THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

convenes the 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

 VOLUME I 

 The verbatim transcript of the Meeting of the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health held 

at The Westin Cincinnati, 21 East Fifth Street, 

Cincinnati, Ohio, on January 7 and 8, 2003. 
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C O N T E N T S

 VOLUME I 

January 7, 2003 

REGISTRATION AND WELCOME 

 Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair ..................................7 

 Mr. Larry Elliott, Executive Secretary .................10 

 Board Members 

REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF DRAFT MINUTES, MEETINGS 8 & 9 

 Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair .................................10 

 

PROGRAM STATUS REPORT 

 Mr. Dave Sundin, NIOSH .................................19 

STATUS OF DOSE RECONSTRUCTION AND CONTRACT SUPPORT 

 Dr. James Neton, NIOSH .................................34 

AWE SITE PROFILE DEVELOPMENT 

 Dr. Richard Toohey, NIOSH ORAU Team ....................61 

 

DOSE RECONSTRUCTION WORKGROUP 

 Mr. Mark Griffon, Workgroup Chair. . . . . . . . . . . 97 

BOARD DISCUSSION/WORKING SESSION 

DRAFT ATTACHMENTS A, C, D & E. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 

BOARD DISCUSSION/WORKING SESSION. . . . . . . . . . . . .217 

 

PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 

ADJOURN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 

January 8, 2003 

REGISTRATION AND WELCOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 

ADMINISTRATIVE HOUSEKEEPING AND BOARD WORK SCHEDULE. . . 273 

PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .293 

ADJOURN PUBLIC SESSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 

 

COURT REPORTER'S CERTIFICATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . .306 
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 TRANSCRIPT LEGEND

 The following transcript contains quoted material. 

Such material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

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

unintentional or purposeful interruption of a sentence. An 

ellipsis (. . .) indicates halting speech or an unfinished 

sentence in dialogue or omission(s) of word(s) when reading 

written material. 

 In the following transcript (sic) denotes an incorrect 

usage or pronunciation of a word which is transcribed in its 

original form as reported. 

 In the following transcript (phonetically) indicates a 

phonetic spelling of the word if no confirmation of the 

correct spelling is available. 

 In the following transcript "uh-huh" represents an 

affirmative response, and "uh-uh" represents a negative 

response. 

 In the following transcript "*" denotes a spelling 

based on phonetics, without reference available. 

 In the following transcript (inaudible) signifies 

mechanical failure or speaker failure. 
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P A R T I C I P A N T S

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

BOARD MEMBERS

CHAIR

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D. 

Professor Emeritus 

School of Health Sciences 

Purdue University 

Lafayette, Indiana 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY

ELLIOTT, Larry J.

Director, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Cincinnati, Ohio 

 

 

MEMBERSHIP

ANDERSON, Henry A., M.D. 

Chief Medical Officer 

Occupational and Environmental Health 

Wisconsin Division of Public Health 

Madison, Wisconsin 

ANDRADE, Antonio, Ph.D. 

Group Leader 

Radiation Protection Services Group 

Los Alamos National Laboratory 

Los Alamos, New Mexico 

 

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

Director 

The Vanderbilt Center for Occupational and Environmental 

Medicine 

Professor of Medicine 

Nashville, Tennessee 

ESPINOSA, Richard Lee 

Sheet Metal Workers Union Local #49 

Johnson Controls 

Los Alamos National Laboratory 

Espanola, New Mexico 
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GIBSON, Michael H. 

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union 

Local 5-4200 

Miamisburg, Ohio 

GRIFFON, Mark A. 

President 

Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc. 

Salem, New Hampshire 

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

Director 

New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund 

Albany, New York 

MUNN, Wanda I. (Present via telephone) 

 Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired) 

Richland, Washington 

PRESLEY, Robert W. 

Special Projects Engineer 

BWXT Y12 National Security Complex 

Clinton, Tennessee 

ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D. 

Professor Emeritus 

University of Florida 

Elysian, Minnesota 

AGENDA SPEAKERS

Mr. Mark Griffon, Workgroup Chair 

Dr. James Neton, NIOSH 

Mr. Dave Sundin, NIOSH 

Dr. Richard Toohey, NIOSH 

STAFF/VENDORS

CORI HOMER, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH 

MARIE MURRAY, Writer/Editor 
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STEVEN RAY GREEN, Certified Merit Court Reporter 
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AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS

Beatty, Sr., Everett "Ray" 

Beck, Wm L 

Bingham, Eula 

Cisco, Jeanne 

Fleming, Kenny 

Fowee, Steven R 

Griffin, Jim 

Henshaw, Russ 

Hinnefeld, Stu 

Homoki-Titus, Liz 

Katz, Ted 

Kotsch, Jeffrey L 

Lewis, Mark 

Malone, Greg 

McGowan, Bill 

Miller, Richard 

Morawetz, John S 

Mullens, Paul 

Naimon, David 

Presley, Louise S 

Ray, Sam 

Russell, Leland 

Schaeffer, D Michael 

Stuenkel, David 

Tabor, Bob 

Tankersley, Bill 

Thomas, Elyse 

Tinsley, Richard 

Toohey, R E 
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P R O C E E D I N G S

 8:30 a.m. 

REGISTRATION AND WELCOME

DR. ZIEMER: Good morning, everyone. I'd like to call the 

meeting to order. This is the tenth meeting of the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health. We'll give 

everyone just a moment to find their seats. 

I'm going to begin with a few announcements this morning. 

I'm Paul Ziemer, Chairman of the Advisory Board. We will 

not formally introduce the members of the Board. If you 

are a member of the public, you can identify the Board 

members by their placards in front of them. We will have 

an opportunity a little later for members of the public to 

introduce themselves, and also opportunities for public 

comment. 

I do remind you to register your attendance. This goes for 

not only visitors, but Board members as well. Register 

your attendance in the book back on the table near the 

entrance there. 

Also if you're a member of the public and wish to make 

public comment during the public comment period, we ask 

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that you sign up for that. This is mainly so we have some 

idea of how to allot the time, depending on numbers of 

individuals who wish to make public comment. 

 There are a number of handouts on the table over here, 4 

including copies of the agenda. If you didn't get a copy 

of the agenda, please help yourself at the table there. 

There are also copies of minutes of the recent meetings 

and some other handouts that will be used in the meeting 

today. 

One minor change on the agenda and that is the topic in midmorning on AWE site profiles. That presentation will be 

given by Dr. Toohey rather than by Dr. Neton. Richard 

Toohey will present that. 

I would like to inform you that Leon Owens, one of the Board 

members, is unable to be here today as a conflict arose in 

his schedule and he contacted us just a couple of days ago 

and indicated that he would not be able to be here. Also, 

we received word from Wanda Munn just last evening. She 

got stranded in the airport. Apparently her flight 

actually got canceled and she was not able to get another 

flight, and Wanda was not -- is not able to make it here 

from Richland, Washington. It's an all-day issue just 

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getting here. I think Wanda may, however, be on the 

phone. And we have a speaker -- I don't know if it's a 

speaker phone, but there's a phone and -- Wanda, are you 

there? 

MS. MUNN: Yes, I am. 

DR. ZIEMER: There's Wanda. Okay. She's sitting right in 

the middle of the group here, so Wanda, we'll do our best 

to keep it loud enough for you to hear. I know it's 

pretty tough to be on a telephone conference for hours on 

end, so if you drift off, that's all right. Well, maybe 

not. 

MS. MUNN: I expect to be here as much as possible. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, we appreciate your willingness to be with 

us by phone. 

MS. MUNN: Well, I appreciate your setting up the phone for 

me. Thank you very much. 

DR. ZIEMER: One other sort of semi-critical item is that 

you can't get into the restrooms without a secret code. 

The restrooms are right outside the door here. The secret 

code is not so secret. It's posted there on a poster at 

the tables, so as you go out, you just have to remember 

the number long enough to get across the hall and then 

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you'll be all set. Is it the same code for both doors? I 

guess it is. 

 DR. MELIUS: 3 And you can use your room key if you -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Oh, the room key works. 

 DR. MELIUS: 5 -- your memories doesn't hold up. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Okay, if your memory doesn't hold, use your 

room key. Thank you very much. 

 We're going to proceed with the agenda. I'm going to just 8 

turn it over a moment to our executive secretary, Larry 

Elliott. Larry, if you have a few comments, and then 

we'll proceed into the agenda. 

WELCOME

MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. I'd just like to 

welcome the members of the Board and the public to the -- 

this meeting. Welcome to Cincinnati. I hope your stay 

here is pleasant, and if there's anything that Cori or I 

can do to make it more enjoyable, just let us know. 

Thanks. 

REVIEW/APPROVAL OF DRAFT MINUTES, MEETINGS 8 & 9

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Larry. We'll proceed with the 

review and approval of the draft minutes. For the Board, 

you received copies of the draft minutes by e-mail several 

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days ago. There are also copies of the draft minutes in 

your binder for this meeting. As we've done in the past, 

we'd like to concentrate on items of content and issue 

that are not simply spelling or grammatical errors. If 

you have spelling or grammatical errors, such as the 

correct spelling of NIOSH, which shows up in the minutes 

as NOSH -- it's an abbreviated version, probably due to 

some automatic spell correcting thing on somebody's 

computer, but other than those kinds of things. 

We will first look at the minutes for the October 15th and 

16th meeting, the Santa Fe meeting, and I'd like to focus 

first on the executive summary, and then we will do the 

main meeting minutes. So let me ask if there are any 

additions or corrections to the executive summary. That 

would begin on page -- essentially 3/10 through 10/10. 

Yes, comment? 

MR. NAIMON: Yes, Dr. -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Staff comment. 

MR. NAIMON: Yes, thank you. On page -- 

WRITER/EDITOR: State your name. 

MR. NAIMON: This is David Naimon from the Office of General 

Counsel, HHS. In the summary of my presentation there's a 

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small but important change that needs to be made. In the 

second sentence it says (Reading) One, ABRWH members may 

not speak on behalf of the agency, department or ABRWH 

unless a majority of members approved the position. 

 That should read that Board members may not speak on behalf 5 

of the agency or the Department, comma, and may not speak 

for the ABRWH unless a majority of the members approved 

the position. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Okay. Let me ask if the recorder got that 

change. And I believe the focus there is that it's the -- 

only the Board's position that a member could speak out 

on, if the Board approved such, but not on agency 

positions. Is that correct? 

MR. NAIMON: Yeah, that's correct. The Board does not speak 

for the agency. The agency -- 

DR. ZIEMER: In any event. 

MR. NAIMON: -- speaks for the agency. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

MR. NAIMON: Right. And in the next sentence, the word 

"regardless" should come out and then at the end it should 

say "was learned at an ABRWH meeting or otherwise, comma, 

with anyone." 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 That's the sentence that begins with the word 

"Two"? 

 MR. NAIMON: 3 Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 So it would now read, what? 

 MR. NAIMON: 5 It would now read: Two, ABRWH members should 

not discuss the merits of individual claims of whether the 

-- whether the information was learned at an ABRWH meeting 

or otherwise, with anyone. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Adding the words "or otherwise, with anyone." 

Thank you. 

Are there other corrections or additions? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: If not, I'd like a motion to accept the 

executive summary with those changes that were noted. 

DR. ANDERSON: So moved. 

DR. ZIEMER: And seconded? 

DR. DEHART: Seconded. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Are we ready to vote on the executive 

summary? All who favor approval, say aye. 

(Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: All opposed, say no. 

(No responses) 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 Motion carries. Now let's look at the main 

minutes. While you're looking at that I would like to 

point out -- I always have the opportunity to take a crack 

at these before you see them, and one of the changes that 

I suggested and I'd like -- if this is agreeable, is to 

somehow separate out formal actions. They've done that 

here by having those put into a italics so that they stand 

out wherever there's been a formal motion and a vote. Is 

that -- is there a different way that the Board would like 

to see -- it seems to me it's worth having those easy to 

pick out in the minutes. Is that -- everybody agreeable 

to that formatting? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Now are there corrections or additions? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Staff, any corrections? 

MR. NAIMON: Dr. Ziemer -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Same thing? 

MR. NAIMON: -- there are similar changes on pages 34 and 35 

to what we just discussed. 

DR. ZIEMER: Are they specifically the same or do we need to 

go through them, David? 

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 MR. NAIMON: 1 The language are not -- is not identical, but 

the -- the bottom line is the same. I'd be glad to -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 Maybe for the record you could point out the 

specific sentences so we make sure that we all are on the 

same page here. Page 34 then. 

 MR. NAIMON: 6 Page 34 where it says Scenario 1. It should 

read: ABRWH members may not speak on behalf of the agency 

or the Department, period. They also can't speak on 

behalf of the ABRWH, and then it continues as it reads 

there, unless a majority of members approved the position. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. And then the other one? 

MR. NAIMON: On page 35 under Scenario 2, ABRWH members 

should not speak about the merits of individual claims 

with anyone, including the individual claimant. You can 

delete "regardless of" and then it would say "whether the 

information was learned at an ABRWH meeting or otherwise." 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

MR. NAIMON: Thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: Any other corrections, additions, deletions? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Then a motion to accept these minutes, with the 

change noted, would be in order. 

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 DR. ANDRADE: 1 So noted. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 So moved. Seconded? 

 MR. ESPINOSA: 3 Second. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Are you ready to vote? Okay, all in favor of 

accepting the minutes, with the change noted -- changes 

noted, please say aye. 

 (Affirmative 7 responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Any opposed, say no. 

 (No 9 responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Motion carries. We then move to the conference 

call meeting of December 12th. There's simply minutes. 

We don't do executive summaries on the conference calls 

since they're much shorter than a regular meeting. 

Let me ask for corrections or additions in the minutes of 

the conference call meeting of December 12th. Yes, Roy 

DeHart. 

DR. DEHART: Just one addition I would have. On the first 

page where we are listing the people who participated, I 

think it would be appropriate to show that I was off at 

3:00 o'clock, and list that formally. We refer to it 

later in the body of the minutes. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Roy DeHart until 3:00 p.m. Thank you. 

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later in the minutes. 

 Yes, Mark. 3 

 MR. GRIFFON: 4 Just a question on page 4 and 5 commenting -- 

it's at the second half of page 4. There's a list of 

comments, comments included, and on most of the comments 

there is individuals referenced. On several of them 

there's not and I just -- it would have been helpful for 

me to -- to know who made certain comments, and I don't -- 

DR. ZIEMER: I wonder if we can ask the recorder if you can 

-- 

MS. MURRAY: I could fill that in. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- able to retrieve that. It would be probably 

the first bullet. 

MR. GRIFFON: Well, there's several going into page 5 where 

it's not indicated. And it might be that -- some of those 

I think were NIOSH comments. 

DR. ZIEMER: And can we agree, rather than try to retrieve 

all that information now, that we simply go back and 

insert those? Thank you, that's very helpful. 

Other comments? 

(No responses) 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 I see none. Okay. Motion to approve? 

 DR. MELIUS: 2 So moved. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 It's been moved. Seconded? 

 MR. GIBSON: 4 Second. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 5 Seconded by Mike Gibson. Okay, ready to vote 

on the minutes? All who favor approving these minutes, 

with the change that was noted, say aye. 

 (Affirmative 8 responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Any opposed? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Motion carries. Thank you. Again, I would 

instruct members of the Board, if you have specific 

grammatical or spelling items that you want to call 

attention to -- I think some of them may have already been 

identified, but there may be others, and don't worry about 

being redundant. Simply mark up a copy and I think we can 

turn them over probably either to Larry or to Cori. 

DR. MELIUS: Could we come up with another acronym for 

statement of work? Somehow, referring to -- we're going 

to be calling -- calling it a SOW is a little -- nothing 

against pigs, but... 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. For now the Chair's going to ignore that 

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suggestion and we're going to move on, but if you have a 

brilliant idea throughout the meeting, we can -- 

 DR. MELIUS: 3 Have a contest. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Yes. It could be worse, you know. 

 DR. MELIUS: 5 It will be. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 It will be. Let's move into the next item on 

the agenda, and that is the program status report and Dave 

Sundin is with us today and will give us an update on the 

overall program. Dave? 

And there is a -- I believe there's a handout. Is there? 

Yes. 

PROGRAM STATUS REPORT

MR. SUNDIN: Well, good morning. Welcome back to Cincinnati 

for your tenth meeting of the full Board. I'm going to 

use the basic approach we've used in previous Board 

meetings and give you a brief overview, and I'm going to 

try and respect the agenda and keep it to around 15 

minutes here. 

December 31st marked the end of the first quarter of fiscal 

-- 

DR. ZIEMER: Dave, let me interrupt you just a moment. 

MR. SUNDIN: Yeah. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 I want to see if this is loud enough for Wanda. 

 Wanda, are you hearing this? 

MS. MUNN: I'm hearing it, but everything I'm hearing is 

quite muted. You're not clear. But that's all right, 

it's better than nothing. 

DR. ZIEMER: I don't know if we can solve that completely, 

but Dave, maybe you can move your mike up just a little 

closer to your throat level there and maybe that'll give 

us a little more volume. 

MR. SUNDIN: All right. Is that any better? 

MS. MUNN: Yes, a little. 

MR. SUNDIN: Okay. 

MS. MUNN: Thank you. 

MR. SUNDIN: All right. As I was saying, the end of the 

calendar year marked the end of the first quarter of 

fiscal 2003, so for a lot of these indicators I'll be able 

to give you statistics which show trends over the first 

five quarters that we've been receiving claims for dose 

reconstruction. At least I may be able to here. 

The Department of Labor has transferred over 10,000 cases to 

NIOSH for dose reconstruction. As you recall, we began 

receiving cases from the Department of Labor on October 

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11th of 2001. And as you can see, the number of cases 

that we've received has increased steadily in each quarter 

of fiscal year 2000 (sic), but dropped back slightly in 

the first quarter of fiscal year 2003. 

 We're currently receiving around 150 to 200 cases per week 5 

from the four district offices of Department of Labor. 

And as I've mentioned in the past, we continue to send a 

letter to each claimant to let them know that we've 

received their claim for dose reconstruction and what that 

means, as well as how they can contact us to monitor 

progress. 

We then log each case into our computerized claims tracking 

system. We electronically scan all the documents in each 

case file, and we also create and maintain a paper file 

system. We are currently making significant changes in 

our database management systems to permit us to operate 

more efficiently and exchange information appropriately 

with ORAU. 

You can see that the majority of claims involve employees 

who worked at DOE sites, but about 14 percent involve 

employment at atomic weapons employer sites or AWE's. 

Each case file we receive from DOL lists the verified 

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covered sites where the energy employee worked, and in 

some cases the energy employee worked at several covered 

sites. We then use this information to direct our 

requests for radiation exposure information to the 

appropriate DOE points of contact. And we're usually able 

to issue requests for DOE exposure information within two 

weeks of receipt of the case from DOL. 

 We've sent nearly 8,500 requests for personal radiation 8 

exposure information to our 12 DOE points of contact, and 

we've received responses to 58 percent of these requests. 

 We are aware, however, that some of these responses 

contain incomplete information, which means that follow-up 

requests to DOE for specific additional information will 

be required before dose reconstruction can proceed in some 

cases. And we intend to track and report on these followup requests separately. 

We continue to work closely with DOE's Officer of Worker 

Advocacy and the designated points of contact at the sites 

to ensure that we get the kind of exposure information 

needed to conduct dose reconstructions in a timely manner. 

 DOE has facilitated our participation in their periodic 

teleconferences with the records retrieval staff at each 

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site, and has arranged for and included us in discussions 

with specific sites when needed to address concerns. 

 We send each DOE point of contact periodic status reports 3 

via e-mail on the requests we've sent and the responses 

we've received. These reports include a listing of all 

the requests which are 60 days or more outstanding without 

a response. We obviously had a substantial number of 

requests which are 60 day-- which have been outstanding 

for too long. As you might imagine, a few of the larger 

DOE sites account for most of the older outstanding 

requests, but DOE has taken specific steps to add 

resources and improve processes at those sites. 

We have also reached agreement with DOE -- at the program 

level, at least -- on the terms of a Memorandum of 

Understanding between HHS and DOE on how we'll carry out 

those responsibilities under EEOICPA and the Executive 

Order, which require the two agencies to collaborate or 

cooperate. This draft document is currently being 

reviewed by DOE legal staff, and following that review and 

any discussions and revisions which result, the document 

will be sent forward in each Department for concurrence 

and eventual signature. 

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 A telephone interview is offered to each claimant to permit 1 

them to add information which may be relevant to 

reconstructing the radiation dose. The award of our 

support contract has substantially increased our capacity 

to conduct interviews. And as you can see, we've doubled 

the number of completed interviews since I last reported 

to you. As of today we've conducted interviews with 320 

employees and survivors, and more than 240 interview 

reports have been sent to the claimants for their review 

and comment. 

Actually Jim Neton will be giving you more detailed 

information on dose reconstructions and contract support, 

and may have even more current figures than what I've 

shown here. 

We currently have 144 dose reconstructions underway, which 

is more than four times the number I reported to you in 

Santa Fe. This means that we've received, assembled, 

reviewed and evaluated the readily available information 

pertinent to the claim, and assigned the case to a NIOSH 

or ORAU health physicist. For 14 claims we've completed 

the draft dose reconstruction report called for in our 

rule, completed the close-out interview with the claimant, 

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and received a completed OCAS-1 form closing the dose 

reconstruction process. All of these 14 cases have been 

transmitted back to DOL, along with the complete 

administrative record, for final adjudication. 

 We realize that every performance measure is significant in 5 

this program, but we're particularly pleased to see the 

number of dose reconstructions begin to rise. We have a 

ways to go, obviously, before we achieve the more than 200 

completed dose reconstructions per week which we need to 

achieve to make progress against our current backlog, but 

we're on the path and making progress. 

We encourage claimants to contact us, and they do so. The 

number of phone calls received in OCAS has increased 

substantially each quarter, as we receive more and more 

claims. We're currently receiving an average of nearly 80 

phone calls per day. Our web site is an unusually rich 

source of information on this program and a vehicle for 

communication with claimants, and others interested in 

this program. We've received over 900 claim-related emails, and our goal is to respond to every one of them 

within 24 hours. 

You'll be hearing more about recent noteworthy developments 

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and accomplishments related to ORAU's efforts under our 

support contract later today, but I will say that all of 

the initial contract deliverables have been received on 

schedule. 

 You were briefed on the status of the progress report on 5 

residual contamination at the last Board meeting, and I'm 

able to report to you that this progress report was 

transmitted to Congress in early December. 

 DOE has recently asked us to appoint additional physicians 9 

to their physician panel, so we have canvassed for 

expressions of interest from a number of qualified 

physicians and will soon be appointing a sufficient number 

of additional physicians to staff approximately 25 threemember panels. Jim Neton will be providing you with more 

information on the status of our current efforts to 

recruit the additional staff, which we sorely need as the 

number of completed dose reconstructions moves steadily 

upward. 

So I thank you for your attention. I'll try to answer any 

questions you might have. 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim -- or David, rather, let me begin with a 

question on the Memorandum of Understanding. As I -- I 

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believe you said that the working staff on both sides have 

reached agreement on what that should contain. Do you 

foresee any substantive changes as these documents work 

themselves up higher in the agencies? 

 MR. SUNDIN: 5 I don't foresee any, but that doesn't mean -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Well, obviously you can't predict, but -- 

 MR. SUNDIN: 7 Right. No, I think there's been sufficient 

communication within DOE and HHS about the basic shape and 

terms of the agreement that I would be very surprised if 

there was something major which came up as it proceeds on 

up. 

DR. ZIEMER: At this point I assume the content of the MOU, 

since it's predecisional, is not generally available. Is 

that correct? 

MR. SUNDIN: That is correct, yes. Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other questions? Yes, Jim. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, can you elaborate a little bit more on 

the delayed requests? You have what, roughly -- I think 

it's 15 percent that were over 150 days. 

MR. SUNDIN: Right. 

DR. MELIUS: I believe you said that a number of those were 

related to large -- sites with a large number of claims. 

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 DR. MELIUS: 2 Is there any other -- I mean are there some 

sites where you're not getting any information back or 

very little being returned, or is it a question of sort of 

what's being a very slow process at some sites, or is it a 

question of certain records not being available or for 

certain time periods or certain areas -- work areas within 

the plants? 

 MR. SUNDIN: 9 I don't think there's any site where we are not 

getting anything back. As you might imagine, the story is 

different -- the reasons are different at each site as to 

why we're having trouble getting a timely response. In 

some cases the site really didn't get started to respond 

to our requests quickly enough. I mean they didn't staff 

up or didn't anticipate the volume of requests. The 

requests from NIOSH are just added on to a substantial 

burden of requests that they're getting from claimants and 

others. So I think at least in a couple of cases there 

was -- it took them a while to get the necessary resources 

in place. There are -- is at least one other site where 

the status of the indexing system for the records we need 

is -- has been the hold-up, and in order to build an 

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efficient system they need to go and develop the index for 

the locations of some of these records. So they're 

spending, we think appropriately, a fair amount of time 

doing that so that they can process the requests more 

timely down the road. But each site is a little bit 

different and it requires dealing with the peculiarities 

and specific problems of each site, with DOE in the mix, 

obviously. 

 DR. MELIUS: 9 Are there any sites where you don't foresee 

being able to get records in the next, you know, 60 days 

or 90 days or -- I mean six months or 150 days is a long 

time for -- 

MR. SUNDIN: There will be -- 

DR. MELIUS: -- to get the process started. 

MR. SUNDIN: Yeah. 

DR. MELIUS: I mean let alone with follow-up requests or 

whatever else can be, you know, involved in... 

MR. SUNDIN: Right. There are sites where the average age 

of the request, once we get the response, will always be 

beyond 60 days I think, for the most part, just because 

they got in the game somewhat late. But we're encouraged 

by the detail and completeness of the response we're 

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getting from at least that particular site. 

 Yeah, there will be cases where they will not be able to 2 

identify any records, and there clearly what we want is 

just a clear statement that that is the end point of their 

search so that we can move to the next step. 

 DR. MELIUS: 6 Related questions. How are you communicating 

with the claimants regarding these delays? 

 MR. SUNDIN: 8 Well, we tell them the truth. We tell them 

that -- I mean that's always the best policy, I think. We 

tell them that we have initiated a request to a particular 

site on such-and-such a date. We tell them that after 60 

days we send each site a report of the requests that are 

overdue and we list -- we particularize that report to 

focus their attention on individual cases, and we also -- 

if the claimant is interested, we will talk about some of 

the efforts we are undertaking with DOE's Office of Worker 

Advocacy and the site personnel themselves to improve the 

process. 

Many times the claimants have already contacted the site and 

registered their concern, so it's not a mystery to them as 

to where they are. 

DR. MELIUS: But is there any regular -- and forgive me, 

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'cause you may have gone over this at a previous meeting, 

but is there any regular communication back to the 

claimants, say after 90 days into the process and there's 

a delay for whatever reason, informing them of that? 

 MR. SUNDIN: 5 No. No, we've not built in those sort of 

periodic updates to claimants. It's -- it may not be a 

bad idea. Obviously if -- it generates a certain amount 

of additional work, but we do respond to every request, 

but we don't, for example, mail out a 30-day status report 

or 60-day or 90-day status report to every claimant. 

DR. MELIUS: It seems to me that that would be helpful on 

different levels, but just simply to inform someone about 

what's going on and, you know, admittedly there are delays 

and at least they are then periodically informed that, you 

know, their claim hasn't been lost and whatever in the 

process. And also -- I mean frankly, to generate some 

pressure on some of these DOE sites if the delay is due to 

records not being sent to you, then the claimant should 

know that and they shouldn't be blaming NIOSH for the 

delay, albeit if it's after the records get in, then it's 

a separate issue. 

DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton, I just have one comment. We 

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do still plan to have claimant information available on 

our web site -- we're working that -- once this new 

updated database becomes available, where they claimant 

will be informed that they can type in their NIOSH ID 

number and certain identifying information and obtain the 

status of their claim directly off the web site. That's 

not exactly what you're suggesting, but it is certainly a 

way that we can communicate with the claimant the status. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 You still have the possibility of some who 

don't have that -- 

DR. MELIUS: I think a lot. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- opportunity available. It's a little bit 

like being placed on hold on a telephone call and you're 

never quite sure whether you're still connected, I 

suppose. Okay. 

DR. MELIUS: And can I just -- one other last thought. 

Could we get a listing of where -- of the breakdown of the 

sites that claims -- record requests are over 120 days or 

-- you know, some number like that? I don't know what 

would be easiest for you to do, but I think it would be 

helpful for the Board to know what -- where some of these 

delays are and how -- you know, a better breakdown, a more 

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detailed breakdown of what the reasons for them and what 

sites. 

 MR. SUNDIN: 3 Yes, we could provide that, certainly by the 

next Board meeting, if not sooner. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 A little different site profile. Okay, Henry 

has a comment. 

 DR. ANDERSON: 7 Yeah, on the -- on the phone calls, do you 

characterize what they're about? I mean how -- are -- I 

guess the question I really have is how many of those are 

related to the long-term delay calls, so that if you were 

to go to a regular notification that might save you some 

time on answering phone calls if it's people calling in 

every month when it's continued to be delayed or something 

like that. Or are they just general information questions 

and how many -- what proportion of them are related to 

their specific claim? 

MR. SUNDIN: Right. It's a mixture, but I -- my sense, and 

we have not sort of tried to parse it and analyze it in 

any great detail, but my sense from fielding a number and 

overhearing a lot of people taking the calls is most -- 

the vast majority are asking about status of their 

particular claim, so yeah. 

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 DR. ANDERSON: 1 So the -- the web site and that sort of thing 

might help -- 

 MR. SUNDIN: 3 Right. 

 DR. ANDERSON: 4 -- keep those calls down. 

 MR. SUNDIN: 5 It could. It might require 10,000 letters 

every so often to go out, but you balance off labor on one 

side or the other. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Roy, a comment? 

 DR. DEHART: 9 Would you further comment, expand a bit on the 

last bullet, the recruitment of additional staff underway. 

 Is that contractor staff, government staff or are we 

talking authorizations? What -- where are we on that? 

MR. SUNDIN: It's actually both, but Jim -- Jim is going to 

talk about our efforts to bring additional government 

staff and then also describe what -- where the contract is 

going, so it's both. But we are encouraged to have gotten 

the green light to recruit additional government staff, as 

well. 

DR. ZIEMER: Wanda, if you have questions as we proceed, 

please pop in at any appropriate time. Obviously we can't 

tell if you have questions, so please feel free to do 

that. 

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 Okay. Other questions on this topic? 1 

 (No 2 responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 If not, thank you very much -- 

 MR. SUNDIN: 4 Okay. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 5 -- David, and we'll proceed with the next 

agenda item. The next topic is status of dose 

reconstruction and contract support. Jim Neton is going 

to present that. Jim. Again, there is a handout in your 

stack there. 

STATUS OF DOSE RECONSTRUCTION AND CONTRACT SUPPORT

DR. NETON: Well, good morning. Welcome to Cincinnati for 

the tenth meeting as well from me. I'd like to talk 

briefly this morning on the status of the -- where we're 

at with dose reconstructions, both within NIOSH and within 

our contractor support effort. 

A good follow-in from Dr. DeHart's question, where are we at 

with the staffing. I'm pleased to announce we've received 

approval to increase our staff and effectively double our 

size. We had originally a FTE limit of 22, of which we 

had staffed 21. The only one that we had not staffed thus 

far is this paralegal position down here in the bottom 

right corner. You can see the shaded boxes -- with the 

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exception of the paralegal -- are the new positions that 

we're adding, so we're going to be adding 21 new FTE's to 

our organization, for a total staffing level of 43. 

 We are actively recruiting. We've had announcements out for 4 

the positions. We are going to add ten health physicists, 

to bring the total to 13 for the health physicists. We're 

going to add seven public health advisors to bring the 

total to 11 in that skill category, and some other 

positions such as an additional epidemiologist to support 

the efforts for reviewing the adequacy of our models and 

programs, and some additional support in the health 

communications areas. 

We did a needs-based analysis on this. We didn't just pluck 

this out of the air. We went through and determined, 

particularly in the health physics area, what we really 

needed to do to accomplish the job of reviewing and 

overseeing the contractor, who would be doing around 

10,000 -- 8,000 to 10,000 dose reconstructions on an 

annual basis. 

We're in a transition period now. The contractor's been on 

board since September 11th, and so we're still -- the OCAS 

staff, that is -- still actively doing a lot of the things 

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we were doing before, but we're also transitioning into 

supporting this growing contractor organization out there. 

 I did mention that a large part of our activities, 

especially mine, are involved in the recruiting, 

interviewing and hiring of our additional staff. I didn't 

mention that we've -- we've had announcements out. We've 

been doing interviews. We've actually made offers for 

health physicists. I think we've got four outstanding 

offers out now, and we intend to continue with this 

through March until we get the right mix of individuals. 

We are still -- we're attempting to complete the dose 

reconstructions that we started prior to the contractor 

coming on board. We had initiated a number of dose 

reconstructions and I think there were 28 in the mix at 

that time. We've issued 14. We've got a few that are 

completed. We just need to get them reviewed and out the 

door. We did pick those on a particular needs basis to 

identify certain categories that we'd like to investigate 

how the approach should go, that sort of thing. So we 

will finish those. 

We have initiated a review process -- a somewhat formal 

process for the ORAU team documents procedures. We will 

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review all the key documents that are produced as far as 

technical basis documents and dose reconstruction 

procedures, and we have a good handshake procedure put in 

place so that that all comes through us in a formal manner 

and we have configuration control so that the current rev 

number is always known and that sort of thing in place. 

 We are also actively involved in oversight of dose 7 

reconstruction research. ORAU of course has the lead in 

that area, but we've assigned a key member of our staff to 

each of these functions. In dose reconstruction research 

we have someone working very closely with the contractor, 

the ORAU team, to ensure that the things are proceeding 

along the lines that we'd like them to. 

We are also -- since the contractor staff is growing and 

going to continue to grow, we're preparing technical 

bulletins that we issue on a periodic basis as the need 

arises. When we review dose reconstructions we see some 

trends or some areas that need further amplification or 

clarification, we will issue a formal technical 

information bulletin to the ORAU team so that that can be 

distributed to the field -- the people in the field that 

are actually doing the dose reconstructions. 

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 And we are also -- of course one of our main functions is to 1 

review and approve every dose reconstruction that the 

contractor staff does. I'll talk a little bit about that 

as we go along. 

 The ORAU project organization, this is their current 5 

functional organization, and it's aligned according to the 

request for contract that -- you know, which they were 

awarded, the contract, and they've aligned in six separate 

areas under database management, data collection and dose 

reconstruction research, interviews, dose report -- 

estimation reporting and technical and administrative 

support. So each of those areas has a NIOSH staff member 

attached to it for oversight and review. So I'd like to 

briefly talk about the progress made by the ORAU team in 

each of these areas. 

Under database management I'm pleased to announce that the 

Cincinnati operation center is occupied now. They're on 

Sherman Avenue in Norwood, and not only is the center up 

and running, but the computer facilities have been 

installed. There are a few minor connections left to go 

with the networking within the facility, but it is -- I'm 

assured that it is up and running and available for use. 

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That's a key milestone. ORAU now has a very nice modern 

facility that they're already staffing and I believe 

getting -- getting to be fairly full already. 

 Dave Sundin alluded to this earlier. This is a key issue 4 

for us to be able to communicate with our contractor. 

We're moving our NOCTS database, which is the NIOSH-OCAS 

Claims Tracking System. If you recall in earlier 

meetings, that was an access database which was never 

meant to be multi-user oriented. We're now -- with ORAU's 

-- major assistance from ORAU, the ORAU team, converting 

this to a SQL server environment, which is a multi-user 

distributed networking type of database. That is due to 

be rolled out on January 13th. So once that comes on 

line, then we can start communicating more effectively 

with our contractor. And more importantly, the contractor 

with their operations people out in the field. 

We're also redesigning and upgrading the CATI system. That 

was also an access database. The CATI system is moving 

over to the SQL environment, as well. And this thing is 

being used extensively now, as I'll talk about under task 

three, the claimant interview -- or task four, claimant 

interviews. 

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 And the collection and input of site profile data is 1 

continuing. I'll talk a little bit more about that in the 

other tasks, but they are being entered into the database 

for site profile and stuff under this task. 

 I've lumped tasks two and three together. They're somewhat 5 

related efforts with data -- you know, the data collection 

related to a claim so that you can complete it, and also 

the research that goes into it so that we can flesh out 

the particulars for an individual claim or site. In this 

task, more importantly, a sampling plan was established 

for initial cases. We've asked the contractor to provide 

60 claims -- dose reconstructions to us by the end of the 

year. I'm happy to announce that that's happened. But to 

do this they established a sampling plan to go through and 

develop this machinery to process dose reconstructions. 

They essentially selected claims that were either on the 

low or high side in the external dosimetry environment, on 

the low and high side on the internal environment, and 

then a selection of claims from the AWE environment, and 

then developed this machinery, as they call it, to be able 

to process these claims in an efficient manner. So that 

sampling plan has been implemented. 

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 Across the board key staff are being added. There's a large 1 

number of HP's working on this project now. I think there 

are eight or so working right now out of Cincinnati 

operations offices, and a number more distributed among 

the contractor facilities around the country. 

 In the area of environmental dose reconstruction for the on- 6 

site doses that are environmentally related, there are 

tables being developed for the Hanford and the Oak Ridge 

sites. These are two of our larger sites where we have 

claims. Also diagnostic X-ray tables are being developed 

for the Hanford and Nevada test site. 

In the area of visiting the sites, there was a site visit to 

the Environmental Measurements Laboratory that occurred 

that proved to be very fruitful. I actually went out in 

the field on that one myself. We identified 46 boxes of 

records that were present at the EML facility in New York 

City that had a large number of AWE data files in them, a 

large collection going back into the early 1950's. We 

were quite pleased with that. 

We inventoried those. They are now being transferred from 

the Environmental Measurements Laboratory to the DOE 

Germantown office for the Office of Worker Advocacy where 

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we will go or the ORAU team will go and do a data capture 

of those files. We expect this to be a very rich dataset 

for us to be able to move forward with a number of AWE 

sites. 

 And I think everyone's pretty aware ORAU has a history in 5 

doing research at different sites. They have a lot of 

information in their vault in Oak Ridge. That vault has 

been inventoried and appropriate records -- records that 

are appropriate for our dose reconstruction have been 

identified there. 

Under task four, a good amount of progress has been made 

here in the claimant interview, the transition. We've 

developed a six-point plan. I think four out of the six 

points are completely implemented now. It's well 

underway. The interview staff has been hired and trained 

per the requirements of the contract. I think there are 

eight full-time interviewers right now actively working 

doing interviews, and some part time people, as well. The 

concept is the early claims first in, first served is a 

top priority. The older claims that have been there a 

while are going to be interviewed when possible. It's not 

always possible. If there's insufficient information in 

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the claim or it needs to be fleshed out a little more, it 

may not be -- receive first priority, but as we can, we're 

going through them from one forward. 

 This number's a little different than what Dave Allen 4 

mentioned. We are up to 370 now. I think Dave's slide 

was as of December 31st. We're now into January 7th, so 

this is the latest and greatest number of interviews. All 

the interviews that are being done are reviewed by an HP 

prior to issuance. And in fact, this is one thing that we 

are still doing. We are reviewing every interview that 

goes out the door to this day. We hope to move that over 

to the ORAU staff in the near future. 

Interesting statistic here is, as we talked about at the 

last meeting, we do send the claimant an interview report 

and ask for their feedback and comments on the report 

prior to finalizing it. I polled the database prior to 

the meeting and about 20 percent of the interviewees 

actually do provide additional information. So one out of 

five claims, on average, provides us some type of 

supplemental information to their interview. 

The comments are all over the board, ranging from spelling 

errors to names of facilities, job descriptions, that sort 

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of thing. For the most part they're not real substantive 

changes, but you know, the claimant's award is on the line 

so they do feel it necessary to provide very detailed 

comments. 

 Task five, dose estimation reporting, I mentioned that we've 5 

asked ORAU to produce 60 draft dose reconstructions. I 

believe we had 50-something in house by New Year's Eve. 

There was a slight delay due to a IREP computer issue, but 

the remaining ones came in shortly after the first of the 

year. I think we have 62 or so draft dose reconstructions 

in house that our staff are currently reviewing. Again, 

these 60 draft were picked out of those five specific 

areas that I mentioned to try to flesh out how the 

machinery would work to process various types of claims. 

The early read on these are that there are some points that 

we're going to make and feedback to ORAU, but from what 

I've seen so far, they're definitely on the right side of 

the compensation bar. We need to talk a little bit more 

about some of the finer points, but thus far we're pleased 

with what we've seen. 

In another area, a technical basis has been completed for 

dose reconstruction to be used for dose reconstruction at 

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an AWE facility. That facility is Bethlehem Steel. Dr. 

Toohey will speak after me about the logic and the 

methodology that went into developing that AWE. It is a 

draft document. It was a draft document -- basis document 

that was used to complete some of the dose reconstructions 

we have for Bethlehem Steel, so I want to make that point, 

that it is not an officially-approved document yet, but 

we're very close. 

 A lot of progress is made in procedures related to dose 9 

reconstruction. Being such a large program distributed 

about the country, we have a definite need to have control 

procedures that people can work to and do these things in 

a consistent manner, so we are in the review loop. I 

actually end up signing off on all the ORAU key procedures 

and documents. My staff reviews every one. So they've 

produced a number of procedures related to dose 

reconstruction for us for review. These involve how to 

use the internal dosimetry program, how to run the IREP, 

all those kind of nuts and bolts issues that go with 

actually completing a dose reconstruction. 

Again in this area, additional support staff has been added. 

 The majority of these dose reconstructions are being 

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performed either by Dade Moeller and Associates out in 

Richland or MJW Corporation out of Buffalo, with of course 

the support from all the dose reconstruction research and 

selection teams. 

 Next goals. We'd like to be producing 100 dose 5 

reconstructions per week by March 1st. This is not a step 

function. We're not getting 60 by December 31st and then 

100 will come in on March 1st. We expect that there will 

be a ramp up over this period as we move forward, so we'd 

like to get 100 moving by March 1st. And then by June 

1st, three months after that, move that up to 200, and 

eventually go beyond that. We recognize that 200 a week 

will just keep us at equilibrium and we'll still have a 

backlog of probably 8,000 claims, so we need to move 

beyond that. But things are moving forward. 

Task six is just the administrative and technical support 

area of the contract, and I just highlighted a few things. 

 I did mention the build-out of Cincinnati Operation 

Center's complete and they're staffed over there. 

This was a project deliverable within 90 days, a quality 

assurance plan. That was written, delivered and approved 

by us within 90 days. 

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plan for information systems because it's sort of a 

fundamentally different piece of the puzzle, and it was 

identified that it needed to have its own independent 

quality assurance plan, so that's under development. 

 In addition to the documents related to doing dose 6 

reconstructions, a number of key training documents have 

been developed and put in place. These cover the gamut 

from training interviewees (sic) about DOE facilities and 

the EEOICPA and that sort of things, so there's a large 

number of these things that have been put in place. 

And the conflict of interest documentation is underway. 

We've approved the data form that's been routed through us 

and approved for documenting the conflict of interest that 

a person may have in their past. Those forms are actively 

being collected by the ORAU team and assembled. It's the 

intent to have them put on the web site in the near 

future, but they're not there yet. I think we're several 

weeks away from that, at best, so look for that to happen 

probably in the next two to three weeks to start getting 

our conflict of interest information out there. 

I think that's my last slide. If there's any questions, I'd 

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be glad to answer them. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 Okay. Dr. Roessler, a question? 

 DR. ROESSLER: 3 Jim, my question has to do with the OCAS 

organizational chart, which is a little difficult to read 

in the handout. 

 DR. NETON: 6 It wasn't intentional. 

 DR. ROESSLER: 7 And my first question is what box are you in? 

 DR. NETON: 8 Probably all of them, but -- right there, I 

called myself a technical program manager, but I'm the -- 

DR. ROESSLER: That's what I thought, yeah. 

DR. NETON: My official title within the government is a 

health science administrator, so I thought technical 

program manager sounded a little more appropriate. 

DR. ROESSLER: Okay. 

DR. NETON: I've got the three technical teams under me, 

which would be the dose reconstruction team leader -- 

which is actually responsible for the review of all the 

dose reconstructions and ensuring the consistency of the 

approach, somewhat more of the technical nuts and bolts. 

We also have a contract oversight team leader, someone to 

ensure that the ORAU team is living up to the agreements 

within the contract and the FRC -- you know, the 

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regulations themself (sic), although all of these people, 

including myself, will be reviewing dose reconstructions. 

 There's no room for anyone that be a specialist here, but 

the emphasis is slightly different between these two 

teams. 

 Then we've broken out down here a technical support team 6 

that includes the information technology specialists and 

the epidemiologists, as well as an office automation 

assistant. These people, in our thinking, serve to serve 

all the teams within OCAS, so they're in their own box. 

The claims information communication team has been broken 

out here specifically, and that is now directly under 

Larry. 

DR. ROESSLER: And my second question, all the gray boxes, 

will those people physically locate in Cincinnati? 

DR. NETON: Yes. Yes, all these positions will be based out 

of Cincinnati. 

DR. ROESSLER: Then I have a third question, and this has to 

do with the dosimetry contract. At one time I think you 

told us or someone told us there were 90 -- approximately 

90 people involved in that work, and I think we were 

promised the names of those people, and I was just 

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wondering if that was forthcoming. 

 DR. NETON: 2 Yeah, those names -- I think as the web site 

becomes populated with these conflict of interest 

statements, those would be available. I don't -- I think 

there would be no reason why we couldn't get them sooner 

than that to the Board. I'm seeing a nod from Dr. Toohey 

in the audience. I think that would be a reasonable thing 

to do. 

 It's sometimes difficult -- and claimants ask this question 9 

a fair amount, is how many people are working on the dose 

reconstructions now, and that's somewhat of a difficult 

answer, because there is a core team within the ORAU 

organization -- the ORAU team, that is -- that work 

directly as full-time equivalents. And I didn't mention 

this, but there's say about eight people working -- this 

is a squishy number because they're hiring all the time, 

but there's about eight people working in Cincinnati 

Operations. That may expand to 12 to 13 HP's, but then 

each of the contractors has full time staff. I think the 

ORAU team probably has -- or the MJW has about eight or 

so, Dade Moeller has at least eight. So you know, you're 

looking at a collective, full-time equivalence of maybe 20 

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to 30 people. 

 In addition to that, though -- I mentioned this is a 2 

distributive project -- there are an additional 90 or so 

people who will work for the project, but are not fulltime employees of the ORAU team. They are -- have signed 

agreements that they will do dose reconstructions, but 

these people are not full-time employees. Of that 90 or 

so people, I think they add up collectively, though, to 

about 50 FTE's, so it's kind of hard to get an exact 

number at any given time how many people are working on 

the project. Those 90 will grow as the dose 

reconstructions get dished out about the country to be 

performed. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Jim, a question and then Tony. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. I have three areas of questions. First, 

in terms of the work flow on the dose reconstructions, if 

you get up to 100 a week by March 1st coming from the 

contractor, when do you think you'll be staffed up in 

order to be able to handle that number in terms of review 

at the NIOSH staff level? Seems to me that it just -- by 

hiring, so I mean -- it seems to me that this backlog 

within NIOSH is just going to get bigger for a period of 

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time, and I don't know if that's avoidable at all, but I'm 

just trying to get a sense of when will the completed dose 

reconstructions start flowing to Department of Labor and -

- 

 DR. NETON: 5 Yeah, that's a good question. We plan on having 

these first 60 reviewed by the end of this week. As far 

as getting the staffing up, we obviously would like that 

to happen sooner than later. I think by March I'd like to 

have the full complement of HP's on board. I mean that 

would be our goal, at least. 

If we have that on board, we've done the numbers and we 

believe that we can be doing 200 a week with that level of 

staff -- 200 at least. Now I've seen -- even in the early 

going now, though, there are some patterns emerging where 

these dose reconstructions do sort of fall into similar 

patterns where the level of effort to review is going to 

go down a little bit because you've seen the same scenario 

-- a person with a very low external dose at a site where 

they've added missed dose. You know, the level of review 

or the amount of time required for review might not be as 

long as we thought, but we'll see. But I think we can do 

-- if we can get our staff on board by March, we can 

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easily handle 100 reviews a week. 

 DR. MELIUS: 2 Starting when is my question, though, not -- 

starting -- when will you be -- 'cause the -- you know, 

orientation and training and -- 

 DR. NETON: 5 Well, that's a -- 

 DR. MELIUS: 6 You're not going to have all -- I don't know 

what it is, nine new health physicists in place on staff 

by March 1st at least in Cincinnati. 

 DR. NETON: 9 It's possible. 

DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

DR. NETON: It's possible. But you're right, though, there 

is some up front training involved. We do believe that 

the staff would need to do at least four or five dose 

reconstructions themselves of these different varieties 

before we start reviewing them because it is a somewhat 

different technical approach that one's used to in the 

field. These are done for compensation purposes and we've 

talked about the differences in this approach, so given 

that they can become familiar with the Act and do a few 

dose reconstructions, you're right, there's probably going 

to be a month or so start-up period where they won't be 

able to actually actively review them, but... 

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 DR. MELIUS: 1 My second question pertains to the conflict of 

interest policies and the implementation of those. I'm 

assuming that those -- the conflict of interest policies 

are already in place. You were referring to them in terms 

of the delay was getting things -- information up on the 

web site -- 

 DR. NETON: 7 Correct. Correct. 

 DR. MELIUS: 8 -- making it publicly available. 

 DR. NETON: 9 The policy is already on the web site. The 

actual form that the dose reconstructor fills out to 

identify their conflict of interest has been approved by 

us. That is being filled out as they're hired and 

collected. They're not on the ORAU or our web site as of 

yet, though. 

DR. MELIUS: I mean I would just urge you to expedite that 

to the extent you can because the transparency of the 

process I think is extremely important, in some ways maybe 

as important as the actual implementation of it in terms 

of public confidence. 

Finally, I have questions about the training of the 

interviewers and the quality control procedures in place 

for those. Could you expand a little bit about how the 

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interviewers are being trained and what sort of background 

they have and how familiar they are with the DOE sites and 

so forth? 

 DR. NETON: 4 Okay. Well, I know that there are modules that 

they've developed. They go through I believe it's a week 

training program. The specifics of the training I know 

were identified in the contract. I know they've been 

trained to that. I've gone through it, but I wonder if 

Dr. Toohey couldn't elaborate a little -- 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, that's -- 

DR. NETON: -- a little more on that. 

DR. TOOHEY: Yes. Dr. Neton's right, it's a 40-hour 

training program and it covers the Act, OCAS' role, ORAU's 

role, conflict of interest policy, Privacy Act, nondisclosure, basic radiation worker training -- we're 

essentially using those standardized DOE modules, you 

know, health physics 101 for that sort of thing -- details 

on the CATI database and how to use the computer system 

and all that sort of thing. We included in the first 

group, the eight -- well, nine people we hired initially, 

eight full-time, one part-time -- a half-day trip out to 

Fernald for people who had never seen a DOE site, give 

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them some familiarity with what these places look like. 

 Your question about backgrounds of these people, I don't 2 

know all of them. Two of them were former Fernald 

employees. One was a records specialist and the other was 

a health physics technician. Others are coming from sort 

of claimant interaction backgrounds. I know one worked 

for Blue Cross/Blue Shield as a claims manager, so they're 

familiar with that -- why do I want to say mind-set or 

ability to deal with claimants and people, so it's sort of 

like that. We have one Hispanic, Spanish-speaking, and we 

used her in I think a couple of interviews with Los Alamos 

claimants. But it seems to be going pretty well. We're 

probably looking to build up eventually maybe four more, 

12 -- 12 or so interviews if we're ever going to knock 

this down. 

As you can see from the statistics, we're doing about 50 

interviews a week now, but we've got to get that interview 

rate up to match our hoped-for dose reconstruction rate of 

course since that's a prerequisite. 

DR. MELIUS: And what's the average length of the 

interviews, roughly? 

DR. TOOHEY: They're scheduled for about an hour. Average, 

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it's been running a little more than that. I'd probably 

say an hour and 20 minutes. Some have exceeded two hours. 

 What we've found on this is that people we're finally 

contacting for interview are just delighted that progress 

is being made and they want to talk. And we have one new 

hire coming on board to support our claims specialist, who 

is actually a master's degree person in social work, who 

is very used to interviewing clients and trying to keep 

people on track and things like that, and we're going to 

use her as additional training for the telephone 

interviewers. Not that we want to cut off anybody or not 

let them reveal information. But just from practical 

purposes to get the work done, you know, we can't let 

interviews drag out for many hours. 

DR. MELIUS: Are the interviewees (sic) randomly assigned to 

claimants or do -- 

DR. TOOHEY: Yes. 

DR. MELIUS: -- some of them specialize in particular sites. 

DR. TOOHEY: So far it's been random, but we're heading 

towards site specialization so that the interviewer is 

familiar with what took place at the site and the facility 

names and the nomenclature and all that. We think that 

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will be more efficient. We're not quite there yet, but 

we're certainly heading in that direction. 

 DR. MELIUS: 3 And finally, what is the quality control on the 

interview process? 

 DR. TOOHEY: 5 Okay. The interview -- the task manager, I 

should say -- the task manager, who's Matt McPhee*, a 

health physicist with MJW, listens in on a number of 

reports for quality control. There is a report produced, 

as you know, from that that gets reviewed. Right now 

Matt's reviewing all of them, but we're hiring another 

health physicist to do that review, also. The -- in terms 

of what I saw in the transcript of the -- your conference 

call meeting last month on that quality control issue in 

terms of follow-up interviews, rechecks with claimants and 

things, we haven't implemented that. But you know, 

whatever it takes to do the job right, we're certainly 

willing to do. 

DR. MELIUS: In terms of the listening in process or 

supervision, is that done on a -- is that formalized in 

the way that there's a record kept of -- 

DR. TOOHEY: I don't know. There's probably a note that it 

was done and we're doing, you know, what Delta Air Lines 

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says, this call may be monitored for quality assurance 

purposes. But in terms of formal record or report, I'm 

not sure, but I can find out and let you know. 

 DR. MELIUS: 4 Okay. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 Let's see, Tony, I think you were next. Right? 

 DR. ANDRADE: 6 One of Jim's questions captured the essence of 

what I wanted to -- so I -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Okay. So you're okay. Then Roy? 

 DR. DEHART: 9 Having spent my life living with records, 

you're going to be processing literally thousands of 

records simultaneously. I know that you're logging in and 

keeping that kind of record, but are you moving -- as you 

move the record, are you logging where that record is so 

it can be found? 

DR. NETON: Oh, yes. All the records are -- the hard copy 

records are stored in one central -- well, all the 

Department of Labor information is stored in one central 

location. All of the Department of Energy information 

has now been transferred and is stored at the ORAU 

facility on Sherman Avenue, so we have that split. But we 

have two central locations for all records that are 

associated with an individual claim. 

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information that we have, as well, and that's our working 

copy, so to speak. We try not to use the paper copies. 

Once they're filed, they're filed. However, we have 

noticed every once in a while the quality of the 

electronic image might not be sufficient and we have to go 

back to the paper copy, but yeah, there's two central 

locations for the records. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Yes, Henry. 

DR. ANDERSON: I just want to congratulate you on getting 

the additional staff. 

DR. NETON: Thank you. 

DR. ANDERSON: And I think the Board would like to take 

credit for -- no. But I think this is something that we 

all recognized and I'm glad to see that it is coming to 

pass, and I hope your estimates are correct so you won't 

have to go back and go through that laborious, painful 

process -- 

DR. NETON: We hope so. 

DR. ANDERSON: -- of justifying additional people. 

DR. NETON: Thank you. We hope so, as well. I think we did 

a fairly realistic assessment and -- of course we were 

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asked that question -- if you get this staff, can you do 

it -- and the answer is if things stay the same. Now we 

can't predict any twist in the program or anything, but if 

things stay as we know them today, we believe we can do 

it. 

 DR. ANDERSON: 6 And lastly I just want to say that all of the 

state health physicists are off -- 

 DR. NETON: 8 Okay. 

 DR. ANDERSON: 9 You're not allowed to recruit from states. 

DR. NETON: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Jim. I'm having a little trouble 

here -- thank you, Jim. 

Let's move on then to Dr. Toohey -- kind of started already, 

but AWE site profile development. 

AWE SITE PROFILE DEVELOPMENT

DR. TOOHEY: Okay, thank you. Good morning. What I want to 

talk about this morning, kind of give you the flavor of 

some of the approaches we're taking to site 

characterization, is really the first one we've completed, 

at least in draft form, for an AWE site, which is 

Bethlehem Steel. And as Dr. Neton mentioned, this was -- 

it's a draft. It's not in final form. We are still 

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reviewing it internally and the NIOSH staff is reviewing 

it and there -- to be honest, there's a few glitches in it 

we still have to address, but it'll certainly give you the 

flavor of the approach. And also we did use it for some 

of the draft or test dose reconstructions that we've 

already provided to NIOSH. 

 Okay, the first -- you have copies of these slides, so the 7 

facility was a rolling mill in Lackawanna, New York. And 

National Lead of Ohio, which as you recall was the 

contractor for the Fernald site here, subcontracted with 

them from the period 1949 to '52 to roll five-inch uranium 

billets down into one and a half-inch rods to be put into 

the production reactors for Hanford for plutonium 

production. They were natural uranium rods. 

Experimental rollings were done -- it's not really clear 

from the records -- on four or five occasions to try to 

get things right. They started using a molten lead bath 

and then transitioned into a molten salt bath, found that 

was more effective and that's what they wound up using. 

That occurred on four to five occasions, depending if you 

count the fifth process run as being experimental or not. 

 It's not clear from the records. 

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 But then they went into what they called production runs and 1 

there were seven dates. These were all done over a 

weekend and typically just one day, a Saturday or a 

Sunday, because of course the mill was doing its regular 

work during the week. 

 Some testing work was also done on this at another facility, 6 

which is also in the AWE list, Simon Saw & Steel in 

Lockport. The material handled, as I said, four or five 

experimental runs in the April to October time frame, 

1951. The experimental runs used a minimum of 26, maximum 

of 43 billets. That fifth run, which was probably the 

prototype production run, rolled 93. The actual 

production runs occurred between January and September, 

'52 and they ran 150 to 300 billets each date. 

There's a letter, a record in the files, from a labor 

representative claiming that six to eight additional runs 

were performed on dates in 1955. We have not found any 

other records that either support or refute this claim, so 

according to the rules of the game, we included this in 

the site profile and with reasonable assumptions that much 

the same thing was done at this time as had been 

documented in 1952. 

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Environmental Measurements Lab, formerly the Health and 

Safety Laboratory in New York, turned up 46 boxes which 

included a lot of monitoring data for these AWE 

facilities. 

 The AEC at that time had developed a maximum allowable 7 

concentration of 70 disintegrations per minute per cubic 

meter of alpha activity for airborne exposures. 

Other data sources, in the early 1980's the New York State 

Assembly Task Force on Toxic Substances, in connection 

with the Love Canal issue, took a look at all these 

things, especially with military uses. And there was a 

report there that said rolling uranium billets using a 

molten lead bath produced readings as high as 1,000 times 

that maximum air concentration or 70,000 dpm per cubic 

meter, but rollings in the salt bath knocked that way down 

to three to five times the maximum concentration. And of 

course that's the main reason why they went to -- well, 

not the main reason, but one of the reasons they went to 

the salt bath for the production runs. 

There was some actual monitoring data of some rollings in 

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1951 at Simons which indicated .8 to two and a half 

maximum concentrations on one occasion and .9 to 4.2 on 

another. A claimant also submitted some documents with 

readings at Bethlehem Steel indicating zero to 1.9 MAC in 

'51 and zero to 70 in '52. 

 So we've used this dataset to bracket the exposure 6 

conditions, and what we did then was generate an exposure 

matrix that is tied to this available monitoring data. 

Now obviously there's a lot of uncertainty in this. We 

don't know where the air monitors were located relative to 

where the workers were standing and all these sorts of 

things, so you have to fold in an uncertainty distribution 

on these exposures. 

Now we chose to use a triangular distribution, so you 

determine the most likely or the mode of the distribution, 

then you draw a straight line down to your minimum 

credible level and then a straight line out to your 

maximum credible level, so it looks like a triangle, but 

it's not an isosceles triangle. It's usually pretty 

asymmetric on the high end. 

For 1949 to '50 time period we took the mode as five times 

the allowable level with a minimum of .9 and a maximum of 

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1,000, based off that New York State Task Force report. 

For 1951, because of some actual monitoring data 

available, we thought the minimum would be zero, and for 

1952 and then the possible additional rollings in 1955 we 

figured the mode would be about twice the MAC with a 

minimum of zero and then a maximum of 70, and those are 

tied on the actual monitoring data I did show you. 

 And then as you may recall, we do the dose estimate on the 8 

mode of the distribution, but that uncertainty 

distribution then carries through to the doses. The 

uncertainty distribution is promulgated through to give us 

an uncertainty distribution on the dose, which would also 

be triangular, and then that uncertainty distribution gets 

fed into the IREP program and is promulgated through with 

the uncertainty in the risk coefficients to give us the 

overall uncertainty on the probability of causation. And 

then of course as you recall, compensable is 50 percent at 

the 99 percent confidence interval, so 20 percent plus or 

minus ten percent would in fact be compensable when you 

get out to three standard deviations on it. 

Estimates of exposure times, actually counting up from the 

records on how many occasions, you can see here was 12 

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rather than the standard eight. There was some evidence 

in the records that they tried to get the run done in one 

day, so it did go over. So multiplying the ten hours a 

day by that number of days gives us the exposure hours in 

that year, and then that times the air concentration 

distribution gives us the intake. 

 We used for breathing rate the one for heavy labor under the 9 

ICRP-66 human respiratory tract model, the newer model. 

We assumed heavy labor, not so much because the workers 

were, you know, physically moving heavy things and 

working, but they were in a higher temperature 

environment, so we figured that would probably increase 

breathing rate to the heavy labor category. 

And as it turns out then, the mode of the estimated 

inhalation intakes of uranium per year, and just 

converting dpm to activity units would be 8.7 to 32 and a 

half nanocuries over those five years of exposure. 

Maximum intakes, .3 to six and a half microcuries. And 

then these were the sort of intakes we put into the IMBA 

program to generate the doses. So the -- as I mentioned, 

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the air concentrations and exposure times were used to get 

these. 

 Also it's not just internal, there's an external exposure 3 

from uranium dust in the air and the chunks of uranium 

billets in there. So we estimated an external exposure 

from sub-- using the standard assumptions of submersion in 

a semi-infinite cloud of uranium dust. And then for 

external exposure from the billets themselves, we could 

use the beta dose rate, figuring from one to three feet 

average from a semi-infinite plane source of uranium. Of 

course, you know, beta ranges in uranium of one and a 

half-inch billets infinitely thick, so that's a reasonable 

assumption. 

Turns out our maximum calculated skin dose from the beta 

exposure was ten to 16 and a half rem, and the deep dose 

from the photon -- as you may recall, uranium doesn't emit 

a lot of photon exposures -- was half a rem to bone 

surfaces. That number includes occupational chest X-rays, 

assuming an annual at about -- oh, at a tenth of a rem per 

shot. 

As we go through actual dose reconstructions, once this 

technical basis is approved, of course the first step is 

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doing the telephone interviews with these claimants and 

information obtained in those telephone interviews can 

also help to ground this in reality, especially about the 

X-ray exposures. We don't have company medical records 

that tell us the details of that, so it's one of the 

questions in the interview form about X-ray exposures, and 

we hope to get a little bit better handle on that. 

 So in summary, we've used all available data we could find. 8 

 If we find more, of course that will get folded in and 

revise things as we go on. But we think we've been pretty 

successful in characterizing -- or maybe that's too strong 

a word, but in bracketing the exposure conditions at this 

one facility. We went with the claimant-friendly 

assumptions on exposure times, ten hours a day; amount of 

material handled in these number billets. As I mentioned, 

we threw a triangular uncertainty distribution on the 

airborne concentrations to get the intake estimates. So 

our draft technical basis document, once it's approved and 

out of the draft stage, is going to be used to guide dose 

reconstructions for the slightly more than 300 claims from 

Bethlehem Steel. And it just gives us the ability to 

knock out sort of a bolus of claims fairly efficiently. 

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 And then this of course is the sort of thing we hope to do 1 

for every AWE and DOE facility where we have data 

available. The nice thing about AWE's is generally they 

only did one thing. Okay? All Bethlehem Steel did was 

roll these billets into rods. 

 I was talking to my colleague, Jack Beck, who's our data -- 6 

or I should say dose reconstruction research person in 

charge of the AWE facilities. He mentioned there were 

eight other facilities rolled billets into rods. Simon 

Saw that I mentioned was one. What's the other one in -- 

Colony site outside Albany, and a few more. So again we 

can pull the records from those and using the Bethlehem 

Steel model, we should be able to generate technical basis 

documents for those sites fairly easily. 

The monitoring data from the facility or from another 

facility performing the same type of work can be used to 

characterize this. As you know, it's not news to anyone, 

extensive searches to find this are involved, and actually 

so far we've been pretty successful hitting that. But 

then, as I mentioned, once an AWE is characterized, all 

the claims from that facility can be processed in a pretty 

straightforward fashion. 

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 So just some acknowledgements. The technical basis document 1 

was really prepared by Jeri Anderson, who's a health 

physicist on our team, employee of MJW Corp. Also let me 

add, input on the external doses was generated by Matt 

Smith, who's a health physicist with Dade Moeller & 

Associates. Bill Tankersley with the data retrieval at 

EML; Jack Beck is also in charge of exposure 

characterizations at the AWE's. I should also -- forgot 

to put the name up -- Diane Reeder, who is our records 

specialist who is here in Cincinnati, did a lot of data 

research and retrieval. And pleasantly to discover, many 

of the documents we needed to use were already in the 

NIOSH database. And also in one of the coups we have as a 

consultant to ORAU for the monitoring data is Dr. Naomi 

Harley, who of course many of you know who worked at EML, 

and as it turns out, the air filter samples from these 

sites that measured the uranium concentration -- when she 

was a graduate student she counted them, so she's very 

familiar with the data and gives us a good tie-in to that. 

So that concludes this one. Do you have any questions? 

DR. ZIEMER: Rich, is there any evidence, one way or the 

other, that there were bioassay data or not any bioassay 

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data? 

 DR. TOOHEY: 2 We haven't found any, Paul. I'll just leave it 

at that. My guess is, from looking at the EML records -- 

and we found one document had been prepared by New York 

Ops Office in 1951 and traced the flow of material through 

these different AWE sites in the east and what was done at 

each. And that gave me the impression that actual 

bioassay monitoring -- say urinalysis for uranium -- was 

pretty spotty. They really just worked off the air 

monitoring. And of course as you recall, in those times 

if an air monitoring result was less than the MAC, 

everything was hunky-dory. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Dr. Roessler? 

DR. ROESSLER: You didn't give any estimates on the internal 

dose, but with -- which is probably the significant one, 

but on the external it seems to me that the chest X-rays 

are going to be a rather significant -- 

DR. TOOHEY: Of course. 

DR. ROESSLER: -- part of that. 

DR. TOOHEY: Yes, we agree. You know, the photons -- this 

was natural uranium, but it had been processed, so the 

radium and all the gamma emitters are out of it, so you've 

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just got the 63 and 93 keV photons which are heavily 

internally absorbed in it. We actually, in our draft 

document, have some estimates for photon dose to skin and 

things like that. And to be honest, I don't believe them. 

 I'm not happy with those yet so I want to go back over 

them. But they're going to be, at most, a few millirem. 

So compared to the internal dose, it's low. 

 I haven't run the intakes through IMBA yet to see what the 8 

doses are. The first thought I had was well, I could just 

use the ICRP dose coefficients, but of course that gives 

me 50-year committed dose, which is not what we want 

anyway. So I don't know what the doses come -- I don't 

know, Jim, do you have any doses off the top of your head 

on any of those that you recall? 

DR. NETON: (Inaudible) 

DR. TOOHEY: Okay, no, no problem. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. We have Mark and then Jim. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, Gen asked the question I was targeted on 

was the internal doses, but you explained that. 

Also I was wondering if you -- you identified some 

individuals -- if you had identified any individuals that 

worked at this plant at the past. And if so, did you do 

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any interviews with past ex-- you know, experts that might 

have had knowledge about the processes of the run. You 

mentioned the one memo that indicated five additional 

runs. 

 DR. TOOHEY: 5 We certainly interviewed some claimants. I 

don't think we've gotten in touch with, you know, experts 

-- site experts who had worked there, but I do -- I plan 

to do that, and I'll tell you why. I noticed in the 

reference list on our draft, one was a memo from Tony 

Lamastra*, a health physicist I know, to his boss. And 

once we're kind of happy with this technical basis 

document, I want to run a copy by Tony, just for a reality 

check. 

MR. GRIFFON: The other question was, you mentioned that 

there was probably five or six or something like that 

other sites that did very similar processes. In 

developing this tech basis document are you going to first 

look at those other five or six and wait to see whether -- 

I mean one thing that comes to mind for me is did you look 

at the measurements for those other facilities to see if -

- had similar processes to see if you had 1000 times the 

MAC and if your triangular distribution is appropriate or 

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-- 

 DR. TOOHEY: 2 Not yet, but -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 3 -- consistent with the other facilities? 

 DR. TOOHEY: 4 -- but we will as we go on. We haven't gotten 

to that yet, but we certainly plan to do that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 In term -- in terms of -- 

 DR. TOOHEY: 7 I was just going to say -- I'm sorry, you know, 

as I'm sure you're aware, these things are an iterative 

process, and I don't think we'll ever be done and say this 

is the absolute final last word on exposure conditions at 

this facility. Our goal is to generate something that 

enables us to do dose reconstructions and be confident 

that the compensability decision is falling on the right 

side of the line, even if we don't have the dose right to 

the millirem. 

MR. GRIFFON: And that's sort of where I was heading was if 

you had 300 or so claims, you know -- I don't know if it 

makes more sense to get this tech basis document done 

before you consider those other sites or -- you know, to 

make sure you have it as correct as possible the first 

time and then do the 300 -- I mean I was just wondering -- 

the timing. 

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 DR. TOOHEY: 1 Yeah. No, I think they'll go forward 

simultaneously. You know, we obviously can't afford to 

wait till we get every site done perfectly before we start 

doing dose reconstructions or, you know, at the end of the 

five-year period there'll still be a backlog of 40,000 

dose reconstructions to do. So when we're fairly 

confident we've got a reasonable handle on the site, we're 

going to go ahead with the telephone interviews and the 

dose reconstruction. And of course the claimant review of 

the interview report and the claimant review of the dose 

reconstruction are -- also serve as reality checks on that 

process. 

We are certainly committed, as time goes on -- even if a 

dose reconstruction was completed, sent to Labor and 

adjudicated by Labor -- if we find new information that 

would make a change in the compensability level, we will 

redo the dose reconstructions for those sites and run them 

back through. 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim and then Robert. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I have a follow-up question I think to 

what Mark was asking about, but I'm just trying to 

understand your process for doing this type of -- making 

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this type of an effort to develop this type of report, and 

my question goes back to this issue about the -- whether 

or not there were actually other additional runs, I 

believe in 1955. 

 DR. TOOHEY: 5 Uh-huh. 

 DR. MELIUS: 6 It would seem to me that you could modify your 

interview process of those claimants as you go through to 

evaluate that question to see if anybody had any more 

information. Now is that something you do -- at the same 

time there may be a way of doing it as you're going 

through the -- 

DR. TOOHEY: Okay. Well, we can't change an interview form 

'cause that's, you know, an OMB-approved document. But 

the interview does ask when did you work, what were you 

working with, what did you do? So if the results of that 

says yeah, I was there doing whatever while we were 

rolling billets in 1955, that would certainly confirm it 

for us. 

DR. MELIUS: But then would the -- would your understanding 

of the OMB process say that you could not then interview -

- or do some sort of data gathering from those 300 

claimants right now, prior to the interview process, to 

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try to ascertain whether there was more information on 

other -- 

 DR. TOOHEY: 3 Help! 

 DR. MELIUS: 4 -- you know, runs? 

 DR. TOOHEY: 5 I don't know the answer to that. Would someone 

from OCAS want to address it? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 7 If I understand what you're asking, Jim, can 

we use the 300 claimants that we know about right now and 

ask them questions about their experience at this 

particular AWE? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I don't believe we can without OMB approval. 

We certainly can as we interview each individual. We can 

go through the questionnaire and the follow-up questions 

are what I think are critical and important. Those are 

questions that, as we -- as the interview proceeds and 

there's information revealed, you can ask follow-up 

questions that don't have to appear in an OMB-approved 

survey instrument. 

DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

MR. ELLIOTT: And that's where our thinking has been all 

along that we would do those follow-up questions to find 

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and elicit more detailed information than we might have 

got just from the original question that is placed on the 

questionnaire. 

 DR. MELIUS: 4 So you -- you have me a little bit confused 

then. So would that then be part of the normal claimant 

interview process -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 7 Yes. 

 DR. MELIUS: 8 -- would you be able to -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 9 Yes. 

DR. MELIUS: -- do it at that point. Okay. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, okay. 'Cause it seems to me -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: We can do that. In the normal interview 

process we can -- we can use follow-up questions beyond 

the OMB-approved questionnaire. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Particularly if you know something about the 

site. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: So it sounds like it opens the door. 

MR. ELLIOTT: But we can't go back to all 300, collectively 

or individually, and pose questions at those -- those 

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folks about the site without using the instrument, without 

using the questionnaire approach. 

 DR. MELIUS: 3 As part of -- and again, I'm not sure this is, 

you know, worth doing or significant enough to do that. 

Would you be able to -- for example, you have this 

information in from one person about this run -- these 

runs in 1955. Would you be able to go to whatever other 

records you have on employees there, employee 

representatives or technical staff, and be able to survey 

them on this issue? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Certainly. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We have an OMB-approved questionnaire for 

coworker information or expert information that may be 

gained from that part of the process, so yeah, we have 

that ability. And again, the follow-up questions would be 

most important and relevant from those experiences. 

DR. ZIEMER: Robert. 

MR. PRESLEY: Bob Presley, Dr. Toohey. One of the things I 

was wondering about is when you do this are you going to 

be able to identify the person that might have an 

outstanding dose for a facility, say a mill operator 

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versus a material handler, so that it's going to be able 

to help you in your other sites, go back and look at these 

other jobs since they are the same for each site. 

 DR. TOOHEY: 4 In general, the answer to that is yes. But I'm 

not sure for this particular facility we could get to that 

level of detail, that someone -- we based this technical 

basis on more or less, you know, a uniform airborne 

distribution of uranium in proximity to the billets. 

 Now if, as we go through the interview processes, we can 9 

nail that down -- okay, if you were in this job category, 

you spent more time within one foot of the billets than 

somebody in another job category -- yeah, we can 

incorporate that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Roy DeHart. 

DR. DEHART: Isn't there an issue with radiation 

contamination of the flaking off of particles into the 

air? 

DR. TOOHEY: Potentially. Our take on this -- we use the 

default particle size assumption out of the respiratory 

tract model, which is five microns, and actually that's 

claimant-friendly. I think from that flaking and 

everything the most likely particle size will be higher 

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than that, which produces a lower dose per unit intake. 

So I think making the default assumption in this case is 

actually claimant-friendly. Although if, you know, Naomi 

Harley still has some air filters in her basement, we may 

run a few through a scanning electron microscope and look 

at what the particle size distribution is, but I don't 

think we'll find those. 

 Let me add one other thing, though. There was a FUSRAP site 8 

survey at this facility, I think in the seventies, which 

found no residual contamination. So if there was 

extensive contamination at this time, they cleaned it up. 

 But my understanding of the process is that molten salt 

bath really covered those billets fairly well and did not 

produce a lot of widespread contamination. 

DR. ZIEMER: Me, I have a question -- 

DR. TOOHEY: Oh, let me add -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Go ahead, Rich. 

DR. TOOHEY: -- one thing. I just thought of it in 

connection with the dose question. One thing related to 

that, and I can give you on the drafts, looking at 

compensability under these exposure assumptions, lung 

cancers, especially in non-smokers, are likely 

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compensable. Skin cancers will likely be compensable. 

We're going to look at kidney of course, since it's a 

target for uranium, but that -- the doses these things 

generate would make those particular cancers on the likely 

compensable side. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Uranium has a chemical toxicity. Does that -- 

 DR. TOOHEY: 7 That's subpart (d). 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 -- is that going to show up here in the 

methodology in terms of -- it probably gets overlooked, 

does it, or not? 

DR. TOOHEY: For what we're doing, yes. Of course the 

chemical toxicity would be a subpart (d) claim, and of 

course our technical basis on exposure conditions could be 

used by the physician advisory panels to adjudicate those. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

DR. TOOHEY: But it's not really part of our task. 

DR. ZIEMER: But I think it's always been kind of an 

operational thesis of health physicists that the chemical 

toxicity exceeds the radiological toxicity for natural 

uranium. 

DR. TOOHEY: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: This was all natural, was it not? 

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 DR. TOOHEY: 1 Yes, at that time. Also they were not into 

uranium recycling yet, either, so there's no transuranic 

exposures in this. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Other -- oh, Robert, did you have another 

question? Okay. Any further comments or questions? 

Thank you, we're -- thank you. Oh, there's one more. 

 DR. MELIUS: 7 Can I just -- one more general one. I'm not 

sure who should answer this. Is the plan to then go 

through a number of these AWE sites one at a time or in, 

you know, groups that -- such as this -- process groups in 

order to develop these kind of site profiles or -- and 

where does that process stand? 

DR. TOOHEY: The short answer is yes. We have four more 

sites currently in development. I know two of them off 

the top of my head, Bridgeport Brass and -- what's the 

other one, Jim? 

DR. NETON: (Inaudible) 

DR. TOOHEY: Sorry? 

DR. NETON: Blocksin*. 

DR. TOOHEY: Oh, yeah, Blocksin Chemical, and I know there's 

a couple more in the works. I would think we're -- I know 

we're going to do Simon Steel, since that was the same 

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sort of thing, and then we'll chase down those other sites 

that also did rolling. 

 DR. MELIUS: 3 And for Larry, how would these be chosen, 

number of claims or -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 5 I was just going to comment on that. We're 

still -- as Jim Neton mentioned earlier, we're still 

trying to develop the machinery to do all this. We're 

still working on low-hanging fruit. This particular AWE 

had 300-plus claims out of the 1,400 you saw on Dave 

Sundin's slide, so we thought this would be a -- and we 

had information, so we thought this would be a good one to 

start with, develop a model and then proceed. The other 

two I think also have a goodly number of claims to us, so 

we're trying to think of it in that way, how can we make 

an impact and at the same time test the machinery, build 

the models and put them in place. 

DR. ZIEMER: Mark has a comment. 

MR. GRIFFON: Just a sort of tangential question, but the 

DOE site profiles, how -- how will they -- I mean what's 

the process there? How -- how are they likely to differ -

- I think they'd probably -- be a little different process 

than the AWE's but -- but maybe Jim or -- I don't know who 

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can comment on this, but what's the process there? 

 DR. NETON: 2 Yeah, and remember, the DOE sites, most of them 

we have personnel monitoring data, which is our sort of 

gold standard to start with, whether there's film badge, 

TLD data or urine data, so you have individual worker 

monitoring data. So those site profiles are more to flesh 

out the rest of the story, so to speak -- the 

environmental issues, the medical X-rays, the detection 

limits for the bioassay programs -- so those are different 

scenarios. 

These profiles -- this is sort of the -- an extreme profile 

that Dick has mentioned where we have only air sampling 

data, and that's it -- and some process descriptions. So 

that's one end of the continuum, I guess, to look at. I 

guess -- there's one more where we would have no air 

monitoring data and just have process descriptions. Of 

course then maybe we could sort of backtrack and use some 

of the air monitoring data we have. So there's a whole 

continuum from personnel to air sample, and there'll be 

all kinds of flavors in between. 

DR. TOOHEY: Let me comment on that. What we're 

concentrating on right now on the DOE sites are preparing 

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what we call look-up tables for the dose reconstructors to 

use. So if a worker was in this building in these years, 

such and such was the environmental dose. Look-up tables 

for the X-ray exposures. And one critical one for the 

plutonium facilities for the internal dosimetry will be a 

table of minimum detectable activities for the bioassay 

monitoring procedures over the years, both in vivo and in 

vitro. And I already have people working on Los Alamos, 

Hanford, Rocky Flats, NTS, so the -- more the major 

plutonium facilities for that because that's the sort of 

thing we absolutely have to have to do dose 

reconstructions for people who had bioassay monitoring at 

those sites. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Richard. We're going to take a 

quick break now. We'll have a 15-minute break and then 

reconvene at 10:30. 

(Whereupon, a recess was taken.) 

DR. ZIEMER: We need to move into the next item on our 

agenda, which is the report of the dose reconstruction 

work group. I would like to indicate to the Board that 

one member of the public would like to comment on this 

topic, and I'd like to ask the Board if you would wish to 

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have that member's comments at this time rather than at 

the end of the day. We have -- the public comment period 

is scheduled for the end of the day and of course, in 

fairness to other members of the public -- if there are 

others who wish to comment on this -- we would not be able 

to restrict it to the one person. But do you wish to have 

that member of the public comment this morning since it 

pertains to this topic? I would ask -- 

 MR. ESPINOSA: 9 I think an open dialogue would -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Please use the mike. Richard. 

MR. ESPINOSA: I think really an open -- an open dialogue 

would work great. 

DR. ZIEMER: Is there any objection to having that member of 

the public -- this is an individual representing -- I 

think it was representing PACE. Is that correct? Where's 

the young woman -- 

UNIDENTIFIED: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: So I believe the Board is willing to have you 

comment now. Let me ask also, in fairness, are there 

other members of the public who would wish to comment on 

this topic? There is another, so we would have to allow 

both. Is that agreeable to the Board? Do you wish to 

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hear those? 

 Okay, let's proceed with those two comments. Please come to 2 

the mike here, identify yourself and your affiliation and 

then we will hear your comments. 

 MS. CISCO: 5 My name is Jeanne Cisco. My phone number is 

740-289-2405. I'm employed at the Portsmouth Gaseous 

Diffusion plant in Piketon, Ohio, and I'm appearing here 

today in my capacity as a compensation representative for 

PACE Local 5-689. Part of my responsibilities require 

that I provide assistance to claimants with respect to 

claims filed under EEOICPA at the Portsmouth plant. I 

also work as part of the PACE Worker Health Protection 

Program, a DOE-funded medical screening program for former 

and current workers. Claimants receiving the NIOSH 

telephone interview questionnaires have come to our office 

for assistance with their telephone questionnaire and 

express their concern with the process. 

Today we are bringing several issues related to the 

interview process to your attention because it's the 

Advisory Board that is charged with overseeing the NIOSH 

dose reconstruction process. First we'll discuss issues 

with the interview process by way of background. 

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 We have advised the claimants to prepare written prior -- 1 

I'm sorry, I'm nervous. 

 UNIDENTIFIED: 3 You're doing fine. 

 MS. CISCO: 4 I'm shaking. Okay. We have advised claimants 

to prepare written answers prior to conducting the NIOSH 

phone interview to ensure that all this information is 

provided as accurately as possible to the interviewer. Of 

the claimants we have assisted, I'll speak of one today. 

I do not have permission to disclose his name. 

He prepared his answers and spoke with the interviewer 

approximately three hours the first time. The claimant 

was pleased with the courtesy and patience of the 

interviewer. However, when the summary was returned, he 

was shocked and disappointed at how condensed the 

interviewer had rendered his interview, and moreover, this 

version contained inaccuracies. It was obvious that the 

interviewer did not have a knowledge of the plant 

processes and equipment. 

Knowing that the only other facts usually considered are the 

DOE's monitoring records, which are not independently 

validated, he phone the interviewer to complain. He was 

told that the computer would only hold so much space for 

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each question and that there was a comment section at the 

end. The interviewer also stated that the supervisor had 

summarized some of the information in completing the 

interview form. The interviewer told the claimant he 

could phone as many times as he needed to to add or 

correct the information. 

 Discouraged, he again came to us for assistance. We 7 

reviewed the summary and his written answers to attempt to 

condense the information, yet accurately capture his 

potential exposures. The second interview was for 45 

minutes, making corrections. 

The second summary had additional information added to the 

back and the comment section, but this was not crossreferenced with the questions. The second summary also 

had incomplete sentences and inaccuracies. 

I advised the claimant to attach his written answers to the 

summary. I do not think the interviewers or their 

supervisors are knowledgeable enough of the plant to 

condense or summarize employees' statements. I hope the 

dose reconstructionists are more knowledgeable of the 

particular plant processes and equipment so that they can 

recognize mistakes like "coal recovery" instead of "cold 

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recovery", which is a process that traps out uranium. 

 It would be more efficient to tape the interviews, subject 2 

to the permission from the claimants, of course. I think 

this could be very useful to NIOSH. Even though I believe 

NIOSH interviewers are performing to the best of their 

ability, I have seen first-hand an inability of the 

interview process to fully capture the information related 

to potential exposures of these claimants. There is 

definitely a need for a follow-up of some type of audit to 

the interviewing process with the claimant's themselves to 

make sure that the interviewing process is accurately 

captured, that perhaps this Advisory Board can perform 

that audit function and advise NIOSH on mid-course 

corrections. 

Not many claimants will have an advocate informed about the 

plant processes working on their behalf to make sure that 

all the significant information is fully and properly 

captured in the interview documentation. In addition, 

claimants may know of certain documents, about exposures 

or the work process, but do not have them in their 

possession. NIOSH should provide an opportunity for 

claimants to identify documents that they know about so 

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NIOSH can use its capacity to obtain this documentation. 

 Second, the interview form is problematic for widows and 2 

widowers. I've spoken with widows and widowers who have 

no idea where their spouse worked in the plant or with 

whom. They cannot identify the job classifications 

performed or the potential exposures. Due to security 

clearances, employees have not been permitted to discuss 

this type of information with their families. 

 We would be pleased to offer our assistance if there's 9 

anything we can do at all to help at our level. 

Does anyone have any questions? 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, Jeanne, for raising those 

concerns. Now we'll hear from the other gentleman who 

wished to address this topic, as well. 

MR. MALONE: My name is Greg Malone. I'm a member of Local 

252, the International Chemical Workers Union, working out 

of Y-12. I'm also a health and safety instructor for my 

international and I'm here for the Center for Worker 

Health and Safety Education based here in Cincinnati, 

which is funded through a DOE grant. We do health and 

safety training at several of the DOE sites, and I'm the 

DOE coordinator. 

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 And mostly mine are questions that I have on some of the 1 

stuff that's been brought forward today. And just like 

Jeanne, one of my questions is has anybody ever thought 

about the culture that was involved for these people? I 

mean you're calling up asking 80-year-old women who's 

filed a claim on behalf of their husband what their 

husband did there, and during the forties and fifties at 

these sites, you know, when you said I work at Oak Ridge, 

that was it. Nobody asked any questions. You didn't tell 

anybody anything. And you know, you're basing part of 

this, if they're going to further their claim, on what 

they know about what their husband did when, just like 

Jeanne said, you know, you didn't talk about it. 

One of the things else, too, is getting into this dose 

reconstruction, I personally sat through and listened to 

Tara O'Toole* testify in front of Congress, saying that -- 

and put it my words, not hers -- that these DOE monitoring 

results were junk, that they didn't know what they were 

monitoring, they didn't know how they were monitoring it. 

 They didn't know what to do with what they had. And 

again you're turning around and basing these claims on the 

information that was provided. 

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 A personal example, I worked in a building in Y-12 where 1 

they did constant air monitoring. The air monitors were 

located eight to ten feet above the floor. Well, then 

they came through in like 1984 and 1985 and they lowered 

all these monitors down to the breathing zone and the 

counts went sky high. So all the data they had prior to 

lowering those is going to reflect a whole lot lower 

exposure, you know, than what people were actually exposed 

to. 

Another thing is that -- I don't know how you're going to 

address it -- is during the forties and fifties -- I 

personally have two uncles that have died from cancer 

working at these facilities. And one of the things is, at 

times in the early forties and fifties, it was routinely -

- maintenance workers and stuff were told to leave their 

dosimeters outside when they were going inside and working 

a hot job, you know, so how do you reconstruct the dose on 

that? And how does the wife know about that when they're 

doing this questionnaire? You know, there's a lot of 

unanswered questions. 

And, you know, finally, the one thing is, as a former 

worker, my question is is how do you get rid of the 

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illusion that it's still not the fox guarding the 

henhouse? I mean it's -- DOE is setting over this. DOE 

is providing the data to the people, and ultimately it's 

going to be DOE that, you know -- that pays the money out 

on these claims, and it should be the fact that these 

people -- it should be DOE has to prove that it was not 

the job that caused the problem instead of some of the 

things -- I've been reading through the minutes of the 

last meeting and stuff, and in the meeting it says that 

it's up to the claimant to prove, you know. They don't 

have the information that DOE has, but yet, you know -- 

that's just one of the questions. It just looks to me 

like it's the fox guarding the henhouse on this if you're 

providing the information to somebody else and they're 

basing their findings off the information that DOE 

provides them as to whether DOE has to pay this 

compensation or not. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you for the comments, Greg. 

I would just add a comment in case there had been some 

misunderstanding. I think at our previous meeting, one of 

the members of the public was concerned about what she 

characterized as the need for the claimant to provide dose 

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data. I thought it was made clear that that was not a 

requirement, but that if the claimant did have additional 

information that was not readily apparent, that they had 

the opportunity to provide that information. There may be 

cases that, in spite of secrecy, survivors were made aware 

of additional information. 

 But I believe most of the issues that you've raised, those 7 

have been raised with us before. We're aware of some of 

these shortcomings or apparent shortcomings. And one of 

the objectives of our dose reconstruction process is to 

try to overcome those by gathering additional 

supplementary information, insofar as we're able to do 

that. But we appreciate having you highlight some of 

those issues that we all are concerned about. 

DOSE RECONSTRUCTION WORKGROUP

Now let's go ahead with the actual report of the dose 

reconstruction work group. You may recall that at our 

telephone meeting in December we went through the early 

drafts of the documents and a number of changes were 

suggested. And Mark has taken those and made some 

revisions, so Mark, are you prepared now to present to us 

the next draft, as it were? 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 1 Yeah, I -- I've done -- I haven't prepared a -

- a formal presentation, but what I was going to propose 

is just to go back through the three attach-- the three 

documents that we've been discussing and just to run 

through -- give an overview quickly of the major changes 

that were made in this document that's -- I believe it's 

on the table, also. Is that correct? Okay. That's 

available today and in -- in our books, as opposed to the 

last one we discussed on the conference call. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Now the one that's in the book -- it's 

labeled draft attachments A, C, D and E -- is which 

version? That's the newest version? 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, it's got a date on the top, 1/2/03. 

DR. ZIEMER: And does that show the changes? That's not a 

version that highlights the changes, is it? 

MR. GRIFFON: No. No, but it -- it reflects the changes 

made from -- 

DR. ZIEMER: But it reflects the changes. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- the conference call. Right. And that's 

why I -- that's why I wanted to step through it, to -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, why don't you do that, step us -- 

MR. GRIFFON: -- target for people the major changes that 

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were made. And if I -- if I go -- skip something that was 

significant, let me know. Larry and Jim might catch 

something else. 

 In the -- start with the body, the first document there, on 4 

page three, section F, I just wanted to draw our attention 

to the fact that we -- we'll have to eventually put in a 

"not to exceed" value, and that'll probably come from our 

executive session numbers tomorrow. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 9 That's correct. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right? On the same page, section H, I've 

added a section there to reflect some comments that -- 

that the -- the review panel will present their decisions 

back to the Board prior to the award of the contract, so 

that's a new phrase that's been added in there. And the 

review panel is the review panel that's making the 

decision on contractor award. 

Let me just run through them and then we can go -- yeah. On 

page -- page four, technical panel members, that's -- 

that's basically been left open. It does indicate a 

reflection of our discussions that -- that one Advisory 

Board member would be on the panel. We've also had 

discussions of whether the other members of that panel 

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should be NIOSH representatives, NIOSH-OCAS representative 

or NIOSH -- broadly NIOSH representatives, or possibly 

outside -- other government -- or other outside 

individuals. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 5 Let me add at this point that in this 

particular instance the -- there will only be one OCASNIOSH person assigned to this technical review panel. The 

remainder of the positions will be filled from non-NIOSH, 

other -- other HHS or other Department -- government folks 

who are -- have been through the contract officer's 

training school. 

DR. MELIUS: Could you clarify "non"? I'm a little confused 

'cause -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: There's only one NIOSH person assigned to this 

review panel. 

DR. MELIUS: And the other three are HHS employees or -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: They may be HHS or others -- other 

Departments. We're not -- 

DR. MELIUS: Department of Energy? 

MR. ELLIOTT: No, no Department of Energy. It may be 

Department of Labor, it may be VA. 

MR. GRIFFON: Can -- does the Board have input on those 

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other panel members, or can the Board have input, even if 

it's in an executive session or -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 3 No. No. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 4 No? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 5 No. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 All right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 7 Nor will the panel members be identified for 

the public, other than the Board representative. This is 

a Federal acquisitions requirement that we must meet, to 

protect the identify of the individuals. 

MR. GRIFFON: Can the other panel members be represented by 

a agency name or affiliation or -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: We'll have to check on that. 

MR. GRIFFON: Thanks, Larry. Okay, the -- I think that was 

the primary changes in the front end document. And I 

don't know if you want me to go -- I can go through the 

whole thing and -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Why don't you just go through the whole thing, 

yeah. 

MR. GRIFFON: I actually had attachment -- I'll do 

attachment C next 'cause that's the order it's in -- in 

the binder here. Attachment C, which is the primary scope 

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of -- statement of work, page three, section A, we 

included in the second paragraph there -- we included -- 

as per the requirements, we included projected break-outs 

for the number of cases to be reviewed from years one 

through five, so that -- that whole paragraph has been 

added significantly. 

 Page five, section 2B, if I can find it myself -- okay, we - 7 

- we -- we had a discussion on the interview or the reinterview process, and at this point in this draft those -

- those tasks have been deleted, as far as re-interviewing 

people. I did circulate on -- I had Cori make copies of a 

previous document, just -- just for your interest. 

There's two pages there. The first page shows the last 

draft where we had task B1 and 2 show the re-interview 

task, but they were deleted for this draft, so... 

MR. ELLIOTT: I asked that those two phrases be deleted from 

this particular draft, proposing that -- as I did in the 

December 12th teleconference -- that with their absence we 

can move this forward expeditiously, not having to seek 

OMB approval to re-interview folks or to record or to 

change questions. That still does not preclude the 

ability for that to be done under individual tasks that 

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the Board might develop to place before this -- this 

contractor. If you should decide to retain that language 

that Mark is -- had provided from an earlier draft, we 

will have to go through Department clearance to get this 

procurement approved, and possibly OMB approval before we 

would move the procurement forward. And that -- I can't 

predict how much time would be taken in those two steps, 

so that's why I asked for that language to be removed from 

the current draft you have, thinking that it would 

expedite the procurement process. 

MR. GRIFFON: And I guess why -- we actually went through a 

few iterations on this where I put it back in, and then it 

was removed again. But anyway, part of the reason I 

thought that we wanted to include it -- and I'm willing to 

-- I wondered if there is a possible solution to this 

which might be to say pending OMB approval or something 

like that, where it wouldn't hold up the whole -- see, my 

fear is I also would like to get a commitment that the 

Board will -- is willing to pursue this for the follow-up 

tasks that we develop down the line -- or decide whether 

or not we think it's worth pursuing in principle. You 

know, if it gets deleted now, it may never be reintroduced 

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into other tasks down the line, whereas if we at least 

left it in there -- I think it's a critical element. I 

understand there might be -- I don't want to delay the 

contract from being released, but I think it's a critical 

element to have to make this audit process useful. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 If I may comment, you still have the general 

principle of evaluating the effectiveness of the phone 

interview, so what is missing is how that's done. Is that 

not correct? 

MR. GRIFFON: Well, you're -- you're evaluating the 

effectiveness based on the -- I guess all we're looking at 

is the summary form and whether that -- I guess we're just 

reviewing the summary form of the interview rather than 

questioning whether -- I mean we -- we've heard some other 

comments and public comments just now that, you know -- 

questioning whether all that information is captured 

accurately or -- or sufficiently, so I guess that's the 

question is we -- we don't get at that point. 

DR. ZIEMER: Larry commented -- I think we had some debate 

over what constitutes an audit on that process, number 

one; and number two, you had the issues that Larry raised. 

 It may be that you could still include a sort of third 

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point that simply said that you would require the 

contractor to assist in other ways that may be developed 

to evaluate the interview process, without spelling out 

what those were at this time, in order to expedite this. 

But let me get the comment here from Larry. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 6 Well, just to react to your suggestion of 

language that's caveated by "pending" or -- that still 

needs to go through Department clearance before 

procurement would proceed. And depending upon what your 

intent was there that would be conveyed to the Department 

for clearance, it may still require OMB approval. 

I appreciate Mrs. Cisco's comments today and I wish that, 

you know, those were brought directly to us. We believe 

that the interview process is an effectively-designed and 

implemented process to facilitate the dose reconstruction 

to fairly adjudicate the claim. We know that the survey 

instruments that we prepared have been fully vetted and 

cleared through -- all the way through OMB and through the 

Department. We feel that those survey instruments and the 

interview approach itself are designed to elicit and 

capture the information that -- and a claimant may have. 

We recognize at the same time what Greg mentioned just a 

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moment ago, that many of the survivors may not have the 

information, and we've taken that into account. And we 

specifically focus in -- we have three individual survey 

instruments, and the one for the survivor speaks 

specifically to who else might we talk to who may have 

worked with your spouse who may have information that 

would shed light on this particular claim. We think our 

interviewers are trained to be polite, compassionate, 

competent and thorough in this process. I believe that 

the interview process can be effectively examined by the 

process tools, which includes more than just the 

questionnaires themselves and the draft report that's 

provided to the claimant, the follow-up comments that are 

captured from the claimant and the final report that's 

approved by the claimant, as well as the performance 

measures that we're going to be tracking and monitoring. 

And let me finally say, we welcome an audit of this 

particular aspect of the process and would be quick to 

work with you all in any deficiencies that are identified 

and investigating those and making changes and addressing 

the problems. And it's not that we're trying to prohibit 

or preclude this -- whatever is decided by the Board 

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regarding interviews, recording of interviews, whatever we 

talked about in that context in December 12th, we're not 

trying to prohibit that by stating that this is the 

language that we think should go forward for a 

procurement. This language, we feel, gives a fair, level 

playing field for all proposers to understand what they 

need to bid against. And then you can prepare task orders 

as you see fit. And those task orders, if they include 

certain things that require special clearances or legal 

reviews, Privacy Act considerations, OMB approvals before 

we can implement them, we can put those into the system 

and work those through after we have the procurement in 

place. So I just want everyone to understand where the 

Department's coming from in this regard. 

DR. ZIEMER: Tony? 

DR. ANDRADE: I think that was an excellent suggestion made 

by the young lady from the public that commented this 

morning, and that is that a certain number of these 

interviews be taped. Would that propos-- would that -- if 

an auditing body were to listen to a tape, compare it to a 

transcript, without revealing any confidential 

information, including identification of the person, would 

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that present OMB with a problem? 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 No, we talked about this taping issue before. 

Larry, maybe you can comment on that. The plan is to not 

tape anything. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 5 Yes, we'd made a considered decision not to 

record the interviews, from a variety of concerns. I 

would categorize those concerns as being practical issues, 

fiscal issues, governmental issues, and legal concerns. 

We have no mechanism in place right now for those 

interviews that we've done already to of course go back 

and capture them. We have looked at ways to record 

interviews. And for those categories of concern, we felt 

that it was not something that we would enjoin right now. 

DR. ANDRADE: Well, then my -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: Whether it requires OMB review or not would 

depend upon changing the interview questions, going back 

to the interviewee -- any follow back to the interviewee 

would require OMB approval to do so. So there's a host of 

issues surrounding whether to record or not record. 

DR. ANDRADE: Can I make a second -- I have a follow-up 

question then. Would it be more practical, since we do 

have people listening in on some of these interviews as a 

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quality control process, for -- at least in a certain 

percentage of cases -- for both people to take down 

transcripts of what they believe they've heard and thereby 

have some mechanism to compare notes for accuracy, and if 

they find that there are discrepancies between 

transcriptions, then there really should be a follow-up 

phone call to the interviewee to get things straight. I 

think that would be a workable means by which one could 

address B-1. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think your proposal has merit. It is -- in 

its design it is before the decision has been levied 

regarding compensability so it has some merit in that 

regard. It doesn't trigger a call-back after the fact to 

a claimant so that would trigger an OMB clearance. It's 

part of the follow-back to make sure that we got the 

information we did need to move the claim. I think there 

are ways like this that the Board can examine and evaluate 

on how to do this audit that may be more beneficial and 

practical than recording of all interviews or a followback to claimants after the decision. 

DR. ZIEMER: Other comments? Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. Just one comment on the suggestion that 

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was just discussed. Remind everyone that we are -- the 

process we're involved in is the Board's oversight of 

NIOSH's dose reconstruction process, so the question isn't 

whether another person within the -- ORAU or another -- or 

NIOSH be listening in on the interview, but whether the 

firm that's chosen under this contract to review the NIOSH 

process is listening in on the interview and whether that 

raises any additional questions. So we're here to review 

NIOSH's dose reconstruction, and I think we have to 

maintain the integrity and the independence of that 

process. And it's already, due to contracting 

regulations, I think seriously impinged by the fact that 

NIOSH gets to choose who gets to choose the outside 

contractor that's going to review NIOSH, and that raises, 

you know, a number of potential problems. Again, not 

impugning anybody's intent in this, but -- nor the fact 

that they are -- there are significant limitations. 

I'd like to go back to this task order issue just so we can 

understand it a little bit better, is that -- I think what 

I'm hearing is that if the original RFC that goes out does 

not specify interviews -- or follow-up interviews or reinterviews in it, anything that would -- that does not 

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somehow call into play a question of, you know, sort of 

responder burden and so forth, that that then would 

obviate the need for OMB approval at the front end of the 

process. However, that if a task were later issued under 

that contract or -- that would involve interviews, then 

that task would have to go up -- the specific task 

involved would have to go up to -- through the Department 

or OMB for approval. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 9 If the task that you would write placed an 

additional burden on the public, either in written form 

or, you know, time committed, it will require OMB 

approval. 

DR. ZIEMER: Roy? 

DR. DEHART: Larry, I think you're getting a sense of the 

Board that we feel that there must be some kind of true 

audit of that interview, it's so important to the 

individual. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Sure. 

DR. DEHART: So whether we do that within the body of this 

or come back to it as we move forward, I think there will 

be some audit system established. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, I recognize that. I understand your 

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interest. It's not been clear to me whether or not that's 

a -- you know, you have arrived at a consensus of the 

Board in that regard, and that's not my -- you know, I'm 

not trying to push or direct that in one way or another. 

I'm trying to explain to you how to expedite the 

procurement process here. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 Okay. Other comments on this particular issue? 

 The expediting, in a sense, allows some of the other 

activities to move forward sort of right away, without the 

sort of indefinite delays -- if that's a good way to 

characterize them -- of going back to OMB. And also, I'm 

not sure we're at consensus as to what constitutes a -- an 

audit of the interview process. Does that mean a reinterview, does it mean listening in on the interview, or 

is it some way to -- to audit the auditors that have been 

built into place to see whether the -- whoever's doing the 

quality control agrees with the original interviewer or 

something like that. It seems to me there are a number of 

ways we can do an audit. 

I want to make sure, though, that in the process that this 

Board does not get off into doing the work of either the 

contractors or the agency itself. We are not the dose 

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reconstructionists. We are auditing, and we have to 

determine what that is. And I don't want to suggest that 

that doesn't mean listening to interviews or doing 

occasional tapes, but we want to make sure that -- I 

suggested last time, a re-interview, if it is a different 

set of questions, is not an audit, in my opinion. 

 Okay. Jim. 7 

 MR. GRIFFON: 8 It makes a case for a transcript, too. 

 DR. MELIUS: 9 Yeah, first of all, just one comment, and this 

is a follow-up on some of the comments I made on the 

conference call. My personal opinion, based on what we 

heard today, is that the current quality assurance plan on 

these interviews is not adequate. That having a 

supervisor listen in occasionally, informally, without a 

record of that review, is not an adequate quality 

assurance program for -- or quality control program for an 

interview process. It's not what's done in survey 

research. It's not done in other similar -- similar 

situations, and I think, independent of that -- of this 

process, of our review, that I would certainly recommend 

that that process be looked at in more detail and that 

some better quality assurance, quality control be built 

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into that -- that process. 

 Secondly, it certainly doesn't make me -- given that 2 

inadequacy, it doesn't make me comfortable at all with -- 

with that process substituting for our independent 

assessment of that -- of that policy. And maybe a way to 

proceed with this process is one -- and there may be some 

other parts of this RFC that we have to go through. We 

really haven't gone through the whole process, but -- but 

is that, one -- for this particular part -- it's one, that 

the Board come to some sort of agreement on, you know, do 

we think that it's important that the interview process be 

looked at as part of our review function. 

Secondly, that we look at what -- how that could be done, 

and to the extent we can come to a conclusions that will -

- what's adequate. Is reviewing the transcript adequate? 

 Does a follow-up interview need to be done? There's 

other -- other means that could be done, and when does -- 

when should that take place? Should it take place after 

the fact, after the record's developed, or does it need to 

be done -- can it be done at the time of the initial 

interview, which might obviate some of the bureaucratic 

problems we're having here. But that would be step two. 

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 And then step three is how do we implement that and can that 1 

be done in a way that allows NIOSH and us to go forward 

with this RFC, get it out, and then at a later point in 

time, you know, deal with the -- through a task order -- 

this -- this whole issue. 

 I just think it's important that we -- that we spend some 6 

time talking about how we would do this interview audit 

'cause -- for example, we want to make sure that the 

contractor have the right -- has the right expertise to 

oversee the interview process. We don't want to not 

consider it at all. And I don't think we want to play a 

lot of games with OMB about pretending that we don't think 

this is important or not 'cause in some practical ways we 

have to deal with it for -- but -- but I think if we went 

through that -- those three steps, I think we would get -- 

I think hopefully relatively quickly through this meeting 

to the point where we can go forward on -- on this 

announcement and -- in a way that will satisfy some of the 

bureaucratic impediments we have here and at the same time 

allow us to get it -- get it out and to serve our 

function, which is important. And I think Larry's in this 

very awkward position because, you know, we are setting up 

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a process to review him and his staff. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 Tony? 

 DR. ANDRADE: 3 I truly believe that there is no way we would 

ever be able to ensure that an independent auditor -- 

somebody listening in from another group that would be a 

member of this task order contract -- would have the 

correct expertise to be able to capture all of the 

detailed information that could very readily -- oh, say 

pass by the first two people that are listening in. So I 

really think that discussing that would just lead us 

nowhere. We're going to chase our tails on that. 

Again, I strongly suggest that if we are already having 

supervisors listen in occasionally -- and I think it 

should be done randomly and occasionally -- that if both 

people, the supervisor and the interviewer, were to 

independently transcribe what they've listened to and then 

make available those transcriptions, with all confidential 

or Privacy Act information redacted, to an auditor, that 

would be the simplest, the most efficient way for people 

to audit the interview process. I think it would fly 

through. I don't believe that we would need OMB approval 

for such a mechanism, and I think we could move forward. 

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 DR. ANDERSON: 2 Recognizing that we could maybe do this as a 

two-step process, my concern would be be sure that the 

task order here is broad enough that in fact it would 

include that and we would not issue a potential task order 

that said well, that goes beyond the scope of this and 

then we're back to something totally -- so I'm wondering 

under number one here, if the issue is one of not 

requiring OMB, would be to just extend number one and just 

say something like: or other evaluation mechanisms which 

would not increase, you know, time or whatever -- whatever 

the exclusionary phraseology for OMB would be. And then 

at that point, when we issue a task order, it would be in 

a manner which would be either having somebody sit in -- 

and I think you could put a case together that sitting in 

is not increasing, you know, the time and effort of the 

claimant. You would then have the other issue of the 

privacy and whatever, but at least from the OMB, on that 

part it would be at -- or you could argue also probably 

that taking a tape recording which, after the fact, would 

be reviewed by somebody on selected cases would also not 

increase the effort by the individual. So I'm wondering 

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if we couldn't put some statement in here which then would 

be, once we get a contractor -- or the contractor would 

see that there might be other mechanisms and you'd think 

they might consider what those would be and, having 

listened if they wanted to or reading our minutes, they 

would see the sort of direction we're going and would -- 

would build that into their application. So what -- I'm 

just wondering if you could give us just what you said as 

the exclusionary and we won't put that in here, or other 

mechanisms which would keep it fairly broad, unless 

somebody would object to that -- 

DR. ZIEMER: You're suggesting, Henry, that item number one 

perhaps is overly restrictive -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- by implying that that's the only -- 

DR. ANDERSON: The only thing you're going to do is that and 

you -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

DR. ANDERSON: -- if I were a contractor, I'd look at that, 

I'd say what's that going to cost me. 

DR. ZIEMER: Because this doesn't even address the issue of 

auditing the independent quality -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 2 -- record, for example, as a next step, what 

Tony was suggesting as -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: 4 And I would -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 -- at least another -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: 6 -- general principle is we don't increase the 

burden on the individual. Clearly doing a second 

interview would do that. If the only way we could assure 

our function is by doing a re-interview, then I would 

agree, we probably need to approach that at a later -- 

DR. ZIEMER: It may be mine. 

DR. ANDERSON: But there may be these other mechanisms that 

would avoid that. We... 

DR. ZIEMER: Keep in mind that the other parts of the audit 

in general are activities done at the completion of dose 

reconstructions. This particular item, if we did -- I 

think one of the things suggested before was -- or during 

our telephone conference call was that there be an 

independent listening-in by one of our Board members or 

contractors, independent of the quality assurance thing. 

So that would be an activity that took place during the -- 

or prior to the dose reconstruction itself. So it's a 

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little different than a after-the-fact audit, which audits 

usually are after the fact. You know, financial audits 

and so on are done on transactions that have occurred. 

This gets involved in the process. But as long as it's 

focused on the process, are we capturing in the 

interviews, and it's not in -- it's not focusing on that 

case and going back and saying redo that case, but it's 

trying to identify shortcomings in the process, then 

perhaps that could be acceptable. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I mean that -- that -- I guess what I 

was thinking of is your audit process -- we're already 

describing several different levels of audit. We could 

say there's one during the ongoing -- now for efficiency's 

sake, it would be easier to do it on the up front end 

rather than on the back end. I mean if you'd say well, 

that's isn't possible, then you could record them all. 

Well, that seems to be fiscally very expensive. On the 

other hand, to do a small number of these, selected on a 

random basis, specifically auditing the appropriateness of 

the interview, they may not be part of the back process at 

all. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. Jim? 

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 DR. MELIUS: 1 Yeah. Could we, along with Henry's suggestion, 

include a task in the -- in the RFC that -- for the 

contractor to develop a process, bring it back to the 

Board, of how to do this to -- I mean to evaluate the -- 

you know, what's being done at the contract level, this 

whole process? 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 You're saying talk about that generically, a 

process for evaluating the interviews. 

 DR. MELIUS: 9 Yeah, and then come back -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Without talking about re-interviewing or even 

necessarily listening in or anything. 

DR. MELIUS: It's a task to come back to the Board with a -- 

to NIOSH and the Board -- 

DR. ZIEMER: With a plan. 

DR. MELIUS: -- with a plan. 

DR. ZIEMER: Larry, could you react to that, in terms of the 

procurement? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Keep in mind that this procurement document is 

not a task order itself. It defines the scope of work 

that a potential proposer would develop their bid for. So 

they need to have -- you need to have a level playing 

field here that covers what you anticipate you're going to 

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ask the contractor to do, but doesn't -- doesn't commit 

you to do that. What I'm driving at here is, you could -- 

yes, you can do that, Jim. You could phrase it here so 

that it's an option that, you know, may be a task order 

coming from the Board to produce an evaluation approach of 

the interview process. You're not asking for them to do 

that in the proposal. You're ask-- you're stating that 

that's a forthcoming task that a successful awardee might 

encounter, but they don't have to propose against that 

here. 

DR. MELIUS: And they should have the expertise -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: They should have -- 

DR. MELIUS: -- to be able to do that. 

MR. ELLIOTT: That's where this comes in. They need to 

factor in the required expertise, technical personnel, to 

react and respond to a specific task calling for that. 

Does that help? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Let me come at this a different way. Once the 

Board has a technical consultation contractor in place, 

your next charge will be to develop these task orders. 

This is not going to be what the contractor's going to 

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work against. You have to place task orders on the table, 

and there'll be -- that's a process in and of itself. 

You'll have to develop the task order. You have to come 

up with your independent estimate of hours that it's going 

to require and what kind of skill levels you want. And 

then you put that back in front of the contractor, who 

gives you a proposal back on it and you kind of negotiate 

down to where you're in agreement of what's going to be 

done, how much it's going to cost, how many hours are 

going to be expended, what's the end product going to look 

like. So you could have 16 task orders running at one 

point in time in your future here that address points in 

your scope of work, but are not specified in this scope of 

work right now -- specified in detail. Does that help the 

Board's understanding? 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me ask you, with that in mind, would we be 

better off then by deleting the last half of this sentence 

-- 

MR. ELLIOTT: I was just looking at that. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- which says evaluate the effectiveness of the 

phone interviews, which -- and that doesn't tell them -- 

otherwise -- 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: 1 You could put a period after "history 

information", period. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 That's a possibility. Let's get other 

comments. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 5 And you don't have to say whether or not it's 

at the end of the process or if it's at the front of the 

process. They don't care. They're not worried about 

that. This is an anomaly in the procurement process where 

we're having a public debate about what your scope is 

going to be. And if -- and we all know that there are 

interested individuals out there who want to propose on 

this. I'm sure that they're going to look through the 

minutes, they're going to look through the transcripts and 

they're going to get a sense of what's the Board's 

interest in this particular area, what do I need to come 

to the table with. 

DR. ZIEMER: Do I have another comment? 

MR. GRIFFON: That -- that -- yeah, that's a possibility 

with that period at the end of that sentence. It is a 

possibility. I want to think about that more. I'm still 

not sure about that pending OMB approval language being in 

the front end, and bear with me for a second, but I mean 

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my understanding of this is that there are going to be -- 

the level playing field comes into play with Attachments D 

and E. They're bidding on -- on those parts. Right? And 

if we wrote Attachments D and E to not have the reinterview language in them, it levels the playing field 

there in terms of the proposals, but we could still keep 

it in the main body, say -- in saying pending OMB 

approval. Or with the suggestion made about the period, 

just to keep it totally broad, but -- Is that correct? I 

mean the primary bidding is going to revolve around 

Attachments D and E. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You're giving them Attachments D and E to bid 

against, create their proposal against. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

MR. ELLIOTT: The rest of the document provides a structure 

or outlines the scope of what they may be involved in. 

But I will add this. If you put "pending OMB approval", 

I'm going to have to get Departmental clearance for this 

procurement to go forward. It is going to hold it up. 

It's just not going to move until they're -- they 

understand what you're asking for and they're satisfied 

with it. Without it, then I know that we can put it in 

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procurement at the conclusion of this meeting. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 2 Well, I -- can I make a recommendation at this 

point? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 4 Sure. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 5 Maybe -- maybe we can -- we still have a 

little more discussion on that topic and probably -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 We can probably get through -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 8 Can we hold that off till after lunch -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 -- everything and then approve the document, 

but -- 

MR. GRIFFON: -- until we've finished -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- do you have a specific recommendation on 

this part then, or what? Go ahead. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I was just going to say -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- we can proceed through the rest of the 

document. 

DR. ZIEMER: Sure, yeah. Let's proceed then. Okay. 

MR. GRIFFON: And -- and this -- I think this question was 

answered, but I'm just going to raise it. Page six, 

section B and section C on page seven, in both cases we 

deleted the numbers of cases as projected, and I think the 

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-- the response there -- but we inserted all the number -- 

the estimates for section A, individual dose 

reconstruction estimates projected over five years. And I 

wasn't clear exactly on why we deleted the -- why we 

needed to delete the number -- the projected numbers of 

cases, or if we do need that in there to give them a sense 

of the scope of the overall project. And I can tell you 

that in -- I've done a draft cost estimate to be shared at 

the executive session tomorrow, and I included estimates 

on numbers of -- of site profile reviews and -- and SEC 

reviews, you know, to the best -- best I could and -- but 

-- so that language was dropped on the number of cases, 

but -- and I wondered if we need that in there is the 

question to everyone. 

DR. ZIEMER: I'm trying to remember -- the original document 

you had something like 15 sites or something. Is that 

what you're saying? 

MR. GRIFFON: I think I had ten and ten and I think Jim 

Neton convinced me that, at least in year one, five and 

five was probably a more realistic number. 

DR. ZIEMER: My recollection of our discussion was that the 

number that we had in there might have been the -- close 

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to the number that they were going to do over several 

years or something. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 3 I'm confused, because it's not lost. It's 

still in here in page three of the -- of this first 

section. And it talks about, under page three A, 

(Reading) Contractors shall conduct one of three different 

levels. 

 And you predict the number of dose reconstruction reviews 8 

estimated, approximately 150 in the first year. There -- 

that's where it's at. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. No, it's not. Worker pro-- site 

profile reviews and SEC reviews, B and C, section B and C. 

DR. ANDERSON: This is on the individuals. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, this was the individual estimates. And 

I have projections -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: I'm sorry, I misunderstood it. I'm sorry. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: I think you were saying that would be done by 

task order. They know that profiles would have to be done 

and there would be individual task orders for each one. 

Was that the case? 

MR. GRIFFON: I thought the rationale at the time was that 

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they're bidding on Attachments D and E and they don't need 

that. But then we inserted it for -- for the -- you know, 

we inserted all those numbers for five years for the 

individual dose reconstruction estimates. I think we need 

to reinsert those and just give our best estimates of what 

the -- I can tell you for the cost estimates I did -- I 

think for year one I did worker profiles/site profiles at 

five and five and I think they went -- went down from 

there. 

DR. NETON: I'm not sure exactly why B, the numbers were 

taken out, but in talking to Martha with procurement, if 

you -- if you had a number for the first year, then you 

had to show numbers for all five years. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, right. 

DR. NETON: If you have no number, then obviously you don't 

need to put any number in. 

MR. GRIFFON: I think in terms of the propos-- the offerer -

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DR. NETON: The offerer is not bidding against that number 

of site profiles. I mean they're bidding against D and E, 

the cost. 

MR. GRIFFON: But they should have a sense of the overall 

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magnitude of the contract -- 

 DR. NETON: 2 Yeah, I agree, and I'm not sure why there's -- 

the number -- if it's relevant to take it out or not. I 

don't know. 

 UNIDENTIFIED: 5 (Inaudible) 

 DR. NETON: 6 Right, you'd have to put an estimate for all 

five years if there was a number for the first year. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 8 Which I did in the -- which I did in the 

budgets, right. Which I did in the budgets. 

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

MR. GRIFFON: So I'll do it the same way I did in the 

individual dose reconstruction section. 

DR. NETON: Right. 

MR. GRIFFON: So I can reinsert those and have them for -- 

well, maybe not after lunch. I was going to say after 

lunch, but I can reinsert those tonight and have -- you 

know. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We can take care of this by using the computer 

and having Cori go right in on the screen and type where 

you guys want what you want. That's my goal before we 

leave here tomorrow. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, I know. I agree, so -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 2 -- I have my laptop with me and I've got the 

numbers -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Okay, so if you would just insert the numbers 

then. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 -- the projected numbers for these -- all five 

years, so it's going to be quick. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 8 So before you move on from that point, on that 

same page under task orders, that first paragraph after 

the first sentence where it requires the contractor to 

show capability of providing staff to do what needs to be 

done under this scope of work, I think may-- my suggestion 

would be you have an opportunity at that point maybe to 

insert some of those critical staff needs that you hope to 

see in a proposal. Maybe that gets at, you know, what you 

hope that the successful proposer will bring regarding 

effectiveness evaluation of survey instruments or -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Can I ask Larry just -- are you in C.4 on page 

seven? 

MR. ELLIOTT: C.4, first paragraph. It says (Reading) 

Although the contractor may not be required to conduct all 

of the tasks set forth in this scope of work, blah, blah, 

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 I'm just suggesting that if you put a parenthetical at the 2 

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clerical support, they need to account for that, but -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 5 Do we -- I know -- I don't want to -- I don't 

want to edit this draft any more than I have to, to tell 

you the truth, but did we cover that in our evaluation 

plan where we -- we have an extensive list now, although 

it may not include the interview review type of expertise, 

but we have an extensive list of personnel requirements in 

the evaluation plan. We may cross-reference it there or 

something. That may be a -- that may save me some effort. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You're right, but what -- if you look at that 

on page -- on Attachment A, the first page under 

personnel, I don't think you're going to see a skill 

category there that will address evaluation effectiveness. 

 So we -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I agree. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, so maybe that would be a good place to 

insert that, after that sentence. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

WRITER/EDITOR: Where? 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 It's C.4, task orders, following the very first 

sentence of the paragraph, that would be inserted either 

parenthetically or -- or not, it doesn't matter, I guess -

- the identification of the types of support needed. Is 

that -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 Yeah, or I was just going to say see 

Attachment A, personnel requirements, and then add -- edit 

that personnel requirements section. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Or -- either way. Yeah. 

MR. GRIFFON: Just be easier. 'Cause that's a lengthy -- 

lengthy section so it's okay to insert it. 

DR. ZIEMER: So parenthetically, see Attachment A, and then 

add whatever additional skill sets are needed. 

MR. GRIFFON: That we need to -- right. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I'm not well-versed in this field of endeavor. 

 I don't know if Ted has a -- I'd ask Ted if he's got some 

kind of job title or something that we might consider or 

suggest for the Board at this point on effectiveness 

evaluation, what -- social -- some social scientist has 

got some job title. 

MR. KATZ: Yeah, you would need -- you need a program 

evaluator. I mean you need someone who's expert in 

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program evaluation. There's a whole -- it's a whole field 

of work and they would provide you, you know, with a plan 

that actually makes sense and stands up in the sort of 

court of science that you're in, in terms of how to go 

about this. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 And then I skipped over Attachment A because 

it's -- it's after this document, so Attachment D and E 

are there and then we have Attachment A. Just to run 

through the primary changes, obviously -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, D and E are just examples. Right? So -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: So you're moving to A. Is that correct? 

MR. GRIFFON: That's correct. And on Attachment A, 

obviously just -- our -- our discussion we just had, we 

might want to edit the personnel section to reflect that. 

 Section E -- and I'm just going through the primary 

things that were changed. Not a lot was changed in this 

document from the previous conference call. Section E has 

-- the second paragraph is a reflection of the discussion, 

going from five years to two years regarding the past work 

with DOE and AWE contractors, et cetera, so you may -- 

that whole paragraph I think has been modified. People 

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might want to take a look at that closely. 

 And also it highlights and underlines key personnel, and at 2 

the very end of this section, the bottom of page four, we 

-- I attempted to define key personnel as it pertains to 

this contract. So those two things are the major -- I 

think they were the only, but I -- they're the major 

changes in this section -- in Attachment A. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 And there was extensive discussion on those 

items on the phone. Is everybody comfortable now that so 

-- I think we sort of agreed then that -- to ratchet down 

to the two-year number, wasn't it? Gen Roessler. 

DR. ROESSLER: In reading this again, I have just a 

question. On page four, the second paragraph where it 

says (Reading) while performing under contract with NIOSH 

or ORAU or ORAU teaming partners. 

Does that need to be more specific, the teaming partners? 

It seems that could be very, very broad. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, is that the two primary teams or -- 

DR. ROESSLER: That's what I assumed it was. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- 'cause there are some secondaries in there, 

too, I think -- 

DR. ROESSLER: Yeah, I think it should be more specific -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 3 I think the intent word, the primary teaming 

partners as they were defined by ORAU themselves, but 

maybe we -- I mean can we cite them directly and -- it's 

MJW and Dade Moeller & Associates. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 7 Sure. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Or we can just say the two primary teaming 

partners -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Two primary teaming partners. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- and it becomes clear. 

MR. GRIFFON: That's fine. 

DR. DEHART: Do we need to include the contract-specific, 

because that's what you're talking about, isn't it? I 

don't know if there's other or -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: We could have the procurement office insert 

the contract numbers that -- that may not be as 

informative to a proposer. I don't know if that'll work, 

but we could even get down to naming the corporations in 

the teaming partners, if that's what you want. 

DR. DEHART: The reason I raise that, with ORAU there are a 

number of contracts that have similar kinds of activity 

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that have no relationship to this at all. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 Okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 3 I think the intent -- yeah, I have to rethink 

this, but I -- I mean I was thinking of the ORAU teaming 

partners under this contract, but then ORAU in general in 

the last five years, so I think we have to be careful how 

we phrase that, I guess. Two primary teaming partners, 

parentheses, regarding contract number so-and-so. Right? 

 Would that be agreeable? 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, it's not clear to me. Are you suggesting 

that this become more restrictive, that -- ORAU may have a 

number of activities which have almost nothing to do with 

dose reconstruction. So you're saying those folks, it's 

not a problem. Is that correct? 

DR. DEHART: That would be my impression. 

DR. ZIEMER: Give us an example. What are we talking about 

here? ORAU training programs? They do a lot of training. 

 Suppose somebody -- suppose somebody was a -- a health 

physicist was a lecturer in an ORAU training program. Are 

they now not eligible for this? 

DR. DEHART: That's an example. 

MR. GRIFFON: And I would say they're not eligible under the 

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strict way I wrote it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 So it's not just these con-- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 3 It's the -- it is -- it is -- it needs better 

clarification, certainly. I agree, 'cause I'm talking 

about the teaming partners for this contract, but then 

ORAU in general in the last five years. So that's more -- 

that's broader. That's more restrictive. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 9 And that was -- that was the intent, at least 

the way I drafted it. 

DR. ZIEMER: And I don't object to that. I'm just -- I'm 

just thinking, for example, let's suppose you had a health 

physicist who gave a lecture -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- in an ORAU course four years ago, you know. 

 Is that -- is that -- 

MR. GRIFFON: I know what -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Is that a substantial enough commitment -- and 

I don't have anybody in mind, I'm just pulling that idea 

out of the hat, but you know they occasionally get people 

to come in and lecture on some topic of their expertise 

and maybe somebody comes in and lectures on TLD dosimetry, 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 2 Yeah, and we had those same discussions on -- 

on the DOE -- work with DOE, and I think we -- that's why 

we cut it back to two years and then said -- and provide 

justification, because it may be that they only did very 

limited work, one -- one, you know, lecture or whatever. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 Yeah, so it's not -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 8 With ORAU and NIOSH, I felt, anyway, that 

because it was closer to the actual project that we had -- 

we needed to I guess assure more independence, you know, 

to the -- to the public, to the potential claimants. So 

it's more restrictive, I agree, and maybe unfairly so in 

some cases, but I thought just for the -- to be -- to pay 

attention to the claimants' concerns about potential 

conflict, it needed to be more restrictive there. That 

was my interpretation. 

DR. DEHART: I can think of an example where there is ORAU 

contracts on an international scope where university 

professors are contracted by ORAU to go to China or go to 

someplace else, and that's not uncommon. There's quite a 

number of -- 

DR. ZIEMER: They're not really working for ORAU, per se. 

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 DR. DEHART: 1 No, but they're contracted. They're using that 

contract process. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 It's a mechanism to... I'm not sure we can 

solve that right now. Maybe we can think about that over 

lunch and when we come back, if there's -- if there's a 

way to -- what you don't want to do is exclude some 

qualified person who really has no real relationship -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 8 It may be -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 -- with ORAU. 

MR. GRIFFON: It may be that we can include a -- a sentence 

similar to the one we put in the prior paragraph -- in the 

paragraph above that, which says that if they did work and 

they are included in this proposal, then provide 

justification on why you think -- and it may be that it's 

because they only gave one lecture and they had no -- 

nothing to do with -- you know. So we may want to -- 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I think it's just a matter of 

disclosure. You want to disclose -- 

MR. ZIEMER: Right, right, right. 

DR. ANDERSON: -- this and then you can explain what all 

this was. 

DR. ZIEMER: So that would be the idea here, so it's not -- 

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it's not a blanket -- you're not closing the door 

completely just because they -- you know. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 3 I think we can -- I think I can try to make 

that -- fix it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 Good. Okay. Is that -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 That was it on Attachment A, yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 Okay, let me ask -- and we're not going to take 

action till after lunch on this probably, but any other 

questions, comments, concerns with the document at this 

point? 

MR. ELLIOTT: I wonder where your language puts a group of 

individuals who come from organized labor who could put 

together a team to make a proposal against this that may 

have had some affiliations with DOE or NIOSH. You know, 

I'm thinking like John Morowitz's shop here in town where, 

you know, they do training through a grant through NIEHS*. 

 You know, I could see where somebody like that might be 

able to put together a very nice proposal, but because of 

their affiliations, you've -- you've excluded them. And I 

don't know if that's the case here or not, but I -- you 

know, I just throw that up for your consideration. 

DR. ZIEMER: Comments? 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 1 We've certainly had these discussions and we -

- we don't want to lose qualified people, as we've said. 

But I think that we do want to draw some kind of line on -

- to make -- to -- to try to assure independence. And I 

think that qualifying language of -- of them providing 

justification, but we still do have the minimum 

requirement, you're right, so I... 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Okay. Roy? 

 DR. DEHART: 9 As I read through this -- I was absent during 

the latter part of the phone call, unfortunately, and I 

may be making an error in assumption. AWE means to me 

Atomic Worker Employee. And if that is the case -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Atomic Weapons Employer. 

DR. DEHART: Weapons, yes, thank you. -- when we're talking 

about expert witness and testifying and things of that 

sort, that would mean that those who have been doing that 

on behalf of the AWE is excluded in the same way that 

people who would have been representing the government or 

the contractors would have been excluded. Is that 

correct? 

DR. ZIEMER: I don't think you're -- you're talking -- 

MR. GRIFFON: The contractor is -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 He's talking about the -- I don't know, what is 

the E on this one? 

 MR. GRIFFON: 3 Atomic Weapons Employee, isn't it? 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Employee, not -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 5 Employer. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Employer, not employee. Employer. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 7 Yeah, I -- 

 DR. DEHART: 8 Makes a big difference. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Yeah, it's employer, so you're okay then on 

that. 

DR. DEHART: No, I'm not. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, you're not. Okay. 

DR. DEHART: No, it just -- it is not, in my view -- you 

must remember, I do a lot of trying to walk the middle 

road on worker compensation, and I see groups who are 

known to represent one side or the other, and the opinions 

of those individuals will markedly vary, given the same 

facts. And I'm concerned that we exclude experts on one 

side, but in fairness, we do not exclude experts on the 

other side of litigation. And I thought we had walked 

through that before and had tried to get that into the 

program. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 2 Roy, in your absence, we did raise that you 

had a disagreement with that and -- on the conference 

call, but -- so you're not -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 Let me see if I can summarize this. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 If you represented the DOE, then you excluded 

yourself. If you represented employee A and that employee 

has a claim, then you don't work on theirs, but you could 

represent employee -- or you could work with employee B 

since you didn't testify pro or con in that case. So I 

thought we had -- it does sort of across-the-board exclude 

all of the one side because it's the agency's testimony. 

On the other side, just because an individual testified 

for one person, should they be excluded from being 

involved with any -- anyone else. That was kind of where 

I thought we ended up, that they wouldn't -- they could 

not be involved in a case where they had already testified 

in that individual's case, but does that exclude them from 

all other individuals. Now I know that there could be an 

argument that there are those who always are testifying 

from -- on this side, no matter who the individual is. It 

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doesn't change their view on what the outcome should be. 

Some would argue that. I'm arguing in a more idealized 

way that doesn't presume -- I don't want to say you're 

presuming this, but it doesn't presume that an 

individual's then biased simply because they always 

testified for other individuals. 

 DR. DEHART: 7 The individual case I think is handled, as I 

recall, in reading through. What isn't handled is the 

class action, and there have been numerous class action 

suits. 

MR. GRIFFON: That's true, and I guess -- 

DR. ZIEMER: I guess -- I'm not sure we talked about class 

action. You're saying on behalf of -- 

DR. DEHART: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- employee groups then, or individual class 

actions. 

DR. DEHART: I think we have to be seen as being fair for 

the worker, but we also have to be seen being fair for the 

taxpayer. 

MR. GRIFFON: I think the other -- the other part of the 

rationale that we had on our conference call was that this 

same -- this exact language was ORAU's. And you're right 

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that it is more restrictive on one side than the other, 

but it's the language that ORAU used and we thought that 

this independent contractor should be at least as 

restrictive in that way as the -- as the people doing the 

dose reconstruc-- as the, you know, ORAU team. So that's 

part of the reason I, in my mind, justified that, you 

know, one-sidedness, if you will. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 You have further comment, Roy, on that? 

 DR. DEHART: 9 I've said all I have to say on the topic. 

DR. ZIEMER: Other comments? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Let's just look quickly at the agenda for a 

moment. We have a working session immediately after lunch 

that hopefully will allow us to come to some closure on 

this set of documents. I think there's plenty of time. 

These are really the only things we have to work on this 

afternoon, so I don't think we should feel pressed to come 

to closure any faster than we're comfortable with. Some 

of these issues that have been raised, we can talk further 

on. I think you can cogitate over it over your lunch on 

these and come back ready to -- to put some ideas on the 

floor. The objective would be to have this portion by the 

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end of the day, though, and ready for action so that we 

can move on tomorrow with the rest of the agenda. 

 With that, we're going to recess for lunch. I understand 3 

there is a list somewhere on the table -- by the 

registration -- of all of the recommended restaurants. 

Does that mean all of the restaurants within a certain 

vicinity here or -- 

 MS. HOMER: 8 Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 9 Can I -- 

DR. ZIEMER: So you have your choice. And we'll reconvene 

at 1:30. Thank you very much. 

MR. GRIFFON: Can I ask -- 

DR. ZIEMER: We've got a question. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- one question? Just from NIOSH's 

standpoint, at this point the master document -- you have 

the master, this -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- these three documents? 

MR. ELLIOTT: And we'll be able to project it on the screen 

-- 

MR. GRIFFON: 'Cause I might -- I might shorten lunch and be 

willing to work -- if someone wants to join me, we can 

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edit some of these things and -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 3 -- expedite the process. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Right, and then we can -- we can get final 

copies projected up after lunch then. Thank you very much 

-- hold on. 

 UNIDENTIFIED: 7 (Inaudible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Oh, this room will not be secure over the lunch 

period, so if you have any things you want to get rid of, 

just leave them laying there. Otherwise, take your good 

stuff with you. Leave your notebooks here. 

(Whereupon, a luncheon recess was taken.) 

 1:30 p.m.: 

DR. ZIEMER: We'll call the session back to order. I'd like 

to give a couple of announcements. 

First of all, a reminder. When you are speaking, speak into 

the mike. I'm trying to demonstrate how to do that here. 

 Get up close. But some of the folks in the audience, the 

general public here, have had a little trouble hearing us, 

even in this room. I don't wonder that Wanda's had some 

trouble. I don't know if Wanda's back with us yet this 

afternoon, but she had some difficulty this morning I 

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think in hearing some of the speakers. There is a bit of 

an echo that is added by the mikes that makes it 

difficult, but at least let's try to help the folks here 

in the room hear us by using the mikes. 

 Then I've been told that if you are interested in a late 5 

checkout tomorrow -- that is -- and late checkout I guess 

is anything after -- is it 11:00 or 12:00? 

 UNIDENTIFIED: 8 12:00. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Anything after 12:00. If you need a late 

checkout, you must let the desk know today. You can't go 

down in the morning and request late checkout. It's too 

late to request it. So I've been told that any requests 

for late checkout for tomorrow must be made before 

midnight tonight. That word comes from Robert Presley. 

And Robert, did I state that correctly? 

MR. PRESLEY: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: That's a yes. 

MR. PRESLEY: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Are there any other general 

announcements? I want to remind folks, if there's any -- 

particularly members of the public who have come in this 

afternoon that were not here this morning, please register 

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your attendance in the booklet at the door. And if you 

wish to speak during the public comment period later this 

afternoon, there's a sign-up sheet for members of the 

public -- I guess there by the registration table, as 

well. 

6 BOARD DISCUSSION/WORKING SESSION 

7 DRAFT ATTACHMENTS A, C, D & E

 Now we have another Board working session where we are going 8 

to deal now further with the documents from the dose 

reconstruction working group, and those are the documents 

in the tab marked Draft Attachments A, C, D and E. During 

the morning session we basically got through those 

documents as far as identifying what the changes were. We 

had some tentative agreement on what some of the changes 

might be. There may be some that are still unresolved, 

but let's now plan to go back through the document. And 

Mark, with your permission, I'll lead the group through 

the documents just in an orderly fashion -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- but I'll ask you to jump in as needed to -- 

MR. GRIFFON: I just had one -- 

DR. ZIEMER: One additional -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 1 I forgot to mention before lunch -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 Oh, okay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 3 If I could. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 One additional... 

 MR. GRIFFON: 5 One additional thing. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Oh, sure. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 7 It's something that the -- the former task one 

was to review the methods and procedures, and it was meant 

to be -- in my mind it was -- it was this baseline review 

up front. We did fold it into -- we did fold it into the 

individual dose reconstruction component. We all agreed 

to do that. I agreed -- I gave up my argument -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let me interrupt. Hi, Wanda, we're just 

starting the afternoon session and right now Mark Griffon 

is just giving us an additional item on the document that 

he missed telling us -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Attachment C. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- Attachment C of his working group document 

that he neglected to mention this morning, so Mark -- why 

don't you start again, Mark? 

MS. MUNN: (Inaudible) 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

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previously been in the task order contract draft -- 

earlier draft that was dropped -- or actually rolled into 

the individual review component was this review of methods 

and procedures. And for two reasons I'd like to consider 

putting that back in. One, you know, from a -- from a 

technical standpoint, I think it would be very useful to 

have this up-front review, and I should say cost-effective 

review -- and I -- I have budgeted this in my draft budget 

and it's not a big ticket item, in my eyes. But an 

initial review to set sort of a base -- or to get a 

baseline of the approaches being used by NIOSH and their 

subcontractors on the dose reconstruction process. And 

that doesn't prohibit the additional review in the 

individual case reviews where you look at how procedures 

were implemented on a certain -- on certain cases, but I 

think what it allows for is kind of a baseline 

understanding and -- and hopefully, if there's 

disagreements, there's a chance to resolve them before a 

lot of cases get adjudicated. So it's -- and I know this 

also depends on how quickly we can get a contractor on 

line and so forth, but I think that -- that's the merit of 

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it and I -- I would like to propose -- or at least discuss 

maybe reinstituting that into the -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 Mark, could you identify where that would be in 

the document? 

 MR. GRIFFON: 5 Well, it -- previously it was -- and actually 

it's the attachment I hand-- this two-pager that I handed 

out. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Just now? 

 MR. GRIFFON: 9 Before lunch. 

DR. ZIEMER: Before lunch, okay. 

MR. GRIFFON: Has -- the second page of that is dose 

reconstruction methods/procedures review, item A. And 

before that was deleted as one of the tasks, that was how 

it was written before it was deleted. 

DR. ZIEMER: Item eight, did you say? 

MR. GRIFFON: Item A, item A. That whole -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, item A itself -- 

MR. GRIFFON: The whole page. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- yes, the whole page. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: And this goes under C-3? I'm just trying to -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, yeah -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 2 Yes, C-3 -- it would the -- it would be A 

again, or it could be D, of you -- you know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 If it were A, then the other ones would 

renumber to B, C, D, so it's -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 Correct. Correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 -- either A or D -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 8 Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 -- but it's a separate section -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- of C-3. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: Is that correct? 

MR. GRIFFON: Correct. 

DR. ZIEMER: So the proposal then is to reinsert this -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, just -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- into the document, so -- 

MR. GRIFFON: -- discuss the merit of inserting this, yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: The merit of it, so you're proposing that it be 

reinserted. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Tony, reply or respond. 

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 DR. ANDRADE: 1 A question for Mark. Unfortunately I was not 

able to participate during the last teleconference, and 

it's been a while since I've considered all of this in 

total, but I have had a chance to read up on all of this 

documentation. And question A, can you tell me why this 

was dropped in the beginning or in the first place? 

 MR. GRIFFON: 7 I think there was a feeling among several 

people that, you know, really where you're going to get at 

this is when you start reviewing individual claims. And 

as you're -- as you're proceeding on the individual claim 

review, the questions are going to come up as to whether 

the procedure was implemented appropriately and whether it 

made sense, you know, so the review could occur there. 

And actually all of these tasks are rolled into the claims 

review process, so it's not lost entirely. I just think 

that -- and again I emphasize cost-effective, but I think 

a baseline up-front review of this allows for some sort of 

understanding of what path is being taken by ORAU and 

NIOSH. And if the independent review team has a very 

different opinion on certain methods or procedures, maybe 

that dialogue can take place before we get too far down 

the line, you know, and you know, I don't think anybody 

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wants to be in the case of redoing a lot of -- of cases. 

So that -- that's sort of the reasoning is that it would 

allow for sort of a baseline comment period by this 

independent expert as to whether the methodology looks 

sound and looked appropriate for the purposes of this 

program. Is that -- I -- best I could answering your 

question, Tony. So the reason it got dropped initially 

was that people felt that it really took -- was more 

appropriate to include within the individual claims review 

than to do as a separate task in absence of real data or 

real cases, I guess. 

DR. ANDRADE: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, Mark, was there also the -- was there 

also the idea that this might have been more detail than 

was required in this document, as opposed to the actual 

task orders that would be issued later? I mean inherently 

what we're expecting to be done is contained in your list, 

I think. Right? 

MR. GRIFFON: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: So it wasn't an issue of whether these things 

should be done or not. That wasn't the issue, was it? 

MR. GRIFFON: No. No, I mean I think the issue was to do 

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them -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 You're just suggesting that we be more explicit 

-- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 4 To do them as -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 -- in this -- in this work -- in this SOW. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 Right now I guess I'm proposing that that both 

be done with the provision that when I say, on methods and 

procedures review in our final task order, we bound that. 

 We carefully bound that. 'Cause I have certain costs in 

mind and I can see other people envisioning methods and 

procedures review and what path it could take, and it 

could get into a very costly endeavor. That's not the 

intent. More the intent is to sort of establish a 

baseline, make sure that the audit team understands where 

NIOSH and ORAU and how they're approaching it. And if 

they -- if the cite disagreements up front, then we have 

an opportunity to -- to resolve those prior to -- prior to 

processing a lot of cases and then having to go back if, 

you know -- so I see it as a measure to sort of avoid some 

of that complication down the line. 

DR. ZIEMER: This was a review of the methods, as opposed to 

the actual audit of individual dose -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 1 Cases. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 -- reconstructions. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Review of methodologies, is that not what 

you're talking about here? 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 Review methods and procedures, methodologies 

and procedures, yeah. Yeah. The other -- the other 

reason -- or the other -- I guess the other thing that 

captured my attention on this was reviewing the statute 

itself, and it spells out a review of the methods and a 

sampling of the cases. I'm not exactly quoting but it's 

something to that effect. It's a review of the methods 

and a sampling of the cases, so they sort of -- well -- 

well, it doesn't say they couldn't be rolled together and, 

you know, I saw those as possibly distinct tasks. And in 

the executive session tomorrow, again -- you know, the 

lump sum value I'm thinking of is not -- I don't think -- 

cost prohibitive, so... 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Tony again and then Jim. 

DR. ANDRADE: Okay. Based on your response, Mark, I would 

be hesitant to support putting these tasks back in as 

stated. They seem to be rather general and, to me, quite 

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frankly, these tasks tend to appear as second-guessing 

what the experts themselves have put together. Everything 

that goes into IREP, for example, to the assumptions that 

are made to address individual cases, which I think more 

often than not -- in fact, perhaps 100 percent of the time 

-- have been shown to be as claimant-friendly as 

reasonably possible. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 8 Let -- 

 DR. ANDRADE: 9 And secondly, I just wanted to say that many 

of -- many, if not most, of the methods that have gone 

into the processes that are being -- that are currently 

being used have been presented to this Board. A lot of us 

on this Board are experts, despite the fact that this is 

an Advisory Board, and are health physicists, and we have 

been briefed on and have concurred that the best methods 

currently available for health physics analyses are being 

used in the analyses being performed to date. So I -- I'm 

going to go further with this later, but I'm really 

starting to question whether we're going beyond the realm 

of auditing and now perhaps touching upon second-guessing 

the work that has been done by many experts over the years 

in building the procedures that are now being used. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 2 Mark, you want to respond? 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 3 I actually think that that might be the 

usefulness of what I'm proposing, is that it might 

eliminate some of that second-guessing because it's an up 

-- an up-front review of this independent group. And if 

it is challenging the -- you said the components of IREP 

are -- I'm misquoting you maybe, but it's not intended to 

do that. It's intended to -- you know, the first part of 

this says are consistent with requirements of the 

regulations, and that's what this committee reviewed was 

those regulations. And they all talk about ICRP models 

and approaches and, you know -- so it's not intended to go 

beyond -- you know, to -- to review those fundamentals, 

but it's -- it's, you know -- but I agree -- the secondguessing part, if -- if these -- if these procedures and 

methods are reviewed when we do the case reviews and -- 

and -- you know, this hasn't taken place up front, then I 

think we could get into this second-guessing situation 

where, you know -- well, jeez, we've processed, you know, 

2,000 cases and now you're telling us that you've got 

concerns about this approach and this procedure. I think 

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a lot of headaches and a lot of conflicts could be avoided 

if everyone sort of agreed up -- you know, more up front, 

some cases are going to be done, you know -- NIOSH and 

ORAU can't stop their processing, I understand that. But 

at least it's -- you know, it could be a little ahead of 

the curve that we give some agreement that the audit team 

understands where ORAU and NIOSH are coming from and, you 

know, and they -- and they sort of understand the baseline 

going in and everybody can -- you know, maybe there's time 

to make some changes to those things before processing a 

lot of cases. So -- and that -- that would be my 

approach, but it's not intended to -- to get at underlying 

-- you know, like the use of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki data 

in the IREP model or underlying things like that. I think 

that -- that may be another thing that the Board wants to 

take up, but that's not the intent of this at all. It's 

not supposed to go to that level -- to that... 

DR. ZIEMER: I'd like to insert a comment here and then Jim 

and then Gen. At first glance this might actually appear 

to be a mix of levels of things. As an example, 

procedures and questionnaires used for work history phone 

interview. We haven't looked at any of that right now and 

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I would expect that we would do that as part of the audit. 

 It certainly makes sense. The methods for estimating 

missed dose and unmonitored dose, you could argue we've 

already heard how that will be done and have sort of 

blessed that. But I think what it appears that you're 

saying, you're not -- you're not so much looking at the 

underlying basis for doing this, but are they actually 

doing that, what they said they were going to do. Are 

they actually using ICRP-66, are they actually -- 

MR. GRIFFON: No, no, I'm looking for -- I'm looking for the 

approaches used for unmonitored or missed dose and how 

they're going to handle that. And I think we've heard 

some discussion, some descriptions, some more extensively 

on the external dose side than on the internal dose side 

because those are the harder problems to tackle, 

obviously. So we have heard some of those descriptions. 

Have -- and a lot of this is in their internal and 

external tech basis document or -- yeah, implementation 

guideline, I'm sorry. So those -- those are out there and 

-- and -- you know, but I think we are asking them to -- 

you know, at this point in time, and it's a one-shot deal, 

at this point in time review these and look at how they're 

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handling unmonitored or missed dose. 

 Now this doesn't preclude them from -- when they look at 2 

individual cases, then they'll have specifics where they 

say okay, in this case it was a site with transuranics and 

in this case NIOSH used -- you know, used this procedure 

to determine missed doses and here's how they did it, and 

is this appropriate for this case. You know, I still 

think that's going to happen. But this was intended to be 

a one -- one-time look at those protocols. 

DR. ZIEMER: In a generic way? The protocols in a generic 

way. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, in a generic -- I mean there's certain -

- the implementation guidelines include a certain degree 

of specificity, but in a more generic -- you know -- you 

know, for instance, does it make sense to assign the MDA 

value when there's -- you know, when it's all less than 

MDA, does it make sense to assign -- you know. There 

might be difference of opinions there and there might be 

comments on that, so those sort of issues. 

DR. ZIEMER: I see. Jim, I guess you were next and then 

Gen. 

DR. MELIUS: First of all -- I mean I think any review 

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process has an element of second-guessing to it, so we 

can't avoid that. I think what Tony was getting at is 

that we don't want to have to re-- necessarily revisit 

issues that the Board has already ruled on or -- in terms 

of regulations and so forth. And I think from what I'm 

hearing from what Mark's saying and Paul and others is 

that this is looked at as the application of these -- of 

these guidelines that we've developed or these regulations 

of these procedures and so forth, and that an up-front 

review -- and it has to be carefully specified, and this 

we'd probably have to do when we talk about the specific 

task and so forth -- but that an up-front review would 

seem to me would it -- would -- would identify any areas 

of -- where there is uncertainty or potential problems 

with application. And if anything, I think it's going to 

-- would identify not where -- what NIOSH is doing is 

incorrect, it's going to identify areas where it's vague 

as to what should be done or there's some uncertainty or 

potential disagreements so they're -- 'cause what we want 

to develop over time is some consistency in the 

application of the procedure -- of these procedures. And 

I think if we keep it -- I think it's a -- it is more 

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efficient if it's done up front. It has to be specified 

and constrained and focused on application and, you know, 

focused to identify areas where, you know, it would be 

helpful to the overall review process. But I don't think 

we can avoid some second-guessing. And then if there are 

areas of -- of disagreement or uncertainty, then we're 

asking the contractor to come back to the Board and, 

again, we may say we've already ruled that -- ruled on 

that or whatever, or that this needs to be resolved in -- 

in some other way. But I think if we keep it focused on 

application, that I think that this would make sense as an 

approach and would be more efficient. 

DR. ZIEMER: Gen? 

DR. ROESSLER: And I have to change what I was going to say, 

in view of what others have said. But I did support what 

Tony was saying, and now that Jim has spoken and I -- I 

think that we all agree that the intent is not to go back 

and redo those first couple of meetings that we -- we 

spent a lot of hard time on, saying yes, NIOSH is taking 

the right approach on applying the science. We certainly 

don't want to, though, confuse this by putting something 

like this in here. Maybe it's written wrong, because when 

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I read it, even though there are some details in here, I 

think that the potential bidders could interpret it, when 

we say dose reconstruction methods -- or procedures, even 

-- could interpret it as saying okay, are they using the 

right ICRP models, are they doing whatever those really 

basic things were that we agreed was the most up-to-date 

science. I think there's a danger of them getting back 

into that, so maybe it's just the wording. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 9 I -- I would actually think that that would be 

within the scope of are -- are they using the correct ICRP 

model, are they -- the thing that I think is out of bounds 

would be the question of whether, you know, the -- the -- 

an independent audit team might think that ICRP is 

incorrect, and that's out of bounds. That's -- that's the 

baseline that we established in the regulation, that 

they're going to use the ICRP model, so whether they're 

using the right one, that is within -- within the scope. 

I guess the other -- the other thing to -- back to Tony's 

comment, is that these are fairly broad, and that's why I 

bring this back to -- I had a discussion over the break 

that -- that -- and they're fairly broad, but a lot of our 

tasks are fairly broad. And when we started putting these 

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in it was because -- it was this idea of placeholders, 

that if -- if we didn't have this, then we wouldn't be 

able to write a specific task order off of this contract, 

and that's sort of what -- what this was intended to do. 

And I think that we do need to work and very carefully 

bound the task order that would come off of this. I agree 

with that. And if -- I think that's reflected in my 

budget estimates. When I budgeted for this item, it's not 

-- you know, I'm not -- I'm sure it's -- you know, you 

could look at this task and estimate anywhere from, you 

know, $1 to, you know -- I mean a massive amount of -- it 

could be a very large project, so I think we have to 

carefully craft the -- the tasks -- specific task order 

that we would submit, but it's not one of the things 

they'd bid on in the Attachment D and E, so it's -- you 

know -- but I guess it -- I just -- it was sort of a 

placeholder and these are the -- the topics that would be 

considered in those reviews. 

DR. ZIEMER: Roy? 

DR. DEHART: As I understand the task that we're going to 

put onto the contractor, there must be an understanding in 

fact of the methodologies and procedures that are basic to 

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what the task of the contractor's going to be. They're 

going to have to understand those methodologies and 

procedures as they apply to the study. My only question 

in my own mind is do we call that an audit with a report, 

or simply understand that the contractor has gone through 

this because I'm sure there's going to be questions that 

will -- the contractor would generate what you mean by 

this, that or the other. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 9 Uh-huh. 

DR. DEHART: I would see if, in a broader context, what 

you're suggesting would be fine. It's going to have to be 

done anyway and get a report from the contractor regarding 

that. As to going back generically to the very basics, 

I'm concerned, like others, that we're -- we're actually 

delving into areas that we really don't have a great deal 

of say for. We've already moved beyond that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim and then Larry -- oh, you have -- Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. I'm trying to think how to bound this, 

and I think Roy's on the right track, is -- again, we want 

to focus on application. We want -- I think we want the -

- this contractor to review these procedures, become 

familiar with them. We'd like them to identify issues 

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that need resolution. Some of those may be minor issues. 

 And I'm sure, you know, Jim and -- I'm sure with ORAU and 

-- plus Jim Neton and his staff and ORAU in place now, 

we're all going through that same process. As you're 

doing individual dose reconstructions, questions come up 

and -- questions of consistency and correct application 

come up 'cause they're issues that haven't been considered 

before. And I -- so I -- at the same time I think if -- 

if the contractor, in doing that, identifies a major area 

of disagreement about application, not about the basic 

models or the science, but about application, we ought to 

try to get it resolved first, rather than have them come 

back with five cases that -- that -- that have, you know, 

implemented that -- applied that particular method and 

there's a problem with. And I think we need to then 

design a task that at least assures that will -- that 

communication back to us will take place. It may not, and 

it may not be necessary. But if it is -- does occur, 

let's do it now. Let's not wait till five cases -- 'cause 

again, it's -- the nature of the review is not to question 

individual dose reconstructions. It's a review of the 

overall process and the overall application process, and I 

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think let's -- with that emphasis, let's -- I think we 

could gain something by having this done if it's done in 

the correct manner and in -- and the information gets back 

to us appropriately. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 Henry. 

 DR. ANDERSON: 6 It seems to me that the issues we have heard 

are really captured in the first paragraph, and I wonder 

if we just added that -- I mean to me, the key part is the 

last part of that paragraph, which is: are the procedures 

sufficient to achieve consistent application. That's the 

global programmatic issue, as opposed to all of the rest 

of it is dealing case-specific. So it would seem to me if 

we got rid of the list here and -- since this is a task 

order, ultimately what that task would be would have to be 

worked out. But I think -- to me, at least -- what I 

think is important is are the procedures that the rules 

and others have put in place, are those sufficient. And 

that's -- that is the question. We said what's -- what 

they're using is appropriate. We haven't necessarily 

said, and I think we raised a lot of kind of gray zone 

issues, although we ultimately supported it. And I think 

this would give an opportunity for somebody to 

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systematically go through and look at are these 

sufficient, are there some other procedures, are there 

other things that might be added or do they see, from 

their perspectives, difficulties that might arise from the 

application of this up front. So that's why I would -- I 

think we're kind of getting caught up in the list as 

opposed to the concept. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Reviewing for familiarity, which somebody 

mentioned, is not the same as reviewing for audit. 

Obviously the contractor will have to review everything 

for -- to be familiar with the methods. I think -- I 

believe, Mark, your group was looking at these in terms of 

review for audit purposes -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- and not just for familiarity, which they 

would obviously have to do. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: Many of them say that they will review them, 

but it doesn't really address it from an audit point of 

view. The contractor shall review internal and external 

dose reconstruction technical basis documents. Well, 

okay. Well, I can review those, but then what? 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 2 And I suppose the key is the first paragraph, 

we're -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 4 Yeah, I don't disagree with that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 -- reviewing for consistency with -- with the 

rule. So -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 7 That's correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 So in that sense, you're probably right, Henry. 

 The first paragraph is all-inclusive. Then it comes down 

to the extent to which the specificity is helpful to the 

contractor. I sense that everybody's in agreement, we're 

not wanting people to go back and second-guess the course 

on which we're already set. But if there are 

inconsistencies in how they're applied, if they aren't 

matching up with the rules in some way, that needs to be 

pointed out. So -- yes, a comment, Larry. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Having observed the debate and discussion on 

this in the working group and hearing all perspectives and 

both sides, I -- we, at the last working group discussion 

meeting I think, suggested to you all that this piece 

should come out, that it was in fact, we felt, covered by 

the early deliberations of the Board, but it's also 

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addressed within the other parameters in this scope of 

work. You know, the other parameters on individual 

review, advanced review and blind review have to take into 

account the regulation that's in place and the 

implementation guidelines that we have put in place, and 

whether or not we're applying them properly or are there 

any deficiencies in those methodologies regarding 

individual dose reconstructions that have been completed. 

 And that's some background here that you may not have 

heard if you weren't on the working group. So we -- from 

the staff level and from my voice, we spoke up and said we 

think it's covered. You've addressed it in your basic 

review and your advanced review, and it's going to be 

covered in your blind review of dose reconstructions. 

I still think it's there. I think if you look at some of 

the items under individual review and advanced review, 

you'll see some of the same kind of statements that are in 

this list. 

MR. GRIFFON: The exact same, I might add. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I would also say this, that -- 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: 2 -- that to do it one time is not necessarily 

going to accommodate your interests, I don't believe. 

Because you heard today about a technical basis document 

that's being developed for an AWE, so as your consultant 

goes through the review process, they're going to have to 

take a snapshot in time of the implementation guidelines, 

the technical basis documents, the informational materials 

that are created to support dose reconstruction 

methodology. And those are going to change as new 

information comes to light, as new methodologies or 

approaches become apparent to us. And so to take a one 

snapshot picture in time at the front end may not 

necessarily serve you well as you get five years -- two 

months out into your review you may see a whole different 

set of implementation guidelines and methodological 

approaches. So I just offer that for your consideration. 

DR. NETON: If I could, I'd just like to add a little bit to 

what Larry just said, but I've been sitting here observing 

as well and I think there's a general sense on the Board 

that these procedures are all maybe completed and mapped 

out and in pristine form ready to go. And of course 

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that's not the case. This is a developing program and we 

are just essentially keeping one step ahead of the dose 

reconstructions. So really, my concern is an audit comes 

in here. They could have all kinds of great ideas of 

other procedures that need to be there, but really those 

will be fleshed out as the dose reconstructions drive the 

procedures. 

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reconstructions without procedures, but you have to -- you 

cannot predict every possible scenario that's going to be 

thrown at you. And in fact, what's happening is we do 

trial dose reconstructions. We pull some to develop these 

procedures, develop them and then do them. So the first 

pass through is going to look at a small set of the 

ultimate overall number of procedures that we're going to 

have. And I agree with Larry that one will be able to 

review those procedures in looking at the dose 

reconstructions that are done because that's how -- you 

know, those were developed to keep one step ahead. So I 

don't know that the -- it's not a mature program. It's 

not like something that's been in place for ten years 

where you can go and say are these things all fleshed out 

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and are they appropriate. 

 My second concern is that I can pretty much predict that no 2 

contractor's going to come in here having ever been done 

this before. This is a unique program. Someone to look a 

priori at our procedures without having ever thought about 

how dose reconstructions are done may give us some pretty 

bad guidance up front. It's a very different process than 

doing regulatory-driven dose reconstructions or researchbased dose reconstructions. I think it would behoove them 

to take a look at some dose reconstructions first to 

familiarize themselves with how the process works, and 

then see if we successfully documented how that process -- 

if that process is effective and accurately -- you know, 

putting someone on one side of the bar or the other. 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, just a response to that. I think I 

understand -- sympathetic to the concern, but at the same 

time I'd be concerned that down the road we get -- we're 

going to be -- the individual dose reconstructions are 

going to be a relatively small sample. I mean the review 

is going to be a relatively small sample of the -- all the 

claims that are out there and that I'm -- that -- it seems 

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to me if we have them review something up front, if they 

can identify issues -- you may not have dealt with them 

yet and it may not be appropriate until you need to, but 

the corollary to that is what happens if we get five years 

down the road and have done ten and because someone didn't 

get around to doing that procedure or think about that, 

the issue didn't come up. Whereas they identified it up 

front five years ago, we're better off for it and I don't 

see where the damage would -- would take -- would be from 

-- from that process, you then having -- they come back 

with recommendations to us, you then have -- you know, we 

advise you. You then prioritize what you -- what you have 

to do and so forth, so -- 

DR. NETON: I think up front that the Board does select the 

cases that are reviewed, so one -- you have the 

opportunity to select cases that conform to certain 

particular criteria -- low external, high external, mixed 

dose -- and pick those and road test them and see are the 

procedures in place that are there and did those 

procedures make sense when you did the dose 

reconstruction. It just makes perfect sense to me. 

That's the proof of the pudding. 

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 DR. MELIUS: 1 To me, that's another argument for doing -- 

having the contractor do a review of the procedures up 

front to look at those that -- where there may be -- 

 DR. NETON: 4 Well -- 

 DR. MELIUS: 5 -- where a review may be more worthwhile. It's 

a chicken/egg argument and it's hard to -- what I was -- 

before I was responding to you, my suggestion was going to 

be why don't we -- what if we took this first paragraph 

under A that Mark handed out and move it into individual 

dose reconstruction, into this and make it a third 

paragraph or the second paragraph there. That's included. 

 You then issue task orders to it that -- and I think 

through the task orders you would then be able to direct 

the contractor in a way that would avoid unnecessary 

review -- or review of areas where you're just not ready 

to deal with yet. Or you could time the review with a 

procedure where it would be most helpful and would also -- 

you know, to all of us as -- collectively do that. And 

would not be a premature review of something that just 

isn't -- isn't ready yet or appropriate yet and will 

capture the idea of it, and then through the individual 

task order be able to target it in a way that is most 

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appropriate. And it doesn't sit out there as a separate 

area and raise all these other issues that we've talked 

about. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 So your recommendation is to insert the first 

paragraph at some point? 

 DR. MELIUS: 6 Under -- well -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 I'm not -- we're not necessarily going to do 

this right now, but I want to see if I can find -- 

 DR. MELIUS: 9 I will confuse you. You take the first 

paragraph under A and put it under A. 

MR. GRIFFON: Put under A the second part -- 

DR. ZIEMER: The existing A. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, and I think it goes best in as the second 

paragraph under the existing A. 

DR. ZIEMER: I see, okay. 

DR. MELIUS: And I think just verbatim it fits pretty well. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Except change -- to do this you would need to 

change "determine" to "evaluate". 

DR. MELIUS: Okay, fine. 

MR. ELLIOTT: And drop the phrase "shall determine then" and 

I would suggest insert "whether". I think that takes care 

of it. 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: 2 Here again, the Board determines. Your 

contractor's not going to determine. Your contractor's 

going to evaluate. 

 DR. MELIUS: 5 Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 Okay, got it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 That's an option. We may or may not do that. 

 Tony, comments? 8 

 DR. ANDRADE: 9 In response to that, let me just say that I 

would -- I would feel comfortable going part of the way 

that Jim suggested. As a matter of fact, by addressing 

the issue as the way Dr. Anderson suggested, and that is 

by inserting the last -- or a piece of the last sentence 

into those provisions that have been written up here for 

the potential contractor that addresses the question of 

whether the procedures in place are sufficient to achieve 

consistent application and requirements of 42 CFR 82. I 

think that's really what the intent is. 

However, I also feel that this is a secondary function. It 

is an element that is to be done overall within the 

auditing function. Let's not lose sight of the fact or of 

the definition of what an audit is. An audit is done by 

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an independent body to let us know how well we are doing. 

 That's simply the bottom line. We're, in their opinion, 

doing 99 percent of our dose reconstructions correctly. 

Maybe there's a question in one or maybe they feel that 

not enough data were used in one -- in one particular 

instance or in some specific cases. That is the sort of 

feedback that we want from auditors. 

 So I really propose that we stick to the -- we adopt one 8 

philosophy. Are we going to hire somebody that's going to 

do auditing for us, or some other function? And I propose 

that we should really stick to the audit function. 

Furthermore, the way the documents are written up, as I read 

them over lunch again, it gets pretty complicated pretty 

quickly. I'd say that if we're going to have an audit, 

let's have an audit like we normally have audits at work, 

where an auditor goes in and does not just look at one 

dose reconstruction or one case of a procurement, but the 

auditor comes in and asks for all your books, everything. 

 And except for those issues that would come up with the 

Privacy Act, such as giving out information about names, 

locations, dates, birth dates, et cetera, we give them 

everything. In other words, they conduct the most 

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thorough audit possible. Okay? I think that's another 

provision that I would suggest here, rather than having 

different levels of audits that can get confusing and so 

on. 

 I would say that audits, in and of themselves, are based on 5 

after the -- or data that comes in after the fact. This 

morning the comments I made, I hope I didn't confuse 

everybody, but when I talked about, for example, an 

auditor looking at two sets of transcripts over the same 

person, I'm talking about it happening after the fact, in 

a random fashion, and perhaps done such that the samples 

of cases they choose to review reflect the percentages of 

claimants coming from different sites. Okay? So there'd 

be some proportionality to it. I didn't want to confuse 

that with a quality assurance function that is internal to 

the supervisor/interviewer relationship that is going to 

exist with ORAU or with OCAS. So I hope that that's 

clear. 

And lastly, let's not lose sight of the fact that OCAS has a 

dose reconstruction team leader that is responsible for 

ensuring consistency of approach. So let's take advantage 

of that situation and let's ensure that we are kept up to 

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date on that sort of thing such that the task orders that 

we have issued are limited to those issues that we really, 

really need help on and not things that are already being 

handled I think in a professional manner. So those are 

the general comments that I had. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Henry, you had a comment? 

 DR. ANDERSON: 7 Yeah, I was -- again, looking at these, this 

seemed to be the only place where we talk about crossprogram consistency, that it's very difficult within a 

case to say was this same process -- I mean we can say was 

it applied according to the rules that they assisted, but 

we don't know has this been consistent across multiple 

cases. And the way I was looking at this is, one, you can 

learn about that consistency after the fact when in fact 

you find that there's -- you know, here's 50 cases like 

this and they all appear to have been handled differently. 

 Now you've got a more serious problem versus if you, up 

front, you may see that because of the procedures that are 

in place, they have some ambiguity in them. And if we 

identify that, I mean what -- what we've heard here is 

there are procedures in place. My question is are they 

written down as to how do we maintain that facility in a 

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growing program. It's very difficult to write it down, 

but in fact there may be procedures in place that you can 

say well, when this comes up, how do they deal with that, 

and this would say well, when there seems to be some of 

this ambiguity, here's what they do. There's a da, da, 

da, da, da, da, da. If that isn't written down, we may 

want to say well, maybe before this occurs, rather than do 

it on the fly, let's take a look at developing those 

additional procedures rather than we'll address it when it 

first arises. So I just see it as potentially -- by 

asking them to look at the language and the other 

procedures, I don't see it as a very complex thing. I 

think you could look at it and say gee, there seems to be 

some ambiguity here and how are you going to address it, 

and they're going to say, just as we heard, here's how 

we're going to do it. They're going to say sounds 

reasonable and maybe you ought to write it down so that 

when it -- when somebody potentially sees this, they'll 

think yep, that's -- this is how I'm supposed to do it. 

So that's how I saw this, as more troubleshooting that we 

have done some of, but somebody more systematic might be 

able to do that. And then after the fact you may run into 

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it, as well. But after the fact, the consequences of it 

become more problematic of oh, gee, we're now going to 

have to go back over umpteen other cases. That's -- if we 

could avoid that by doing something up front, that was my 

intent in suggesting focusing on that cross issue. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Tony, why don't you respond and then Jim and 

Mark. 

 DR. ANDRADE: 8 I didn't mean to imply that by using the 

phrase "after the fact" that we'd come back and -- or this 

group -- this potential contractor group would go in a 

year or so later to look at things. I'd like to get these 

people on board, hired and get them working as quickly as 

possible doing simply-defined work, although it may be 

very tedious, time-consuming and difficult work. Okay? 

But get them going on this. So I'm saying I don't want a 

time delay in there. I didn't mean that at all. And so -

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But by the statements that Jim Neton made, I think it's 

absolutely clear that some of these procedures are going 

to -- are -- they're dynamic in nature. I mean I think 

they're going to be -- that OCAS is going to be building 

these procedures over time. I don't think they're going 

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to be changing wildly. I think they're going to be 

growing and being built upon rather than changing. And 

that's my perspective on that, and Jim can comment on 

whether or not you've really ever had to go back and 

change something dramatically. 

 DR. NETON: 6 No, our fundamental approach hasn't changed. 

It's consistent with the regulation. But as you look at 

more and more and more cases, more specifics come up. 

Certain geometries of exposure, for example. Was the guy 

anterior or posterior, what is the percentage ratios of 

medium energy photons to high energy photons, and that's 

why we develop these -- flesh these things out in these 

technical information bulletins and technical basis 

documents, White Papers, so to speak. So that's sort of 

where I'm coming from is that not all of that is nailed 

down because we just have frankly not come against all of 

those possible exposure scenarios. With 10,000 cases, you 

can probably have 10,000 different type situations. 

DR. MELIUS: And just to amplify and carry on what Henry and 

-- we've been talking about, I mean I would see that if 

the contractor, in reviewing the procedures, raises an 

issue and he says you really don't have a good procedure 

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for dealing with this particular issue in a consistent 

manner, he comes back to Jim and Jim says well, yeah, but 

in the first 2,000 cases this just hasn't come up. We 

haven't needed a procedure. Well, that's not a -- you 

know, a problem. That's a -- you know, an issue that 

yeah, if it comes up, it's going to be dealt with down the 

line. But we don't want, you know, to raise that as sort 

of a deficiency in the audit. You know, that's not what 

we want the focus or the effort put into. If they find 

something that's, you know, more relevant to what's going 

on, then some effort ought to be put into it. But it's 

not to sort of make unnecessary work or to disrupt the -- 

the process. And I think we can set it up that way. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Mark? 

MR. GRIFFON: I -- I guess I would -- I would -- I'm being 

beaten down again, but -- no. I guess I -- I could agree 

to just having that first paragraph. I would still push 

for it to be a separate task, rather than rolled into the 

existing section A. But I guess I could live with that. 

And I think everything that the last four commenters have 

said, I totally agree with. That's the intent. Maybe by 

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having all these specifics here, I -- I give a wrong 

intent on this. But that was certainly the intent, and I 

think that -- you know, there still is value to reviewing 

core methods and procedures. And I think that when we 

write the specific task order, we can even specify the 

bounds of the -- you know, we'll have a laundry list of 

procedures and methods developed already and we can focus 

them on only the ones that the Board wants to focus them 

on, you know. I -- I understand that as you do site 

profiles, you're going to have different TBD's for site 

profiles as you move on, and you're going to have 

different geometries and et cetera. That's -- that's -- 

but there -- there ought to be a core set of procedures 

and methods that -- that don't change a whole lot from 

here on out or else you're going to have consistency 

issues, you know. So I think that's where -- where I 

envisioned this being targeted, and I guess the other 

suggest-- either -- either using that top paragraph with 

the edits Larry mentioned. The other language, the only 

value to that really in the initial cut at this was to 

sort of refine the set of skills that the contractor would 

need, but that's captured in the other task anyway. So 

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I'm willing to -- to allev-- you know, to drop that and 

either paste it into the existing task A or I really would 

prefer it to be a separate, stand-alone task and -- with 

the understanding that it's -- with the understanding of 

the bounds that we discussed, you know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Are there any more comments on this issue? 

MS. MUNN: I'd like to make a small comment. 

MR. GRIFFON: Can I put a mike up there? 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, Wanda. I was saying where is that voice 

coming from, looking around the room when I hear your 

voice. Yes, Lord, speak to me. Go ahead, Wanda. 

MS. MUNN: In the absence of precise language that's being 

discussed here, I think I have to come down with Tony on 

this one. I have some concern that we not get too 

proscriptive with what we're doing here so that we do not 

find ourselves in a position of trying to establish 

criteria for projects which, as someone's already pointed 

out, have not been done quite this way and for this reason 

before. That being said, it's very difficult I think for 

anyone to identify precisely how many actions you're going 

to want an auditor to take without taking into 

consideration what a full scale audit really implies, and 

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I think Tony's already articulated those points quite a 

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that known. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Okay. Thank you, Wanda, for those comments. 

Did you have -- and I guess you can put the -- take your 

mike back there. 

 Now Mark, that completes the items that you wanted to 7 

identify, did it not, for -- I mean -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 9 I wouldn't dare introduce anything else. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

DR. MELIUS: Moving right along. 

DR. ZIEMER: Help Mark off the floor there and we'll get 

back to the document. 

Now what we want to do now is just go back and identify 

specific -- see if we can reach agreement on each item. 

We've identified the various items and we'll go back 

through, I guess beginning with the request for contract, 

which is pages one through five -- oh, we -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Just one suggestion. I made those edits 

during lunch that we had discussed, so we may be able to 

look at the language if -- if you want to pull it up on 

here or something. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 Do we have the full document on the -- on the 

laptop? 

 We'll wait just a moment. 3 

 MR. GRIFFON: 4 It might take me just a second, I'm sorry. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 No problem. 

 (Pause) 6 

 MR. GRIFFON: 7 All right, Paul, are we going to start with 

the main body and then go -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Yeah, let's just go right through it. 

MR. GRIFFON: Attachment C and Attachment A like we did 

before, so Attachment C will be the first thing we -- 

DR. ZIEMER: The request for contract is... 

MR. GRIFFON: It's sorted by date. It should be right at 

the bottom. 

(Pause) 

DR. ZIEMER: Actually there were no changes in that, so -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I didn't touch that. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We don't have to look at that. 

DR. ZIEMER: No action is -- well, no changes were noted. 

The only thing is that later, during executive session, we 

fill in the dollar amount. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 And then at some point an Advisory Board member 

is to be named to the panel. I believe that's probably 

the prerogative of the Chair to do that. And the other 

names are -- will be unknown, I guess, to us. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 5 Do we -- just for purposes of completing this 

section P, should I put OCAS -- NIOSH-OCAS in one slot and 

then unknown for the other three slots or how do you want 

to -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 9 Certainly. Put Jim Neton's name there. He's 

the only NIOSH-OCAS person that I know of who's going to 

be on this. 

DR. NETON: (Inaudible) 

DR. ZIEMER: OCAS project officer. 

MR. GRIFFON: OCAS project officer. 

DR. ZIEMER: A/K/A Jim Neton. 

(Pause) 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, so then we can go to statement -- or 

Attachment C, which is what you have here. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You do have agreement on everything in this 

request for contract section. 

DR. ZIEMER: As far as we know, we have agreement on 

everything in the request for contract section. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 2 Okay, let me lead us through this. As far as I 

know, there's -- C.1, purpose of contract, is pretty much 

boilerplate. We had no changes there. Stop me if I go 

too fast. 

 C.2, background and need, no changes. 6 

 DR. ANDRADE: 7 Paul, did you want to -- did you want to leave 

this in sort of the past tense. In the very first 

paragraph he says -- the sentence in the middle of the 

paragraph says that OCAS has retained. Do you want to 

change that to will retain? 

DR. ZIEMER: No, that OCAS has retained the services of a 

contractor. They have. 

DR. ANDRADE: Okay, you're talking about ORAU. 

DR. ZIEMER: OCAS has, yes. So that is correct. 

DR. ANDRADE: I'm sorry. 

DR. ZIEMER: And the last sentence is the one that applies 

to us. (Reading) To support the Advisory Board, the 

Department of Health and Human Services requires the 

services of a contractor. 

C.2, background and need, no changes. 

C.3, contract tasks. Let's go through by section. There's 

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an introductory part that identifies the three tasks, A, 

B, C, and then there are some individual things on each 

task. Task A, are there any changes on page three, task 

A? 

 DR. MELIUS: 5 Yeah, we want to -- we want to insert -- I 

don't have Larry's changes written down. Mark, do you 

have those, the will -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 8 Yeah. 

 DR. MELIUS: 9 Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, this is the point -- 

MR. GRIFFON: This is the point of the methods and 

procedures. 

DR. ZIEMER: This is the point where we have to decide -- 

and maybe to do this we'll do this by motion. That way we 

can formalize it. The Chair will entertain a motion 

dealing with what was item A on the separate handout, dose 

reconstruction methods/procedures review. The motion can 

be to full incorporate what Mark had or it can be to 

incorporate the first paragraph. Any motion is fair game, 

as long as we have a motion. Roy? 

DR. DEHART: I move the adoption of the first paragraph, 

altered with procurement language. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 Let me have a second to the motion. 

 DR. MELIUS: 2 I second. 

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WRITER/EDITOR: Would you repeat that, please? 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, the motion is to insert -- where is this 

to be inserted in the motion? It's after paragraph one of 

the existing A? 

DR. DEHART: It would be inserted as the second paragraph. 

DR. ZIEMER: It would be inserted as a separate paragraph 

where it says the contractor shall determine, it will say 

the contractor shall evaluate and shall evaluate where 

there is sufficient -- there's two of those. Right? 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I got them. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Have we got two, for the record? 

MR. GRIFFON: Yes, I got them. 

DR. ZIEMER: Read that second sentence. 

MR. ELLIOTT: As I see it, the contractor -- let me get my 

act together here. (Reading) The contractor shall review 

all relevant dose reconstruction methodologies and/or 

procedures employed by NIOSH, NIOSH contractors in 

conducting individual dose reconstructions and SEC 

petitions. The contractor shall evaluate whether 

methodologies and procedures are consistent with the 

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requirements under 42 CFR 82 and whether there are 

sufficient procedures to achieve consistent application of 

the requirements in 42 CFR 82. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Okay, that is the motion. That motion has been 

seconded. Let's have discussion then. 

WRITER/EDITOR: Who seconded the motion? 

DR. MELIUS: I did. 

WRITER/EDITOR: Thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: Discussion pro or con, support or -- pro or 

against the motion. 

MR. GRIFFON: I still think it's -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Mark, it's your last chance. 

MR. GRIFFON: I give up. It's in the wrong place, but I'll 

accept it. 

DR. ZIEMER: It is -- in your mind, it should be posi-- 

you're okay with the paragraph, but would want it in -- 

MR. GRIFFON: I'm okay with the paragraph. I just think 

it's -- it's confusing to have it under the header 

Individual Dose Reconstruction Review. 

DR. ZIEMER: Would it be more appropriate to have it in the 

lead-in paragraph at the end of construction (sic) tasks? 

 I mean where -- where are you suggesting it would be 

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other -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 2 Oh, I -- I was proposing a separate task item, 

but I think I lost that argument, so I guess I'll... 

 DR. ANDERSON: 4 I think -- that first paragraph is still 

pretty generic, so I think it fits. 

 DR. MELIUS: 6 Yeah, and then we talk about the bas-- the 

different types of reviews, so it's an introductory -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: 8 So the first one doesn't really say a single 

case would be used. 

MR. GRIFFON: That's true. 

DR. ANDERSON: So I think it fits the -- 

MR. GRIFFON: I agree. I agree. 

DR. MELIUS: But it makes it clear it's part of the 

individual dose reconstruction review process. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, there seems to be consensus that it may 

be okay in that position. Mark, you haven't made a motion 

to move it, so we'll consider it still there. 

MR. GRIFFON: That's fine. 

DR. ZIEMER: Are there any other comments in support of or 

in opposition to this motion? Are you ready to vote? 

This motion is only on placement of this. At the end of 

this whole procedure we'll be voting on the whole 

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document, so this only pertains to where it is at the 

moment. 

 Those who favor this motion say aye. 3 

 (Affirmative 4 responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 And those who are opposed, no? 

 (No 6 responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 And any abstentions? 

 (No 8 responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 The motion then -- And Wanda, I don't know if 

you can legally vote long distance. 

MS. MUNN: I don't know either, but I said aye. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, gotcha. I just didn't see your hand 

there. Okay. Thank you very much. The ayes have it. 

Going on to subset -- or item B, actually -- wait a minute, 

where are we? No, it's 1.A after -- under -- under the 

other A. There's A and there's, 1 and then A and 1. 

Okay, page four B -- oh, I'm sorry, A. 

DR. DEHART: Could we have just a brief discussion on the 

rationale for paragraph -- the follow paragraph. It was 

the old paragraph 2 under A where we're talking about -- 

DR. ZIEMER: The numbers of cases? 

DR. DEHART: Yes. I was -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 Mark, do you want to address that question 

then? It's the -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 3 Where are we? 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Two-thirds of the way down on page three where 

we just were, right there, (Reading) The contractor shall 

conduct one of three levels. 

 And you have some numbers there. I think Roy is asking 7 

about the rationale for those numbers. Is that correct? 

 DR. DEHART: 9 Right. 

MR. GRIFFON: Well, the -- for the -- this was through 

discussions with NIOSH staff and sort of an estimate of -- 

of how many cases would initially be available year one -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Right -- 

MR. GRIFFON: -- and projecting it out. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- and we had sort of agreed on a percentage, 

also. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, a 2.5 percent I think we've discussed 

several times, yeah. So it was, you know, quite -- I mean 

years four and five are quite difficult to project I 

think, but this was -- I did this through discussions with 

Jim Neton primarily, on estimates of how many -- 

especially the first year adjustment. I adjusted the 

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first year down quite a bit 'cause you -- not -- not quite 

a bit, but down a little 'cause of, you know, the 

projected status, so... 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Right. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 5 I don't know if Jim wants to -- I don't know 

if Jim wants to comment on the... 

 DR. NETON: 7 Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Jim doesn't have a mike here, so maybe you can 

borrow that one behind you. 

DR. NETON: Mark and I talked about it and if the contractor 

comes on board parallel with the ORAU ramp-up, the number 

of cases available is going to be somewhat less than the 

8,000 for one year. I mean it's sort of the reality of 

the situation, so that -- that's how those got lowered a 

little bit. 

DR. ZIEMER: Does that answer your question, Roy? 

DR. DEHART: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Any other questions on that page? Yes, 

Tony. 

DR. ANDRADE: I'd like to go back to a comment I made 

earlier about having the contractor be available to really 

perform a complete audit. And this may be a little 

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controversial, but believe me, I have -- I have thought 

about it -- this over many a evening. And that is I would 

propose to -- and I'm not making a motion, but I would 

propose that we would -- as we consider eliminating the 

three different levels of review and for whatever cases 

come up or are of interest to the Board, that we allow the 

contractor to do everything that is specified up through 

an advanced -- the advanced and the blind -- what is 

currently called the blind review, I guess -- blind dose 

reconstruction. 

I mean if you're going to have an auditor give you the 

result of an audit, then you might as well go through each 

and every one of these steps, determine if the data is 

adequate, determine whether or not the data were used 

correctly, and then go ahead and perform the dose 

reconstruction. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Let me ask the working group, any of you 

want to reply to that? Okay, Henry. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I think the overall basic idea of the 

multiple levels was one of cost efficiency. To do 

everything comprehensive would -- and we may hear more 

about this tomorrow -- exceed the budget. So that then 

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we're left with, instead of doing two and a half percent, 

which would give us a good -- a statistically valid 

sample, we'd end up with, you know, less than that. And I 

think it was felt that you could gather a lot of good 

information on a more basic review than a comprehensive. 

I mean if you want it, we could say the advanced one is, 

in quotes, an audit, and the other is a -- you know, a -- 

call it something else. But I think that was the idea of 

being able to do more and that gathering some key 

information by having larger numbers, so that's why I 

thought it was efficient to have multiple levels than to 

have only one level and do a few, but do them all 

extensively. Then we really don't know is it adequately 

representative of all of the claimants, and then when we 

write -- we say that based on this audit the program is 

working well, we -- the likelihood of finding a few of the 

events will be not very -- very good, you know, random 

events. 

DR. ZIEMER: If I might insert a comment here, in one sense, 

all of -- the whole database is available for audit. We 

are the auditors. We are simply stating for our 

contractor about what the magnitude of the actual job will 

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be, and in fact the Act itself tells us that we are to 

sample a representative percentage. It doesn't say what 

that is. And I think our thinking here was we've got to 

give the auditors -- the contractor that will help us -- 

some idea what we're talking about -- sampling 50 percent 

of these cases or two percent or half a percent or -- so 

that sort of scopes it. But we are the auditors and so we 

can determine what that sampling size ought to be. This 

is referred to as an estimate to try to bound it. 

And I know the working group recognized that you can do 

different levels of audit, just as you can in financial 

work. You can get the $89.95 -- remember Marian Samm*, 

the $29 wedding or whatever it was, or 29-cent wedding? 

You know, you can get whatever you pay for. And if you're 

hiring an auditor to audit your books, there's all kinds 

of levels of audit you can get, depending on how much 

you're willing to spend. And some of them are not very 

good, even if you spend a lot, we've found out. 

But in any event, you're -- Tony, were you asking why we're 

specifying the percent or were you -- I know earlier you 

said you felt like we should have -- the whole thing is 

open, and I would claim it is. But we don't want our 

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contractor to check -- I mean we can't afford to have the 

contractor go back and audit every claim, every 8,000 

claims. 

 DR. ANDRADE: 4 Absolutely not, and I would suggest that it 

should be based on a percentage that is related to the 

number of claimants at each site. And it's going to be a 

small percent -- a small percentage. I mean we all know 

that. We can't afford to go back and look at every single 

case. There's just -- that's just not possible. But I 

would claim that I think that we as a body might feel 

better if we had had an end-to-end study of the cases that 

were chosen, either by us or randomly selected, that they 

did go back and look at all elements. And again, my point 

is just up for discussion. 

DR. ZIEMER: Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: I think we have to be frank, that these numbers 

or this percentage is chosen based, to some extent, on 

what we think the resources are that will be available for 

-- for performing this function, and that certainly, no 

matter how we start the process, we're going to have -- 

should we as -- the Advisory Board should evaluate that 

process at some point, you know, the first year or 

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something, and decide are we satisfied with the 

representativeness and the sample that we're looking at 

and that, given what we're finding, are we comfortable 

that the auditing job that we're doing -- monitor job is 

adequate. And in that case, I think Tony's very much on 

the point, that we shouldn't have it driven by some 

artificial number, but rather are we performing the 

function we should be -- should be performing. And we 

have to be willing to -- to look at that at some point. 

This would get us started, and then we can decide at a 

later point how -- how we go about -- and what -- what is 

the appropriate sample, and how do we draw that sample. 

Is it by site, is it by type of claim or what. 

DR. ANDRADE: I'd certainly be willing to live with that, as 

long as we put in that proviso that we will review this 

particular set of cases and the approaches we're taking 

after a period of time. 

DR. ZIEMER: I might ask, is that a proviso that would need 

to be in this document, or is that helpful at this time? 

MR. GRIFFON: I don't disagree with what Tony and Jim are 

saying. I think that we talked about sort of just giving 

a sense to the bidders of what this scope might involve 

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and what their commitment -- level of commitment might be 

over various time. That's not to say that we might not 

decide to do more advanced reviews, but I think that all 

could fall under our selection process, which is part of 

the Board's function or if we establish a subcommittee, 

you know, but the Board's responsible for the selection 

and the type of cases selected. And I think we can -- we 

can discuss that there and maybe these percentages are 

wrong, but we wanted to at least give them a -- some sort 

of estimate of, you know, potential personnel commitment, 

et cetera, so... 

DR. ZIEMER: Would it be helpful if we said something like 

these percentages are subject to change as experience is 

gained in the process, or something like that? Would that 

be -- is there any objection to adding a caveat of that 

sort? As we gain -- basically I think we're -- that's 

what you were suggesting, that if we found out the sample 

wasn't representative, we need to increase this, or if 

we're getting more than we need or the costs are different 

than we expect. These percentages are subject to change 

as experience is gained with the audit -- with the review 

process. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 1 By the Advisory -- subject to change by the 

Advisory Board or -- 

 DR. MELIUS: 3 Why don't we say these numbers and percentages 

are subject to change by -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 It already says that these are estimates, in 

any event, but -- but nonetheless, maybe that's helpful to 

make it clear that this is a -- any agreement or 

disagreement on that? Can we take that by consent that 

that simply clarifies -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Based on experience -- what were you -- what 

was the end of that? 

DR. ZIEMER: Subject to changes by the Advisory Board based 

on experience with the review process. Do you want a 

formal vote on that or -- no objection? Consider it a 

friendly amendment to the document? 

Are we ready to go on to page four? Any comments on page 

four? While we're on -- well, let's see, page four -- 

okay, the paging up there is a little different than our 

draft, but that's all right. It'll be item C, 1, 2, 3, 4, 

5. Anything there? I have a minor change I'm going to 

suggest on 5.d -- 5.d, let's see. Who can guess what my 

change is on 5.d, one word? 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 2 You're right, data are. Okay. Thank you. I 

know all my graduate students could guess that one if they 

were -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 5 You would have failed me out a few tests ago. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Right. 

 DR. ROESSLER: 7 You're not Purdue material. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Just missed the entrance test. Ready for item 

-- let's see, where are we? Item 2, advanced review, 

anything there? 

MR. GRIFFON: The edit I show on the overhead is cutting off 

that sentence where we had discussed. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, that's item B under advanced review. As 

we discussed this morning then, everyone's -- in this 

version now the sentence was ended with a period after the 

word "information", so as to keep the scope broad enough 

to deal with the issue that we talked about in terms of 

the interview process, or audit of the interview process. 

Let me ask if there's further discussion on that issue right 

now or is the Board comfortable with this wording? I want 

to ask specifically, Mark, because I want to make sure 

that -- I know you would like some more specificity on the 

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audit thing, but we -- this does not close the door. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 2 No, I -- I mean I think I'd like to -- the 

Board to actually -- after we close this document -- 

discuss specifics, though, and come up with some sort of 

proposals that we agree on as a -- as a Board -- as a 

separate item, though. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 To move forward on that issue later? 

 MR. GRIFFON: 8 Right, right. But -- and also I should say 

that -- I'll have to edit the -- Attachments D and E to 

reflect this change so that -- and I didn't do that in 

this... 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Just for the record -- well, perhaps -- 

perhaps we can take this by consent. Are -- any 

objections to this version at this time? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: There appear to be no objections. Without 

objection then, we'll consider that the language to be 

used. 

Item B, NIOSH-OCAS site profile, anything there? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we're ready for item C.4, task orders. 

MR. GRIFFON: Actually -- actually page -- item B -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 2 -- on page seven, at the top of page seven, or 

the pages might be different now. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Yeah, this is still under site profile? 

 MR. GRIFFON: 5 Yes. This paragraph was added -- I didn't 

highlight the whole thing, but this gives the numbers of 

estimates of -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Oh, these are the numbers that we talked about 

this morning? 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, right. 

DR. ZIEMER: So the paragraph in yellow now is the one that 

reflects the estimated numbers of worker profile reviews 

and -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Site profile -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- site profile reviews. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- reviews, correct. 

DR. ZIEMER: And we -- the instruction was if you do the 

first year, you have to estimate the following years, so 

we have first, second and third at that level, and fourth 

four and four, and fifth three and three. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Let's open that for a moment for 

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discussion. I don't think we had the specific numbers 

before, so are there any comments on this, pro or con? 

Any objections to this -- these numbers, recognizing that 

at this point they're somewhat arbitrary, but -- but 

probably reasonable. 

 I would like to ask Jim Neton or Larry a question. What 6 

percent of the total site profiles -- we're talking about 

five, ten, 15, 19 -- 22, is it? Have I added up this -- 

we're talking about a total of 22 -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Twenty-two, correct -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- site profiles. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- site profiles. 

DR. ZIEMER: How many site profiles will there be in the 

total -- I'm trying to get a feel for what percent -- 

DR. NETON: Ideally that would match the number of covered 

facilities, which would be somewhere in the vicinity of 

300, so this would represent approximately eight to ten 

percent or something like that of the covered facilities. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. And there's no specification here as to 

what types of facilities these are, but -- you know, DOE 

sites versus the others. That's, at this point, not to be 

specified, apparently, 'cause that could make a fair 

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difference in workload. Is everybody comfortable with 

that? Any objections to that paragraph? No objections? 

We leave it in? 

 Let me back you up just to the prior paragraph. Go back to 4 

the bottom of the previous page where it says "is the data 

appropriate". 

 MR. GRIFFON: 7 Don't tell me. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 I didn't even have to tell him what to change 

there, did I? Okay. Thank you. Actually if you like 

"is" better, you can say "is the dataset appropriate", you 

can make it singular, but either way. 

DR. MELIUS: Send off a letter from the Board to Microsoft 

that they should either automatically -- yeah -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Grammar correct, yeah, should be in there. 

All right. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, review of SEC petitions. 

MR. GRIFFON: The same -- similar thing was done here, the 

numbers were added. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. This is added? Yeah, the last 

paragraph. 

MR. GRIFFON: Four -- four reviews the first year, then 

eight, 12, 12 and eight, and four certainly in the first 

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year is lower because the regulations aren't even in place 

yet and, you know, petitions -- that many petitions early 

on, so... 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Let me ask a similar question. What's the 

expectation, Jim or Larry, on the -- 

 DR. NETON: 6 Yeah, I was just going to comment. I don't 

think there's any basis for -- for us knowing the number 

of SEC petitions, so it's -- I'd actually prefer to leave 

it unquantified at this point. I mean we just can't -- 

given that the contractor's not even going to know what 

the review criteria are for SEC petitions, does it really 

make any sense to tell them how many they're going to have 

to review, anyway? I don't know. 

MR. PRESLEY: Could you leave that four out then and put in 

there that that would be determined by the Board? Just 

put a caveat in there? 

DR. ZIEMER: Certainly could, I think it's -- this is open 

for discussion. It can be left in, it can be taken out, 

it can be changed. I think Mark has put it here for your 

review. One of the reasons this whole section -- this is 

a placemarker section, remember, that -- we don't have an 

SEC rule right now so it's hard to be specific on what 

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should be here except to let the contractor know that we 

expect some assistance in that area when the rule making 

is done. The rule making will be out soon. Later this 

month the proposed rule perhaps will be in the public 

realm for comment, so perhaps -- and 30 days later there 

may actually be a rule. But in the meantime, do you want 

to back away from the numbers or leave them or what? 

What's your pleasure? Let's have some comments, pro or 

con. 

MR. GRIFFON: I guess I don't really have heartburn over 

dropping the numbers. The numbers, though, are in the 

budget that I'm going to share at the executive session 

tomorrow, so we had to project numbers for the budget. It 

doesn't give me heartburn, though, to drop them out of 

this section. 

DR. MELIUS: Well, I think it's more a question of how the 

contracting people feel about -- you know, are they -- 

feel better off at least having some numbers in there and 

some expectation or not. I don't think it hurts to leave 

it in, but I don't think any of us feel strongly one way 

or the other. 

MR. ELLIOTT: It doesn't have to be here. And you can take 

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care of the numbers in your independent government cost 

estimate. It's at the discretion of the Board. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 Robert? 

 MR. PRESLEY: 4 You could just drop it out for the first year. 

 DR. MELIUS: 5 I would just drop it out entirely then. If we 

don't really know the process and procedure, then -- and 

the contracting people are comfortable, then -- better off 

than implying that we have some idea of what they should 

be doing. I mean the other -- all the other numbers have 

some basis on a percentage or the amount of work that the 

staff's doing. This one, we -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Does anyone feel strongly we need to leave it 

in? 

UNIDENTIFIED: We're only talking about deleting the number. 

DR. ZIEMER: The number, yeah. No, the task still remains 

there. Then it appears to be consensus that we just leave 

the numbers out on this particular item since the rule 

itself is not in place. 

Okay. Thank you. Task orders, there will be an insert 

referring back to Attachment A where we would -- and there 

it is indicated in yellow what the change would be in the 

body here, and we'll come to Attachment A in a minute and 

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see what the change is there. And we had agreed to that I 

think this morning. 

 Okay, continuing A, B, C, D and E -- stop me if we're going 3 

-- E, F -- F, hold on F a minute. "Contracting officer of 

is", what is -- is that of -- of the projection, of -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 Where are you at, Paul? I'm sorry. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 The words of -- "of is projection" can be 

removed? So it would say Contracting officer shall not 

exceed or -- 

UNIDENTIFIED: Its projection of the resources (inaudible) 

i-t-s. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, we don't know if it's a man, do we? 

Well, it's the contractor that's notifying, so it's the 

contractor of its or their, the contractor is an entity. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think it reads correct if you just delete 

"of is projection of" and just -- 

UNIDENTIFIED: No, no, no. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Contracting officer of the resources and costs 

necessary to complete the project tasks. 

DR. ZIEMER: Or of the projection of the -- is the word 

"projection" needed? 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: 1 I don't think it's needed. What they're -- 

what we typically ask them to provide is what resources 

and costs are necessary to complete the tasks. Once they 

reach a 75 percent level, the contracting group needs to 

know what they need to finish up with. So it is a 

projection, but in this context, I don't think it really 

adds anything. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 So you can delete the words "of is projection", 

which probably was "of his" or "its" projection. 

MS. MUNN: This is Wanda. I thought we talked about that 

when we were on the phone. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, it's more of a grammatical thing. 

There's a grammatical error in the copy that we have here. 

MS. MUNN: Yes, I thought we had just taken "as is" out. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, what we're ending up here, it's going to 

say: The contracting officer of the resources and costs 

necessary -- notify the contracting officer of the 

resources and costs necessary. 

MS. MUNN: That would essentially do the same thing. 

Earlier we had said "is" needs to come out. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So that was more of a grammatical thing. 

 Okay. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 3 Okay. Then we're ready for Attachment D. 

Well, I'll tell you what -- yeah, we're going to take a 

break. I want to see if we can vote on Attachment C 

before we break. You want to do that? That's a way we 

can get this vote done real fast. 

 I'd like a motion to approve Attachment C with the changes 8 

that have been previously agreed to. Is there such a 

motion? 

DR. MELIUS: I so move. 

DR. ZIEMER: And is there a second? 

MR. ESPINOSA: Second. 

DR. ZIEMER: And is there any further discussion now? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: No further discussion. Okay. All in favor of 

the motion say aye. 

(Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any opposed, no? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any abstentions? 

(No responses) 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 Wanda, did I hear you vote there? 

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MS. MUNN: You heard me vote aye again. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, just making sure. Thank you. The ayes 

have it. 

And we will recess, have a comfort break here for 15 minutes 

-- 3:30 resume. 

(Whereupon, a recess was taken.) 

BOARD DISCUSSION/WORKING SESSION

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we have just completed approval of 

Attachment C. We're ready to look at Attachment D. This 

is an example, and I believe there was just a minor change 

that was required to make this parallel, was there not, to 

the earlier document. Mark, can you -- 

MR. GRIFFON: No, what's on the interview portion, I can -- 

I can make that change. 

DR. ZIEMER: Show us where that would be and make sure we're 

all on the same page on that. 

MR. GRIFFON: It might be in advanced reviews. Is it in 

advanced reviews -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: It's in advanced. 

MR. GRIFFON: So it's not in -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 Okay, so Attachment D -- are there any changes 

in Attachment D then? 

 MR. GRIFFON: 3 The only question I have, and I raised this 

with Jim and, believe it or not, ran out of time to try to 

modify this, but I'm not sure -- the form that we have it 

in right here, I'm just concerned that we're not going to 

have enough information to allow the bidders to respond -- 

you know, to respond. I mean it asks for a lot and we 

don't have specifics about these various sites that they 

might need to make their projections or estimates, and I -

- you know, this was like a first cut in a concept and -- 

DR. NETON: I think, though, what we need to be -- remember 

that they're bidding these tasks as if they're going to do 

them, but it's not necessarily so much the cost of the 

tasks but the approach that we're evaluating. You know, 

what is -- what are the level of resources that are being 

allocated to do this, what's the mix, that sort of thing 

that we're evaluating. So it's the approach more than -- 

the cost estimate will be looked at, of course. But it is 

really more going to be based on the approach, the 

technical approach that they're going to employ, which -- 

I don't know that it needs to be fleshed out much more. I 

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mean you need to say am I going to have five senior HP's 

doing these and two -- two juniors, that sort of thing. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 3 Well, if you -- I mean you've gone through 

this sort of thing once with one round of contractors for 

the -- the work itself, so I -- I -- it may be -- and 

we've also discussed this, maybe this is something that 

could be handled -- I think at the very least we probably 

need like a bidders' meeting or something. 

 DR. NETON: 9 Right, I've spoken to procurement about that and 

there's no problem having some sort of a bidders' 

conference call or a meeting if that's required. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. NETON: I mean we can do that to answer questions once 

the -- I don't know if you want to do a pre-bidders or -- 

you know, once it's issued on the street, but we can 

certainly accommodate something of that nature. 

MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Mark, was it not the intention of the group 

that this was just an example, as opposed to the 

individual sites from which cases would be drawn? 

MR. GRIFFON: Yes. Yes, that's true, but the examples is 

what they -- they -- these -- the bidders are required -- 

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and according to this task order contracting process, I 

think the bidders are required to -- this sort of 

establishes that baseline, so they're bidding against 

these two examples, is the way I understand it. 'Cause 

other wise we don't know, you know -- this -- this sort of 

tells them okay, this is -- for -- this isn't necessarily 

the task that you're going to end up doing in your 

contract, but here's an example. Give us a bid on this, 

and then we have -- we're comparing apples with apples is 

the idea. 

DR. NETON: Right, but I think if you look at the evaluation 

criteria, what is it, 15 points are based on this -- 

MR. GRIFFON: That's correct. 

DR. NETON: -- or something of that nature. 

MR. GRIFFON: That's correct. 

DR. NETON: You've got 40 points that are targeted towards 

the professional qualifications of the personnel on the 

staff of the contractor -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, that's right. 

DR. NETON: -- those sort of things, so it sort of comes out 

in the wash. This is just some way of trying to gain an 

idea to stratify the contractors on their qualifications -

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 MR. GRIFFON: 2 That's correct. 

 DR. NETON: 3 -- and their ability to do this. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Well, let me ask it in a different way. Is it 

very -- is it clear that we're not locked into these 

sites? This is only for purposes of demonstrating 

capability. 

 DR. NETON: 8 It is to me, and I think we certainly -- if we 

had a bidders' conference, phone conference or meeting, we 

would certainly make that clear, as well. 

DR. ZIEMER: So that we don't have someone coming back and 

saying wait a minute, this wasn't on the list or -- 

DR. NETON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- this was on the list, why aren't we -- 

MR. GRIFFON: I think it is in the main body of the 

document, too, when these attachments are referenced -- 

DR. ZIEMER: I just want to make sure it's clear. 

DR. NETON: They're examples. 

MR. GRIFFON: Very clear, yeah, yeah. 

DR. NETON: I think one thing Mark was concerned about, if 

you look at the review data collection, for instance, you 

know, it would be nice if we could provide them example 

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administrative records or something of that nature, but we 

just -- it would not be really practical for us to do 

that. So they don't have an idea at this point whether 

it's five pages or 400 pages they're going to have to 

review. But as long as they couch it and there are 

provisos that, you know, we're assuming that the written 

administrative records are this large and we're going to 

take this level of staff, that sort of thing. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Did someone have a question over here, or a 

comment? 

DR. MELIUS: I had a comment, but I think Jim's covered it. 

 I think it's a nice list. I mean it's a good 

representation of the types of facilities and -- for them 

to develop a work plan, they ought to be able to address 

all these different types of sites and I think the -- it's 

the work plan more than the cost estimates that you're 

evaluating. And I don't see how you can provide a lot 

more detail. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I should say that I didn't randomly 

select these sites. I did put a little thought into it. 

I mean I have a mix of AWE's and various DOE facilities, 

but also I paid attention to the types of exposures 

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relevant to some of these sites. 

 DR. NETON: 2 I could almost argue, as well, that the most 

qualified bidders would be the ones that would understand 

what kind of information they'd be looking at. What is 

the quality of the DOE information, what volume would be 

there based on the site, that kind of thing. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 7 Procurement would tell you that you don't want 

to add too much detail and specification in your examples 

here because then it becomes more difficult to determine 

the capability and the intuition that a proposer has about 

the scope. You almost write it -- write their proposal 

for them and all they've got to do is plug in the hours, 

and you don't want to get to that point. 

DR. ZIEMER: Other comments? So are there any -- any 

changes in this attachment anyone wishes to propose? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: If not, let's have a motion to formally adopt 

this, or accept this. 

DR. ANDERSON: So moved. 

DR. ZIEMER: A motion by Henry. And second? 

DR. DEHART: Second. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Opportunity for discussion on the 

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motion, pro or con? Ready to vote? 

 All in favor of adopting Attachment D say aye. 2 

 (Affirmative 3 responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 All opposed say no. 

 (No 5 responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Any abstentions? 

 (No 7 responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Motion carries. Attachment E. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 9 This is the change, Paul, that you referenced 

earlier. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Item B, the change in item B now would 

be as shown here: Evaluate the effectiveness of the phone 

interview in ascertaining relevant work history 

information, period. And that makes the statement 

parallel to the statement in the earlier section, which we 

had already agreed to, and I think we had already agreed 

that we should change it in this document, as well. 

Are there any other changes in Attachment E? 

DR. ANDRADE: A tiny item on C.1 -- I don't know if you want 

to leave it as "wipe" data, rather than "swipe" data. 

DR. ZIEMER: Actually, both words are used. 

DR. ANDRADE: It doesn't matter. 

NANCY LEE & ASSOCIATES 
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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 Yeah. Smear data, wipe data. 

 DR. MELIUS: 2 They did get the "are" correct there. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 So if they get "the data are" correct -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 4 I get a point there. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 5 -- they're okay. Okay, a motion to accept 

Attachment E with the change that's noted there in yellow? 

 DR. MELIUS: 7 So moved. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 It's been moved and -- 

 DR. ANDRADE: 9 Seconded. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- seconded and thirded and so on. Okay. Now 

is there any further discussion on the motion to accept 

Attachment E? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: If not, all in favor say aye. 

(Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any opposed? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any abstaining? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Motion carries. Then I guess we are at 

Attachment A, technical evaluation criteria. Gen. 

DR. ROESSLER: I have a question under A, personnel, the 

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last line. I don't think this has come up before, where 

it says a DOE Q clearance. I'm wondering if this 

requirement -- I don't know that much about DOE 

clearances, but is this contradictory with our conflict of 

interest statement where two pages later -- and we 

discussed this before and I don't think Paul wants us to 

discuss that again, but we talk about the key -- okay, the 

conflict that I see, or the contradiction, is between that 

Q clearance and then on the -- two pages later under 

conflict of interest, second paragraph where we talk about 

the two years, not having had any DOE experience during 

the past two years. Is that reasonable to expect a 

contractor to have someone with that DOE clearance if they 

haven't been involved with DOE? 

DR. ZIEMER: Mike, can you answer that? 

MR. GIBSON: It's actually United States government Q 

clearance, rather than DOE Q clearance. 

MR. ELLIOTT: No, it's DOE. 

MR. GIBSON: It is DOE? 

MR. ELLIOTT: It is DOE. 

MR. PRESLEY: Sure is. 

MR. GIBSON: But it don't -- I don't believe -- we don't -- 

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it has to do with some of the isotopes or -- have 

classified properties and some of the methods in which 

they were used is classified, so it's just a matter of 

whether or not you've got a record -- a background and the 

government grants you a clearance, whether you've been 

working for the government... 

 MR. GRIFFON: 7 I guess the -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 I don't know definitively. There are different 

designations for security clearances actually in different 

agencies, so they're not all completely parallel. But I 

think to get things from a DOE site, you have to -- I 

believe -- have specific -- is there any -- any -- 

UNIDENTIFIED: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- DOE people here that can -- 

DR. ANDRADE: We certainly give authorization for all 

different types of Q clearances and sigma levels. DOE -- 

DOE contractors are issued Q clearances on a need-to-know 

basis, and then further specification for additional 

information goes through sigmas. The Department of 

Defense has an almost-equivalent program in which they are 

issued a SNWDI* access, nuclear weapons design information 

access. So a DOE Q clearance is a DOE Q clearance, 

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whether it's a contractor to DOE or a DOE employee. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 2 I guess the -- the distinction in this 

document -- and this doesn't necessarily end the 

discussion, but the distinction I made -- subtle as it may 

be -- is that it -- it requires the technical staff member 

who has currently or may be able to obtain a Q clearance, 

and the conflict of interest talks about key personnel. 

So it doesn't necessarily require that your key personnel 

-- although during break we were discussing whether it 

might be an awkward situation to be in when your principal 

and your key personnel don't have Q and they're signing 

off on an audit that was done by a technical staff member 

that had the Q, without ever -- you know -- I don't know -

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DR. ZIEMER: Well, let me tell you that it is possible to 

get Q clearance reinstated after a number of years away 

from the DOE. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: I have Q clearance and I have not worked at DOE 

for over ten years. 

MR. GRIFFON: And it is possible to get a new Q clearance, 

too, and -- and -- but -- but you know. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 2 Yeah, actually reinstatement is not that very 

fast. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 4 But it doesn't take as long to get a -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 Short time period is not spelled out here, but 

it's not always short. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 7 But we also have flexibility in our case 

selection that we could, you know, sort of save those 

cases while somebody was being processed or re-- you know, 

reinstated. So I don't -- I don't think that those 

statements necessarily are -- are conflicted in the 

personnel versus the conflict of interest. I think we can 

live with both those statements, is my opinion. 

DR. ZIEMER: And Gen, does that answer the question, or do 

you want to pursue that further? 

DR. ROESSLER: Yes, it answers the question, but it just 

kind of confirms my concern that it will be difficult, I 

think, for the reviewers of these proposals to find 

someone who's really qualified, with the restrictions that 

we're putting in. But I'm going to say period, we've 

discussed that before. I just wanted to go on record 

saying that. 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: 1 If I could offer a suggestion of wording here, 

you make this a requirement. Maybe if you softened it a 

little bit and say it's advisable or it's advantageous, 

that gives a proposer some additional points toward 

gaining an award, if they have it and if they can put it 

in place and they're not conflicted. If you make it a 

requirement, as it's currently written, I wonder how many 

people -- how many proposers you actually lose. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Robert? 

MR. PRESLEY: I think -- I think it's got to be a 

requirement to go ahead and -- and -- you know that you're 

going to be doing some dose reconstructions at areas that 

require Q clearance to get it done, so I think it's going 

to have to be a requirement. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other comments? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Is there any desire to reword it or leave it? 

Okay, comment? 

DR. ANDRADE: Just one additional comment. Whenever we 

bring folks into our areas that don't have Q clearances, 

and if the work is not going to be -- it's not going to 

involve having access to weapons design information or 

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weapons processing or weapons manufacturing type 

information, one can always be escorted, and that's 

usually the way we work around the problem. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Okay. Yeah, Mike? 

 MR. GIBSON: 5 There are -- some of the sites, though, the 

actual isotope itself is classified. And to do dose 

reconstruction on those, they would have to know about the 

nature of the isotope. 

 MR. PRESLEY: 9 It's not only the isotope, but it's also the 

operations. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. So I'm looking for any -- anyone 

who wishes to modify or leave this as it is, we can do 

either. You've heard the discussion. There seems to be 

some uncertainty as to what the best tack would be. 

Obviously we don't want to eliminate large numbers of 

qualified individuals, but we do want to recognize the 

need for the contractor to have access to the information 

needed to do the work. Henry. 

DR. ANDERSON: Wasn't this a requirement for the earlier 

contract, the dose reconstruction group? 

DR. ZIEMER: Dick or Jim, can you tell us -- is there a 

similar requirement in the original -- 

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 DR. TOOHEY: 1 Yes, there was. There was about -- I think it 

was between six and 12 people who had or reinstated Q 

clearances. They aren't DOE clearances, but they are now 

justified by the contract provision that requires us to 

have them. 

 DR. NETON: 6 Actually the reason that appears there is I 

think this was in the -- as it was lifted and pasted from 

the original -- 

 DR. ANDERSON: 9 So we'll just have to see, but I do think -- 

DR. NETON: The "or" is the operative word in there, so it 

would not eliminate someone from the competition if they 

have a top person who worked three years ago and could 

reinstate. As Dr. Ziemer pointed out, short time period 

has not been defined. 

DR. MELIUS: And we have the other restriction, which may be 

in conflict with this in terms of the conflict of interest 

is personnel. So I think, as Mark pointed out, I think 

that does give us some room and let's see what happens, 

yeah, if it's... 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's continue. Any -- that's section A. 

 Section B, any item -- 

MR. GRIFFON: I should say above that, section A, there was 

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the change from the earlier comments. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 Oh, okay, back in item seven. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 3 This was Ted -- I tried to capture what Ted 

Katz was saying -- and program evaluation experience 

related to occupational health surveys -- he said program 

evaluator. I tried to -- I don't know if that captures it 

or not, so... Program evaluator, to me -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Wanda -- let me spell out for Wanda's benefit. 

 In item A were at -- middle of the first paragraph where 

it lists six items, we would be adding a seventh that 

says: and program evaluation experience related to 

occupational health surveys. 

Okay? Comment from Ted. 

MR. KATZ: Experience or expertise, I'm unsure if that isn't 

a better. 

MR. GRIFFON: Expertise is fine with me. 

DR. ZIEMER: Experience or expertise? 

DR. MELIUS: Does it have to be occupational health -- 

MR. KATZ: Yeah, and that's what I'm just sort of chewing 

over. I'm not sure that it has to be occupational health 

surveys, but -- 

MR. GRIFFON: Related to -- 

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MR. KATZ: Related more -- I would put it more broadly. I 

mean program evaluation expertise. I mean -- 

UNIDENTIFIED: Period. 

MR. KATZ: -- proper experts, you know -- they evaluate all 

sorts of programs that use surveys, they use all sorts of 

instruments, but they -- they would be -- 

DR. MELIUS: But since we're particularly concerned about 

the interview process, I think health survey would give 

them sort of a focus on that part of the process, which is 

what we want. 

MR. KATZ: Sure. 

DR. ZIEMER: Not necessarily occupational, though. 

DR. MELIUS: No, not necessarily occupational, though. It 

would be someone that... 

DR. ZIEMER: So it might read "program evaluation experience 

or expertise related to health surveys" is now what we 

have before us. Is that -- does that wording seem to be 

agreeable with everyone? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any major heartache on that one? It seems to 

be agreeable. 

Okay, let's proceed. Item B? C? D? E, which is the 

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conflict of interest section? In this section we had 

talked about the primary teaming partners, as far as the 

ORAU. Let's see, that's the fourth paragraph. Am I ahead 

of you here, conflict of interest? Yeah, roll on down to 

-- yeah, there we are. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 Somebody questioned about the spelling of 

"offeror", but I figured you would have -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Where is that? 

 DR. ANDERSON: 9 Is it o-r or e-r? 

DR. ZIEMER: Offeror, o-r is probably correct. Is it e-r? 

DR. ANDERSON: I don't know. 

WRITER/EDITOR: I think it's o-r. 

DR. ANDERSON: Spell check says e-r, so... 

MR. GRIFFON: Spell check says no, it doesn't accept e-r, 

either, so... 

DR. ANDERSON: It doesn't accept either one of them? 

MR. GRIFFON: No. 

DR. ANDERSON: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, we're going to jump ahead to E here, 

conflict of interest. Go on down to additionally -- there 

we are -- no prior work history or performing under 

contract NIOSH or ORAU. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 1 And the second part of that I just cut and 

pasted from the paragraph above, the last two sentence -- 

beyond this limitation -- then I just inserted NIOSH and 

ORAU. Above it it said DOE and DOE contractor and AWE and 

AWE contractor. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 6 Which contractor are you refer-- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 It's a little confusing. What -- where does 

the two primary go? Performing under contract with NIOSH 

or ORAU -- 

UNIDENTIFIED: Or the two -- 

DR. ZIEMER: -- or the two ORAU primary teaming partners. 

Right? The two ORAU primary teaming partners is what it 

should say. It's referring to the Dade Moeller Associates 

and the other -- the two primary teaming partners. 

MR. ELLIOTT: The contract number is located further down in 

the same page, Mark. It's 200-2002-00593. 

(Pause) 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So the sentence now reads, starting with 

the middle of the sentence, "while performing under 

contract with NIOSH or ORAU, or the two ORAU primary 

teaming partners (related to contract number 200-2002-

00593) in the past five years." Then there's an added 

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sentence -- beyond this limitation -- I'm reading this for 

Wanda's benefit now. I don't know if she has this copy, 

does she? 

MS. MUNN: Thank you. I don't have that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes. Beyond this limitation, the offeror -- 

with an o-r -- the offeror, teaming partners and key 

personnel shall be evaluated for their entire work history 

with NIOSH and ORAU for any appearance of actual conflict 

of interest or other factors which could otherwise 

prejudice the independence of the offeror, teaming 

partners and key personnel. 

MS. MUNN: Boy, we're getting pretty heavy. 

DR. ZIEMER: Is that parallel to the wording in the -- 

MR. GRIFFON: It's exactly the wording. 

DR. ZIEMER: It's exactly the wording in the ORAU contract 

then. 

DR. MELIUS: But the number of years is different. 

DR. ZIEMER: Except this is five years. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, and is there a rationale why this should 

be more strict -- more stringent than the one for DOE? 

DR. ZIEMER: Mark, you want to -- 

MR. GRIFFON: One rationale was that this is a NIOSH-ORAU 

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dose reconstruction effort, so that that -- you know, we 

ended up earlier discussing DOE more than we did NIOSH and 

ORAU in the past conference calls and meetings, but the 

rationale was that it's an audit of NIOSH and ORAU and as 

-- under that contract and therefore that was -- that was 

-- that was the primar-- you know, that's the -- the audit 

function is going to be auditing that process, NIOSH, and 

ORAU doing the work under them, and therefore, you know, 

we should be more stringent with that. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, but -- but I thought the rationale for 

adding this language was to add some flexibility to this 

process in terms of the nature of the relationship with 

ORAU or with NIOSH that -- that there would be -- you 

know, again, we talked about the speaking engagements and 

-- 

DR. ZIEMER: And there is this added sentence, which I 

didn't read, that follows that that I think is intended to 

do that, in part. (Reading) If the offeror, teaming 

partners or key personnel have current or past work 

history with NIOSH or ORAU, the offeror should include a 

needs justification for the key personnel's participation 

in the project. 

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 You need a space in there on the key. 1 

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sort of the exceptions to the rule. That doesn't preclude 

the question of the five years, however. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 6 Right, yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 Right, it still may be there, so that certainly 

is open for discussion. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 9 I guess, you know, Jim's point makes sense, 

that -- I mean we could -- depending on what we decide 

here, we could eliminate that sentence that says "beyond 

this limitation" and just include the last sentence, and 

that says that even within those five years, if they can 

justify working with NIOSH or ORAU, then -- then we'll, 

you know -- like -- like we discussed earlier, it might be 

a minor contract to do some training or whatever. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I -- I mean I would certainly propose 

that we change it to two, to be consistent. I think 

that's -- and then beyond two years, we judge based on the 

nature of the relationship, the nature of the work. Even 

that begs the question of someone having a minor contract 

from NIOSH or -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 Which still could be handled with the last 

sentence, so -- 

 DR. MELIUS: 3 Yeah, right. I think that gives us an -- okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 There's a proposal to change it to two. Let's 

get some other comments or -- I mean is this something -- 

 UNIDENTIFIED: 6 I concur with that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 Concur? How do others feel? 

 (No 8 responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Are there objections to going to two? Or is 

that -- I'm going to rule consensus here unless I hear 

from those who really want to keep the five, why, don't be 

bashful. 

UNIDENTIFIED: It's changed. 

DR. ZIEMER: Changed to two. Okay. Were there any other 

items in the conflict of interest statement? 

MS. MUNN: This is Wanda. 

DR. ZIEMER: Wanda. 

MS. MUNN: I have one comment. In the fourth paragraph on 

page four, that final line there talks about these 

individuals of key personnel and staff not being involved 

in any reviews related to that site. When I looked at 

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productive to make that strong an exclusion, especially 

when we have spoken often in this body about the concerns 

relative to whether or not the reviewers actually had any 

real knowledge of the process and physical structure where 

the claimants may have worked. 

 I can understand excluding these key personnel and staff 6 

from actually performing the review, but to not have them 

involved appears to me to deliberately exclude the very 

individuals who might have key information that the 

evaluators could use. Am I thinking incorrectly? 

DR. ZIEMER: Let's see if we have a -- someone readily 

available to answer that. Your comment suggests that we 

don't want to miss the information that might be of value 

that such individuals have. 

MS. MUNN: Correct, I can understand -- 

DR. ZIEMER: At the same time, if you knew that one of your 

people worked at that site, perhaps they could become an 

information source rather than part of the review process. 

MS. MUNN: Correct. 

DR. ZIEMER: So let me ask Mark how -- how they interpreted 

that. 

MR. GRIFFON: I was going to -- except that I have another 

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way to maybe get at this. I was going to ask Dick what 

their -- what ORAU's protocol is with regard to this. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 Okay, Dick Toohey is going to comment here. 

 DR. TOOHEY: 4 Well, what we're doing is very similar to what 

Wanda proposed. A person who worked at a site cannot do a 

dose reconstruction for a claim from that site, but they 

can serve as a subject matter expert in dose 

reconstruction research, exposure profile development and 

all that sort of stuff. 

DR. ZIEMER: An information resource then. 

DR. TOOHEY: Correct. And we're even heading that way in 

getting up a cadre of those people even as health 

physicists reviewing the telephone interview results to 

correct nomenclature, facility work, that sort of thing. 

But they are excluded from performing or reviewing or 

approving a dose reconstruction itself. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So Jim and then Roy. 

DR. MELIUS: What provisions do you have then to assure that 

the -- that the dose reconstruction or whatever task is 

involved does not overly rely on their expertise or their 

information? How do you assure that other sources of 

information are, you know, sought out? Because I mean I 

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think that what -- your process is fine. I'm not arguing 

the process. I just worry about us getting in the 

situation where well, you know, what was the basis for 

your review? Well, I asked so-and-so, he worked at the 

site for 20 years; he said we never had this or we never 

did that. Well, did you talk to anybody else? No. That, 

to me, would be problematic. 

 DR. TOOHEY: 8 Well, the answer to that is that input, in 

whatever form it is -- and probably a memo or a technical 

basis document or whatever -- becomes part of the 

administrative record for the dose reconstruction, along 

with everything else and every other document that was 

based on that. So in the eventual review process, it 

would at least come out that we had relied too heavily on 

one source of information, to the exclusion or 

minimization of others. 

DR. MELIUS: And is their conflict then noted in the -- 

potential conflict, the work experience, noted in the -- 

so that the reviewer is aware of it? 

DR. TOOHEY: I don't know the answer to that one. I'd have 

to check. Certainly the people who are site experts will 

be listed with their work history -- 

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whether we would -- I don't know. We can work that one. 

We'll work with OCAS on it if we want to identify who the 

site experts were preparing information that's used in a 

dose reconstruction for that site. I won't have any 

problem doing that. 

 DR. DEHART: 8 I offer a suggested change in language on the 

last line of that paragraph, which would read "will not 

perform reviews related to". 

MR. GRIFFON: That's what I have waiting here, so -- 

DR. MELIUS: And I would agree with that, too. 

MS. MUNN: That would certainly make my... 

DR. ZIEMER: Rather than "be involved", which their 

testimony could be an involvement. Will not be -- will 

not perform. 

MR. GRIFFON: Related to that site. 

DR. ZIEMER: Perform reviews. Does that satisfy everybody's 

concern there? 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. That's a good suggestion. Any 

others? Yes, Roy. 

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 DR. DEHART: 1 I'd like to move up to the other paragraph 

ahead, which -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 Starting "additionally"? 

 DR. DEHART: 4 That's correct, which I had discussed before 

and suggest the following wording change: Additionally, 

no personnel may be employed under this contract who have 

served as an expert witness, including non-testifying 

witness, at any time in the past in any litigation 

concerning worker compensation or other radiation-related 

claims, period. Which I think would serve the need for 

excluding anyone involved with the DOE or contractors, but 

would also exclude anyone from the worker side. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. You're making that as a motion? 

DR. DEHART: I will make that as a motion. 

WRITER/EDITOR: Would you repeat that, Dr. DeHart, please? 

DR. DEHART: Okay. The whole paragraph will now read: 

Additionally, no personnel may be employed under this 

contract who have served as an expert witness (including 

non-testifying witness) at any time in the past in any 

litigation concerning worker compensation or other 

radiation-related claims. 

WRITER/EDITOR: Thank you. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 2 And that's seconded. It's now open for 

discussion. Let me ask a question. Since we -- we now 

have -- oh, the word "radiation" is still in there. 

Right? 

 DR. DEHART: 6 That's correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I was going to ask if 

it's any worker compensation claim or just radiationrelated. Thank you. 

Okay. Comments pro or con on this motion. 

MR. PRESLEY: Do we have a second? 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, we had a second. Gen Roessler was 

seconding. 

MS. MUNN: This is Wanda again. 

DR. ZIEMER: Wanda, go ahead. 

MS. MUNN: I think most of you will recall from our previous 

telephone conference that I have real pain with this. I 

understand the rationale for having it there, but saying 

for a body like ours, which purports to base all of its 

actions on clear scientific evidence and fact, to 

deliberately eliminate from any part of what's going on 

here any individual who has legally substantiated fact or 

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provided scientific information for the court is very 

difficult for me to accept. It just simply -- certainly 

the way it was written originally struck to the very heart 

of fairness that was brought up earlier this morning in 

much the same light. I know we had to have something that 

defined some degree of restriction in this regard. But 

it's very, very difficult. I cannot imagine anyone being 

able to obtain expert witness in legal action if the 

knowledge that they are going to be excluded from further 

employment as a result of that is known to them. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you for that comment. Let me ask 

a question of the mover of the motion. Would this also 

exclude individuals who might have been called on to 

testify as a friend of the court rather than for or -- for 

one of the litigants? You know, testifying as to matters 

of fact, there's an issue at some lab and they bring in an 

expert witness to establish some information, or are such 

witnesses always considered witnesses on behalf of one of 

the claimants? 

DR. DEHART: The parenthetical phrase, as I read it here, 

would exclude that individual, I think. 

DR. ZIEMER: That's the non-testifying witness? 

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 DR. DEHART: 1 Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 That's a friend of the court type? 

 DR. DEHART: 3 Correct. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 4 I gotcha. Thank you. Other comments pro or 

con? Yes, Jim. 

 DR. MELIUS: 6 First of all, I think it's -- I'm not sure 

you're achieving what you're trying to achieve 'cause that 

would rule out anybody that's involved in any other 

radiation-related facility or exposure, including 

hospitals or -- I mean there's a large number of 

compensation claims and other things not related to 

Department of Energy sites. And I think what we're trying 

to focus here, we're on a conflict with radiation 

exposures at Department of Energy AWE sites. So I think 

we're going far beyond that in terms of who we're ruling 

out here, and I -- I mean I -- going back to our earlier 

concern about the issue of ruling out a lot of people or 

having enough qualified people to do this, I think we're 

lowering the pool quite dramatically with that -- this 

approach. 

MR. GRIFFON: And I think -- I think we have first-hand 

knowledge of that, and I think it was in Santa Fe when 

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Dick said that he would lose the two teaming partners, 

along with several other of his -- of his pool if they 

went to that criteria. I think we discussed this before 

as an option, and he said if we expanded it -- not that 

this would apply to them, but if they were to expand it in 

that sense, he would lose a large majority of that pool -- 

or a large percentage of their pool of contractors. So a 

similar comment. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Okay. Other comments on this motion? Yes, 

Mike. 

MR. GIBSON: I've just -- on the side of representing 

workers, have seen over the years several -- I've seen 

lawsuits filed against contractors for not properly 

monitoring workers. I've seen people testify and give 

depositions that this is not true, it's not happening. 

But it was the Department of Energy that stepped forward 

and said that yes, we've lied to these workers. It was 

the Congress of the United States that passed the law that 

said we've done these people wrong. So I just don't 

believe in the credibility of people that have stood up 

there and tried to defend these contractors and the 

Department of Energy. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 And so you're speaking against the motion then. 

 MR. GIBSON: 2 Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 Okay. Richard, comment? 

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Alamos POW's and there's just outrageous -- not 

outrageous, but there's a lot of claims against DOE and 

there just has been mistrust of DOE, and I speak against 

the motion. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Keep in mind this motion does exclude those who 

have testified for the DOE. The issue I think is more -- 

it also excludes those who have testified on the other 

side for individuals, and I think -- I assume your remarks 

still hold. The DOE folks would still be excluded by 

either of these forms. 

Okay. Now, Jim, did you -- 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. Just to reiterate our earlier 

discussions of this 'cause we've gone through this several 

times and that, again, we were -- this was directed at the 

DOE, DOE facilities which were the -- again, as other 

people have said, the cause or related to the exposures 

these people have experienced. And you know, the issue, 

again, is for the claimants to feel that the review of the 

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dose reconstruction procedures is being done in a fair and 

-- fair manner, free of prejudice and potential conflict. 

 So the idea is to try to have as fair a review as 

possible. 

 Secondly, it's consistent with what was required for ORAU in 5 

their contract. So maybe to have something more, you 

know, stringent or different there I think raises a number 

of issues regarding this. And I think it -- that we also 

have provisions in place to -- for individuals who have 

been involved in litigation on any side related to a 

particular site, that they are disqualified from 

involvement in the review at that site. So at a sitespecific level, we have a more stringent conflict. On 

this general level we're limiting participation by people 

who were employed by the major source of the exposure and 

of this program. And it's not -- I think it's for the 

sake of the appearance of equity and fairness for people 

involved in the process. 

DR. ZIEMER: So you're speaking against the motion then. 

DR. MELIUS: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: Others for or against? 

(No responses) 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 Let me ask if we're ready to vote on the 

motion. The motion is to change the wording to -- I'm 

looking for the correct paragraph here. 

 UNIDENTIFIED: 4 It's the fourth down on page -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 The fourth down on the page. I'm sorry, it's 

the third down. It's to put a period at the end of the -- 

"claims" so as to exclude any who have been involved, 

either side. If you vote yes, you are voting for that 

change. If you vote no, you are voting to retain the 

present wording. Is that -- everybody understand that? 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I just put up for -- for the sake of -- 

Roy's motion was to say in any litigation "concerning", 

not "defending" -- "concerning" worker compensation. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, it's the word "concerning" and then end it 

at the end -- 

MR. GRIFFON: At the end of "claims" so I just put that -- 

yeah, I didn't delete it yet, but I just put -- 

DR. ZIEMER: If you vote yes, you are voting for that 

change. If you vote no, you are voting to retain the 

original wording. 

All those who favor the motion say aye. 

(Affirmative responses) 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 All those who oppose the motion say no. 

 (Negative 2 responses) 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 I'm going to call for a show of hands -- 

 UNIDENTIFIED: 4 Any abstain? 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 Abstention? 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 7 Okay, show of hands. All in favor of the 

motion a show of hands aye. One, two, three -- and 

Wanda's voting? 

MS. MUNN: Wanda votes aye, if I'm counted. 

DR. ZIEMER: Three is the phone. 

MS. MUNN: Oh. 

DR. ZIEMER: Opposing the motion will vote no. One, two, 

three, four, five -- the Chair votes no, that's six. 

Any abstentions? One -- two abstentions. The motion fails. 

 So we're back to the original wording. 

Okay, we press on with item E then. Item F. Now I'm going 

to ask for a motion on accepting Attachment A, with the 

changes that have been agreed to -- let me parenthetically 

say that I hope those who had concerns about the one item 

will not vote the whole thing down because of that one 

item, but the Chair does not wish to overly influence 

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anybody, however. 

 A motion then to accept Attachment A with the changes agreed 2 

to. 

 DR. DEHART: 4 I move the -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 So moved. 

 MR. PRESLEY: 6 -- approval of Attachment A for acceptance. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 Thank you. Seconded. Now, any final word of 

discussion? 

 (No 9 responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: All who favor approving Attachment A with the 

changes agreed to say aye. 

(Affirmative responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any opposed, no? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Any abstentions? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: The ayes have it. Thank you very much. 

Let's see where we are time-wise -- 4:30. We are -- thank 

you. We appreciate the work of the working committee on 

that, as well as everybody's work in reaching closure on 

that item. 

DR. MELIUS: I'd like to particularly recognize Mark 

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Griffon, who did a -- I think an outstanding job of 

keeping track of all the words and changes and -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 3 Except for the is-es. 

 DR. MELIUS: 4 -- and suffering through that, so -- it was a 

very good job. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Thank you, Mark. We do thank you and the other 

members, as well. 

 PUBLIC 8 COMMENT

 We have -- actually we've heard from two of the members of 9 

the public. We have two additional, Mike Schaeffer and 

Richard Miller. Are there any other members of the public 

who did not have a chance to sign the sign-up form that 

wish to be included? There appear to be none, so we'll 

hear from Mike Schaeffer first. Mike, welcome. 

MR. SCHAEFFER: Thank you very much. I'm Mike Schaeffer, 

Department of Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency. 

I'd first like to start out and applaud the Advisory Board 

for all their work and good discussion and being able to 

implement or move toward implementation of an independent 

assessment contract for dose reconstruction. 

However, I do have one area of concern for this process -- 

and that I think one of the members of your Advisory 

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Board's already talked about that -- in terms of it's 

still a NIOSH process. It's going to be a NIOSH contract, 

a NIOSH process, and in terms of follow-up and 

implementation of seeing if the contractors perform, it's 

still NIOSH. I think this has a very grave consequence in 

terms of public consequence -- or public confidence in the 

long run in this particular process. And I would propose 

a couple of things perhaps to think about to overcome this 

particular what seems to me to be an impediment. 

Number one is, we have struggled with this process ourselves 

in the nuclear test personnel review program. In fact, 

we've endured a number of National Academy of Sciences 

committee examinations of the process, one of which is 

currently under way and will produce the results of the 

examination of our process come this April. So I would 

ask that the panel look very, very carefully at just how 

the National Academy asks us to do the very same process 

that you all are ready to -- to go forward with. 

One is kind of another practical implication here is that in 

lieu of waiting say on the National Academy's results to 

come out on our program, the way out of this dilemma would 

be for someone like NIOSH to enter into some interagency 

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agreement with a government agency for which one of the 

members of the panel is associated with. In looking over 

the roster, some of you are still associated with state 

governments. I don't think any of you are associated with 

a Federal entity. But I think it would be well worth the 

while, since this process is being built for your 

examination of the dose reconstruction on an independent 

basis, that perhaps NIOSH consider giving the money to one 

of the state governments by some interagency agreement and 

let one of the members of the panel's -- who's best 

equipped with a staff to implement such a contract, go 

forward and get that contract, put it into place and it 

would be one that you could essentially, as the Advisory 

Board, call your own contract, independent of NIOSH. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you for those comments. Then we'll hear 

from Richard Miller. 

Oh, let me first ask members of the Board, any of you wish 

to ask questions of Mike on -- yeah. 

DR. MELIUS: I just have one question. I mean I'm somewhat 

familiar with state radiation programs and -- worked in 

New York and so forth, and I'm not sure that the level of 

expertise is there to -- particularly in this area of 

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worker dose reconstruction. Are there other states out 

there that have particularly good programs that you could 

think of? I don't know all the individuals involved and 

obviously -- 

MR. SCHAEFFER: I don't know of anyone off hand. I was 

really looking more in terms of state governments that had 

vehicles for putting into place a particular contract. I 

would think it would be incumbent on whoever was best 

equipped to do that, as a member of the Board here, 

actually oversee that contract. I think that would be a 

very important feature since it is something that is a 

function you are doing for yourselves in trying to do this 

thing as independently as possible with the confidence of 

the public, independent of NIOSH. So it would essentially 

be who is best equipped, not from a technical standpoint. 

 I think any of you as individuals is -- are already 

highly qualified as individuals to do that. It would be 

who has the contracting vehicles in place that would allow 

you to do it effectively. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other questions? 

(No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Then we'll hear from Richard Miller. 

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 MR. MILLER: 1 Hi, good afternoon. I've never seen an RFP 

drafted in public before. Probably a first. Maybe a 

last? Well, it's -- 

 UNIDENTIFIED: 4 Aren't you sorry? 

 MR. MILLER: 5 Need for asking for more democracy instead of 

less? I had two ques-- one -- one -- just one point of 

information. One of the individuals who testified, I 

believe in the last meeting in Cincinnati -- his name is 

Jerry Tudor, who has been activist down in Oak Ridge, 

Tennessee -- passed away from cancer on the 2nd. What? 

UNIDENTIFIED: (Inaudible) from the Y-12 plant. 

MR. MILLER: Yeah, right, was a Y-12 employee and he passed 

away on the 2nd of January -- I believe that's right -- so 

it just -- the only thing is when I got his obituary, what 

struck me was how long this process seems to be taking. 

This is not a criticism, it's just an observation that 

people really do say we expire while we're waiting for 

these benefit programs to come to fruition, and here's 

somebody who took the time to drive all the way up from 

Oak Ridge who didn't have much longer to go. 

The question I had, and it may not be appropriate for a 

public forum -- in which case, Larry, I'm going to 

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authorize you to kick me in the shins reflexively if you 

need to. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 Just do it anyway. 

 MR. MILLER: 4 Well, since he shaved his moustache I feel more 

comfortable about receiving them. 

 DR. MELIUS: 6 Here's your opportunity, Larry. 

 MR. MILLER: 7 And so if it's more appropriate for a closed 

discussion that you're going to have tomorrow on 

procurement issues, fine. The current section C 

authorizes -- as approved at least today -- for the option 

of the source evaluation board or whatever you call it 

awarding more than one contract, a potential for multiple 

contractors. The question is, what will be sort of the 

go/no go points? What will be the guidance or criteria 

which will govern whether the source evaluation board will 

issue more than one contract? 

Obviously part of it's going to be with how many people bid 

and what their qualifications are, a sort of depends 

answer. But the question then becomes is is this 

something that the Advisory Board actually wants to have 

happen -- and again, that discussion can happen in closed 

session as opposed to open. I'm not asking you to answer 

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it here to me now. And the reason that this is provoked 

in part was earlier on there had been discussions about 

this idea of the double-blind audits, so that you could 

have two teams that could potentially audit the same 

individual dose estimate, and you could then test how well 

your auditors were doing. That was sort of one 

interesting idea that came up. 

 The second was that this is such a large project that if you 8 

break it up into maybe half the size of the whole thing, 

you might invite some smaller, boutique-size bidders who 

might be able to come in -- who might not be able to take 

the whole thing, but can take a good -- you know, could 

take half of it 'cause it's, again, a shallow pool you're 

fishing from. 

So that was sort of my question. It would seem to me that 

before you close the door on this RFP, the Advisory Board, 

either in open or in closed session, ought to provide some 

kind of direction in this area about one versus two. That 

was sort of my comment. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Richard, for that comment. Let me 

ask again, any of the Board members wish to ask any 

questions on this comment? 

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 MR. GRIFFON: 1 Just a comment on that. Early on we did talk 

about sort of the double blind process and I -- I guess in 

my -- my feeling was that it was sort of in the selection 

process. We could select -- we are -- we are allowed in 

section C to have multiple contractors and if we selected 

the same case for two contractors, that would, in essence, 

be that double blind, but it wasn't specified in this 

section C, but I don't think it's prohibited, either, so -

- I'm not sure about that. 

DR. ZIEMER: And just as an additional comment, you can do 

double-blind studies with one contractor, as well. Many 

people do. You have an A team and a B team or a red team 

and a blue team or whatever you want to call them. So 

that's -- that -- the issue of multiple contractors is not 

so much whether you're doing double blinds. It may have 

more to do with how you want to break the work up. And we 

can't say at this point whether -- this may be a small 

boutique to start with. That will be known before too 

long, but -- the size of the boutique. 

Okay. Other -- one more opportunity for other public 

comments. There appear to be none. 

Normally at the meetings we allow -- or we have a time where 

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members of the public can introduce themselves. Some have 

in the past preferred not to. I'm going to give others 

the opportunity, if you wish to introduce yourself 

publicly -- you don't have to make any comments, but if 

you want to let us know who you are, please take this 

opportunity just -- you don't even have to go to the mike 

if you speak loud enough, but just introduce yourself. 

You don't have to, but we'd like to know if you -- if you 

wish to. Anyone that -- okay. 

MR. FLEMING: Kenny Fleming, I represent (inaudible). 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, the recorders can't hear you so I guess I 

will ask you all to come up to the mikes. 

MR. FLEMING: Can y'all hear me? I'm Kenny Fleming with 

Science Applications International, SAIC, out of our Oak 

Ridge office, and we're one of the members of the public 

and would potentially look at bidding on this -- on this 

project. I see it as a -- as a really particular -- a 

small project, the way it's written out, as it is now. If 

I take the existing contract that Dick has won from ORAU 

at $70 million and two and a half percent, if we can just 

do the linear relationship there, it's a very -- very 

small project. And when we're talking about small 

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operations that may want to do this, then maybe there's 

some small operations out there that may want to bid on 

it. But there's a lot of work that needs to be done and -

- and I guess I do have two comments, since you let me 

stand up. 

 One of the things Jim -- Jim had suggested was a pre- 6 

bidders' meeting. I think that's -- that's -- that has to 

happen. It -- I -- I -- I'm getting in on this sort of on 

the -- on the end of the game and start finding out 

things. There's a lot of things that are going on that -- 

that -- being here is very important and some of the other 

members within SAIC didn't have the opportunity to come 

today. We plan on bidding on this, don't get me wrong. 

We do plan on bidding on this, but there's a lot of things 

that -- that we've been discussing this entire afternoon 

that show that there's an awful lot of questions, pro and 

con, at the way the statement of work or RFP or RFC, 

whatever you want to call it, are going to be. And so 

there are a lot of things that I think we need to get 

resolved before we can even propose to -- to even bid on 

it and even potentially be a successful bidder. 

The other thing I wanted to talk about was OCI issues, which 

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I know Dick has had problems with, also. We -- being as 

it's a small contract and Dick just mentioned that he's 

got six and potentially 12 Q-cleared people, if we're 

looking at two and a half percent of that same project, 

two and a half percent times 12 is less than one FTE, so 

unless the DOE or unless there's funding that's going to 

come out of this that -- that potentially can get people 

qualified with a Q clearance -- I have a Q in the past, 

but I'm not sure how long it would take to get that 

reactivated. We do have some Q-cleared individuals, but 

most of us have worked at Oak Ridge or at Miamisburg, at 

some other locations, and it might cause us some problems 

with OCI-ing us out at some of the locations to do some of 

this work. So the gentleman over here talked about 

plutonium cases. Los Alamos, that would cause us some 

problems, too, 'cause we do have some Q-cleared 

individuals out there, too, so I appreciate the time. 

Thanks. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. Well, if this is a small 

enough project, maybe you can get a lower-case q clearance 

or something like that. That just proves it's getting 

late in the day. I don't mean to be facetious, but I 

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couldn't resist. 

 Yes, sir? 2 

 MR. STEUNKEL: 3 I'll just mention I'm Dave Steunkel with 

Trinity Engineering Associates, a consulting company in 

Cincinnati, also interested in the work. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Thank you. Any others that want to introduce 

themselves now? 

 Okay. Let me ask if there are any housekeeping issues 8 

tonight, Cori, that we need to take care of? 

MS. HOMER: Be sure to take everything with you. 

DR. ZIEMER: Take everything with you. Robert? 

MR. PRESLEY: For all of us that are going out to dinner 

tonight, we have a little problem. They can't take us at 

6:30. They can take us at 6:00, so we're going to meet in 

the lobby at 5:45 to go to supper. 

DR. ZIEMER: I want to hasten to add that this is not an 

official dinner of this group. It's not subject to FACA 

rules. This is a Robert Presley dinner and not everybody 

is going. We're not discussing Board business. We're 

only discussing Robert's barbecuing techniques. 

Henry. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah, just kind of revisiting tomorrow's 

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agenda, are we going to have additional discussion? Do we 

want to distribute the other documents or -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 I'm sorry, I meant to do that. 

 DR. ANDERSON: 4 I mean the people can look -- I don't know if 

we have time tomorrow, but -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Yes, the working group on IREP, which is 

chaired by Jim, did prepare a document for our discussion 

tomorrow. I'm going to ask Jim if you would simply 

distribute that document. There are copies on the table 

for the public, and we will have an opportunity tomorrow 

where we talk about Board work schedule and so on. We're 

not going to go through that document in any detail, but 

just take a moment -- in fact, actually -- actually we can 

just -- just -- we'll take five minutes now and indicate 

what's in this document. We're not going to have the 

discussion. This will be on our agenda for the next 

meeting, but we want to make sure you have it -- the 

members of the public have it. 

You may recall that this document is the result of our last 

meeting where we said, number one, we would like to 

identify issues, scientific topics related to IREP, for 

which we might want to have additional information brought 

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to the Board; that we would try in fact to prioritize 

those items and then talk about procedures on how -- if 

there are changes identified for IREP, how those might be 

brought about in an orderly manner. So this document 

identifies eight topics that the working group has come up 

with to be considered in the future. This might be 

through speakers brought in and so on. 

 These are not in a priority order. They're in a random 8 

order, or at least the order in which they popped into 

Jim's mind and to which others have added. So I -- is 

that fair to call that random, Jim, or -- 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah, there's no -- they're certainly not 

prioritized. And what I've set forth is one -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Use the Mike there, Jim, please. 

DR. MELIUS: Yeah. One is what are the -- how we prioritize 

these and I think was issues of -- I mean they came from 

our -- where I got most of these from is from our past 

meetings, from the minutes and transcripts and 

discussions, and some of the comments that were provided, 

either by the experts or by the public, on the original 

IREP regulations and so forth, that there are sort of 

three sources of -- so that's one source. They're sort of 

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-- there are scientific issues that are out there that 

need to be addressed. 

 Secondly, there's issues of how -- how some of the other 3 

compen-- radiation compensation programs are dealing with 

some of the same issues, and those would bring them to our 

attention. And third, there may be issues that the 

claimants bring up that they view as unfair or -- or 

whatever in the process that would trigger something for 

review. There's a list of the eight issue and it's by no 

means exhaustive or, as Paul has said, prioritized. 

Then I put forward -- the work group put forward a suggested 

procedure for how we would deal with these with -- in 

terms of NIOSH doing some background work, of course the 

presentation to the Board, then a Board decision on 

whether to go forward or not with them. And then finally 

there's discussion of either we can do through another 

work group. We could sort of prioritize this process and 

work on some of the scheduling issues, or we may very well 

be able to do that at our next meeting, should we have 

time on the agendas. 

DR. ZIEMER: The work group, by the way, included Henry 

Anderson and Larry Elliott and I were members of the work 

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group. And as Jim has suggested, we can add to the list. 

 And depending on how the time goes in the first two hours 

tomorrow morning, if we have a little time and you have a 

chance to read through this enough, other items pop into 

your mind, we can add that to the list. And in fact, 

although a working group to prioritize has been indicated 

here, it may be that we can do this as a group -- as the 

whole and simply prioritize. It may be that, rather than 

saying well, this is item six or item eight, that we may 

group them and say okay, these say three are the top 

priority and these three are middle and these three bottom 

or something like that, and then have the opportunity to 

bring in speakers or resource people on those topics. 

So take a look at this this evening and if we have a little 

time in the morning, depending on the administrative 

housekeeping session and work schedule discussions, we may 

be able to address this initially without setting up 

another working group. Okay? 

MS. MUNN: I'd certainly appreciate it if someone could FAX 

me a copy of that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes -- Cori, we -- yes, Cori will FAX you a 

copy of that. It's just a two-pager, Wanda, and -- 

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MS. MUNN: Thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- so you'll be able to have some material to 

chew on tonight, as well. 

MS. MUNN: I appreciate it. 

DR. ZIEMER: We do thank you for a yeoman's task. I've 

never myself tried to sit on a telephone conference call 

for eight hours or more, so we salute you for your 

endurance. Maybe you're more comfortable -- she probably 

has her feet up and is sipping something. 

MS. MUNN: No, actually I prefer to see faces while I'm 

talking. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MS. MUNN: But that's all right. 

DR. ZIEMER: Anyway, we thank you, Wanda, for being on board 

for the session. 

MS. MUNN: Thank you for making arrangements. I do 

appreciate it, Paul. 

DR. ZIEMER: And if there are no other comments for the good 

of the order, we stand in recess till tomorrow morning. 

Thank you. 

(Whereupon, the meeting was adjourned to Wednesday, January 

8, 2003, at 8:00 a.m.) 

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1 DAY TWO: JANUARY 8, 2003 

 8:30 a.m. 2 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Good morning, everyone. I'll call the session 

back to order. We'll be getting Wanda back on the phone 

here, we think. What time is it out in Richland, 

Washington? Is it -- 

 MS. HOMER: 8 5:30. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 We're going to wake up Wanda, I think. I hate 

to do that, but you know. 

We're going to start off with a couple of announcements. 

First of all, I want to remind everyone, including Board 

members, you need to re-register; that is, sign the roster 

'cause we have a roster for each day. Visitors, staff 

people, members of the public, please also register your 

attendance with us at the entryway. We will have a public 

comment period -- 

Good morning, Wanda. Are you awake, Wanda? 

MS. MUNN: Indeed I am. 

DR. ZIEMER: You may be doing better than some of us, but 

welcome. 

We are going to have a public comment period before very 

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long this morning. It's scheduled for 9:00 o'clock. 

Those members of the public who do wish to make public 

comment, please register your intent quickly -- in the 

next half-hour -- so that we know who will be speaking. 

 ADMINISTRATIVE 5 HOUSEKEEPING

 Administrative housekeeping, Cori Homer. Are you ready to 6 

go on that? 

 MS. HOMER: 8 I sure am. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 You can use the mike right there, if you wish. 

MS. HOMER: That'll work. Good morning. I wanted to let 

you know that the February meeting has been confirmed for 

February 5th and 6th. We'll be meeting in Charleston. I 

will need to have your travel plans by Friday -- at a 

minimum, your dates of arrival and departure -- so that I 

can get the rooming list to the hotel. We'll be staying 

at the Doubletree. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let's reconfirm. The start date is -- 

MS. HOMER: February 5th. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- 5th -- 

MS. HOMER: And 6th. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- through the 6th. 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 Okay. 

 DR. MELIUS: 2 Full two days? 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 That's a Wednesday/Thursday combination. 

 MS. HOMER: 4 Uh-huh. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 Full two days. 

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 MS. HOMER: 6 If you could, also, go ahead and get your time 

written down and to Larry so that we can make sure you get 

paid for the correct amount of time you spent. And I'd 

like to see if we could take a look at the calendar in 

your book and set some dates for future meetings. We of 

course have the February meeting, and following that, if 

you could consider some sites. We were -- I think in past 

meetings we've discussed Knoxville, San Francisco, I think 

also New York State, maybe Pennsylvania as options. And I 

think from discussions that we've had -- Larry and I've 

had, May looks like a possibility for a meeting following 

February. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me follow up on that then, Cori. In the 

February meeting I think the intent will be to focus 

largely on the proposed rule making on the special cohort. 

 That rule making we think will be on the street later 

this month, and there will be then a 30-day time period 

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for comment, so that means Board comments would have to be 

developed at that meeting, or at least, if necessary, 

there could be a follow-up teleconference. But again, 

we'll be squeezed for time to move rapidly once that 

document is on the street 'cause there's just a 30-day 

turnaround time. 

 Of course we had some original comments on the first version 7 

of that document, so the extent to which our previous 

comments are applicable will depend on what this version 

looks like, and we may need a whole new set of comments or 

-- well, we'll have to see. But in any event, the focus 

will be on developing those comments. There'll be some 

other items on the agenda, but that'll be the main focus. 

DR. MELIUS: Can I just ask that -- this will really depend 

on -- it'll be up to Larry with the timing of when that 

actually gets in the Federal Register, but if we're going 

to need to do a conference call afterwards or -- I think 

don't we have to do a Federal announcement and -- Register 

announcement for -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: For a conference call? Yes. 

DR. MELIUS: -- conference calls and so forth, so just -- if 

someone could just think through the logistics of that and 

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maybe even set it up on a contingent basis -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 Well -- 

 DR. MELIUS: 3 -- so we can keep within the time period -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 -- if that came out in January what, 22 or 26 

or -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 6 We're hoping it'll be published sometime the 

week of the 20th, knowing that the 20th itself is a 

Federal holiday. So that's the target week we have for 

publication. 

DR. ZIEMER: So for example, if it were the 21st, then the 

comment period ends basically February 20th or 21st, which 

is just -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: Two weeks after. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- two weeks after our meeting, so yes. So we 

might -- we might want to block off a day in there in 

February such as the 20th -- well, actually it should be 

maybe even before that to allow a little time to get the 

comments formalized, but -- 19th or 20th. Why don't we 

look at that, just for scheduling purposes. 

Does anyone have major conflicts on -- let's look at the 

19th of February. Any major conflict? Not accessible to 

a phone is what I -- 

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 DR. ANDERSON: 1 Oh, I could -- I could -- it depends how long 

it would be, but I could -- I could get to a phone. 

 MR. ESPINOSA: 3 Depends on what time it would be for me. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Yes, and I don't think we can -- we can set a 

time that's suitable, but if someone said no, I'm going to 

be out of the loop completely all day, that's what we want 

to identify. I would assume that two or three hours 

should be sufficient, if we can find a time window during 

the day. You want to identify those bad times on the 19th 

for Cori's -- 

MR. ESPINOSA: The evening, New Mexico time, for me is bad. 

 Morning would be good. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MS. HOMER: About 1:00 to 3:00 or 1:00 to 4:00 Eastern? Is 

that good? 

MR. ESPINOSA: No. Yeah, that will be -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Anything before about 6:00 Mountain time? 

MR. ESPINOSA: Well, I don't mind waking up in the morning 

doing a conference call, it's just -- 

WRITER/EDITOR: Would you use your microphone, please? 

Thank you, Mr. Espinosa. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Sorry. I don't mind waking up in the morning 

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doing a conference call. That's not a problem for me, 

it's -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 It's the evening. 

 MR. ESPINOSA: 4 Yeah, the evening hours are a little bit 

rougher. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Sure. And Henry, what about your bad times, or 

can you identify those? 

 DR. ANDERSON: 8 Well, it's a grant review committee that I'm 

on, so I would -- whatever you do, I'll just have to tell 

them I can't -- I'll just excuse myself. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So you have some flexibility there. 

DR. ANDERSON: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

DR. ANDERSON: I mean it's -- they won't be happy, but 

they'll do it. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, our job is not to make everybody happy. 

Right? 

MS. MUNN: Paul, I was scheduled to be traveling on the 6th, 

but I can change that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Oh, let me -- okay, so you're talking about the 

meeting itself on the 5th or 6th. 

MS. MUNN: Yes. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 But you can change that. Yeah, the 5th and 6th 

dates you recall we selected at our last meeting, so -- 

and those have been locked in with the hotel, so that's 

pretty fixed. But we're just looking at times for a 

telephone conference, if needed, on the 19th or 20th, so -

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MS. MUNN: Of February? 

DR. ZIEMER: Of February. How are you on the 19th, Wanda? 

MS. MUNN: I'm fine. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So we've identified the potential for 

19th -- let's also look at the 20th as another possible 

date. Are there any major conflicts there? Anyone? 

Wanda? 

MS. MUNN: Yes. 

DR. ZIEMER: You're okay? 

MS. MUNN: I'm fine. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. We do need to check also with Leon. 

MS. HOMER: Yes, okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: And Leon is not available -- was not available 

yesterday or today for telephone conference, but we'll 

have to check with him off-line -- 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 -- and make sure he's available, as well. 

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 Okay. So why don't you pencil those in as potential dates 2 

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 UNIDENTIFIED: 4 1:00 to 3:00? 

 MS. HOMER: 5 1:00 to 3:00 or 1:00 to 4:00. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Maybe block off 1:00 to 4:00. 

 UNIDENTIFIED: 7 1:00 to 4:00 Eastern? 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Eastern time. 

 MS. HOMER: 9 Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Now I'm -- is it safe to assume that 

once the comments are in in late February, the staff will 

be pretty heavily involved for the next few weeks on that 

issue. 

MR. ELLIOTT: It's a safe bet. 

DR. ZIEMER: So we don't want to jump right in and have 

another meeting. March then is probably not a good time 

for a meeting, and maybe not even April. I think Cori's 

suggesting May. 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh, early May. 

DR. ZIEMER: So let's start looking at dates in early May. 

DR. DEHART: I'm out through the 9th. 

DR. ZIEMER: Out through May 9th. 

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 DR. DEHART: 1 Yes. 

 MS. HOMER: 2 Okay. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 3 Okay. Let's start with the 10th. Again, we'll 

have to back-check with Leon. 

 DR. ANDERSON: 5 The 10th is a Saturday. 

 MS. HOMER: 6 Yeah, it would have to be the 12th. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 The 12th. 

 MS. HOMER: 8 If you traveled on Sunday. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Let's start with the 12th and just find out bad 

days. Who's not available on the 12th? No conflicts? 

Wanda, if you have any, pipe in. 

MS. MUNN: I'll pipe up. The 12th of May is fine. 

DR. ZIEMER: 13th, 14th? 

UNIDENTIFIED: Sounds like a time. 

DR. ZIEMER: 15th? 16th -- 15th? 

WRITER/EDITOR: The 15th to the 17th I'm not available. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Well, that's important to know. Okay. 

DR. MELIUS: The 15th I'm not available. I'm sorry, I'm out 

the 15th. 

DR. ZIEMER: The 15th is out. Okay. 

MR. ELLIOTT: The 13th is a bad day for me. 

DR. ZIEMER: The 13th is a bad day. Then our week is 

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chopped up. That eliminates any two-day meetings there, 

it looks like. Let's look at the following week. 

 MS. HOMER: 3 The 19th. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 The 19th, 20th, 21st? 

 UNIDENTIFIED: 5 I have a conflict. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Bad on the 21st. 22nd? 

 DR. ANDERSON: 7 Same thing. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Same thing. 

 DR. MELIUS: 9 I have troubles on the 22nd. 

DR. ZIEMER: Are the 19th and 20th okay, 'cause you would 

have travel -- you're okay on -- 

DR. ANDERSON: It depends on how late it goes. I have to be 

in San Diego on the 21st. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We can get you a red-eye. 

DR. ZIEMER: The 19th and 20th are possibilities. Some 

might have to travel on a Sunday evening. 

MR. ELLIOTT: If we had it in San Francisco, it would be -- 

MS. HOMER: It would be convenient. 

DR. ANDERSON: Or San Diego would be better. 

MS. HOMER: That wouldn't be bad, either. 

DR. ZIEMER: The following week we're into Memorial Day. 

DR. ANDERSON: What about the last week of April, the 28th? 

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 MS. HOMER: 1 The 28th? 

 MR. ESPINOSA: 2 That's better for me. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 3 Let's back up and look at that. That's a good 

point. Week of April 28th through May 2nd. How's the 

28th of April? 29th? 30th? 

 DR. MELIUS: 6 30th's bad for me. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 30th is bad. Okay, 1st? 2nd? My calendar 

says that the 1st is Labor Day in New Mexico. Is that 

right? 

MR. ESPINOSA: I'll have to check. 

DR. ZIEMER: This is a good calendar, isn't it? So we have 

a possible slot 28th and 29th of April or 1st and 2nd of 

May? 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Possibilities. Cori, are those enough 

possibilities you can check out? We need to kind of 

identify a location. 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. Or we could go into June, too, just for 

-- 

DR. ZIEMER: You want to -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: Could we just hold a couple of those days in 

May and work against that? 

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 MS. HOMER: 1 We can. 

 DR. MELIUS: 2 So we're holding May 19th and 20th -- 

 MS. HOMER: 3 Uh-huh. 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: 5 Which two days do you want to hold? The Board 

should hold two days, which -- I think. Which days. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 7 Do you have a preference? 

 MR. ESPINOSA: 8 April would be more preferable if -- April 

would be more doable for me. 

DR. ZIEMER: Does that include May 1st and 2nd, that last 

week of April? 

MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah, that last week of April, including the 

1st and 2nd is a lot easier on me. 

DR. ZIEMER: Do you -- would folks be agreeable to that last 

week in April and just look at those two time slots, 

Monday and Tuesday and Thursday/Friday? Shall we do that? 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Kind of pencil those in and hold a 

placemarker. You want to make any recommendations on 

location at this time? We will have another meeting 

before then, but I think Cori may wish to look at -- 

MS. HOMER: It does help me to have some time, especially in 

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locations like San Francisco. 

 DR. DEHART: 2 Bob Presley keeps threatening us with barbecue 

in Oak Ridge. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 4 It's the Board's pleasure, wherever you want 

to go. 

 DR. ROESSLER: 6 It seems Oak Ridge would be a good place -- 

 DR. MELIUS: 7 Yeah, I think -- 

 DR. ROESSLER: 8 -- because of the people involved. 

 DR. MELIUS: 9 There are a lot of claims from there and a lot 

of people have been coming up here for the meetings. 

DR. ZIEMER: We would meet perhaps in Knoxville, or in Oak 

Ridge? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Knoxville might afford us more logistic 

opportunities -- 

MS. HOMER: Yes. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- than Oak Ridge. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, you have to fly into Knoxville, in any 

event. 

MR. PRESLEY: You've got to fly into Knoxville and you've 

only got one place in Oak Ridge that's got a meeting room 

this size and that's the Garden Plaza. 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

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 MR. PRESLEY: 1 And that's the only place that's got a board 

room big enough to meet. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 3 You may need to use the mike there. 

 MR. PRESLEY: 4 Garden Plaza in Oak Ridge is the only place 

that's got a board room big enough. The rest of them are 

in Knoxville. 

 MS. HOMER: 7 Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 Okay. Cori, does that give you enough to -- 

 MS. HOMER: 9 Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: There seems to be consensus that we give that a 

try. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: And then Henry can check the flights out to... 

Okay, good. Any further discussion on that then? Yes, 

Mike. 

MR. GIBSON: Cori, you said you had to have travel plans by 

when? 

MS. HOMER: I have to have your travel plans by Friday. 

MR. GIBSON: This Friday? 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: For Charleston. 

MS. HOMER: Yeah. 

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 DR. MELIUS: 1 Can you send us a reminder Thursday, just -- 

 MS. HOMER: 2 Let me write it down. 

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 DR. MELIUS: 3 -- an e-mail so that helps. And are we holding 

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 UNIDENTIFIED: 5 February? 

 DR. MELIUS: 6 No, of May. 

 MS. HOMER: 7 28th and 29th and the 1st and 2nd. 

 DR. MELIUS: 8 Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Just those two time slots. 

DR. MELIUS: Just those two, okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: If those don't work, if everything's tied up, 

then we'll have to go to something else, but that should 

give enough flexibility. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: And in terms of staff time, that's enough 

breathing space? 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think what we need to do here is Cori'll 

have to look into available lodging accommodations and 

whichever works -- whichever date works the best, we'll 

nail that down and then get back to you all so that you 

can free up the other two days. 

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 MS. HOMER: 1 That's right. And I'll do that as quickly as I 

can. 

MS. MUNN: This is Wanda. I'm not hearing all the 

conversation clearly. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Wanda -- 

MS. MUNN: Where are we going in February? 

DR. ZIEMER: In February we will be in Charleston. 

MS. MUNN: Charleston, okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: South Carolina. And then in April or first of 

May, we -- hopefully we'll be in Knoxville or Oak Ridge. 

MS. MUNN: Very good. 

DR. ZIEMER: And then the other date of course is by phone. 

Okay, that -- Cori, do you have any other housekeeping 

issues? 

MS. HOMER: Just one more. In your housekeeping section of 

the binder are the current and completed action and agenda 

items listings. Just take a look at those. If you have 

any comments or questions, just e-mail Larry or I about 

that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you very much, Cori. 

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: Two quick items before the public comment 

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period. One, I want to ask if there are any further 

issues relating to the documents from yesterday. That is 

the work group's -- on dose reconstruction. Is everybody 

okay on that? Any further modifications to be proposed? 

I mean we approved those yesterday, but I want to make 

sure that everybody's okay with that before we proceed. 

Okay. 

 UNIDENTIFIED: 8 On what? 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 This is the dose reconstruction -- the draft 

Attachments A, C, D and E. Okay. I had heard informally 

that some might still be concerned about the two-year 

limit that's been placed on the -- but is that -- 

DR. MELIUS: I think we'll just let -- let's just see what 

happens, I think -- I don't know if we can -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Some of you had talked informally, I 

understand. And Mark, have you -- do you have any 

comments? 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I mean we -- we -- 

DR. ZIEMER: I just wanted to give the opportunity if you 

had some second thoughts on that issue, that you could 

raise them. If not, we're fine. 

MR. GRIFFON: Well, we had further discussions on it after 

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the meeting, yes, like you said, and -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 This being not a quorum and not a -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 3 Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Just informal chats amongst -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: 5 Informal discussions -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 -- a couple of members. 

 MR. GRIFFON: 7 -- and, you know, informally we -- we -- I did 

sit down with Jim Neton and discuss some alternatives. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 In terms of the implications of the two-year 

limitation. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, right, right. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

MR. GRIFFON: But you know, reflecting more on that, we -- 

we were still -- you know, I think we -- I reconsidered my 

position on it and I think we -- we're concerned about the 

draft -- the modifications more than the original, so -- 

DR. MELIUS: I just think it's -- well, just to explain it a 

little bit further, it's -- we tried to come up with some 

other criteria that would allow some evaluation of 

conflict that would be -- would give a little bit more 

flexibility, and it's just hard to come up with language 

that's -- I think allows that to take place with -- you 

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know, and maintaining, you know, some protections for 

conflict of interest and -- at least in the short time we 

tried, we couldn't come up with anything that -- that was 

workable. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 5 You face kind of a trade-off. As you make the 

time qualification shorter, you provide an opportunity for 

more folks to participate. But that also has to be 

balanced against, in eliminating folks, what you've 

eliminated qualification-wise. So there's those kinds of 

trade-offs. And you don't really know -- in some respects 

it's a little arbitrary where you draw that line and the 

impact of doing that. You don't really know that until 

you actually have real people before you and look at their 

qualifications versus that potential time for conflict of 

interest considerations. So the two-year was kind of a -- 

it's sort of a compromise itself, and it's not clear 

whether it was shortening that or lengthening that -- 

either way it has some impact, but evereyone's still okay 

then, I gather. Okay. 

The other thing before the public comment period, just to 

see if you had opportunity to look over the document from 

the other working group on IREP, and if so, are there any 

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-- and you have the eight topics that were in that 

document. Are there others that anyone wished to add, 

number one. And then number two, is there any desire 

today to try to group those? We don't want to take a long 

time to do that if -- unless it -- unless it jumps out at 

people that something's very obvious in terms of what's a 

priority. Yes. 

 DR. DEHART: 8 This one opportunity to review is not the only 

opportunity we'll have for -- 

DR. ZIEMER: No. 

DR. DEHART: -- new topics because -- 

DR. ZIEMER: That's exactly right. This is not a fixed 

thing. This is just to get us started. And in fact, we 

can -- this'll be one of the items on the agenda at the 

next full meeting, so there's not an urgency to do 

anything today on that, just -- but on the other hand, if 

there's an item that you would really like to see on 

there, on the list, we can add that readily. It's -- at 

this point it's not even a consensus issue. I think it's 

items to consider. Does anyone wish to add any topics at 

the moment? It appears not. 

Is there any strong desire to consider the document further 

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today? Everybody comfortable with doing that at the next 

meeting -- which is only a month away. Yeah. Okay, very 

good. 

 Larry, do we have any other administrative or housekeeping 4 

issues? You do want people to let you know their time -- 

their time cards, as it were. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 7 That's it, the only thing I can think of. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 8 And then turn your travel documents in, of 

course. 

PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD

Okay, then we'll move to public comments. Do we have 

members of the public that had planned to comment? Cori, 

do you have the list there? 

MS. HOMER: Yes, it's right there. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Apparently we do have at least one -- 

one person -- oh, two. Okay, Sam Ray with PACE. Sam -- 

okay, here's Sam. And then Richard Miller. 

MR. RAY: Good morning. Time to turn the volume up a little 

bit. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, we'll try to get the microphone here, 

Sam. That's fine. I think we can hear. I'm not sure, 

Wanda, if you'll pick this up fully, but we'll do the best 

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we can. 

 MR. RAY: 2 I have a couple of issues that I would like to 

address this morning. One of them is on the NIOSH 

interview system, and if I understand it right, they were 

going to try to be site-specific with the interviewers. 

Essentially, in other words, whoever the interviewer is, 

it will be more site-specific and more knowledgeable about 

the plant. Did I understand that right? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 9 That's a goal. 

MR. RAY: A goal? 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think you heard Dr. Toohey yesterday 

indicate that they have a goal -- we have an interest in 

making sure that the interviewers are as well versed as 

possible in specific site operations, and so given the 

number of sites that we've got to deal with, we're not 

going to have 314 experts or so, but we're going to -- you 

know, the larger sites or the more complex operational 

sites, we'll try to educate and cultivate an experience 

within those interviewers. 

MR. RAY: Now when you have completed the site profiles, 

would you anticipate the interviewer having that in hand? 

 In other words, when they're talking to the claimant. 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: 1 Oh, yes. All -- the site interviewers, before 

they actually do an interview, have the full case file in 

front of them and all of the available site-specific or 

job-related information that might be developed in a site 

profile or a worker profile, so that's in their hands 

before they actually start the interview. They use that 

as background information. 

 MR. RAY: 8 Fine. Now what I would like to do is digress a 

little bit. Normally what you have heard is second-hand 

information of the problems that the claimants in town or 

in the system (inaudible) I would like to give you some 

first-hand knowledge, if that's appropriate. 

I filed my claim in July of 2001. Well, it was an 

experience, to say the least. Eleven months and two weeks 

later, it was finalized and it turned out well, but I'd 

just like to give you some idea of what a claimant can go 

through. I'm a mechanic. I dealt with a claims examiner, 

very nice individual. I'm not sure he knew what the bill 

was really all about, but I did because I've been involved 

in it since its inception, so anyway, we got over one 

little hurdle and then all of a sudden I got a letter that 

my case was going to NIOSH for dose reconstruction. And I 

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would like to say they pulled that back. I called them 

and with some logic and reasoning they backed off of that, 

and you're really fortunate they did. But I know I'm just 

a -- but anyway, I had them on the right track. 

 I had received the legal document and then I had received 5 

the recommended decision, and so I'm feeling pretty good 

about myself. And then I ran into the fact that the final 

adjudication board and I've come to the conclusion 

(inaudible) -- 

WRITER/EDITOR: Can't hear. 

MR. RAY: I've come to the conclusion that they had a 

different interpretation of the FAB. I think their 

interpretation (inaudible) but some of them, that was just 

a contraction. That was really fabulous. They thought 

they were fabulous that they were going to make the 

interpretation of what was a specified cancer, so I 

thought well, I'll prevail on them, you know, logic and 

reasoning, so I responded to that, laid out my argument. 

But then there was a stone wall and (inaudible) said well, 

we're going to have to call out the heavy artillery, so 

then I did. I contacted Congressman Strickland and 

Senators Dodd, Dewine and (inaudible), Richard Miller, Dr. 

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Michaels and the National Cancer Institute got involved in 

it and we got it resolved. But I just wanted to give you 

an idea of what you can be prepared for in dose 

reconstruction and the interview process. I see right now 

we're getting comments from people that NIOSH is just an 

extension of DOE and (inaudible) agency. I (inaudible) 

maybe now and then they appear to be like DOE, but they're 

really not. 

 But anyway, I would like to explain. See, the first 30 or 9 

40 years it was a different culture, and you're aware of 

that, Larry. It's like the land before time, and if 

you've got (inaudible) therefore you've got to work that 

into the equation because I think in 1981 you had a 

document out, and I can't remember the exact wording, but 

in the document you said that the (inaudible) facility, 

that the monitoring program was pretty bad, that it would 

almost be impossible to go back and reconstruct that. So 

I -- even though I had problems with the dose 

reconstruction, I believe it can work if you want it to 

work. And you know, if your heart's in it, I believe it 

can work. 

Now one of Jim's coworkers here, we talking at one -- after 

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one meeting and we were talking about it and everything 

and I mentioned something about when I -- you know, we had 

a lot of animals on (inaudible) -- deer, (inaudible), 

everything. He said not to worry, we can do dose 

reconstruction on them, too. No, I'm not -- I'm making 

that up. What he actually said was if they were Q cleared 

or should have been Q cleared, we can do it. 

 But anyway, I'm just trying to explain to you, you don't 8 

want to put yourselves in a position that you appear to be 

like DOE because I personally think the DOE and the 

physicians' panel will fail. That's just my personal 

opinion. But I would like to see this succeed, and I 

think it can. Thank you very much. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Sam. Let me ask if any of 

the Board members have any comments or questions for Sam. 

 We might want to sign him up for the NIOSH PR team. 

DR. MELIUS: I have one -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Jim. 

DR. MELIUS: -- somewhat unrelated but it brought to mind -- 

could we put on the agenda for the next meeting an update 

on the implementation of the conflict of interest policies 

and what's happening in terms of that, in terms of getting 

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things up on the web site, getting information out -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 For next meeting, update on conflict of 

interest progress. 

 DR. MELIUS: 4 Implementations. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 5 I'm sorry, I was -- 

 DR. MELIUS: 6 For the next meeting, Larry, like update on the 

implementation of the conflict of interest. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 8 Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 Okay. Yes, Richard. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Yes, I was just wanting to know whether there 

is a bilingual person on staff, Spanish-speaking, to help 

with the claimants from New Mexico and Arizona. 

DR. ZIEMER: I think we heard that there was some -- one of 

the interview -- Richard Toohey maybe can -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, there is -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Contractor staff but not -- 

MR. ELLIOTT: There is -- ORAU's team has Hispanic speak-- 

Spanish speaking people. NIOSH has Spanish speaking 

people that we bring to bear on our interactions with 

claimants over the phone or if we are enacting an 

interview, so we have that capability. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Okay. And another thing that brings up some 

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concern is Navaho. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 2 We don't have any wind talkers. No, we don't 

have that covered. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Richard, do you have any suggestions on that 

issue for us? Are there -- well -- 

 MR. ESPINOSA: 6 Well, I don't know about suggestions, but I 

can definitely refer some -- I can definitely refer some 

people to help if that situation occurs. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 9 If we need translators or something like that. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah. 

DR. MELIUS: Usually through the tribal organizations or -- 

MR. ESPINOSA: Yes. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think in NIOSH's past -- you know, our 

history has been we've done radon on uranium miners and 

the Navaho folks and my recollection there is we did bring 

in some of the Pueblos and the tribal folks to help us 

with that, but certainly your comment's well-placed and 

your suggestion is appropriate. 

MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah, the Nishi* council in Farmington is 

looking at this, as well, so it's -- it is of some 

concern. 

WRITER/EDITOR: I'm sorry, which council is this? 

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 MR. ESPINOSA: 1 I think it's Nishi. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 2 You want to -- 

 MR. ESPINOSA: 3 I'm not sure of the right -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Okay. Nishi? 

 MR. ESPINOSA: 5 Yeah. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Okay. Thank you, Richard, for that suggestion. 

 Richard Miller then. 

 MR. MILLER: 8 Just very briefly, is there any possibility of 

getting a briefing on the residual contamination study now 

that it's done? And I don't know whether it has to be 

done with the Board, but is there -- is there any plan or 

preparation for some kind of public briefing on that? 

MR. ELLIOTT: We certainly can do a briefing. Perhaps we 

can add that to the February agenda if -- if it's 

appropriate. 

MR. MILLER: It's up to the Board and what they want, but I 

-- I mean I just would -- I'm just sort of asking in 

general. It can be in D.C. if you want to do it in 

Congress or if you want to do it for the Board, but it 

seems to me it'd be helpful to at least get it out in the 

public some way. So that -- that's just a question. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We have briefed the Board on this report, last 

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meeting in Santa Fe. 

 MR. MILLER: 2 But did -- were the contents briefed? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: 3 Yes, it was a contents brief. And we -- it's 

our intention that it will -- the full document will be on 

our web site very soon. It's a very hefty document. It's 

very thick in it's content and it's very complex in its 

presentation, and we've had some trouble reconfiguring the 

electronic version back into a proper formatted version to 

get on our web site. It's also available in hard copy 

upon request. We can print it off and provide it by 

request, so -- 

MR. MILLER: Okay. Okay. And then the last question I 

guess is just a -- I don't know whether this -- has this 

been announced yet or not? Has the Board -- has the Board 

selected its representative to sit on the auditor's 

selection, we'll call it -- auditor's the wrong word. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me -- 

MR. MILLER: I don't know the right word -- reviewer -- 

review contractor selection -- 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me answer that, Richard. The answer is no, 

and the Chair will be appointing that person. 

MR. MILLER: Okay. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: 1 Are there any further public comments? 

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 MR. TABOR: 2 I don't have a comment, but I'd like to ask a 

question. 

 DR. ZIEMER: 4 Please. 

 MR. TABOR: 5 You want me to step up to the microphones? 

 DR. ZIEMER: 6 Sure. 

WRITER/EDITOR: Yes, please. 

DR. ZIEMER: We're going to force you to work that new knee. 

MR. TABOR: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: This is your morning exercise. 

MR. TABOR: My name is Robert Tabor with Fernald Atomic 

Trades and Labor Council, and my question to the committee 

would be, I understand that you're announcing that your 

next meeting is in Charleston, South Carolina and I was 

just wondering why you would select Charleston as opposed 

to some place like Augusta where possibly you could 

accommodate the Savannah River site? 

DR. ZIEMER: This may be a logistics thing and I can only 

give you a partial answer. The intent was to be close to 

the Savannah River site. I don't know, logistically, 

whether Augusta had facilities available. I think we 

looked at Augusta, did we not? 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: 1 Well, we had talked about Augusta. We talked 

about Aiken and Augusta, Aiken and Augusta being the 

closest to cities next to Savannah River. There's been 

some history here with a health effects subcommittee that 

has been in place for a number of years having meetings 

around Savannah, Charleston, Aiken, Augusta, and they all 

seem to be well-attended, no matter where they're held. 

Charleston's not that far away. 

 MR. TABOR: 9 Yes, I understand, I was just curious whether or 

not it had been explored. Thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Robert. Now we've completed the 

public portion of the Board meeting. 

ADJOURN PUBLIC SESSION

The Board is going to break briefly and then we are going to 

reconvene in closed-door executive session, as has been 

announced in the agenda and on the web site and in the 

Federal Register. I do want to indicate that after the 

executive session the Board will adjourn when that session 

is completed. We will conduct no further business after 

the closed session. So it's only the closed session that 

remains today. This is information for the public. There 

will be no other business conducted by this Board 

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following the closed session today. 

 I do want to thank all the members of the public and other 2 

staff who are here that have been with us, both yesterday 

and today. We're going to recess now and then, as I said, 

we -- the Board -- executive -- we'll meet in executive 

session for the development, review and discussion of the 

independent government cost estimate for the contract. 

 DR. MELIUS: 8 Can we break long enough so I can go up and 

check out? 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes, we will break for about 15 minutes. 

(Whereupon, a recess was taken, followed by a Closed 

Executive Session.) 

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2 C E R T I F I C A T 

E3 

STATE OF GEORGIA ) 

 ) 

COUNTY OF FULTON ) 

 I, STEVEN RAY GREEN, being a Certified Merit Court 

Reporter in and for the State of Georgia, do hereby certify 

that the foregoing transcript was reduced to typewriting by 

me personally or under my direct supervision, and is a true, 

complete, and correct transcript of the aforesaid 

proceedings reported by me. 

 I further certify that I am not related to, employed by, 

counsel to, or attorney for any parties, attorneys, or 

counsel involved herein; nor am I financially interested in 

this matter. 

 WITNESS MY HAND AND OFFICIAL SEAL this _____ day of 

January, 2003. 

 ___________________________ 

 STEVEN RAY GREEN, CVR-CM 

 GA CCR No. A-2102 

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