July 20, 2016 

This is a working document prepared by NIOSH or its contractor for use in discussions with the ABRWH or its 

Working Groups or Subcommittees. Draft, preliminary, interim, and White Paper documents are not final NIOSH 

or ABRWH (or their technical support and review contractors) positions unless specifically marked as such. This 

document represents preliminary positions taken on technical issues prepared by NIOSH or its contractor. 

NOTICE: This report has been reviewed to identify and redact any information that is protected by the 

Privacy Act 5 USC §552a and has been cleared for distribution. 

Page 1 of 44

Evaluation of 32 Additional INL Claims for the SEC00219 

Proposed Class Definition 

W.M. Findley and T. D. Taulbee 

Introduction 

In March 2015, NIOSH presented a Special Exposure Cohort (SEC) recommendation to the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health (ABRWH) for the Idaho National Laboratory 

following the evaluation of SEC petition 00219. The recommendation was to add a class of 

workers to the SEC who were potentially exposed to plutonium and other actinides during their 

employment at the Idaho Chemical Processing Plant (CPP) from January 1963 through 

December 1974. The ABRWH questioned the ability of NIOSH/DOL/DOE to identify workers 

who worked at CPP during this time period. Since March, NIOSH has followed up on the 

availability and completeness of dosimetry records and presented an analysis at both the July 

2015 and the November 2015 meetings of the ABRWH. The only remaining issue raised by the 

ABRWH was the follow-up of the 881 claimants who worked at INL during the 1963 through 

1974 time period to determine whether they should be part of the SEC. 

By October 2015, NIOSH had reduced the number of claims requiring further follow-up to 7 

claims. SC&A identified 11 additional workers that needed follow-up based on their 

independent analysis. Thus a total of 18 of the 881 workers required further follow-up. The 

follow-up was required because the dosimetry records for these individuals were incomplete. 

In the beginning stages of the EEOICPA program, the INL site in agreement with NIOSH and DOL 

instituted an efficiency measure such that only annual doses were reported if the worker had 

less than 500 mrem lifetime total exposure. As a result, for workers with little external 

exposure only annual data was available and the location information was not reported. During 

this follow-up, the full dosimetry record which includes the location information was requested 

and received from the site. 

In December 2015, NIOSH issued a paper describing the results of the follow-up investigation 

on the 18 claims which had not been resolved. A total of three claims were not resolved using 

full dosimetry records and DOL files. Two of those three cases were resolved during a January 

2016 data capture trip in which CPP temporary badges were found for two of the three 
July 20, 2016 

This is a working document prepared by NIOSH or its contractor for use in discussions with the ABRWH or its 

Working Groups or Subcommittees. Draft, preliminary, interim, and White Paper documents are not final NIOSH 

or ABRWH (or their technical support and review contractors) positions unless specifically marked as such. This 

document represents preliminary positions taken on technical issues prepared by NIOSH or its contractor. 

NOTICE: This report has been reviewed to identify and redact any information that is protected by the 

Privacy Act 5 USC §552a and has been cleared for distribution. 

Page 2 of 44

unresolved claims. This left just one claims requiring additional follow-up with 880 of 881 claims 

resolved for CPP dosimetry. 

At the March 1, 2016 INL Work Group meeting NIOSH and SC&A were tasked with reviewing 

“new” claims (claims received since the original 881 claims reviewed were identified in April 

2015). Thirty two claims were identified at that time. This report provides the conclusions from 

the review of those 32 claims. It should also be noted that at the March 23-24, 2016 ABRWH 

meeting, the portion of the proposed SEC class for those workers were who monitored for 

external radiation at INL (e.g. at least one film badge or TLD dosimeter) between March 1, 1970 

and December 31, 1974 with an aggregate of at least 250 working days was approved. 

Methods 

During this analysis, a wide range of sources (dosimetry from DOE monitoring files, DOL 

employment records, Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATIs), bioassay, and visitor 

badge reports) were reviewed and evaluated. Conclusions on the presence at the Chemical 

Processing Plant (CPP) during the SEC covered period for each case varied greatly in the level of 

difficulty to resolve. In some cases direct evidence of monitoring at CPP clearly put the 

individual at CPP during the covered period and are therefore part of the Special Exposure 

Cohort. In other cases, a weight of evidence was used since the absence of dosimetry at CPP 

may not be a clear indicator to some of SEC exclusion. In some cases monitoring at another 

radiological area at INL during the SEC time period was used to place the worker outside of CPP 

during the covered period. 

Since these workers all had some indication of work at CPP either through the CATI or other 

sources, hence the uncertainty to begin with, the focus of this evaluation was on verification of 

monitoring at CPP and the time period involved. Through evaluation, several individuals are 

considered to be excluded from the SEC as their work at CPP was outside of the SEC time 

period. Overall, significant investigative work and some professional judgement were used to 

resolve the status of the follow-up cases. 

Results 
July 20, 2016 

This is a working document prepared by NIOSH or its contractor for use in discussions with the ABRWH or its 

Working Groups or Subcommittees. Draft, preliminary, interim, and White Paper documents are not final NIOSH 

or ABRWH (or their technical support and review contractors) positions unless specifically marked as such. This 

document represents preliminary positions taken on technical issues prepared by NIOSH or its contractor. 

NOTICE: This report has been reviewed to identify and redact any information that is protected by the 

Privacy Act 5 USC §552a and has been cleared for distribution. 

Page 3 of 44

The detailed results of the thirty two claims reviewed are provided in Attachment A. A summary 

table is provided below. 

Case

Number

Claim 

Number Occupation CPP Dosimetry

1 [redacted] Pipefitter Yes

2 [redacted] Roofer Yes but outside of SEC period

3 [redacted] Technical Writer Yes

4 [redacted] Sheetmetal Worker Yes

5 [redacted] Heavy Equipment No

6 [redacted] Engineer No

7 [redacted] Mason Yes

8 [redacted] Engineer Yes but outside of SEC period

9 [redacted] Helper Yes

10 [redacted] Material Handler Yes

11 [redacted] Engineer No

12 [redacted] Painter No

13 [redacted] Chemical operator Yes

14 [redacted] Reactor operator No

15 [redacted] Operator Yes

16 [redacted] Operator Yes

17 [redacted] Laborer Yes

18 [redacted] Project Engineer No

19 [redacted] Bus Driver No

20 [redacted] Operator No

21 [redacted] Mechanic Inspector Yes but outside of SEC period

22 [redacted] Time Keeper Yes

23 [redacted] Manager Yes but outside of SEC period

24 [redacted] Security Guard Yes but outside of SEC period

25 [redacted] Electrician Yes but outside of SEC period

26 [redacted] QA Engineer No

27 [redacted] Reactor operator Yes but outside of SEC period

28 [redacted] Ironworker Yes

29 [redacted] Project Control No

30 [redacted] Electrician No

31 [redacted] Telephone Installer No

32 [redacted] Maintenance Yes
July 20, 2016 

This is a working document prepared by NIOSH or its contractor for use in discussions with the ABRWH or its 

Working Groups or Subcommittees. Draft, preliminary, interim, and White Paper documents are not final NIOSH 

or ABRWH (or their technical support and review contractors) positions unless specifically marked as such. This 

document represents preliminary positions taken on technical issues prepared by NIOSH or its contractor. 

NOTICE: This report has been reviewed to identify and redact any information that is protected by the 

Privacy Act 5 USC §552a and has been cleared for distribution. 

Page 4 of 44

Conclusions 

All but one of the thirty two INL claims that were reviewed were deemed to require no 

additional follow-up to definitively determine whether they should be part of the Special 

Exposure Cohort. Only claim number [redacted] was considered indeterminate due to the lack 

of individual dosimeter results. 

The other claim ([redacted]) that has not been fully resolved from the original 881 is believed to 

be the result of a potential error (typographical or other) in the location for the individual. The 

individual worked out of central facilities and appears on multiple temporary badge reports for 

SPERT, MTR, and ETR from 1963 through 1966. The claimant’s 1967 whole body count lists CPP 

but the individual was not listed on the CPP temporary badge reports. Since the maximum 

wear duration of a temporary badge was approximately one month with most being one to two 

days and occasionally a week, NIOSH is confident that the individual did not work at CPP for 250 

days or more even if the WBC location is correct as that would require a minimum of 12 missing 

temporary badges. The temporary badge rosters appear to be complete based on a 

comparison with monthly dosimetry reports. 

To date 913 claims have been reviewed to determine the efficacy of using external dosimetry to 

determine inclusion in the Special Exposure Cohort. Overall, NIOSH has come to complete 

closure on 911 of the 913 (99.9%) reviewed claims. There were no instances found during this 

review where a claimant worked at CPP without evidence of CPP dosimetry. 

References

The primary reference source for each evaluation was the individual’s claimant files as provided 

by the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Department of Energy (DOE). 
July 20, 2016 

This is a working document prepared by NIOSH or its contractor for use in discussions with the ABRWH or its 

Working Groups or Subcommittees. Draft, preliminary, interim, and White Paper documents are not final NIOSH 

or ABRWH (or their technical support and review contractors) positions unless specifically marked as such. This 

document represents preliminary positions taken on technical issues prepared by NIOSH or its contractor. 

NOTICE: This report has been reviewed to identify and redact any information that is protected by the 

Privacy Act 5 USC §552a and has been cleared for distribution. 

Page 5 of 44

Attachment A 

External Dosimetry Records for 32 Evaluated INL Claims 

[redacted]