to have to refer to some 

notes. But first of all I -- I just want to 

say that I -- I found the dialogue today 

between the contractors and NIOSH very 

stimulating and very informative. And you 

know, I probably bet you don't get a lot of 
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comments like that at these meetings, but I 

really did, and so... 

At any rate, while I was listening to the 

dialogue today between Mr. (sic) Neton's 

presentation from OCAS and then followed by Dr. 

-- let me make sure I get this right -- 

Makhijani's presentation, I noticed a couple of 

things. And the first thing I wanted to 

address had to do with Mr. (sic) Neton's 

presentation. 

I am a little bit disturbed about one thing in 

his presentation, and that was the use of a 

hypothetical model to demonstrate -- and I 

don't know the specific context. I certainly 

want Mr. (sic) Neton to come up and, you know, 

if I misspoke, to -- misspeak, to -- to correct 

it, but the use of a hypothetical model to 

determine -- to determine -- and -- and -- I 

guess I got the feeling to justify the ability 

to do dose reconstruction. 

Now a hypothetical model -- and I didn't do 

well on my SATs, but I think I got this one 

right, is something that really doesn't exist. 

It's -- and it's a make-believe example. Now 

I'm not a scientist, but I have a fairly decent 
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background in social scientific research, after 

going to graduate school, and I am concerned 

that Mr. (sic) Neton used a hypothetical model 

to illustrate the fact that he could do dose 

reconstruction on claimants who were involved 

in real incidents and exposures and 

circumstances. 

 That troubles me. But what troubles me even 

more is a phrase that Mr. (sic) Neton said in 

his presentation when he was developing his 

hypothetical mod-- or explaining his 

hypothetical model. I think it had to do with 

numbers, and we could check the transcript. 

But he said something along the lines, when he 

was explaining it, that the numbers in the 

hypomodical (sic) that these numbers he just 

made up. He just made them up. How can you 

use a hypothetical model and numbers you just 

made up to do a dose reconstruction on people 

with real exposures and real events? 

Now I don't want to be cynical, but it leads me 

to question -- as representative of Senator 

Bond -- has Jim Neton and OCAS -- what else 

have they just made up to justify dose 

reconstruction? Is this the only thing? I'm 
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concerned about that and I want the Board to 

know that concern. 

Number two, in Arjun -- Arjun's presentation 

there was a slide that says -- and I believe it 

was slide 13, brief review of CD with documents 

from five or six boxes, and it was the first 

bullet. And specifically I'm referring to the 

-- the boxes contain a large amount of data. 

It will take significant effort to verify 

whether data are adequately captured. NIOSH 

has stated some 1953 to 1958 data are not 

captured and will be put in the next revision 

of the TBD. 

Well, the next revision of the TBD? And I want 

to make this clear, and if Mr. (sic) Neton is 

here, I'd like to ask him. And when he came up 

with his dialogue, I believe, with Arjun, he 

said that -- something along the lines -- and I 

don't -- we'd -- again, we'd have to check the 

transcripts -- that this will be addressed in 

our next revision to the site profile. And I 

guess my question is -- to Jim and Larry at -- 

and the rest of the gang at OCAS, are you 

planning to revise this TBD again after this 

meeting in the future? If -- if anybody wants 
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to answer that, they can. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me make a general comment and 

then -- and Jim can certainly answer -- all of 

the site profiles are subject to updating on a 

regular basis, certainly as a starting point. 

But Jim, you may wish to address that. 

DR. NETON: Yes, Jim Neton. I think I'll 

(whereupon, the speaker's microphone failed but 

the response continued) address the first issue 

that was raised (unintelligible) -- the first 

issue (unintelligible). 

(Pause) 

(Whereupon, the microphone service was 

restored.) My lucky day. I'd like to address 

the first issue raised by Tom. The -- I think 

the -- I'm not sure of the exact title of the 

slide, but I thought it was hypothetical 

example, not model. And I'm sorry for the 

misunderstanding that I -- I must have given -- 

at least Mr. -- Tom that this was an example 

that was used or a model that was going to be 

used to actually make decisions on -- on the 

data. What I really intended to convey was 

that this was an example of the approach that 

is going to be used to validate the individual 
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sets of monitoring data against each other so 

that we could have some assurance that this 

data integrity issue was -- was not a major 

factor in our dose reconstruction. So I do 

apologize for -- for giving that misinterpre-- 

misimpression, but it is not a model that's 

going to be used for any dose reconstructions 

at all. I just used it as an example to -- for 

timeliness purposes. And I think Dr. Melius 

already pointed that out after my presentation. 

The second question related to the Revision 2 

of the site profile. I indicated that we're 

under very serious time constraints trying to 

get Rev. 1 out. The dataset from '53 to '58 we 

do intend to incorporate. It will be a very 

short time period for that incorporation, we 

just did not have time to get it in for this 

deliberation. 

I will point out, as Dr. Ziemer indicated, they 

are -- profiles are meant to be living 

documents. We use that term a lot but it is 

very true. We will put in there what we know 

to be fact as it's available. And more 

importantly, as it becomes available we will 

look at every single dose reconstruction that 
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may have been done under the previous version 

to see what effect that additional data may 

have on the outcome of the cases. No case is 

closed under this system. Every time a profile 

is revised, we go back and evaluate those. 

 MR. HORGAN: Well, in terms of the hypothetical 

model, that's good to know, 'cause I hope we 

would use real numbers. 

The second issue -- in response to the second 

issue, so we -- we -- we have the answer to 

that question. There is going to be another 

revision to the site profile. 

And I've heard -- again, let me remind the 

Board that we -- this site -- the original site 

profile was given to us or released 18 months 

ago. I believe it was October 28th, 2003 at 

the Adams Mark in St. Louis. We've had Rev. -- 

Rev. 0, Rev. 1 -- I -- I really can't keep 

track. My point is, though, and I think 

Senator Bond touched about it on this speech. 

Now we know they're planning to do another 

revision of the site profile -- another one. 

I've just got to ask a question with the intent 

of the statute and the timeliness, and he said 

it's going to be short, but how many times -- I 
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want to ask the Board -- does NIOSH need to 

revise the site profile to get it right? 

This very well may be a living document. I've 

heard that a hundred times. While the document 

is alive and well and maturing after 18 months, 

there are plenty of Mallinckrodt workers who 

are dying. And even though it will be a short 

site profile that -- from what we're told, 

again, I -- a lot of people don't have a lot of 

time left. So again, it's a living document 

after 18 months, but a lot of people are dying. 

And a lot of people have died within that 18 

months. 

 Finally -- and I guess if I could leave that, 

in the earlier discussions today it all comes 

back to an issue that was discussed in the Iowa 

site profile, very (unintelligible), an issue 

of credibility. 

Finally, today I -- there were a couple of 

things that were mentioned in the dialogue 

today regarding the Iowa site profile. On the 

Iowa site profile I thought I heard Mr. (sic) 

Ziemer today say, when we were talking about 

the discussion, that if we had ten years -- and 

again, let's check the transcript, but if we 
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had ten years we could probably come up with a 

dose reconstruction for the Iowa sites or 

something along -- and it was something along 

the line about smart people can come up with 

solutions if they have enough time. 

I don't disagree with that. I think while the 

situations between Mallinckrodt and Iowa are 

similar but not identical, I think that I may 

be -- I can't say for sure, but I may be open 

to an argument that if we did have ten years we 

could -- on Mallinckrodt downtown we could 

maybe come up with a dose reconstruction for 

all the workers. I've got to remind the Board, 

though, that we don't have ten years and it's 

been five years since enactment, so we're 

almost halfway there. 

 Finally, I also want to remind the Board of 

something that I thought I heard Dr. Melius 

touch on today, and I believe Dr. Ziemer said 

something about it, as well. The Board needs 

to address the information that they have at 

hand right now. The cur-- that is the current 

site profile or TBD, as you have it today, not 

any new info or site profile that may occur or 

may develop in the future. What you have 
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today. Just in the same way that I believe 

this Board acted on the information they had 

for the site profiles of Mallinckrodt and the -

- and the partial cohort from 1942 

(unintelligible) at the February meeting, and 

the information they had when they acted on the 

Iowa site profile at the Mallin-- at the St. 

Louis meeting at the Adams Mark. That's all I 

wanted to say and I just wanted to make that 

aware to you today. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Tom, for your pointed 

remarks, and please pass on the regards of this 

Board to Senator Bond, as well. 

Now let's hear from -- I've got Dan McKeel 

next, and Dan, if you will approach the mike. 

 DR. MCKEEL: Well, good evening to the Board. 

As Dr. Ziemer said, I hope you all at least 

have received my more extended comments that 

really address both the Rev. 1 of the TBD and 

also have some insights about the SEC petition 

that you'll be voting on tomorrow, hopefully. 

So tonight I wanted to go through some related 

matters, but to make some emphasis points that 

I think are -- are important. And I -- I am 

going to try not to go over the same material 
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that's in those extended outlines, but I do 

have to mention that here we have Rev. 1, a 

greatly expanded and improved document, no 

doubt, but still one of the deficiencies that I 

pointed out in -- both in 2003 and 2005 in St. 

Louis, is still not corrected. And that is 

that the second paper that has to do -- peerreviewed paper that has to do with dust studies 

at Mallinckrodt, this paper here in the Journal 

of Epidemiology, 1995, is still not included in 

the TBD Rev. 1. So it does seem to me that 

there's some miscommunication between actually 

the program office at NIOSH and their 

contractor, and Ms. Westbrook, who's preparing 

the site profile. So I certainly would hope 

that that situation has improved. 

One of the things I'd like to make as a 

suggestion -- 'cause I think this will come up 

for many site profiles, and that is that it is 

impossible to decipher from the Rev. 1 of 

either Iowa or Mallinckrodt -- to get a good 

idea of the thoroughness of the search of the 

available data on those sites. And I think 

it'd be a great improvement if the Board could 

at least suggest possibly to NIOSH that when 
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they prepare a site profile there ought to be a 

explicit statement that says we consider the 

following available sources. And for instance, 

for Mallinckrodt there is no information 

whether, for example, the EPA superfund records 

center in Kansas City was searched. Was the 

National Archives, the (unintelligible) 

archives, were they searched thoroughly, et 

cetera. And it seems to me that that's 

extremely important. And as you know, the vote 

on the SEC 00112-2 that has to do with the '49 

to '57 Mallinckrodt cohort was delayed -- not 

exclusively for that reason, but because we had 

to look and decipher what was in six boxes of 

new material. So you know, maybe if all that 

data source work were done up front, then there 

could be a more systematic review of that 

material and we wouldn't be turning up with all 

these documents late in the -- late in the 

course of an SEC evaluation. 

 And that makes me turn to the analysis that's 

in the -- of what's in those six boxes. One of 

the things I was interested in the supplement, 

in fact, quite fascinated by, was a notation 

that -- there was one line item that said there 
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were urinary analysis records for -- for 

plutonium. Now that line item was not dated 

and it didn't say whether that was explicitly 

for Mallinckrodt Destrehan Street or for Weldon 

Spring. But I bring that up because plutonium 

being present in -- at either of those sites 

was really not mentioned in the -- certainly 

not in the Mallinckrodt Rev. 1 TBD, and it 

seems to me that that's important enough that 

that should be at least addressed. 

It implies that the DOE field office report 

saying that there were some 74,000 metric tons 

of recycled uranium sent to one of those two 

sites, or to both, has some validity, even 

though both sites apparently deny that they 

received any appreciable recycled uranium. So 

I would think that that ought to be gone into. 

 The other thing that I would comment about the 

supplement by NIOSH that they wrote in the 

review today by SC&A of what was in those boxes 

on slide 13 was -- my -- my reading of the 

analysis of what's in those two sets of 

evaluation of the same boxes is -- is sort of 

different, NIOSH saying that they -- there were 

no real surprises that would affect anything, 
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that they had already captured 19 of the 22 

documents. And I think the slide 13 

information indicates that SC&A found a lot 

more information that needs to be digested and 

that they couldn't even make the evaluation 

whether the information had been captured in 

the TBD without further study. So there's sort 

of a difference there. 

 Anyway, after the February meetings I was 

interested enough in what was in those six 

boxes that I enlisted the help of Ted Hisell* 

and the Missouri Coalition for the Environment 

Foundation, and we filed on March the 10th a 

Freedom of Information request where we sought 

to know what was in those boxes. We wanted a 

detailed index, and in particular we wanted to 

address another issue that seems to me to be of 

widespread importance for many site profiles, 

and that was -- we had heard that within those 

six boxes were material that had to be 

declassified. And so we now have unclassified 

but formerly classified documents. And the 

question was, how much more classified material 

is there about the Mallinckrodt site and I was 

also interested in the Weldon Spring site, of 
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course. And it seems to me that that's a very 

important question, not only what was 

declassified but what is still classified and 

why it's classified. 

And it would seem to me that, you know, there 

could be some information that relates to 

process and production of uranium that could -- 

the processes could still be classified, but it 

didn't seem to me that the data that was in 

those six boxes -- dust study records and film 

badge readings and so forth -- didn't seem to 

me that they ought to be classified 50 years 

later, and that if they were classified, maybe 

the reason they were classified was it was 

inconvenient to release those data into the 

public realm. 

Anyway, that was on March the -- the 10th. I 

believe the law provides 20 days for a 

response, and it's now April the 26th and I 

have not received any response to that request, 

so I look forward to that in short order. And 

you know, so Oak Ridge operations, ORAU at 

NIOSH and the ORISE source vaults, I also wrote 

to them. 

 Another comment I have about the technical 
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basis Rev. 1 is I understand that the SEC 

petitions had to be separated for Mallinckrodt 

and Weldon Spring. But it seems to me it would 

have made sense had the MCW and the Weldon 

Spring site profiles be constructed in parallel 

and together and released at the same time. So 

here we have a stagger of at least 18 months 

where we've had Rev. 0 and Rev. 1 of 

Mallinckrodt and we have no site profile yet on 

Weldon Spring. And I know that's being worked 

on and I even understand it may be released 

soon, but it seems to me that that has really 

created an inequity and a disparity that is 

unfair for the Weldon Spring workers because we 

heard in St. Louis voluminous testimony that 

many workers worked for Mallinckrodt Destrehan 

Street for many years and then they 

matriculated out to Weldon Spring. And so if 

their dose is being reconstructed, that may 

well be that the part that's at Mallinckrodt is 

now bolstered by this much-improved Rev. 1, but 

the dose they received at Weldon Spring is not 

covered at all by a site profile. So that 

seems to be a -- a bad way that was handled. 

My extended remarks -- and I won't go into them 
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at all, but it does highlight that I think that 

despite the expanded volume of Rev. 1 of the 

TBD there are still just enumerable statements 

that have to do with data completeness, with 

data ambiguities or uncertainties, data 

omissions, and there are many, many qualitative 

statements made like some or almost, things 

that I can't understand as, you know, an 

outsider how that could help a dose 

reconstructor who's trying to make quantitative 

estimates of a dose received, so I'd just 

comment on that. 

I guess one of the most important things that I 

would like to address to the Board -- and this 

goes to tomorrow's decision, hopefully -- and 

that's got to do with the general situation of 

data validity. And it seems to me that data 

validity cuts across various levels of science, 

and certainly in our longitudinal Alzheimer's 

studies we have to justify to grant review 

sections and study sections that our data is 

valid and it's reliable. And how do we do 

that? And it seems to me that in arriving at 

that answer, what we can say is that this data 

on Mallinckrodt has not been validated and it's 
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not proven to be reliable, and there's some 

basic ways to do that. 

One way to do that would be to have a gold 

standard set of data, and that should be 

available. The gold standard data could be 

doses calculated -- not reconstructed, but just 

calculated -- from a set of workers who had 

complete data, so you could come up with a 

dose. And then you could give their records -- 

say with some data purposely omitted in a 

blinded fashion -- to your dose reconstructors 

and get them to re-evaluate the dose and see if 

they came up with a number that was close to 

the gold standard. And by doing that in a 

series of cases, you would come up with a 

validity measure that yes, we can -- the same 

dose reconstructor, for instance, could 

reconstruct that dose, plus or minus ten 

percent standard deviation, whereas another set 

of dose reconstructors could do it at a 

validity level of say 25 percent, whatever the 

number is. But that sort of testing really is 

-- is very necessary. 

Another way to do it is to have the auditors, 

SC&A, do the same thing and to have them 
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reconstruct the dose that the NIOSH 

reconstructors have already done and compare 

those data. And I understand that that has not 

yet been done for a single Mallinckrodt worker. 

So I would like to suggest that if the Board 

believes that they have to act on what's in 

hand right now, which I believe they should and 

could, then they're going to have to act on 

data that has not been validated. And so I --

I think that's one thing to consider. 

As far as the SEC and the accuracy of the data, 

another thing that they ought to repre-- ought 

to ask is -- the data is certainly not 

complete. It may be extensive. There may be a 

lot of urine samples, lot of air samples, et 

cetera, but the data is certainly not complete 

for all workers. So then you have to ask well, 

of the data that we have, how representative is 

that data subset of the whole realm of data. 

And I haven't seen any statements about that, 

you know, and one way to do that -- and 

certainly some on the panel are 

epidemiologists, they should certainly be aware 

of this -- is you take a population sample, you 

take a random, unbiased sample of the total 
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universe of data and you -- and you use that 

data to estimate data for the whole population. 

If you don't have that, if you have a biased 

sample or a random -- or -- or not a random 

sample, or one that is really just -- this is 

the data that's not missing, not specified, 

then you really don't have representative data 

and you certainly are on shakier ground 

extrapolating that to a whole class of workers. 

Final thing I have to say is it seems to me, 

also, that there -- we are faced again with -- 

I understand the TBD is a living document, but 

there's still parts of it that are just plain 

incomplete. Section seven, for example, 

dealing with external dose reconstruction, is 

on hold. Why is it on hold? It's on hold 

because ORAU hasn't entered some of that data 

or calculated -- it wasn't clear to me exactly 

why not. But section seven of this 18-monthlong living document is still not complete. So 

I would ask the Board to please consider those 

thoughts when you're making this very tough 

decision. And -- and I do have to say that we 

-- we're all engaged in applying scientific 

principles, but we also have a mandate from -- 
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you have a pres-- a mandate from the President 

of the United States, and there is a strong 

mandate also from Congress. And I think that 

you have an obligation to live up to the intent 

of Congress, and that intent goes to timeliness 

and accuracy of doing dose reconstructions. 

And I agree with Tom Horgan and Senator Bond. 

I agree and support and applaud the sentiments 

from Senators Harkin and Grassley that I 

thought was eloquent in saying that the intent 

of -- of Congress is not being fulfilled here. 

And you -- you folks can address that. And I 

hope and I pray that you will do that tomorrow 

afternoon. Thank you very much. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Dan, for your 

insightful remarks. Yes, Jim Neton, please. 

DR. NETON: I'm sorry, I'd just like to address 

two of the statements made by Dr. McKeel, just 

to correct maybe a misconception. 

I think that the plutonium line that was in the 

-- in the file -- it also caught our interest, 

indicating there may have been plutonium at 

Mallinckrodt. In fact, what that was -- at 

least if it's the one that Dr. McKeel is 

referring to -- was a reference to a paper on 
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how to do plutonium chemistry that was sent to 

Mallinckrodt with the idea that it might be 

adapted to do thorium analyses, because the 

chemistry of plutonium and thorium are very 

similar. And I believe that's the line item 

that appears that Dr. McKeel was talking about. 

The second issue is that the documents that 

were released from the ORAU -- the vaults were 

not necessarily -- they were not classified, 

they were stored in classified space and needed 

to be reviewed for classified content. It's my 

knowledge -- my knowledge none of the documents 

that were removed from the vault were 

previously classified and then declassified. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you for those 

clarifications. Denise Brock. And Denise, 

you're up next, too, if you want to -- 

MS. BROCK: I really wasn't going to say 

anything, but I just wanted to address the two 

things that Dr. Neton had stated. Number one, 

as far as the plutonium, I believe that was 

from Mont Mason, if I'm correct -- I could be 

wrong -- to a Dr. Sheppard*, and could have 

been to address the thorium, but it could have 

been plutonium. I have workers on videotape 
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that I've offered to NIOSH and for the Board to 

see in reference to numerous things. One of 

those things was the possibility that plutonium 

was in fact at the Destrehan Street site. I 

have workers that are willing to testify to 

that, but the workers that I have that are 

living are very ill. We do have some things I 

believe that are possibly on tape. 

And the second thing that I was going to 

address -- I just forgot, what was the other 

thing that Dr. Neton had mention -- oh, the 

boxes. I don't know -- were those on CD from 

quite some time ago? I mean I thought you just 

got those boxes, but could they have been on 

CD? I -- because I -- and I also think, in 

reference to the -- that 1975 Mont Mason memo, 

I was with the understanding from the February 

meeting that you all had just obtained that, 

and then I found out that you had it since May 

of 2003. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't know the answer to that, 

and Mark, do you have a comment or -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I was going to ask -- I was going 

to ask for clarification on the first point. 

Jim, I agree with the statement you made with 
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the reference you're talking about, but I'm 

wondering if that's the same one that Dr. 

McKeel's talking about 'cause I see on page 3 

of his letter there's this handwritten note 

that suggests that there was a shipment from 

Savannah River. This seems to be a different 

reference, so I just wanted clarification on 

where this came from -- 

 DR. MCKEEL: Yes, that note from Savannah River 

happened to be in paper -- that's a completely 

different affair. That -- that's -- that's 

explained in my records. It was on the back of 

a meeting minutes. I have no idea who wrote 

that. It just was in -- interesting that it 

was there. But the reference I'm talking about 

is in the supplement, just in the list of what 

was in the boxes. And the reference refers to 

plutonium urine analyses, and it doesn't refer 

to a paper, although that may just be a 

shorthand for a reference to a paper. So --

 MR. GRIFFON: But I -- yeah. 

 DR. MCKEEL: -- so they're two completely 

different things, but -- but they're two little 

teeny bits of information talking about 

plutonium at Mallinckrodt. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, this --

 DR. MCKEEL: That's -- that --

 MR. GRIFFON: -- this was new to me, so I -- 

but I -- I --

 DR. MCKEEL: It was new to me, too, and I just 

thought it might be of interest, whatev-- 

whatever it means. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Denise, did you have 

any additional comments for the assembly? Did 

MS. BROCK: (Off microphone) No, I just was 

going to (unintelligible) -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

MS. BROCK: -- (unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Are there any other 

Mallinckrodt folks who did not have the 

opportunity to sign up but do wish to address 

the assembly this evening -- or St. Louis 

folks? Okay, I -- I do have two others who 

have signed up -- Tom, did you have an 

additional comment? 

 MR. HORGAN: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

answer to the second question. Denise, you 

know -- I didn't phrase it right, you know. 

 (On microphone) Come up here and let me know, 
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but it was my understanding, as well, the socalled Mont Mason rebuttal memo that we got at 

the 11th and a half hour at the St. Louis 

meeting, which couldn't be made available and 

wasn't even brought to the meeting, it's my 

understanding they just got ahold of that 

document, NIOSH, and that it was literally hot 

off the presses. 

Now Denise mentioned something that you found 

out that they've had it since May? 

MS. BROCK: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

 MR. HORGAN: May what? Could you come up and 

clarify that, 'cause if that's the case we'd 

like to get some -- an answer to that question. 

 DR. ZIEMER: This Board got the Mont Mason memo 

on -- at our meeting there. You were there. 

Is there some additional information on that, 

or Dick Toohey, can you address it? 

 DR. TOOHEY: Go ahead. 

MS. BROCK: No, I -- I -- with the 

understanding that you all got it the same time 

I did. I'm just curious -- maybe I -- maybe I 

misunderstood. When did -- when did NIOSH or 

ORAU come into possession of that memo? Was 

that -- because at the February meeting it was 
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my understanding you'd just gotten it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't know the answer to that. 

Is there -- Jim Neton, do you know anything 

about the sort of background on that memo? 

DR. NETON: I really think that we would need 

to go back and look at the transcripts because 

that was discussed in some detail at the 

meeting, and I really don't want to use my 

memory to recall, you know, what happened at 

that meeting. But I don't -- I don't recall 

and I need to look at the transcript to see 

when we got the Mont Mason memo, 'cause it was 

discussed. 

MS. BROCK: Sorry, you just may as well stay up 

here. About the boxes, have the -- has that 

all been on CD all this time? 

 DR. TOOHEY: That's all -- well... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Richard Toohey, can you address 

that? 

 DR. TOOHEY: Yeah. Yeah, that's the question I 

came up to answer about the memo. Okay, the --

I don't remember the date, but it was the 

second to last Board meeting when we had just 

captured these six boxes, which actually got 

consolidated into five 'cause two of them were 
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both Weldon Springs and half-full. 

Okay. We -- in capturing those, we physically 

got those boxes, and now I don't know whether 

we made copies on the site or if we brought the 

boxes and copied, but -- but in any case, as we 

copied these things, we scan them and then the 

documents, you know, get broken apart and put 

on a CD. So right now, to the best of my 

knowledge and belief, all those documents are 

on CD/ROM and have been put in our site 

research database. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. Dick Toohey, 

you had signed up to address the assembly, so 

you're at the mike, please. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Yeah, as long as I'm here, 

actually I signed up to answer a couple of the 

questions Mr. Horgan raised this morning in 

Senator Bond's remarks. One was the -- I don't 

remember the exact number, but it was the 140 

or so Weldon Springs claims that had been 

denied -- 148, thank you -- and what was the 

basis for that denial. The basis was the ORAU 

Team Technical Information Bulletin Number 2, 

maximum dose reconstruction for Department of 

Energy sites, which gives a maximum plausible 
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dose to a case. And if the probability of 

compensation (sic) is still well below 50 

percent, under the efficiency process allowed 

by 42 CFR 82 -- I think paragraph (10)(k)(3) -- 

we can stop at that point because it is very 

unlikely that any additional research would in 

fact find this case to be compensable. NIOSH 

refers to this as one of the efficiency 

processes for completing dose reconstruction. 

And since we do not, as you know, yet have a 

completed site profile for Weldon Spring, that 

is actually probably the only way we could 

complete a Weldon Spring case at this point. 

Speaking of Weldon Spring does come to the 

point -- it's a partial reason -- the other 

question was why have only a quarter of the 

Mallinckrodt claims been done, and Weldon 

Springs is part of that, because a number of 

those workers, as we know, went on to work at 

Weldon Spring. And without having the site 

profile and the exposure models complete for 

Weldon Spring, if a worker did not get enough 

dose from the exposure at Destrehan to become 

compensable, we cannot complete the dose 

reconstruction till we've included these other 
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sources. 

 Hindsight's always 20/20. Maybe it would have 

been better off to do Mallinckrodt and Weldon 

Spring together. But our overall decisionmaking process on the order in which we pursued 

the site profiles was roughly in the order of 

the number of claims from the site. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Tom, do you have -- 

 MR. HORGAN: Now I've got to get a 

clarification. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- additional question or comment? 

 MR. HORGAN: So are you saying that the 23 

percent rate of dose reconstruction at the 

downtown site, which we're dealing with that 

separate petition right now, is based -- is -- 

is that way because you're depending on 

material from Weldon Spring? 

 DR. TOOHEY: What I am saying is that many 

workers at Destrehan also worked at Weldon 

Spring. If the dose they received at Destrehan 

Street is not sufficient to get them over the 

50 percent probability of causation, we cannot 

complete their dose reconstruction until we 

include their additional exposure at Weldon 

Spring. 
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 MR. HORGAN: I -- I -- I'm -- I'm at a loss 

here because I thought we were dealing with two 

separate sites, and that -- well, wait, wait, 

wait, I mean we sub-- she submitted a site 

profile (sic) that had the two sites together. 

We were told by NIOSH that you had to split 

them up. She did. Now I -- I'm a little 

confused because if -- if this is the case, you 

know, that we have -- because some of these 

workers worked at Weldon Spring -- maybe I'm 

missing something, but none of these -- it 

seems to me a lot of these people aren't going 

to get compensated for quite a while because 

we're going to have to wait till the Weldon 

Spring site profile's done and all that's done, 

and I -- I don't know, maybe -- maybe it's 

above my pay grade, but I -- I don't -- I don't 

understand. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Well, no, you are -- you are quite 

correct in that point. I would also point out, 

though, that we have provided NIOSH with 9,300 

draft dose reconstruction reports and 

approximately 1,500 revised DR reports, and 

have provided DR reports for more than half of 

the cases that have been referred by DOL for 
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dose reconstruction from the 200 sites across 

the country. Actually there's 300 sites that 

are covered, but claims have only been received 

from about 200 sites. And I realize that sites 

which are not completed yet are unfair and we 

had to start somewhere, and where we started 

was with the sites that had the most number of 

claims. So Savannah River, Y-12 and so on got 

most of the attention up front. 

Also, we were able to develop exposure models 

for some sites where there was practically no 

data available from the site itself, such as 

Bethlehem Steel. And we have completed I think 

over 600 claims from Bethlehem Steel. 

One of the problems with Mallinckrodt was it's 

a very complicated site. You had uranium in 

many different forms in processing, recycled 

uranium and all that. And in terms of creating 

the site profile, we did Rev. 0. It did not 

cover all the claims. The ones that could be 

done with the data we had available, and 

generally those would be claims that could be 

compensated on the basis of that data, we were 

able to complete. The ones that come to mind 

would be lung cancer cases, just what we found 
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in Rev. 0 for radon levels at the site, there's 

enough of a dose, just that, to make lung 

cancers compensable, but no other types of 

cancer. 

Rev. 1 includes more data, so we can do more of 

the Mallinckrodt cases. We may not be able to 

do all of them. There may be -- some may need 

to await Rev. 2, and some of them may even need 

to await completion of Weldon Springs. 

Denise, I remember you told me once that it's 

about half the people who were at Destrehan 

went on to work at Weldon Springs, or something 

like that. 

MS. BROCK: There's a large volume of people 

that -- that had actually -- and I think Dr. 

McKeel had addressed that, too, that had went 

from Destrehan and a lot of them had moved over 

to Weldon. My father wasn't one of those 

workers, but a lot of them did. 

But I -- I just had a question, and I 

understand what you mean about if you don't 

want to give somebody a denial letter if they 

have possible exposure at another facility, so 

you want to see if they're compensable, and I -

- I greatly appreciate how -- how you -- you 
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get the cases that you know you can compensate, 

but it just hurts my feelings so bad or upsets 

me when people that -- it's almost like the 

cases are being prejudged with Weldon Spring, 

and it would -- to me, it would be costly -- I 

could be wrong, but if you had maybe a 

pancreatic cancer, a non-metabolic cancer that 

is one of the 22 SEC cancers and they, for 

whatever reason, were an overestimate from 

Weldon Spring and that case was denied, are you 

not -- who contacts those people? I mean I 

have a list of probably almost every claimant, 

but that seems to me to be prejudging these 

when in fact there could be an SEC and we're 

just not sure of -- of the data. That's why I 

filed a -- a petition on their behalf, as well, 

so -- I mean I -- I'm going to be the first 

person to tell you, I love when you compensate 

these people. But to not compensate them 

without giving them the benefit of the doubt of 

a possibility of a cohort, it just doesn't seem 

fair. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Well, again, I think the answer to 

your question there is that the stat-- not the 

statute but the rule and the implementation 
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guides say that if we can give a maximum dose 

to a case, regardless of the site they worked, 

as long as that -- we have something to base 

that dose on -- we can't just pull an arbitrary 

100 rem out of the air -- and in fact the model 

we use is based on the highest intakes ever 

observed across the complex, and our model 

assumes that this one individual gets these 

highest intakes from 18 different 

radionuclides, most of which were not even 

present at Weldon Springs, and if they're still 

not compensable, they will never be compensable 

under dose reconstruction. 

MS. BROCK: And I almost hate to get in these 

discussions because I'm not a scientist or a 

health physicist, but just for an example, had 

an -- my father worked, I think everybody knows 

that, and I also had several uncles that worked 

there. I had one uncle in particular -- and 

this was at the Destrehan Street site, but he 

worked there -- my aunt is 81. My uncle worked 

there -- missed the 250-day mark, but during 

that time frame. He was involved in an 

accident. Well, she doesn't remember what kind 

of accident, only that he was hospitalized. 
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And of course, you know, the 

collation/killation* therapy, nobody even knows 

what that is, and so if you're saying that 

you're taking the maximum dose, I don't really 

understand maximum dose, maximum plausible 

dose. And what if he was involved in something 

so horrific -- because he wasn't able to go 

back to work, they wouldn't allow him after 

that -- so how do you know it wasn't an 

episodic event that caused something that would 

have caused that type of cancer? 

 DR. TOOHEY: I would just say that the 

technical basis for our maximum model would 

cover that. It is so high that it would cover 

any conceivable sort of intake. 

Let me -- I've actually thought of a few other 

remarks I would like to make, at the risk of 

being perceived as proud and arrogant, but I 

would want the Board to remember -- because 

I've seen some indications today that there 

seems to be a feeling about that if we do not 

have very complete and reliable individual 

monitoring data, we cannot do a dose 

reconstruction, and that is simply not correct. 

The rules permit us to do dose reconstruction 
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based on other data. Granted, individual 

monitoring data has top priority. If we don't 

have that, we can use coworker data. Failing 

that, we can use area monitoring data. Even 

without that, we can use process knowledge. 

And in terms of doing health physics and 

estimating doses, that's what we do all the 

time. 

I would dare say Drs. Roessler and Ziemer 

remember when they took the certification exam 

from the American Board of Health Physics they 

were asked to calculate doses to a worker from 

a given exposure scenario, given so much 

cobalt-60 solution running through a pipe. 

It's what we do all the time. So I simply do 

not agree, as a professional health physicist 

with 30 years of experience in dosimetry and 

100 publications in the open literature, with 

the statement that we have to have individual 

monitoring data that is complete and verified 

and valid and covers every possibility to do a 

dose reconstruction that is adequate to make an 

unambiguous and a correct compensation 

decision. 

I would also mention that the Cohen & 
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Associates review of the first 20 dose 

reconstructions selected at random did in fact, 

to my knowledge, find that -- even though there 

were some, you know, trips and slips there in 

some of the dose details -- every dose 

reconstruction, they agreed, we came up on the 

right side of compensability. And I see that 

as the bottom line of this entire project. 

Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Richard, for those 

remarks. 

Tom? 

 MR. HORGAN: I just want to say a couple 

things. Have you ever inf-- and -- and this 

very well -- you may be right, this may be very 

beneficial, but have you ever for-- has NIOSH 

ever informed Mallinckrodt downtown claimants 

who are waiting that their dose reconstruction 

may be indicative (sic) on information coming 

from Weldon Spring, the -- (off microphone) if 

you know what I mean. 

 DR. TOOHEY: I think I know what you mean, and 

the answer to that question is the claim that 

is filed with Department of Labor identifies 

the site at which the Energy employee worked. 
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 MR. HORGAN: Okay, so yes or no? 

 DR. TOOHEY: So -- well, the employees know 

where they worked and if we haven't published -

-

 DR. ZIEMER: I think Tom is asking is the 

employee made --

 DR. TOOHEY: Aware of --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- aware of the fact that -- 

 DR. TOOHEY: -- where we are --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- there's additional information 

to be determined before their dose 

reconstruction is completed, something along 

that line. 

 MR. HORGAN: Yeah, basically what -- 

 DR. TOOHEY: Okay. 

 MR. HORGAN: -- I'm trying to say -- what I'm 

trying to say is the man -- the person who 

worked at downtown and also worked at Weldon 

Spring files a claim at downtown. He's waiting 

for his dose reconstruction for the downtown 

site. Is he aware -- or he or she aware that -

- that the processing of that dose 

reconstruction may dep-- may depend on 

information coming from the Weldon Spring site? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Larry Elliott has -- 
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 MR. ELLIOTT: Let me answer this, if I may, Mr. 

Horgan. When a claimant files a claim with the 

Department of Labor, they are asked to list all 

sites that are under the covered facilities 

list where they worked. That is a critical 

component of the eligibility of their claim 

that DOL must verify, because DOL recognizes, 

as we do, that multiple site experiences can 

lead to a compensable claim. And we don't want 

to miss any dose from another site, and so I 

just -- I hope that answers your question. So 

unless there's a claimant that decides that 

they don't want to list a site, we work hard, 

DOL works hard to make sure that claimants 

understand that they have to include all sites. 

It's to their interests. 

 MR. HORGAN: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, I'm sure that the Department 

of Labor, in their forms -- they work closely -

- the claims examiners work -- 

 MR. HORGAN: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

 MR. ELLIOTT: You can verify it, but I'm pretty 

confident in my answer to you, sir, that -- 

that Department of Labor wants to make sure 

that the claimants understand to add any -- any 
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experience from any multiple-site exposures 

that they might have. 

 MR. HORGAN: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I am very certain of that, sir. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. I have 

Richard Miller next on the list. 

 MR. MILLER: Good evening. I -- Richard Miller 

with GAP. I couldn't help today during the 

question and answer session but notice a 

discussion about contaminated blanks. And I 

went back to my room and got on my laptop and 

found Rev. 1 and looked up the section of the 

pages that discussed the contaminated blank 

situation, and -- and it look-- and it's not 

entirely clear how long a time period there 

were contaminated blanks, one; were there 

correction factors imposed which would have 

affected the dose results because it would be 

subtracted, it wouldn't be added, it would be 

in a non-conservative direction; and to what 

degree does this affect the credibility of the 

data that's the issue here. Can someone 

address the contaminated blank problem and how 

many years this went on or -- or months or was 

this just one incident, and has anybody dug in 
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and even verified that question? Is that 

something --

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim Neton --

 MR. MILLER: -- we can address? 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- may be able to shed some light 

on this. 

DR. NETON: I'm not prepared to answer that 

question this evening, but we certainly can 

look into it and provide an answer. 

 MR. MILLER: Could I -- I don't want to trouble 

you, Jim, 'cause I know there's many hours a 

day that you work, but if this Board's going to 

have to ask and answer questions on the special 

cohort, and this is now on the table about -- 

about the -- you know, this question about -- 

people are asking how much can we rely on the 

data here, and this seems to be an interesting 

data reliability issue that if we could get 

answered and understand the degree and extent 

and scope of it and what years it covers and 

how many samples might be affected so that when 

we saw the large volume -- I don't want to be 

in the business of necessarily confusing 

quantity and quality. 

The second thing I just wanted to flag for you 
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all -- it -- it struck me -- it was -- it came 

out in the memo that was sprung on the Board 

and -- and the petitioners at the last meeting 

in St. Louis was this 33-page memo which -- 

which -- which some -- some purport -- on the 

record, at least -- that was written by Mont 

Mason, and I think others will address its -- 

its pedigree. I think there's some questions 

about the pedigree of that memo, and I think 

careful reading would indicate there's some 

pedigree issues. But one of the interesting 

things that was revealed to me, and someone who 

has spent some time studying Mallinckrodt and 

kind of digging through the records for the 

last couple of years, was we kept coming across 

documents which talked about the I-factor. And 

I don't know if it jumped out at you, but it 

jumped out at me because the I-factor was a -- 

was a factor invented by Mallinckrodt which 

Mont Mason mentioned in passing in one of his 

letters, and what the I-factor turns out to be 

and what -- for the -- was -- was the -- was 

the mysterious employee threshold that 

heretofore did not want to be disclosed 

publicly for fear that this could either not 
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only cause workers concern, but could cause 

them to -- and doubt the credibility of 

management, but could raise liability concerns. 

And the I-factor was that they -- at -- if you 

reached 90 percent of this factor, they will 

remove you from your job. 

Now what was the threshold level for the 

removal of someone from their job? It was 600 

rem to the lung. Now at that time the standard 

was 15 rem to the lung. I think -- it came out 

of the studies that were done at Rochester, but 

the AEC used that as their guide. And so it 

was really stunning to see that you had a 40-

fold increase over the recommended level from 

the AEC being used as the basis for removing 

people -- 90 percent of that figure for being 

removed from their job. Which -- which left in 

my mind, at least -- or planted this seed -- 

which was, you know, if I had that problem on 

my hands, I'd have a liability concern, too. 

What's amazing is how long it took for that 

actually to find its way in the public domain. 

I don't know whether this was obvious to the 

rest of the world, but to me it's pretty 

stunning and close to barbaric that you would -
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- you would accept 540 rem before you decided 

to remove somebody from their job at this 

particular facility. And I -- and I -- and I 

think it's -- and it's -- it's an important 

equity issue. 

 The third issue I just wanted to question had 

to do with -- with the raffinate -- raffinates 

which we've talked about so many times, and I 

noticed in the supplement to the SEC that -- 

that -- that this was addressed at least in 

terms of concentrations -- or fractions, 

really, of thorium or fractions of actinium or 

protactinium and so forth. What I'm trying to 

figure out is where exactly in the process do 

people assume, one, that this material would 

concentrate and the concentration -- I don't 

mean the concentration levels in the air, but 

the concentration in the production process. 

Because as you go through a distillation, 

whether it's ether extraction or -- I guess 

they had various acid extraction processes as 

they went through their uranium refining 

process. Just the question I had was how do 

you know what the concentrations are that are 

being concentrated in the process, because 
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that's going to speak volumes to what your 

potential uptakes are going to be. 

Now when I -- I heard the discussion today 

about the sperry cake, and I think that's a 

significant issue, you know, in terms of -- 

that Dr. Makhijani raised, but when we looked 

at the production process when all of these 

cakes were produced, or filter press material 

were produced, it was produced by taking lime 

and mixing it with acid. Right? It was 

neutralization process that went under in order 

to get kind of this -- this -- this -- I don't 

know what you want to call it, paste and or -- 

or -- or -- or extract. And it seems to me --

there's a lot of questions about is this stuff 

only in dust form, was it available in a 

aerosol form if you heat things up and they're 

warm and then you make -- mix an acid in a base 

of great difference, you know, you get a 

reaction, you get a vapor -- you get vapor form 

-- has this been accounted for? 

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about -- it's only ur -- if it was only 

uranium. But when you're talking about the 

isotopes of interest here of some radiologic 
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significance, it would be interesting to me 

because when reading the site profile I saw 

still, even in Rev. 1, very little discussion 

in detail about the processes by which this 

went on. There was one discussion about a 

cloth belt where the material was -- was -- was 

pressed and -- and it would be scraped off and 

then it would be put into drums. But there's a 

-- this is a wet, sloppy process. I mean I --

I worked -- I used to be a mechanic and I 

remember what industrial processes were like, 

and filter presses -- you go even into a sewage 

treatment plant today -- are not neat, pristine 

processes. It's not -- and it's -- leaving 

aside whatever aesthetics may be associated 

with it. And so to the extent that one has a 

wet, sloppy process by which you're making cake 

and you're pressing out the liquids and you're 

separating the solids, I've seen very little 

discussion about the character and I've seen 

nothing with respect to worker interviews, 

which would illuminate this if there's no paper 

trail to support this. 

So I would just welcome further in-- sort of a 

further exploration of this because it's been 
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on the table for about a year, and I still 

don't have a very good answer. Maybe it's 

'cause the records aren't there to support it, 

and maybe the worker interviews are or aren't 

there to support it, I don't know, you know, 

Denise, whether you will know, but it seems to 

me we need to know a lot more about the 

raffinate part of this process. It seems to me 

there's a lot of ambiguities, leaving aside the 

fact that there was an effort made to come up 

with fractions of activity level. 

I just want to comment on the CD issue, just 

briefly. It's my understanding that the 

records that are being discussed that were on 

CD were the six -- five or six boxes of data. 

They were scanned and put on a CD. It would be 

great if Dr. McKeel, assuming there's no 

Privacy Act information, could get it. One of 

the problems we see to be having -- I remember 

working on the Freedom of Information Act 

request trying to get the original memo out of 

Merril -- on Merril Eisenbud, and we spent two 

years and didn't get it and fortunately NIOSH 

produced it for us. We learned that the V2161 

shelf record information which was recently 
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transmitted in the package and we saw the 

inventory from the Federal Records Center, that 

request has been hanging out there for several 

years. And one of the disadvantages I think 

that those of us on the outside of government 

have is we -- we file FOIA requests in good 

faith and we sort of hope someone's digging and 

get them, and then it's a little hard for us to 

play a role in the process when this stuff's 

already been captured in the system and we 

can't even get it. So I just thought I would 

pass that along because I do think if ORAU is 

sitting on this information, it'll be very 

helpful -- and some of this stuff was collected 

by ORAU -- it'll be very, very helpful if there 

were some mechanism that if you file a FOIA 

request to the Department of Energy, it -- it 

somehow funnels into the system, gets to you 

all, you go into your O drive or whatever it's 

called and it gets back out to the public 

because we're at -- we're -- there's a lack of 

symmetry in access to information here. 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) 

 MR. MILLER: It's true, huh? Okay. The last 

-- the last I guess issue going back to the 
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liability concerns was the discussion about 

should -- because AEC was doing a separate 

monitoring program from the Mallinckrodt and 

that -- and -- and then -- sort of the argument 

that was made about why one can separate the 

pre-'48 time period from the post-'48 period, 

one of the arguments that was made was well, 

look, AEC's in the game. And I guess one of 

the things that I would really like to know is, 

you know, is there a real sense of validation 

that AEC will always be consistently more valid 

than the Mallinckrodt records. There was one 

discussion of this in the Sanford Cohen report 

where they evaluated one MCW versus one AEC 

record. But it seems to me we would want to 

know whether -- one question is would you 

always go with the higher of the two in the 

interest of conservatism? If there's a reason 

not to do so, why not? But -- but this -- 

given that we've seen some of the same samples 

that were supposedly side-by-side come out much 

higher on one side, much lower on the other, 

what I question is how broadly can we even 

embrace the concept that the AEC data is going 

to be sort of the gold standard that we can 
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subscribe to, that we can have great confidence 

in. MCW may -- may have done a lot of 

sampling, there may be a lot of records, but -- 

but -- but you know, it's sort of we've got a 

verification. 

 Because we have this lack of parity in outcome 

of results with what we thought were similarlysituated monitoring circumstances, can we 

actually subscribe to that cutoff date? Can we 

actually say we now have valid data going 

forward, post-'48, because we can rely on the 

fact that AEC data is therefore necessarily 

valid and MC-- and -- and we'll always be 

validating Mallinckrodt. And I don't know if 

there's been an analysis done by -- by anybody 

to try to prove what I think is more of a 

hypothesis than necessarily a conclusion, but -

- but that's -- those are my thoughts. Thank 

you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Richard. Dick Toohey 

may have a comment on yours. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Just one. I was looking in my 

notes on -- on the numbers. We have 315 claims 

from Destrehan Street and 200 from Weldon 

Springs. I don't know the exact number, but I 
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believe that actually represents 400 or 

possibly fewer individuals, you know, because 

numbers of workers claim both Destrehan Street 

and Weldon Springs. And while I was looking 

for that, I ran across our site profile 

schedule, which says the Weldon Spring site 

profile was due to NIOSH for initial review 

this week. So it won't be too much longer to 

wait on that, hopefully. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. Let me ask if 

there are any other individuals in the assembly 

that wish to address us tonight? 

 (No responses) 

If not, that completes our public comment 

period. We do thank you all for coming and for 

either sharing or being a part of this meeting. 

I would remind you that the Board will resume 

its deliberations tomorrow morning. The actual 

discussions will begin shortly after 8:00 

o'clock -- 8:15, according to my schedule. So 

we look forward to seeing many of you at that 

time. Thank you very much and goodnight, 

everyone. 

(Whereupon, at 8:30 p.m. the meeting adjourned 

to Wednesday, April 27, 2005 at 8:00 a.m.) 
_____________________ 

393 

C E R T I F I C A T E OF COURT REPORTER 

STATE OF GEORGIA 

COUNTY OF FULTON 

 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 

Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 

above and foregoing on the day of April 26, 

2005; and it is a true and accurate transcript 

of the testimony captioned herein. 

 I further certify that I am neither kin 

nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 

have any interest in the cause named herein. 

 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 

26th day of May, 2005. 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102