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 

MEETING FOUR 

SUBCOMMITTEE FOR DOSE RECONSTRUCTION AND 

 

SITE PROFILE REVIEWS 

 

The verbatim transcript of the Subcommittee for 

Dose Reconstruction and Site Profile Reviews, 

Meeting 4, held at the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland 

Plaza, 35 West Fifth Street, Cincinnati, Ohio, on 

March 24 and 25, 2005. 
2

C O N T E N T S

March 24, 2005 

OPENING REMARKS 7 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 

DR. LEW WADE, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF DRAFT MINUTES, MEETING 3 17 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 

DR. LEW WADE, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

SUBCOMMITTEE DISCUSSION –- 18 

SCORING METHODOLOGY 

SUBCOMMITTEE ADJOURN 185 

March 25, 2005 

OPENING REMARKS 186 

ADMINISTRATIVE HOUSEKEEPING 186 

REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF DRAFT MINUTES, MEETING 3 188 

FIRST 20 DOSE RECONSTRUCTIONS WRAP-UP 190 

MEMBERS OF SUBCOMMITTEE 

SUBCOMMITTEE DISCUSSION: 

BETHLEHEM STEEL SITE PROFILE 252 

HOW TO CLOSE 

SUBCOMMITTEE DISCUSSION 281 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 358 
3

TRANSCRIPT LEGEND 

The following transcript contains quoted material. 

Such material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

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

an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 

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

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

word(s) when reading written material. 

-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 

of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 

reported. 

-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 

the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 

available. 

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

"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 

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

without reference available. 

-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 

failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 

In the following transcript (off microphone) 

refers to microphone malfunction or speaker's neglect 

to depress "on" button. 
4

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

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

BOARD MEMBERS

CHAIR

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D. 

Professor Emeritus 

School of Health Sciences 

Purdue University 

Lafayette, Indiana 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY

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 

STAFF/VENDORS

CORI HOMER, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, Certified Merit Court Reporter 
6

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS

BINGHAM, EULA, UC 

CASE, DAVID, SAIC/DTRA 

HEISTER, MELANIE, NCRP 

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS 

KATZ, TED, NIOSH 

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL 

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 

NUGENT, MARY, USGAO 

TOOHEY, B.A. 

TOOHEY, R.E., ORAU 
7

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

2 (12:05 p.m.) 

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

going to call the meeting to order. Thank you 

for being here. This is a rather cavernous 

room. There's a lot of echo here. We're never 

quite sure what to expect on subcommittee 

meetings in terms of public participation, but 

we have at least some support people here that 

make us feel like it's worth having a big room, 

have a few spectators. 

 This is the meeting of the Subcommittee for 

Dose Reconstruction and Site Profile Review of 

the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

Health. The subcommittee members participating 

today for the record: Mike Gibson, Rich 

Espinosa, Roy DeHart, Mark Griffon, Paul 

Ziemer, and we expect Henry Anderson to be 

joining us tomorrow. Designated Federal 

Official Dr. Lewis Wade is with us today, as 

well. 

 Remind everyone again, if you haven't 

registered your attendance with us, this 

includes Board members, the -- Cori Homer has 
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the registration book there by the door. 

Please do that sometime yet this afternoon. 

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 I assume all of you have had a chance to review 

the agenda. This was distributed several weeks 

ago by e-mail. And you're aware that the focal 

points of our sessions deal with two primary 

reports. One the review of the first 20 dose 

reconstructions, a document that we're hoping 

to wrap up, and then the Bethlehem Steel site 

profile review, as well. So that will be -- 

those will be our main focus for the next 

couple of days. There will be some other 

pieces of information that come up from time to 

time, but we'll follow the agenda as close as 

we can. 

 I've indicated to some folks that if we need 

to, in terms of timing, if it looks like it's 

going to take us a little longer, we would 

probably stretch this afternoon session a 

little longer in order to allow people who have 

made travel arrangements for tomorrow afternoon 

to be able to keep those. So if it looks by 

late this afternoon that we're going to need 

more time, then we'll probably stretch the 

afternoon a little beyond what the stated 
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 Let me turn the mike over to Dr. Wade for a 

moment for some introductory remarks, as well. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you, Paul. Let me thank you 

each personally for making yourself available. 

I know that it's difficult, and we do 

appreciate your coming together. I bring you 

welcome from the secretary and from John 

Howard, the NIOSH Director, and again, I bring 

their thanks to add to mine. 

 As Paul mentioned, really today we're going to 

put our attention to the issue of individual 

dose reconstruction reviews. And I'd just 

like, in my role as Designated Federal 

Official, to pose some questions that I think 

need to be answered by the full Board based 

upon input from this subcommittee. 

If you remember, when last we met in St. Louis 

we were just recently in receipt of the SC&A 

report that reviewed the first 20 dose 

reconstructions. There was also a discussion 

there about what kind of a report card or 

scorecard the Board would use in reporting out 

its summary findings. I think that issue of 

scorecard needs to be closed on or the issues 
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 And then I think that it's appropriate that 

that scorecard be used to develop this 

subcommittee's thoughts on those first 20 dose 

reconstructions. So it would be nice for this 

group to come to closure on deciding upon a 

report card and then filling out that report 

card. 

 I think it's also important that this group 

start to discuss and then bring to the full 

Board how it would intend to see the full Board 

close on these issues. Would this be a letter 

to the secretary? Would this be a motion on 

the record? How will the Board conclude its 

work on each of these -- each batch of these 

dose reconstructions? I think we need to talk 

about that in the relaxed environment of this 

subcommittee meeting and bring those thoughts 

to the Board so the Board can act upon those 

thoughts at the next meeting. 

I think then it would be well for us all -- and 

SC&A is with us -- to pause and discuss lessons 

learned from the process of the first 20 so we 

can bring those to subsequent batches of 

reviews. I think the Board has laid out a very 
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healthy process, but I assume it can always get 

better by iteratively evaluating its 

effectiveness. 

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 And then the last issue I'd like you to think 

about is the overall scope of this dose 

reconstruction review task. As you know, the 

depth of these reviews has grown, as has 

possibly the cost of them. And I'll need a 

sense from the Board -- starting, I think, with 

this subcommittee -- as to whether the Board 

still holds to its original scope of what it 

would like to see reviewed. And then if that's 

the case, I would need to set out to see that 

the resources were available to do that. 

I'm not in any way trying to limit the scope of 

the review if this subcommittee and the Board 

thinks we need to go to that two, two and a 

half percent measure we used, then that's what 

we should do. We would need to start to 

prepare information as to the cost of that in 

light of what we've learned. And I would need 

to go out and get the money to see that we can 

do that. 

 So I think all of those issues sort of fall 

under the scope of what's to be discussed 
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today. I think it's a fairly full plate today, 

and wish you well in your deliberations. 

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 Thank you, Paul. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Lew, and let 

me ask if any of the subcommittee members have 

any other questions relating to agenda or scope 

of work before us. Mark? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think there is -- and I've sent 

e-mails or talked to you about this. I can't 

remember now, but I think there's other things 

that we may want to cover prior to the next 

full Board meeting, and they're not on the 

agenda here today. But I just think we should 

sort of keep them on our radar. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, and Mark, I think it's in 

order for you to go ahead and identify the 

items that you were thinking about just so we 

can have those in mind as we proceed, as well. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, one certainly is the 

procedures review. SCA has provided us with 

their first cut of a procedures review, and I 

think that we should go through it -- you know, 

review it as a subcommittee and bring our 

recommendations back to the full Board. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And the discussion at this point 
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would be on actually how are we going to do 

that rather than actually doing it. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: How and when perhaps. Go ahead. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Second is the Mallinckrodt, 

Revision 1, I guess, site profile. And at this 

point I don't think that SC&A has finished 

their review of Rev. 1, but I think that we 

committed to having another -- in our one vote 

we talked about resolving the issue on the 

petition at the next Board meeting. So I don't 

want to let us slide on that one. So I think 

somehow we've got to get Rev. 1 in -- in our 

review, before -- prior to that next Board 

meeting which is coming right up pretty 

quickly. 

 And finally, I think we need to move along a 

task order for SEC petition review, and we 

talked about that at the last meeting. I think 

-- at this point you've sort of rolled some of 

the work that's being done on that under the 

site profile review, which I think was 

appropriate. But I think we still may need a 

task, a specific task for that. I've actually 

taken the liberty of drafting something off the 
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original task order contract -- which I have 

with me so I can provide that to discuss these. 

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 DR. WADE: I agree that I think it would be 

most appropriate for the subcommittee to 

discuss those issues. I think we are working 

to try and get a phone meeting of the full 

Board before our next sit-down meeting, at 

which time hopefully the full Board can close 

on some of those issues. So I think we are 

trying, Mark, to live true to your desire, but 

I think any intellectual lifting we could do 

here to work that process along would be a good 

thing. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's correct, and I think Cori 

has already made contact with all of you to ask 

-- I think there were suggested dates. I don't 

recall them right now, and it's not critical at 

this moment, but we're trying to find a time 

when we can get a telephone meeting of the 

Board prior to our upcoming meeting next month. 

And that would be a meeting where we discuss 

process. Not actually discuss, for example, 

the Mallinckrodt profile, but the process of 

coming to closure on it. And likewise some of 

these others, and we may be able to take an 
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early look and be prepared to make a 

recommendation to the full Board on process on 

some of these. 

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 Thank you, Mark. 

 DR. WADE: One of the functions listed in the 

charter for this group is to clarify the Board 

intent regarding technical scope of tasks 

assigned to the audit contractor. So I do 

think, even under the previously agreed-upon 

functions of this subcommittee, we're well 

within our rights to talk about the issues that 

you mentioned. 

 It also -- to add to your list, Mark, I think 

it would not be inappropriate for us to discuss 

some of the issues that might arise concerning 

the SC&A review of the Iowa TBD that you're 

aware of. And again, setting the stage for a 

more formal discussion by the full Board in its 

telephone call, preparing all of us for having 

all of the information we think, and all of the 

questions we think need to be raised, raised so 

when we meet next as a full Board together in 

Iowa, we're prepared to do our business. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Then for the record -- I can't 

remember, there's been so many e-mails and so 
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on back and forth the past month, but I think 

you all received from NIOSH the new information 

on Iowa relative to the issue of the 

confidentiality of records -- well, a 

classification of records, and the fact that 

there appears to be a time period now where the 

classification issue is not the issue any 

longer, and this raises some questions relative 

to our previous recommendation. 

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 Since there is this new Iowa site profile, and 

we were in the process of preparing the 

recommendation to the secretary, I felt it was 

very important that we not only look at this 

revised -- it's a technical basis document, 

actually a TBD -- that we not only look at 

that, but we get some assistance from our 

contractor. 

So I did make contact with John Mauro. Lew and 

I both talked with John about whether or not 

they could marshal their resources to take a 

look at that and give us some early feedback on 

that revision so that we would have that in 

hand. This may be particularly important 

because we may have our next meeting actually 

in Iowa, and we want to certainly be prepared 
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 DR. WADE: And I'd like to go on record as 

thanking SC&A for their very timely response. 

I think the Board is in receipt of at least the 

first comments by SC&A in review of the Iowa 

TBD. I think it was sent to you maybe 

yesterday or the day before. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And I'm going to instruct everyone 

to turn off their cell phones, and I thought I 

had done that. I now have turned off my cell 

phone. It didn't get through the whole "Ode to 

Joy," which is what it was playing. It seems 

appropriate, doesn't it? 

 Other comments in general as we proceed? 

 (No responses) 

16 REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF MEETING 3 MINUTES

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 DR. ZIEMER: The first item on our agenda is to 

take action on the minutes of the last 

subcommittee meeting. That meeting was held 

February 7th; that was in St. Louis. I believe 

you have at least in your folder a copy of 

those, but perhaps have not had a chance to 

read them yet. Do you wish to defer action -- 

or they're actually not very long. 

How many have not had a chance to read those 
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 DR. ZIEMER: I'm going to def-- just -- if 

there's no objection, we'll defer action until 

tomorrow on these minutes so Board members have 

a chance to read them. I have the advantage of 

having them in advance. 

8 SCORING METHODOLOGY FOR DOSE RECONSTRUCTION 

9 REVIEWS

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 Okay, let's proceed now to the issue of the 

scorecard or scoring methodology for the site -

- not site, the dose reconstruction reviews. 

 As a backdrop we have the report of the first 

20 reviews, and that report has gone through a 

couple of iterations over time. And you also 

have, I believe, in your folder a -- yes, a 

page that came out of our last Board meeting 

called Methodology for Categorizing and Ranking 

Dose Reconstruction Case Findings -- or Case 

Review Findings. Do you all have that? It 

should be in your folder. 

I assume all of these handouts are available to 

those of you here. If you don't have them, let 

Cori know. 

And then there also is a packet which gives the 
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-- wait, I'm looking to see. Does this packet 

go with this document? 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. Okay. 

 DR. WADE: This is done by the subcommittee. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, this is a matrix that shows 

the finding number -- which is SC&A's finding 

number, I believe -- a brief description of the 

finding, brief description of NIOSH's response, 

a ranking -- I believe that was an importance 

ranking -- a category; and the categories that 

we selected were technical -- well, they're 

shown on this sheet, I believe -- technical, 

procedural, quality control, and regulatory. 

So those are indicated. And let's see, section 

-- section is -- remind me, is that 

external/internal dose? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, primarily external. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, right. There were some 

other things there, as well -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: And data collection. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- data collection issues, right. 

 And then is this just being passed out now? 

 DR. WADE: The subcommittee has it now. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Just as a reminder, we asked Cori 
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to xerox the checklist that came out of the 

SC&A document. Remember that they had 

developed what they called a Case Review 

Checklist, and they have the -- well, it's a 

somewhat similar way of categorizing things. 

There are some differences here that -- they 

have the categorization of significance -- low, 

medium, high -- and that sort of thing. 

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 DR. WADE: And if you look at the footnotes 

that speak to their low, medium, high, it sort 

of creates a discussion in terms of the 

subcommittee's -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. WADE: -- work. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Which -- yeah, and their 

footnotes are actually -- they sort of go along 

with -- if you look at the methodology document 

where I have my ranking discussion I bring up 

in there, and ranking is similar to their 

(unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's a similar concept, right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Now -- and I don't think 

it's a matter of us saying we're going to 

necessarily select one or the other of these. 
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We may want to use the good features of each. 

But the issue before us is, number one, what 

should the scorecard look like. And then we 

have to apply it specifically to these first 20 

cases and see -- and make a recommendation to 

the full Board on how to wrap up those first 20 

cases. 

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documentation at the moment? Do you have 

everything you need to begin discussing? 

 (No responses) 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think we're at a 

(unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think it would be useful to talk 

a little bit about how we do the array. Do you 

have any preferences for how this would be laid 

out schematically? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I mean I was just going to say, 

just to pick up on that conversation that we 

had in St. Louis on this, is that I'm not 

necessarily sure that both of these wouldn't be 

appropriate, that -- to have our contractor 

track these things as we go on with more cases. 

We're up to around 60 now. It gives us a good 

perspective on the tracking part of this and 
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 This -- what we came up with with the working 

group was more -- rather than calling it a 

scorecard, although it has rankings on it, I 

was envisioning it as summary report of the 

first batch of cases, a summary report of the 

second batch of cases. So that you can quickly 

get a sense of the types of findings and a 

short discussion instead of reading the 

lengthier document to get a sense of what kinds 

of findings we had. So it's more of a summary 

report that has some ranking stuff in it, but I 

think they can work -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, it's certainly a good point, 

and the contractor sheet actually goes right 

down the list from their original proposal, 

which is -- they had indicated which items that 

they would review and we in fact asked them to 

make their findings parallel to their original 

proposal, which is -- and they were responsive 

to that and that's what this reflects, so that 

each item here reflects one to one, I think, 

pretty much -- John, maybe you can speak to 

that, but I believe that this is every item 

that's in the original proposal that said -- 
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you said you would look at these items, and 

here they are. 

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 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And so there is the advantage of, 

from their point of view, in each case being 

able to itemize all of them -- all of the items 

that they look at. 

 MR. GRIFFON: The only thing I said that -- 

that going forward, I really see a benefit to 

having both systems, and -- but if going 

forward -- it would be very useful -- at least 

from my standpoint, I think it would be useful 

to be able to say, you know, 1.1 on my table, 

can I tag that to the checkmark under C.2.1 in 

their matrix, you know. So there's a link -- 

somehow we create a link so that we know which 

finding on the summary report goes with which 

finding in their database. You know, that 

would be beneficial so we can have -- you know, 

so that it tracks across systems. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, Mark, we don't cover every 

one of theirs here, I don't believe. Right? 

Is there a straight linkage on every one of the 

-- I don't believe there is on every one of 

these. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: There's not a straight linkage on 

-- what do you mean, on questions or -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, no, we don't have an item 

here for every one of the SC&A items, do we? 

In other words, if everyone -- if we covered 

everyone, we could just use the same number. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, this summary report I was 

hoping would have all the findings, and then if 

they track their findings -- they create one of 

these summary sheets for each case they look 

at, and each case may have several checkmarks 

in it, several boxes checked off as a yes or -- 

and then a ranking with that box. That's my 

understanding. And I was saying that it would 

be nice to have -- like for case one, in my 

summary report here there is 1.5. 

 Now this -- I don't think this is all of them, 

as we discussed at the last meeting. But say 

it was all of them, for the sake of argument, 

and there's five findings on here, I'd like 

that to line up with five spots, ideally. Or 

maybe there's two checkmarks for one finding, 

you know, but it would still be linked so that 

-- you know what I'm saying? So that there's a 

sense of -- so that you have a descriptive part 
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in the summary report that goes along with the 

checkmark in this database, because this 

database doesn't describe to me -- you know, it 

says was the appropriate procedure... Well, it 

does say procedure, but in the descriptive 

section we might say procedure TIB 0003 or 

whatever was not adequately applied. And if we 

see TIB 3 several times, we might recommend to 

NIOSH that they revisit that procedure. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: If you just have a checkmark 

here, you don't capture that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: So I think there's useful -- 

utility in having it linked is all I'm saying. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. But my question was, for 

example -- just pick out any one of these at 

random, item 1.5 -- is that unique? The first 

page of your matrix, item 1.5, is that item 

unique to a corresponding item on the SC&A Case 

Review Checklist? 

 MR. GRIFFON: And maybe Hans can help me. 

 DR. BEHLING: The way this -- Hans Behling, 

SC&A -- the way this evolved, it was that when 

we submitted the first draft of our first 20 
26

cases to both the Board and to NIOSH, NIOSH 

responded with a list of things that they felt 

they disagreed with. And the numerical 

sequence that you see that Mark identified is 

in fact their sequencing of issues that they 

disagreed with. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 Which, first of all, answers two questions. 

Dr. Ziemer's asked are all the issues that we 

raised there? No, they are not. There are 

certain issues that NIOSH didn't disagree with 

us up front; therefore, they were never entered 

onto that disc of issues that they wanted to 

contest. 

 And the numbering system that you see there, 

the first number is usually a reference to the 

particular case. So you'll see case one 

through 20, and there may be cases for which 

there were no comments, and so you will skip a 

whole number. And so 1.1 will be the first 

issue with which they took exception to, and it 

does not coincide with our numbering system. 

But they are in fact all contained in our 

system, although there will be considerably 

more issues that we raised than were identified 

by NIOSH. 
27

1 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

2 

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25 

 DR. MAURO: Excuse me, I -- there's one more -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, John, go ahead. 

 DR. MAURO: -- I think it's important to 

consider. 

 The form, this form, was written primarily for 

DOE cases where we have data on bioassay, 

urinalysis, where in effect a dose 

reconstruction followed the conventional, 

traditional protocols as laid out, for example, 

in OCAS-1 and 2, the two dose reconstruction 

guidance. 

This form is not used for the cases, or that 

form, where we do our review for atomic weapons 

employees. See, so it's a whole different 

class of problems. We don't have bioassay 

data. As a result, the review -- for example, 

in one through five -- Mark, for example, in 

your write-up I notice you've numbered them 

what, one -- 1.1? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Uh-huh. 

 DR. MAURO: The first five turned out to be AWE 

cases, and each of those deal more with the 

fundamental models that were employed, and they 

don't track -- and there -- we do not have a 
28

cover sheet like this in front of any case that 

was an AWE case because it's not trackable this 

way. 

1 

2 

3 

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5 

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7 

8 

9 

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12 

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 MR. GRIFFON: I noticed that. 

 DR. MAURO: So it's important to keep in mind 

that, yes, I think we eventually can link the 

scoring here and each of the items that you 

identify here except for AWEs because each one 

of those are very unique in the way in which 

they come at the problem, the way they modeled 

it. It doesn't go back to OCAS-1 and 2, and it 

does not really map back in a way that we -- 

that's -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Gotcha. 

 DR. MAURO: -- that's so clean -- so cleanly 

trackable. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Hans, do you want to 

add to that? 

 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, there's more -- there's -- 

with another small twist to it. In fact, just 

yesterday I was able to review a dose 

reconstruction that involved the Iowa facility, 

and that is obviously one that we want to score 

according to this plan because we can. The TBD 

for Iowa pretty much tracks some of the 
29

procedural guidance given in the non-TBD 

guidance documents. And so therefore we can 

track that pretty much using this scorecard. 

So some AWE, like Bethlehem Steel, you would 

have virtually this whole checklist with NAs 

because there were simply no monitoring data, 

there was simply no bioassay data. There was -

- certainly many of the issues that we want to 

look at simply weren't applicable here. But 

there will be AWEs for which we feel we can use 

them. So to go backwards again from what John 

said, not all AWEs are created equal. And so 

we will have a chance to use them if we 

consider it appropriate. And Iowa will in fact 

be considered appropriate. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And that raises another question 

that I had which was that -- might we'd not 

want to -- I had some editorial comments on 

this matrix that might -- you know, could it be 

edited to make it globally acceptable? I'm not 

sure, you know, but might well be considered be 

considered, yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, let's -- we'll raise that in 

a moment. 
30

 Let me ask this question now. It just occurs 

to me that basically this matrix only addresses 

items that -- where there was some kind of 

initial disagreement, which means we're not 

tracking items where basically both groups 

agreed as to how the reconstruction was done. 

My question is -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Huh? 

 MR. GRIFFON: That wasn't necessarily the 

intent. That was more -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's how it came out. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- just what I had to work with 

in the working group. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But the question I'm raising is do 

we need to in fact have such a listing of those 

issues that were what the finding was. The 

finding in such a case might be that we agreed 

that NIOSH -- or with NIOSH's approach to this. 

Don't we want to have that tracked, as well? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So there would be -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I think there are several -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- a parallel document or part of 

this document would be such a listing. 
31

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, my intent was to add to 

this in there, as Hans said, and I've gone 

through the foreword part a little more now and 

tried to identify them. The difficulty I have, 

obviously, is that they're not -- in that 

document they're not numbered like they were 

when we had the meeting with NIOSH because 

NIOSH numbered those -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

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20 

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24 

25 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, because they were specific 

issues, and they had to keep track of them. 

 MR. GRIFFON: So I guess we as a subcommittee 

have to go back and try to separate -- from the 

text of the 20 cases -- findings, and I think 

findings -- even when NIOSH said yes, we're in 

agreement -- well, certainly it was still a 

finding by SC&A. So I think we need to 

incorporate that in there. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, where -- there's two of 

them then. One is where SC&A says we agree 

with how NIOSH did this. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: One is where they say we believe 

NIOSH did this incorrectly or should have done 

this, and NIOSH says oh, yes, I think you're 

right, and we will make that change. That also 
32

1 is not captured here then. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: That's right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So if we want the full story, we 

need those other pieces to show up here for 

future tracking purposes. 

 Okay, Roy. 

 DR. DEHART: My question, having read this 

document, is at what point do we prepare a 

scorecard? Because more than half of these 

issues are yet to be resolved. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I know, right. 

 DR. DEHART: And the final scorecard needs to 

have resolution, either by the two parties that 

are discussing it or by the Board. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I guess that's why I was 

reluctant to call it scorecard is I -- I feel 

like this is a way to track -- even if they 

were only preliminary findings, even if after 

the comment resolution process, NIOSH and SC&A 

may have agreed and the finding was dropped, I 

think that's important just to, you know, lay 

that out. You know, that's what happened to 

it. That's how it got disposed of. 

 And -- but on the other hand we've got, as Roy 

said, a number of these that are still hanging 
33

up in the air. I think we need to make sure we 

don't just let them -- we don't forget about 

them, so that's why I was calling it a summary 

report more than a scorecard. And I think -- 

yeah, I'm not sure how, but I don't think we 

rank them until we have a resolution there, 

final resolution. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: It's the initial report that kicks 

it all off. You have a whole group of 

findings, and those are going to be tracked. 

And I'm envisioning now what we're talking 

about, because the end product has taken care 

of -- a number of issues go away. But just 

because they go away doesn't mean that they 

shouldn't -- we shouldn't be cognizant of them, 

and how they were handled. 

And the final wrap-up would be, I think, a kind 

of summary of how all the issues -- some issues 

were resolved in this way, some were resolved 

in this way, some may not be resolved between 

our contractor and NIOSH. I mean we're not 

going to force resolution where there's valid 

scientific disagreement on an approach. I 

think it sits there and NIOSH ultimately says 

yes, we understand your point, but this is how 
34

we're handling it. And the Board may say 

that's fine, or we may weigh in one way or the 

other. But I'm trying to get a picture of what 

a final report would look like, and it seems to 

me it could have all of those kinds of pieces 

in it. 

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 DR. WADE: Right. I mean I think this is a 

very important discussion, but you've basically 

asked the contractor to offer its opinion on 

NIOSH's work, and that opinion stands at a 

certain moment in time. And I think that 

opinion needs to be captured, owned by the 

Board and reported out on. 

 Then there's a very positive step of improving 

the process based upon that report. And I 

think that should happen -- I think the Board 

should track that, but I think there is a 

moment in time when the Board needs to say here 

is our summary view of NIOSH's performance on 

these 20 dose reconstructions. 

 Now again, whether you're in a position to do 

that now or whether you want another iteration 

is for you to decide. But right now, as I 

understand it, there is no resolution activity 

going on. The material sits before you at this 
35

1 moment in time. 

2 

3 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think also I -- just to 

reflect back on what we wanted this whole thing 

to be and, you know, we originally said that if 

we had our -- you know, in an ideal world -- 

maybe not so ideal world because the other 

program did it after the fact. But if you had 

all the cases done and we were going to sample 

2.5 percent and do the -- you know, audit them 

all at once and get a sense of, you know, a 

random sample -- maybe stratified, however -- 

but get a good sense across the board of what -

- 

 What worries me here I think is, you know, 

we've got 20 cases. We know there were some 

conditionals on these cases that were -- they 

were, you know, probably low-hanging fruit to 

start with, so there were certain conditionals. 

 On the other hand, I think we need to give a 

progress report, and possibly part of that 

progress report is recommendations. So far 

we've seen some things already that we think 

NIOSH should modify or, you know, and it's 

important to get -- that's part of the reason 

for doing it while they're still doing other 
36

DRs. It's to improve the program like you said 

Lew, so... 

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 DR. WADE: Right. Just for clarity purpose, 

John, in your work you have filled out or you 

have provided an evaluation of each of the 20, 

and then you've provided a summary of those 20. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 DR. WADE: And that exists as -- that is your 

evaluation. 

 DR. MAURO: Right, the score -- the so-called 

scorecard that is in front of the report, the 

large, three-volume report. In the front of 

every one of the cases there is this form 

filled out except for AWE ones. Okay? And 

this is our attempt to try to come up with a 

scorecard regarding the performance of that 

individual case, the way it stacks up against 

these various criterion, some of them. And 

this has been formed in a way where it goes 

into our database, and it can be collapsed 

because each of these individual ones are casespecific, and therefore, are under the Privacy 

Act. However, when we collapse them -- because 

it can be rolled up -- and say okay, these 20 

can be collapsed, and then the next 20 can be 
37

collapsed into that. So in the end, when we're 

through, there are only supposed to be two. In 

theory we could have a single page which would 

be a scorecard on how well did they do 

regarding missed photon dose. How well did 

they do regarding internal dosimetry issues, 

and the number times we found a different 

category of problem and whether that problem 

was minor or substantial. 

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 DR. WADE: But at this moment in time you could 

do that for the first 20? 

 DR. MAURO: We have already. 

 DR. BEHLING: In the executive summary you will 

see that same scorecard which will represent 

the summation of the first 15 cases. In the 

executive summary of the report we have already 

done that. 

 DR. WADE: So it seems to me the task before 

the Board is two-fold. One is to issue its 

view now of how NIOSH did on the first 20, 

armed with the contractor's report. And then 

to turn its attention to how to make the 

process better by making recommendations to 

NIOSH on specific issues or things it needs to 

concentrate on. And so -- I mean I think both 
38

1 of those tasks are before the Board now. 

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 DR. BEHLING: May I make a comment on that very 

issue of how do we go forward? The problem is, 

if we identify -- let's say in the first 20 

cases there were problems as you see in front 

of you, or deficiencies, issues that we 

identify. And of course one could look at 

those and sort of say well, how do we fix that? 

We see people not following the procedure or 

the procedure may have had an error, or certain 

other issues. 

 However, when I realize -- for instance, now 

I'm working on the second 18 set. Those cases 

were done before this first set of 20 was even 

done, and they may have even been performed 

prior to the first 20 dose reconstructions. So 

the question is how does one go about changing 

something that may have already, in time and 

space, preceded the ones that we have evaluated 

for which we will make recommendations for 

change. So that's the difficulty. 

 DR. WADE: True. And there's no answer 

obviously to that conundrum other than... 

 DR. MAURO: One more observation that I think 

is very -- I think, Mark, what you've done is 
39

part of a very important part of the process -- 

that -- what you've done is say okay -- and I 

think it's very different than what we did with 

our scorecard, both of which have an important 

role to play, but different role. This 

basically is a tool that will help to capture 

the degree to which we're converging on 

resolution of issues that we -- there were some 

differences when we began. And through a 

process, we're converging on resolution. Quite 

frankly, right now when you read through your 

mock-up there is a process at work where these 

issues are being resolved. 

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25 

 Now -- however -- and so this is a tool for 

closure (indicating). This is not a tool for 

closure (indicating). This is something 

completely different. This is a way of 

determining at the end of the process of the 

62, when we're all done, we're going to be able 

to make some global statements regarding what 

we found out in our reviews; where there might 

have been some I guess trends, recurring themes 

which would provide insight into areas where 

perhaps some improvement -- areas of 

improvement. 
40

 So it's a different -- it's a different product 

and serves a different role on the program. 

Certainly an effort could be made to try to map 

one to the other, to the degree it can be done. 

My guess is it can be done. Whether or not 

it's important that it be done, that's another 

question. That is, I think that this is really 

a tool for closure (indicating). That is where 

are we and what's still outstanding? 

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 This is a different tool (indicating). This is 

almost like an audit report that says when 

we're done with the 62, what did we learn. I 

don't know if that helps any. 

 DR. ZIEMER: All right. John, let me ask you 

this then. From SC&A's point of view this 

basically gets completed after you've gone 

through at least one iteration, or two? 

 DR. MAURO: As many as you'd like. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Or as many, but at some point the 

process has to come to a halt -- 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and this gets filled out. 

Actually in each case you've gotten feedback, 

and you come with a report and this is filled 

out. Now obviously we can go back and say 
41

well, go through that process again and maybe 

this would change a little bit. But what we 

have right now is a document which is based on 

some resolutions having occurred, and they no 

longer then show up as issues here. 

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 DR. MAURO: In fact, this particular form 

reflects the expanded review cycle. That is 

the ones that are completed in the report you 

have before you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: In fact if you read through the 20 

cases there's a lot of dialogue related to the 

expanded review -- where we achieved closure, 

where we agree, where we changed our position, 

where NIOSH has changed its position. These 

forms, as filled out in front of each case and 

as rolled up for the full set of the first 20, 

reflect as best we can that expanded review 

process. So this represents where we are right 

now in time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. DEHART: It would seem to me that we 

already have a report, and that's the report of 

the contractor. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 
42

 DR. DEHART: That could be summarized for each 

of the cases and not attempt to find fault or 

anything else with NIOSH or with the 

contractor. But that's the report we've been 

given. We would then follow on that report 

with another area that would address the 

recommendations, et cetera, and tell the 

process that is now on -- been going on between 

the contractor and NIOSH to resolve as much as 

they can. And that would be the report for the 

first 20 cases. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Right, and that's already occurred 

in the first 20 in terms of dialogue between 

the contractor and NIOSH -- or NIOSH's 

contractor, as the case may be -- and has 

become a kind of template for the future where 

you expect that dialogue to occur, the factual 

accuracy checks and so on. And then, as you 

say, at some point we have the report, which 

will include the individual and the summary 

things here. 

This then would become the document that helps 

us come to some kind of closure, I think, on 

that, that -- where we could go through each 

case, or we could roll them up. 
43

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think, again, if I -- for 

the next set I would propose the -- I mean I 

obviously like the matrix. I sort of came up 

with the idea, but if -- you know, to go -- 

going forward with it, I would say that I want 

to have all the findings in there. And I'm not 

exactly sure of the answer to John's question, 

but I have a feeling it's going to be important 

to be able to tag those to his matrix. So I 

don't know -- I think it would be worth doing 

just to have it there in case we'd want to look 

back at it later. 

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 For one thing, I can see -- in the resolution 

process -- if we initially have six findings 

for case one and the last five and six drop 

off, and they were tagged on your summary 

matrix as five and six in certain check boxes, 

and you see the five and six drop off on the 

next report, you can follow it through. You 

know, it's a good way to follow through what's 

happening, as far as the resolution process, 

with all the findings. 

 But also in the next round I wouldn't want to 

just do the contentious findings. I'd want to 

summarize all -- you know, all the findings. 
44

And I'd like to add those to this matrix for 

the first 20, too, but it involves going back 

through the meat of that report to do that. 

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 DR. WADE: If I could offer up sort of an 

observation, you have your contractor's report 

on the first 20, individual and summary. Now 

it's for the Board to take that and to do 

something with it. Maybe you accept it; maybe 

you modify it slightly. I mean I think that's 

something that the Board needs to do. It could 

be the Board will decide to withhold a 

significant statement on NIOSH's performance on 

dose reconstruction until the 62 are done. 

You know, that's your option. 

 You have now a third of the work done. You 

have your contractor's report. You could offer 

a statement now, or you could wait. That said, 

you have the -- I think the more important 

aspect of the work, and that is how do you make 

the process better. And that's what you're 

talking about now. That has to go on, but what 

the Board says relative to NIOSH's performance, 

do you say it now; do you wait for the 62 to be 

done? That's something that you need to 

discuss and decide. 
45

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, let me suggest as a way 

forward here, one of the issues was in fact the 

scorecard issue. In fact, one of the reasons 

we sent things back was not only to resolve 

some issues between SC&A and NIOSH, but was 

also to ask the contractor to relate their 

findings to that original list. They may now 

have done that. 

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25 

 And I'm wondering if we can't, as a part of our 

recommendation here or as one recommendation, 

recommend to the Board that in fact this 

scorecard that has been developed by SC&A -- 

that they continue to utilize that as part of 

their reporting process to us in the future, 

both for the individual cases and for their 

summary. Do you wish to make such a 

recommendation that this be still part of the 

process, the SC&A checklist? 

 DR. WADE: Again, what I would suggest that the 

subcommittee do is -- in this piece of paper 

there's a great deal of intellectual content. 

And I think you own this, and I think this is a 

very powerful piece of paper. Do you feel that 

this piece of paper is reflected in the 

footnotes to this? If you do, then I think 
46

you've got closure. But I think there is a 

discussion to have about that, and I don't 

think that discussion has happened yet. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: This -- the discussion here on the 

ranking of the findings really shows up in the 

other document in terms of how we wrap things 

up. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think one difference that Lew's 

pointing to is -- and I actually -- if I 

remember this comment right, is -- a couple of 

people brought this comment up on the other 

matrix, was that we should probably have -- 

because if you remember the way I was ranking, 

it was not only whether a finding had a 

significant impact on the dose, but also was it 

-- did it impact only that case, possibly cases 

from that entire site, or broader to -- was it 

a programmatic issue? Was it a -- you know, 

possibly all cases? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And then someone said well, maybe 

you should have a column -- an extra column in 

there that says, you know, a ranking and 

whether it's a broad finding, a site-specific 

finding, or a case finding, or something to 
47

that effect. I think the footnote on this 

other matrix sort of misses that level of this 

ranking. 

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25 

 DR. WADE: It does. Now if you want that -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: This is based on individual cases 

here. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It doesn't speak to the impact on 

-- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Or -- or the poten-- I guess, you 

know -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Potential impact? 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- I was thinking if it has the 

potential impact, you know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. WADE: More comprehensive. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: On many cases. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Is it a finding that could be -- 

could it have been -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Be widespread, yeah. 

 DR. WADE: I think that's a very important 

finding. The question is do you want the 

contractor to do that or do you want to do 

that, based upon the contractor's work for you. 
48

1 And I think that's not a trivial point. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 Other than that, I think they track quite well. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I agree. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me ask a question here, John -

- or maybe Rich wants to address this, too -- 

but when you do your wrap-up, what meaning 

would these footnotes have in a wrap-up 

document? Because it looks like it's very 

individual, case-specific. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes and no, 'cause you can have a 

wrap-up for the individual as well as for the 

collective. For instance, if we find -- in an 

individual for a single dose reconstruction -- 

a series of -- let's call them deficiencies 

that have moderate impact individually. But 

taken collectively -- let's assume that there's 

an error in missed dose, there's an error in 

neutron dose, there's an error in photon dose, 

any one of which singly would have only 

marginal impact on the collective dose for that 

individual organ. 

 But when you tally them all up, they may have 

in fact now a significant impact. And so we 

couldn't -- when I tallied these up, I looked 

at the magnitude for each individual deficiency 
49

that each checkmark, and then I tallied the 

number of checkmarks in that category of low, 

medium and high and came up with some 

understanding of whether or not this could 

potentially, in combination of these 

deficiencies, affect that individual case. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 For all of the doses, no, those deficiencies 

simply don't have much of a meaning because 

we're talking about does it affect the 

individual organ dose for that individual or -- 

and/or the probability of causation which 

determines whether or not the individual would 

be compensated. 

 But when we roll them up in all 20 cases, those 

numbers have very little meaning other than to 

let you know that there are errors here that 

are prevalent in some areas and perhaps point 

to a systematic problem that may involve, for 

instance, interpretation of a given procedure 

that is being misinterpreted by the dose 

reconstructors. And we've already found that 

there's at least three or four guidance 

documents that have consistently misrepresented 

-- or misinterpreted by dose reconstructors, 

and that allows us to do that. When I see, in 
50

missed photon dose, a constant checkmark and 

I've -- now working on the second set of 18 and 

I see the same error over and over again and my 

root cause analysis says the problem is the 

guidance document, the TIB. And so it allows 

me to do that. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 But to answer your original question, no, those 

high, medium and low do not have any meaning 

when we wrap up all of the 20 cases. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But the prevalence number may. 

The prevalence -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- itself may tell you something. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes, it will point to a certain 

systematic problem. 

 DR. ZIEMER: In other words, there may be a 

medium deficiency that's occurring again and 

again and again. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes, and we've already found that 

there are certain procedures that are 

consistently being misinterpreted. 

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

Please, Rich Toohey. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Yeah, Dick Toohey, ORAU team -- 
51

representing myself obviously, not NIOSH, in 

these comments. But actually what I’m going to 

remark on was just touched on by Mark and Hans 

and that is, especially on summary statistics 

on this, I can't tell whether there is a -- 

I'll use the term error, or at least 

disagreement in what is in the procedure -- and 

certainly the Bethlehem Steel or the Savannah 

River max dose would be examples of them -- and 

that appears on every dose reconstruction 

review that used those procedures. 

1 

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3 

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5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

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25 

 Or a very different one where one of my dose 

reconstructors did not follow or misapplied a 

procedure which, in and of itself, is okay. 

And those things require very, very different 

corrective actions if we're going to improve 

the system. So I think it's very important 

somehow or another to catch that sort of thing, 

especially in the summary statistics. Because 

if you just say well, you know, 60 percent of 

them had this problem, then -- like B -- what 

was it here on internal dose, F-3, was the dose 

value correctly derived, that doesn't tell me 

if the dose reconstructor misused the document 

-- the supporting document or if the supporting 
52

1 document was at issue. 

2 

3 

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8 

9 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Right, that's why I was saying 

there's a utility with both, I think, because -

- yeah, prevalence certainly may -- you know, 

as we see that prevalence out of 60 cases we 

may say, wow, this photon dose is coming up an 

awful lot, you know. Then I might want to tag 

back to the full matrix and say is it because 

of misapplication of a procedure or is one 

procedure always having a problem? And maybe 

it's not the users; maybe it's the procedure, 

you know, something like that, yeah. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Now there's another issue on that, 

and that is -- well, it's actually the issue in 

TIBs 1 and 2, the maximum internal dose, where 

the issue is using ICRP-30 models versus ICRP68 models. And we shared in TIB-1 that the 

majority of radionuclides we used at Savannah 

River using the ICRP-30 model to derive intake 

was actually claimant-favorable. Now granted 

it's not the best science, but since the idea 

was to develop maximum internal dose estimates, 

claimant favorability we thought was more 

important. So that's another issue that would 

need to be considered, maybe more appropriately 
53

1 at the resolution stage. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 But again, we would just have a checkmark that 

the dose was not correctly derived. Well, 

correct by what standards, best current 

available science or making claimant-favorable 

assumptions in the interest of providing a 

maximum dose estimate? 

 And one final thing, if I may. There's one 

thing on here under B, review of interview and 

documentation provided by the claimant, B-1, 

did NIOSH address all work history, dates, 

locations of employment reported by the 

claimant? That's really not a NIOSH issue. 

DOL makes the call on covered employment. So 

if we see in a CATI interview a discrepancy 

between the DOL submittal on the case, the only 

way to appropriately address it is to refer the 

claimant back to DOL to raise the issue. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Which item is that, Rich? 

 DR. TOOHEY: It was on the first page, Paul, 

under -- it's B, review of interview and 

documentation provided by claimant, B-1. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think that was a little -- I 

know what you're saying, Dick, and I agree with 

that on the DOL perspective, but I think that 
54

point was getting more at do they consider the 

work history in the -- maybe in the 

appropriateness of dose calculations. For 

instance, was there certain coworker data that 

could have been used? Based on their work 

history, they shouldn't have used operator data 

if they had a security guard or something like 

that. I think that was -- 

1 

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3 

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 DR. TOOHEY: Oh, okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think that's what -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's within the accepted -- I 

don't think this was getting at quite what you 

were talking about, whether it’s -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I don't think it -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- the right period. I think 

we're accepting what DOL -- 

 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, and also the issue of 

requesting dosimetry. If, for instance, a 

person worked at Los Alamos, and then, for 

instance, went to Hanford, it is NIOSH's 

responsibility -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: To get all of it. 

 DR. BEHLING: -- to secure those records. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, that's the nature of it, 

yeah. 
55

1 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, from that standpoint. 

2 

3 

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 DR. TOOHEY: Okay, fair enough. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Richard, for those 

comments. 

Well, one of the questions that arises in all 

this is -- because we end up with a -- we end 

up, as it is right now, with a kind of a score 

sheet. And then we have this document which is 

the issue resolution tracking and so on, which 

is -- and the ranking of the seriousness and so 

on. 

Who -- one of the questions is who's going to 

do this? Does this now become the job of the 

contractor as an added tracking? I mean, Mark, 

you've kind of done this by hand, but as we go 

forward, if we say that this is the kind of 

thing we want, are we asking -- do you envision 

asking the contractor to take the findings that 

come and the issues that are raised by NIOSH 

and doing something like this, which is almost 

an additional subtask within -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Maybe John... 

 DR. MAURO: Effectively, it has been done. 

Unfortunately, it's imbedded in 300 pages of -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, of -- of -- 
56

 DR. MAURO: -- But in theory, as we write our 

report -- 'cause I did the first five -- I 

recall having the list of -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, you had a list of 

questions, NIOSH had a list of questions -- 

 DR. MAURO: -- right, had it right next to me 

while I was rewriting my cases one through 

five. And as soon as I hit one of the -- 

NIOSH's comments, I addressed it, said during 

the -- during the review meeting on January 

12th the point was made, and then I resolve it 

right -- well, I tell -- I explain right there 

what our understanding is on the status of that 

issue. In most cases it was a matter of yes, 

we agree with the comment as -- as -- I 

remember in the case that I did, and we 

withdrew it. Or it was agreed that this is an 

open -- the oro-nasal breathing, this is an 

open item. They're right -- as it stands right 

now, NIOSH is looking at the issue, whether or 

not that is something that needs to be factored 

into the models or not. So in other words, I 

did the best I could, just as you did when you 

went through the document and you pulled it 

out. 
57

 DR. ZIEMER: But you're effectively doing this, 

in a sense, now. 

1 

2 

3 

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5 

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8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

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22 

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25 

 DR. MAURO: It's in there. It's a matter of -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I guess what we could -- what -- 

 DR. MAURO: -- we extracted -- but you may 

prefer to do it, because this way the Board, 

you know -- whatever you'd like to -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think there's value to -- 

I mean as we've said before, this is our report 

-- the Board's report, not the subcommittee's, 

but the Board's report. But I think we can 

maybe ask our contractor to write their reports 

such that it's easier to extract these 

findings. That might be -- and that's just a 

logi-- you know, a logistical thing I think, so 

that we can make sure our matrix is -- has 

everything and is comprehensive. 

 DR. MAURO: I'd like to add that that would be 

very easy for us to do, since we're doing it 

anyway. It's just a matter of, as we're 

writing, pull it out. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And that's part of my reason for 

-- 

 DR. ZIEMER: You could put it right into this 

kind of a format. 
58

1 DR. MAURO: Very definitely. 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

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20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 MR. GRIFFON: And that's part of my reason for 

thinking of linking these to the checkmarks in 

this other table because you've just got layers 

of -- there's no lost findings, so to speak, 

you know, so... But I think the subcom-- I 

mean my feeling is that if they have that 

report, they basically -- and they've laid out 

the findings so that they're very easy to find 

within the bulk of their report, I think it's 

worth the subcommittee making the effort to 

pull those findings and construct our matrix as 

we go because then we're getting into the meat 

of the issues, too. We're looking at the 

report more in depth, so I think that's 

important, yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But a part of this is just the -- 

sort of the physical work of doing it. I mean 

we could easily ask the contractor, I think, to 

actually generate this if they have the 

wherewithal to do it. I mean rather than us to 

sit there and retype things or -- do people 

still use that word, type? To re-keyboard 

things -- well let's see. Where are we here? 

Other comments or suggestions on -- 
59

 DR. DEHART: If I'm hearing correctly, we've 

got a two-part, so far. We've got the report 

that comes in -- the main sheet from the 

contractor for each of the cases. And then 

that's going to be followed by a second portion 

of the report that will have something similar 

to the scoreboard, scorecard or whatever you 

want to call it. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 MR. GRIFFON: The Board summary report. 

 DR. DEHART: The Board summary on this. And 

any recommendations would be, I think, separate 

yet because the recommendations aren't here. 

So the third part would be a list of 

recommendations. And this, in reality, is a 

work in progress continuing as we work each 

section. So this would be for the first 20. 

Then there would be a follow-on with the next 

18 cases. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's right, that's right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I sort of envision this matrix, 

this table, having a front-end report -- maybe 

one or two pages -- that said out of this 20 -- 

we've reviewed the 20 cases. Here's what we 

found, like you had indicated before, and if we 

had any recommendations -- preliminary 
60

recommendations for changes, and then -- and 

this -- you know, this matrix would be like a 

table with that report. That's the way I 

envision... 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 DR. ZIEMER: The cover page, which is kind of 

like an executive summary, what do you envision 

that saying? Is that -- for example, would it 

be like a statistical summary of the findings, 

or numbers of points where there's agreement or 

disagreement, or kinds of findings, or numbers 

of significant findings? What are you talking 

about when you say a cover sheet? What would 

be the content of that? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, I -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: And this is not just for Mark. I 

mean -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I'm just -- I'm sort of -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- I'm asking us to -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- thinking out loud here, but -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- think about what is it? I mean 

-- all right, this is the meat of it, but what 

do we do with these items? Are we saying, 

okay, here -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Thinking out loud here, but -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Are we going to flop this down in 
61

front of the Secretary and say well, here's our 

findings. He'll say, well, what does it mean? 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 DR. WADE: Well, if I might be allowed an 

observation. I mean I think -- again, if you 

look at SC&A's footnote three -- I mean if you 

get to the root of the cause of auditing this, 

the question is did they find deficiencies that 

impacted the compensability of the case, yes or 

no? I mean if the answer is yes, I mean I 

think that's terribly significant. If the 

answer is no, I think then you can move down to 

the next level. 

 But I think you're -- and I like your words, 

"here's what we found," needs to start with the 

issue, are dose reconstructions being done 

correctly as it relates to decisions on 

compensability. And then you can work your way 

down, you know, to more esoteric 

considerations. But I think it needs to start 

with the big question, did they get it right or 

not. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Lew, you're suggesting that as a 

starting point we would -- we have 20 cases. 

Question one, based on the findings of our 

auditor, were any of these -- did any of the -- 
62

do any of the findings affect the 

compensability of cases. And I think more 

specifically we're asking are there cases that 

should have been -- where there should have 

been compensations that weren't. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 But I suppose we also would like to know if we 

had errors in the other direction, even though 

you're not going to go back and -- 

 DR. WADE: True. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- take the money back. 

 DR. WADE: But I think it starts with the big 

question, and then you go to the next -- and it 

sort of follows their three, two, one, or it 

also follows your severity measures. And I 

think you should report out on that. I think 

it ends with we think the process would be 

improved by these recommendations being 

followed. 

So I think it goes from sort of a headline down 

to the work, and I think that's quite 

reasonable. Whether you do it at 20 or whether 

you do it at 62, I think that's a discussion, 

but I think that would be a reasonable 

expectation of the work of the Board. 

 DR. ZIEMER: For example, one might have a 
63

report that said these 20 cases -- one, the 

compensability would be altered in one case or 

no cases or three cases or whatever it is. And 

then work your way down to less significant 

issues. Although compensability has not been 

affected, the following concerns are raised in 

terms of procedures, calculations, whatever it 

may be. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

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24 

25 

 DR. WADE: Right, just to follow SC&A's words, 

the next bullet could be, "While compensability 

wasn't affected, there was a deficiency that 

significantly impacted the dose." Well, that's 

something to note -- down to their third, which 

is it has only marginal impact on the dose. 

 And then to me the big second part of it is now 

here are things the Board thinks NIOSH needs to 

improve upon as it practices the art of dose 

reconstruction. And that would be -- that 

would flow from this as among other things. 

 DR. DEHART: I don't know that we have the 

summary sufficient to answer the first 

question. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. DEHART: We don't know whether this will 

affect the compensation. 
64

 DR. WADE: I do think we have a summary from 

SC&A now available to us, right? 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

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13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 DR. BEHLING: Right, and again -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: They only use the word "may" 

affect it. 

 DR. BEHLING: I think that's exactly right 

because I can look back at the first 20 cases, 

and I've -- I'm the person who does all the QAs 

and most of the ones that you see in front of 

you so I'm quite familiar with it. And there's 

one case where the number of errors could have 

potentially pushed the guy over the 50 percent 

mark. I did not run the POC calculation -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Do we have your wrap-up sheet on 

the latest version? 

 DR. WADE: We can get copies of it. 

 DR. BEHLING: I brought my report with me, but 

here's the problem that can complicate matters. 

In that particular case, I saw some 

deficiencies that were very definitely claimant 

unfavorable, meaning that they underestimated 

those because they failed to account for 

missing neutron doses, missing photon doses, et 

cetera. 

On the other hand -- and this is where I've had 
65

a serious discussion with NIOSH people -- they 

were extremely claimant-favorable because they 

thought this was not a compensable case. Now 

when you ratchet up the other doses that were 

legitimately underestimated, they will simply 

then say you know that hypothetical exposure 

that we gave you 17 rem for for the 28 nuclides 

because it was a reactor facility? We're going 

to take that away from you. And that may just 

turn out to be the exact number of rems that 

you would have added legitimately. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 So the question of is it compensable as a 

result of these deficiencies, the answer is we 

don't know because chances are when you sharpen 

your pencil and you say now we're coming up to 

that 50 percent mark and best estimates prevail 

and best estimates usually don't allow you to 

give you a hypothetical, you're back to square 

one. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We understand that, and I think -- 

in any event, it wouldn't be your job to make 

the determination of compensability anyway, but 

to raise the issue, and that would go back to 

NIOSH as part of their ongoing quality -- 

 DR. WADE: We do have this -- we do have the 
66

summary sheet, and if John has it, we can get a 

copy. 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I don't think I have my copy 

here, but I was just -- for example in the 

first 20 cases -- 

 DR. BEHLING: I would suggest we look at case 

number six. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I want to see what the wrapup looks like of everything. 

 DR. BEHLING: These are the wrap-up. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Do I have the -- this is -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I don't see any highs in there. 

 DR. WADE: No, I didn't see any highs. When I 

looked at it there were no highs. 

 DR. BEHLING: No, as I said, I tried to stay 

away from the collation of numbers in the 

summary sheet. You will see that on the 

individual sheet. 

 DR. WADE: Right, that's understood. 

 DR. BEHLING: And I would say for that you may 

want to look at case number six. 

 DR. WADE: Well, let's start with the summary 

sheet. Maybe I can get that copy. 

 DR. BEHLING: You will see -- 

 MR. ESPINOSA: By chance was that e-mailed to 
67

1 us? 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 DR. WADE: It was certainly given out at the 

last Board meeting. 

 MR. GRIFFON: It was e-mailed, too. 

 DR. BEHLING: If you look at some of these, 

there were a whole bunch of mediums, and when 

you add them up, the mediums could potentially 

-- this why I have a question mark here. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, but on the summary sheet, 

this says 15 cases -- oh, that's 15 cases that 

-- where you actually -- 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes, starting with case number 6 

through 20. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, would you all like a copy 

of this summary? That would be the... 

 DR. BEHLING: Just two sheets. But if you look 

at the individual case and the potential impact 

of multiple deficiencies, you'll see that -- 

and this is where we see the question mark. 

 DR. ZIEMER: All right, this is the -- well, 

September 7th was the date that they received 

them. This is the report dated February 2005, 

audit of first 20 cases. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Hans, maybe you can answer a 

question while they're passing this out. Why 
68

doesn't that one on case six get captured in 

the summary matrix? Shouldn't there be a one 

in the high field under -- or no? I'm -- 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

 DR. BEHLING: Because we really wanted to just 

collate the column and say they were -- eight 

deficiencies that were in the medium range, so 

forth, and I can't go from one to the other 

because one cancer has nothing to do with the 

other cancer. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I see. Okay. Okay. 

 DR. BEHLING: So in fact on that summary 

checklist we will delete that -- those 

footnotes because they do not apply. This is 

strictly a collation of deficiencies that 

define the first 15 cases. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, in fact maybe your roll-up 

sheet needs a little bit -- I'm just wondering 

if it needs to be reformatted a little bit 

where it's a -- specifically a summary where 

you indicate that you're telling us the number 

of cases that fit into these categories. And 

we would understand that the footnotes still 

apply to the individual cases. But -- but -- 

and then we're looking at prevalence of a 

finding, which -- 
69

 DR. BEHLING: Yes, the checkmark has been 

replaced by a number now. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Right. So rather than this being 

a case review checklist, this now is a summary 

of case review checklists -- or something that 

differentiates it and gets interpreted a little 

bit differently, perhaps. 

 But presumably, based on this, we could make 

certain statements about -- of the type that 

you were talking about in the numbers of cases 

where their -- the compensability may have been 

affected. We're not going to necessarily say 

it did. We're going to say -- "may be 

affected" is the terminology they use. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Again, I think Lew asked the 

right question at the end, too. You know, I 

don't disagree with that format, it's just a 

question of when should we do that type of 

roll-up. And these 20 cases I don't think are 

representative at all of the whole -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: No -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- the whole system. 

 DR. ZIEMER: No, but one of the issues is what 

do you do with the first -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 
70

 DR. ZIEMER: -- how do you summarize the first 

20? 

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 MR. GRIFFON: I understand. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Can we not say that this is what's 

been found so far? In these first 20 cases 

there were -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, yeah, I -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- there were findings of this 

type. 

 DR. WADE: I would think -- again, taking high 

purpose to our work, at a minimum we need to 

use what we learn on the 20 to improve the 

process, so that has to happen regardless. 

When you write your summary, you could write it 

at 20. I assume there was a certain wisdom 

when you did the 62; you created that unit. I 

don't know if that becomes a logical point to 

write your summary. I don't know, but I think 

it's an issue that needs to be discussed. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And keep in mind -- and I think 

Hans raised this point -- that many of those 

subsequent reconstructions were done perhaps 

even earlier than these, so these findings 

don't necessarily impact on those, but we're 

still looking forward to what is being done in 
71

the future. And in some cases if there was a 

finding of either error or assumptions that 

affect compensability, NIOSH has the ability to 

go back and pull cases several cases back and 

re-examine them -- those that perhaps were not 

compensated. 

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 DR. BEHLING: In fact, they will not impact the 

first 4800 cases that have been done to date. 

 DR. ZIEMER: There you go, except insofar as 

they do go back if there's -- 

 DR. WADE: But they could. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- they could go back if there was 

something that arose that said yeah, we need to 

go back and revisit some of these. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I'm not saying that we 

shouldn't summarize. I'm just saying that we 

may want to consider caveats in how we state it 

because even the first 60, I believe, were 

still -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's still a small -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- if you look at the number that 

are -- were greater than 45 percent POC -- I 

mean certainly we're still going to have a lot 

of cases where they're going to use the 28 

radionuclide worst case assumption. But they 
72

haven't gotten down to the -- or we haven't 

seen that many of the cases where they had to 

sharpen the pencil and where they got close to 

that 50 percentile. So I think -- you know, 

the summary's not a bad thing, but I just think 

people also have to understand what we were 

sampling from. I think that's important to 

somehow state. 

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 DR. WADE: And there's still two intellectual 

issues that I think are before you and sort of 

let me restate them. You have the issue that 

Hans is bringing to us, and that is that on an 

individual case there could be a number of 

medium categories that might, acting together, 

elevate the concern. 

 And then you have Mark -- or the group that put 

this documents together concern is that is on 

an individual case saying we found something 

and it is of great concern to us because we 

think it could well affect a number of other 

cases. I think that's terribly important 

intellectual content in what you have and you 

need to capture it and do something with it. 

The question is do you have the vehicles in 

place to do that now, and I think that's 
73

1 something the subcommittee needs to talk about. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, it's not clear to me that we 

are at that point. I mean... 

 DR. DEHART: Well, again, I bring up the issue 

that there has not been full resolution, even 

within the 20 cases, so it makes it hard to 

determine whether or not the contractor will 

change or NIOSH will change. Obviously some 

changes will occur, with over half of the 

individual cases saying that we need to look at 

various other areas. Twenty is a small number, 

but we need to report out something in terms of 

we have initiated an audit process, so I think 

we need to say something to that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I mean I think there's -- I think 

we can certainly make some -- I was more 

concerned with summary statistics than with 

some findings that we think -- for improv-- you 

know, areas for improvement I guess is the way 

to state it. 

I think we have some of those, and I think at 

the meetings with NIOSH and SCA I think we 

ventured upon several of those. I mean we -- 

you know, one that comes to mind for me is the 

way the DR report is written. And in the 
74

meetings NIOSH conceded that they need to do a 

better job at communicating with the receiver 

of that report. Not only the receiver of that 

report, but also the report itself has to be -- 

lend itself better to an audit. 

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 There are just so many things that aren't 

stated in the report that for someone just to 

look at it in the public, or even a health 

physics contractor, it's difficult to walk it 

through and recalculate the same -- come to the 

same conclusion. So for public purpose and for 

the audit purpose, we think -- I think they've 

accepted that the DR reports need some revision 

in formatting and revision in content. 

 It doesn't mean they don't have the content and 

didn't do the work correctly, but it wasn't 

really presented very well. So I think that 

was an important thing that came out of some of 

our meetings. And that's certainly, I think, 

supported -- as an example. 

 DR. WADE: And more than just an example, there 

are many positive things that have come out of 

this process that have made dose reconstruction 

better, no question about that. I don't think 

there's anywhere we're capturing that, either. 
75

 DR. MAURO: If I may, by way of process, one of 

the things I think that needs to be brought 

into the picture is the task three report, and 

I think Richard made a very good point. 

There's a very important distinction to be made 

between do we have a generic problem that has 

to do with the procedures. So all of a sudden 

what I see here is -- what's happened -- you 

know, it's so hard to step outside and say wait 

a minute, where are we and where are we going. 

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 The actual dose reconstruction audit reports in 

the form they have taken, and the ability to 

try to let it tell you a story, it's trying to 

speak to you. You have to not only listen to 

what is coming out of the report and also the 

dialogue with NIOSH and the notes that have 

been taken, but then there's another story that 

comes out of task three which starts to get to 

root cause issues. And it's the confluence of 

our report with the expanded review cycle with 

the results of the task three that starts to 

converge. And what emerges from it is a story. 

 So what I see here is the process is taking 

form, almost in a self-organizing way whereby 

it's the confluence of this that starts to 
76

emerge. Where do we just have errors that were 

made that weren't caught and they were one of a 

kind, and they have to do a little bit with 

some -- let's say better QA, should have caught 

that one -- but it's nothing systemic. It's 

just something -- what I mean by systemic, it 

doesn't necessarily go back to a procedure that 

is misleading or confusing, because we do have 

a lot of that. 

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 So what I'm getting at is, unfortunately the 

whole story is not told just from only one 

dimension. It's coming out of multiple 

dimensions that are converging, and the task 

three report is very much part of this process. 

So I think that a lot of what you are looking 

for is going to emerge when we start to talk 

about task three. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And not only that but the site 

profiles as well, John, if I can add. I mean 

some of these things have been held back 

because they were pending site profile review, 

Savannah River and Bethlehem Steel, right? 

 DR. MAURO: There's no doubt -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: So there's -- 

 DR. MAURO: -- that we're starting to see the 
77

site profile reports as another set of 

procedures, only specific. So I say our task 

three report is just really part of a bigger 

array of guidance and background information as 

to how the dose reconstruction -- it's -- it's 

amazing how such a -- it's a -- when you start 

to put your arms out and realize you can't 

really stretch your arms big enough to bring it 

all in, but it's happening. It's happening. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Hans? 

 DR. BEHLING: And I just want to give you an 

example, for those who do have the report 

available to you. I would ask you to look at 

case number 16, 18, 19 and 20, I believe. And 

you will see the same series of errors being 

made in all of those particular dose 

reconstructions, and they all come back to two 

particular procedures, OTIB 0008 and OTIB 0010. 

And it is a consistent error that has been -- 

and I see now even in the next 18 cases. 

 And these are systemic errors, but they're not 

linked to anything other than a flawed guidance 

document that is poorly written and poorly 

understood. And so I looked at the people and 

said, well, you have four or five different 
78

people looking at the same document and making 

the same mistake. And I have to say the fault 

has to lie in the document because we have four 

intelligent people, well-trained health 

physicists, who can't decipher the guidance 

that's being presented to them. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: That's another -- another 

aggregate finding. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, here now you have the wrapup of the first 20 cases. That is the 

scorecard wrap-up. And for example now on item 

A-1, did NIOSH receive all requested data. 

This would say yes, in 14 of the cases they 

did, in one case they didn't. Is that how we 

interpret this, and so on? And what's the 

significance of that when you say that is low. 

Right? And so on. And there's some of these 

where it's not -- NA is not applicable, I 

assume? 

 There's -- none of these -- let's see, there -- 

so, for example, you're saying that there were 

42 deficiencies where the impact on dose was 

marginal? 

 DR. BEHLING: No, I -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: No? What -- 
79

 DR. BEHLING: I have the -- sorry. I have not 

really had a chance to look at this. Somehow 

or other this was transcribed badly in the 

final revision. Those numbers -- 46, 42 and 

four -- really don't -- I think they fall in 

the -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: That's not the sum of what's -- 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes, they fall under the first 

three columns -- yes, NA and no. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, they're shifted -- they're 

shifted -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, they're shifted over. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes, they were shifted. And as I 

said, I did not intend to even -- I don't know 

who -- it left my hands and was in somebody 

else's hand for revision. Those numbers of 

low, medium, high should not exist. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 DR. BEHLING: I don't want them in there 

because you cannot collate these numbers. They 

have no meaning. 

 MR. GRIFFON: That's what's confusing. 

 DR. BEHLING: Somebody ended up doing something 

here that they shouldn't have done. They were 

not -- this is not my -- 
80

1 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, so those three numbers -- 

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 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- in item H are the sums of the 

audit responses. 

 DR. BEHLING: Exactly, and all the numbers are 

-- under the low, medium, high, they should all 

be blank. They -- they have no business being 

there. 

 MR. GRIFFON: When you total them across, they 

should all add up to 15 every time. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: So those extra 1's that -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: But Hans is also saying -- so this 

is not a prevalence number in here under low, 

medium and high? I mean you're saying -- you 

just told us that there should be no numbers 

under low, medium and high. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, I wouldn't want that 

because they have no meaning when you collate 

them across 15 individual reports whether or 

not this would have an impact on dose and 

impact on cancer or impact on POC. You cannot 

collate across individual dose reconstructions. 
81

So all of the -- the columns -- in fact, I'm 

going to revise this thing so that they will 

have no -- none of these columns will exist. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, what I'm wondering, though, 

is -- this was part of the discussion before. 

Wouldn't it be useful to know the prevalence of 

the individual ones where you found low, medium 

and high? 

 MR. ESPINOSA: If they're all consistent. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You understand what I'm saying? 

In this case the footnotes wouldn't have the 

meaning before that you had for the individual 

cases, but you could tell us something about 

the prevalence. How many times did you find 

that the recorded organ dose -- let's see, is 

the organ dose uncertainty properly determined 

for photon dose, and if you said there were two 

cases where that occurred, two medium cases 

where that occurred. 

 DR. BEHLING: I can do that, yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Would -- do you understand what 

I'm saying? It's -- 

 DR. WADE: That's what I thought we had, as a 

matter of fact. 

 DR. BEHLING: Well, it has to be reformatted. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: It has to be reformatted for the 

cover things so that it's clear that it's a 

prevalence thing. 

 DR. WADE: That's fine. 

 DR. BEHLING: In my initial intent all I wanted 

to do was show that they were -- a total of 46 

cases where we had a yes and 42 where there was 

NA and four no’s. And I should have 

potentially added the other numbers, without 

necessarily making a reference to whether or 

not they impact the dose other than to collate 

the numbers of low, medium and high -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, yeah, I think we understand 

it -- it's -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I (unintelligible) -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- I think it has a different 

meaning when you roll it out. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes, yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But we certainly still want to get 

the prevalence, I think. 

 DR. BEHLING: And then I will revise this to 

make sense out of this. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, that's good. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I'm not sure we don't have 
83

that, but let Hans look at it -- but except for 

that last line, I think we do have it -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- 'cause all those add up to -- 

right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Those are here, yeah. Now my 

question at this point is does the prevalence 

information address the bullets on our single 

sheet, the methodology for categorizing and 

ranking cases, or do we still need to go back 

to the other matrix to answer that? I mean 

based on what Hans has given us here, for 

example, one can say that the contractor found 

no cases where there was a high probability of 

-- or where the -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I don't think they did -- to 

answer your question quickly, I mean I think it 

gets back to Dick's point, is that a checkmark 

on that one is not going to tell me whether it 

was a procedure problem or whether it was 

likely a -- you know, somebody added the 

numbers wrong or entered the wrong data and it 

might still fall under -- you know, was it the 

actual procedure itself or was it the person 

implementing the procedure, you know. And I'm 
84

not going to find that with just the check box. 

You might find it in a more descriptive review. 

Does that make -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: All this -- I think all this would 

-- what I'm -- I'm trying to understand what 

the wrap-up would say, for example, if there 

were no checkmarks in the high column on any of 

the individual cases. Can you then say that 

there were no cases where the deficiencies 

would substantially impact on the 

compensability of the cases -- or on a dose? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I wouldn't say that -- for the 

sheer reason that Roy was talking about, which 

is that half of them are unresolved at this 

point, and these only summarize 15 cases, and 

I'm still -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I'm only talking about the 

cases that -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. But even on this -- I mean 

I guess I'd want a little more depth on this, 

but when I look under internal dose, there's -- 

there's no checkmarks on the "no" box, but in 

fact I know one of the findings for Savannah 

River -- it's still up in the air, but there 

was a question about the high five with the 
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ICRP-30 versus 68. Now maybe -- you know, I 

don't think that's been resolved either way, 

but it's definitely an internal dose -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Well -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- finding. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- what we have to do then, it 

seems to me, is we have to take these ones 

where they have resolved it and what their 

findings are, combine it then with the 

unresolved ones somehow. I mean it -- at a -- 

at what point -- what do we do with these 

unresolved issues? Are we going to keep going 

back to the trough here; we can't do that 

indefinitely. 

 DR. DEHART: I think you can have unresolved 

issues that have been played out, and then the 

Board is going to have to decide what to do 

with that. We have unresolved issues which are 

still being worked, I understand. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. DEHART: And I don't see why we can't 

address that, the fact that there's eight or 

ten issues that are still being worked. Or do 

you want to wait on the report until we have 

everything closed out that we can close out, 
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 DR. ZIEMER: See -- 

 DR. DEHART: -- for the Board to take a 

position on it? 

 DR. ZIEMER: No, I think that's -- I think 

that's the Board's issue. They would like us 

to make a recommendation on that, though. In 

other words, this then just becomes a kind of 

interim report. 

 DR. DEHART: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It says this is where we are to 

date. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Some issues are still being worked 

and therefore there may be a change in -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. DEHART: But there are -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- conclusions. 

 MR. GRIFFON: However, we've found the 

following -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- following positive things that 

can be done to improve the program and some are 

already being implemented by NIOSH. 
87

 DR. ZIEMER: And in terms of -- I want to get 

back to your first issue, Lew, on 

compensability. You can -- you can still say 

that of the findings so far resolved that these 

-- these have impact or do not have impact on 

compensability, in terms of what you've found 

so far, just as a reporting tool. 

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 DR. WADE: Yes. Again, there are always two 

functions. There's the audit function and then 

there's the improving the process function. 

And you know, I think the latter is more 

important. You have to decide when you want to 

speak as to your audit results. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think -- I think -- for myself, 

I think that I -- we need a little bigger 

sample. You know, I'm just afraid what context 

that might be used in 'cause we might only have 

ten total cases resolved here. If we start 

pulling off the ones that have outstanding 

issues, I think you're left with eight or ten, 

maybe, that have -- you know, SCA's findings 

are fully resolved. I don't even know if 

there'd be that many, quite frankly. And then 

you're going to make a statement that out of 

all the cases -- you know, I think that's 
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potentially misleading and could be misused, 

you know. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: I don't know that we're 

necessarily obligated to give the Secretary 

kind of a final audit report. I think we can -

- we can give him a status report of what we're 

doing and how it's being done -- Lew, wouldn't 

you think? 

 DR. WADE: Sure, and you -- and you could 

decide that, again, that should come after 20, 

it should come after 62, I think it's -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: We could give them some kind of a 

summary at some point, but -- but the Secretary 

could simply be informed as to how the dose 

reconstructions are being audited, what the 

process is. 

 DR. WADE: And again, I think there would be 

cert-- there would be different levels of 

urgency. If you were to see in the first 20 

that there were numbers where the 

compensability decision would be impacted by 

faults you found, I think that would -- that 

would set off an alarm and I think you would be 

called to add. We're not seeing that. 

I think it is appropriate then to keep your eye 
89

on that and to report out things that would 

make the process better. But I don't think 

that an alarm has gone off, based upon what 

we've seen here. But I think there are things 

that could be done better and I think you're 

obliged to point that out. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: But even in those cases, we're not 

neces-- we don't necessarily have to go to the 

Secretary to get those things corrected because 

a lot of it's simply pointing it out then NIOSH 

picks up the ball and takes appropriate action. 

 DR. WADE: It could be your result of the first 

20 is -- having given a reasonable time for 

these issues to be resolved -- if you see 

issues that are not resolved, your motion could 

be to ask NIOSH to address these issues. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, right. 

 DR. BEHLING: Dr. Ziemer, may I -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Hans. 

 DR. BEHLING: -- make a correction, because I -

- I have to apologize. It was my wife who 

collated and did all the spreadsheet, and I 

haven't looked at this for a long time -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now be careful, be careful. 
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 DR. BEHLING: -- and I am -- I know -- I have 

not -- well, she will kill me if she finds out 

I have completely compromised her effort here. 

And as it stands, this is correct. And let me 

explain what it means. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Which is correct now? 

 DR. BEHLING: The summary table as it exists is 

in fact correct and, as I said, this represents 

really mostly my wife's work. And what we have 

here in -- in -- is as follows: Under the 

column yes, NA and no, obviously we're not 

interested in anything that has yes in it 

because it responds to each of the questions 

that you see there under -- for instance, in 

the first -- under A, did NIOSH receive all 

requested data for the DOE, et cetera. If the 

answer's yes, that's great. And if it's NA, 

well, it doesn't matter. And it's only when we 

have a no that you have a potential problem. 

And this is -- when you turn -- on the back 

side we had a total of 46 no’s, meaning that 

there were 46 potential problems. Okay? Or 

deficiencies. 

And then the columns under "If no, what is the 

potential significance?" we had a total of 42 
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with significance being very, very low, meaning 

that it only marginally impacts -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: That is a prevalence number, then. 

That's this. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 DR. BEHLING: And then there were four that 

were medium. However, it -- unlike in case 

number six where I put the question mark in the 

last column, these four do in fact represent a 

-- a collective value of a medium and therefore 

if -- let's say we had four cases, each with 

one medium. You would say well, that's not 

going to change the probability of causation. 

But if they had occurred in a single case, then 

of course they would -- and for that reason I 

refrained from even acknowledging that 

potential for impacting POC in the collated 

numbers. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, understood. 

 DR. BEHLING: As -- as it stands, this 

document's correct, and I owe my wife an 

apology. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So -- and it does look like 

the -- I mean if you look through these, they 
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1 did add up, so -- 

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 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 DR. WADE: And I think that's what we -- we had 

always thought it was and that's what it is. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. The Board thanks you, and 

your wife thanks you, too. 

 DR. BEHLING: I'm at least man enough to admit 

my mistakes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other comments? Okay, 

ready for a brief break and then we'll resume? 

Thank you. 

 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 1:50 p.m. 

to 2:15 p.m.) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we're ready to resume 

deliberations. John Mauro has some comments -- 

John, welcome back to the mike. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, John Mauro. During the break 

I had a chance to sort of just step back and 

think a little bit about that form, and what is 

it really telling us. And the bottom line is I 

think it's telling us that notwithstanding the 

fact that we really went after these 20 cases 

with a fine-tooth comb, what -- what the 

outcome is is that, based on our review, we did 
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not find any case that left us with the 

impression that it looks like we've got a 

situation that might be reversible. 

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 In the one case that Hans pointed out where 

there was this question mark, there are reasons 

that are not -- that one -- if you read through 

it, you'll see why there's a question mark 

there. But it did not raise it to the level 

that we felt warranted putting it in the rollup column as a possible reversal. When I say 

possible -- so our -- the bottom-line story is, 

out of the first 20 cases we did not see 

anything whereby the combination of the POC, 

together with the level of perhaps 

underestimate of the dose, was to such an 

extent that we thought the potential existed 

for a possible reversal. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. And that's certainly 

significant for us to keep in mind as we do our 

own summary. 

 I have one other question. On the tot-- the 46 

potential problems that are identified in the 

roll-up, does that include all the problems 

that are still under concern -- or that have 

not been fully resolved? Yeah, that's 
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 DR. BEHLING: Yes, what you're looking at right 

now is the report that is part of the expanded 

review process and therefore has -- they 

removed some -- a few of the items where NIOSH 

came back and said we are right and you're 

wrong, and we said yes, we're wrong and so we 

withdraw. But the report as you see it in 

front of you basically reflects what we felt 

were residual issues and therefore are issues 

that are deficiency or error or minor -- many 

of them are very, very minor -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right understood. 

 DR. BEHLING: -- and that's fully acknowledged. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And then is it fair to state that, 

even in those unresolved items then, even if 

the -- regardless of how they're resolved, they 

have a very low likelihood of impacting 

compensability. 

 DR. BEHLING: Absolutely. I mean -- not only 

compensability, but affecting the dose. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 DR. BEHLING: And I should also say if you read 

through the actual cases, we were probably as 

critical of overestimating many of the doses as 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Understood, right. 

 DR. BEHLING: -- where we took exception to 

these generous assignments of exposures -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. BEHLING: -- that we felt were unwarranted. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Can I -- can I just -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Mark. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- urge one thing? Can I urge 

that we, at this subcommittee level, dig into 

the report? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Sure. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I'm getting a little nervous 

about relying on one sheet of paper for all 

this case work they put in, especially since I 

-- I look at the summary and I'm unclear why 

there's no internal dose findings when Savannah 

River -- it's not on the Savannah River cases, 

either, but we've talked at length about the 

high five. And I don't know that that was 

resolved yet, and it doesn't show up anywhere. 

So I don't understand exactly how these are 

tracking through, so I just want to understand 

-- 
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 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, because of task one being a 

very separate task where we have an obligation 

to review several of the TBDs, including 

obviously Savannah River, we basically -- or 

when I did most of the dose reconstruction 

reviews my principal objective was to say did 

you comply with the procedure and not necessary 

question the integrity of the procedure itself. 

In other words, we did raise the issue of the 

ICRP-30 versus 60 issue, but ultimately 

postponed even that to another discussion that 

involved the TBD. And so the internal 

exposures among the first 20 cases were almost 

to the T those that involved hypothetical 

uptakes that involved the high five or the 28 

versus 12 nuclides for Hanford, and I did not 

challenge that. I simply audited the report 

and said the dose reconstructor's job was not 

to challenge that and therefore I'm not going 

to hold him accountable for necessary 

questioning the methodology that has been laid 

out for him to follow. And so you're right, 

Mark, and we did not necessary address that as 

an issue because that was something we felt 

came under task one. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: But -- but -- yes, but it was 

brought up and discussed at length at all of 

our meetings and I just -- 

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 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- and these are -- these are 

some big issues -- 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- or potentially big issues -- 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- at least, that we have to 

follow through on, and I think it's terribly -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: It gets -- it gets -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- (unintelligible) when you see 

no internal dose findings, and you went to 

these other meetings, I think that doesn't 

coincide with what I -- 

 DR. BEHLING: You will see that is an issue 

under the review of the Savannah River TBD, 

which is -- I assume -- currently in your 

hands. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Jim Neton, welcome. 

DR. NETON: I want to clarify something. I 

think that the crux of the issue with the high 

five approach was -- was not so much of the 

magnitude of the assigned intake. I think 
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you'll even see words in the report that say 

they don't necessarily disagree that this was 

an overestimate of dose and the case is still 

not compensable, that large overestimate. It 

was in the use of -- whether we actually used 

the ICRP-30 instead of the 66 methodology, 

which is in our regulation. So it's a 

conceptual issue related to 66 versus 30. But 

the whole high five approach was we were giving 

very large overestimating intakes to workers. 

And whether you use 66 or 30 is irrelevant if 

one buys into the fact that those values are 

very, very large overestimates for the workers 

who were not very heavily exposed. It's not 

really -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: There was another question and -- 

but it wasn't captured in the revision of SCA's 

document, either -- but I brought it up at the 

three-way meeting that we had and that was the 

question of whether those high five have ever 

been validated, had NIOSH ever gone back and 

redone those calculations independently or were 

they just taken from the site authors -- 

 DR. NETON: That's correct. That's another 

issue. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: That was another issue, right. 

And it didn't necessarily make this final 

draft, I agree. 

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 DR. NETON: But it's not the ICRP-30 or 66 

issue that was raised. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: John? 

 DR. MAURO: John Mauro. Yeah, I'd like -- the 

-- one of the I guess challenges to the work 

we're doing is very often we're auditing cases 

that we have not yet reviewed the site profile. 

So what happens is -- and Hans can speak to 

this better than anyone -- is that he has to 

perform what I would call a mini-review of the 

TBD, read the 300 pages, get -- get a 

sensibility for okay, does it look reasonable -

- in other words, do his own review so that he 

can then use the TBD, along with everything 

else, to check the case. 

 Now you bring up a very good point regarding 

the Savannah River because what -- Savannah 

River review you may have just received, a hard 

copy of it, we just completed. And there's a 

whole section dealing with the high five, and 

there's a lot of commentary on -- regarding 
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whether or not the -- you'll see when you get 

to it that we have questions regarding it. 

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 Now we were not in a position, and quite 

frankly we're still not in a position, to have 

a judgment on the degree to whi-- of 

conservativism imbedded in the high five. 

Certainly on first blush the strategy to use 

the high five for those cases that we don't 

have data and you suspect that the person is 

non-compensable, that is -- that's a cut to 

make it into the high five world. Right off 

the bat we're dealing with those folks that are 

not the ones that are in the -- 

(unintelligible) of NIOSH to be in that range, 

so -- but nevertheless we were very -- we had 

lots of comments and questions regarding it. 

That was the result of quite an effort on the 

part of our internal dosimetrists. 

 When Hans performed a review of the Savannah 

River cases, that was actually before -- or 

during the time when we were reviewing the 

Savannah River site profile. So as a result, 

we elected not to perform the high five review 

as part of an individual case. It would have 

been impossible, the magnitude of the effort. 
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So basically the -- our reviews of each case -- 

we do the best we can in reviewing the site -- 

the TBD at -- when -- that supports that case, 

but I have to say that it -- by no means is 

that review on the same scale and magnitude and 

depth as when we perform our TBD review. So we 

do have a little bit of a misconnect here. 

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 I think the day will come after we review the 

site profile comments and after we go through 

our expanded review, we may very well get 

around the table and say okay, what does this 

mean with respect to the completed reviews of 

the cases, the five or six or eight cases of 

Savannah River? Is there anything that we've 

learned now as a result of the TBD review that 

might feed back and have an effect. There's 

not -- there's no way to avoid that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, in the -- and I -- you 

know, don't misinterpret what I'm saying. It 

wasn't really a criticism, it was just a point 

about dialogue in these other meetings. And 

also -- you know, I also recognize that the 

high five, for someone who probably -- some 

workers who were never even in a hot area it's 

obviously a fairly conservative assumption. 
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I'm just pointing out that there were some -- 

some gaps in that. 

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 DR. MAURO: You're correct. 

 MR. GRIFFON: But the -- the other thing that 

comes to mind is the Bethlehem Steel cases 

where -- and I don't know where these stand. 

You -- you've certainly done more work on this 

at this point and it's coming up later in our 

meeting here. But there was some questions I 

think, not necessarily for the cases we 

reviewed here because I think they were mainly 

lung cancers, but for other cases where the -- 

the questions that you guys rose, SCA rose -- I 

think you stated at other meetings that they 

may have impacted on certain cancers, certain 

types of cancers -- 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- for being compensable -- 

 DR. MAURO: Yeah, they were -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- rather than non-compensable. 

Right? 

DR. MAURO: We reviewed several Bethlehem Steel 

cases. We were the beneficiary, I -- in fact, 

I reviewed the Bethlehem Steel cases myself and 

I was the beneficiary of the fact that while I 
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was doing that the Bethlehem Steel site profile 

was well along. So basically as it -- in the 

case of those -- those cases that are -- the 

Bethlehem Steel cases, everything that we've 

learned as a result of our review of the 

Bethlehem Steel site profile has been captured 

and is incorporated into the cases. 

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 Now, how some of those issues are resolved -- I 

mean they're still pending. That is, NIOSH's 

position regarding the issues that we've raised 

I believe is going to be the subject of some 

discussion. As a result of that discussion, 

perhaps some changes that NIOSH might make to 

its approach to analyzing -- to the TBD for 

Bethlehem Steel, that will have an effect on 

our report, which could change some of the -- 

in other words, change some of the findings, so 

-- 

 MR. GRIFFON: But not on the matrix 'cause 

they're not included. Right? The AWEs are 

not. Right? 

 DR. MAURO: Right, the -- exactly, the AWEs are 

not included in that report because there's -- 

there's no fit. 

 DR. WADE: Might I make one other suggestion, 
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Mr. Chairman, just to finish the laying out of 

background? Jim, could you give us a status of 

where we stand on the unresolved issues that 

have come out of the interaction between SC&A 

and NIOSH concerning the first 20 case -- dose 

reconstruction reviews? 

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 DR. NETON: Well, I can't speak -- do you want 

me to speak to the AWEs, as well? I think it 

would be best for this meeting to talk about 

the ones that are non-AWEs, the 15 that are not 

related to Bethlehem Steel or -- or Huntington. 

We can talk about those later. 

 But of the 15 that are listed here, I don't 

believe that there are any unresolved issues 

with SC&A at this point. We are working 

through a list of 13 action items that we've 

established to go back and -- and relook at 

these cases and -- and change our procedures or 

policies, as appropriate. We don't have that 

formally published, but we have a team working 

on that. We have actually looked at all 15 

cases and evaluated the change in 

compensability based upon the issues raised by 

SC&A. We don't believe any of those cases are 

going to change compensability based on a 
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 DR. WADE: Okay. So at least from your report, 

intellectually you've reached closure with SC&A 

and NIOSH has taken now the lessons learned and 

is applying them to the process of dose 

reconstruction. 

DR. NETON: Yes. 

 DR. WADE: Okay. 

 DR. NETON: With the exception of the AWEs and 

possibly the Savannah River site profile issue 

that was just discussed by John and Mark with 

the -- the high five issue. 

 DR. WADE: I mean I just think in a world where 

there's all kinds of reason to question just 

about everything -- I mean this is a good 

experience we've had. I think the audit 

contractor's come in and looked at NIOSH's work 

and reported that it found no issues where 

compensability would be modified, although 

there are all kinds of caveats, and NIOSH has 

taken to heart SC&A's comments and is looking 

at improving its own procedures. I think 

that's worthy of note. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. Jim, thank you for updating 

us on that. Now I want to ask the question, in 
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terms of this document, what -- what the impact 

is here then. We have a number of items in 

here where we're showing, for example, NIOSH 

and SCA agreed to resolve this issue; NIOSH and 

SCA agreed to resolve this issue within the 

site profile review. A lot of those are that 

way. Let's see -- NIOSH and SC&A agreed to 

resolve this general issue. So all -- all of 

these that are -- that show here like it's 

going to be done, have been completed. Is that 

how I'm to understand it? 

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 DR. NETON: I don't know that they've been 

completed. We've come to an understanding 

between us and SC&A. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think also case one through 

five are the AWE ones, yeah. So six on is 

really what you're looking at. Right? 

 DR. NETON: And I don't have first-hand 

information. Stu Hinnefeld has been working 

closely with SC&A on this, but my latest 

information from him is we have no outstanding 

issues. We believe some of the language may -- 

may be a little -- we may have expressed things 

a little differently language-wise, but 

fundamentally we're -- we're in agreement. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: But wherever it says NIOSH and 

SC&A agreed to resolve this issue -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: I think we just want to know how 

-- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- or NIOSH agreed -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- that was resolved. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- to further investigate -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: That's -- 

 DR. NETON: I don't have that level of detail 

here at this meeting, but I could certainly get 

that to you if you'd like a -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Or NIOSH agreed to look into this 

further, all of these things have now been -- 

I'm just really asking if this needs to be 

updated before -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think we -- if we can ask 

NIOSH to report to us -- 

 DR. NETON: We can put together a report that 

outlines where -- how we've come to agreement 

on these issues, certainly. 

 DR. WADE: John, you were going to speak? 

 DR. MAURO: John Mauro. Yes, I just wanted to 

-- it's important to point out, I noticed that 

in one through five on the list here, you'll 

see a lot of places where it says NIOSH and 
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SC&A agree to resolve this issue. I think by 

way of an example, it would be very helpful to 

know what does that really mean. In one 

particular case it talks about, for example, 

this business of the triangular distribution 

versus a lognormal distribution. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

 DR. MAURO: The way that stands right now is 

that yes, as you know, our position is 

scientifically we were critical of the use of 

the triangular distribution. As my 

understanding is right now is that NIOSH is 

taking a closer look at perhaps replacing or 

supplementing their TBD with a lognormal 

distribution of some form, which would go 

toward a resolution of this issue. Now 

certainly there's a lot of the devil in the 

details. Okay? How do you build that, how do 

you use it, all of which is, I believe -- and 

right now NIOSH is working their problem -- I 

presume the day will come when NIOSH will put 

forth their position, their addendum, regarding 

all of the matters that we have been 

discussing. And at that point we'll have a 

better sense of how much closure we have in 
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fact achieved. But there's no doubt that at 

least based on the last meeting I attended 

where Jim gave a presentation -- in Buffalo -- 

it's clear that each of the major issues are 

very much on the table and NIOSH is working 

with them. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: But it sound to me, though, from 

what's been said, that actually there's a kind 

of closure on each item has been achieved. Is 

that a correct statement? I mean we're not 

looking for another iteration or waiting for 

something to be resolved at this point, is that 

-- is that correct? 

 DR. WADE: I think that's correct, yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So what we would need for our kind 

of wrap-up would be the up-dating of this 

document so that it coincides with what we've 

heard here. And I'm not sure -- it seems to me 

that something could be done pretty easily, 

maybe even this evening, just -- it'd be a 

matter of sitting down and -- with maybe Jim 

and -- some of these it is it's going to happen 

in the future or it has happened. Right? So 

whatever we end up with here does not 

necessarily have to talk about things that need 
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to be resolved as yet. Is that correct? That 

some level of agreement has been reached 

between the groups and -- but we need to 

identify what that is. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We have the response here, but I'm 

even wondering then if we need something that 

describes the resolution of the issue. Would 

that be helpful, or do we need that in here? 

 DR. DEHART: Is that cutting too deep for -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't know, I'm asking -- 

 DR. DEHART: -- (unintelligible) report out? I 

don't think so. What I would suggest is that 

what -- if you can do it in a few sentences, 

what the issue was and then state that that's 

been resolved. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, we have -- we have the 

findings, we have NIOSH's response, it's -- 

it's the -- the action is, you know, what was 

agreed to? It's -- it's a sentence or two, I 

think, and -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Because we -- I think we want to 

know that. The Board's going to want to know 

that, what is the resolution of this issue. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Do you all see that as being part 

of the -- of the closure? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Oh, yeah, yeah. 

 DR. DEHART: If it can be kept brief. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I want to get a sense of where we 

are here, so what would need to happen would be 

-- I think the only change on the SC&A summary 

sheet is how that's characterized on the wrapup. Right? And that can be easily... 

 DR. BEHLING: We will make some changes there, 

but I think with regard to closure I am not 

sure I know what can be done. Obviously we 

have very minor deficiencies. There's what, 42 

or 46 minor deficiencies, and I suppose one 

would be to go back and make the changes to the 

dose reconstruction report. But as we already 

pointed out, it's not one that's going to 

change the dose significantly or anything else. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well -- but we're not asking -- 

we're simply summarizing -- 

 DR. BEHLING: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- what you found, and that's what 

you found. If NIOSH wants to make changes, 
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that's going to be their -- their job. But I'm 

just looking at what -- what our wrap-up report 

is going to have. It's going to include this 

information, I believe, with whatever minor 

modifications are made to the form. It's going 

to include an updated version of this findings 

compilation and the resolution thereof. And 

then the final part of it I believe then is a -

- what you described, Mark, as a cover sheet 

which is a narrative that, in essence, 

summarizes what these all mean. Is that 

correct? 

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to generate here as we sit, or do you want to 

assign this to a drafting person or persons for 

the evening? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think it -- well, it might be 

easier to draft something tonight or -- unless 

we can get a -- I think it'd be easier to draft 

tonight. 

 DR. WADE: Do you have -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Maybe we can get the major 

concepts that we want to capture in it, and 

then draft the text tonight. 

 As far as filling out that matrix, that's a 
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little more involved of an effort, especially 

since it requires going through and finding all 

the findings that weren't necessarily 

controversial. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: I don't know that we need that 

matrix tonight. I'm thinking of something that 

-- we're going to present something to the 

Board -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- for action. And what I'm 

suggesting is that that will include -- if this 

is what we agree to, I'm -- I'm not 

unilaterally declaring this; I'm throwing this 

out. This would include the SC&A summary, with 

whatever minor modifications they make in the 

headings of this to make it clear that it's a -

- it's a roll-up of the individual sheets; an 

update of this summary of findings and the 

resolutions thereof; and then this cover sheet 

that we talked about which will enumerate the 

significance of the findings -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: And the areas for improvement. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and the areas for improvement. 

And this may be a one or two-pager, whatever it 

is. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: It'd be some sort of a narrative. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Uh-huh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But with -- and we'd want to make 

sure that we addressed the bullet points that 

are set forth in our methodology sheet. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now, that's -- that's what I'm... 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I was -- and I am envisioning 

this -- this one or two-page part in front of 

the tables as sort of a -- I mean I think it's 

worth putting a little background in there, 

too, you know -- 20 -- we reviewed 20 cases, 

five AW-- you know, this many AWEs, this many -

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 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- you know, we've -- and the 

primary -- the major conclusion that none -- we 

don't -- our subcon-- our contractor found that 

none -- they don't believe any would have -- 

would have been pushed over the 50 percentile. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: But then go on to say, you know, 

these were sampled from, you know, early cases 

and the POCs ranged -- I mean even a little 
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background information about what we were 

selecting from, you know -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Sure, sure. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- I'm talking a paragraph, you 

know, yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Is that agreeable to 

everybody? Give him some ideas here for a 

draft effort this evening. So the updating of 

these other two pieces would need to occur 

before the Board meeting. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We would understand that we would 

be recommending to the Board that the final 

report include this cover page, plus these two 

-- the support documents. Is that -- is that 

agreeable to the group? 

 DR. DEHART: This would be -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: You want to formalize this in the 

form of a motion? Or is -- are we going to 

take it by consent that any objections -- 

without objection, we'll proceed in that way. 

We would be looking for a volunteer writer or 

two for working on the summary sheet for this 

evening. Mark, are you volunteering to -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I'll draft -- yeah. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Roy will assist you. And I'm 

certainly around -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- you know, if you're not -- if 

you're not sure about the dangling participles, 

I'll be around. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I'm sure you'll find them for me. 

 DR. WADE: You know, in terms of the heavier 

task, which is the -- getting this document 

resolved, maybe -- Jim, could you come to the 

microphone for us so we could have a dialogue 

as to how we're going to -- just -- it'd be 

good if we get an agreement as to how we're 

going to do that, so let's just talk as to how 

that's going to happen so that it can be done 

in time for the next Board meeting. 

DR. NETON: Okay. I'm not sure what -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I guess I -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- what we're wondering is -- we 

have a number of items here that currently 

indicate they're going to be resolved. 

 DR. NETON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And you've told us basically they 
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have been, and I think we're just wanting to 

update that and say this is how it's been 

resolved. 

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 DR. NETON: Right, so we can -- we can update 

this? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, it'll be a sentence or two, 

and it may be even a separate column, a 

resolution or something like that. 

 DR. NETON: Yeah, we can do that and -- before 

the next Board meeting, if that's -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's really what we're asking. 

 DR. WADE: But let's talk -- but -- you can do 

it, but then it needs to come to this group, 

and you need to take ownership of it and make 

sure it's adequate. I just wouldn't want to 

come to the next Board meeting and find that we 

didn't have what we thought we needed. So 

there needs to be an iterative step. If you 

can put something together and then share it 

with the members of this subcommittee, then if 

you guys are comfortable with it then we're 

done. If you're not, then we need to do an 

iteration. 

 DR. NETON: The question is then how soon 

before the Board meeting -- we have a number of 
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competing and conflicting demands on our time. 

I don't expect that this is going to be a -- a 

huge effort, to be honest. But if I could get 

some sense for how much advance notice -- ten 

days before the Board meeting? 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, if we had it a week before, 

that would be adequate, I would think, would it 

not? 

 DR. NETON: We'll certainly do our best to get 

-- as soon as we're done we're going to send it 

over, but a week before, if that's suf-- 

 DR. WADE: Well, let's say ten days. 

 DR. NETON: Ten days before. 

 DR. WADE: And you would then send that to all 

the members of the subcommittee. 

 DR. NETON: Right. So that would be by the 

15th of April time frame. Okay. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you, Jim. 

 DR. NETON: Okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Get your taxes in first. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now are there any issues relating 

to this that we have not captured? Anyone... 

 DR. WADE: I have some general issues. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, go ahead. As far as 

procedural or what do you -- 
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 DR. ZIEMER: No, items that we want to include 

in the report that we haven't captured. Okay. 

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 DR. DEHART: The only thing that comes to mind 

is any direction which we have given the 

contractor since we've begun to see the reports 

that they will be required to continue to 

follow. In other words, the results of the -- 

of the audit have resulted in our making some 

recommendations on how that's to be prepared. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, and this is the general 

scheme issue of how we proceed to -- go ahead. 

 DR. WADE: I was just going to say what Dr. 

DeHart -- I think it would be worth us spending 

some time talking about lessons we've learned 

to this point and things we would like to 

institutionalize, be it in SC&A's work or the 

Board's work or NIOSH's work. I think it's 

good to pause and to talk about those things, 

particularly while it's fresh in all of our 

minds 'cause, again, the purpose here is to get 

better. And so I think that needs to happen 

sometime this afternoon. Maybe now is the 

time, maybe later. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, this is certainly the time 

to do that. I'm asking if we're all set on the 
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general report itself for the first 20 cases, 

and then that'll come back to us tomorrow 

morning to act upon. 

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 As far as the general issue of going forward, I 

think we've already institutionalized the idea 

that -- number one, that the report will go to 

NIOSH for factual checks right at the front 

end. And we also have, as a general process 

involving the individual Board members, the 

sub-teams on the initial discussions with SC&A. 

I'm talking about dose reconstructions now. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, we are very much into what I 

would call the expanded review mode of 

operation. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: Our work products -- namely, for 

example, the next set of 18, for example, will 

go through the same process that the first 20 

went through, namely we will deliver a draft 

version for factual accuracy review. There 

will be an exchange that I presume will follow 

exactly the same pattern that the first 20 

followed, perhaps a list of commentaries, 

observations, questions, issues from -- from 

NIOSH. We'll meet to discuss all of them, then 
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we will finalize our report that will reflect 

that expanded review cycle. So we're in a 

pattern that, yes, for the task four dose 

reconstruction process, that is the mode of 

operation that we are operating under right 

now. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

 DR. WADE: And John, while -- while you're 

still there -- now we talked about possibly 

your drawing out this kind of information from 

your review and providing -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Can you generate that as part of -

- 

 DR. MAURO: We certainly can, if that's what 

you would like, and it would be very easy for 

us to do. It would reflect basically -- in 

effect, it would be our understanding of what 

was resolved during the expanded review cycle, 

and it would basically take exactly the same 

form that Mark's write-up has, except it would 

have a column in it that would indicate how the 

issue was resolved by SC&A. That is, we did 

resolve this issue, see page so-and-so and this 

is how it was resolved. In other words, we 

could actually achieve closure. 
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 If it means -- it also would indicate -- 

perhaps there's an action item. For example, 

let's say we're talking Bethlehem Steel. If 

there's still an open item related to 

triangular distribution, we will say right now 

this is an open item currently being reviewed 

by NI-- so this will be our understanding is 

that this particular issue has not yet been 

closed but it's an action item that's currently 

being looked at by NIOSH. This in effect would 

be a letter from us to the Board reflecting our 

understanding of the status of each of the 

items that were originally listed by NIOSH 

during the expanded review cycle, and that's 

very easy for us to do while we're writing our 

report. 

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think -- this matrix -- I know this was done 

from the expanded review and NIOSH's sort of -- 

the ones that they were questioning. But I 

think what I'd like to see in the next cycle is 

for you to create this matrix and sort of just 

fill in that first column initially as we start 

the process, so you'd just list your -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: And you could still 
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 MR. GRIFFON: -- list your findings in a table, 

and then -- and then we'll work them from 

there, and as -- 

 DR. MAURO: I'm not following you, I'm sorry. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Mark's saying when you first do 

your initial report -- well, no, they would 

have had the factual accuracy thing, but you 

wouldn't necessarily have the NIOSH responses -

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 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- to your findings. 

 DR. MAURO: That's correct, it would be our -- 

in other words, the way -- what I just 

characterized -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: This column would be almost blank 

to start with. 

DR. MAURO: Well, the first -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: No, the second column here. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You wouldn't have the NIOSH 

response when you first issued your report. 

DR. MAURO: That's correct. We would have -- 

if we go through the process we just described 

-- okay? -- we would -- we would be going into 
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-- you would -- we would have been through the 

first phase where we delivered our draft. We 

would have had our meetings with NIOSH 

regarding factual accuracy review. We will 

have -- SC&A will have had before us the first 

column, because that would be provided to us 

prior to the meetings of -- the factual 

accuracy meetings, so we will have all that. 

Then -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, but I'm saying you provide 

that. 

 DR. MAURO: Oh, the -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I'm saying -- asking if you could 

provide that first column going in, and then if 

during the factual accuracy review it gets 

thrown out for factual accuracy basis, then you 

show that in one column. 

 DR. MAURO: No, I think NIOSH provides the 

first column. 

 MR. GRIFFON: That's what happened -- that's 

what happened here. 

 DR. BEHLING: I think I understand Mark's 

intent here and that's to simplify the issue 

and also make it more comprehensive as -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 
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 DR. BEHLING: -- in this case we found we only 

dealt with the issues that were being contested 

by NIOSH as opposed to those -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Right, I want to have all -- 

 DR. BEHLING: -- that were the complete 

picture, so what I understand you to mean is 

that summary of findings is what we will 

introduce as part of our initial draft that 

will actually precede or coincide in time with 

our initial draft, before we even get any 

comments from NIOSH. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. BEHLING: And then after meeting with NIOSH 

we can then sit down and saying well, item 

number one, they concede or we were wrong -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. BEHLING: -- or this is a difference of 

opinion that needs really no resolution. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Otherwise some of these are 

dropping out and we don't -- 

 DR. MAURO: We don't see them. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- we don't see them. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes. Yes, yes. And so this is 

nothing more than a facsimile of the dose 
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 DR. BEHLING: We will simply itemize and 

perhaps summarize in very brief fashion into 

this first column, that's all. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. And then each -- as each 

item is resolved or responded to, you simply 

fill one column -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: (Unintelligible) across the 

(unintelligible). 

 DR. BEHLING: And that should be no problem. 

We'll have that then available and -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. BEHLING: -- we'll just then fill in the 

blanks after the meeting. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, right. 

 DR. BEHLING: Or as the meeting progresses. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So in essence it's the same 

process, but we would be tracking it a little 

more formally so that we can really see how 

each item was dealt with and you can just go 

across and it's resolved or whatever. Or 

dropped away -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: -- for factual accuracy. Okay. 

Does that seem reasonable? Anybody... 

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 DR. WADE: I have two more general issues, and 

they come under the Board heading of time and 

money. I think it would be good for us to talk 

about how long it would be reasonable for us to 

expect it would take to come to where we are 

now on the first 20 on any group of dose 

reconstructions. I mean I think we need to do 

a better job of realistic -- realistically 

planning what we're going to do at Board 

meetings. We are very overly-optimistic in 

terms of what we think we're going to do, and 

then we find ourselves rushed. And I think 

while we're here and we have some time, it 

wouldn't be a bad idea to talk about -- from 

the minute we pick the next number of cases -- 

when would we think it would be appropriate to 

try and come to a Board meeting and reach 

closure on that -- that series of review. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me kick this off and we'll 

have to hear from John, too, but we all already 

have our second group of 20 -- which is really 

18 -- and our third group of 20 -- which is 

really 22, I believe. And both of those have 
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been impinged upon by other events, such as the 

urgency of the Special Exposure Cohort 

petitions and -- and our contractor has tried 

to accommodate us by readjusting the -- with 

the urgency of the times. So -- and that 

readjusting has continued with the change in 

the Iowa Technical Basis Document and -- and 

others. So the fact that there's been a delay 

in the second 20, of course, is -- we can't lay 

at the feet of our contractor. But I guess at 

this point maybe we need to look at what -- 

what -- with all the things that have impinged 

on us, where do we stand on the second 20, and 

then -- that is, the second 18 -- and the third 

group, where do we stand on those? 

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 DR. BEHLING: Well, I'm trying to do a number 

of things, some things -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, and I understand. 

 DR. BEHLING: -- obviously reading and 

reviewing the Iowa TBD, but at this point I can 

assure you that we will have a draft report for 

the second 18 cases probably before the end of 

next month so that -- end of April, it should 

be the target date. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That would be the first draft? 
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 DR. BEHLING: Yes. And we will also try to do 

this summary table that Mark has been asking us 

to do, and we will have that available for your 

review, as well as NIOSH's review, sometime at 

the end of this month, assuming that there are 

no additional tasks handed to me by John. But 

I think we're well on our way. I think at this 

point I'm trying to do these things -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: What would be the end of this 

month? What -- 

 DR. BEHLING: The end of next month, end of 

April. 

 DR. ZIEMER: End of April for the next 18. 

 DR. BEHLING: Next 18, yes, yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And then you said something else 

was going to be at the end of this month, or 

was that a slip? 

 DR. BEHLING: No, no, that was a slip and I -- 

we had intended to have that available at the 

end of this month originally, and then asked 

for a reprieve for one-month period as a result 

of the Iowa case. And then at this point I 

think we will certainly be in a position to 

satisfy the end of April as a deadline for the 

next 18. 
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 DR. WADE: So at the end of April -- excuse me, 

at the end of April we would get the first 

product -- could you just walk us through, 

Hans, how long it would take to get to the end 

of the process for that 18, from your point of 

view? 

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 DR. BEHLING: Again, I think we're getting 

smarter as time goes by. I think we will have 

a much more efficient process by which we 

resolve issues between us and NIOSH when they 

crop up. I think we all learn from our 

experience, so right now I think we perhaps 

need to get some additional information. 

 I think there may be a discussion that we will 

also have later on, either today or tomorrow, 

and that is the issue of workbooks and Excel 

sheets and so forth and other items that we now 

know are an integral part of the dose 

reconstruction process. And for us to become 

much more efficient in reviewing and auditing 

those particular claims that made use of these 

workbooks and spreadsheets, we're going to 

probably be asking the NIOSH people to provide 

us with some training, because that will 

clearly expedite. 
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 And some of these dose reconstruction require 

an extensive review and I've elected to do most 

of that myself. A case in point was the Iowa 

dose reconstruction case I looked at just 

yesterday, and again it was fortuitous in a 

sense where I was also in a position to have 

already reviewed the revised TBD for Iowa, 

which also obviously therefore saved me the 

time for reviewing it in -- in context for this 

particular -- but I also have to go now back 

and review the original because this particular 

dose reconstruction report was done under the 

old version, the Rev. 00. 

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 So at times it's very time-consuming and I know 

that we've been questioned about our 

efficiency. But for a single case such as this 

one here in question, I had to review two 

independent TBDs, the original Rev. 00 and the 

revised Rev., in order to understand what this 

dose reconstruction entailed and how it may 

change as a result of the revision to that TBD. 

So for a single case I had to review really two 

TBDs, and at times that does tend to really 

take a big chunk out of your time. 

 I'm hoping that, as I said, I will still be in 
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a position to review all the other TBDs that 

are part of the next 18, and they include NTS 

and INEEL and, as I said, they do require some 

time. So I'm hoping that I'm not biting off 

more than I can chew in telling you that I will 

be there to -- to give you a finished report, 

but I will certainly do my best. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let me clarify. So the end 

of April let's say you have that draft out with 

your findings. Then NIOSH will look at that -- 

now at that point a factual review has or 

hasn't -- has not been done? 

 DR. BEHLING: No, it will not have been done. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Then NIOSH does the factual 

review -- 

 DR. BEHLING: Uh-huh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and -- and -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Could I ask -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- that --then that -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- to back up one step, is there 

-- are we going to have the workgroup 

conference call -- 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- like we did last time? 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 
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 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: That happens first. Right? 

 DR. BEHLING: And that means we have to 

obviously do this well in advance because we 

need the -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: You've got to schedule -- 

 DR. BEHLING: -- initial telephone -- has to 

take place before we even write the report, so 

as I said, I've got my work cut out and I'm 

going to have to probably finish most of my 

reviews within the next two weeks or so in 

order for us to achieve that timetable. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Then NIOSH needs some time to do a 

factual review and -- amidst everything else, 

and I supposed in fairness Jim would be the one 

to ask, but what -- what's -- or -- what's 

reasonable from your point of view if they 

deliver a document -- you know, here's the -- 

here's our review of 18 cases; what happens 

next? 

 DR. NETON: Well, if it's -- if it's -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: If it's just the factual review. 

 DR. NETON: The factual review, we're not 
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looking at it from a technical perspective 

necessarily. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. NETON: I think we'd like to have a 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

 DR. NETON: I mean these are long documents. I 

mean they're typically well in excess of 100 

pages, more typically closer to 200, so just to 

get someone's eyes on it and to look at it, I 

think a week is -- is -- could (unintelligible) 

-- 

 DR. ZIEMER: So then you get the factual review 

back, then what happens next? 

 DR. MAURO: Could I just back up one second? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. MAURO: The fact that we're going through a 

factual review process, I question whether we 

need the telephone review process. Let me -- 

I'd like to pose this to the Board. As you 

know, one of the things we did on the first set 

is that after we performed our first review of 

the 20 cases -- and we actually didn't really 

write up our audit report yet, but we had each 

author of -- or who was working, we had this 
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telephone conference call where each -- where 

two members of the Board were -- were in 

conference to hear our story. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay? And it was a round-table 

discussion. Now that was one of the milestone 

steps in the process, and the reason -- if you 

recall -- that was introduced was to avoid a 

situation where the first time the Board would 

see the document would be during the next Board 

meeting. Okay? This was an opportunity for 

the Board to be part of the process, to have a 

preview of where things were going and be 

engaged early. 

 I would contend that now that we have the 

expanded review process in place whereby we 

deliver a draft report to the Board and to 

NIOSH, and then we hold this meeting whereby it 

is basically a working draft, it is recorded, 

do we -- do we still want to go through the 

telephone review step? Because I think the 

expanded review cycle step really is -- 

accomplishes the same thing. And it would help 

-- preparing for that round-table meeting, 

getting everybody together, is a -- it's time-
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consuming. It would probably lose a week 

'cause each person is -- tries to get their 

thoughts together for the presentation. 

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 I'd sooner have everyone working on preparing 

their draft report, getting the draft set of 18 

cases into your hands as a working work product 

and into the hands of NIOSH, and then have our 

expanded review cycle go on for -- for how long 

it's necessary to go through that process. 

This will give the Board and NIOSH an 

opportunity to see the document -- which is 

almost like redundant to the telephone 

arrangement. I don't know whether you would 

agree with that or not. 

 DR. ZIEMER: In some respects it is the -- I 

think the problem is the following: That each 

of these cases is fairly extensive, when you 

dig into the files. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And it would be difficult, for 

example, if we put on the shoulders of two or 

three Board members the job of reviewing all 20 

cases in preparation for that meeting, versus 

having individual teams where Roy is 

responsible for only three cases -- and 
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 DR. MAURO: I understand. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We don't just get paid nearly as 

much as you guys do -- we don't think we do. 

That's really immaterial. I couldn't help 

saying it, though. 

But I think -- I think it's more that issue of 

to what extent can we involve the full Board in 

the process in their ability to look at some 

cases in depth, versus having a few Board 

members cover all cases in less depth. That's 

-- that's the -- the Board can decide, I mean -

- but I think that's sort of the nature of the 

issue. What do you guys think about the... 

 DR. DEHART: I certainly agree that it's 

important for the members of the Board to 

participate. The auditing procedure and policy 

as set up and -- is a Board function. We're 

required to have an audit. In that requirement 

I see it that we're required to participate. 

Now I don't know how many people participated 

in the phone conversations that were occurring 

in those reviews, probably some more than 

others, but I think it's important for each of 

us to have that opportunity. 
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 DR. MAURO: That's fine. To go back to answer 

your question -- I'm sorry, I sort of diverted 

it for a minute 'cause it was a thought I had. 

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 Now your question was okay, we -- let's say the 

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draft -- well, it's between now and the end of 

April we'll have our telephone conference -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: -- as we planned. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: Then we will deliver a draft 

report. The draft report will look exactly 

like the final report -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: -- except we're going to be 

delivering one more thing with that. This 

would be a letter, which would be -- which 

would be of the form similar to Mark's form 

except, to make life a little easier for 

everyone, in the first column we will identify 

every issue that we've -- and sort of like in 

summary form -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: -- so that rather than reading 200, 

300 pages, you can actually go down and say 
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here's the issues that we found out. And 

somehow as best we can -- I'm not quite sure -- 

capture each finding in some succinct way 

that's tractable, perhaps even could be put 

into a database. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 DR. MAURO: And then I presume that -- so then 

-- so that would be delivered. That will be 

delivered to the Board and to NIOSH as the 

first step in the expanded review cycle. Then 

the cycle begins. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Then NIOSH has a week -- or 

whatever it takes; we're not throwing a 

timetable on them, but they're estimating that 

about a week later they come back to you and 

they say here's the following factual errors. 

What happens now? 

DR. MAURO: Right. They -- they send to us, as 

they did before -- here is what we -- on each 

one of the items that you've identified, here 

is our position regarding those items. We 

think you're in error here. We think -- we're 

-- in other words, that -- that would be the 

next column, so therefore -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Wait, wait, wait, I'm only talking 
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factual check here now, not -- not dealing with 

issues raised. You know, Jim's group says wait 

a minute, you guys have the wrong dataset here 

or what -- what kind of things do we find in 

the factual? 

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using procedures that have been superseded or 

out of date -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay, right. 

 DR. NETON: -- or things -- things of that 

nature. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, at this point NIOSH is not 

debating the merits of findings. I think 

they're only checking for factual accuracy. 

And I'm saying once you get that information 

back, what -- then you make some modifications. 

Say oh, okay, well, this may have an effect on 

this finding or whatever, but you'll -- 

 DR. MAURO: Exactly, then we're in what I call 

the home stretch. Now we have written material 

back from NIOSH which itemizes their -- the 

outcome of their factual review. Okay? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: But then, what we did the last 

time, is we had a meeting. 
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 DR. MAURO: Okay? And we had -- we actually 

had a meeting with NIOSH with -- with 

involvement of the Board. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: Mark, you were there in January 

12th. Unfortunately I didn't make that 

meeting. I was in Buffalo with you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: But there's a -- then we go through 

each and every one -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Where there was an issue, right. 

 DR. MAURO: There -- yeah, that was -- that -- 

in other words, right there we'll have on this 

-- in fact, quite frankly, on the same piece of 

paper we would have every issue that we've 

identified would all be there in some kind of 

succinct form. Right next to it, as 

appropriate, we will have NIOSH's statement 

regarding the factual accuracy of that 

position, finding, statement that we've made in 

column one. So column two, to varying degrees, 

will contain material that reflects NIOSH's 

perspective on each of the issues. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 
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 DR. MAURO: Okay. Then -- the next -- so now 

we -- we sit down and we -- we meet with NIOSH 

and -- and representatives of the Board. We 

record the meeting. We go over each and every 

item on the list. Then we're -- then SC&A goes 

back to the drawing board and we revise our 

working draft report and -- in a -- to be 

responsive -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Right, depending on -- 

 DR. MAURO: -- to the factual -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: You may say yes, we understand 

that position and we -- change, or NIOSH may do 

the same and -- and so there's another version 

that -- 

 DR. MAURO: And then we deliver what I call to 

be the version you now have. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: But there'll be one more thing 

that's going to come. That would be another 

column -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: -- whereby it would be almost 

SC&A's perspective of how each issue has been 

closed or has not been closed. So it would be 

-- basically, as I understand it -- a three-
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column table. Column one, SC&A's list of 

concerns, issues, findings; column two, NIOSH's 

perspective regarding factual accuracy 

regarding those issues; column three, SC&A's 

understanding of the status of each one of 

those issues as a result of the expanded review 

cycle that we went through, and that 

information would of course not only be 

captured on the table, but would be discussed 

in greater detail in the actual deliverable 

report, cross-referencing -- maybe this would 

be helpful; in that third column we would also 

cross-reference back to our report where that 

particular item is discussed. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: To the extent possible, yeah. 

DR. MAURO: To the extent we can do that. That 

seems to be a way of really moving the process 

toward closure. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now how long after the factual 

accuracy check do you estimate -- assuming 

things are working smoothly, what's -- what's 

the turnaround time from factual accuracy to 

the next version, which is the -- 

DR. MAURO: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- version that -- 
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 DR. MAURO: Our experiences -- that is, after 

we deliver the working draft, there is during 

that one-month period whereby there's the 

factual accuracy review process takes place. 

If that -- the -- at the end of that one-month 

period, we deliver, so it's a -- in other 

words, I think it's possible to go from 

delivery of the working draft to you folks and 

-- and NIOSH, sometime as early as possible 

following delivery we receive the write-up from 

NIOSH -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. MAURO: -- we hold our meeting, and then we 

probably need two weeks after the meeting to 

revise our report and deliver it. That is a 

little bit optimistic -- assuming that we don't 

have too many challenges -- but I think it's -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, wait -- then how long after 

the factual accuracy check before you would be 

ready for the meeting? 

DR. MAURO: Okay. Aft-- I would say that once 

we get the material back from -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: From NIOSH. 

 DR. MAURO: -- from NIOSH, within days, two -- 

just give us a chance to read them -- 
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 DR. MAURO: -- for us to -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- are we kind of at a week, two 

weeks, a month? 

 DR. MAURO: Within a week. In other words, 

within a week of when we receive NIOSH's 

commentary on our material, we probably should 

hold our -- our meeting. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Ready for a meeting. 

 DR. MAURO: We should have our meeting. And 

then after the meeting, we need two weeks to 

revise our report and deliver it. That would 

be fast-tracking it. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think we might want to -- you 

might want to think about this time line a 

little and present it tomorrow, too, because I 

think -- I'm getting confused between your 

factual accuracy description and your -- and 

your other comments, NIOSH -- not the NIO-- the 

issues. I think -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: The issues -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- that middle step of 

(unintelligible) -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- discussion occurs after the 

factual accuracy check. 
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1 MR. GRIFFON: I understand that. I think -- 

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 DR. BEHLING: I'm not sure -- I raise a 

question of whether or not factual accuracy 

even comes into play here. That was done for 

Bethlehem Steel because we were looking at 

potential models that involved a surrogate 

facility. I think factual accuracy is really 

not an issue here. I think what we would do is 

point out certain things in our review process 

that may involve misrepresentation of a 

guidance that has been provided to the dose 

reconstructor, et cetera, but we're not really 

going to question the factual accuracy of those 

documents -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: No, I think we're talking about 

NIOSH questioning your factual -- 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- accuracy in your report, if 

there's something that's just -- 

 DR. BEHLING: Well -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- simply wrong. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, I would assume that that's 

part of the -- their review of our draft that 

says here's what we found are potential issues 

that we wanted to raise, and they will come 
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back -- as they did the last time -- and say we 

disagree with you. That's really not necessary 

a factual accuracy. It's just an issue that 

they feel we may have made a mistake in making 

assumptions -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Well -- 

 DR. BEHLING: -- it's just nothing more than -- 

than what we went through the last time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, did we do a factual accuracy 

-- 

 DR. BEHLING: No. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- on the first set? 

 DR. BEHLING: We submitted -- the last time 

what happened was we submitted a report to the 

Advisory Board and concurrently provided the 

same report to NIOSH, who then reviewed the 

contents of that report and said your criticism 

is not necessarily something we agree with. 

And therefore at the last meeting in 

California, at Livermore, they came to the 

meeting with a list of issues that they felt 

were -- were unjustified criticism. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So -- yeah, so we had -- we 

specifically had factual accuracy on the -- on 

the site profile reviews. But Jim, can you 
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speak to this factual accuracy issue? Is that 

an important step or is it -- 

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 DR. NETON: I honestly don't recall that we did 

a factual accuracy review of the dose 

reconstructions, so I think the report was 

issued and -- and remember, we had the -- the 

problem that it was not released to the public 

because there was no factual accuracy review. 

I think that was the central issue was we 

believe that it -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, in fact were there factual 

issues in the report that -- 

DR. NETON: Yeah, there was a -- it was 

commingled issues -- I mean factual accuracy, 

but as Hans correctly pointed out, there were 

also philosophical issues and -- and 

(unintelligible) -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, let me -- let me rephrase 

this. Do we need a factual accuracy report or 

do you -- can you handle it all as one thing? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Just do it all as one thing. 

DR. NETON: I suspect that we could. I'm a 

little bit reluctant to say we could turn 

around an entire review in a week, though. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, no, I -- no, if -- if he's 
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talking about the entire review, that's 

something different. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: I'm really asking do we need a 

factual accuracy review, in your mind, or can -

- can you just... 

DR. NETON: I don't think so. The more I think 

about this, I really feel that we can 

accomplish both -- kill two birds with one 

stone, so to speak. 

 DR. DEHART: If I remember correctly, it was -- 

during the conference call wasn't NIOSH 

represented? 

 DR. BEHLING: Yes, sir. 

 DR. DEHART: In that committee -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 DR. DEHART: -- y'all had somebody from NIOSH 

with you. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. NETON: That's correct. 

 DR. DEHART: So there was the first chance to -

- if there was something that was clear, they 

could correct right then. 

 DR. NETON: Yeah, and -- it's not clear, is 

this -- is this report released to the public 
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 DR. ZIEMER: No, because it involves individual 

cases and -- and -- 

 DR. NETON: Right, so -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: And I don't think that was an 

issue at that time. We -- 

 DR. NETON: See, that was our concern with the 

release to the public of a report that may have 

been way off-base on some factual accuracy 

issue. We just wanted the opportunity to -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, the site profiles were -- 

 DR. NETON: The site profile, that makes some 

sense. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, right. 

 DR. NETON: But for these, I guess I would 

agree that a factual accuracy review and a 

technical review can be accomplished at the 

same time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So now your review changes 

-- your first crack at it changes its form a 

bit, so now you're going to need a little more 

time to address technical issues, so you jump 

from one week to -- 

 DR. NETON: At least two. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- at least two -- Hans, right? 
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1 DR. NETON: And I'd like to say three, but -- 

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conservative, Jim. 

DR. NETON: Well, I'd like to say three. I'm 

not speaking -- I'm speaking for the group 

that's going to have to do it. I don't really 

do the first pass on these, but -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, but -- 

 DR. WADE: Yeah, please say three. 

 DR. NETON: If I say three and no one will 

balk, I would appreciate the extra time. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Realistic, yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So three weeks and you -- and 

basically now you have the next column -- 

 DR. NETON: We'll fill in the next column, and 

then that would precipitate to the next meeting 

and (unintelligible) -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and then a revised document -- 

and you -- you folks now would need to respond 

to that, so you need what, a couple more weeks? 

 DR. MAURO: Yeah, I -- from our previous 

experience, I think it took at least two weeks 

to go from -- after the meeting to getting the 

product out as the final report. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, so we've got two to three 
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 DR. MAURO: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So those two steps -- we've got 

six weeks after the first draft comes through. 

 DR. WADE: And just remind me, John, from the 

day you get the assignment, how long before you 

produce the first report? If we were to give 

you 20 cases, when would we expect that first 

report out? 

 DR. MAURO: I'm thinking about the first time 

through the pipeline, that actually took two 

months. 

 DR. WADE: Okay, that's fine. I just needed a 

time to -- that's fine. 

 DR. MAURO: Yeah, from the -- from the -- that 

is from receiving this set of -- first set of 

20 to the meeting -- the telephone -- two-man 

team meeting to the delivery of the draft -- 

working -- working draft document that was not 

published, I think that took two months. 

 DR. WADE: That's fine. 

 DR. MAURO: Yeah. And then -- then -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, 'cause you assigned the 

cases out. Your individual folks are reviewing 

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

 DR. MAURO: -- and before we could actually 

have the product in your hands required two 

months, and then after that two-month period, 

then we move into the cycle you just described. 

 DR. WADE: And that's a six-week cycle. 

 DR. MAURO: And that's six weeks on top... 

 DR. WADE: That's fine. That's... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Lew, does that answer the question 

we need at this point -- 

 DR. WADE: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- on a timetable? 

 DR. WADE: And again, where I'm -- where I'm 

trying to go with this is now to try and 

understand what the Board or the subcommittee 

would see as a year's work, how many cases do 

we want to do in a year given our understanding 

of this time line. 'Cause what I'm really 

trying to do is build an understanding of how 

much money we need to set aside to do the work 

you see in a year for this. So the question to 

the subcommittee -- I mean we don't have to 

decide this now, although we should talk a 

little bit about it, is in the course of a year 
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how many cases do we want to do, given the fact 

that it's -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: This process is going to eat up 

two and a half to three months per 20 cases -- 

call it three months -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, three months, yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- so you -- at best, you can do 

four sets. 

 DR. WADE: Unless you run them in parallel, 

that's right. 

 DR. DEHART: We have two -- two sessions or two 

groups right now in the pipeline. 

 DR. WADE: That's right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But they probably -- they may not 

be done in parallel. They may end up 

sequentially, in terms of -- 

 DR. WADE: So I mean one logic would say two 

months for the first version, six weeks, that 

equals four months. You could do three batches 

a year, so that's 60 a year. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, uh-huh. 

 DR. WADE: Okay. I just wanted to get a sense 

of that. Then my next question, so you don't 

have to sit down, John, is what does it cost to 

do 60? 
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 DR. MAURO: Okay. Right now we're operating on 

the basis of 40 work hours per case -- okay? 

Let me -- let me (unintelligible) -- the -- the 

-- 

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 DR. MAURO: You want to talk about this here? 

I'll -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

 DR. MAURO: We won't talk dollars, we'll talk 

work hours if -- 

 DR. WADE: Work hours is fine. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. Our experience is 40 work 

hours to get the product written. Then there 

is another eight hours per case for the quality 

control check, so 48 hours per case. Okay? 

 Now we've delivered. Then we go into the 

expanded review cycle and our experience is the 

expanded review cycle to do a full set of 20 

cases takes 300 work hours. Other words -- so 

the -- get moving through -- other words, we 

have basically two people working full time for 

a month during the expanded -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: So that's another 15 hours per 

case. 
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 DR. MAURO: That's what -- how -- it comes to 

about that, yeah. So in the end we're talking 

about for-- say 50 -- 65 work hours per case. 

That's what it's turning out to be. Now as 

Hans pointed out, we are now getting access to 

certain information that might greatly ex-- 

might improve our efficiency. But at the same 

time, we are moving into the advanced reviews -

- I'm not sure how much different the advanced 

-- 'cause I don't know if you can get much more 

advanced than what we're doing. That is, we're 

really beating it, you know, pretty hard, so 

I'm not sure whether the advanced reviews are 

really of substantive difference. We'll find 

out as we move through these cases, but right 

now if you were to say what do you think, I 

don't think it's going to be -- I think it's in 

the fine structure. It's not going to be -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: No. 

 DR. MAURO: Yeah, it's not going to change that 

65 work hours per case. 

 DR. WADE: Okay, so we're looking at a period 

of performance of four months per set of cases, 

assuming a set is 20. That gives us 60 a year, 

and approximately 65 hours, without discussing 
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labor rates, to do a case. That's fine. That 

gives me what I need to -- to... 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Any other questions on this topic 

now? We're going to have a draft prepared this 

evening which we can act on in the morning in 

terms of what the wrap-up will look like, and 

this will be something that, if we approve it, 

will be presented to the Board at the next 

meeting, together with the updated supplement 

material. 

 DR. WADE: On this general -- general topic, 

another -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. WADE: Hans has brought us to the point, 

but I think it would be good for us to close on 

this issue of workbooks and just get those 

issues on the table and make sure that we have 

an understanding and everything in place to do 

this as efficiently as possible. So the table 

has been set on that issue, John, but we 

haven't really closed on it, so... 

 DR. ZIEMER: What -- are there actions that 

need to be taken, or are you working this with 

NIOSH or what -- what's happening there? 

 DR. MAURO: We -- you may not have received 
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this yet, Paul and Lew. I sent out an e-mail 

yesterday late in the day which summarized some 

of the recent developments that were very 

important in terms of our being able to 

effectively and efficiently perform our reviews 

of the cases. Two of the developments deal 

with what's referred to as the workbooks and 

their associated spreadsheets. We recently 

received them. Stu Hinnefeld provided us with 

them. We've been using them. They certainly 

are helpful, but they're also -- we're really 

not -- they -- my sense is we need some 

training. 

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 That is -- and there's -- an interesting aspect 

to this is, in effect, the workbooks and the 

spreadsheets are the de facto procedures that 

NIOSH is using to do dose reconstruction. 

They've automated it, almost becomes like an 

assembly line. Now -- so in a funny sort of 

way, we -- we did a critical review of the 

procedures, task three. Now we are in a 

situation where what we've been doing up until 

now is reviewing the cases directly against 

those procedures, which are substantial -- 

about 35 procedures. And as you know from our 
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critique of task three, it's a -- I use the 

word impenetrable. I'm sorry, but it's very 

difficult to read the site profile, read all 

the procedures, digest them all, understand 

exactly what they're trying to tell you, and 

then audit the case. Okay? 

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 Now it turns out -- and -- but that's what 

we've been doing. Now it turns out, though, 

that the reality is that there are these 

spreadsheets, workbooks that help to automate 

the process. One of the things that I 

mentioned in my e-mail to you, Lew, recently is 

that since these spreadsheet workbooks are 

becoming de facto the automated process that's 

being applied, I think it's important -- one -- 

for us to map the spreadsheet workbooks back 

onto the original procedures that they're 

designed to implement. That audit -- that step 

needs to be done in effect as part of task 

three. In theory, under ideal circumstances, 

auditing the spreadsheet workbooks at the same 

time we audited the procedures might have been 

a very helpful and a -- in other words, because 

-- and -- and Jim, certainly correct me if I'm 

wrong, since the real place where the rubber 
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meets the road is these workbooks and 

spreadsheets, this is -- it's very important 

when we do our audits that we see how those are 

being used, how those redu-- take this massive 

amount of material that's contained in either 

the site profile -- not either, in the site 

profiles and in the 35 set of procedures that 

are generic, and somehow they're boiled down 

and turned into a spreadsheet that becomes an 

automated process, which certainly greatly 

expedites the process, but we have not audited 

that step. That's a very important step. 

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 Now two things happen. One, when we audit that 

step, we'll find out whether or not the line is 

clean. That is, we can see -- cradle to grave 

-- how we got to the spreadsheet and how it's 

being used. And then when we do our audits of 

a case, we'll see yes, we could track 

everything right back to OCAS-1, for example. 

Once we get that behind us and we're proficient 

in understanding and using the spreadsheets and 

the workbooks, something that I think we might 

need some training on -- because I don't think 

they were written to be used cold; I think 

someone needs to be -- a little bit of walk-
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through on how to use them -- we will then be 

getting into a mode of operation where we might 

be able to get a lot more efficient. And that 

65 work hours per case may come down. So you 

know, we're all maturing in this process. 

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 I'm not -- so I guess I'm making a request that 

a -- that if we could, as soon as possible, 

receive some training, make sure we have all 

the spreadsheets and workbooks, and then 

there's also access to certain electronic files 

that I mentioned that recently we didn't know 

about. That is, that we found out that we can 

download directly some very, very large files. 

We were having trouble getting access. 

Apparently we now have access to it, and this 

was in my e-mail to Lew and Paul was that the 

extent to which NIOSH folks involved in the 

process can sort of put their hat on is what is 

it that we could provide SC&A that might make a 

little easier for them to do their job, provide 

us with the workbooks earlier, provide us with 

access to databases or other information so 

that -- right now we're doing it by brute 

force. When I -- brute force is digesting all 

this material, trying to understand it, 
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condense it down so that we can do our job. 

There's material out there that would ex-- help 

us do our job, that would be greatly 

appreciated. 

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speak to that general issue? Is this -- seem 

to make sense that, in essence, these do become 

de facto procedures and therefore ought to 

be... 

 DR. TOOHEY: Yeah, Dick Toohey, ORAU. I'm not 

sure if I agree they're de facto procedures, 

but they're certainly de facto the way sizeable 

portions of an individual dose reconstruction 

report get done. And what I want to clarify on 

that for the record is what is automated is the 

common elements in the site profile -- the 

ambient environmental dose, the X-ray dose, the 

missed dose for both external and internal -- 

all the things that would apply to all 

claimants from that site. And that is 

automated to improve our efficiency, but I want 

to make sure for the record that the 

subcommittee and the Board understands that the 

individual monitoring records are entered and 

pulled in, both external and internal, and we 
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1 use IMBA as necessary to run those. 

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 But -- and the other thing I want to mention, 

as John mentioned, these are Excel spreadsheets 

that get assembled into workbooks. They also 

pull in some of the boilerplate, the required 

phraseology in the dose reconstruction report. 

And we've got pull-down menus for well, if you 

did the DR this way, then that paragraph has to 

be in the report and -- you know, all these 

things just to minimize the amount of typing a 

health physicist -- or keyboarding, I should 

say, a health physicist has to do to generate 

the final product. 

 And as John mentioned, yeah, we have provided 

all the current ones on the CD-ROM. I will 

mention, like everything else, these things 

change with time. As we may discover more data 

or revise a TBD or a site profile, then that 

gets incorporated into the workbook. So like 

anything else, when you're auditing something 

you're looking at a snapshot in time. 

 But certainly we can do that. We can probably, 

you know, set up some way to provide training 

for this or -- on using these or whatever. I 

would mention, though, one training session may 
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not meet your needs. Our experience has been 

that a -- you know, a fresh dose reconstructor 

whom we would hire anew, it takes them about 

six months to get proficient in using these 

tools in producing DR reports, but -- so I'm 

not surprised, you know, you guys, by the brute 

force method -- you know, you're condensing 

into a couple of months what we've been 

developing for two and a half years. I don't 

envy you the task. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Rich, do you have a formal 

training program for your guys on these now, or 

do they just pick it up by using it? Is it a -

- I mean -- 

 DR. TOOHEY: They are -- there -- there is a -- 

I would say there's a semi-formal training 

program. What we have, we're getting more and 

more people specialized by site, so we have -- 

you know, these three or four guys, they do all 

the Hanford cases, so they know that 

spreadsheet. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I was really asking if there's a -

- is there an existing training program that 

they could plug into or is it done on an ad hoc 

basis and -- 
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 DR. TOOHEY: No, on -- on the spreadsheets it's 

pretty much ad hoc. There is a formal training 

program for IMBA, which I think we made 

available and they use, but not on the 

spreadsheet. But -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: But on the ad -- or -- so how do 

you -- how do your folks get trained, just by 

doing it or does somebody sit down and show 

them how -- 

 DR. TOOHEY: It's OJT. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. TOOHEY: You know, one of the more 

experienced dose reconstructors, and probably 

somebody who helped developed the spreadsheet, 

sits down with somebody -- okay, here's how you 

use them and -- but actually it's a good point 

which -- I didn't realize, we do need to 

formalize and capture that, too, in the 

interest of defensibility of the produced dose 

reconstruction. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Hans? 

 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, and I just want to make a 

point here is that we don't have the luxury of 

having Dr. Toohey's team of people who are 

specialized. You're looking at the team right 
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here. Okay? And I have to learn just about 

every TBD and know how it's to be applied, and 

my wife is the one who does all the computer 

work, so she will have to do many of the 

spreadsheets -- and she's done quite well; 

she's a very smart girl and she has learned a 

lot on her own. But I would like for her to be 

able to use the spreadsheets efficiently 

because it would help my process. And right 

now -- and John has talked about strong-arming 

this -- I go back to first principles and I 

have in fact done a very, very cursory quality 

assurance assessment of the spreadsheets 

because I go to first principles and say do I 

come within one, two percent of the numbers, 

and I have. So my verification at this point, 

in the absence of having the spreadsheets 

available for duplication of numbers, I use 

basically first principles and go through the 

motions, but it's time-consuming. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. But the good news is you 

can train the whole team in one fell swoop, 

see? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I would -- I would also ask if -- 

I don't know if all Board members would be 
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interested, but I certainly -- I got the -- 

some preliminary sheets from Jim Neton about 

probably nine months ago, I don't know when he 

sent them, but -- and with the caveat that 

these are not intuitively obvious to use. And 

at some point you did say it might be useful to 

have someone sit down -- I'd like to take 

advantage of that, too. I've also cross-walked 

them, but they're difficult to -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, if we had a couple of people 

maybe do it at the same time, if we can -- 

 DR. NETON: Yeah, I think Dick is definitely 

willing to do that and we'd be willing to 

support that effort. 

I'd like to point out a couple -- couple of 

things, though. One is that these workbooks 

evolved over time. The procedures do stand by 

themselves. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh, good. Right. 

 DR. NETON: They are not the actual TBDs and 

profiles and the implemented procedures. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The procedures -- 

 DR. NETON: I give these workbooks more like 

TurboTax compared to the U.S. Tax Code. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, right. 
168

 DR. NETON: You've got a very complex 

structure. It'll take you years to do your 

taxes if you try to plod through it line by 

line and looking through the books. If you 

have these workbooks, it'll certainly expedite 

the process. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: But you're -- you always want to 

know that TurboTax is really following the 

Code. 

 DR. NETON: Exactly. But what I will say is 

these evolved over time and so that it may be 

that some of these products weren't even 

available at the time the audit started, I 

don't know. I mean I haven't looked at them. 

 The other thing I might caution people on is 

that these things tend to address a very 

specific set of claims, in many cases. We 

worked through the efficiency process so there 

are large blocks of claims that can be done a 

certain way. These workbooks evolved in 

accordance with the procedures. You may spend 

a lot of time learning this -- these workbooks 

and these techniques, to find out that the next 

500 dose reconstructions are now different and 

what you learned is obsolete. So just so the 
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Board understands that this is sort of a moving 

target that they're working to. 

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these spreadsheets. I looked at various ones 

and there are a lot of similarities, too, so I 

think... 

 DR. TOOHEY: Yeah, let me add one thing. We 

haven't done it on too many cases so far, but 

some of the spreadsheets incorporate the 

Crystal Ball program under Excel, which is this 

Monte Carlo sampling of things we have to do 

where we're using distributions of variables 

and then try to get the combined uncertainty 

and the best estimate of the case. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 DR. TOOHEY: And those things are well beyond 

my (unintelligible), also. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'd like to ask the subcommittee 

now if you -- well, number one, do you need 

another break; and number two, do you want to 

continue on the -- tomorrow morning's agenda, 

or do you want to go ahead and break? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, do we -- just a question, 

if -- I'm certainly hoping for a break since 

I've been up since 3:30 this morning, but just 
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a question. If we wanted to -- since I'm going 

to work on this draft tonight with Roy, do we 

want to talk about -- 'cause I have some 

questions for content of that -- of that front 

end piece -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- that I thought would be 

worthwhile discussing here. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let's get those -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- before us before we leave then. 

Let's go ahead and do that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I mean I think I mentioned the 

one about the DR reports. I thought that was 

an important thing that came out reviewing 

these first 20, the -- the way they were -- the 

amount of information the -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Communication with the claimants 

is -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Communication with the claimant, 

and also the auditability of the -- of the DR 

reports themselves. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's really the audit trail -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- issue. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I had those two jotted down. 

Do we have some other ones we want to identify, 

any of the committee members would want to 

identify? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I mean certainly -- and Hans -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Those come under items for 

improvement, I believe. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yes, yes, I think so. Hans 

brought up the one of some concerns about 

procedures. I think there was -- if there was 

any trend amongst the first 20 there was some 

question about the adherence to procedures. 

I'm not sure exactly how to word that right now 

if -- I want to look back at the findings, but 

it wasn't always adherence. Sometimes -- and -

- and as Hans indicated, it wasn't -- it didn't 

seem as though it was necessarily the user. 

Sometime it seemed that it was a confusing 

documentation -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: It was the issue of whether the 

procedures themselves were clear. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Whether somebody's adhering to 

poor procedures or somebody's ignoring good 
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procedure might have been correct, but it was 

so -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Was hard to understand. 

 MR. GRIFFON: No, no, it was so tedious of a 

calculation that nobody bothered following it. 

That was the uncertainty calculation -- 

 DR. BEHLING: And I'm sure Dr. Toohey can 

verify this, the implementation guide 001 has a 

certain protocol for defining the uncertainty 

in behalf of dosimeters, whether it's the 52 

weekly change-outs to element film or the 

subsequent ones, but they basically tell you to 

go through a protocol that would probably take 

you years to do a dose reconstruction based on 

52 individual for just a single year 

uncertainties. And I think no one follows it 

and therefore we're constantly saying you did 

not include uncertainty, and I understand why. 

You can't do it unless you want to invest a 

year of your life. And so the question is, is 

the procedure wrong? The answer is yes, they 

should simplify it. Multiply the dose of 

record by 1.3 and assume a 30 percent error or 
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uncertainty and solve the problem. So some of 

the procedures are written by people who have 

too much time on their hands or certainly don't 

understand the urgency behind doing dose 

reconstruction. 

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capture that. We can look at the specific 

language tomorrow, but -- then the other ones 

that I jotted down, and I'm not sure of some of 

these, but I think there were some general 

findings related to quality assurance 

questions, whether there was sufficient 

internal quality assurance. And you know, if 

we look at some of the findings that -- that 

sort of point toward that question of -- of the 

internal quality for -- you know, when -- when 

something gets reviewed by several people and 

there's -- maybe the -- you know, it didn't 

make a difference in the case, really, but 

there's some errors that were very basic that 

were just left there and missed on -- on 

several reviews. Those kinds of things I think 

came up several times, and I think it points to 

the -- or at least it raises the question of 

can the quality assurance -- internal quality 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Particularly if a finding, even 

the low-level ones, if there's a significant 

frequency reoccurrence, it probably should be 

mentioned. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Why not fix it now. Right? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, fix it. 

 DR. WADE: But again, I think all of this in 

the context of what the overall finding has 

been of the audit, I think that's important to 

start with. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. WADE: And these things make sense then. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, these are all in the -- in 

the category of items for improvement, as 

opposed to significant issues that will affect 

compensation or doses. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Any others? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Then the question -- and these 

are even -- these might be even a little lower 

than ones we just talked about, and these might 

be even notes or other things to -- other 

future considerations, I'm not sure how to 
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capture this, but the CATI reviews in the first 

-- in these cases was -- there were several 

cases where there didn't seem to be any followup on specific comments made by the claimant or 

the widow of the claimant. And we -- you know, 

you -- you look at it in two ways. In most 

cases, as we discussed with NIOSH in the group 

meeting, even if certain incidents -- they 

didn't go back to validate whether they did or 

did not happen. But even in most instances if 

they had, they were overly conservative already 

on the high five or the 28 radionuclides, so 

what's the difference. But the importance 

might come into play when you're writing that 

DR report. I think from a communications 

standpoint with the public, it's very important 

to say yes, we listened to you in the 

interview; we did consider this, and here's why 

our approach is still conservative, even -- 

notwithstanding your concerns about some 

incidents you might have been involved with. 

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there. One is, you know, just to communicate 

back to the claimant that you took their 

interview information seriously and did 
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consider it. But the second is, as you move 

forward, maybe when these cases get to the -- 

closer to the range of the 50 percentile, they 

-- that information might be important and -- 

and I -- I want to make sure we're not losing 

sight of that information and just sort of 

dismissing it out of hand. I don't think NIOSH 

is. We don't have that indication. But you 

know, just to put that on there. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: It may be that you could just 

identify some items like that that are items -- 

it's kind of a watch-list, not necessarily that 

they have to take action -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- but this is something we need 

to be watching, both in our future reviews -- 

it's more of a heads-up kind of list. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Exactly, yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And maybe you can give it a -- 

categorize it in some way like that. Other -- 

other issues to maybe be cognizant of as we go 

forward that... 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I -- I think there is just 

one final one that I think -- in my mind, this 

is a bigger one. I'm not sure if other people 
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agree with me, but the question of validation 

and that -- the quick example is the high five 

question and whether -- whether in fact when -- 

when we did these 20 cases it was pretty clear 

that the dose records used were usually summary 

DOE dose records. And from the beginning of 

this program we've been talking about the 

reason for NIOSH and for the Board's 

involvement is -- you know, there's been 

mistrust over years about DOE records, so part 

of our role as NIOSH doing this dose 

reconstruction work and part of the Board's 

role is to make sure this is being validated 

against the raw data that's -- to the extent 

that it's there. And I -- I haven't seen any 

of that -- or not much of that in these cases. 

The high five's an example. There's not much -

- I haven't seen many cases where they've tried 

to use two methods to calculate an intake, for 

example, if air sampling or -- or urinalysis 

data are both kind of sketchy but they're both 

available, did they try to do both to sort of 

validate their final intake numbers, to the 

ext-- you know, to the extent that it's 

helpful. So those are -- high five is probably 

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1 the clearest example I can give where -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I'm wondering 

(unintelligible) -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- (unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: Hans kind of brought this up, that 

-- on the high five that in doing the reviews 

of the dose reconstruction you sort of said 

well, I'm making the assumption that the high 

five is valid at this point; did they do the 

dose reconstruction correctly if that's the 

correct starting basis. But then you have to 

say okay, then you may need -- we may need a 

caveat that says oh, by the way, we need to 

give attention to this in the -- in the site 

profile reviews or in the Technical Basis 

Documents that -- that if the starting 

assumptions are themselves incorrect, then -- 

then your -- you have a different ball game. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, I think the problem comes 

into play when you look at the balancing 

between empirical data that involves bioassay, 

urinalysis, chest counts, and balance that 

against the assumption of a hypothetical 

exposure using the high five. And what I 

usually do is -- and there have been cases 
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where they've done exactly what Mark had 

questioned. They do in fact look at the 

empirical data and say you know what, if we 

follow through on this and use even 

conservative assumptions on the basis of 

certain realization that the urinalysis was 

only done on a routine basis, once annually, we 

will not come up with a dose that we will 

assign to them as a hypothetical individual. 

And I've looked at that, and for the most part 

I think they have always -- consistently sided 

on the -- in favor of the claimant by being 

cautious and saying that no, I believe if we 

were to pursue the empirical dose assessment 

from -- from data, whether it's urinalysis, 

chest count, we will still come up short of the 

dose that we would assign by hypothetical. And 

they have done that, there's no question about 

it. And so I usually am confident -- I have no 

question about the -- the claimant favorability 

when you see a dose reconstruction that assigns 

a high five dose to somebody who's only worked 

there for one or two years. I would question 

it if the person worked from 1953 through 1989 

or something and say is the high five truly 

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claimant favorable based on the potential that 

this individual worked within one of the 

production reactors where even the -- the 

integrated dose from non-monitored exposure 

could potentially exceed the high five, as 

favorable as it appears. And so there's where 

you start to look at things and sort of say is 

the high five truly claimant-favorable. In 

most instances it is, but for a person who may 

have worked there for 30 years or more in an 

environment where potential exposure could have 

occurred at a time when people weren't properly 

monitored, were not consistently monitored, you 

sort of have to look at that. And I do that, 

and I haven't found anything that would cause 

me any heartburn. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: And this is one of those that it 

may not have affected the cases here, but it's 

something that could affect others, and I think 

that -- as Dick has stated -- they're careful 

in when they use the high five and when they 

don't, when they -- you know, so they won't -- 

they don't use it for all cases. Especially as 

they approach the 50th percentile they'll use 

other data. But I just think that is hanging 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Mark, how are you proposing that 

be incorporated into this, though? This -- 

this -- this (unintelligible) -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I guess -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- category -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- watch -- under the watch-list 

-- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- (unintelligible) -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- I guess I would say. It also 

comes up in the -- in my eyes, anyway, in the 

Huntington Steel case. And again, I'm not sure 

it's -- I don't even remember what type of 

cancer that case was, so it may be a -- you 

know, they may have been very conservative in 

that case. The point on the -- from the 

exposure assessments side is that they made 

assumptions on the uranium enrichment that, 

according to NIOSH, are very conservative and 

compensate for not taking into account the -- 

word I love -- trace transuranic concentrations 

in the nickel. And maybe someone's run those 

numbers and checked that to make sure that that 

39-percent enrichment is truly conservative, 
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given even the worst case estimates they can do 

the plutonium, neptunium in that nickel. I 

don't know, but I haven't seen it, so that's 

all I'm saying is if that -- you know, somehow 

that has to be validated. And those kind of 

issues are out there in the public, too. 

People know that this stuff had plutonium, 

neptunium in it. If they see that -- you know, 

you say we used conservative assumptions to 

demonstrate it wasn't a problem, they're going 

to be speculative, you know. So I think to the 

extent we can validate it, it strengthens the 

whole program, too, so... 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other items? So that -- 

that's also a watch list item then. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. It looks like you have a 

good laundry list there to work into the 

narrative. Any other input for Mark and Roy 

for tonight? 

 DR. WADE: Godspeed. 

 DR. DEHART: Only after (unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: Tomorrow we'll be focusing on the 

Bethlehem Steel material. One item that's on 

our list for tomorrow and has 45 minutes set 
183

aside for it, and I think it will take less 

than 45 seconds, the upcoming set of 18. I 

think we've covered that pretty much already. 

Didn't we agree that we've -- is there anything 

more to be said on that? I think we're -- the 

upcoming set of 18 -- we've already talked 

about the schedule and -- 

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 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, I'm pretty well on my way 

to reviewing those that other people have done, 

as well as doing a good number of those 18 

myself. There's still a few left, and some of 

them may be time-consuming because they -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. BEHLING: -- involve TBDs that I have yet 

to even look at. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. BEHLING: But I think we're pretty much on 

our way and -- and right now the only 

difference that I can sort of identify between 

the first 20 and the subsequent 18 we're 

currently reviewing is the involvement of 

workbooks, Excel sheets, Crystal Ball and a few 

other things. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. BEHLING: And that has certainly been a 
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think, Lew, you got the information you needed 

for a timetable on those also, right? 

 DR. WADE: Right. I think that while that will 

free up time tomorrow, we need time to do some 

of the agenda items that Mark brought to us. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, right. 

 DR. WADE: So I think it's worthwhile -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, that's why I was asking the 

question because that would determine whether 

we needed to go much longer today or not. I 

want to make sure that we're done by the stated 

adjourning time. 

 DR. WADE: I think we have time tomorrow to do 

what we need to do. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Then I think we're probably 

prepared to recess, since we do have some work 

assignments tonight. We don't want Mark 

staying up till 3:00 again. 

 DR. WADE: Unless it's absolutely necessary. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Okay, we'll recess then 

till tomorrow morning. We're -- I don't have 

15 minutes worth of opening remarks. I don't 

know if you do, either, Lew, but we'll try to 
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start right promptly at 8:30 and we'll -- 

that'll give us three good hours to work. 

Thank you very much. 

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(Whereupon, the subcommittee adjourned at 4:00 p.m.) 
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2 MARCH 25, 2005

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 P R O C E E D I N G S

 (8:37 a.m.) 

5 OPENING REMARKS

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 DR. ZIEMER: Good morning, everyone. I'd like 

to call the meeting to order. We have some 

carry-over business from yesterday, the first 

item of which is the action on the minutes from 

our last subcommittee meeting. Before we 

actually act on that, let me take a moment here 

for some housekeeping things. Cori had a 

couple of items she wanted to call to the 

attention of the Board. 

Let's do that first, Cori, and then we'll 

address the minutes. 

17 ADMINISTRATIVE HOUSEKEEPING

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 MS. HOMER: I just wanted to let you know that 

due to some travel processing changes at CDC 

there -- I will need your travel vouchers, 

receipts and all of your information by the end 

of the day in order to process your voucher and 

get it paid. We have a deadline of the end of 

the month to get these in or they won't be 

reimbursed till the end of April. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: What about -- what about like 

airport parking and things that we don't have 

yet? 

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 MS. HOMER: That's about it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I think that the issue then 

is if -- if you don't get them in by the end of 

the day, you'll get reimbursed in April instead 

of March. 

MS. HOMER: Pretty much. If you mail them to 

me it just simply won't arrive in time for me 

to process them. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. But you do need the 

receipts, I assume, and -- 

 MS. HOMER: Yeah, once you check out you can 

provide me -- 

 DR. DEHART: Parking doesn't -- isn't -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah -- 

 MS. HOMER: Or you can just send me an e-mail 

with your parking information, but it's the -- 

it's the hotel receipt that I really need. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Okay, everybody? One other 

item, again I'll remind all the Board members 

and others who are here to -- if you haven't 

done so, to register your attendance there -- 

in the book there on the table. 
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1 REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF MINUTES, MEETING 3

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 Now let's turn our attention to the minutes. 

Are there any corrections or additions to the 

summary minutes and the minutes for the 

February 7th meeting of the subcommittee? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: No additions or corrections? 

 DR. DEHART: I move their acceptance. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Move their acceptance. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Second. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Seconded. All in favor, aye? 

 (Affirmative responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Opposed, no? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Motion carries. Thank you very 

much. 

 We're going to continue with the material from 

yesterday. We have a report from our working 

group. 

 Before we do that, Lew, you had some additional 

comments I think you wanted to make. Do you 

want to wait till after this to make comments 

about the rest of the agenda, or have you 

covered everything you were going to -- 

 DR. WADE: The only things that I haven't 
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covered that -- in very specific detail, we -- 

I think we should talk a little bit about the 

SC&A review of the Iowa TBD -- not contentwise, but just from a procedural point of view. 

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 I also think it would be good for the Board to 

consider -- the subcommittee to consider 

whether or not we would like to have Board 

members with Q clearances look at some material 

surrounding the Iowa TBD, as that might be 

relevant to the Board's deliberations when we 

meet the end of April. So I think it would be 

worthwhile exploring that as a subcommittee, 

and we are a subcommittee that looks at site 

profile reviews; I think that would be okay to 

do. 

 I also don't know that it would be a bad idea 

to start a discussion here that I think would 

then terminate on our phone call of are there 

specific questions we would like to pose to 

SC&A as they report out on their review of the 

Iowa TBD. Again, I don't think we need to 

close on that, but I think we might want to 

anticipate what questions we might be asking 

them when they come before us the end of April, 

and at least give them a heads-up on that now 
190

so they could begin to prepare their work. We 

don't need to do that, but I think it would be 

worth talking about. 

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 I do think then we have an issue to discuss 

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involve. Again, that's not something we can 

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could talk a little bit about here -- again, in 

anticipation of our phone call by -- in early 

April. 

 Thank you. 

13 FIRST 20 DOSE RECONSTRUCTION REPORT

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 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Okay, let's now turn 

our attention to the first 20 dose 

reconstruction report and, Mark, do you want to 

lead us through the draft of the working group 

here? Are there copies available for others or 

just -- 

 DR. WADE: Cori is making them. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Copies for the others, okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: You want me to read through the 

entire text or just describe the -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't know that you need to read 

through it word for word, but -- 
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 MR. GRIFFON: -- you through the document. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think you should take us through 

it and -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Sure. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- let us comment on the different 

sections. Also, I think -- just for clarity, I 

would suggest that you go ahead and mark this 

draft with a date, everybody, 'cause on some of 

these documents we get subsequent drafts and 

you -- I know going back in the files I 

sometimes lose track of which preceded which. 

So this is the draft of -- let's use today's 

date -- one of 3/25/05. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. There's probably some -- 

many more edits than that. Okay. 

 Basically what Roy and I tried to do last night 

and I -- I did some additional editing this 

morning on this -- was to first -- the first 

couple of paragraph tried to lay out a little 

background, and I -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: We're getting reverb here on these 

mikes, we -- that's better. 

 MR. GIBSON: Dr. Ziemer, I didn't get a copy. 
192

 DR. ZIEMER: Another copy? Mike didn't get a 

copy -- oh, she's running some off right now. 

Just memorize everything he says. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, that's why I'll go through 

it, and once we have the full text, everybody 

can (unintelligible). 

 DR. DEHART: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible). 

 MR. GRIFFON: The first couple of paragraphs 

attempt to go through some of the background of 

what this -- what we believe this audit is, 

describe it a little bit. Also describe the -- 

the sort of case selection and the cases 

available for sampling at this point. And then 

it summarizes the -- or it sort of references 

that this -- this report is based on our 

contractor SCA's full report of the 20 reviews 

-- 

 Shall I wait till everybody has the... 

 DR. WADE: Okay, we're giving out to the public 

the document that's being discussed now. 

 (Pause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Mark, while -- while you're 

talking about this introductory stuff, right at 

the beginning where it talks about -- you're 

going to have a number inserted, which would be 
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-- is that the number of cases that were 

available at the time the 20 were selected, or 

the... 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Right, that's correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Somehow we have to make it clear 

that -- however -- that those are not the only 

20 to be selected from that -- it may sound 

like out of that group there's only going to be 

20 cases audited. That's not the case here. 

Somehow we -- and I'm not -- I don't have the 

wording for you -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- but somehow we have to convey 

the idea that this is an initial sampling and 

perhaps even indicate, if we -- we were going 

to discuss this -- out of -- with the ultimate 

goal to sample let's say two and a half percent 

of the total cases. But if we can insert that 

idea so that it's clear that this 20 does not 

represent all of the sampling from that first 

batch. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, or -- or that -- yeah, 

somehow convey that those -- those cases will 

go back into the full pool to be re-- to be 

potentially sampled from. Right? Is that what 
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 DR. ZIEMER: No -- no, these won't go back into 

the -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: No -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- these 20. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- the -- the -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: But the ones that were passed 

over. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, right, will -- right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Going back into a bigger -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- a growing pool, sort of -- 

yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Right. 

 DR. WADE: But I think Paul's -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I just don't know how to phrase 

that. 

 DR. WADE: But I think Paul's concept is that 

the Board currently thinks it would be 

appropriate for it to have audited two and a 

half percent of individual dose 

reconstructions, and this is but a first -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: This is simply -- 

 DR. WADE: -- step in that. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: -- an initial 20 -- an initial 

sampling of 20 cases. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: We should convey that right up 

front, I agree. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. And we can do the wordsmithing -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: (Unintelligible) insert a 

sentence after the first sentence, because that 

-- we -- we did have a resolution to do two -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. ANDERSON: -- and a half percent, so -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. ANDERSON: -- you could simply say that the 

-- you know, the goal of the -- is to sample 

two percent of all cases -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, or -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: -- two and a half. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Two and a half percent of all 

cases, and this is an initial -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- 20 cases that we're looking at, 

and that would clarify it. Right? 

 DR. WADE: Although further sampling from this 

population may occur. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Proceed. 

 (Pause) 

 MR. GRIFFON: Sorry, just capturing those 

words. 

 Okay. And -- and -- so it does reference back 

to SC&A's full report, the third paragraph, and 

then I left a area for inserting a table of 

these 20 cases, just that descriptive table 

that we first drew our selection from. I 

thought that was appropriate so people have 

some kind of -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Type of case, location and so on. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. And we can -- I can -- we 

can obtain that. Right? We have that -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- on disk or whatever. Okay. 

Then I -- in the next paragraph I sort of 

referenced three different attachments here, 

the first being the SCA summary findings and I 

have a note in here that I think we need to 

discuss -- and maybe -- certainly with SC&A, 

but as I was writing this I felt that it was 
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sort of very difficult to explain why the 

summary findings only cover 15 of the cases, 

not all 20, and whether -- the question came up 

in my mind as to whether we can -- I know 

there's different issues, but whether we can 

make one matrix that would cover all issues and 

many of those -- maybe some of the issues 

listed -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Or -- or -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- are not going to be applicable 

for DOE sites or for AW-- you know, but I think 

-- you know, one database for all the cases 

might be important for us down the line, so -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let's explore that a moment. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: What about a -- and it may be a 

different matrix, but what if there was a 

separate one to cover the type -- those -- I 

think it's -- is it AWEs, mainly? I don't know 

that you necessarily have to commit to this 

right now, but how -- how might we capture, for 

example, deficiencies, findings and so on for 

those other types of cases, like the other 

five? Is that a different table? 

 DR. BEHLING: We have not really attempted 
198

that, but as I mentioned yesterday briefly, 

there are or there will be AWEs that are very, 

very suitable for the standard checklist that 

we identified. And a case in point is the Iowa 

where we do have attempts to identify dosimetry 

data for photons, neutrons, et cetera -- which 

was not the case for, for instance, Bethlehem 

Steel. There was absolutely zero data on which 

to backtrack or extrapolate from. As we 

mentioned yesterday, Bethlehem Steel has no 

dosimetry data, no bioassay data, very little 

air monitoring data that even applies to 

Bethlehem Steel itself, so there was very 

little in the current checklist that we could 

have made use of other than to keep checking 

off NA and then write a synopsis, perhaps, that 

explains what it is that we did find. 

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apply the current checklist. So I can't say 

categorically that all AWEs will not be 

evaluated by means of the checklist. 

 DR. ZIEMER: No, I understand. But I'm 

wondering if there is some kind of a wrap-up 

sheet -- it may be a different sheet than the 
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 DR. BEHLING: We haven't done so, but -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: No, I understand. 

 DR. BEHLING: -- we can certainly look at it. 

We can certainly make an attempt to go back and 

identify perhaps a separate type of checklist 

for those AWEs for which this current checklist 

is not appropriate. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, and basically, even if 

there's not a checklist for -- a check sheet 

for each case, how do we roll up the findings 

for those five that don't appear in this -- 

they don't appear in this table. 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, when we were putting this 

together and Hans said listen, we have our 

checklist that we're using, the one that you 

see, he says can you somehow -- 'cause I did 

the first five. And I said you know, they're 

all going to be NAs 'cause they were all based 

on -- turned out to be Huntington, Blockson and 

Bethlehem Steel, as Hans pointed out. So what 

I did instead was, in the beginning of each one 

I have a little table. Each table basically 

summarizes the degree to which that particular 

dose reconstruction was either -- had any 
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inadequacies regarding how they went about 

reconstructing the external doses, the internal 

doses. 

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 So in other words, think of it like this: All 

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reconstructing the internal doses, the -- the 

external doses and the X-ray doses. I mean 

they're all really the same, when all is said 

and done. But the methods by which that's done 

are very often substantively different in the 

AWEs as compared -- so -- so in theory, I could 

prepare -- or we could prepare, to the extent 

that we could use the format for the others -- 

as Hans pointed out, for Iowa -- do that. 

 To the extent that we have AWE cases that we 

have nothing but NAs in that format, then I 

think we probably -- we certainly can come up 

with something a little different that would 

address -- okay, let's talk Bethlehem Steel. 

Okay? The question becomes, you know, how -- 

you know, how well did the dose reconstruction 

perform in doing internal doses, did we find 

certain deficiencies; and the answer would be 

yes, we did find some deficiencies. Check -- 

or put a mark there. 
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 So I guess I'm saying that in theory, for those 

AWEs where the reconstruction was based solely 

on some construct of a model, as opposed to 

real bioassay data, a different form for the 

roll-up I think might be necessary and I think 

would serve the process better. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: I guess -- I guess what I'm 

asking for -- maybe it's a little more 

unyielding -- is just let's have one form, and 

I think it can be done. I've looked at these 

questions. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I'm not saying that the AWEs fit 

in the current form. I'm saying add some 

different questions. 

 DR. MAURO: Some additional -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Under external dose, of course 

they didn't have dosimetry, but there can be a 

question that says, you know, did they, you 

know, estimate external dose in an appropriate 

-- 

 DR. MAURO: Put it (unintelligible). 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- put it in in an appropriate 

manner to determine PO-- you know, whatever the 

question is. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: Marry the -- marry the two. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So maybe it's an -- maybe it's -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Otherwise -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- an additional -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- we're going to have these -- 

these -- you know. 

 DR. MAURO: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Is it then perhaps an additional -

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 MR. GRIFFON: Additional line -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- few rows in these different 

categories. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Under each -- under each section 

or an additional couple, I don't know how man-- 

you know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That are specific to those kind of 

cases. 

 DR. MAURO: In fact, it -- as a thought, it 

might be worthwhile breaking out -- the table 

itself would have -- separate out. Okay, 

here's the -- here -- you know, here's the 

roll-up. Now, here's the roll-up and the rollup would say here's the roll-up for the 15 DOEs 

and here's the roll-up for the five -- in this 
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case, the first set, the five -- AWEs, all on 

the same form. And you'll be able to make a 

distinction between the types of findings that 

we -- because the types of findings are 

different regarding AWEs versus -- I mean -- in 

fact, it might be useful to see a distinction 

because I think that understanding that there 

is some substantive differences between the 

strengths and limitations of a -- of a dose 

reconstruction that's done for DOE facilities 

and -- it's of a different issue regarding the 

strengths and limitations. The -- of -- in 

essence -- in essence, the way I see it is the 

construct that's used for AWEs to come to grips 

with a site where you have virtually minimal, 

if not -- data is a different category of 

problem. And you may want to be able to look 

at it for a different perspective. Perhaps in 

the same table, but have it broken out. It 

might work better that way. 

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that. I mean the -- the presentation I think 

we can work with, and I think that should be a 

query-able field, you know. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: You should be able to sort AWE 

findings from DOE find-- that's interesting -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: -- 'cause I think you're right, 

there would be probably different conclusions 

or different kinds of problems, you know. 

DR. MAURO: They're different, and I'd go a 

step further -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: However, I think it's useful to 

see -- see (unintelligible) -- 

 DR. MAURO: All in the same place. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: And what is also -- I'm sorry -- 

what's also interesting is that when you start 

to see trends, there's going -- a -- a story 

emerges. I mean actually from the data, a 

story emerges. And I think the story that 

emerges when you start to roll up information 

for AWEs is a completely different story than 

emerges when you look at the DOEs, and you want 

to be able to see that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, John. What I -- I'm 

going to suggest that if -- if SCA can do this, 

and I don't -- I'm not talking about a major 

effort here, but when we have our Board meeting 
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where we act on this next time, if we could 

have the additional information rolled up. And 

I'm wondering if -- if we could agree, for 

example -- I don't want the Board to end up 

spending a major part of their time focusing on 

what the form looks like. This could evolve 

over a series of sets -- you know, you could 

say okay, we did it this way, but the next 20 

we want to massage it a little bit. But as 

long as we have some kind of a wrap-up next 

time that we can utilize with our narrative 

here, that would be helpful. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: And I think SCA realizes -- 

realizes what we're asking for here. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, and I think it -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: I mean we'd sort of like to get 

them integrated into a summary. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That would make it clear that 

there's still the two kinds of animals in 

there, so -- 

 DR. MAURO: We'll do that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. And then -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: So I think I can reword that and 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Right, would be -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- you know, are presented. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. And then the total number 

of deficiencies identified in the 20 cases, and 

we'll have a new number there instead of 46 or 

whatever. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now I'd like to insert something 

else at this point. I didn't get to read this 

in full detail, but I pretty well skimmed it 

and I -- let me ask this. Have we described in 

here the SC&A process, including the NIOSH 

interactions, that get us to this report. In 

other words, have we pointed out that there 

have been the factual accurac-- well, not -- 

there wasn't factual accuracy checks, but there 

have been -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: The only -- I didn't -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- sort of resolution of issues 

efforts made in this process. 

 MR. GRIFFON: You -- you can tell me if I need 

to -- to lay this process out more. I -- the 

only place I referenced it is in one short 

paragraph right before the numbered conclusions 
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and recommendations where it says (reading) By 

considering the audit findings in aggregate and 

through discussions with NIOSH, SCA and the 

Board during the expanded review meeting -- 

which I think is what John Mauro has been 

referencing that as -- January, 2005 in McLean, 

Virginia, several conclusions are offered for 

consideration. 

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referenced as this was the process with NIOSH, 

SCA and the Board involved. I didn't say 

comment resolution meeting. I referenced it as 

John was saying, the expanded review meeting, 

which I think -- you know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's good. That's what I was 

referring to. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Maybe -- maybe that has to be 

explained a little more to -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: You may want to put after 

(unintelligible) just got through in that 

sentence, iterative -- 'cause this was kind of 

a back and forth. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Iterative discussions? 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I think the idea here is to 

give it a little more detail on the process 

because this -- this is a summary report 

(unintelligible). 

 MR. GRIFFON: All right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Is that okay with the others? 

Okay, proceed. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I might tap others for the 

process, if I -- if I forget exactly how we did 

this. 

 DR. BEHLING: Can I just make a comment? Mark 

-- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Hans? 

 DR. BEHLING: -- take a look at page three of 

the report and I think you will find that I 

went through detail in explaining the 

chronology of events that led up through the 

expanded process, the dates, every 

(unintelligible) -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: And maybe we can -- we don't need 

-- we can summarize that chronology. 

 DR. BEHLING: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: May I can pull some language from 

that, too. 
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 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, I think you want to make 

sure that the two parallel each other -- 

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 DR. BEHLING: -- at a minimum. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- that's helpful. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Thank you, yeah. So then -- then 

going back to page one, I -- one point I wanted 

to make in that -- that large paragraph at the 

bottom of the page is -- and I -- I fooled 

around with this this morning. I told Roy that 

-- that I -- I think I -- I kind of went back 

and forth between findings and deficiencies, 

and I -- I think we need to -- to be 

consistent, or are those sometimes used dif-- 

as different terms of art in SC&A's report or 

narratives? I've been kind of loose with the 

way I've been -- actually I -- I've usually -- 

in the matrix we developed I think I've been 

referring to them as just findings, but SC&A in 

their summary table uses deficiencies. I want 

to -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, but you've used deficiencies 

in a collective manner that -- then -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and then within the 
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deficiencies they grouped into several levels 

of importance. Right? 

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 DR. MAURO: Yes, but it's -- turns out we have 

used one set of terminology when we work on our 

site profile reviews where we do make a very 

concerted effort to make a distinction between 

findings and observations. And I think 

unfortunately we have not been as disciplined 

in terms of communicating our findings and 

observations, deficiencies -- we've been a 

little looser in our language. We have been -

- we refer to it in some cases as areas of 

concern. In some cases we say deficiency. So 

I -- perhaps there's a need for somehow 

developing a more precise characterization 

about findings. In our dose reconstruction 

reviews we really have not done that. We've 

been a little looser with regard to that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I might at this point -- I think 

in most cases I'm going to edit this and use 

findings as the term. 

 DR. WADE: I think that would be appropriate. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, so just to (unintelligible) 

in my mind. 

 And then the second paragraph sort of -- I'm 
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not sure if I needed a new paragraph, but I -- 

I transition from the SC&A summary sheet to 

sort of the Board's ranking method and 

distinguish why in fact we have this other 

matrix and -- and the utility of the other 

matrix is brought up on the top of the second 

page. And I thought -- and I just added this 

this morning, but I thought -- I think it would 

be useful, since we have a different ranking 

system here where we're looking at -- at case 

ranking and broader ranking, and that -- those 

terms can certainly be modified. But we should 

at least summarize what we have in this -- in 

this attachment, rather than just leaving it 

hang there for -- for no overall use, 

apparently. So I left some Xs there because, 

as we discussed yesterday, we don't have all 

the findings in that table currently so we 

still have to -- to fill that out. But I 

thought that would be useful and -- and -- you 

know. 

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 And I also -- if you noticed, I put low level, 

medium level and high level, which is actually 

different than I had originally had in our 

matrix, which was zero to five, a numerical 
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ranking. But I wanted to sort of make it 

consistent at least with the SC&A approach so 

we -- I think we have to maybe modify one or 

the other, I'm not sure. 

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five rank to a -- did we use any decimals, or 

was it -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: No, we didn't -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: This is a 3.47. 

 DR. WADE: We will eventually; we haven't yet. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So you're saying you would go low, 

medium, high rather than -- or -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I guess I'm -- I'm opening -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- or words -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- I'm willing to -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- in words -- words or one, two, 

three. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I'm willing to do that or -- or, 

yeah, the numerical ran-- I think they're -- 

low, medium, high for this level of qualitative 

ranking I think suffices, you know, so that 

would be my -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: How do the rest of you feel about 

that, as a -- 

 (Affirmative responses) 
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 DR. WADE: Can I comment upon those paragraphs? 

And it goes to the first of the paragraphs 

we're discussing. In the middle it says 

(reading) Although SC&A considered the majority 

of findings, 42 of 46, to be low level -- I 

would just like to see -- would suggest that 

you finish that thought completely. The SC&A 

document had 46 low and four medium and no 

high. I think that's important to include, 

just to finish -- even parenthetically, if -- 

because it leaves over -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: What were the other four, yeah. 

 DR. WADE: What were the other four, that's 

right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: With four medium findings -- 

 DR. WADE: And no high. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- parenthetically, okay. 

 DR. WADE: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So this is all sort of intro -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and then you have your 

conclusions. So all that -- let's -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Anything else on this introductory 
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material? So you would have a table describing 

the cases, you have the SC&A wrap-up table, 

you'd have our matrix table -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Uh-oh, we're out of line. 

 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I have a quick question -- 

Liz Homoki-Titus with General Counsel's -- when 

-- in your first introductory paragraph could 

you just include some language out of the 

statute saying why you're doing this, just for 

the Secretary's office? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, yeah, yeah. This document 

would -- 

 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I can send to Lew what to 

put in there. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Right. 

 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Thanks. 

 DR. WADE: Made us nervous when she got up. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. MAURO: If I may, just one observation, a 

nuance, that I want to make sure that -- when 

we did our review of the cases, we found, for 

example, a case where the dose may have been 

overestimated by a factor of 1,000. Now, 

that's an enormous number, but it still -- the 

outcome in that particular case was still non-
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compensable. Now you ask yourself the 

question, is that low, medium or high when 

someone makes an error that underestimates a 

dose by a factor of 1,000 or overestimates the 

dose by a factor of 1,000 because of a major 

error in the calculation? If it still doesn't 

anywhere near come near having an effect on the 

PC outcome, we gave it a -- not important. So 

it's a -- it's a funny -- so we have ourselves 

a little bit of a dilemma. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, right, and we need to -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: And also -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- make clear that when we talk 

about significance, it's significance with 

respect to compensability as opposed to the 

technical value of dose -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, significance with -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- or it could be -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- respect to the dose estimate 

for the particular case. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I think John's point is that 

the dose could be significantly in error, from 

a scientific point of view, because of the 

process where we're intentionally 

overestimating, but it does not affect 
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compensability of -- it doesn't affect the 

decision on compensability, which is the 

ultimate issue. We may need to clarify, 

though, what it is we're talking about when we 

talk about significance. 

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yeah, I just think we -- I think we need to do 

a little more discussion, too, on how much our 

audit can look at the -- whether or not cases 

were found to be likely overturned or 

compensable. You know, this -- this footnote 

three worries me a little, given our scope of 

work in our charge. You know, this seems to be 

stepping into the Department of Labor realm of 

-- of work on this whole compensation program, 

you know, that impacts the dose and may also 

impact compensability of the case. We -- we -- 

in the scope of work we weren't -- we weren't 

charged, and neither was our contractor, in 

looking at compensability of these cases. So I 

know they said -- like may, may affect. 

 DR. WADE: That would be my reaction. I think 

the word may in there -- I find this 

acceptable. Now if the Board is -- has trouble 

with it, we can talk about it, but I also think 
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from the point of view of conducting an audit 

of the dose reconstruction process we do want 

to come as close as we can to that final 

question because that's the question that 

really dictates whether NIOSH is doing a good 

job. So I don't want us to just back away from 

this too much. The question is, is the Board 

comfortable with this as it's written with the 

word "may". 

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in the scope -- and this was like after 

probably 30 edits -- was that the -- the 

approach was sufficient for the purposes of 

determining probability of causation. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, and if we can convey that -

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 MR. GRIFFON: And I think that -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- but what we don't want to 

convey, I don't think, is -- for example, these 

cases where there is an intentional 

overestimate, that -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: But I don't think we 

(unintelligible) say that -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- that we come up -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: -- it was intentional. I think 
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he's saying that an error was not -- it has 

nothing to do with the intentional 

overestimate. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Right, this was -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: It was an error in the 

calculation. 

 UNIDENTIFIED: No. 

 MR. GRIFFON: That's correct, that's -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, it could be both, I guess. 

 DR. MAURO: It could be both. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It could be both, particularly 

where there were disagreements as to how you go 

about doing the overestimating. 

 DR. MAURO: Yeah, we've seen both. In Rocky 

Flats cases we've seen deliberate overestimates 

which are clearly communicated in the report -- 

the dose reconstruction report where it made it 

clear that listen, we're doing a deliberate 

overestimate here for efficiency. However, in 

other cases we found -- it's clear that there 

was a typo. The wrong number was put into IMBA 

and -- and the dose came out 1,000 -- 4,000 

times higher and still was not compensable, so 

there are those -- both (unintelligible due to 

microphone failure). 
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1 DR. ZIEMER: In one case it's a -- an error -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: -- per se. In the other case, 

it's a result of the process, yeah. So we -- 

we need some words -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: We're not going to criticize the 

process, though. It was... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. So then are we moving -- 

moving on to those conclusions or -- you ready 

or -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Just one -- okay. Any other 

comments on this introductory part? Yes, 

Henry? 

DR. ANDERSON: I would just -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Use the mike for the recorder. 

 DR. ANDERSON: I just had a question on, you 

know, kind of the paragraph before the 

conclusions. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, we're going to expand that. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, but the (reading) several 

conclusions are offered for consideration. 

 I mean I'm not sure this is offered for 
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 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ANDERSON: I mean what -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: The Board reached the following 

conclusions. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, right. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. I mean you could say 

after considering the findings in aggregate da, 

da, da, da, da, da the Board agreed -- you 

know, something like that, a more... 

 MR. GRIFFON: All right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's go ahead with the 

conclusions. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, the first one is the 

question that we -- we discussed a little bit 

yesterday, the format of the dose 

reconstruction final report and, you know, I 

think it's -- the -- the -- you know, it's also 

the question of the auditable trail within the 

-- the DR report, the fact that -- that all the 

dose input tables can be tied back to where 

they were actually -- where they actually came 

from, is -- is the example there. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Mark, I think we certainly were 
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all in agreement with this. I would wonder 

whether this would -- this is something we 

would ask the Board to take action on. I would 

question whether something like this would need 

to go to the Secretary, however, as a 

recommendation to the Secretary that these 

formats be changed. This is -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Well, it's more -- maybe format's 

a bad word. I think they should -- I think 

this definitely should -- not to mention that 

you've got a lot of DR reports that have 

already been issued in this format and that 

they -- you know, their reaction by -- by -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I 

thought you were talking about this report. 

You're talking about the individual dose -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, right, I'm sorry. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- reconstruction reports that go 

to claimants. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, I'm back with you. 

 DR. DEHART: In fact what we're reporting here 

is what has been done. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 DR. DEHART: It's not -- 
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 DR. DEHART: -- asking the Secretary -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, I understand now, uh-huh. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Sorry. And also the reason for 

that one sentence being highlighted is I -- I 

mentioned this, and then I wasn't sure that 

this was actually true so I wanted to see if in 

fact -- I think this is a question for NIOSH or 

ORAU if these DR reports have been modified in 

any way. 

 DR. BEHLING: Well, I can -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Oh, okay. 

 DR. BEHLING: -- also make a comment on this 

because I've now received a second set of 18, 

and the format basically remains the same, but 

we are now being given additional information 

that makes the auditing process considerably 

less detailed and easier for us because we're 

given at this point a firm understanding of the 

data entries that you see on Attachment A that 

accompanies each of the DR report that says 

entries one through 25 are recorded dosimeter 

photon doses, so we don't have to go and 

identify what portions of the IREP input 

components are due to neutrons, to photons, to 
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the alpha internal, et cetera, et cetera. 

However, that has not -- I assume not been 

transmitted to the -- the claimant himself, so 

the -- the reading or your statement as it 

reads here, in part we have been given the 

benefit of an expanded explanation as to what 

the DR report contains, but I assume that that 

has not been transmitted to the claimants. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: And -- and I'm a-- is anyone from 

-- 

 DR. WADE: Well, Jim isn't here at the moment. 

Let's ask -- when he -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Dick -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Dick Toohey may be able to answer 

that, and -- and is the issue here -- this has 

to do with what the claimants understand the 

report is telling them and... 

 DR. TOOHEY: Yeah, the operative word is "may 

be able to answer" because I'm not absolutely 

sure, but I know we have been working with 

NIOSH on a formatting change on the report, and 

what it would primarily be doing is putting 

together an executive summary for the front 

part of the report in claimant-understandable 

language on what was done, how we got the 
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numbers, here are the numbers. And though, as 

you know, we don't make the compensability 

decision, there are some circumstances where, 

you know, it's pretty clear that -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Does this actually come from DOL? 

Is it a DOL letter that we're -- 

 DR. TOOHEY: No. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- talking about? 

 DR. TOOHEY: No, we're talking about when we -- 

the process is -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: When you notify the claimant of 

the dose. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Yeah, we submit the draft DR 

report to OCAS and then when it's approved they 

send it to the claimant, along with the OCAS-1 

form. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Then we do a closeout interview 

with the claimant, and then when all that's 

done the DR report is sent to DOL as a final 

for the adjudication process. I know we have 

been working -- my understanding is creating an 

executive summary up front without many other 

changes in the body of the DR report -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim Neton has returned, maybe -- 
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 DR. TOOHEY: -- but I'm not sure we implement 

that yet -- Jim? 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, we're talking about any 

modifications to the dose reconstruction report 

for the claimants that helps them to understand 

it easier, what has been done so far? 

 DR. NETON: That's in the works. I don't know 

what Dick has mentioned so far, but we're -- I 

think we're going to try to make a layman's 

summary, we -- what we call at NIOSH a onepager, that kind of outlines what was done and, 

you know, fairly -- in layman's terms explains 

what was done, and then attach behind that a 

more detailed health physics report that would 

make it easier for folks like SC&A and others 

who are inclined to, you know, review the 

health physics data, it would be more clear to 

them what we've done. That's not finalized 

yet, but we're moving in that direction. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 

 DR. TOOHEY: That's good. We said the same 

thing without prior collaboration. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And no rehearsal, yeah, that's 

good. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: And Paul, I think Roy maybe just 

captured it. Maybe we can refine that sentence 

to say this -- this enhanced DR report is under 

development by NIOSH -- is currently under 

development by NIOSH/ORAU. 

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 DR. WADE: Uh-huh, that's fine. 

 MR. GRIFFON: That way we show that there's 

some action on the -- yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Let me add one thing to that, if I 

may. I just recalled that the next 20, and 

maybe even the 20 after that, that get audited 

will probably not have been done with the new 

format. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, understood. Okay, go ahead. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Then the next item -- Paul, 

should I move on to the next item? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, I think so unless anyone has 

anything else on this first item. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Next item, internal quality 

control, and this was a -- I think Hans brought 

this point up yesterday in a summary fashion, 

and I tried in several of these items to 

reference back to (unintelligible due to 

microphone failure) -- the Board's list of 
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findings, and I'll call those findings. In 

this case when it says 8.x, that's one that I 

found in case number eight in the SC&A full 

report but it wasn't captured in my table yet 

so we've got to -- you know, I don't have it 

numbered, but it is in case eight and it's yet 

to be in the matrix. 

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 But this -- this also -- by the way, and I'll 

also just ask Hans on the record here that I 

was looking for that one with the four thou-- 

that's kind of a quality control issue that -- 

that we saw that it didn't (unintelligible due 

to microphone failure) that, but the question 

that that would get by was a -- was a -- 

 DR. BEHLING: There are numerous instances I 

believe where a person who has signed off -- 

and I always look at the signatures of the dose 

reconstruction report and there's usually two 

signatures that involve people who supposedly 

have looked at the dose reconstruction report 

and signed off on it and my understanding would 

be that these people not just signed their name 

to it, but actually scanned through the 

document and at least did a cursory review, 

quality assurance check to see if it looks 
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okay. And there are some instances where I 

would say that's quite difficult and I wouldn't 

expect the QA auditor to go through line item 

by line item, but for instance, if you look at 

the attachment that accompanies the input to 

IREP and you see, for instance, entries for 

recorded dose that are defined for a normal 

distribution and you see parameter two is 

blank, you realize there's something missing 

because that would suggest to you instantly 

that there is an uncertainty that has not been 

captured. 

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 On the other hand, if it was a factor of two 

for a high estimate, that should have been 

entered as a constant. So you can instantly 

look at the input and say here is an entry 

level that says for a normal distribution 30 to 

250 keV and there's a number here and that the 

parameter two is blank, that should instantly 

trigger somebody to say hey, wait a minute, if 

you -- if you doubled it and it's a maximized 

dose, it should have been entered as a 

constant. If it's a normal, there should have 

been an uncertainty, a sigma value. And so 

these kinds of things should be part of an 
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internal QA, and there are numerous instances 

where you don't have to go through lengthy QA 

checks but simply scan through it. For the 

guy who's really familiar with the -- the 

process, you can within -- within matter of 

minutes identify deficiencies by just looking 

at the IREP input. 

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case here -- 

 DR. WADE: We just need to -- we need to move 

on. I mean I don't think we need to do this at 

this particular time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But we understand the point. 

 DR. WADE: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thanks. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And then number three -- 

 DR. DEHART: Could we discuss (unintelligible)? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. DEHART: For the purposes of the letter, 

it's saying that we are recommending. 

Shouldn't that be more defined? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Clarify what you mean. 

 DR. DEHART: We have recommended, we're not 
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recommending. The procedures are in place or 

moving forward or something. I mean that's -- 

this is just sort of hanging out there. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Oh, yeah. 

 DR. DEHART: And that isn't appropriate, I 

don't think, for a letter of this sort. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: In other words we have -- we have 

to do this under a separate recommendation. 

 DR. DEHART: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, you're right. I didn't 

catch that. The Board has recommended that -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: This is just information -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- that we've rec-- this is what 

we've done to address that. We're not asking 

the Secretary to take specific action. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. Sorry, that's -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: And it's my understanding that 

quality assurance procedures are sort of in 

flux anyway and progressing, is that -- that's 

correct in both cases, they're being developed 

as -- as we proceed. Thank you. 

 DR. DEHART: So I think we should -- that 

should be in a terminology that finalizes it. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: It just -- it's changing it to 

has recommended, is that sufficient or are you 

-- 

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 DR. DEHART: I'll help you reword it. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, that's fine. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's go ahead. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Item three, procedures fragmented 

and difficult to interpret. That -- that was 

actually a summary term that was used several 

times in the SC&A report so I'm not completely 

wedded to that language, but it gets the point 

across. Again, cases are referenced -- where I 

have the Xs, I didn't have those numbered. 

And this -- now here's a question on the 

action, but I think we've sort of said that 

we'll -- we'll withhold recommendations at this 

point on most of these because we have a full 

procedures review being done under task three, 

and it's more appropriate to -- to tackle that 

at that point. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And until we have completed that I 

wonder if the title to the third item may need 

to be a little more generic. There may be -- 

fragmented is one thing and difficult is 

another, but there may be some other kinds of 
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issues that emerge. So is there a more generic 

title for that section? Procedures... 

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 DR. DEHART: Procedure clarification and 

modification? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Something like that. Which would 

include these specific cases, but there may be 

other things that we're not aware of. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Or -- I don't know, can it be as 

simple as procedures -- procedures issues or 

procedures -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, procedural issues, sure. 

Okay. Any other input on that section for 

Mark? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now let me insert at this point, 

because we haven't been definitive on exactly 

what these changes are, what -- after we get 

through this I'm going to call for a motion to 

accept this conceptually -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- 'cause -- 'cause we're going to 

have a document that's the polished version of 

this, with the input that we've given here -- I 

don't want to do all the word-smithing here at 

the table today, if that's agreeable. 
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1 DR. ANDERSON: We'll just all pile it on Mark. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: That's agreeable, that's -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, no, we may get a couple to 

volunteer to help with that, and I certainly 

want to be involved before the next meeting, 

also, so that we get -- maybe two or three of 

us can do that, but as long as we have the idea 

of what -- what modifications we want to make, 

then we can do some additional polishing at 

that time to get these concerns in place and 

get a revision of this ready for the Board that 

we can at least conceptually approve. 

 DR. DEHART: A question that I would have is is 

this to be accompanied by the full report? 

Because we're constantly referring to the 

cases. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, in essence, that -- yeah, I 

don't know that the report -- this is the wrapup -- I mean the report stands on its own. 

This will have the -- its appendices as 

attachments. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Attachments. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The report wouldn't necessarily be 

attached to this that went to the Secretary, I 

don't believe. 
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1 DR. DEHART: We're referring -- I'm just -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, here we're referring -- and 

that's -- that's a note for the Board. 

 DR. DEHART: You don't -- do you intend that 

those references go into the report? Because -

- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Oh, those references are within 

the -- and maybe I should be clear on that, 

that those finding numbers are in the matrix, 

which is an attachment, so they'll be able to 

see a summary. They won't have this -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: They won't have -- 

 DR. DEHART: Okay, it won't be part of the 

attachment -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: They'll have that summary of -- 

of -- of describing that -- 

 DR. DEHART: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's proceed. CATI is the 

next item, item four. 

 (Pause) 

 MR. GRIFFON: I'm just capturing that idea. 

The CATI -- again, it's constructed basically 

the same with examples where it was identified 

in the cases that we reviewed. And I guess the 

second part of that paragraph there basically 
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explains that while this -- it is accepted by 

SC&A, and I believe the Board, that the -- in 

these ca-- in these particular cases the 

identified information within the report likely 

would not have affected any -- any dose 

estimate in a significant manner because they 

mostly involved overestimates using high five 

or the 28 radionuclides in some cases anyway, 

we just wanted to -- to identify that this 

information could in fact impact future cases. 

So it's not really -- I guess it's a -- a -- 

Paul, you had the word for it yesterday -- a, 

you know, just a indication that this -- this 

information shouldn't be forgotten about. 

There was a lot of -- and further than that, 

the idea -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: This was what we talked about as 

the watch list -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and -- and -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: But it is a little further than 

that in that the idea has to come through -- 

because it raises this question of credibility. 

If the individuals get back their case reports 

and they say well, geez, they didn't even -- I 
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gave them all those five incidents I was 

involved in and nobody even talked about those; 

you know, what'd they do with those? I think 

that's part of -- it also ties back into the DR 

report modification, just the explanation that, 

you know, we considered the information 

provided in the CATI interview. While we 

understand that you were involved in several 

incidents, we have taken a very, you know, 

overestimating approach with the internal dose 

based on, you know, the highest internal doses 

ever received on -- highest intakes ever 

received on the site or some-- 

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 DR. ANDERSON: There needs to be an 

acknowledge-- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Something to ack-- some-- yeah. 

DR. ANDERSON: -- acknowledgement that, you 

know, it was heard and recorded and -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: And considered. 

 DR. ANDERSON: -- considered. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And considered, you know, and 

that we didn't have to go back and try to 

recalculate those 'cause we knew we were 

overestimating with this other approach. But 

at least that way there -- there's -- it -- I 
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think it lends credibility to the product in 

the eyes of the public that, you know, they did 

follow up on what I asked them to look into. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Then let me jump in at this 

point then with -- with -- I'll call it an 

organizational issue on this now. The way this 

is currently set up, and this -- this -- take 

this to be a friendly suggestion. I think what 

we have listed here as conclusions and 

recommendations are what we called yesterday 

items for improvement, which were separate from 

the main conclusions which now get hidden in 

the introduction, which has to do with -- with 

the ac-- these findings, the findings. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. Well, that was sort of 

intentional, though, 'cause I don't think those 

really are the main conclusions out of all 

we've done so far, so -- you know, not that I'm 

not considering those, but I think -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- to say that 42 out of 46 of 

these cases had low level findings -- you know, 

what's that mean based on what we were 

reviewing? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, it only has meaning for 
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these 20 cases at this point, but yesterday we 

talked about asking the question were there -- 

have we observed any cases that would impact 

compensability. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: That -- this is what I was 

concerned about going, right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well -- 

 DR. DEHART: But that... 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- might -- can -- to the extent 

that these 20 cases tell us anything one way or 

the other about that, it seems to me that's 

still an important point, even though it's a 

small sampling at this point. It seems to me 

we still have to identify that -- and we have -

- and there's a level of importance to that, I 

think to the program: Did you find any cases 

in this first set that -- where compensability 

would likely have been changed. 

 Then we talked about areas of improvement, 

which are these things you've just gone through 

here, these conclusions. And then we also 

talked about what we sort of named the watch 

list, which was another category of things that 

we weren't necessarily making a definitive 

recommendation on, but we were calling 
239

attention to things that we need to pay 

attention to down the road sort of thing and -- 

which is another -- I'm thinking about another 

sort of heading for the things starting with -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: I still think -- I still think we 

should stick with more of the sufficient for 

purposes of determining the probability of 

causation. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's fine. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I really was reluctant to put in 

there that, you know, none of these would 

likely have overturned compen-- you know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: All right. Yeah, yeah. I'm -- 

I'm okay with those words. I was just trying 

to see if we shouldn't, when we have our -- our 

conclusions, have some conclusions about those 

-- that issue, sufficient for compen-- for the 

finding, and then the areas that need 

improvement and then these other things, sort 

of a three-part -- I mean you have it all here. 

I mean it's an organizational issue. I'm just 

raising it as -- I don't -- I want to be sure -

- and Mark, I think your concern is that we put 

too much weight on the prior question with only 

20 samples. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: So is there a way we can -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Especially -- here -- see, here's 

-- 

 DR. ZIEMER: My point is that this point here 

in that paragraph is, in essence, part of our 

conclusions, the conclusions of our auditor, 

that in essence we are then accepting. 

 DR. ANDERSON: But -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: So maybe putting -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: But our -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- the last part as just 

recommendations -- I mean I put that stuff up 

front, but I don't think from that we can -- 

can -- we necessarily have any recommendations, 

yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And maybe that's the way to do it. 

Maybe it's -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: So that -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Conclusions, recommendations and 

then ongoing concerns or something. 

 DR. WADE: Yeah, I agree with that -- makes 

sense. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Are you comfortable with that 

approach? 
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 MR. GRIFFON: Sort of. I'm -- I'll tell you 

why I'm a little nervous, quite frankly. It's 

that we're starting to write an executive 

summary with conclusions on -- on this 20-case 

audit where there's a lot of details that I 

think are being overlooked within this audit 

report. You know, we're talking from this 

matrix, this summary matrix. When I go through 

all these findings, my -- last night when I 

compiled this thing, you know, I asked myself 

the questions of what happened to the Savannah 

River finding, what happened to -- you know, 

and not only the ICRP-30 versus 68 issue, the -

- you know, tritium versus organically-bound 

tritium issue. Defer it to the site profile 

discussion, I agree, but not captured in that 

summary list anymore. I think there might be 

explanations to a lot of those, but I think -- 

you know, I'm just -- I'm just a little nervous 

about, you know, those details here. And also 

we don't have a wrap-up of the -- of the five 

AW-- I guess we can -- will include that now, 

of the five AWEs, 'cause there's different 

types of items, but -- so I guess -- something 

to that effect I think I'm comfortable with. I 

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just think we -- we -- we as a subcommittee 

have to be comfortable with the details that 

support this front-end matrix. 

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 DR. WADE: Let me offer sort of an observation, 

and I think all of the ideas that have been put 

out are good. I think Paul comes to a place 

where he said let's have some conclusions and 

some recommendations. Then Mark, you raise I 

think the excellent point that we don't want 

the reader to be confused that this is anything 

but an early observation of one part of a 

multi-tasked review. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. WADE: I think we need to point that out. 

I mean I think the Board reserves the right in 

summary, be it on dose reconstruction or the 

overall audit of the NIOSH activity, to come 

back and re-conclude, and all we're doing is 

offering an observation at this early junction 

and I think it's important that we put those 

limiters in there. 

 DR. DEHART: Would the term "concern" be 

appropriate here? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, I think it would for that 

last category, ongoing concerns or something. 
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And in fact, you know, one might argue even on 

these recommendations that they still are based 

on a very limited number of observations 

anyway, so one way or the other we have some 

recommendations that are based on a limited 

sample. But I think you've set the framework 

very well. It's clear that this is just the 

first 20, that the intent is to sample this two 

and a half percent of whatever the number is 

and so on, so I think in the proper framework 

that could be fine. Well -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: In principle right now I'll try 

to -- we'll try to figure out -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- how to wordsmith that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I was trying to separate out what 

in essence are -- maybe conclusions isn't the 

right word, but certainly the findings of our 

auditor include the -- the potential, or lack 

thereof, of -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: What if I -- what if I had a 

section that just introduced this as the 

summary of findings -- 'cause that's what we're 

discussing is the summary of findings. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Sure, that would be fine, yeah. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: And then ongoing -- ongoing 

concerns, for that last -- for those last -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, summary of findings and then 

recommendations for improvement and ongoing 

concerns, something like that. It's just an 

organizational issue that -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- helps sort out the different 

things that we've identified. 

 MR. GRIFFON: That's fine. I agree. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So the part, starting I guess with 

the CATI part, is the -- our so-called watch 

list, the ongoing concern issue. Right? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Oh, so these are -- one, two and 

three you would consider -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, yesterday that's -- we had 

identified the items for improvement. We had 

the report to claimant, the audit trail -- did 

you mention the audit trail? 

 MR. GRIFFON: It comes up in the DR report. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, and then the concerns about 

procedures and quality assurance. And then we 

had the -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- validation/verification and so 
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 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. I wasn't trying to break -

- okay. We can break those out if we want to. 

So recommendations, then the other three will 

be ongoing concerns. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Anything else on the CATI part? 

Suggestions there? 

 (No responses) 

 MR. GRIFFON: The -- if everybody's ready, the 

second item there then, the validation and 

verification question, and I tried to define 

what I meant -- I think this came -- came up in 

several cases that we looked at. A lot -- many 

of them were the Savannah River high five. 

That's mainly 'cause that's just a very easy 

one to explain what we mean by validation. 

There was -- one of these findings, 

deficiencies, whatever -- one of these findings 

that I list here was a question where there was 

only annual -- some annual dosimetry summary 

data, at least for one or two years of the 

entire body of -- of external data available 

for that individual, so a minor point on that 

particular case, but a question in ongoing -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: (Unintelligible) 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, any other comments on that 

section? And again, these are just items just 

to give a heads-up. We have to look at these 

in the subsequent cases to see what -- the 

picture emerges. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I think the issue is one -

- if this is the systematic approach, we're 

concerned. And you know, we haven't seen 

anything serious, but it has -- has the 

potential here to -- 

 DR. DEHART: I think when we're discussing this 

-- 

 DR. ANDERSON: -- to be -- 

 DR. DEHART: -- we were interested in assuring 

that there was sampling -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 DR. DEHART: -- where it was possible to do 

calculations -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 DR. DEHART: -- and make sure that you had 

validation. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, so put that on the radar, 

that -- 
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 DR. ANDERSON: I think that's the -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I'm sure they are considering 

the validation and verification. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. And the last item is 

consistency of cases and/or concern with 

efficiency approach. I'm not sure about that 

title, but the idea here was -- and this is a 

discussion that we had at the McLean, Virginia 

meeting. Some of these question -- or this 

question came up. You know, certainly the idea 

of -- you know, I can think of the medical Xray situation where in some cases overestimates 

were used which assigned a -- quite a higher 

dose than you would if you had correctly 

(unintelligible due to microphone failure) not 

affecting the -- necessarily the dose 

significantly, so really no major problem as 

far as the case was concerned. Where we 

started thinking -- theoretically, anyway -- 

that this might come -- lead to a problem is if 

you have similarly-located workers. I can 

picture this sort of thing happening at K-25, 
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having been down there a lot. Retirees getting 

together for breakfast and comparing notes, and 

you might say oh, they'd never look at these 

things together, but they -- they do. And 

they'd say well, how the heck did you get 40 

rem when I only got, you know. 6.5 rem and I 

was there in the hottest places -- you know. 

So and it -- and it can be explained because 

one person had a certain type of cancer and 

they used the efficiency method and, you know, 

the other person was a different situation and 

they used the more enhanced approach. But to 

these two sitting in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, it 

may not be a -- you know, and that -- that -- 

just that concern out there that is this going 

to create a credibility problem down the line. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: And part of this has to do with 

how that dose is explained, also, to the 

person. We've actually had some of that in our 

public meetings where someone has gotten up and 

said so-and-so and I both have exactly the same 

dose, down to the decimal point, and they're 

astounded by this, and they say how can that 

possibly be. And I mean we've heard that a 

time or two in the public meetings, which means 
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they don't understand that there's a reason 

why. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Well, and also -- it also makes 

them won-- you know, they -- they -- 

 DR. DEHART: Question. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- they question -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, 'cause they know very -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I thought -- I thought this was 

an individual dose assessment. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Why aren't you looking at mine. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. So somehow that needs to be 

addressed more. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, and just an ongoing 

concern, no -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- recommendation here. Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Are you ready to make a 

motion to recommend this, in concept, to the 

Board? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Someone else (unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Yeah, Mike is so moving? 

 MR. GIBSON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And a second? 

 DR. ANDERSON: Second. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Any further discussion? 

And this -- this would be accompanied by 

hopefully some revised -- the -- revised 

appendices and so on. We may have some 

additional polishing to do, but at least will 

be at that point for the Board to present that. 

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 Okay, all in favor say aye? 

 (Affirmative responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: And any opposed? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: And any abstentions? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: The motion carries. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mark and Roy, for your work. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you. 

 DR. DEHART: I think there's going to be 

considerably more development of this once we 

have the summary for all 20 cases, since we 

were really talking 15 here. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. Dick Toohey -- address us a 

moment. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Thank you. I'd just like to make 

a comment for your consideration. You know, it 

doesn't specifically say in this report what we 

know and that we did in fact in these 20 cases 
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get the compensation decision correct. And as 

Dr. Ward (sic) mentioned yesterday, it's 

probably something -- and you did go into a 

little bit on discussion -- that should be one 

of the things specifically mentioned up front. 

And I'm just concerned that you're raising 

these other issues because of concern that 

could tend to undermine the credibility of the 

program. And if we don't explicitly say that 

at least this initial audit of 20 cases did 

find that we were getting the compensation 

decision correct -- which is really the 

ultimate, perhaps the only, purpose of doing 

the dose reconstructions -- that, in and of 

itself, would undermine the credibility of the 

program. Thank you. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, actually this is one -- the 

point I was making, Richard, was to actually 

have at the front end of the conclusions and 

break that out. It probably wouldn't state 

that we had the compensation decision correct, 

but that the results are unlikely to have 

affected compensation, or something to that 

effect (unintelligible) -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Sufficient for purposes of 
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right up front. After the intro that will be 

right at the front end and these other things 

will be listed as items for improvement, 

whereas the others will be up front as the 

front-end conclusions based on the work of the 

auditor. And then the other will be our 

ongoing issues -- concerns. Okay. Thank you 

very much. 

12 BETHLEHEM STEEL SITE PROFILE

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 The next item -- main item for today, really -- 

is the Bethlehem Steel site profile and how to 

close on that. Now let us identify what we 

have. We have the -- we have the -- the 

Bethlehem Steel initial site profile. We have 

the SC&A review of the site profile, which was 

dated October, 2004. We have NIOSH comments on 

the review, from December. And let's see -- 

 DR. WADE: I also have, Paul, the motion -- a 

copy of the motion that the Board took at the 

last meeting concerning Bethlehem that I could 

give out if that would be of -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: That would be -- that would be 
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helpful. And then also -- I just want to ask 

if the Board members received -- I've received 

some other materials, including some from Ed 

Walker, and I'm -- okay, the Ed Walker 

materials I'm going to distribute here. 

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 (Pause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now does every-- the copies of the 

Bethlehem Steel action -- 

 DR. WADE: Did you -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- does everybody have a copy of 

that? 

 (Pause) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now who can give us an update on 

where we stand on the resolution of technical 

issues? Can either Jim or -- 

 DR. WADE: Let's start with Jim and then -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim and then -- and then John, 

perhaps. 

 DR. NETON: As you recall, NIOSH had two sets 

of reviews of the -- of SC&A's review. In the 

December meeting we provided some preliminary 

recom-- comments. The Board instructed NIOSH 

to go back and work with SC&A to resolve any -- 

any issues that we might have. We did that, 

and we came back at the February Board meeting 
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with what I'll call a White Paper describing 

our approach to resolving those issues. We 

heard the Board's motion and -- that carried, 

and are working now toward resolving those 

issues in accordance with the motion that was 

passed. 

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 We're revising the site profile. We're 

actively working on it and we're moving along 

the lines of the Board's recommendations. We 

have one outstanding issue we know that we owe 

the Board, which is characterization of oronasal breathing at steel mills and the 

respiratory rate during heavy work at those 

mills. Other than that, though, I believe that 

the recommendations that we made and put forth 

at the February meeting were essentially 

accepted and we're moving towards that end as 

outlined in that White Paper to revise the 

profile as appropriate. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Have we -- do we have copies of 

those -- those White Paper that you... 

 DR. NETON: That was handed out at the Board 

meeting in February. I didn't bring copies 

with me. I may have a copy and we can get 

copies made, but I could summarize where we're 
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 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, (unintelligible) -- 

 DR. WADE: Please. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- sorry. Didn't prepare as much 

for (unintelligible). 

 DR. NETON: We have a number -- that White 

Paper translated into twelve Action Items on 

our part that we're using to track our changes. 

The first issue was the air monitoring, purpose 

and applicability. We committed to explaining 

in more detail how the air monitoring program 

at Bethlehem Steel and Simonds Saw and Steel 

were representative of the workers' 

environment, at least to the extent -- using a 

maximizing approach for assigning doses, and 

we've done a lot of work in that area. We've 

committed to re-evaluating the air 

concentration data. We're going to scrap the 

triangular distribution and, as SC&A suggested, 

use a lognormal distribution to characterize 

the workers' environment -- internal exposure 

environment. And on top of that we will use 

the 95th percentile of those generated 

lognormal distributions and apply it to all 

workers. 
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 In the original document we used the triangular 

distribution and sampled it. Now we're going 

to generate a lognormal and assume that all 

workers breathed the 95th percentile of the air 

sample concentrations. 

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 There was an issue related to the low energy 

bounding matrix that was in the original 

profile. Since that was never used to make any 

compensation decisions -- or to assign 

probability of causations by Labor, we're 

removing that table from the document. 

 The fourth issue was the oro-nasal breathing 

and breathing rate, and I mentioned that we're 

working forward on that. 

 The fifth issue was the ingestion model to tie 

in with the residual contamination model. 

We're working on that. 

These sort of go together. SC&A recommended 

that -- or believed that residual -- residual 

contamination in between rollings was an issue, 

and we did not evaluate that in our original 

profile, and we're going to do that. So we're 

going to include both ingestion and inhalation 

from resuspension in between rollings and after 

the cessation of the last rolling into the dose 
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SC&A at that -- SC&A agreed at the meeting that 

the five micron particle size was likely 

appropriate for that exposure environment, so 

we're working on that -- we're not working on 

that; they've accepted that. 

 There were some issues raised in the SC&A 

comment that we did not really address site 

expert input, and we're going to great lengths 

to try to explain how the site worker input was 

evaluated and incorporate -- and how the models 

that we developed are sufficiently claimantfavorable to over-arch any of those concerns. 

 Medical X-ray data, there was some concern that 

we didn't evaluate photofluorography, and we're 

actively searching AWEs for the use of 

photofluorography. And once we finalize that, 

if it looks like that was a X-ray exposure 

modality back then, we'll include that in the 

profile. 

 And I think that -- that covers the main -- the 

main points. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, what's the timetable on this? 

Are we likely to have something at next month's 
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Board meeting or... I mean you have a lot of 

things you're working on there, we understand 

that, but I just -- realistic. 

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 DR. NETON: I'm reluctant to commit to having 

something -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I'm not asking you to 

commit, I'm just -- really -- 

 DR. NETON: There is a -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: If you said -- 

 DR. NETON: It's possible -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- you were within a week of 

finishing or -- 

 DR. NETON: No. 

 DR. ZIEMER: No. Okay. 

 DR. NETON: This is a substantial revision. As 

you recall, the original profile was I think 

something like 14 pages long. I expect this 

document to be substantially larger. I mean 

there's a lot of references we're tracking 

down. We've made excellent progress, but it 

does take time to do it right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I -- oh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, go ahead, Mark. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I just had a question. As we're 
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looking at the materials that were handed out 

from Ed Walker whether -- I mean he's brought 

this up several times at public comment and 

stuff about the additional rollings. Have you 

researched that any further? Is there any 

headway on that? 

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 DR. NETON: The lead agency, of course, in reevaluating these additional rollings is the 

Department of Labor. While we work closely 

with the Department of Labor, our main task -- 

as we view it -- is to research the exposure 

conditions. As we identify additional 

exposures and documents, we pass those on to 

the Department of Labor. But we are not 

actively searching for additional rollings. 

We're just working with -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: So D-- DOL is responsible for 

finding the -- 

 DR. NETON: The covered exposure period. 

 MR. GRIFFON: The covered exposure period, 

right. And to the extent that you've found 

documentation on other process... 

DR. NETON: Oh, we pass everything along to 

Department of Labor. I just don't -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: So you're not actively looking 
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 DR. NETON: We're actively looking for exposure 

documents, and if they show that exposure has 

occurred in different years, we would pass 

those on directly to Department of Labor. But 

we are not actively looking to expand the 

covered exposure period. I mean we will 

collaborate with the Department of Labor. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Is it fair to say that Ed's 

material has, either directly or through you, 

gone to Labor? I assume that they have the 

information, do they not? Ed understands it's 

-- it's -- 

DR. NETON: Yeah, the additional information 

that we've found has been found -- discovered 

at Hanford and Savannah River. I passed those 

on to Department of Labor, that's correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm asking about Ed's own 

assertions, has he provided those -- do we know 

-- 

 DR. NETON: Oh, the document that was sent to 

you? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. NETON: I don't -- I don't know that that 

was -- has been transmitted to the Department 
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of Labor. You're talking about the letter that 

the Board received -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, does Ed himself provide that 

to Labor or -- 

 DR. NETON: I don't know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- is he relying on us to do that, 

or do you know? 

 DR. NETON: I really don't know the answer to 

that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't know, either. 

 DR. WADE: I could call Ed and ask him and -- 

 DR. NETON: Yeah, I mean we'd certainly -- 

 DR. WADE: -- at his request would transmit the 

material to the Department of Labor. 

 DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It seems to me that, you know, if 

that's all it takes and we can say, you know, 

it's their baby but we'll be glad to help you 

send it on to them or something. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I'm not -- I must admit I haven't 

reviewed his handout in depth -- or at all, I 

should say -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: No. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- but -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Most of his points have been -- 
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 MR. GRIFFON: Well, the question I have is are 

all the additional rollings he's referencing 

outside the time period currently defined or 

are there some that are within the time period? 

DR. NETON: I don't know that any of those are 

outside the covered time period right now. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. So he's talking about 

potentially just -- just more rollings. 

 DR. NETON: They weren't even really rollings. 

In some cases Mallinckrodt would send the 

billets to Bethlehem Steel for heat treatment 

in the salt bath, and that would be it and then 

they'd be shipped on. Same thing with Savannah 

River. So it -- I don't know that we've 

uncovered any additional rollings. But there 

was additional evidence of material being 

transported through Bethlehem Steel, but -- but 

not necessarily rollings. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I guess from my standpoint it's 

just another -- you know, another -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, what impact would that -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- point -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- have (unintelligible) -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Let's make sure we're consi-- I 
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 DR. NETON: Oh, yeah -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- NIOSH considers this to the 

extent that it would impact -- 

 DR. NETON: Oh, exactly. The team that's 

working on advising the site profile has Mr. 

Walker's transmittal and we're addressing that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Richard Toohey. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Let me add something to that Jim 

doesn't -- I haven't told Jim about 'cause I 

just found out Wednesday. On a data capture 

trip at Hanford we did find some Bethlehem 

Steel records out there and went through them 

and did not change the covered period. There 

was nothing outside the '50 to '54 time frame. 

 MR. GRIFFON: All right, but (unintelligible) 

you followed up on the (unintelligible) 

question is yes. 

 DR. TOOHEY: We weren't specifically looking 

for Bethlehem Steel out there, but we found it 

anyway. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 DR. NETON: I would just like to remind the 

Board -- I brought this up at the last meeting 

-- but NIOSH was responsible for increasing the 
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covered exposure period and extending it to '52 

because we found rollings, and we notified the 

Departments of Labor and Energy at that time 

that hey, you know, it looks like people were 

being exposed in '52, and so, you know, we do 

collaborate as best we can. 

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 DR. WADE: Could I just discuss this issue just 

briefly, not to add confusion to it but 

hopefully to bring it to closure. First as a 

data point, I was contacted by Senator 

Schumer's office and the Senator asked me to 

make sure that the Board understood that this 

issue of number of rollings and information on 

rollings was of great interest to the Senator's 

office. And I said I would make that comment, 

and I would also make sure that Ed's materials 

were given out. 

 You'll notice from the motion that the Board 

took at its last meeting that the Board has not 

formally asked NIOSH to do anything with regard 

to this issue. I think the discussion we've 

just had, if that satisfies the subcommittee, 

then that's fine. I just want to be sure that 

we're clear in what our expectations are and 
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what NIOSH will do. And I think, given the 

level of interest expressed by the Senator and 

others, I think it's important that we're clear 

on that. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I think the -- the 

confirmation that Labor has the information is 

important and -- 

 DR. WADE: Okay, then -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- that -- it -- I'm not sure what 

we can do beyond that. NIOSH has taken into 

consideration the additional activities, and 

I'm -- I guess we don't know for sure if this 

document suggests there are any outside that 

period, but if -- if there are, we need to make 

sure Labor has the information. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I guess -- I don't know if 

-- if we need to make a formal recommendation 

or -- or a motion for this, but you know, I 

think that if NIO-- and that discussion sort of 

suggests that they have, but if NIOSH has 

considered the additional information provided 

regarding rollings -- where applicable, I 

guess, you know, given the question of the 

coverage period -- in the development of the 

site profile, or in the revision of their site 
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profile, I think we just want assurance of 

that. 

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 DR. WADE: I mean I might suggest that possibly 

NIOSH could write to the Board and let the 

Board know of its work in this area and just 

create then a record, and I think that would be 

sufficient -- if we could ask -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

officially report (unintelligible). 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I think we -- if we have a 

document, rather than just minutes, I think 

that would be very helpful. 

 DR. WADE: I think it would be, too. 

 DR. ANDERSON: I don't know if we need to have 

a -- we can just request that and maybe at the 

next meeting you could provide us with a, you 

know, kind of written documentary of what's 

been done and how it's being used. 

 DR. WADE: Okay, I'll carry that request to 

NIOSH. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Now one of the -- you 

notice on the agenda -- for Bethlehem Steel the 

agenda item says how to close. Now closure on 

Bethlehem Steel I think would require us to 

have a final -- or not necessarily -- though 
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site profiles are never final, but we -- it 

seems to me we need this next revision that 

addresses the -- or resolves these issues. So 

is it fair to say that we would have to defer 

final action till we receive the revised site 

profile? 

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 DR. DEHART: Absolutely, I don't know how we 

can move otherwise. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And then I guess the -- the next 

question beyond that is do we need -- here's 

this question of findings resolution. 

Everything that Jim stated sounds great, but we 

go back to that -- you know, the devil's in the 

details. How -- how was this applied and does 

SCA -- and I think they're working together, so 

it shouldn't be -- maybe it's just a -- but a 

final review by (unintelligible) -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, and our final report can 

consist of a similar tracking thing, what the 

issues were, how they were resolved, and then a 

final wrap-up type of document. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Which would come after we have 

this final revision. 

 DR. WADE: Right. I mean could we ask John 
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Mauro to come and just tell us, from your 

perspective, where things are and how they're 

proceeding, John? We'd... 

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referred to the expanded review process and 

this is what we're talking about. The way in 

which it works is -- a perfect example would be 

what's going on right now with Mallinckrodt. 

We just received Rev. 1 of Mallinckrodt, and at 

the direction of Dr. Ziemer we have initiated 

our expanded review cycle. As I had ind-- as 

we spoke about before, this is a part of the 

process that's triggered based on direction 

given by the Board. That direction has been 

triggered by Dr. Ziemer and we're moving 

forward with Mallinckrodt review, which will be 

a one-month review. As everyone knows, we have 

set aside a budget just for that purpose in our 

most recent modification to our task one work. 

 Now to go on to Bethlehem Steel, we have not 

initiated any expanded review on Bethlehem 

Steel. Our expectation would be that when we 

receive the next revision of the Bethlehem 

Steel site profile, it would be our expectation 

that at that time the Board would make a 
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judgment whether they would like SC&A to 

proceed with a review and give an -- authorize 

us to move forward. So as it stands right now, 

we have not billed any time or have taken any 

actions regarding the information that has been 

coming across our desk. I did sit in on the -- 

and we are certainly aware of these 

developments. But as -- we have not engaged 

the expanded review cycle. We felt it's best 

to conserve those resources until we see the 

revised site profile. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. And a good part of this 

revision is based on the interactions already 

occurring between the two, so it's basically 

responsive to what you have already identified. 

There may be some new information that the 

Board would want evaluated -- for example, if 

there were something in these Hanford records 

that would change things, then that might be a 

different story. But otherwise it's a little 

hard for me to see why we would ask SC&A to 

review what they've already -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I mean the main reason is 

just the follow-through of -- you know, if we 

can have these broad discussions on -- you 
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know, they now are replacing triangular 

distribution with a lognormal 95th percentile 

for all cases sounds -- sounds wonderful. I 

think what we need SCA maybe to look at is 

well, what data was used for the lognormal 

distribution, is it consi-- you know, are they 

comfortable with the way it was handled and not 

in the (unintelligible) sense but in the more 

specific sense of the data et cetera. There 

were some sub-issues in those findings, and if 

-- and I think my -- my -- since there's been 

so much dialogue along the way, my 

understanding is that it'll be a fairly quick 

review. It won't be as extensive as -- as 

reviewing like a Mallinckrodt where there was a 

much more expansive revision. But -- and I 

would also say that -- you know, I think the -- 

these are living documents, so I don't know 

that we would want to -- you know, you have to 

stop somewhere, so -- but I think the findings 

that they identified, to carry them through and 

make sure that they -- that they, and by an 

extension that we are comfortable -- 

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okay, at this point, based on what we've seen 
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and what's occurred, we now agree that this is 

okay, whatever words we end up using. But we 

would not decide on the next -- another step 

until we have the document in hand, I assume. 

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would trigger that -- as John suggested, maybe 

we would trigger that at our next full Board 

meeting -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- you know, when we -- if we get 

Rev. 1 by that time or if it's coming down the 

pike in a week or so. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I think Jim is suggesting 

perhaps it wouldn't be ready by the next Board 

meeting, but -- 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, the -- the -- two points that 

I'd like to make is, one, of the various 

strategies that Jim has just outlined, there 

was really only one where there is clear 

consensus among the SC&A team, that yes, we 

agree with the five micron AMAD. The other 

items we are -- we would prefer to reserve 

judgment until we see them within the context 

of the overall revised TBD. That will take 

some -- some work. 
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 The other thing -- point that I'd like to make 

is that bear in mind that we have reviewed a 

number of Bethlehem Steel cases that are before 

you. In our first set of 20 I think there were 

three, and in the next set of 18 I believe 

there's one. Those reviews are in place. It 

would probably be appropriate when the new site 

profile comes through to see if there's 

anything in the revised site profile that may 

bear on our findings regarding those particular 

cases. I couldn't really say off-hand one way 

or the other whether it'd have any impli-- what 

type of implications it would have. So we are 

in an unfortunately somewhat of an iterative 

process whereby -- you know, we have our 

reports, the 20 cases, but then a revised site 

profile comes in and it's probably prudent to -

- to revisit those quickly to make sure there's 

nothing about the new information that possibly 

could have affected the -- the... 

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think the burden's going to be on NIOSH to 

determine whether or not a revised site profile 

impacts on past cases. I'm not sure we're 

going to be asking the contractor to go back 
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and revisit previous findings. I believe this 

would be correct, but NIOSH would basically -- 

automatically would -- Jim, if you revised a 

site profile, you ask the question does this 

impact on previous cases, and the burden is on 

them to do that. Yeah. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Hans? 

 DR. BEHLING: Just a comment because of the 

earlier concern about completing the first 20, 

which involved the five AWEs, three of which 

were Bethlehem Steel, and Mark had requested 

and I think the Board approved that we include 

those in our checklist in our review. And my 

question is do we do this in the absence of 

closure in (unintelligible) like the Bethlehem 

Steel? 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think you have to do it based on 

what you have available at the time. 

 DR. BEHLING: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's all you can do. And then 

if the site profile changes, then NIOSH has to 

go back and say well, what's the impact on that 

on this previous set. 

 DR. WADE: Paul, could I just -- 
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 DR. ZIEMER: That's -- that's old -- that's 

beyond just the ones that were audited. It's 

all the previous cases. 

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 DR. WADE: Paul, I would like to talk a little 

bit about timing, and I hate to always do that, 

but I do think we need to be steering these 

things towards closure. And so based upon what 

I've heard to this point, we will not expect to 

see -- understandably -- a revised site profile 

at our April Board meeting. So that's a 

statement of fact, unless the Board wishes to 

instruct otherwise. 

So then we're looking at a July Board meeting, 

let's say tentatively. You could look at two 

scenarios. One is at the July Board meeting 

the Board could see the NIOSH revised site 

profile, and at that July meeting make a 

decision as to whether or not it wanted SC&A to 

look at the materials, which would likely take 

us then to the September Board meeting -- or 

October Board meeting. Or it's possible, if 

the Board was to decide in April that what it 

wanted when the NIOSH revised site profile was 

complete we would send it to SC&A and trigger a 

review, then we might be able to come to 
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closure in July. And I think this subcommittee 

should think about that and then the Board 

should decide that. 

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full Board could decide at this telephone 

conference. To me it would make sense to have 

it automatically trigger a -- some kind of a 

review by SC&A to affirm that it was responsive 

to what they thought they were asking for. And 

that way we're not sitting marking time for a 

month or two waiting for the next Board 

meeting. 

 DR. WADE: Okay. So we will put on the agenda 

for our call then a full Board discussion of 

the timing of the Bethlehem next iteration. 

But Jim, this then brings pressure to you in 

that if we want to come to the July meeting 

with the revised site profile and the SC&A 

comments, that means that you would be in a 

position of having to deliver the revised site 

profile to SC&A in a May/June kind of time 

frame -- May time frame. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But at this point we still 

wouldn't know how long it would take SCA and 

what else would be on the table, so that would 
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 DR. NETON: I think we can accomplish that May 

time frame, but what I'd like to ask is, am I 

correct in assuming that we could engage in the 

-- sort of the six-step iterative process 

again? I mean so that if SC&A receives it, 

they have some comments and we could engage in 

some dialogue in somewhat real time, as long as 

there's a Board member present and it's 

transcribed. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 DR. NETON: That way it'll expedite things 

tremendously. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. NETON: I mean there -- I anticipate that 

it wouldn't -- there's not going to be perfect 

agreement. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We can continue to do that, yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: This will trigger that expanded 

review process -- 

 DR. NETON: Exactly, so then by the time the 

next Board meeting, we may be able to have all 

those issues worked out and a consensus opinion 

between the two -- 
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 DR. WADE: Now let's ask John to react to -- 

now we're talking May, June, July if -- if you 

were to get the revised site profile the end of 

May, would you be in a position to turn it 

around in a month? 

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 DR. MAURO: Two weeks. 

 DR. WADE: Two weeks? 

 DR. MAURO: Other words, I'm optimistic. I 

feel as if the issues have been condensed 

nicely down to very clean, well-understood 

points. How they actually take life in the 

revised -- what I will quite frankly do as soon 

as I get the document and get the green light 

to go ahead, I will convene something very 

similar that we just did on Iowa. Everyone 

read it, telephone conference call, what's your 

reactions. We'll knock heads, then we'll get 

in touch -- we'll come to some sensibility 

regarding our position regarding each of the 

five or six issues. At that point I would say 

some type of dialogue with the Board 

involvement, recorded, and I think that at that 

point we would be in a position right there to 

say verbally what our position is on each item. 

And I guess the actual -- then perhaps a 
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letter, I -- as you would like, a letter 

acknowledging yes, these issues have been 

resolved as far as -- to our satisfaction, or 

not. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, that's fine. Okay. 

 DR. WADE: So for our own scheduling purposes, 

we're looking at -- at -- at optimistically in 

July having revised site profile and an SC&A 

review of that site profile, so hopefully we 

can come to closure at that meeting. That's 

very useful for me for my scheduling purposes. 

 One more just small point to ask the 

subcommittee. I refer you back to your own 

motion of February 8th where you asked for a 

meeting between NIOSH and SC&A. I assume that 

the meeting that John just referred to would 

satisfy your requirement there. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, and there has been a meeting 

or two already. Right? 

 DR. WADE: I don't think there's been a meeting 

since you -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Since then -- 

 DR. WADE: -- passed this motion. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- oh, oh, I see. Okay. Okay, so 

this is -- this meeting would satisfy that. 
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presence? 

 DR. WADE: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, and a record kept of the... 

 DR. WADE: I just wanted to make sure that we 

were -- make sure that things happened 

consistent with the Board's motion, and so what 

was discussed here, in the opinion of the 

subcommittee, is consistent with the Board's 

motion. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And I think that then completes 

the discussion on the Bethlehem Steel issue. 

We'll take a break for about ten minutes, and 

then we'll come back and we have a few items 

that are procedural. 

 DR. WADE: Well, we have three major issues -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let's see what we have to cover 

yet. We have to talk about what -- what we're 

going to -- no, the next set we've actually 

talked about. That was a 45-second discussion. 

The next set is underway but we don't have 

anything to report on that, so -- next set of 

18, but the process will be similar to the 

last. That's underway. 
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things, and maybe more. I think we want to 

talk a little bit about Iowa. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. WADE: I think we want to talk about an SEC 

task for SC&A in a very general way. And I 

think we want to talk about the task three -- 

start to talk about a time line. We won't 

finish it, but I think in the broad sense of, 

you know, when do we intend to come to closure 

on SC&A's task three. This is a review of the 

procedures and steps, and at least talk about 

that a little bit and -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: And maybe Mallinckrodt Rev. 1 -- 

 DR. WADE: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- or did we bring that up 

already? 

 DR. WADE: Well, we did, but I think it'd be 

good to bring it up all together with Jim 

speaking and then John speaking. 

 MR. GRIFFON: The reason I raise Mallinckrodt 

is we -- I think we sort of committed last 

meeting to resolving that SEC petition in the 

next Board meeting -- next full Board meeting. 
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 DR. WADE: Indeed we did. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. WADE: And it has been noticed. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. Yeah -- yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's take a break and then 

in about ten minutes we'll resume. 

 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 10:25 a.m. 

to 10:45 a.m.) 

10 SUBCOMMITTEE DISCUSSION

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 DR. ZIEMER: Let's reconvene, shall we, and 

finish up here this morning. Let me suggest -- 

let's see, Rich is here, okay. Let me suggest 

that we talk briefly about the issue of having 

a task order directly -- directly involved with 

a Special Exposure Cohort review process, and I 

know that Mark has drafted a kind of a straw 

man task order. But let's talk first -- and 

actually a detailed task order might be 

something the full Board would have to look at, 

but let's talk about process. And Lew, can you 

help us frame out exactly what would be needed 

to specifically task S-- task SC&A to assist in 

the petition review processes? 

 DR. WADE: Okay, well, let me first sort of put 
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as foundation -- the functions assigned to this 

subcommittee, while they relate to dose 

reconstruction review and site profile review, 

does ask that we clarify intent regarding the 

technical scope of tasks assigned to the audit 

contractor. So I think that gives us an 

ability to briefly talk about this topic, but 

not make any decisions on this topic. 

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 What I'd like to do is to read for you from the 

existing contract as to what it says about SEC 

work, and I think we need to understand that -- 

and again, I'll see that that is shared with 

the full Board, but -- and I quote, (reading) 

The contractor shall be available to assist the 

Advisory Board in reviewing SEC petition 

determinations. The contractor may be 

requested to assist in some or all of the SEC 

petition reviews. The contractor shall review 

all relevant methodologies and/or procedures 

employed by NIOSH evaluating and processing the 

SEC petitions consistent with the statute and 

NIOSH regulations. 

So those are the words in the contract. Now 

those words take you to an understanding that 

the Board might, on a particular petition, as 
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SEC (sic) for help or guidance. And that's 

what the contract currently says. 

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take on as a task. We can't stray too far from 

the words in the existing contract; that's what 

was competed. 

Now what -- to answer your question, Mark -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: But there's no specific task. 

That was just in the general -- 

 DR. WADE: That's in the gen-- no, we -- we 

would have to develop a task. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. WADE: So what would happen, in my view, is 

that at the next Board meeting -- and I -- I 

mean the phone discussion -- if the Board could 

agree on a scope of work for the SEC task, and 

then if the Board would consider empowering me 

to do the independent government cost estimate 

for that, then I could -- armed with that 

authority, I could see that there would be an 

SEC task in place for the Board to use as it 

might see fit by the April full Board meeting. 

If I didn't have the authority to negotiate the 

independent government cost estimate, then I 

would have to come back to the Board. 
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 I think there's an intellectual question as to 

what the Board wants SEC to do -- excuse me, 

SC&A to do within the SEC task. And I think 

again we have to be guided by the words in the 

existing contract. But I don't think there's 

anything we need to do today but to start to 

think about that. 

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 Now Mark, you might want to briefly talk to us 

about what you've prepared -- again, not to 

reach closure, but just to set the -- set the 

stage for thinking. 

 MR. GRIFFON: You know, which -- which I 

believe -- I don't -- I have on my laptop a 

full task order contract with -- it's a -- it's 

a fairly brief paragraph as a placeholder for 

an SEC -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, it simply identified that 

we might call on SC&A to assist in the process. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I believe that this is consistent 

with the scope outlined in there. I don't know 

if we want to pull that to compare them. 

 DR. WADE: Well, I think I'll ask a contracting 

officer to do that before our call. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: All right. But this -- you know, 

this outlines the -- I guess, you know, five 

major areas -- major items that we would 

anticipate possibly asking SC&A for assistance 

with for certain -- for certain petitions. And 

-- and it -- you know, I -- well, let me -- let 

me just step through those items, I guess. 

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 Number one talks about a review of the SEC 

evaluation procedures, the procedures that 

NIOSH is using to evaluate the petitions. The 

second part speaks to -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me interrupt. Are those 

procedures on the list of -- in the procedure 

reviews? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I don't think so. 

 DR. ZIEMER: No. Okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: They were specifically kept out 

because they were petition-related, right? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, right. Thank you. 

 MR. GRIFFON: The second item is -- is having -

- asking the contractor to assist the Board in 

developing a review procedure that the Board 

would adhere to for reviewing these petitions -

- for reviewing the petition reports or 

petitions. 
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 The third item is sort of an estimate of the 

number of petitions that may come up -- and 

this is a one-year task -- number of petitions 

that we might -- we estimate receiving in a 

year that we -- requiring SCA's services or 

assistance with. And I also -- we might -- you 

know, certainly those numbers are open for 

discussion 'cause these were pretty much, you 

know, estimates on my part on -- on what might 

be coming down the line. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: And Mark, you to some extent have 

to pick these out of a hat, but for example, 

contractor required to review eight SEC 

petitions, I think the intent would be up to -- 

that would be a maximum for the year? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Because we don't know how many -- 

there may be two come in or -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: And there may be -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: We don't -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- some for which we don't want -

- we don't need their assistance. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. WADE: That's right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Up -- up to is fine. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: And -- and the break -- later I -

- I broke them out into DOE petitions and AWE 

petitions. I think that we have to at least 

estimate that to give SC&A a chance to estimate 

cost, 'cause I think we've heard already that 

the cost incurred can be different, especially 

for sites where there's no site profile and 

that sort of thing. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. So these numbers here 

are, again, simply to assist in -- the 

contractor would say okay, for this type of 

site profile (sic) review, the cost for doing 

three of those would be such and so, or we 

might even be able to get a unit cost out of 

that then. Is that right? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right -- and I believe that we 

have the ability to shift costs within the 

overall cost, so if it turns out we have more 

AWEs, the -- petitions from AWE sites, the cost 

per unit might be higher so they might use up 

the money a little quicker, but -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: But at least we would -- in the 

independent cost estimate you would have those 

figures broken down. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And the fourth one is they would 

be required to attend Board meetings, and I 

think it discusses sort of a -- have dialogue 

with the Board and -- and NIOSH on these 

issues. I forget how it's phrased. And the -- 

oh, you... 

And the fifth item is required to interview 

petitioners and -- and consider their testimony 

or written material -- provided materials, I 

guess, in -- in the scope of their assistance 

to us. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you very much. Now I 

-- I assume -- and Lew, you can help us out 

here again -- this -- this would be, for 

example, a suggested type of task order, the 

exact wording to be worked out if -- if, for 

example, you were authorized or some -- 

 DR. WADE: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- group is authorized to proceed 

on this, but what action would be needed here 

today simply to recommend in principle that the 

Board adopt something like this? 

 DR. WADE: Yeah, I mean I think the only action 
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would be to -- to commit to getting this to the 

Board for a discussion on our -- I think it's 

April 5th telephone conference call. I would 

ask for no more action than that. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: So the only action required here 

today would be to recommend that the Board 

review this in the full telephone meeting for 

possible action. We wouldn't even have to 

recommend an action, simply -- 

 DR. WADE: Yeah, I don't think -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- this be on the agenda. 

 DR. WADE: Right, and I think recommending an 

action on this might be a little bit outside 

the scope of this subcommittee so I wouldn't do 

that. I think it was fine that we talked about 

it. I think it should go to the Board and I 

think we should take that up as a full Board. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But we can have a motion to ask 

the Board to review -- 

 DR. WADE: Sure. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- this and -- someone wish to 

make such a motion, that the Board -- that the 

Board consider a task order for a Special 

Exposure Cohort review? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I'd like to make a motion that 
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the Board consider this task order for a 

Special Exposure Cohort review. 

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 DR. DEHART: Second. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Any discussion? A comment from 

Richard Toohey. 

 DR. TOOHEY: I'd just like to offer 

clarification. I would suggest you make it 

explicit that what you want to be reviewed is 

the SEC petition evaluation -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 DR. TOOHEY: -- report. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. TOOHEY: There is another aspect that -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Not the -- well, and we -- we may 

want the petition to be reviewed, as well. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Well -- right, and I was going to 

say there was another aspect to that where we 

initially evaluate and qualify a petition. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. TOOHEY: There's a procedure for that, so 

you want to look at that independently -- 

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

said that -- 

 DR. TOOHEY: Yeah, -- 
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 MR. GRIFFON: -- all this doesn't include 

(unintelligible) qualifi-- you know. 

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 DR. TOOHEY: Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think I noted that. 

 DR. WADE: You did say that, yeah, very 

clearly. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Okay. But for -- the main thing 

for SC&A to do a review would be the petition 

evaluation report. Right? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. WADE: Right. 

 DR. TOOHEY: Okay, thanks. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Yeah, see, assistance 

in reviewing and evaluation petitions and 

evaluation reports is how it's stated. Okay? 

 All in favor, aye? 

 (Affirmative responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Opposed? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Motion carries then. Abstentions? 

 (No responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Now 

we have the Iowa petition, and just to remind 

you of where we are on that, the Board took 
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action at its last meeting and developed a 

recommendation to be forwarded to the Secretary 

through the Director of NIOSH that the -- I'll 

paraphrase -- that the Iowa petition be granted 

as Special Cohort status. We had discussion of 

the quality of data and so on, but we didn't 

really take action on that. Basically action, 

as I understood it and in reviewing the minutes 

and the transcripts, the action of the Board 

was based primarily on a transparency issue and 

the fact that the data were classified and 

could not be made available to petitioners or 

to the full Board, or to the public. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: I'm not sure I would state it 

that far, but I mean that was part of the final 

considera-- or final recommendation by the 

Board. We also noted that there -- the -- our 

conclusion was based on -- on insufficient 

dosimetry, dosimetry records, et cetera, so I -

- 

 DR. ZIEMER: The point I was making -- in fact, 

that's stated in the record, but the Board 

didn't -- didn't specifically make a 

determination that the data were inadequate. 

That was raised as an issue and discussed, but 
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it appeared to me that the overriding issue was 

the transparency issue and it's so stated as 

the main point in the record. 

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just shortly after our meeting -- well, 

actually a determination by the Department of 

Energy, and again I'm paraphrasing a little 

bit, but -- and I don't have the dates before 

me, but it's in the record -- a determination 

by the Department of Energy that for a 

particular period -- I believe it was '62 on, 

does anyone recall that -- that later period -- 

that -- that those dose reconstructions could 

be made without the use of the classified 

information. Therefore, if -- if we were to 

send our recommendation to the Secretary, it 

would have been in conflict with -- at that 

point with NIOSH's statement that the -- that 

the information was not classified and dose 

reconstructions could be done. So because of 

that conflict -- I'm sorry? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I just -- again, I don't -- I 

don't know that we have our recommendation -- a 

draft that we did at the last meeting, 'cause I 

wasn't really prepared to discuss Iowa that 
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much, but I -- I -- you know, my -- my 

understanding, and I know that the majority of 

the dialogue at the meeting -- and I think it 

was really due to time pressure -- the majority 

of the dialogue at the meeting was focused on 

this issue of classification, but I think that 

there was a lot more there that -- that lent me 

toward moving towards Special Exposure Cohort 

for -- for that class, and it was deficiencies 

in the dos-- dosimetry, the questions about 

internal dose being -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, and that very well may have 

been for individuals, but -- but the fact is, 

the classification issue became an overriding 

issue. It was a moot point at that point on 

the quality of the data, I think -- at least in 

my mind it was a moot point that even if the 

data were of high quality that we -- the 

transparency issue became overriding, at least 

in my mind. That was my understanding. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I agree it was a substantial 

point. I just don't know that it was the major 

or only point, that's all I'm (unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Well, in any event, the -- 

the issue at that point was should the 
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recommendation be transmitted to the Director 

of NIOSH, who then would have to send to the 

Secretary two conflicting reports, which I 

think would put the Secretary in an awkward 

position, as well. His own agency having one 

particular view and -- and -- we don't have to 

agree with them, but the issue of 

classification had gone away and we were using 

it as a major point in our -- maybe not the 

only point, but a major point in our decision, 

so with this revised document, I felt it was 

important that we at least look at what that 

contained. And so asked whether or not SC&A 

could take a look at that and that's what has 

occurred. The Iowa delegation of course is not 

overly happy about that. They are quite upset. 

But it seemed to me we had an obligation to at 

least look at that new revised document. And 

in fact, that will cause us I think to focus on 

the quality of the data as an issue since the 

classification issue now goes away for that set 

of information. But it does -- it does 

nonetheless delay at least part of the Iowa 

petitioners' response. I mean we could still 

go ahead with our recommendation as it stood, 

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but I think it would be a serious problem for 

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recommendation. 

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 MR. GIBSON: Paul, it seems to me, though, that 

at the time of the meeting and the information 

we had at hand, the Board made a decision, 

passed a motion and, at least in my opinion, I 

think it should have been carried through with, 

as instructed. And then when we subsequently 

found out there was other data, we could send a 

follow-up letter saying we now are -- have been 

made aware as a Board that this has happened 

and therefore, you know, we're asking you to 

hold off while we reconsider. But just to -- 

it seems like it costs the Board a lot of 

credibility when we state in front of public 

we're going to do something -- in fact, I've 

had some e-mails from -- as most of us have, 

probably, from Senator Harkin and -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, we have, uh-huh. 

 MR. GIBSON: -- Senator Grassley that, you 

know, we're not following through with what we 

committed to do. So again, we acted on the 

information we had at hand, and I think -- I 
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think in the future that we should follow 

through with our commitments. Now we can 

always step back and say, you know, situations 

have changed. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: And I'm certainly prepared to do 

that if the Board -- and I think this telephone 

meeting the Board can instruct the Chair to do 

that. Remember that what we do is transmit it 

not directly to the Secretary. It goes to 

NIOSH. In this case it goes to NIOSH and NIOSH 

has to determine what to do with that if it -- 

particularly in this particular case, there's 

no guarantee it would then -- I don't think -- 

go to the Secretary necessarily -- or maybe it 

would, I don't know. But in any event, if the 

Board so instructs me, we can still set that -- 

send that -- 

 DR. WADE: But I think Michael's point was for 

future issues we need to understand his point 

and behave as -- 

 MR. GIBSON: I might have misstated who to send 

it to, but I mean, you know, we took action 

based on the information at hand -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GIBSON: -- and I think it should be 
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followed through then unless the Board advises 

otherwise. 

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that? 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I think the issue is the -

- the Board passed a resolution and apparently 

that was set aside. Is that true, that that -- 

I guess... 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'd hate to characterize it as 

being set aside. It just hasn't been -- it 

hasn't occurred yet. I mean we can still send 

that forward. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Well, a request was made to have 

our contractor do some additional work on it -- 

I mean as the record says, we passed that 

resolution now and I think -- I would tend to 

agree with Mike that the issue is if we want to 

revisit it, we can. But at this point, what's 

happening with that? Why didn't it go forward? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, the reason it didn't go 

forward is -- and again it is the Chair's 

decision to delay sending it till we have a 

chance to look at this new document. But I can 

certainly -- you know, if -- I think if the 

Board instructs me to proceed with it, I 
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certainly will do that. It wasn't clear to me 

that it would be very helpful to send that 

forward with the presence of this new document 

available to us, but -- it's a -- and it's a 

timing issue, really. Roy? 

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 DR. DEHART: My decision and vote at that time 

was based entirely on the fact of transparency. 

Within days, almost before we got home, that 

issue was resolved and I think it would have 

been a mistake not to withhold the -- the 

action until we can -- we can review the data 

appropriately and have our contractor do so, it 

likewise would have been foolish. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I guess there -- there's -- 

there's lots of questions in my mind on the -- 

the -- sort of the chronology of events. I 

think some of those are most -- are best 

discussed on the upcoming phone call, 

especially since I didn't bring Iowa materials. 

I'm not really equipped to discuss, but you 

know, the ques-- the first question that comes 

to my mind on some of the chronology is how -- 

how -- was any of the 19-- is there any new 

data that's been declassified that -- that is 

used in this new Rev. 1 and the -- you know, 
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maybe that's -- some of these questions we can 

bring up at -- 

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 DR. WADE: I think we need to. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That was my understanding, that 

there was. But -- and again, I had -- I had 

the document ready to go, to send to -- to John 

Howard at NIOSH, which -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: And if so, I think -- even in -- 

this might even be in preparation for -- for 

this upcoming conference call is -- is what new 

information was declassified? Please provide 

it to the Board so that we can compare the old 

revision and the new revision and see just 

where -- you know, why and how this was changed 

due to declassified information, but -- but -- 

you know -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, in fact this is where we 

needed SC&A's help on that, too, that -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's why I asked that we get a 

quick look at that. I don't know what was in 

the document, either. I mean I just learned 

that -- as you did, that that information had 

been declassified and there now was this 

revised -- really it's a Technical Basis 
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stepping back to -- to Mike's point, I mean I -

- I also was a little bit -- I think I found 

this out sort of in a back door process. I 

asked a different question of the contractor 

and they indicated to me they were working on 

Iowa, which surprised me 'cause I didn't -- I 

knew that was one of the site profiles we were 

not reviewing, so I guess -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- I guess the question -- I knew 

you had a timing -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, but I had sent out an e-mail 

before that, but I won't -- you apparently 

hadn't seen it or something 'cause I went back 

and checked my e-mail to the Board on that Iowa 

issue, and it had been dated -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Oh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- several days prior to that one 

that -- 'cause I saw your question -- you asked 

me the question, but anyway, yeah -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Regardless, the contractor was 

set in motion without any full Board sort of 

process -- 
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timing issue, also. But I think -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- in the future we might -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, really what -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- examine that -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: I asked the question and I asked 

Lew can we in fact have the contractor do this 

and are there resources to do it and -- and he 

said to John Mauro can you do this, in terms of 

your own resources and timing. The answer was 

yes, but then we had to divert resources from 

some of the other work. The Iowa issue seemed 

to me to be pressing, so we -- we did move 

ahead on that, but -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: It seems -- seems -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- if the Board instructs me to go 

ahead and send the original motion to NIOSH, I 

will certainly do that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I -- I'm not even -- you 

know, I'm not weighing in on that, but I'm just 

saying that -- that we might -- it seems a 

little bit that we put the cart before the 

horse here, and I understand there was urgency 
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to get -- but maybe an emergency conference 

call, you know, or somehow -- 

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 DR. WADE: Yeah, in point of fact, at that 

moment in time I asked SC&A to look at Iowa. I 

had the authority to do that. I didn't try to 

usurp the Board's function, I just felt that -- 

that it was -- we needed to -- to act 

immediately if we were going to have material 

for the Board to consider at its next meeting. 

Now I would like on the phone call we have of 

the full Board to discuss this and -- and the 

Board can endorse what I did or not, as it sees 

fit. But I took it upon myself to ask them to 

look at Iowa because I -- I felt that you would 

want their input when you next faced this 

decision. And I didn't do it in the name of 

the Board, I did it on my own. Now Paul knew 

what I was doing, but I took that decision. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Michael? 

 MR. GIBSON: With all due respect, Dr. Wade, 

but isn't ORAU your contractor and SC&A our 

contractor? I mean I'm just trying to -- so I 

don't know -- really understand. 

 DR. WADE: Well, in point of fact, SC&A's 

contract is with CDC. They -- right. I mean 
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so I have the -- I am the technical project 

officer, so I can instruct them. I would 

normally instruct them on your behalf. In this 

case I instructed them without consultation 

with you. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: I guess we -- we've had these 

discussions in the past where we tried -- it's 

a difficult arrangement, obviously, but we've 

tried to be very clear that the Board 

controlled the scope on -- even though, you 

know, the contract is through CDC. 

 DR. WADE: That's right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And you know, this -- this also -

- you know, we said that -- that -- you asked 

SC&A to review the site profile, which I'm not 

even -- I think that probably was appropriate -

- 

 DR. WADE: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- but -- but it's also -- also 

part of that is what exactly were they asked to 

do, 'cause this -- this falls maybe under the 

site profile review piece, but I think you're 

also asking them the ques-- those tricky 

questions that fall under petition. 

 DR. WADE: I haven't yet -- 
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 MR. GRIFFON: Is data adequate for -- for 

determination -- you know. 

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 DR. WADE: And we have not asked them those 

questions. All I've done is ask them to add 

this to the list of site profiles to be 

reviewed and to accelerate it. I think it's 

incumbent upon the Board to decide if you want 

to add any additional questions to that task, 

but I have not added any questions to that 

task. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And just to -- just to follow up 

on that, I -- can we -- can we ask just that 

type of question that I just mentioned without 

falling into the SEC petition task that we're -

- the draft that we're discussing now? 'Cause 

this -- in site profile reviews we -- we stay 

away from that question of whether the data was 

sufficient to make a determination. 

 DR. WADE: I think it depends upon the 

question. I think that's something we need to 

talk about as a full Board and decide if we can 

ask the questions the Board would like asked 

under the site profile review. That's a 

judgment that the contracting officer would 

have to make. I would hope that we could. I'm 
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also trying to accelerate having an SEC task in 

place so that if we go beyond that, then we 

have a mechanism for doing that. 

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 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I think -- I think -- to 

me, the issue is if -- are we going to get the 

answers from this review that we need in order 

to move forward on this. I mean I'd hate to 

have on the call or whatever them say well, 

that wasn't what we were asked to do and we're 

left in the same quandary that we were. I mean 

we -- 

 DR. WADE: Right. 

 DR. ANDERSON: I mean we really need to move 

this one way or the other. 

 DR. WADE: Right, and -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, and we -- we don't even know 

at this point whether or not SC&A will be in a 

position to have done the full review -- I 

can't recall, John -- I know there -- there was 

a -- there was a bit of a push as to the timing 

and whether we could be prepared for the next 

Board meeting, but -- but let me say in any 

event I think at the telephone Board meeting 

where we're going to talk about process, I 

think it's very appropriate for the Board to 
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say in cases like this we should go ahead in a 

timely way -- you know, for the Chair to go 

ahead and implement the Board's action in a 

timely way, even if -- if something else 

emerges, 'cause they -- we can go back and say 

okay, in light of this new data we now have a 

new recommendation. So I -- I quite 

understand. Your point's very well taken. 

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

it's very important for our credibility and -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, right. 

 MR. GIBSON: -- with the public and -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GIBSON: -- you know, we made our decision 

based on the information at hand. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GIBSON: And you know, then to get a letter 

that, you know, we're delinquent in our duties 

from a Senator -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. GIBSON: -- and I just -- I don't -- don't 

feel comfortable with that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: No. Thank you. Okay. John? 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, we -- we began work Thursday 

of last week and we did what I call a 
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horizontal review, which meant there were about 

five people who read the document cover to 

cover, and we compiled a list of approximately 

50 observations, questions, issues that emerged 

from what we call the horizontal review. 

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 We have delivered that letter to you folks. 

Our expectation is some of those might be 

important, some of those may not be important, 

we don't know at this point. Our expectation 

is to meet as soon as possible with NIOSH to 

discuss those 50 or so issues. 

 In the meantime, the -- to -- to answer your 

question, are we going to be able to complete 

our site profile review within the next two or 

three weeks, and the answer is we will 

certainly complete a lot of it, and we might 

complete the most essential portions of it. 

However, there's one major problem that is 

glaring. Our horizontal review has revealed 

the areas of greatest vulnerability are the 

early years. That is in terms of doing a good 

technical -- whether or not the data are 

adequate, the information is sufficient in 

order to -- to do dose reconstructions for the 

early years. In other words, we're doing a 
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data adequacy -- that's part of a site profile 

review, data completeness. Our most important 

observation has to do with the approach that 

was used to reconstruct doses for the early 

years. In order for us -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Meaning pre-'62? 

 DR. MAURO: Pre-'62. And the approach that was 

adopted in the site profile was to have a -- 

what's called a construct. That is so that 

they did not have to -- I'm sorry to go on, but 

-- so that NIOSH did not have to disclose or 

declassify information that came up, what would 

be called a construct, a reference weapon or 

pit. And from that, say this is a bounding pit 

and any doses associated with the handling of 

that pit is going to be bounding, we have lots 

of questions related to whether or not that in 

fact is a bounding construct. And the only way 

we're going to be able to probe that is by 

having our Q clearances in place, which have 

not occurred yet. And without that, we're not 

going to be able to add very much value to that 

aspect of the review. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But that may be a moot point 

because the early years would still be covered 
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 MR. GRIFFON: Your -- your -- your clearances 

are going to be critical, though, and if -- if 

we don't have access -- maybe as the Board, as 

Lew indicated earlier, but also as the 

contractor -- 

 DR. WADE: Well, we're doing everything we can. 

I think we have done everything we can and will 

do more to try and see that your two people get 

their clearances as quickly as possible. I do 

believe it's in the offing, but it hasn't 

happened yet. 

 Again, to go back to the issue, I think it's 

important when the Board deliberates on this 

issue that it doesn't consider the technical 

availability of data issue moot simply because 

of the transparency issue. I hope that's a 

lesson that we've learned. I mean I think the 

Board needs to consider both issues thoroughly 

for both time periods when it deliberates on 

this issue. I think it is important that the 

Secretary gets a complete report on technical 

availability as well as issues of transparency. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The 50 questions John referred to 

were -- appeared in a letter dated March 22nd, 
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so it was earlier this week. I believe we 

asked -- and I believe it has been done -- 

asked John Mauro to send those questions to all 

the Board members. John, didn't we -- 

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 DR. WADE: I think that's been done. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So if you didn't already get it, 

it's probably sitting in your e-mail. 

 DR. MAURO: We have sent them out. Whether or 

not you've received them early enough -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: It would have been within the last 

day or so. 

 DR. MAURO: Day, exactly. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think I got them yesterday, and 

I have them here, but these are some 

preliminary questions that they raised on this 

revised Iowa document. And again, we're not 

going to consider it here, but it's part of the 

process that they are trying to get a grip on 

what issues are out there in this revised 

Technical Basis Document. 

 Yes -- 

 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I just wanted -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- Liz, please. 

 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: -- to remind you in your 
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considerations of sending -- Dr. Ziemer sending 

the recommendations to the Secretary that it 

does trigger a 30-day time period, and so if 

y'all were to reconsider information, the 

Secretary may have had to go ahead and send a 

decision to Congress already, so I just wanted 

to remind you of the 30-day time period that 

you all trigger when Ziemer sends a letter and 

(unintelligible) that you're getting 

information. 

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 DR. WADE: And let me expand upon that a bit, 

and again, this is for the Board to decide, but 

if you were to send a recommendation forward 

and there was to be new information available 

for the NIOSH Director to consider, a time 

clock would be put in motion where a decision 

would have to be made, and it could well be the 

Secretary would then deny. 

What has happened now, I think, is your motion 

is still active. You will look at the 

materials and then you will decide what it is 

that you wish to do. I would want to avoid the 

possibility of a summary denial based upon new 

information. I think it is better to keep the 

issue open, but that's a decision you have to 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Right. The time clock doesn't 

start until we send our recommendation. But at 

that point then it forces the decision. If the 

Secretary has a -- I think what your point is, 

if the Secretary has conflicting information 

from the Board and from the agency and it's not 

clear what way to go, he could turn it down 

based on that. 

 DR. WADE: Right. I don't think your motion 

has been scuttled. I think it's still an 

active motion and you can do what you want with 

it as you consider the new information. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Mike? 

 MR. GIBSON: Well, just to make it clear, I 

guess my point is when other issues come up we 

can set in motion a conference call and 

everything else, and I just think for the Board 

to be made aware by letter from a Senator's 

aide rather than a Chairman or NIOSH I think is 

inappropriate. 

 DR. WADE: Understood. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I also just want to follow up on 

Lew's point that -- I regret at the St. Louis 
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meeting, but I think it was mainly due to time 

constraints, but I regret that the emphasis and 

certainly the record that we built focused on 

the issue of transparency because I believe we 

had before us -- and I thought actually, having 

reviewed it -- some pretty compelling 

information that suggested that doses could not 

be reconstructed with sufficient accuracy. So 

we had lengthy data provided by Dr. Bill Fields 

of University of Iowa, testimony there at the 

site -- or on site that day at St. Louis that -

- I don't think we deliberated very much on 

those -- on those statements. We focused on 

the transparency, and I do regret that, as 

well, but I think we did have some of that 

there at the time when we made -- when we 

formulated this -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: -- recommendation. 

 DR. WADE: I do think that -- that it's 

important that the Board build a record, and 

again, even if you go back to Iowa pre-'62 and 

there does appear to be a transparency issue 

there, I wouldn't limit the date on the 

availability and the adequacy of the data for 
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that period. I think it's terribly important 

that the strongest possible record is built and 

provided to the Secretary. 

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 DR. ANDERSON: So what are we going to have new 

available? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I mean what are we going 

to have available that's new at our next 

meeting? I guess I just don't want us to, you 

know, be rolling on something and face a 

similar thing that you did at the last meeting 

where -- you know, what -- what are we going to 

have to review that's -- that's different at 

the next meeting that would modify what 

we're... 

 DR. ZIEMER: We will have the revised site 

profile, number one. We hope to have some 

evaluations from SC&A. Whether or not we have 

-- I believe we have a number of Board members 

who have classi-- have Q clearance that could 

look at early data. Whether they can do that 

before that meeting, I don't know, because that 

-- again, we're very much pushed for time. I 

think Cori did a survey in the last week or so 

to find out who had Q clearance and, let's see, 
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 DR. DEHART: Had. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You had, okay. Rich Espinosa has 

Q. Mike, yours has lapsed? 

 MR. GIBSON: I imagine it is. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, it says past. Mark has Q, 

Bob Presley has Q. 

 DR. WADE: That's it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And that's it. Mine has lapsed 

also, so -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I'm not quite sure whether Q 

gets me in the door because, you know, you also 

have a need-to-know -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's a need-to-know issue, right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- statements which are sitespecific, sometimes site -- you know, that -- 

that's -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. I mean you can't just walk 

in there at that point, so -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. WADE: Rich has his... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Rich? 

 MR. ESPINOSA: A little bit more -- expand more 

on what Mark's saying, too, you know, the -- 

the diversity of this Board -- you know, I have 
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a clearance, but my background is within manual 

labor, not health physicists or anything like 

that, so the documents that I would be 

reviewing that are classified, I'm not sure -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Right, you're going to be talking 

about -- I think we're talking about weapons 

information and pit -- 

 MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- parameters and some -- some 

other factors that go into the reconstruction, 

so that's a good point well taken, as well, 

that -- but it may be that a couple of Board 

members could take a look at that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Does Bob Presley have a Q 

currently? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And he also -- working at Y-12, 

he would be useful in this I think. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Right. 

 DR. WADE: So my question is, is it -- sorry. 

 MR. ESPINOSA: You would have to be a little 

bit careful with that, you know, basically 

calling them a site expert or something like 

that rather than -- you know, because of the 

conflict of interest forms that we have out. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I think he'd be all right at 

Iowa, he'd -- 

 MR. ESPINOSA: Oh, at Iowa, yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 MR. ESPINOSA: And just a little bit more on Q 

clearances, I know at Los Alamos DOE started a 

program for a rapid clearance, and I don't know 

if that's anything this Board has looked at in 

providing -- or -- or getting information out 

for SEC (sic) to apply for. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Rapid clearance? 

 MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Of course one would ask 

what that means in DOE -- 

 DR. WADE: I shudder to think what that -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Less than a decade. 

 MR. GRIFFON: My clearance was about a two-year 

process, but I heard during this process that 

if they really want to expedite it, they can do 

it in a couple of days, so I don't know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: They don't do that with the rank 

and file, I think. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, right. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Let's just be sure we have it 
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all together at the next meeting so we don't 

have to -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I guess what this raises is 

can -- can we either -- some Board members 

maybe along with SC&A, before the next 

conference call, have an opportunity to in any 

way look at that. I think it's pretty -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think SC&A is still waiting for 

Qs. Isn't that correct? 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, we are, but I've been told by 

Joe that -- Joe Fitzgerald, by the way, is one 

of the individuals that will be seeking -- that 

it's imminent. And -- and that -- and the plan 

that we have is we have a team that is raising 

questions and that tho-- some of those can only 

be answered by looking at classified documents, 

so Joe and Kathy DeMers will be sort of the 

people who would be going forward into the Q or 

into the classified documents and try to answer 

the questions that'll be imposed by the team. 

We -- the -- an example would be okay, there's 

a construct that supposedly bounds the 

exposures that the pre-'62 folks were exposed 

to while handling the pits, and there is -- the 

construct is it does-- it's not a real weapon, 
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it is a hypothetical weapon. The question that 

we're posing is, in the judgment of the folks 

that have the Q clearance when they go into the 

literature, is there good reason to believe 

that in fact that construct is bounding. 

That's the -- when all is said and done, that's 

going to be the heart of our work. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Where do the -- the documents that 

would be involved in this, do they exist -- are 

they at NIOSH? No. 

 DR. WADE: Jim, could you come and talk to us 

about -- if this was to be able to happen, that 

Board members could look at the documents, how 

would it happen? 

 DR. NETON: Right, they would have to travel to 

-- I believe it's Germantown. The office is in 

Washington area. 

 DR. ZIEMER: They're not sitting out in Iowa 

someplace. 

DR. NETON: NIOSH does not possess any 

classified information at all. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. NETON: And -- but we would be willing to 

send our health physicist who has a Q clearance 

with the team, sit down in classified space -- 
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 DR. NETON: -- and we'll coordinate with the 

Department of Energy and they would have access 

to the same documents that our health physicist 

did. 

 MR. GRIFFON: We may want to -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Could we get Mark and Bob, for 

example? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, the question -- what I was 

going to say, maybe -- I know the timing is 

critical here. I was going to say maybe the 

Board wants to send a workgroup, which could be 

Bob and I, you know, but I don't know that we 

can assign... 

 DR. ZIEMER: That would -- that would have to 

be done, I think -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: A week till the conference call. 

Right? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Actually the Chair can assign 

workgroups. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So if that's something that could 

be done before the next meeting, I think I have 

the authority to do that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I would -- I would -- I suppose 
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volunteer, if -- but also I'd like to -- to -- 

if it was possible, to do it along with the 

SC&A team and the NIO-- you know. 

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-- is it just Joe or was one other person, was 

-- 

 DR. MAURO: Joe Fitzgerald -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- is Hans involved? 

 DR. MAURO: Not yet. Joe Fitzgerald and Kathy 

DeMers. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And Kathy? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Also, is there a contact at NIOSH 

that we can wal-- that can walk through my 

clearance and see if I need any revision to my 

need-to-know to get into the Germantown 

facility and to review weapons-related records. 

I'm not sure -- I think I have -- I'm not sure 

I have the ability to look at weaponsrelated... 

 DR. NETON: I agree, I mean there's -- it's not 

an automatic if you have a Q clearance, I don't 

think. 

 MR. GRIFFON: That's right. 

 DR. NETON: But Martha DiMuzio in our office is 

coordinating that effort with the -- we're 
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working through the Office of Worker Advocacy 

in this regard, so -- 

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(unintelligible) -- 

 DR. NETON: -- as well, so -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: We'll ask Lew to coordinate -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I mean -- I mean if I could ask -

- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let's try to get -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: I could provide my badge number 

and stuff if someone can run it through and see 

-- 

 DR. NETON: If the Board agrees who's going to 

be sent -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think it would be Mark and Bob 

would be the people, if they'd agree to it. I 

think Bob has some expertise in that area and 

has worked in the weapons area. 

 DR. NETON: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Richard? 

 MR. ESPINOSA: I just want to make sure that 

we're not bound -- when you're setting up the 

working group that we're not bound like the 

subcommittee to people -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: No, the working group is ad hoc 
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and we would charge this group with 

specifically accompanying our contractor to 

examine the Iowa data that's apparently held in 

Germantown to help ascertain its -- its value 

in -- in making credible dose reconstructions, 

something along that line. 

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 MR. ESPINOSA: Okay. Just another thing -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: And then they would report back to 

the Board. 

MR. ESPINOSA: I understand that the 

information will be coming from, you know, 

Iowa, the IAAP. But it -- we still have to be 

careful with the conflict of interest because, 

you know, some of our Board members are tied in 

with NTS and some of that information might be 

NTS in-- NTS information, also. 

 DR. ANDERSON: We won't know that. 

 MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah, we won't know that, so... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, and then at that point they 

would have to somehow recluse (sic) themselves. 

 MR. GRIFFON: (Unintelligible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Yeah, and you don't know 

that out the door, I guess, yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: A good point, though. 
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 DR. ANDERSON: No, I mean the -- the point is, 

if you -- if somebody has already looked at 

that data -- 

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 DR. NETON: I'm not convinced that they could 

even reveal that, though. 

 DR. ANDERSON: Well, I -- yeah, I -- well, I -- 

I would say you do -- you would know that. 

Whether you could reveal it or not, you know, 

it could -- it would help with the construction 

of the workgroup. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, let the Chair exercise that 

prerogative and appoint the working group of 

Mark Griffon and Bob Presley -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: Second. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- to carry that out and -- I 

don't -- I don't think it requires -- we'll 

take it that it's agreed to by the 

subcommittee, but I think the Chair has the 

prerogative of appointing workgroups, and these 

are ad hoc. It's a one-time job and they would 

report back to the Board. We'll try to 

coordinate their effort with our contractor and 

with the NIOSH person to gather the appropriate 

information. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Can I -- 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Anything else on Iowa at the 

moment? 

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apparently NIOSH -- Jim Neton, maybe -- if -- 

if there are any new declassified documents 

available for Iowa and are they on the O drive 

that we have access to or do you know? 

 DR. NETON: There are no additional 

declassified documents available from -- since 

the time that Rev. -- Revision 1 was -- was 

written and authorized by DOE as not containing 

classified information. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Revision 1 is this new revision. 

 DR. NETON: Correct, Revision 1 -- the 

documents -- there are no additional documents 

that have been declassified. What was 

determined to be declassified or unclassified 

was the content of Revision 1. Revision 1, as 

written by NIOSH, remained intact with no 

redactions by the Department of Energy. 

 DR. ZIEMER: At the time we were meeting 

Revision 1 actually existed. 

 DR. NETON: It existed, but it was undergoing 

classification -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: It was undergoing review, so we 
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 DR. NETON: Right. And in fact what happened 

is the Department of Energy did not redact 

anything from our Revision 1 of the document. 

It stayed completely intact as written, which 

could not have been a priori determined by 

NIOSH. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So we had Rev. 0 to work with. 

Rev. 1 existed, but couldn't be revealed to us 

'cause it was undergoing review by DOE, and 

then they didn't finish that review till after 

our meeting. Okay. 

 DR. ANDERSON: So is this -- we're hoping to 

get this done by the April call or are we 

waiting -- is this a July issue? 

 DR. WADE: Or by the April meeting. I mean it 

-- there's an April call in early April, and 

then there's an April meeting at the end of 

April -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: We're going to be in Iowa. 

 DR. WADE: We're going to be in Iowa, so it's 

our hope to have this -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: (Off microphone) 

(Unintelligible) 

 DR. WADE: -- by the April -- the end of April 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Right, and -- and -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: (Off microphone) 

(Unintelligible) have that time line. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And the meeting in -- the phone 

call meeting in early April will be one where 

we talk about process, including this issue of 

the Chair's handling of Iowa and what the Board 

would like to do with previous action, and 

what's coming up with this procedurally. We'll 

talk about that, we'll talk about the process 

for having the contractor assist with task 

orders and -- was there another item? 

 DR. WADE: Well, this issue of are there 

particular questions we would want to pose to 

SC&A relative to their review of the Iowa site 

profile, and we have asked them nothing at this 

point but to review the site profile. I think 

the Board might want to pose some particular 

questions, and that would be discussed on that 

call. 

 MR. GIBSON: NIOSH is -- NIOSH is going to 

bring the protective gear for the Advisory 

Board (unintelligible)? 
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 DR. ANDERSON: (Off microphone) 

(Unintelligible) 

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 (On microphone) I just think it's clear that we 

have our strategy, and if that changes that, 

you know, we make that known to everybody as 

soon as possible. And the other question I had 

is are we going to be -- are you going to be 

sending a letter detailing this to the 

Congressional people so they know what our -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: -- strategy is. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. I think Lew has had some 

contacts with the Congressional people. You 

know, I -- I've gotten -- in fact, my wife 

informs me today that I got another letter from 

the Senator today. Maybe it's the same one 

that I've already seen, but in any event, I'm -

- I'm somewhat hogtied in res-- I can't respond 

to those unilaterally, either. You recall the 

Board does not wish the Chair to respond to 

Congressional letters without the Board seeing 

them, so that's a little awkward. But Lew has 

had an opportunity to interact a bit with the 

staff on the Hill, so they're aware of some of 

these issues. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: They're not necessarily happy with 

them, but they're aware of what's going on. 

 DR. WADE: I do meet with the delegations from 

Iowa and I do understand their concerns, and 

NIOSH is communicating -- we believe very 

clearly -- with them as to events past, present 

and future. 

DR. ANDERSON: Okay, that -- I just -- I just 

want to be sure that our communication lines 

are -- are not going to lead to us getting some 

other irate comments. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, one thing that will be very 

difficult is if we get out to Cedar Rapids and 

we are not ready -- we don't have the 

information, we don't have the report or we 

haven't reviewed the new document or we're not 

-- 

 MR. GRIFFON: We may not have clearances by 

then. I mean I hope we can expedite them, but 

-- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, and if that occurs, that -- 

that's going to be extremely awkward to go out 

there and not be in a position to act on the 

Iowa petition. In fact, it may -- you know, we 
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1 -- we may all head to Oak Ridge instead. 

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 MR. ESPINOSA: Just make sure Cori sits us up 

close to the exit. 

 DR. MAURO: Excuse me, Dr. Ziemer, I have a 

process question related to these -- unlike the 

other site profile reviews, it was a process 

whereby there was -- where we would generate a 

list of questions, then we would deliver them -

- and there was -- it was a protracted process. 

What we're in a mode now is that we sent you 

the first set of approximately 50 questions. 

Since that date I received additional -- we're 

still working, as you can imagine, and we have 

about another seven or eight more questions 

that have been sent to me. 

 The question becomes can we somehow construct a 

living process over the next three weeks -- 

'cause that's what we've got -- whereby we -- 

we're -- we're maturing in our understanding of 

the issues. Our questions are getting more 

refined. I'd like to move those out, have them 

be -- some of them may be very good questions, 

some of them may be not very good questions; 

we're not at a position yet to be able to make 

that distinction. 
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 Normally we would spend a lot more time 

researching our questions, reading the back-up 

literature so that we don't ask silly 

questions. I'd -- right now I'm not so worried 

about that. I'd like to move out the questions 

as they're generated. They'll go through an 

internal SC&A screening to make sure that 

they're appropriate and reasonable, but I'd 

like to keep moving them out to you folks and 

to NIOSH so they could see in real time where 

we are. 

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 And then now the question becomes how do we 

engage in the dialogue with NIOSH and the Board 

in a living process? For example, there could 

be certainly phone calls. There should -- they 

may be recorded, but I'd like to request a mode 

of operation that is more continuous and 

interactive as we move through the next three 

weeks, which is somewhat different than what 

we've done in the past. I think that only in 

that way will we get to the point where we can 

deliver a report to you that you will have at 

least a week -- hopefully a little more -- 

before the meeting that would represent -- a 

report that is -- is a mature report that has 
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received adequate interaction with factual 

reviews. So it becomes a little bit more of a 

living process. Whether or not NIOSH and the 

Board would like to proceed in that fashion, 

that's how we'd like to proceed. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: When John first posed this -- 

essentially this question to me, it -- in terms 

of what should the Board's role in this be, and 

of course none of us individually can act on 

behalf of the Board, so it is my sense of it 

that these questions essentially become 

questions to NIOSH relative to their document 

and -- 

DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and -- and John is expecting 

their response. It seems to me the Board can 

track what's going on, and Board members may 

even raise additional questions or ask for 

clarification of things. But we can't answer 

the questions in terms of a Board position. 

DR. MAURO: Uh-huh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But I thought it would be useful -

- and this is kind of a new process, at least 

be aware of what's going on so I -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Kept in the loop. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Kept in the loop, and at some 

point, if there is going to be sort of a faceto-face -- like an issue resolution time, we 

certainly want to have a presence there. But 

otherwise, this is kind of a new -- this is a 

special situation. But the Board's not really 

in a position to sort of take any actions on 

those questions other than to be aware of what 

they are, what's being raised and -- and having 

the new document. If we have questions to 

raise we can throw those in the pot and say 

yeah -- or -- or would you consider this 

additional part of a -- of a question that's 

already been asked or whatever. So I think 

we're free to do that 'cause you can ask a 

question. That doesn't represent a Board 

position. But -- but to go back and say this 

is -- this is how you should resolve that, I 

don't want to do that; I don't think we want 

others to do that. So these will essentially 

be questions for NIOSH -- 

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 DR. MAURO: Yes -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- to deal with. 

 DR. MAURO: -- but we also recognize that it 

should -- the dialogue with NIOSH should be one 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. MAURO: -- as part of the process, because 

we're anxious to engage NIOSH on the first set 

of 50 questions. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. And so insofar as there's 

responses, I think we want to hear the 

responses. Jim, just keep us in the loop. And 

then at some point if there's a sit-down or a 

telephone kind of conference needed, we want to 

have a Board presence there and we can do that 

on an ad hoc basis, I think. 

 DR. WADE: Let's just talk through that. So -- 

I mean I would commit that any contact between 

SC&A and NIOSH on this issue would be recorded 

and a transcript kept. Do you want a Board 

member to be present on any phone call between 

SC&A and NIOSH at this point? I'm asking this 

question now -- I'm asking the Board that -- or 

the subcommittee that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It seems to me that there'd have 

to be a judgment on the level of significance 

of the phone call. 

 DR. WADE: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: If somebody just said what did you 
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mean when you asked that question, what does 

this word mean, that's one thing. If they're 

going to have a dialogue and debate some issue, 

I think that's where we're talking about -- 

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 DR. MAURO: That's what I mean. The nature of 

the relationship is a dialogue, that's an 

ongoing dialogue. And given the ground rules 

of transparency, I believe it's important that 

certainly Board members be -- listen in and be 

part of that -- selected Board members. We 

could certainly, if it's a telephone call, have 

it recorded, have a court -- I'm not sure how 

you'd like to proceed, but I'm looking for 

guidance from the Board on when we engage in 

this -- what I'd like to be called -- call an 

ongoing dialogue over the next three weeks. It 

may be -- it may involve a weekly telephone 

call to NIOSH that we would continue the 

dialogue because as you could almost imagine -- 

right now Kathy DeMers is out interviewing 

folks related to these matters. Very soon Joe 

and Kathy will be looking at classified 

documents and -- and we're -- and -- our list 

of questions is going to evolve, and I'd like 

the Board and NIOSH to be close to this process 
337

because when we deliver the report three weeks 

from now, I -- I would -- I would hope that's 

not the first time NIOSH and the Board sees our 

report. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I think it's going to have 

to be Bob and Mark -- well, I mean the -- the 

questions are going to start to impinge on -- 

on -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, we certainly can't discuss 

classified information on a phone call, so I'd 

say maybe -- maybe Bob and I, but maybe someone 

else, as well, if you want a third person. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I'd be glad to be in the 

loop, but I -- it's -- it's not clear to me at 

this point -- 

 DR. WADE: Can I? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. WADE: Let me propose this solution, that 

any interaction -- be it on the phone or face 

to face -- between SC&A and NIOSH on this issue 

will be recorded. Any interaction, the Board 

will be notified of that interaction and 

allowed to participate, if they wish. But on 

those issues that, in the opinion of NIOSH 

and/or SC&A elevate to a certain level that it 
338

appears to be a substantive interaction, that 

those would not take place without a Board 

member present. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: That's (unintelligible), yeah. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you. Okay? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Is that okay? Okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Let me -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Can I ask if -- if we're closing 

on Iowa, I've got to -- I -- some of us 

probably have flights, but I have one question 

on logistics on Iowa. If -- if -- assuming we 

get these clearances in a timely fashion, SCA 

is going to provide to us in their site profile 

review a -- a review of some of that 

information, classified records. I'm sure that 

they're going to have to run that through the 

same declassification process that NIOSH went 

through with Rev. 1, so there's another -- 

another delay in there. I'm getting quite 

nervous about the time frame and what we're 

setting ourselves up for in Iowa, you know, 

just to put -- just to put that out there. I 

mean it's not only getting the clearances, it's 

anything they generate that -- that is covering 
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classified items, certainly they're going to 

have to run that through a declassification 

officer to assure that it's not -- they're not 

generating a classified document. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Does that -- 

 DR. NETON: Unless their decision was that they 

were in complete agreement with the NIOSH 

profile and there were no -- no dissenting 

opinions, I suppose. But yeah, to the extent 

where there were differences that are raised 

based on the classified information, yeah, it 

would have to be reviewed. We've been -- we've 

been having very good cooperation with the 

Department of Energy thus far, though, on 

obtaining quick and prompt reviews of documents 

that have been generated. I have to say the 

cooperation there has been excellent within the 

Office of Worker Advocacy. 

 I had a quick question, though, on -- on what 

is meant by "recording". I expect these 

discussions to be fairly -- fairly spontaneous 

as they arise, and are we referring to a 

physical recording or a court recorder with a 

transcript, because that -- that would be a 

limiting factor, I think. It's very difficult 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, in the past haven't we just 

kept minutes of these interactions, John, if 

they're not face-to-face? 

 DR. MAURO: The last expanded review cycle 

there was a court reporter. 

 DR. ZIEMER: On the telephone? 

 DR. MAURO: On the telephone. That was the one 

that was on January 12th at the McLean office. 

 MR. GRIFFON: But that was -- that was -- I 

think that was where we raised it to the higher 

bar, maybe -- 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, we did. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- so... 

 DR. MAURO: I think that we're operating on 

that. See, this is not a factual review 

process now. This is going to be an engagement 

-- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: -- where I believe it's on that 

level where we're going to be discussing issues 

of substance. Certainly there's going to be 

this classification overriding problem. I'm 

not quite sure how we're going to deal with 

that. That is, I -- I don't have the 
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classification, but I know right now I'm very 

interested in finding out whether or not the 

construct for the pre-'62 pit is in fact a 

bounding situation. And we have a list of at 

least a dozen questions that are in the set of 

50 that we'd like answered, and -- and to 

discuss with NIOSH. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: I think given the nature of this 

review and its potential impact on the 

petition, I think we need to transcribe these, 

at least for this -- 

 DR. WADE: We certainly need to -- to have the 

ability to have a transcript. We'll work out 

the details of recording and transcript or -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

 DR. WADE: -- or actual -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. WADE: But we'll have a recording of 

everything that's discussed. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Do we need to have a Plan B for 

the meeting if we don't finish the Iowa work in 

time for -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: What's the drop-dead date for... 

 DR. ZIEMER: This is a difficult question for 

Cori, but I mean if we go to Iowa and we're not 
342

prepared to act on the petition, I think it's 

going to be a disaster. 

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 DR. WADE: Well, I think we have to use that 

meeting we have the first week in April to 

decide if we're ready to go or not. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, and we'll bring it up -- 

 DR. WADE: We might have to cancel the meeting. 

 MS. HOMER: I need to sign the contract very 

soon. 

 DR. WADE: Well, we'll work through those -- 

 MS. HOMER: Mid-week next week. 

 DR. WADE: We'll work through those details. I 

think on our call in early April if we feel 

we're not prepared, we need to make that 

decision then and to take the appropriate 

steps. 

 DR. ANDERSON: That's two weeks. Right? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, it's coming up very rapidly. 

 DR. DEHART: Do we have a date and time for the 

call? 

 MS. HOMER: I'm sorry? 

 DR. WADE: Date and time for the call in early 

April. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't think we -- 

 MS. HOMER: April 5th -- it's most likely going 
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for that call? 

DR. ANDERSON: Eastern time? 

 MS. HOMER: Eastern. 

 DR. WADE: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Eastern time. 

 DR. WADE: We have a quorum. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Is there anything else on Iowa 

that we need to discuss? What about 

Mallinckrodt? 

 DR. WADE: I mean I do think we've had it 

reported to us -- I mean the revised site 

profile has been issued by NIOSH and is in the 

hands of SC&A and John, we -- the Board could 

expect to see the SC&A review when? 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, we started work -- in fact, I 

actually have a little mini-report that was 

sent to me yesterday by FAX. We've identified 

some of the issues and we're moving 

aggressively. We will meet our one-month 

commitment from the date we were turned on. I 

think we were turned on a week ago. We will -- 

we will deliver within the one-week -- onemonth period, as we discussed at the last 
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meeting. And it will be -- basically the -- 

the report will take the form of each of the 

issues -- findings and observations, as you 

recall, the degree to which the Mallinckrodt 

report addresses those issues and the degree to 

which we concur or -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: What is your delivery date? 

 DR. MAURO: One month -- when -- the day -- one 

month from the day you asked us to proceed, 

which was I believe sometime last -- last week. 

I'm trying to think of the exact date. I'd 

have to go check in my records, but -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's roughly April 15th, though. 

 DR. MAURO: Yeah, we're -- we're -- yeah, we're 

-- well, we're -- middle of April is when we 

plan to deliver it. I don't have the exact 

date, but that's about one month. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And then there has to be an 

opportunity for NIOSH to -- 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- respond. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So we're -- what we're looking for 

at our -- if we're going to -- we've committed 

to take action on Mallinckrodt at our next 
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meeting. And to do that, we not only need the 

SC&A review, but we need the NIOSH response. 

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 DR. MAURO: We're -- we're a lot more 

optimistic of being able to deliver our work 

product to you early, with adequate time for 

discussion with the Board and NIOSH regarding 

our review of Mallinckrodt than we are with 

regard to Iowa. We're -- we're nervous about 

whether we're going to be able to do 

(unintelligible) -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, but then -- but then NIOSH 

needs some turnaround time, also, on -- before 

our meeting, and I don't know -- Jim -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Eight days. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- that's pushing your folks quite 

a bit -- 

 DR. WADE: Wait, John, am I -- do I understand 

that in -- factored into your delivery date to 

the Board is an opportunity for you to have a 

discussion with NIOSH? 

 DR. MAURO: We certainly could work that in. 

That is right -- for example, right now I have 

a list of our preliminary observations related 

to Rev. 1 of Mallinckrodt. I've got it here in 
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my hand. In theory, we could convene a meeting 

right now and sit down and go over each of 

these items and talk about them. 

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 We could certainly wait until we -- this -- 

this is a very early response. We could -- 

certainly we could have that meeting early 

April to go over our initial list of findings 

so that -- and deliver our report by April 

15th. At that time you'll actually have the 

report and I think what -- with at least a 

week, I guess, in front of us for -- before the 

-- before the meeting. The meeting is 

scheduled for the 24th. So -- so -- I mean it 

-- 

 DR. ZIEMER: It seems to me if NIOSH sees it 

for the first time when we see it that they're 

really behind the eight ball. 

DR. MAURO: I could -- I mean I could certainly 

leave with NIOSH right now the memo that I have 

of what our initial reactions are. I mean I'm 

-- is that appropriate? Because I have in my 

hand -- our team has reviewed the -- gave the 

first review -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, that could be similar to the 

early -- it's almost like the early factual 
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review before it comes to the Board, chance for 

NIOSH to look at... 

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 DR. MAURO: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Does that seem right to the 

others? 

 DR. DEHART: I don't know how far along he is. 

 DR. MAURO: It's very early. The bottom line 

is we had two individuals -- we -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, we don't want you -- don't 

want NIOSH spending a lot of time on things 

that may go away when -- 

 DR. MAURO: That's true. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think you have to use some 

judgment as to when they need to see that, but 

I'm just concerned that they have an 

opportunity before the Board meeting if -- if 

we get to the Board meeting and NIOSH hasn't 

had a chance to sort of do whatever review of 

your findings, then we're back in an awkward 

position in terms of taking action. 

DR. MAURO: I gue-- if I had my 'druthers, the 

-- sometime the first week in April to deliver 

our list of findings and observations related 

to Rev. 1 of Mallinckrodt, have our conference 

call, our mee-- physical face-to-face meeting 
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with NIOSH regarding our initial -- not our 

initial, basically our findings, get feedback 

and then prepare our report and deliver by the 

15th. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Does that make sense to others? I 

-- seems reasonable to me. 

 DR. WADE: More than reasonable. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now Jim, you want to comment and -

- 'cause it impacts on your group and -- 

 DR. NETON: I guess I would like to clarify -- 

I believe SC&A's reviewing the entire document. 

Is that -- is that correct, John? I mean back 

to 1942? 

DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 DR. NETON: And I'm concerned -- if the time is 

of the essence here, has not the Board already 

made a recommendation about the early years at 

Mallinckrodt? So are we -- are we -- do we 

really want to expend a lot of effort in SC&A 

reviewing material that the Board has already 

decided is not useful for doing dose 

reconstructions? 

 DR. ZIEMER: There's only one group at 

Mallinckrodt that we have to take action on. 

That's the -- 
349

 DR. NETON: Well, that's my point, and so do we 

really -- would it be best served if we focused 

on the quality issues related to the discussion 

that's going to occur at the Board meeting 

rather than have SC&A review the entire 

document, going back -- and I think the early 

years were the more problematic, sticky points 

in the first review. 

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priori-- prioritize that. 

 DR. NETON: That's what I was trying to get -- 

and you know, at the risk of changing SC&A's 

direction midstream here, I just bring that up 

as a -- as a point. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, that's -- we have to take 

action on that third group. I forget those 

years, but that -- that clearly needs to be 

where the focus is. 

 MR. GRIFFON: John, is that agreeable? 

 DR. MAURO: (Off microphone) Yeah, we were 

(unintelligible) -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. MAURO: So as I understand it, the emphasis 

will be on those 1947 to -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: But -- yeah -- 
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 DR. WADE: '49. 

 DR. MAURO: '49, '49. That would be where the 

emphasis should be. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: That is -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: We don't want you or NIOSH 

expending a lot of effort on the periods that -

- where the decision has already been made. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: Fine. 

 DR. WADE: Just on Mallinckrodt, you know, the 

Board did make it -- send its letter to the 

Secretary. The NIOSH director has prepared his 

statement consistent with the Board 

recommendation and that's in the hands of the 

Secretary now. The clock is -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, the clock is going on that. 

 DR. WADE: -- ticking. I think there might be 

15 days left for -- for the Secretary to take 

action. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Rich? 

 MR. ESPINOSA: Just a -- on the recommendations 

that went from the Board to NIOSH and from 

NIOSH to the Secretary, is there any way the 
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Board can receive the information that was sent 

to the Secretary (unintelligible) -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, yes. 

 DR. WADE: Well, I mean we've got to be care-- 

the -- what you sent to the NIOSH director I 

think can be shared, if you wish, with the 

Board clearly. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But certainly my cover letter, 

which has the Board's recommendations, there -- 

there are a lot of trans-- there were 

attachments, like the transcripts and the -- 

the handouts that Denise -- that we already 

have, so you're just talking about the 

recommendation letter, I believe. Right? 

 MR. ESPINOSA: Well, I would like everything -- 

I would like what is sent from the Board to 

NIOSH, the -- the whole package. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The whole package, okay. Well, 

it's the -- it's the letter -- my cover letter. 

It's like 500 pages of the transcripts -- well, 

actually it's only the transcripts for the day 

in which we did the Mallinckrodt thing -- 

 DR. WADE: Uh-huh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- so it's only about -- perhaps -

- it's about 250 pages of transcripts. It's 
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some PowerPoint presentations by Larry. It's 

the petition itself. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: It's all the materials that we 

have. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's all the materials related to 

the petition, petition review, the transcripts. 

It's Denise's presentation, Larry's 

presentation. It's the -- the transcripts of 

all the comments by the -- by the public, and 

then -- and then a summary of our 

recommendations verbatim as we approved them in 

the meeting. But yeah, we can -- yeah. 

MR. ESPINOSA: I'm not so much worried about 

the information that we were privileged to at 

the meeting. It's the information that has 

came (sic) out that -- going from NIOSH to the 

Secretary. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, from NIOSH to the Secretary. 

 DR. WADE: Now that -- as -- and you can 

correct me if I'm wrong, Liz, but I think that 

the -- the NIOSH director's package is 

considered pre-decisional at this point, so it 

is not public. It will be public once the -- 

once the Secretary acts on it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I don't know what the -- I 
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presume the Secretary will take our stuff, 

together with other information from the 

agency, and send that forward. I think -- I 

think the only thing I can commit to is what we 

sent to -- 

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understand that. I'm not concerned about the 

stuff that we're privileged to in the meeting. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Already, okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: So once that's a final decision -

- that's a good point, Rich -- 

 MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- once that's finalized, we -- 

we will get a copy of. 

 DR. WADE: Liz, is that correct? Once the 

Secretary makes his decision, that entire 

package will be available to the public. 

 DR. ZIEMER: To the Board. 

 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what 

you're asking for -- 

 MR. ESPINOSA: That's exactly -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- what goes up to the Secretary 

from NIOSH. 

 MR. ESPINOSA: That's exactly what I'm asking. 
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 DR. WADE: Well, again, we need to be careful. 

What goes from the NIOSH director to the 

Secretary is pre-decisional and not available 

till the Secretary acts on it. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Till the Secretary acts on it. 

 DR. WADE: Then it is available. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Okay, any other comments or 

any other items that we need to consider before 

our telephone conference meeting? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, just the procedures review, 

task three. We wanted to -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- discuss the process. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, procedures review, task 

three. Mark, you had a -- did you have a 

recommendation on that? I'll go ahead and give 

you the floor on that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I don't have any specific 

information with me. I just think we need to 

discuss a process going forward on how -- when 

-- how and when we're going to deal with that 

as a full Board. And I thought that it might 

be an appropriate task item for the 

subcommittee to at least take an initial crack 

at to -- 
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 MR. GRIFFON: -- review and -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- their report -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- provide a summary to the full 

Board. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We have the report -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- from SC&A on the procedures 

review, and it -- because of the fullness of 

the agenda last meeting, we simply -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- deferred acting on it, but 

would you like it to come to the subcommittee 

first and talk about it? This could even occur 

at our next -- prior to the next Board meeting. 

 MR. GRIFFON: That's what I would propose is 

let's put it on the agenda for the next 

subcommittee before the full Board meeting -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Before the full Board meeting. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- just one day right before the 

-- yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

 MR. GRIFFON: So let's have it on the agenda 

there. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. Is that agreeable? 
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 DR. ANDERSON: (Off microphone) Yes, 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's do that and we'll have 

it then -- have it ready to look at then. 

Thank you. 

 Any other items? 

 DR. WADE: I'd just like to close -- I mean I'm 

as sensitive, maybe more so than you, on the 

timing of the Iowa meeting and -- and we'll be 

watching very, very closely to see where we 

are. And if at some point it looks like we 

cannot have a meaningful meeting, then I'll -- 

then I'll bring that information to you, Paul, 

and we'll have to discuss what to do. But at 

this point -- I mean I -- I hold out the hope 

that we will be able to have a meaningful 

meeting on the Iowa petition in -- at the end 

of April in Iowa. And as soon as I'm disabused 

of that, I'll let you know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Any other questions, 

comments? Michael? 

 MR. GIBSON: If we're not prepared for the Iowa 

meeting are we going to -- we still have plenty 

of other work we need to be doing. Are we 

going to have a meeting somewhere else? 
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 DR. ZIEMER: We're still going to meet. It's -

- the issue would be do you -- do you go into 

the lion's den without anything to feed to the 

lions. 

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 DR. DEHART: If we go into the lion's den, 

we're giving them something to feed on. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, us. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Us. Yes, we will definitely have 

a meeting, so the question -- and Iowa wasn't 

on -- on the picture for the next meeting until 

this issue came up on the Iowa petition. We 

were going to meet in Oak Ridge, actually. I 

think -- I think Robert was a little 

disappointed 'cause he was ready to break out 

his barbecue, so... 

 MR. GIBSON: I think we also committed, prior 

to being delayed going to San Francisco, to 

meet in Washington, which we have not done. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's correct. That's correct. 

Okay, any other items? Motion to adjourn? 

 UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Motion to 

adjourn. 

 DR. ZIEMER: All in favor will please leave. 

Thank you. 

(Whereupon, the subcommittee adjourned at 12:10 p.m.) 
358

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 March 24 and 25, 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 

17th day of April, 2005. 

_____________________ 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102