THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 


PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 


CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 


NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 


convenes 


MEETING 44 


ADVISORY BOARD ON 


RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 


VOL. IV 


DAY THREE 


The verbatim transcript of the 44th 


Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 


Worker Health held at the Cincinnati Marriott 


Northeast, Mason, Ohio, on Feb. 9, 2007. 

 

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C O N T E N T S 

Feb. 9, 2007 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL 

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REPORT ON UPCOMING SEC PETITIONS 

MR. LAVON RUTHERFORD, NIOSH/OCAS 

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CONFLICT OR BIAS MANAGEMENT POLICY 

IMPLEMENTATION STATUS UPDATES 

NIOSH, MR. LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH/OCAS 

ORAU, MS. KATE KIMPAN, ORAU 

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SCIENCE AND OVERARCHING TECHNICAL ISSUES UPDATES 

DR. JAMES NETON, NIOSH/OCAS 

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BOARD WORKING TIME: 

STATUS OF SITE PROFILE REVIEWS 

FUTURE MEETINGS 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 

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COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 207 
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TRANSCRIPT LEGEND
 

The following transcript contains quoted material. Such 


material is reproduced as read or spoken. 


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


an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 


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


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


word(s) when reading written material. 


-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 


of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 


reported. 


-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 


the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 


available. 


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


"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 


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


without reference available. 


-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 


failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 

 

 

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


(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 


BOARD MEMBERS
 

CHAIR
 

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D. 


Professor Emeritus 


School of Health Sciences 


Purdue University 


Lafayette, Indiana 


EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
 

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D. 


Senior Science Advisor 


National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 


Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 


Washington, DC 


MEMBERSHIP
 

BEACH, Josie 


Nuclear Chemical Operator 


Hanford Reservation 


Richland, Washington 


CLAWSON, Bradley 


Senior Operator, Nuclear Fuel Handling 


Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory 


GIBSON, Michael H. 


President 


Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union 


Local 5-4200 


Miamisburg, Ohio 


GRIFFON, Mark A. 


President 


Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc. 


Salem, New Hampshire 

 

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LOCKEY, James, M.D. 


Professor, Department of Environmental Health 


College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati 


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


Director 


New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund 


Albany, New York 


MUNN, Wanda I. 


Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired) 


Richland, Washington 


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


Professor, Texas A&M University 


College Station, Texas 


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 


SCHOFIELD, Phillip 


Los Alamos Project on Worker Safety 


Los Alamos, New Mexico 

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SIGNED-IN AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS
 

ADLETA, DIANE, GENERAL ELECTRIC 


BEHLING, HANS, SC&A 


BLANK, GORDON 


DONG, MAXIA, NIOSH/OCAS 


ELLISON, CHRIS, NIOSH 


EVASKOVICH, ANDREW K., LOCAL #69 


HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS 


JACQUEZ-ORTIZ, MICHELE, U.S. CONG. TOM UDALL 


KOTSCH, JEFF, U.S. DOL 


LEAVY, GLENDA, NIOSH 


MCKEEL, DAN, SINEW 


PARLER, RICH, NUMEC 


RAMSEY, ANN 


RAMSPOTT, JOHN, SINEW 


SHEEHAN, WARREN, MOUND 


SIEBERT, SCOTT R., ORAUT 


ZIEMER, MARILYN 

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P R O C E E D I N G S
 

(8:30 a.m.) 


WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS
 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR
 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO
 

DR. ZIEMER: Good morning, folks. I'm going to call 


the meeting to order. Welcome to the third day 


of the 43rd (sic) meeting of the Advisory Board 


on Radiation and Worker Health. 


I'd like to remind you again to register your 


attendance, if you've not already done so, in 


the foyer. 


 Looking at today's agenda, also I'd like to 


remind you that the item that's listed for 


right after lunch now is -- has been deleted 


from the agenda, so that -- that will shorten 


our agenda somewhat. Particularly for those of 


you who may have plane arrangements to make or 


to rearrange, that may be of value knowing that 


the meeting will certainly be shortened 


somewhat from the stated agenda times. 


All the members are here assembled with the 


exception of Mike Gibson. And Mike, are you on 


the line? 


 MR. GIBSON: Yes, Dr. Ziemer, I am. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. And Mark Griffon, who 

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had to leave early, so Mark is not with us, but 


we do have a quorum. 


Let me call on Dr. Wade to make some opening 


remarks, as well. 


 DR. WADE: Only to welcome and to thank. I 


mean we've had a very productive meeting to 


this point and I look forward to this morning's 


deliberations. Thank you. 


REPORT ON UPCOMING SEC PETITIONS
 

MR. LAVON RUTHERFORD, NIOSH/OCAS


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. We're going to begin this 


morning with an update on pretty much what's 


coming down the road, the outlook for SEC 


petitions. LaVon Rutherford from NIOSH is 


here. LaVon, you -- welcome again, and we look 


forward to hearing what you have for us. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer, and the 


rest of the Board. As Dr. Ziemer said, I will 


be providing some information on upcoming SEC 


petitions. The purpose of this presentation is 


to provide the Advisory Board and -- and the 


public -- the number -- current number of SEC 


petitions we're working on, ones that are under 


evaluations, and the ones that were looking at 


83.14s for. Hopefully this will provide 


information to the Advisory Board for 

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preparation of upcoming working group sessions 


and Board meetings. 


As of January 29th we had 83 submi-- SEC 


petition submissions. We actually got another 


one in yesterday from -- for NTS, which makes 


84. We have nine that are in the qualification 


process, 34 petitions that have qualified. Of 


those, 11 are in the evaluation process and 


NIOSH has completed evaluations on 23. We have 


34 petitions that did not qualify. 


Currently there are four SEC petitions that 


have completed evaluation and are with the 


Board for recommendation. We have Rocky Flats, 


Rocky was -- we completed our evaluation report 


in early April and presented the evaluation at 


the April Board meeting in 2006. The Advisory 


Board recommended a working group review that 


petition evaluation, and that review is still 


ongoing. 


Chapman Valve, we completed our evaluation on 


August 31st of 2006. We presented that 


evaluation to the Board at the September 2006 


Board meeting. The Board established a working 


group, as Dr. Poston mentioned yesterday, and 


the review is ongoing. 

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Feed Materials Production Center, Mark Rolfes 


presented that evaluation yesterday. We 


actually approved that on Novem-- on November 


3rd, and the Board established a working group 


and the working group is now reviewing that 


petition -- that evaluation report. 


Our most recently completed evaluation is with 


Los Alamos National Lab. We actually sent the 


-- or completed -- approved the evaluation and 


sent the evaluation report out to the 


petitioners and the Board on the 7th of this 


month. NIOSH plans to present our evaluation 


at the May Board meeting. 


 Now let's talk about the SEC petitions that -- 


that are currently in the evaluation process. 


We have Bethlehem Steel -- Bethlehem Steel 


qualified on August 29th of 2006. We have 


actually done our initial internal review of 


that evaluation report. We can expect that 


that evaluation report will be issued sometime 


this month. 


 The Hanford evaluation -- the Hanford 


evaluation is a -- a very large class. If you 


look at that 1942 to 1990, that evaluation is a 


very big evaluation and we're working hard to 

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meet that 180-day, you know, criteria. There 


is a chance that -- that we won't make that. 


just want to let you know that there's -- 


there's so much information to review for that 


evaluation, there's a chance that we will not 


make that 180 days. 


Blockson Chemical, we actually issued an 


evaluation report on Blockson Chemical. But 


after recognizing the -- it was 


misunderstanding on what exposures we actually 


had to prove feasibility and actually had to 


calculate for dose reconstruction. Once we 


determine, with the Department of Labor, what 


was expected, we pulled back that evaluation 


and we pulled back the Technical Basis Document 


and -- and we're in the process of revising 


both. We -- we plan to present that evaluation 


or to complete that evaluation update and 


Technical Basis Document for the May Board 


meeting. 


Dow Chemical, I think -- if you were here 


yesterday you heard the update on Dow Chemical. 


We are doing some additional data capture. We 


-- we -- if you weren't here yesterday, there 


were -- we had initially planned to present Dow 

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at this Board meeting, but some new documents 


came up in early January and, based on those 


new documents, we recognized that we needed to 


do a little more work. So we plan to present 


at the May Board meeting, but the report should 


be complete sometime in April. 


We have a Y-12 petition. This Y-12 petition 


was actually a petition that we received we had 


initially not qualified for statisticians from 


'51 to '59. It is actually a -- when you -- 


when you see that the petition is more for an 


incident than it is in -- so it's actually for 


'58 and '59, but the petitioner petitioned for 


'51 to '59. We did not qualify it initially. 


The Administrative Review Panel came back and 


recommended that we do qualify it based on the 


medical evidence provided, and I will talk 


about -- I'll give you a little more detail on 


that in that the -- the Administrative Review 


Panel did not actually disagree totally with 


our decision. They disagreed with the fact 


that we did not provide them or the petitioner 


enough information for everyone to understand 


what the feasibility determin-- or -- 


determination was. Therefore they recommended, 

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based on that, that we should -- we should 


qualify the petition and evaluate it. 


And there are actually a couple more of those, 


and I had talked to Dr. Lockey, who's in charge 


of that working group that's looked at the ones 


we did not qualify, and we are providing the 


letters from -- from the actual Administrative 


Review Panel to Dr. Howard, we're providing 


those letters to Dr. Lockey's workgroup so he 


can understand, you know, what the decision -- 


the reasons they changed -- or they recommended 


that we qualify a couple of these. And then 


we're also going to provide Dr. Lockey what 


we're going to do in -- in the SEC group at 


OCAS to ensure that we don't have this problem 


in the future. 


We have a NUMEC petition and we actually have 


our NUMEC petitioner here. We have a NUMEC 


petition that was under the same situation. It 


was initially not recommended for qualification 


by us and the Admin Review Panel -- again, it 


was based on our -- or the amount of 


information we provided to the petitioner and 


the understanding that they could derive from 


our own information, they felt that there was 

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not enough information to actually -- for the 


petitioner and to the -- and for the Admin 


Review Panel to understand how we came up with 


our position, so they recommended we qualify 


that petition, which we have. 


Those both we plan to present at -- or plan to 


be -- complete the evaluations in July of this 


year. 


We have an Ames Lab petition that was for some 


maintenance workers that worked on some thorium 


duct-work during the years. We plan to present 


that -- or complete that evaluation in July. 


We have a 83.14 for W. R. Grace, and we -- that 


one should be completed and presented at July. 


We'll actually complete that earlier, but I 


don't think there'll be enough time for the 


working group to look over that evaluation to 


actually present in May. If -- if we get it in 


earlier, you know, I'll let Dr. Melius's 


working group -- make them aware of that and -- 


and we'll work to -- to get it presented at the 


May -- at the May Board meeting. 


I presented at the December Board meeting -- we 


have 11 sites that we are looking -- working 


through the 83.14 process. Those -- the -- we 

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are still working on those through the 83.14 


process. However, based on lessons learned -- 


and I will talk about those in a few moments -- 


we -- we have pulled back in -- in that we are 


verifying that we have done all the appropriate 


searches for data for information in support of 


determining feasibility for dose 


reconstruction. So we've pulled back a little 


bit. We've set up a time line. We've actually 


put it in our -- worked it out in our project 


plan, and all 11 of those sites -- we'll 


complete that portion of -- of review for data 


by March. Once we've completed that, we will ­

- I'll jump here. Once we've completed that 


review and look for additional data in March, 


we will -- our contractor will provide us with 


a professional judgment and class proposal, 


which we will review and hopefully approve and 


we'll move forward with those 83.14s. 


I mentioned some lessons learned. I think 


there's some lessons learned that -- that we 


picked up at the December Board meeting and -- 


based on our presentations that were given, and 


-- and we also discussed them further at the 


working group session in January. 

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 The General Atomics, we -- we had identified a 


class and worked -- presented our evaluation. 


However, it -- the information we provided to 


the Board -- it wasn't clear enough and not 


descriptive enough for the Board to, you know, 


come up with a conclusion and understanding of 


the class definition and -- and all the issues. 


General Atomics had -- there were numerous 


issues associated with that petition. However, 


we presented one, so what we -- what we talked 


about at the working group session and, you 


know, just lessons learned from that Board 


meeting, that you know, we could provide 


additional tables that could be put into the 


evaluation report that could -- could lay out 


all the issues that we had actually -- the -- 


all the issues we found in our evaluation 


process for that facility that'll actually help 


the Board and help people that are reviewing 


pull this string and understand where we came 


up with our class definition. 


Another lesson learned that we've actually 


talked about, I think you've probably heard us 


mention it, we -- we've typically done this in 


the past for 83.13 SEC petitions. 83.13 SEC 

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petitions are the standard petitions that are 


submitted by a petitioner. We -- we actually 


put together a folder with all the supporting 


information, example dose reconstructions if 


necessary, reference documents and -- and 


everything that -- that we used to make our 


determination for feasibility and -- and to -- 


to help the Board and the Board's working 


groups understand how we got where, you know, 


we ended up with our evaluation. We haven't 


done that in the past with 83.13s -- or 83.14s. 


The 83.14s we had taken the position that well, 


we're recommending adding a class based on an 


issue that we found. However, to do everything 


justice, we need to provide that information to 


the -- to the Board and -- and the Board's 


working groups as well. So what we've done is 


we've set up folders that the Board and the 


Board working group have access to. Dow 


Chemical has a folder right now with reference 


documentation and -- and all the documents that 


we actually used to make our determination, we 


have -- have that set up. If you in our -- W. 


R. Grace should be there. We will do the same 


thing. So we will do the same thing that we do 

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for 83.13s, we will do that for 83.14s from 


this point forward. 


Hopefully this will -- it'll make the Board 


meetings easier for the Board to understand. 


You know, they can review the documentation 


ahead of time, look at that information and 


maybe make it a little easier. 


 Another concern, and I think this concern was 


identified by Dr. Roessler, that -- that, you 


know, worry about inconsistencies, 


inconsistencies in how we determine 


feasibility. It was -- and it was discussed by 


Dr. Melius at the working group session as well 


that we -- you know, we want to make sure that, 


you know, as we go through this process and 


we're adding classes, we're evaluating numerous 


sites, some of these issues are going to be 


similar. You know, some of the issues that are 


associated with sites -- thorium exposure, for 


example -- are similar. What we need to do is 


we need to make sure that we are not 


inconsistent in our determination of 


feasibility. So what -- what we've done is 


we've discussed internally things that we can 


do to -- to help our evaluation team, to help 

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the Board be sure that we're not coming up with 


inconsistencies. 


One of the things that we are doing is we're 


developing a matrix. This matrix is actually 


already in internal review one as -- as I 


speak. It's a matrix that lays out every 


evaluation we've completed to date. It puts 


out the feasibility determination for each -- 


you know, whether we said we can or can't do 


dose reconstruction for internal, external, all 


the way through. It also lays out the HHS 


recommendation, how it compares to that 


feasibility determination and -- and it has, 


you know, a couple of other items. This will 


hopefully allow future teams that are doing 


evaluation to look back through this matrix and 


say okay, do I have a similar issue, do I have 


an issue that -- that's similar to something 


that we've looked at before and -- and then we 


can -- they can go back, as the evaluation 


team, can go back and see how that 


determination was made and -- and -- and make 


sure that we're not going to be incon-- not 


only inconsistent, but look at, you know, 


similarities and make sure that they've 

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addressed everything. 


 Another issue that actually came out of the 


December Board meeting -- Board meeting and was 


-- a good point by Dr. Lockey. Dr. Lockey 


asked the question about data captures, and we 


had -- you know, in our 83.13 evaluations we 


lay out all sources of information where -- all 


sources we went for information. We lay that 


out in the evaluation report. We haven't done 


that for the 83.14s. In the future we will 


because what we want to do is we want to make 


sure that we have looked at all of the possible 


sources for information and we've actually 


pulled that string to -- to make sure we come 


up with the right determination. 


 That's it. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, LaVon. Let me begin 


the questions by asking about the legal 


implications of not meeting the 180-day 


requirement. You suggested in the case of 


Hanford that the agency may not be able to 


complete that evaluation report, so -- 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: I -- I --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- we may have been told, but I 


don't recall, you know, who slaps whose hand or 

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what happens. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: The amended language of the law 


requires us to provide a report to Congress, so 


various committees at -- on the -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: So the report could say that you 


have not been able to complete or -- 


 MR. ELLIOTT: I -- I conceive this as a -- on a 


yearly basis we would report to Congress on how 


many times --


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, I see. Okay. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- we missed the 180-day mark. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: We hopefully would be able to 


explain, you know, what happened in those -- 


each individual set of circumstances, and I 


guess we'll take our lumps as they come then. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Yeah. So the law doesn't 


say that if -- if for some reason you can't 


meet the 180 days, you can get a reprieve in 


some way. It just says 180 -- 180 days, 


there's no --


 MR. ELLIOTT: Says we are to strive to meet the 


180-day mark. It may not use that word, 


strive, but that's the time frame that -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: -- Congress is desirous of us 


completing our evaluations. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. I just didn't recall if 


there was some kind of penalty involved -- 


dismiss the Board or something. 


 DR. MELIUS: Send the contractor to jail. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, other questions. Dr. 


Melius. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, just one follow-up, LaVon, 


and I have a -- actually a question for the 


Board here. But the one -- one thing I would 


add is -- it's a very good report. I really 


appreciate the effort that NIOSH is making with 


-- with -- on this SEC issues and think it'll 


make it a lot easier 'cause there are a lot of 


sites that -- that we're going to have to deal 


with -- with -- through this process, and I 


think the way you're laying it out is -- it 


will be very helpful and hopefully really will 


facilitate our work. 


The one thing I would add to it is -- is -- I 


think that it would be helpful -- believe I 


mentioned this yesterday, also -- where 


possible and appropriate, for you to also reach 


out and -- to some of the claimants or 

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potential claimants, people that worked at some 


of these facilities, particularly some of the ­

- the older facilities and larger facilities 


where there are multiple buildings and dif-- 


different types of activity on site 'cause I 


think it's very important that we have -- also 


capture the right definition of the class and ­

- and make sure we get everybody included and ­

- and I think that's also very difficult at 


these sites 'cause how people were classified 


and so forth and then you're going to be going 


through this process of having people applying, 


putting down wording and having to interpret 


that, and the more information we could get 


into that process early on, I -- I -- I think 


the better. It'll never be perfect, given the 


age and how long ago a lot of this happened, 


but -- but I -- I think it would be -- be 


useful. 


The second comment I have is actually for the 


Board members. I -- I -- I think we need to 


sort of get moving on some of the sites. LANL 


we don't have a workgroup yet, I don't believe. 


I don't -- Sandia's coming up, I don't think 


we've done anything with that yet. I -- I 

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don't know about NUMEC and some of the others 


that -- got a little bit more time on, but -- 


but I think we really need to get set up and be 


ready to be able to move ahead on -- on 


addressing the SEC evaluations. We haven't 


really even started to deal with the -- the 


site profiles yet on -- on some of these, and I 


can't remember where SC&A is with some of the 


reviews here, but you know, some of them they 


have completed and we -- we just need to get to 


the resolution process. So I hope we could, as 


part of our actions today or the near future, 


get some of those workgroups set up. 


 DR. ZIEMER: In fact if you look in the front 


pocket of your -- your booklet, you have the 


big book from -- okay. I prepared a chart so 


that we have that information about the site 


profiles. This indicates in fact what SC&A has 


completed, and those cases where we have in 


fact begun and where we have essentially 


workgroups and a matrix underway and where we 


don't, with the -- and then we -- we need to in 


essence I think look side by side with the SEC 


chart here and we can in a sense prioritize 


which ones we need to move on. 

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We have already committed to do, and it's not 


on -- not on the SEC list, but we have 


committed to establish a workgroup at this 


meeting for Linde. You recall at our -- our 


meeting -- our phone meeting last time that we 


made that commitment, so we need to do that yet 


today. And then we would look at the other 


sites, particular where -- where the report 


from SC&A is in place and -- and aging. Many 


of these -- a few of these go back more than 


six months and some are since July of -- of 


last year and -- and we can pick out those, but 


your point is well made that we -- we need to 


be moving both on the SEC upcoming petitions as 


well as on the reviews of the site profiles. 


And we'll need a -- certainly several more 


working groups right away. 


Okay, good. Other comments or questions? 


Yeah, Lew. 


 DR. WADE: Before we -- we leave this topic, 


we're very pleased this morning to -- to have 


in our presence Michele Jacquez-Ortiz, who's 


the district director for Representative Tom 


Udall from New Mexico. The fact that Michele 

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is here is evidence of the -- the great 


commitment that both the Congressman and 


Michele personally has to the workers of New 


Mexico, and she wanted to be here this morning 


even for the brief discussion that touched on 


the Los Alamos workers. So we're -- we're 


pleased to have you here and welcome, and if 


you'd like to address the Board, please. 


 MS. JACQUEZ-ORTIZ: Thank you so much, Lew. 


Dr. Ziemer and members of the Advisory Board, 


thank you for allowing me a quick moment to 


speak. 


First I want to just dovetail a little bit on 


Dr. Melius's comments about clarifying that 


class definition. Harriet Ruiz -- as you know, 


she's the 83.13 claimant for Los Alamos and we 


sat together when Jason Broehm sent us the -- 


the report on her SEC, and this was just a 


couple of days ago, but there were some 


questions that came up. Clearly we are very 


pleased and I want to just get it on the record 


that we're very pleased with regard to the 


preliminary report, and we want to thank Larry 


Elliott and the staff at NIOSH for all of the 


work that went into this and -- and what's 

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stated in here. We look forward to a meeting 


with the NIOSH staff to answer our questions. 


That meeting's coming up next week with the 


Congressional delegation and I'll clarify a 


couple of points. 


One of them was on the class definition. We --


we feel that the clarity is really important, 


and it looks like they tried to make it as 


broad as possible, so for that we are very 


appreciative. I just -- I had some questions 


on -- and I think that Jason -- excuse me, a 


couple members of the staff also had some 


questions. 


I also -- I wasn't here yesterday, I was on a 


plane stuck in Chicago, but wanted to thank the 


Advisory Board for your support also with 


regard to the Los Alamos medical records issue. 


And we have been working very closely with the 


DOE and also NIOSH to make sure that all of 


those records are preserved for the claimants. 


And I understand that there was a comment maybe 


in the last couple of days from the Advisory 


Board in support of that, and on behalf of 


Congressman Udall, thank you very much for -- 


for lending that support to that important 

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effort. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much for those 


comments and for taking the time to be with us 


here today. 


Okay, other comments or questions for LaVon? 


 MR. GIBSON: Dr. Ziemer? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Mike. 

 MR. GIBSON: I don't know if this is exactly 

the appropriate time, but it seems to me that 


it is, concerning looking into other issues and 


everything else. 


I would like to, if it would be an appropriate 


time, make a motion. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I'm -- what I'm -- what I'm 


wondering is if we can do that in the context 


of during the Board working time when we -- 


when we look at the total list of -- of the 


sites. You're talking about your suggestion 


from last night that we have a working group 


that would, in some manner or another, be 


involved in getting worker input relating to, 


number one, I would say the site profiles and 


perhaps also as it relates to the SECs, but I 


think -- I think it would be appropriate if we 


did that during our working session when we 

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will be reviewing this list of the site 


profiles and which ones we haven't addressed 


yet and so on, if -- if you're okay with that, 


Mike. We'll just postpone that briefly till we 


get to that point in the agenda. 


 MR. GIBSON: Yeah, I'm okay with it. I just --


I just -- you know --


 DR. ZIEMER: We haven't forgotten you. 


 MR. GIBSON: No, I've heard -- I just heard 


that, you know, people are looking -- different 


organizations are looking at different ways to 


do the site profiles, the SECs and everything 


else, and I just -- I just thought this might 


be the appropriate time. But if you feel it 


would be later, that's fine. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I think -- I think we can do 


it so that we have the full picture of both the 


site profiles and the SEC information. So at 


the moment I think, if -- if -- if there's no 


objection, we'll proceed with the other items 


that are on the regular schedule here. 


CONFLICT OR BIAS MANAGEMENT POLICY
 

IMPLEMENTATION STATUS UPDATES
 

NIOSH, MR. LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH/OCAS
 

ORAU, MS. KATE KIMPAN, ORAU
 

We have a -- we have a scheduled presentation 


from NIOSH and from ORAU on the conflict of -- 

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of interest, and kind of an update on where 


they are on what they call the bias management 


policy. We're going to hear from Larry Elliott 


and then -- did -- oh, Kate has arrived. I was 


just asking someone earlier if Kate was going 


to be here and there she is. 


So first we'll hear from Larry Elliott, and 


then we'll hear from Kate Kimpan from ORAU. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, good morning again. Last 


day of three long days, and we hope to get you 


on the road and get you back to your home ports 


safe and sound, weather allowing and all of 


that. 


I'm here to give you an update on the 


implementation of NIOSH's policy statement on 


conflict or bias, and this is a slightly 


different title than we had given the policy 


that the Board had reviewed. We -- Dr. Howard 


is engaged in a refinement to that policy 


statement that has been presented to the Board 


as we implement it. 


However, the purpose of the policy as it has 


been put in place is to prevent individuals -- 


I've given talking points to the Board on -- 


I've given copies of talking points to the 

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Board. They're also available on the back 


table. I do not have slides. So from these 


talking points that you have, the purpose as 


stated in this policy on conflict or bias is to 


prevent individuals with either apparent or 


perceived conflicts from being the primary 


document owner on any key program function 


document. The policy lists these documents, 


and you should review them and make yourself 


aware of what is a key document versus a non-


key document. There's also a purpose here in 


this policy to promote and provide transparency 


in the dose reconstruction process, and in the 


creation of these key program documents. 


 Now there've been many policies over the course 


of the six years of the program. We started 


out with a -- requiring a policy, internal, 


where no one had a prior affiliation with a DOE 


site on -- on the OCAS staff or the NIOSH staff 


could work on a given dose reconstruction or a 


tool that was used for that dose 


reconstruction, and we've adhered to that. 


When we awarded a contract for technical 


support on dose reconstruction, the competitive 


process, requests for proposals, called for a 

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outline of a conflict of interest policy. And 


upon award, that was further developed. After 


the award it -- at several points in time the 


policy was modified, as this Board is well 


aware of, based upon concerns that have been 


raised regarding site profiles and Technical 


Basis Document development. 


 The first policy that was put in place under 


the ORAU contract, as specified by that 


contract, dealt only with dose 


reconstructionists and doing a dose 


reconstruction for an individual claimant and 


how that would be managed and controlled. And 


so we have -- we have matured and we have 


progressed beyond just that to dealing with the 


various tools and methods that are employed in 


this program. 


One of the other major changes of the -- this 


current conflict or bias policy is the 


establishment of an office of a conflict or 


bias officer. This is a person not involved in 


the dose reconstruction program. Currently it 


is the chief of staff to Dr. Howard, Mr. Frank 


Hearl. This individual is responsible for 


ensuring that any key program function document 

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disseminated by NIOSH conform substantially and 


procedurally to all the provisions contained in 


the conflict or bias policy statement. 


There's more specifically-defined roles in this 


conflict or bias policy than in previous 


policies, and the -- the policy itself defines 


seven key program functions. And in Section 6 


of the policy it defines five program support 


functions, and you should make yourselves aware 


of those. Defining these functions in the 


policy provides complete understanding of what 


roles are performed in the construction of key 


program documents and where conflicts should 


always be avoided. 


Now we're in the process of implementing this 


policy and disclosure by every individual at 


NIOSH is required. I'm only speaking at this 


point, in my presentation, about the NIOSH 


actions to implement this policy. You'll hear 


later, in a moment, from Kate Kimpan about 


ORAU's efforts and what they are doing in 


implementing the policy. Each one of our 


contractors is required to implement this 


policy as a floor. That means that they can go 


-- they can be more rigid and more rugged in 

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their -- their interpretation of the policy, 


but they cannot go below this as a floor. So 


there are various ways that some of these 


contractors are implementing this -- this 


policy. 


 Our disclosures at NIOSH, for all NIOSH staff ­

- that includes not only the health physicists, 


my communications specialist in the Office of 


Compensation Analysis and Support, the public 


health advisors you see here at these meetings 


consulting with claimants, the IT computer 


specialist that we have, secretaries, special 


assistants, everybody has to provide a 


disclosure. It also includes Dr. Howard. It 


also includes Frank Hearl, the conflict of -- 


or policy -- conflict or bias policy officer. 


It includes our legal team and what -- whoever 


else is associated with this pro-- this 


program. 


So on our web site you will soon see disclosure 


forms. If an individual is conflicted at a 


site or -- during any period, he or she cannot 


perform any program function for that site, as 


defined in the policy. This is a -- we -- we 


base -- at NIOSH/OCAS we are basing and 

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interpreting the policy in a little more higher 


level than just the floor. We're going by site 


rather than by individuals solely, so you 


should -- if you have any questions about that 


in that regard, let us know. We feel that this 


ensures a more restrictive approach in 


implementing the policy. 


As I said, all NIOSH and all OCAS employees who 


work in the program are required to complete a 


disclosure form, regardless of their job title 


or function. All of those disclosure forms 


will be soon posted on the NIOSH/OCAS web site. 


And if you don't know how to navigate to that, 


I'll provide it to you; just ask me, rather 


than read -- well, I guess I should read this 


into the record. It's -- it's located at 


www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/defaulthtml*. You'll 


find those disclosure forms there very soon. 


We're -- we're pulling them together as I 


speak. 


There will -- you will see in those multiple 


sites that are listed where conflict exists. 


For those sites where conflict exists, the 


individual is required to complete that form 


and to explain in some level of detail how -- 

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what the conflict or bias is. There will be a 


one-page summary that will front this set of 


disclosures for an individual that will provide 


you as a reader a -- a straightforward 


understanding without having to go through each 


set of disclosure forms for a site. This 


summary statement will show where the 


individual -- which site the individual has a 


conflict or bias. 


We are doing this at NIOSH/OCAS. It is not 


required of the contractors. They will 


implement this as they see best for their 


situation. We are not allowed to place 


contractor disclosure forms on our web site. 


We will have a link on our web site that will 


take you to our contractor's web site so that 


you can find them there -- find their 


disclosures there. 


Sites where there's no conflict of interest for 


an individual in NIOSH, but for which 


additional explanation is required, will be 


listed separately on the multiple site 


disclosure forms. In other words, in my in-- 


in my case, when I went through this disclosure 


process I found myself not to be conflicted at 

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any site. However, I supervise individuals who 


are. I am supervised by an individual who 


could be. So I provide an explanation at the 


end of this document, of my disclosure, 


explaining all of that, that I supervise 


individuals who have a potential for a conflict 


or bias because of a prior affiliation at a 


site. Every action or decision that I take on 


that -- on be-- in regards to that individual 


set of circumstances is reviewed by my 


supervisor and by the COB, the conflict or bias 


officer, and at Dr. Howard's choice, perhaps 


others. So you may find that kind of 


explanation at the end of each individual site 


disclosure form. Make sure you go through all 


of that to see how people have responded. 


And that's the end of my talking points. We 


are proceeding as -- as quickly as we can. 


This is -- and we want to make sure we put this 


up right the first time, and so I would ask you 


to look and you'll -- if you're on our 


distribution list, you'll -- as the Board is, 


you'll have a notice coming very shortly that 


these are posted on the web site. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, while -- while you're still 

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at the podium, Larry, let's take a moment and 


see if there's any questions from the Board on 


this update and the -- the new nuances for 


conflict of interest and the COB officer. 


 Any comments or questions? 


 (No responses) 


 Okay, then let us proceed. Kate Kimpan now 


will give us the update with respect to ORAU. 


Good morning, Kate. 


 MS. KIMPAN: Good morning, Dr. Ziemer, members 


of the Board -- shorter than Larry -- and 


others. It's a pleasure to be here. I've been 


the last couple of days listening by phone and 


it just doesn't do justice, so it's a pleasure 


to see you all in person. 


 You heard Larry describe what NIOSH has been 


doing, what's occurred to the policy, with the 


policy, and I wanted to update you on some 


things I've talked about with you before, and 


some things that I haven't yet spoken with you 


about. 


As NIOSH has worked to finalize this policy in 


recent months, the ORAU team has been managing 


the project, as you all have been informed by 


me at prior meetings. We've been managing the 

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project so that no dose reconstructions or 


other key program functions are performed or 


developed by individuals with inappropriate 


conflicts of interest, as defined by the NIOSH 


policy. 


You recall when these discussions were just 


emerging a long while ago in early 2006, I 


immediately replaced -- we as a team replaced 


any document owner who, under the policy that 


NIOSH had released at that point, would have 


been conflicted at the time the document was 


prepared or contributed to. 


Now let me explain for those of you that 


haven't been to one of these before, it's an 


unusual way to proceed. Many, many, many 


documents were written before the conflict of 


interest policy that was on the books had 


specific requirements like those right now. 


Since the beginning of this program the ORAU 


team has endeavored to assure, and we believe 


we have accomplished, no dose reconstruction or 


peer review of a dose reconstruction has ever 


been performed by a conflicted individual on 


our team. So I want folks to be clear since 


we're four and a half years into this project 

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talking about a COB policy, COI policy. Since 


day one the ORAU team had a system, 


computerized system to assure that a dose 


reconstructor couldn't be assigned to a dose 


reconstruction where there was a conflict. 


And I just want clarity for folks listening 


because it's so important. We've performed 


tens of thousands of these dose 


reconstructions. There is a way for a worker 


to say I don't want Kate Kimpan working on my 


claim, and I wouldn't work on it. So there's a 


way, irrespective of actual bias or conflict, 


for a worker to say -- a claimant to say I 


don't want that person touching my work. And 


we've abided by that in the very rare instances 


it occurred, but I just wanted to -- before we 


talk about this 'cause it's mostly about the 


documents rather than the DRs. I wanted to 


make a slight distinction. 


What we're going to be doing with our documents 


and what we began implementing about a year ago 


was that we're going to apply the same conflict 


of interest at the time policy to all the 


documents that we develop. And this isn't just 


a going-forward exercise. Our team, with -- in 

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close work with NIOSH, has submitted to them 


hundreds of documents that have been approved 


for use in this program. The documents are 


rigorously reviewed. And what we're doing now, 


which is quite unusual for those of you with 


legal backgrounds or government backgrounds, is 


we're going to take a new policy -- the one 


that isn't quite yet in force yet -- as soon as 


it's finalized we're going to look through the 


lens of that policy back at work that we did 


years before when the policy was not in force. 


That's on purpose because of the important 


nature of assuring that the scientific 


findings, conclusions and contributions are 


appropriate, are scientifically sound and are 


free of the influence that a paper conflict or 


bias concern might elicit. 


 Since 19-- early 2006, all document owners who, 


under the definition of the policy that NIOSH 


has had in force, had -- any of those that have 


had a conflict of interest under the lens of 


this policy have been replaced with a not-


conflicted document owner. In some ways the 


conflicted individuals -- and you've heard some 


of these names bandied about, sometimes 

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accurately, sometimes not -- sometimes those 


individuals have remained involved in 


appropriate, non-key roles as subject expert or 


site expert. 


For those of you that have already fallen 


asleep, sort of in the weeds of the lengthy 


policy, there are site experts, there are 


subject experts, there are document owners. 


The document owner is ultimately responsible 


for assuring that every conclusion in that 


document rises to the proper scientific, 


defensible level that's required by the 


outstanding science that this program has been 


using. We're going to assure that the owner is 


assuring that all those facts are well used, 


well cited, and in the right place. 


We've developed and are now finalizing -- we're 


awaiting the revision to the NIOSH policy to be 


signed into effectiveness so that we aren't 


taking actions that -- lest there be another 


change, we've developed and are now finalizing 


procedures to implement the NIOSH COB policy. 


Do reduce our burden associated with paperwork 


-- we have many employees -- we've developed a 


system where employees will fill out their 

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disclosure forms on line through a password-


protected system, and a PDF version of their 


disclosure form will be posted on our web site. 


Once the revision to the policy, which is 


currently in process and we -- I believe, 


Larry, we expect this to be signed into policy 


soon -- we don't know. As soon as that policy 


is signed with this revision that's underway 


right now, we'll be able to have all ORAU team 


forms completed within one week of the 


effective date. Okay? We have programmed -- 


our computer programmers have been working on 


this, have been changing it as the policy has 


changed and morphed. This is a significant 


effort but it's an important effort. 


I want you to know that we've done everything 


we can -- that's appropriate, in terms of 


taking action, spending hard-earned taxpayer 


dollars -- we've done everything we believe we 


can do appropriately until the policy is in 


effect. So we're ready to go. Assuming there 


are no more changes to the -- the basic queries 


and questions on the policy, we're ready to go. 


We, the ORAU team, established -- via analyzing 


the NIOSH policy in earlier versions -- a more 

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restrictive method of assuring our workers and 


contributors were free of conflict or bias than 


was initially required. You heard Larry refer 


to it. We initially, and have been all along, 


restricting individuals by site. If you have a 


conflict at a site, you don't work on that site 


and you're taken off for our DRs. There's no 


discussion of what you did at the site, how you 


did it, if you've got a conflict. So we have 


been using individual site-based throughout -- 


I think this policy certainly would -- would 


encourage that or allow that. You can see 


NIOSH's new policy is drifting toward a site-


based. It's more restrictive, but it is 


cleaner for us and it is easier to manage. We 


have a computer system in place that actually 


prevents assignment of someone with a conflict, 


and our new system will feed into that same 


system. It's coordinated to work with our dose 


reconstruction and other key function 


assignments. So if somebody -- one of my 


managers wanted to assign a dose reconstruction 


or a document review to a conflicted 


individual, we have an elaborate computer and 


document control system, the system would say 

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no, you must not do that. It's a -- you may 


not do that, not must not. 


It's another reason for us to use a computer-


based system rather than paper. If there's 


paper, that's all well and good, but that's 


showing what an individual wrote on the paper, 


you post the paper. There's nothing wrong with 


that. At 160 dose reconstructions a week and 


nearly 400 employees, we can't be looking at a 


piece of paper every time we go to do our work, 


so we need our computer system talking to our 


conflict of interest or bias system to help us 


do our work well, prevent these concerns and 


assure you, the Board, the government and the 


public, that we're doing this the right way. 


We've talked at other times through the months 


about annotation and attribution, and I know 


I've spoken to this Board, and it was an 


emergent topic early on in this. A year ago 


when I assigned new owners to areas where 


document owners might would have been 


conflicted under a new emergent policy, we 


looked at what we might do to assure the 


scientific community, to assure this Board and 


-- and the interested members, to assure the 

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public, the claimants, that we're handling this 


the right way. We have, and it is now in the 


policy. We talked about it before it was, what 


we as the ORAU team were going to do to assure 


the fine scientific quality of our documents. 


It's now in the policy and we're very pleased 


to see that. We've been working closely with 


OCAS to assure we're going to implement this 


the way that they'd like to see to assure 


credibility for all of us on this program for 


what we've been referring to, and now it's an 


actual in-the-policy word, annotation and 


attribution. 


Our documents are written by scientists who 


write for professional journals as part of the 


rest of their livings, and as such they use 


proper citations, footnotes, references, et 


cetera. These are all done to a scientific, 


peer-review level. That's how the writing that 


our team has done and the OCAS team has done 


has -- has been emerging. You'll see that in 


our system documents go through many, many, 


many reviews. And if you've ever met a group 


of health physicists, you couldn't get them to 


agree it's cold today, I suspect. Some people 

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would say it's warmer than Minnesota. So we 


have many, many, many reviews of different 


health physicists on our team. Then it goes 


over to OCAS where an additional group of 


professionals and health physicists and other 


experts review it. For many of our documents 


we've had SC&A, yet another group of health 


physicists with opinions about how these were 


developed, review and -- and challenge and -- 


and work with us about our conclusions and our 


findings. 


I'm going to say, before I tell you what we're 


going to do for annotation and attribution 


again, we believe that these documents are 


absolutely high scientific quality that are 


honoring the contributions of these workers, 


because these -- these documents are used to 


process claims and that's why we're all here is 


to take care of workers and their families. 


That's the intent. That's what the program 


does, and we believe that's what the documents 


do. We believe they're thorough. We believe 


they're professional, and we believe they're 


free of conflict or bias based on the 


experiences of any individual contributor. 

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In terms of assuring that that is -- thank you. 


(Unintelligible) stop long enough to drink. 


Sorry, Ray. I should always start off with 


sorry, Ray. 


In order to assure that we're doing this a way 


that has not only satisfaction for scientists, 


for the government and for the Board, but also 


to make sure that the public, that the 


claimants, that everybody who's involved in 


this program sees the amount of sunshine on 


these documents, we believe that we are going 


to make certain that folks can see where every 


contribution was from. And we're going to make 


even more certain when there's a potential 


conflict or bias among the contributors. So 


we're going to be doing a retrospective 


annotation and attribution. We're going to do 


that on every document where the -- the 


existing policy would have created a conflict 


for an owner or contributor to that document. 


And they're going to be th-- and we're going to 


prioritize this retrospective work. These are 


documents that are already out there, in -- in 


some cases already in force. We're 


prioritizing this based on the type of conflict 

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that was either found or alleged. 


And I want to tell you a little bit in detail 


about the three types of annotation and 


attribution we're going to do under this 


policy. This is an ORAU team construct. The 


policy does not call this out at all. We're 


acting, we believe, in an abundance of caution, 


again, to assure the credibility of these 


documents and this group of individuals. 


 Retrospective annotation and attribution is 


first being conducted on six sites, and they're 


slightly different sites. The first situation 


is where there was actually a conflicted 


document owner. That occurred at only two 


places. You've heard a lot of things said 


about a lot of people in recent weeks and 


months. There are two sites, the Idaho 


National Laboratory and Pantex Texas site are 


the only sites where the ORAU team document 


owner had a conflict. New owners were 


immediately assigned a year ago, and these 


documents are going to receive the most 


thorough and complete level of annotation and 


attribution, which is appropriate. The person 


who was the decision authority for those 

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documents had an employment status at one point 


in life which, under this new policy, would 


conflict them or -- or facilitate the 


possibility of a bias. So we're going to make 


sure that every scientific conclusion, every 


finding, every premise, every table and every 


exhibit in that document will be identified, 


referenced and fully explained. 


As promised, we gave to OCAS last year -- I can 


say that now, being January -- a fully 


annotated and attributed TBD for Rocky Flats, 


which is actually in the next category, never 


had a conflicted document owner, but it 


received a great deal of attention and it was 


the right thing to do. Our documentation in 


that -- our annotation and attribution in that 


document we believe was very thorough. If and 


when OCAS and NIOSH see fit, they -- they will 


share that with the Board or ultimately that 


document will become public and it will show 


this level of annotation and attribution. 


We've shown it to a lot of people, including 


the COB officer and the attorneys and the 


government and we've gotten no feedback to 


suggest that this annotation/attribution is 

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anything less than totally thorough. 


For places where the document owner was never 


conflicted, but we had a conflicted site expert 


who wrote or substantially authored part of the 


document in a way that would now be 


inconsistent with the NIOSH policy -- okay, no 


conflicted document owner, so there was an 


arbiter that owned the document, but one of the 


contributors, somebody writing important, 


substantive scientific portions of the document 


has a conflict under what we believe will be 


the NIOSH policy. Those two sites are Rocky 


Flats and Hanford. This annotation and 


attribution is completed for Rocky. It's in 


process for Hanford. 


Again, I want to be very clear. On those 


documents where, although there was never a 


conflicted owner, there was a conflicted 


contributor, we're going to again make sure 


that every contribution by the individual with 


a conflict is called out, clearly identified, 


clearly sourced and clearly explained. 


There's another situation where -- at Los 


Alamos and Paducah where there was not a 


conflicted owner or a conflicted expert 

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contributing in an inappropriate way, but it 


has become part of the vernacular. Stuff has 


been alleged at Boards and there's been 


discussion. There's been discomfort from 


members of -- of -- well, public is strong. 


There's been discussion from -- from different 


folks about whether or not people's 


contributions was appropriate. The actual 


analysis for both Los Alamos and Paducah was 


that nothing inappropriate occurred in terms of 


who contributed. But because these have 


received a great deal of attention, a great 


deal of critical attention, for those two sites 


as well we're going to apply this level of 


annotation and attribution. Again, we're very 


proud of this work. We're very proud of our 


conclusions and our contributors. 


We believe they've been well vetted, well 


justified and we're just going to make certain 


that you all know where that information is 


from so everyone has the same comfort level, 


not only with the findings our team has ended 


up with but as important to everyone, 


especially the public, we want to make certain 


you're comfortable with our process. It isn't 

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just the answer that comes out of all of this 


work. But I listened to the -- the discussions 


last night and the concerns that people have as 


they read these reports. It's a very, very 


complex program, and anything we can do in the 


service of these workers and this program to 


assure that people know how we've made our 


decisions and that those decisions have 


credibility, credibility with the folks whose 


lives they're affecting -- and with the Board 


and government -- is very, very important to 


us. 


For the six sites mentioned above -- those are 


Idaho National Lab, Pantex, Rocky Flats, 


Hanford, Los Alamos and Paducah Gaseous 


Diffusion Plants -- the current document owner, 


the newly non-conflicted owner, will conduct an 


additional technical review of these documents. 


Anyplace where there were questions raised, 


legitimate questions raised, one of the things 


we've committed to do -- which is not required 


by the policy, but it's the right way to handle 


this -- is that our non-conflicted document 


owner, in concert with other experts on our 


team and experts within the government, will 

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conduct a technical review of every finding in 


that document to assure they're right, they're 


satisfactory and the document owner is 


comfortable with their use. When that's 


completed, we again subject these documents, 


every one of them, to a rigorous review by our 


colleagues in the government, who ultimately 


actually approve these documents. We merely 


provide work to them. 


We're very pleased to be moving forward on 


these important aspects, and we're very pleased 


that it looks as though the policy will be 


finalized. For those of you that -- that surf 


our web site all the time, we've left it up, 


although it is an artifact of a policy which is 


no longer in effect, and it includes workers 


who no longer work for me. So we're very 


anxious to get the new policy signed so that we 


can make our web site proper and right, with 


the people we currently have working on the 


team. 


 Obviously there's a great deal of historical 


information on the current web site and I want 


to assure you, as we revise this, as the 


policy's finalized and we revise our exhibits 

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on that web site, we will maintain -- the ORAU 


team will maintain, for your availability and 


others, all the information that we take down. 


The information that's up there was a proper 


snapshot at a certain time. COB, these forms, 


are a snapshot of who works for you at the 


time. With this new policy, we'll require new 


forms. The old ones will be obsolete. 


So the -- the web site will in coming weeks be 


changed and you'll see this new policy, once 


it's effective, reflected on the web site. 


Larry and others will be made aware when we're 


going to change that so you, the Board, will 


know. This isn't something that should be a 


surprise. Once the new policy's in effect, 


about a week after it's in effect, we have all 


of our current employees' information up and 


ready to go, we'll replace the current web site 


with the current, proper information under the 


policy. And I just wanted folks to know. 


 If there's anybody who has interest in making 


sure you preserve what's on it now, feel free 


to print away or, as I said, we'll be retaining 


that in our computer memory. We will not get 


rid of it. It will no longer be available to 

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the public. We certainly have before provided 


elements of -- of things that have been taken 


down for the Board and to others. We have no 


problem doing that. It's just not the right 


thing to have information up there that's four 


years old, obsolete and an old policy. So I 


wanted folks to know -- we're not trying to 


hide anything or take anything away. We're 


just going to put the current, correct 


information up as soon as that's available. 


And I can't give you an exact time frame on how 


this is going, but there are six documents on 


what we consider our tier one, must do right 


now. Paducah's -- I'm sorry, Rocky is 


completely done. Three of the others are in 


process, and there are two others that we have 


planned and are beginning to do. Again, this, 


like so many other things, is very important 


work, prioritized among a lot of very important 


work, so what we've been doing is as much prep 


work as we can until such time as the policy is 


effective. As soon as the policy is effective, 


there'll be an internal flurry of activity to 


get us dress right dress in compliance with the 


requirements, including posting, and we should 

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be then pleased to stand for any questions in 


the future and now. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you -- thank you, Kate -- or 


-- yeah, Kate, for that update. I'd like to 


pose a question that perhaps goes to the issue 


of bias. There are clearly concerns that folks 


have that there's a sort of an inherent bias in 


this process that relates to the fact that the 


documents, with all the protections that you've 


described, nonetheless are pretty much authored 


by scientists, health physicists and management 


types of folks who may see things, or not see 


things even, in a different way than the folks 


out there doing the work. 


 MS. KIMPAN: Uh-huh. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And in -- in the abstract, at 


least, one could argue that -- that a kind of 


bias could in fact be present because of that. 


How do we and how does ORAU assure that those 


concerns that -- we might call them worker 


concerns -- are not only made visible but 


impact on the final product? I think for the 


most part, and you talked about the authors, 


the scientists who are used to writing papers 


and so on, and we recognize that many of the 

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workers are not normally in that capacity for ­

- that's not what they do normally, and maybe 


we have overlooked how they might contribute to 


the product. So can you give us a feel for 


what efforts ORAU uses to get that input into 


the document, how do we know it's there, how 


does it show up, how does it change what I 


think is going on as a health physicist versus 


the worker who says well, you're only here now 


and then; here's what really happens. 


 MS. KIMPAN: Right. Sure. Let me start with 


sort of what -- part of what I've learned from 


my team in -- in the time that I've been here 


in this part of the project. 


A lot of the folks on our team were folks that 


were workers. Some of them were workers in the 


rad protection program. The story I get from 


them is it was their job to assure that workers 


voices were heard and that management heard the 


concerns of workers. So I don't know that it's 


as easy for me as for some to distinguish what 


somebody's bias might be. I'm not -- I -- you 


can say but I'm not accepting that everybody 


that worked for a contractor at one of these 


facilities was anti-worker. My team certainly 

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doesn't talk that way to me about what their 


contributions were. 


We have among our team some very large-brained, 


well-degreed, big scientists. And those folks 


were, without question, some of them at the 


helm of the radiation protection programs and I 


think in the position that you described, Dr. 


Ziemer. But it isn't as -- as simple for me to 


say that the folks we have contributing to 


documents were all in some DOE ivory tower and 


not in touch with the workers. These were the 


guys that suited up with the line workers and 


walked up and down the lines in the same 


protection equipment, making sure that workers' 


concerns were heard, as I understand -- and I'm 


sure I'm going to get a whole lot of comment 


based on that. 


That said, we endeavor -- and it could be 


improved upon, there's no question. We 


endeavor to assure -- these documents take a 


long time to develop. They take a long time to 


gather the data. You'll recall the first 


couple of years of the program some would say 


too long. And part of what takes so long is -- 


if we could just sit in Cincinnati, or 

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electronically wherever we are, and rely on one 


expert, I'd have finished these documents a 


long time ago. So there is a great deal of 


input that is gathered. There's a great deal 


of input that is sought through our document 


development program. We work closely with -- I 


see Libby came in -- with the Department of 


Energy to make sure we're getting to the right 


people. Our teams go in, they look for the 


data, they start interviewing. If someone 


comes forward that has contributions, I believe 


we accept that information. We validate and 


verify it. 


There has been through this project a thing 


called the worker outreach portion of the -- 


the ORAU team. The original intent of that 


shop was much more limited than it has been in 


recent days and weeks and months. The original 


intent was to go to a facility in advance of 


one of these documents being completed and have 


a public meeting where workers were asked to 


come in please and see what they thought of 


this document. So the process of the ORAU 


team, through the development of all these 


documents, was to conduct one of these worker 

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outreach meetings, and we did so. And in 


conducting those, we worked closely through -- 


folks that had organized labor, through 


organized labor at the facility. If they 


didn't have organized labor, through whatever 


group of -- of people identified themselves as 


advocates, like Dr. McKeel and others in places 


where there wasn't organized labor. And in 


those places, with due respect, it's not clear 


what the voice of a worker was. 


So we've endeavored to get to the workers, 


whoever they are, the retirees -- as you know, 


oftentimes the family members don't know great 


detail. You've heard the testimony as recently 


as last night, folks worked for years in these 


facilities and were unable to share with their 


loved ones what they were subjected to. So 


although we certainly value that input, it's 


the workers, the former workers, the folks who 


had boots on the ground, that we've endeavored 


to hear the voice of. 


So what we've done is, I believe in both formal 


and informal ways, tried to assure that those 


voices were heard as we developed those 


documents. And I apologize, I don't have the 

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list in front of me now, but there is a lengthy 


list -- and folks on my team do have it -- of 


places where input at a meeting actually 


affected immediately the Technical Basis 


Document under development. I don't think we 


did a particularly good job -- the only time 


you're going to hear me say this this way. I 


don't think we did a great job in the first 


couple of years of letting folks know we had 


heard them. We did do a great job of 


listening. 


We had -- at these meetings that were conducted 


for every document prior to release, we had our 


document owner and we had OCAS on the ground in 


those meetings. And if a question was raised 


that had a substantive effect on the document, 


it was immediately put into the ORAU 


deliberations about the document in formation, 


immediately explained and discussed with OCAS 


what the effect of that change should be, and 


we actually have identified and know where 


those changes have occurred. We didn't 


communicate back to those communities 


particularly well or promptly. We didn't go 


back and do a second meeting. At the time 

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there was a flurry of activity, trying to get 


to the next document. But there've been very 


great -- in magnitude terms -- effects from 


these meetings. 


One of the things you hear about, and I have 


heard it as recently as during this Board 


meeting, and I will speak to it in a -- in a 


way that will not be satisfactory to some. 


Oftentimes what we hear from individuals is 


something that was an individual experience. 


That's a very, very important thing for that 


individual's dose reconstruction. But there 


are many, many, many stories that an individual 


might tell about what happened to them that 


absolutely do not affect -- affect the TBD. 


And there's a little bit of a disconnect in 


some of the testimony I've heard at different 


times. Because an individual worker said this 


happened to me and I don't see it in the TBD, 


that has nothing to do with the quality of the 


TBD. 


The TBD is one document among many that are 


used. We have health physicists that are well 


trained, well trained on this program, and 


there are many, many, many aspects of what's 

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called professional judgment. And that is, the 


health physicist who is the dose reconstructor 


must review all the documentation with a 


particular case, including the interview 


conducted with the worker. We conduct very 


thorough interviews with workers. If somebody 


wants to talk longer than they have, 


notwithstanding some of what I heard, we 


listen. We continue to listen. We continue to 


take notes on everything the worker says. The 


dose reconstructor then, in concert with the 


interview from the worker, the Technical Basis 


Document, and a number of other technical tools 


to determine what a worker's dose might have 


been. They see evidence in my interview I 


worked in a glovebox. It sends them down one 


direction for determining my base -- my -- my 


dose differently than if I didn't. They --


they listen to all of that on the individual 


workers. 


And so these individual testimonials that 


people give at meetings is extremely important 


to their individual case. But you can well 


imagine it isn't necessarily something that 


would change how the overall process at a 

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gaseous diffusion plant operated. When a 


worker says on this date a hole in my glove 


occurred and the following happened to me, 


that's very important information for that 


individual, extremely important information. 


It can make the difference between a claim 


being compensable or not. That's considered in 


their dose reconstruction. And keep in mind 


that if -- if -- what the worker's recalling 


occurred that way may very well show up in an 


incident report. I know that if you get 40, 50 


years ago, there's some concerns about whether 


the incidence reports were made and -- but for 


many workers who worked in recent years, when 


they say a thing happened and they know the 


date, they know the location, they know the 


time, we have additional evidence to say 


absolutely true. 


The guys who were in the Rocky fire know where 


they were. They know what the date was. 


That's very, very important information for the 


individual dose reconstruction. Every bit of 


that information is considered in the dose 


reconstruction. We've got Dr. Maher, the head 


of our dose reconstruction team, here. If I'm 

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an individual saying what happened to me, his 


team will consider that for my DR. It is 


unlikely -- unless Dr. Maher, Mr. Siebert and 


his team says so, it's unlikely that that 


individual's information is going to affect the 


TBD. And so there's been a bit of a disconnect 


that is sort of very important to us in terms 


of how we feel about the process. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Kate, also let me ask you this and 


then Larry can speak. In those cases where 


your input in fact somehow showed up in the TBD 


 MS. KIMPAN: Yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- do you annotate that as well, 


or --


 MS. KIMPAN: You know, we haven't captured -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- have you thought about that? 


 MS. KIMPAN: -- it that way, Dr. Ziemer, 


although I'm -- we're --


 DR. ZIEMER: In other words, the --


 MS. KIMPAN: -- gathering that information now 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- here's this and the source is ­

- you know. 


 MS. KIMPAN: You know what we've been doing is 

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we've been gathering it in terms of making 


certain we're communicating back with that 


group, often an organized labor group. And one 


of the things that my worker outreach team has 


been working on is we've got this WISPR* 


database that you folks are -- are going to 


have access to that -- that shows all these 


comments made at these public meetings. And 


one of the categories in there is what do we do 


in response, so we capture that information and 


have it. 


I can absolutely at the next Board meeting 


bring an exhibit of places where this has 


occurred, if that would be of interest to the 


Board. But there are many, many places and 


specific numbers, functions, findings in these 


documents that were immediately and 


substantially affected by input, as you say, 


sort of from the rank and file -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 MS. KIMPAN: -- from the folks who show up at 


these meetings, at our behest, to help us make 


a better document. That's the entire purpose 


of these meetings, by the way, was to make 


certain that we were hearing that voice. We 

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understand, as a government, that we listen to 


voices that worked with and for DOE. We're 


aware of that. We want as much of all voices 


about what went on in these facilities as we 


can get --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 MS. KIMPAN: -- so we're very anxious for 


those. We -- we do look for them in a lot of 


ways, but --

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 MS. KIMPAN: -- we can absolutely identify the 

changes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: One of the -- the reason I asked 

this question, some of us chatting last evening 


-- not a quorum, by the way, but a couple of us 


chatting about Mike Gibson's concern about 


worker input into the -- the process, is the 


question of how do we know if -- if the Board 


went back and looked, how would we be able to 


tell that it made a difference, you know -- 


 MS. KIMPAN: I guess the way you'd be able to ­

- yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and so that's why I asked the 


annotation --


 MS. KIMPAN: Sure. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: -- question, is there -- 

 MS. KIMPAN: We -- we can find --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- some way --

 MS. KIMPAN: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- that someone could audit that 

and say ah, here's a case where yes, something 


was changed or -- or was added or whatever it 


may be that reflected some input that's not 


just from --


 MS. KIMPAN: To be honest, I can do that --


 DR. ZIEMER: I'm not asking you to do it. I'm 


asking if it --


 MS. KIMPAN: It -- my -- my gut is --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- if it's doable. 


 MS. KIMPAN: -- in the way you're asking, it 


will not show up in annotation and attribution 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right now it doesn't show up. 


 MS. KIMPAN: -- but it will show up on the 


WISPR database, the -- a lot of times that 


input was before --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 MS. KIMPAN: -- a draft was completed and -- 


and of course the annotation and attribution, 


even if it were a worker that brought it to our 

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attention, would not likely be the source -- 


the source wouldn't be that worker. I -- I'm 


not accepting from my scientists Fred said so, 


so --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, yeah. 


 MS. KIMPAN: -- even if the worker identified 


something we didn't know, a document we didn't 


know, records we didn't know, that's something 


we could best capture for you out of this WISPR 


database. And the changes that were made -- a 


lot of times, to the annotation and attribution 


viewers of the document -- the -- the 


consumers, these changes would have occurred 


substantially before, and the changes would 


have already been made and vetted through our 


team and through OCAS. But I can get that 


answer for you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, thank you. Larry, uh-huh. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I was just going to remark 


upon what you just asked about. As we're 


looking at Rocky Flats and yes, the -- that 


serves as a model of attribution and 


annotation, has been delivered by Kate to us. 


General Counsel's looked at it, found it to be 


over the top even in that regard. But -- but 

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what I want to do today is set a very clear 


expectation that I don't believe has gotten 


through to everybody yet. Let me just phrase 


it that way. I, too, am displeased, not happy 


with how worker outreach, worker input has been 


garnered. I think we could have done a better 


job and I intend and have -- I'm scheduling 


meetings with organized labor representatives 


to talk about how to go about doing worker 


outreach better than we have in the past. 


Here's what I want to set in place as the 


expectation. We consider at NIOSH all workers 


site experts. And in some ways, subject 


experts. And if we don't start from that 


premise, we're missing the bet. We're missing 


the big component here. At the early days when 


we implemented -- started drafting our -- our 


rules and our regulations for this program, we 


put in place this interview process. That was 


one step to get a site expert's commentary, a 


person who was a chemical operator who worked 


on the floor, who was a millwright, who was -- 


whatever their job title was, to me, they are a 


site expert. And that's where we need to start 


from. I want the worker's voice heard. 

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It's not carried through yet. I think a 


worker's voice should be annotated and 


attributed. If a person in their interview 


says, like we heard last night from the 


gentleman I talked to afterward, if he wore 


gloves and if the gloves were contaminated and 


he, unbeknownst, touched his -- his forehead, 


scratched his jaw, you know, rubbed his neck, 


picked his ear, whatever, what kind of 


contamination, external dose, did he acquire 


that way? Dose reconstructors should pick that 


up, attribute that in the dose reconstruction 


report, and explain what they've done to 


account for that kind of dose. Have we done 


that in all regards? No. Have we done it in 


some regards? Yes. Can we do a better job? 


Absolutely. 


So my expectation and what I'm looking for and 


asking my people to make sure in Rocky Flats as 


a model, is there anything that changed in that 


model based upon worker input, worker outreach, 


that we need to take up. We don't have to put 


the person's name in there, but we can say this 


has come from a site expert worker. Or we can 


say this came from an actual millwright who -- 

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who told us this -- this information, and we 


should be doing that. 


So that's what we're looking at right now. 


That's the expectation I'm setting before all 


the contractors. And Kate, I want to -- I want 


to say that -- just so everybody's clear here ­

- there is a policy in place. The floor of the 


policy is there. Kate is working with that 


understanding and that intent. However, as I 


mentioned in my comments, Dr. Howard is 


refining that right now as we implement it. 


And we can't -- we need to see that signed off 


and that refinement -- those refinements made 


so that we can put everything up on the web 


sites and show disclosure and make sure we've 


done it according to the letter of the 


refinement. We're close on that, so it's -- 


it's imminent. 


 MS. KIMPAN: And Larry, you're right and I said 


at the beginning but then I talked a whole lot, 


there is a policy in place to which we are 


adhering right now, and have been all along. 


We haven't been running around going "huzzah, 


huzzah, no policy" for recent months. The 


policy that's in force for us is the most 

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recent one that was signed, which was many 


months ago. For our work, it sets the same 


floor, to be perfectly frank. It affects the 


annotation/attribution, but there are no 


changes, in our view, to how we've been 


conducting the dose reconstruction. 


I can offer, most especially 'cause my document 


folks aren't in the room, for the 


annotation/attribution sites, as an appendix or 


as part of the A&A, we can certainly add in -- 


and for all other things we can associate with 


that -- the changes that occurred to that 


document because of -- and that can be a 


document that's with the TBD and follows it 


around, even if it isn't something that -- in 


the text. So we can add an exhibit to our 


documents for the sole purpose of saying -- 


where there are changes because of information 


garnered through the public meeting process, 


through rank and file workers, through 


individuals who -- who believe they -- they 


know something about that facility, we can add 


that as a separate addendum to our documents in 


a going-forward way. I'm not going to say the 


ones that go over this week are going to have 

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that 'cause it's going to take me a little bit 


of time to make sure. But based on what 


Larry's saying, the interest of the Board, Mr. 


Gibson's comments yesterday and throughout 


these meetings, certainly is something that our 


team can offer to do. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I'm not suggesting how that should 


be done, but I can certainly anticipate that as 


we go forward there will be some level of 


expectation from the Board that -- that we will 


need to be able to assure ourselves that in 


fact the input from the public meetings and so 


on somehow is in -- you know, it's not just we 


had the public meeting and there's a transcript 


and everybody's happy, but it didn't have any 


effect on anything, but -- 


 MS. KIMPAN: Well, that's --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- but we're going to want to, I 


think, have some way of sort of auditing that 


and say what difference did it make, in a site 


profile or --


 MS. KIMPAN: Absolutely. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- whatever it may be. 

 MS. KIMPAN: It's certainly the raise-on debt 

for this database --

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 MS. KIMPAN: -- for worker comments that -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MS. KIMPAN: -- developed and what we need to 

do --

 DR. ZIEMER: And if there is some attribution 

method --

 MS. KIMPAN: Yeah, we could excerpt -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- maybe that's a first step, but 

-- yeah. 

 MS. KIMPAN: Well, we could excerpt the 

database for individual documents and associate 


that with the document so somebody has -- 


doesn't have to go left hand and right hand. 


We can take all the comments from the Rocky 


meetings --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 MS. KIMPAN: -- put it on with Rocky, and 


you'll see the comment, who made it, the ORAU 


team and/or OCAS response and any resulting 


change to --


 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 


 MS. KIMPAN: -- the document process or product 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 MS. KIMPAN: -- based on that comment. We can 


just extract that out of our other data source, 


associate it with the documents. It'll answer 


all of these questions in a real-time way. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, and again, I'm not 


suggesting how one would do this, but just 


conceptually to think about -- 


 MS. KIMPAN: Absolutely. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- think about how we go forward. 


Jim Melius --


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah --


 MS. KIMPAN: We'll do so. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and then Brad. 


 DR. MELIUS: Getting back to conflict of 


interest, my first question is -- for Larry or 


Lew is when is Dr. Howard going to sign off on 


this? We've been waiting many months. I was 


called in -- I believe in November telling that 


my latest round of comments were going to be 


ignored because they were -- everybody was in a 


hurry to get them out and it would take too 


long to address one of the issues that -- that 


I raised, and now it's into February and we 


still don't have a -- a policy. And so I'm 

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trying to get a handle on when will this fin-- 


be finalized. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: The policy was signed I believe 


on November -- was it late November -- it's on 


our web site. It's signed by Dr. Howard. And 


post that signing, additional comments were 


received by Dr. Howard. I'm not sure whose 


comments those were or what extent they go to, 


but there are refinements that he's taking -- 


making in the current policy, and a new one 


will be issued as soon as he gets it developed. 


 MS. KIMPAN: And we are in compliance with the 


one that is signed, by the way. We are --


 DR. MELIUS: And again --

 MS. KIMPAN: -- currently compliant. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- do we have an estimate of when 

that will be? 'Cause apparently it appears to 


be holding up what ORAU is able to do in moving 


forward with some of the stuff. That's... 


 MR. ELLIOTT: I have -- I have no estimate to 


provide you today. I guess we'll have to get 


back to you with that. The -- Dr. Howard works 


with one of the legal team members on 


developing this and gets input from others as 


part of that process, and I just don't have 

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that information today to share with you. 


 MS. KIMPAN: And let me assure the lack of 


signature to a revised policy is not slowing 


our work in annotation/attribution. If the 


policy is as expected, it'll be a very prompt 


web site change that we'll be able to do. It 


of course wouldn't be prudent to do that change 


now, lest something else affect the forms. But 


we believe that the premise, the bases of who 


is and isn't conflicted, that's our only 


challenge on annotation/attribution. We're 


looking through the lens of this policy in 


identifying yes, Kate had a conflict on this 


document. That has the potential to change. 


The -- the places I identified the annotation 


and attribution, we know we're going to do it 


and the only -- who we have to annotate or 


attri-- for those, we're -- they're in process. 


They're going on. So the policy isn't holding 


us up, we don't believe, in that way. And we 


don't believe the new policy that's coming is 


going to change how we've been running dose 


reconstruction one iota. So just want you to 


under-- there is a policy in force. We adhere 


to it every day, and we've been adhering to it 

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for months and months and months, and we 


believe the result is we have never conducted a 


conflic-- a dose reconstruction or peer review 


of a DR with a conflicted or bias-potential 


individual. 


 DR. MELIUS: However, you have conducted many 


dose reconstructions based on conflicted site 


profiles, and that's always been the major 


concern. But in -- in terms of, you know, 


believe you that you're working on it, I would 


-- we would like to be able to see it and it's 


-- apparently you can't do that, and I think we 


understand that, until the NIOSH policy is 


finalized. 


 DR. WADE: What -- I'll carry back the Board's 


message to Dr. Howard that they -- they think 


it critical that this policy be finalized, and 


I'll e-mail you next week with the latest 


information that I have on that. 


 Also, included in that could well be a decision 


on the part of NIOSH to instruct ORAU to post 


their materials on their web site. That's the 


one thing that seems to be hanging in the 


balance. So let me talk to Dr. Howard about 


this and to communicate clearly to the Board 

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next week his time frames and how we will deal 


with the issue of ORAU's posting their 


information on their web site. 


 DR. MELIUS: My second question has to do with 


the new annotation approach, and in -- again, 


I'm not sure you're aware of this, Kate, but 


the Ro-- I believe that the Rocky Flats 


annotated document is up on the web site. Is 


that --


 MS. KIMPAN: Oh, I sure wasn't. Okay. 


 DR. MELIUS: Okay, yeah, yeah. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Parts are. 


 DR. MELIUS: Parts are. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Parts are. 


 DR. MELIUS: Okay -- can -- can someone 


explain. I obviously went and looked for Roger 


Falk and there's -- in the introduction and I 


guess which -- I can't tell which parts are new 


and which parts aren't and so forth. Chapter 4 


or 5, internal dose, which I believe he 


originally authored, now is up there with I 


believe 130 annotations in it, something on 


that order. It's about a -- 30 pages of text, 


about 15 pages of annotations, and all those 


annotations are Roger Falk, which seems a bit ­
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- a bit odd, but what mostly dis-- more 


disturbs me and maybe it's because the -- the 


document isn't -- you know, the complete 


document, new document isn't up there is 


there's no mention that Roger Falk is 


conflicted. So someone going in and looking at 


the Rocky Flats document would see something 


with a bunch of footnotes from Roger Falk -- or 


no idea that he has any conflict unless one 


somehow would trace this back through a few web 


sites and find it. So my question is, is there 


going to be some sort of -- part of the 


introduction or early in the document that 


would explain the annotation and explain the 


reasons for it, as well as at least alerting 


people that these -- attribution is someone who 


has a -- a conflict of interest on this 


particular site? 


 MS. KIMPAN: We'd be pleased to do that. We'd 


be pleased to describe -- for the in particular 


six documents I've named where either an owner 


or contributor has a conflict, even though 


their contribution under the new policy will be 


properly as a site or subject expert and not a 


key function, in those situations we're still 

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going to be very concerned because there is a 


bias potential at that site. So we'd be very 


pleased to identify up front, or as part of the 


-- you know, the part we're going to talk about 


what the contribution of the worker might have 


been, we'd be pleased to say who we're calling 


out and why --


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 MS. KIMPAN: -- which conflicted contributors. 

That's --

 DR. MELIUS: It can be done on a --

 MS. KIMPAN: -- no problem for us at all. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- chapter basis or so -- but -- 

 MS. KIMPAN: Absolutely. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- I think -- I think it would be 

-- be -- be helpful 'cause it's not clear why 


it's --


 MS. KIMPAN: We'd be pleased to do that. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- why the attributions are and it 


certainly seems odd and some ways -- I mean -- 


again, I don't -- I didn't do a comparison -- 


side-by-side comparison (unintelligible) sorry, 


but it might be easier just to say the 


chapter's by Roger and was -- 


 MS. KIMPAN: Yeah, and --

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I 

 DR. MELIUS: -- reviewed by somebody else. It 


doesn't seem that 130 -- 15 pages of 


attributions really --


 MS. KIMPAN: Well, you're right, Dr. Melius. 


said in my comments and it's part of the 


premise, the reason we're doing that is 


everything Roger did we're going to make 


certain there's sunshine on. We just need to 


say that's why we're doing it and we can do so 


quite easily. 


 DR. MELIUS: And my next question has -- 


concerns the issue of getting a -- a -- 


documents owners in place. I mentioned this 


yesterday. The -- when we went to have a 


Hanford workgroup, I was told that that could 


not be scheduled for a couple of months because 


the key site expert, who was absolutely 


necessary for any meeting, Jack Fix, was out of 


the country and unable to be present to meet 


with us. And my understanding of the document 


owner process would be someone that could -- 


understood and could review the technical 


issues involved, and I don't see why a 


conflicted site expert is absolutely necessary 


in order to move forward on any resolution of 

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comments on a -- a site profile or an issue of 


that. And I would hope that we would get in 


place, and maybe this is an issue of timing and 


staffing and so forth, get in place document 


owners that can really own the document and 


understand them because, as I've said before, 


if we don't have good document owners that 


understand -- are technically proficient on the 


document and understand the sites and so forth, 


then this whole policy I believe will be a 


failure and we don't need someone that's an 


editor of a document. We need someone that 


really will take charge of the document as an 


owner and I hope we could get that in place for 


Hanford and some of these other sites that are 


poten-- site profiles that are potentially 


problematic, particularly as we have SEC 


evaluations or petitions to be considered at 


these sites where will be a great deal of 


public scrutiny and so forth on these issues. 


 MS. KIMPAN: I absolutely agree with the 


premise of what you're saying, Dr. Melius. The 


ORAU team has endeavored to make certain that 


the best expertise was at the table. At times 


some experts in particular fields, and they can 

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be broad-reaching across the complex, are 


people that have conflicts at certain sites. 


Two points that you made I'd like to address. 


One is you're absolutely right, a -- document 


owners need to know everything about their 


document and need to be able to defend, discuss 


and contemplate whether those contributions 


from potentially biased individuals was right. 


We've been endeavoring to provide to OCAS the 


right experts -- some of their choosing, some 


of our fronting -- for certain things. I 


apologize for how that went and I -- I'll tell 


you, the ORAU team will never again in a public 


arena have anyone with a potential conflict or 


bias representing our team. I think that we 


all understand that somebody can have a great 


deal of specific technical knowledge, and 


that's a great resource for the author, at 


times for the Board, at times for the 


government, but both the importance of this 


policy, the substance of what you're bringing 


up and the appearance say that'll never happen 


again. Our owners, and it is a lengthy 


process, it has been challenging for us -- I'm 


sure it has for OCAS as well. Our owners need 

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to know everything about a very complex body of 


literature and work, and we believe they're 


there. So my apologies for it appearing any 


way else or affecting a meeting. That won't 


happen again and we are absolutely endeavoring 


to assure that our document owners are actual 


document owners so they can discuss, describe, 


analyze and defend every finding, conclusion 


and fact in that document, without having to 


look over their shoulder or ask somebody else. 


That's the place we're going and we believe 


we're there. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Larry. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: I -- I support your point, Dr. 


Melius. I embrace it. I think a document 


owner needs to take the ownership of the 


document. We're -- we're interested right now 


in what has been left out of a document. 


That's where we also ought to be focusing our 


attention. What was left out of a document, 


like the chapter of the Rocky Flats site 


profile you're talking about, what else may -- 


may -- or should have been considered. Was 


there anything else to be considered. So I --


I fully embrace your point. I take it home. 
I 
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take it to heart. 


I do have to take a little exception with the 


example, though. Mr. Fix, Jack Fix, was -- was 


felt to be necessary for some technical issues 


and questions being raised at that particular 


point. It wasn't that he has to be at all 


meetings. At this example that you raise I 


think is being portrayed, appropriately, as a 


problem. But it is not -- it was not our 


intention in that example that Mr. Fix had to 


be at every one of these working group 


meetings. It was this particular meeting where 


certain questions of a technical nature were 


being raised about Mr. Fix's work, and we 


wanted to avail the working group of his 


explanation. 


 DR. ZIEMER: They were trying to fix the 


problem, so to speak. Okay --


 DR. MELIUS: Can I just respond? And again --


 DR. ZIEMER: Do you have a follow-up or we have 


some other questions. 


 DR. MELIUS: Can I just ask one --

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, go ahead. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- one -- one, just briefly. And 

again, not to be-- belabor it and so forth, I ­
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- I think it would have been as well to -- Mr. 


Fix could have been made available later. The 


information involved -- there were some written 


reports that could have been addressed and I -- 


I -- again, it wasn't -- this -- you know, just 


delays us more and I think it's -- it's a -- a 


significant problem, but ho-- hopefully we'll 


be beyond that and it won't happen again and 


let's just move on with it. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Brad I think is next, Brad 


Clawson. 


 MR. CLAWSON: Kate, we're going to talk a 


little bit about Idaho, and I'm conflicted on 


it so I'll tell you that right now. But part 


of the issue is, and we hear this time and time 


again, is these site profiles, these TDBs (sic) 


are like flying over the site at 30,000 feet. 


Now granted, we are using truly professionals, 


and I have the utmost respect for many of them, 


but I just wanted to pull up this one. We've 


got one little blurb here, level of airborne 


activity around 603 unlined storage pools was a 


chronic problem, da da da da da. You know 


what? I -- I deal with that place quite a bit. 


We had an inch and a half of lead on the 

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basins. It doesn't even really address the 


conditions that were there. I had the 


opportunity, it's been over a month ago, to 


take our health physicist that is writing -- 


keeping the site profile up to date, for the 


first time in his life, into N-Tech* -- by the 


way, he forgot his TLD; I had to explain that 


to him -- and take him down into these areas. 


These -- there's so many things that are 


missing, and this is the frustration of the 


people. And I applaud Larry, and I know you 


guys have got a difficult job. It -- it --


it's hard to get all this in here, but you've 


got to understand what the people are seeing, 


too, because I'm looking here -- it just told 


me that my basins got emptied in 1984. Well, 


Kate, I did three-fourths of that. We finished 


in '94. There's ten years difference in this. 


And -- and this is a frustration for them. 


And when I look down and the man -- I -- I have 


a great deal of respect for, I.C. Rich, well, 


you know there's an issue there. He was there 


for years. Now am I questioning -- and 


everything he's put in there, but it's been 


generali-- it's a generalized system. 

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 There's another incidence in here when we cut 


into a fuel element. Now that one's very dear 


and near to me because it's in one of my 


facilities, but it said that we had a release, 


it actually boiled the lid off the cask, but no 


release to the outside public. 603 was a 


respirator zone for six and a half months. Two 


and a half years we were in zone one clothing 


de-conning it down. This changed the whole 


structure of it. So these -- these are the 


frustrations that people have. And I'll be 


right honest with you, I -- I know that we're 


striving to make better outreaches, but until I 


came onto this Board I didn't even know that 


we'd had a TBD done for the site. And it's 


been quite interesting for me to read, but I 


see so many gaps. It is -- it is a generalized 


statement. And everything they say is true, 


but it's -- it's like from a very high 


altitude. And this is the frustration of the 


workforce. Well, I was down there and I 


realize this. 


I had -- I had the individual come down -- and 


the reason he came down was because I'd just 


filled the basins full of concrete and he 

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wanted to actually see it. He'd never been in 


the facility, but he'd read basically this 


information. And he asked what one large 


portion of it was. It was a cutting facility. 


And he says oh, that doesn't matter; that was 


D&D'd years ago. No, I just pulled four fuel 


elements out of it, by hand, that we cut, by 


hand, two years ago. 


But -- but see, as they go through, when they 


take a facility -- the site profile is to give 


a generalized issue, but if you were to take 


this TBD and put it against what our site 


profile is out there that is being written, 


it's pretty much the same, just little bits and 


pieces. So what I would express to you is in 


these outreach programs be able to take in some 


of this because these TBDs have been -- become 


so general, and when I go to every one of these 


meetings, it's the same thing that I hear. 


Well, yeah, it's not really wrong, but it's not 


really correct, either. 


So I -- I -- I hope that we can strive to do 


that. Plus you also expressed that you were 


going to re-look into Idaho's technical databa­

- the TDB (sic) and review it. 

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 MS. KIMPAN: Yes. 


 MR. CLAWSON: If there are any changes in it -- 


 MS. KIMPAN: Yes. 


 MR. CLAWSON: -- how are we going to be able to 


know that? Because this is real wonderful 


reading, but --


 MS. KIMPAN: If there -- let me address the 


last point first and then the -- 


 MR. CLAWSON: Okay. 


 MS. KIMPAN: -- first point and then Larry can 


jump in as I see -- on the last point, we will 


capture any changes that have been made, Brad, 


particularly for a report to this Board because 


this is such an important issue. So if any of 


these reviews inspires a change, especially -- 


my gosh, if it's a change because our 


information was potentially biased or 


conflicted, if that were the reason, we will 


call it out as such. I can report to the Board 


on any changes we find to every document that's 


going through this process. It'll be a good 


day if all of our conclusions stand. It'll be 


a great day if we improve our document by 


learning something through this process. 


 Secondly, and I don't know the appropriacy 

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(sic) of this -- well, I know the appropriacy. 


You're a guy -- you're a -- a person, not just 


a Board member. I'd like to invite you, as a 


conflicted site expert, and anybody else at 


INEEL that you have reason to believe has 


information that may have been omitted, 


neglected or treated wrong in our document, I'd 


like to invite you formally to let us know when 


you want us out there for a meeting with these 


people to capture every concern you have about 


our document. And we will be out there with 


bells on to capture this, and welcome you to 


participate, as the document's developed, as a 


conflicted site expert. We have to call out 


your contribution because you work there -- 


 MR. CLAWSON: Right. 


 MS. KIMPAN: -- and anybody else you bring to 


the -- to bear, but I'd like to offer right 


now, please, help us make the document better. 


If you know things we've omitted, it may show 


us what we're not asking in other places. In 


particular, this document had a conflicted 


owner. It's of particular import on this 


document and I'll have my worker outreach folks 


contact you right after this, but let us know 

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when you'd like us there, who else you'd like 


contacted, how best to reach people that have 


these voices -- whether it's old labor pension 


rolls, whether it's newspapers, radio, I don't 


care what, you tell us how to get the right 


people in the room, you tell us who those are. 


Please help us. 


 MR. CLAWSON: Okay. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Let -- let me also make sure that 


everybody understands -- I hope they recognize 


it, maybe they don't -- we welcome comments on 


our Technical Basis Documents, site profiles, 


Technical Information Bulletins. You can 


provide those comments to us. We'd like them 


in writing. You can send them by e-mail. You 


can go on the OCAS web site and hit the e-mail 


thing and send the comments that way. Those 


are then placed in a -- in a docket and we make 


sure that they're given to the team that's 


working on that particular document. Okay? So 


they're passed on. 


The other -- the other way I would answer your 


question about how will you know if a -- if a 


document is changed and whether that change 


resulted from a worker outreach meeting or 

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resulted from technical comments that have been 


given in the review process, whatever 


stimulated the change. If you go to the second 


or third page of any of our documents that have 


experienced a revision, you're going to find a 


brief statement there. And I've asked for 


instances where, through this Board's actions 


or through worker outreach meetings or through 


input that we gained that resulted in a change 


in a document, it be so entered on that page. 


And so when you get a notice from Chris Ellison 


that a new document, a revised document has 


been placed on the web site, I encourage you to 


go to that third page -- second or third page, 


I don't recall which one; it's right after the 


cover page, there's usually a page left blank ­

- but check out what the revision was, why did 


it get changed, and you'll see it there. If 


you have questions, if it's not informative 


enough, let me know because that -- there's a 


purpose behind that statement. You know, we 


want people to understand why we made that 


change. 


 MR. CLAWSON: And -- and also, too, Ka-- I've ­

- I've got to make sure you realize, because I 

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talked with Mark. 


 MS. KIMPAN: Uh-huh. 


 MR. CLAWSON: Mark was trying to set up a 


little bit better outreach out there, but the 


people didn't understand what he was trying to 


do. 


 MS. KIMPAN: Okay. 


 MR. CLAWSON: They didn't understand well, why 


is OCAS coming in here. They felt like they 


were going to lose credibility and -- 


 MS. KIMPAN: Right. 


 MR. CLAWSON: -- they thought OCAS was coming 


in to -- to deny all this stuff, and so we need 


some things to work on that. But I'll be right 


honest, as a Board member, it's very difficult 


for me to figure what I can and I can't do 


because of the position that I'm in. 


 MS. KIMPAN: You can definitely, from my view ­

- and somebody else is going to have to tell 


you if it's not appropriate -- in terms of the 


kind of knowledge that you have, Brad, I've 


known you for a long time, you know who some of 


the right people are to tap. If it would be 


better for us to invite you here, if it would 


be better for you to arrange the meeting and us 

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be your guests, I understand the discomfort, 


the difficult that was encountered in the last 


attempt to have a meeting there. We want to do 


better at that. Whatever you think is most 


comfortable, if you'd like us to bring you to 


Cincinnati, that would be fine. If you'd like 


to have the meeting in -- in your -- on your 


turf so it doesn't feel like the government 


coming in telling you what to do, that's also 


fine. We want the information. We want to 


interview you and others. You mentioned 


several specific items in a four-minute 


discussion, so we want to make sure we're 


listening to you and others. As Larry said, as 


-- as Mark Lewis on our team -- we've had -- we 


have room to improve in this arena, and in 


particular you've identified one way to help on 


this document. Let's get some of the -- some 


additional people. We have done outreach 


there. Let's do more. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: One premise of the policy that 


Dr. Howard has signed tells that we -- 


encourages us to hear people out, hear all 


voices. We want all sources of information 


that we can seek out. Yes, you're a Board 

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member, but I look at you as a -- as a site 


expert --


 MS. KIMPAN: Absolutely. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- as a worker who knows what 


happened on the floor. You should feel free to 


come forward to us and talk to us about your 


concerns in our documents and in our 


approaches, even -- you could put on your Board 


member hat and talk to me that way or you can 


put on your citizen hat and talk to me that 


way. Okay? You should not feel restricted in 


talking one-on-one with me or Kate. Your 


conflict is --


 MS. KIMPAN: Absolutely. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- is, you know --


 MS. KIMPAN: Absolutely, you're a site expert, 


Brad, without question. 


 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, there -- there's one other 


thing because I've kind of been jabbed for this 


one because I keep talking about how all these 


sites are interacted and so forth like that 


because I have stuff from Paducah and Mound, I 


have stuff from probably every one of these 


sites. And -- and we brought up at Los Alamos 


-- we did an SEC petition because of lanthium 

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(sic), which came from Idaho. And I came to 


find out something very interesting about that 


because -- and this is what I'm trying -- the 


point I'm trying to bring forth is this trail 


that we go down, we've got to see where it came 


from and what it did because it -- it mentions 


it briefly in the TBD, but they had to 


reconstruct a complete facility to be able to 


handle that because it came out of the reactor 


so hot. So the-- this is -- this is why the -- 


the workforce, when they read something like 


this, they -- they get a little bit frustrated, 


and I appreciate your concerns, and -- and I'll 


work with you in --


 MS. KIMPAN: Absolutely, we'll be --


 MR. CLAWSON: -- what we can. 


 MS. KIMPAN: -- in touch -- in touch right 


after --


 MR. CLAWSON: A lot of this is people's -- you 


know, we -- we that deal with this even have 


frustrations trying to get around through 


things, and then you get a -- some of these 


older people and so forth like that, and it's 


very difficult. So I -- I commend you on the 


outreach. I think that we can do better and -- 

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and we'll do whatever we can to help. 


 MS. KIMPAN: Very good. We look forward to 


your help. 


Dr. Ziemer, I'm informed by my sources that, 


(a), I need to talk louder, which is not 


usually a thing I -- I need, and (b), Board 


member Gibson would like to speak. 


 MR. GIBSON: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I just wanted to caution Brad to 


be careful what he says about the older people, 


but other -- other than that, Mike Gib-- 


 MS. KIMPAN: I resemble (sic) that remark. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, Mi-- Mike, go ahead. 

 MR. GIBSON: Yes, I just have a few comments 

relating to Ms. Kimpan's earlier statements 


I've been trying to get through. Number one, 


when she spoke of if an individual has an 


incident happen that may have a determination 


or a difference in their dose reconstruction, 


that is personal to them and it could change 


their dose reconstruction. I have never in 20­

some years at a DOE site seen any one person 


individually working alone. So I don't see how 


-- yes, it may affect the individual's dose 


reconstruction, but it may also have a 

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significant impact on other individuals. And 


then for a -- you know these site experts, 


professionals or whatevers, just because they 


know of a project, an area or a -- some -- some 


situation going on at a site, that doesn't mean 


that they don't know what went on there every 


day. So there's -- there's kind of conflict 


that -- again, you know, I challenge the fact ­

- for anyone to tell me that a DOE site they've 


worked alone and it can only affect them and 


them only, and then for a site expert to be 


able to generalize that nothing has happened in 


a -- in a particular area or situation. 


 MS. KIMPAN: Mike, on the -- the part about the 


individual, I guess I used a bad example in the 


world of DOE work. The kind of thing that 


would affect an individual that wouldn't 


necessarily be generalized -- I want to say 


parenthetically, unless it was the norm at the 


facility -- we have testimony from individuals 


-- as you know, I've been taking testimony from 


DOE workers since 1999, folks who said they 


took off their badges, and there were all sorts 


of reasons and at times that was normative a 


bazillion years ago, according to some workers. 

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But that's the kind of example. If -- if I say 


the reason you don't have my dose right is 


because I only wore my badge for half a day, 


'cause if I wore it all day my numbers were 


going to be too high for me to go to work the 


next week, that's the kind of thing that would 


affect that individual, would not be 


generalizable unless we found that the entire 


site encouraged, it was part of how the site 


operated. So I used a bad example potentially 


about the -- the glovebox with a hole in it for 


what would be individual. Obviously some of 


the things you're talking about, people working 


together, if there's some kind of a release or 


spill or a breakdown in equipment, in certainly 


recent times that would merit an incid-- an 


incident report. It would absolutely be part 


of the consideration of the overall document. 


 Regarding your concern about conflicted site 


experts, I'm not sure I understood it. We've 


got a lot of site experts, including Brad who I 


think I just convinced to come on my team as a 


conflicted site expert. We get a lot of 


information from individuals that are 


conflicted. Everybody isn't necessarily 

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conflicted on the one side of the conflict. 


There are a whole lot of people that are 


claimants who are, by definition, conflicted 


because they have a claim against that 


facility. It doesn't mean we disregard what a 


claimant says. Every claimant is, by 


definition of claiming, a conflicted individual 


for that site. We don't not want that input. 


The entire purpose of this conflict or bias 


policy is to assure that we use the input from 


a conflicted individual in a proper way. When 


that's a worker giving testimonial, it's proper 


to listen to what the worker has said, knowing 


they're conflicted. When it's a site expert 


like Brad or Roger Falk, if they're a site 


expert or subject expert, we must look through 


that same lens to assure that their 


contribution is correct in spite of the 


conflicts that individual or group of 


individuals may carry. We're not ashamed of 


conflicted people. I think the people who've 


worked at DOL know darned well if there was a 


way to learn what DOE did that wasn't DOE, none 


of us would be here. The way that DOE did 


stuff was quite unique. Nobody else did that 

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the same way. DOD didn't, Navy nukes didn't, 


and by gosh, commercial nukes certainly didn't. 


So there is a need to know what went on in 


these facilities from guys like Brad and a 


whole bunch of other people, including all the 


workers. All the interviews that have been 


conducted with all those workers we consider 


hundreds and hundreds, tens of thousands of 


conflicted site expert interviews. That's all 


conflicted information. It doesn't mean it 


isn't factual. It means the person giving the 


information has a conflict under anybody's 


analysis of what a conflict is. So I'm not 


certain if you point was that we shouldn't use 


Brad or we shouldn't use our other experts, but 


I'll tell you right now, I will use properly 


site and subject experts to assure we are 


giving workers and the government the very best 


information we can get about what went on in 


these facilities. And we certainly welcome a 


group of conflicted experts we haven't had 


great access to, and that's the ones Brad's 


referring to, some of the folks who know 


exactly what went on, who we need to hear the 


voice of, and we need to declare they're a 

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conflicted person who we're still taking very 


seriously. 


 DR. WADE: Okay. Thank you. 


 MR. GIBSON: Okay. Dr. Ziemer, could I respond 

to that? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Sure, Mike. 

 MR. GIBSON: My response is, there are people 

who are paid -- all people were paid by the 


contractor they worked for under the Department 


of Energy contract. Some were paid to do a 


manual job, stick their hands in stuff, go fix 


things or whatever. Some were paid -- and most 


of those people were paid by the hour. Some 


people were paid to oversee and -- and control 


and, in my opinion, protect the interest of the 


company on a salaried basis, irregardless of 


the hours they were there, irregardless of what 


they did, and therein lies the difference 


between my interpre-- personal interpretation 


of site expert on this and workers' knowledge 


as site expert on that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, Mike. Let me 


ask if there's any other comments or questions, 


Board members. 


 (No responses) 

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Okay, we're due for a break. Let's go ahead 


and take our break at this time and then we'll 


-- we'll resume about 11:00 o'clock. 


 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 10:40 a.m. 


to 11:00 a.m.) 


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


Before Dr. Neton makes his presentation, I'm 


going to call on Libby White from DOE. Libby 


has a very brief comment relating to the 


records issue that we were discussing 


yesterday, particularly with respect to those 


records at Los Alamos. So Libby, if you would 


address us, we'd appreciate it. 


MS. WHITE: Sure, yeah, thanks so much. Andrew 


Evaskovich brought this issue up last night 


during the public comment period, and I just 


wanted to follow up really briefly. 


 The Los Alamos Medical Center records issue was 


brought to our attention by Congressman Udall's 


office about eight months ago, and we -- we, 


being Department of Energy, has been working 


with NIOSH and the Los Alamos Medical Center 


and the Lab and the site office and our Office 


of Legacy Management to try to come up with a 


plan for the review of these records. 

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They were owned by the Atomic Energy Commission 


until December 31st, 1963, and then later sold 


to a private entity. AEC was given six years 


to make copies of any of the records, but we 


don't know whether that was ever done, so we 


don't know what DOE or Los Alamos currently has 


and what is only in existence at the Medical 


Center in terms of worker records. 


What we do know is that the Medical Center 


wants to destroy the records. They've already 


more than met their ten-year requirement -- 


State requirement to maintain the records. We 


also know the records are mixed with community 


member records and stored in a warehouse on 


county property. 


There are about 2,500 to 3,500 cubic feet of 


records, and we also know that the records may 


be covered in Hantavirus-infected mouse 


droppings. So we're currently planning for the 


decontamination and review of these documents. 


We have a plan in draft. We hope to make this 


plan available to the Board and to NIOSH and to 


all parties involved, the Congressional 


delegation, sometime next week. And I just 


wanted everyone to know that it is the 

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Department of Energy's full intent to pay for 


this review and decontamination, and then 


ultimately the records will be sent to -- the 


worker records, that is, will be sent to the 


Federal -- Denver Federal Records Center so 


that they can be used for EEOICPA purposes. So 


more information to come. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Libby. And 


as we go forward -- and we can discuss this 


during our work session, but if the Board can 


play a role in assisting in any way, well, we 


want to think about what we might do in that 


regard. 


MS. WHITE: That would be great. That was one 


thing I just forgot to ask, and that is we 


would very much like to have some oversight by 


the Advisory Board, if possible -- one or more 


members to just sort of participate -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: We may think about maybe having a 


workgroup that could at least participate in 


some way with NIOSH and DOE, but we'll talk 


about that during our work session. 


UNIDENTIFIED: A question --


 DR. ZIEMER: A question first. 


 MR. GIBSON: Dr. Ziemer? 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Mike, hang on, we've got a 


comment from Mr. Presley and then you'll be 


next. 


 MR. GIBSON: All right. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Libby, do you know if those 


things have been -- are they catalogued by name 


or year or how are they catalogued or how are 


they stored? Do we know anything about the way 


they're stored? 


MS. WHITE: We know that they're stored in 


boxes. The conditions are not good at all in 


this warehouse. We have pictures that we can 


share with DOL, and we believe that they're 


stored -- that each -- there's a file for each 


individual's medical record and I believe 


there's a name on the outside of that -- of 


that folder, file folder. But two members of 


our staff are actually in Los Alamos right now 


and can provide more detail. They went to the 


warehouse yesterday and they can provide more 


detail, certainly by next week. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. Mike Gibson? 


 MR. GIBSON: Yes. I'd just like to ask Ms. 


White and I hope all of you received the e-mail 


I sent yesterday and hopefully it was forwarded 

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to others about the burial of the Mound 


records. And I would just like an update on 


that. 


MS. WHITE: The Mound records? We actually are 


till in the midst of collecting information. 


There was one document which was distributed to 


Board members in your materials that we had 


been searching for and just found the day 


before the Board meeting, and that was a letter 


written by Kathy Robertson-DeMers to her 


management in the mid-1990s. So we hope 


that'll be helpful, but we're also searching 


for additional documents, including some that 


we believe may be in classified section of 


OSTI* down in Oak Ridge. So once we're able to 


get that additional information, we will 


certainly share it with you and hopefully that 


will help us to make a collective decision as 


to how to proceed at that point. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

 MR. GIBSON: Okay. Dr. Ziemer? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, go ahead, Mike. 

 MR. GIBSON: Is Ms. White in possession of the 

40-some page PDF document that I believe was 


authored by Cheryl Kirkwood, records management 

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-- manager at Mound at that time? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. A 40-page document from 

Cheryl --

 MR. GIBSON: And because -- the reason I say 

that is because several pages of that document 


list on the -- the title, health physics 


records, incident records and et cetera, and I 


think that's very important to dose 


reconstructions from -- from this facility. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Libby, do you know if you have the 


document Mike is referring to? 


MS. WHITE: I'm not sure if I've actually got a 


copy of that document or not. Do you, Larry, 


know if -- is that -- we've shared everything 


that we --


 DR. ZIEMER: Who is the author of that one 


again, Mike? 


 MR. GIBSON: Cheryl Kirkwood. 


MS. WHITE: We've seen several by Cheryl. 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) Yes, we 


(unintelligible) --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes -- yes, they --


MS. WHITE: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Larry has confirmed, and Kate has, 


that they have a copy of that as well. 

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MS. WHITE: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And you heard the commitment from 


Glen Podonsky (sic) earlier in the week 


regarding those particular records. 


Okay, a comment from Phil Schofield. 


 MR. SCHOFIELD: A couple. One on the Mound's 


records, as I stated last night, that when they 


do go in there to retrieve those records, it 


may take longer than we would like just because 


of the nature of Area G. It is a waste dump 


and it has everything from chemicals to 


biologicals to every isotope just about you can 


dream of in that place and it is a very nasty 


environment to work in. So it may take them a 


little longer and a little more effort than a 


lot of people would like, but hopefully they 


are retrievable. 


And on the Los Alamos records, I actually 


talked to someone who went in and got the 


physical view of those records, and they are 


just -- they were put in storage boxes and the 


boxes were just literally thrown into the 


storeroom, so there's been water damage, 


there's been mice, squirrels in there, 


chipmunks in there, so you have the biological 

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problems you have to worry about. At least one 


person has come forward at some point and said 


they suspect some of the records may have low 


level alpha contamination on them. So I mean 


there's a number of issues there and the 


records were stored -- most of them will be in 


a single file folder. That is the way Los 


Alamos Medical Center has historically always 


done their records. And each of those folders 


would have that person name -- in case of 


people have large medical file folders, it may 


be two or three of these. But like I says, in 


-- the way it was done historically, it was the 


day you moved there or the day you were born, 


the file was started on you and it did not 


matter what doctor you saw, who you saw, what 


you -- was done to you, what testing, it all 


went in that file, so there is -- a lot of 


those files are going to be a combination of 


personal medical records and things that are 


related to things that happened to people at 


work. So it's going to be a slow, tedious 


process going through those files. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Larry. 


 MR. GIBSON: Paul, could I make another 

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comment? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, okay, go ahead, Mike. 


 MR. GIBSON: If I'm not mistaken, it's the 


Department of Energy's policy to try to reduce 


waste as far as high level contamination, et 


cetera. And if these things had minimal 


contamination, why were they then put into a 


area that is much more toxic, according to my 


colleague, Phil. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Good question, Mike, and I don't 


think any of us know the answer to that 


particular one. We've asked it amongst 


ourselves, as well. 


A comment from Larry. 


 MR. GIBSON: Well, I would like to find that 


answer out. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I think we all would. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Are you talking about the Mound 


records? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Mound records. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Mike, are you talking about the 


Mound records? 


 MR. GIBSON: Yes, Larry, I am. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay, I don't have an answer for 


you, either, but I -- I would be interested to 

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know, as well. 


My -- my comment goes to Phil here. When NIOSH 


was working with DOE and talking about how to 


go in and look at the hospital records, the 


medical records, we brought up the alpha -- 


possible alpha contamination. But if you could 


share with me and the audience, I'd appreciate 


if you have any idea about why there would be 


alpha contamination there because that would 


help go to the extent that potentially might be 


there. In our conversations we were talking 


about using a -- you know, a -- frisking the 


records to make sure the boxes, and then the 


records as they were being pulled out of the 


boxes, to make sure that they weren't heavily 


contaminated. Or if they -- if they were, they 


could be set aside and appropriately handled. 


But if you knew anything at all about why there 


might be alpha contamination in medical 


records, patient records in -- in a hospital 


setting, we'd like to understand that. 


 MR. SCHOFIELD: Historically, Los Alamos 


Medical Center was used for both employee 


injuries and for personal health care, so there 


was a number of incidents over the year where 

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people were injured, had some contamination on 


them, and because the Lab didn't really have a 


good medical facility for X-rays, things like 


that, surgery, they were sent to the Medical 


Center. And if they were a person who came to 


that medical center anyhow, their records would 


be pulled, their treatment was put in that file 


and then it was filed with the others. And 


this is where some of this contamination is ex­

- suspected to have come from. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Well -- Wanda 


Munn, do you have a comment? 


 MS. MUNN: I had one question for Libby White 


with respect to the Los Alamos records and the 


jurisdictions there. The only two real players 


here are DOE and the contractor. Right? You 


don't have any problem with the county? There 


isn't any possibility that the county's going 


to get involved, I just want-- 


MS. WHITE: The county -- the county is 


involved because since the records are 


currently on county property in a warehouse, 


we'll have to get their permission and we've 


been given their permission to use county 


property for the decontamination process, 

118 

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decontamination with regards to Hantavirus. 


The records will be moved from this county 


warehouse into transportainers, which will 


remain on county property for the 21-day period 


that the decontamination is taking place. So 


we did have to get approvals and permits from 


them. 


 The Medical Center is working with us as well. 


It sort of -- it's definitely more than just 


DOE and Los Alamos involved. We're working 


with NIOSH. NIOSH is going to provide people 


to help with the review, and they've provided 


the protocol for the decontamination of the 


records with regard to Hantavirus. 


 MS. MUNN: No real roadblocks there, 


everybody's going to -- 


MS. WHITE: No, no, I don't see any roadblocks 


in terms of --


 MS. MUNN: Thank you. 


MS. WHITE: -- any of the parties we're working 


with. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Libby. 


SCIENCE AND OVERARCHING TECHNICAL ISSUES UPDATES
 

DR. JAMES NETON, NIOSH/OCAS
 

We want to return to our regular agenda here 


for now, and we're going to ask Jim Neton if he 

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would come and make his presentation. Jim. 


UNIDENTIFIED: Excuse me, Dr. Ziemer, may I 


make one comment about the Mound records? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, a comment --


UNIDENTIFIED: Very briefly. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- about the Mound records, and 


identify yourself. This gentleman has --


UNIDENTIFIED: Yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- worked at Mound for a number of 


years. 


 MR. SHEEHAN: My name is Warren Sheehan. I was 


an employee at the Mound Center or Mound Lab 


for 33 years. The first 16 years was in health 


physics. I had responsibilities in survey. 


Most of the time, though, I was in dosimetry. 


And I am somewhat familiar with the records 


there, and I just want to make a firm statement 


that as far as I know -- now keep in mind, I 


left health physics in 1972, so what happened 


after that, I don't know. But from the 


practices that we had initially, there's no way 


I could understand that the records were ever 


contaminated -- health records. And if they 


were contaminated, they were contaminated after 


they left Mound --

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120

 DR. ZIEMER: Well --


 MR. SHEEHAN: -- period. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. There's actually two 


sets of records. The ones which they're 


referring to that were contaminated are the Los 


Alamos ones. The Mound ones -- it's suspected 


that they've been buried in a contaminated 


site. 


 MR. SHEEHAN: Site, right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: So the records themselves may not 


have been contaminated, we don't -- I don't 


think we know that, do we? 


 MR. ELLIOTT: We do know that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, we do know that? Okay. Let 


me --


 MR. GIBSON: Paul? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, hang on, Mike. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: We do know that they -- the Mound 


records -- some of the Mound records were 


contaminated. In fact, I believe Cheryl 


Kirkwood -- her name's been mentioned here 


already -- who worked at -- for Mound and DOE 


at the time as a records manager, was involved 


in -- she and several others, as we understand 


it, listening to her, were involved in scanning 

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radiation-contaminated records in some elevator 


vault that they sealed off for that purpose so 


that they could -- they could get it -- capture 


the images of those contaminated records and 


make a non-contaminated record. And the 


contaminated portion of that 450 boxes were 


moved and buried to -- in -- in Los Alamos. 


 DR. ZIEMER: So that -- that explains why they 


were buried then in a low level waste site, so 


apparently were -- somehow got contaminated. 


 MR. SHEEHAN: The records, in and of 


themselves, I can hardly believe were 


contaminated. Maybe the boxes -- in other 


words, after it was boxed up and stored in an 


area during all the demolition work -- you 


know, dust on them, somebody come along with an 


alpha meter and say, hey, these are 


contaminated. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, however --


 MR. SHEEHAN: Who knows. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, thank you. Mike --


 MR. GIBSON: Dr. Ziemer? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Last comment on this and 


then we're going ahead. Go ahead. 


 MR. GIBSON: Yes, as far as -- as far as what 

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I've uncovered and read, some of the boxes were 


stored in T -- technical building and had some 


low level radiation. There were also several 


boxes stored in the records management area, 


which was a non-contaminated building, non-


posted building as far as radiological reasons. 


Those boxes I personally witnessed being 


transported out of that building and put into 


the radioactive LSA boxes and onto a semi and 


shipped to Los Alamos. And a number of those 


boxes have health physics records, incident 


records and the records that were -- were 


contaminated were log-- health physics surveyor 


logbooks. So you know, one of my questions is 


how did a health physics surveyor's logbook get 


contaminated if in fact there were not poor 


radiological controls. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Well, right now we have to 


consider that as a rhetorical question which we 


can't answer --


 MR. GIBSON: Absolutely. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- but yeah. Thank you. We're 


going to move on now to the presentation on 


science and overarching technical issues, Dr. 


Neton. Glad to have Jim with us. 

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DR. NETON: Good morning. I'm really pleased 


to be here addressing the Board after a -- I 


think missing the last couple of meetings and 


it's my pleasure to be here and present the 


update on the science/technical issues. It's 


been -- sort of become a standard agenda item 


on -- on the Board's -- at the Board's meetings 


as of late. 


I think at the -- at the last meeting that I 


missed -- it was held in Las Vegas -- a little 


bit of confusion arose in the presentation as 


to what we really consider to be the relevant 


scientific and technical issues that we are 


tracking within -- within NIOSH. And I -- I 


presented briefly on this at the Board's 


conference call -- the last conference call, 


but I'd just like to sort of go over this a 


little bit more in some additional detail. 


The issues that we're tracking really now 


encompass two main topic areas. One is those 


that are evaluated -- that were originally 


determined by the Board's working group on IREP 


and scientific issues that -- I went back in 


the transcripts and figured out that that 


convened back in February, 2005, so it was 

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about two years ago we held that meeting. And 


if you recall, it was sort of a consolidation 


of the Board's -- what the Board considered to 


be relevant science issues and what NIOSH 


considered to be relevant science issues. The 


two -- the two were merged and consolidated 


into seven issues that were identified. 


At that time SC&A was not real far into the 


dose reconstruction issue, so by the nature of 


the -- of the review, where -- where we were, 


almost all those issues were related to risk 


model calculations. That is, IREP and 


calculations associated with the risk models. 


Subsequent to that, and SC&A has been doing a 


lot of dose reconstruction reviews, site 


profile reviews, a number of overarching 


technical issues have been identified that are 


really relevant to dose reconstruction 


themselves. SC&A is not specifically going out 


and looking at the risk models. They were 


identified during the review process, and -- 


and again, those are dose reconstruction-


related, so there's sort of a separate list, 


but they were identified at least at one site 


and determined to be relevant at multiple -- 

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potentially multiple sites. 


So I'm going to speak to both of these -- these 


lists and briefly go over the -- what I call 


the IREP and scientific issues, where we are 


with these seven issues, and then go into the 


overarching science issues and try to present 


at least some status -- an update on a couple 


of issues where we've made progress. I know a 


lot of these presentations have been here is -- 


we're working on these things, and it's my 


intent as we go forward with these 


presentations to at least provide some status 


report on where we've made some progress. 


 The seven issues that you see on the slide 


here, the IREP and scientific issues, are not 


new. They've been there for some time. 


The incorporation of worker -- nuclear worker 


studies into the epidemiological analysis; that 


is how relevant are the Hiroshima and Nagasaki 


studies compared to some of the studies that 


have been done at DOE sites relevant to 


internal exposures, particularly for actinides, 


that sort of thing. 


 The smoking adjustment for lung cancer we'll 


talk about. 

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126

 The Board also identified the grouping of rare 


and miscellaneous cancers as an issue. 


The relevance of the age at exposure, there's 


been some studies that have shown that the risk 


model may be different depending upon what age 


you were exposed at in the workforce. That is, 


older workers may be more compromised by 


radiation exposures than younger workers. 


 Interaction with workplace exposures; that is 


are there synergistic interactions with 


chemicals and other agents in the workplace 


with radiation that would make the cancer more 


likely. 


 One that we've been working on quite a bit, the 


addition of the chronic lymphocytic leukemia to 


the covered cancers, at least the evaluation of 


that, should we add that. 


And then finally the dose and dose rate 


effectiveness factor adjustment, and I'll 


briefly go over each of these issues. 


The nuclear studies we've been working on for 


quite some time now, and you see identified on 


the slide here three phases that -- three 


phases of this work. Phase one, which is 


underway and is essentially complete actually 

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right now, is the collec-- the nuclear -- 


evaluate the quantity and quality of the data 


available. There are a lot of studies out 


there. Brant Ulsh took this on when he first 


joined the science staff in OCAS, and he has 


done an excellent job of assembling a little 


over 200 studies that specifically deal with 


radiation exposure and risk in the nuclear 


workforce. 


The second phase is to -- is to move into the 


evaluation of the feasibility of some metaanalysis. Each study in and of itself might 


not be complete enough to come to some firm 


conclusions as to what the risk adjustments 


might be for the nuclear workers. But taken in 


-- in a conglomerated fashion with a metaanalysis, we may be able to make some more 


conclusive -- arrive at some more conclusive 


opinions. 


I -- I would like to point out, we do have a 


new member on our staff, that's Dr. Maxia Dong, 


and she's -- this is one of the first projects 


that she's heading up for us. Maxia's standing 


at the back of the room there -- wave your hand 


so everybody can see you. Dr. Dong comes to us 

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by way of CDC in Atlanta, with over 20 years 


experience. She holds both an M.D. degree and 


a Ph.D. in epidemiology, and we're really 


looking forward to her contributions on this 


project. She's made a lot of -- lot of good 


inroads already. There are two -- two 


particular areas where Dr. Dong will be 


working. One is in this meta-analysis area and 


the other one we've tasked her with is -- is 


working on the chronic lymphocytic leukemia 


model that we'll talk about in a little bit. 


 And the meta-analysis we're undertaking right 


now and Dr. Dong is working on that, and then 


phase three will be to compare any findings 


with the analysis of the IREP cancer risk model 


groupings, are they significantly different, 


have the meta-analyses, you know, revealed 


something that we need to take into 


consideration and modify IREP itself to be more 


of an occupational -- occupational data risk -- 


risk base. 


 The smoking adjustment/lung cancer issue we -- 


we vetted with the Board some time ago. In a 


sense we combined the lung cancer risk models 


from the NIH-IREP and the NIOSH-IREP in the 

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sense that the NIH-IREP calculated the 


adjustments for smoking somewhat differently, 


based on the Pearson* analysis. And based on 


solicitation of expert opinions and internal 


deliberation within NIOSH and SENES, our -- our 


risk assessment contractor, essentially, we had 


made the decision to use both models 


simultaneously, if you recall. Run both 


models, and the model that delivered a higher 


probability of causation calculation would be 


the one that would be used in the analysis. 


We've done that on -- we adopted that in 


February, 2006. We are now going through, as 


we will for any of these type of changes, going 


back and looking at previous cases that have 


been denied by the Department of Labor to make 


sure that the change in this model did not 


necessarily affect their outcome or their -- 


their decision. We've identified over 900 


prior lung cancer cases that needed to be 


reworked. Fortunately this is a computerized 


setup. You run both models and compare the 


analyses. It's somewhat tedious, but not as 


bad as redoing an entire dose reconstruction 


because it only involves the risk model 

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calculation. And thus far -- we're almost 


finished with this; I think we're within a 


matter of a week or two away from completing 


this entire analysis -- and the -- the final 


result was there's minimal impact on any 


compensation outcomes. So there'll be a few, 


but out of 900 cases, we were actually somewhat 


surprised that the impact was as small as it 


was in this issue. 


The Board did pass a motion at the time that we 


adopted these two lung models to instruct us 


that we should keep looking at these models to 


see if any new evidence warrants change in the 


future. That is, do we want to keep running 


these two models simultaneously or eventually 


would we feel comfortable in adopting a single 


approach, and we'll continue to look at that. 


As far as the background cancer incident rates, 


we have -- we're going to review that in 


conjunction with the IREP cancer grouping 


adjustments that I'll talk about later. 


And that is the next slide, grouping of rare 


and miscellaneous cancers. It was the sense of 


the Board, and NIOSH as well, that you know, 


some of these groupings might need to be re­
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evaluated to see if they made sense to be put 


in different pots, so to speak. We -- we met 


with SENES, our contractor, several times on 


this issue in 2005/2006 to try to see what it 


makes sense to do. In addition to the general 


cancer groupings, we also reviewed our IREP's 


all male genitalia model, which includes 


prostate cancer. So you have -- the reason 


these are grouped is there was a decision made 


by those developing the risk models that we 


needed at least -- I think it's 50 cancers to 


have enough statistics to be able to come up 


with a risk model. So to get 50 cancers in 


certain groups, one needed to group types of 


cancers, essentially by biological endpoint, to 


get some statistical power on these -- these 


analyses. 


We've looked at these. The question is if any 


grouped cancers could be separated out and 


modeled individually -- you know, can we do 


that; and then what would the effect be. And 


the end result is the effect would be somewhat 


variable -- some increase in PC, some decrease 


in PCs. We also need to look at where we are 


with the -- the groupings. The way these were 

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grouped, for example, prostate cancer is 


included in the all male genitalia group. If 


we were to pull it out, then that would 


seriously affect the risk model for all male 


genitalia, and now you have two models. Do you 


leave the prostate cancer in that total group 


and pull it out and model it separately -- you 


know, how do you handle that and -- and make it 


equitable for all parties, and we're wrestling 


with those types of ideas right now. The 


consensus at this point, though, is we're -- 


we're going to continue to review this and 


we're going to do this in conjunction with our 


evaluation of the BEIR VII findings that have 


come out fairly recently. 


 Okay, I've summarized the last four on one -- 


one slide here, the other IREP topics. The age 


at exposure, we have decided to review that in 


conjunction with our BEIR VII review, which is 


ongoing with SENES Oak Ridge at this time. 


 The interaction with other workplace exposures, 


we originally looked at this in some detail, 


and there's -- there's a real paucity of data 


out there to inform us on these synergistic 


risk models, just the interacti-- just modeling 

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the radiation alone is difficult enough. When 


you start entering synergistic interactions 


with chemicals such as benzene and asbestos and 


others, it -- it becomes a statistical morass, 


but we are looking at that at this time, though 


we are not actively pursuing this. 


Chronic lymphocytic leukemia remains in a 


predecisional stage. We -- we -- I reported 


before that we have a prototype CLL risk model, 


we're reviewing it. Dr. Dong is looking 


through it at this point. One issue that we 


need to determine, though, is what is the 


appropriate target organ for dose 


reconstruction. It would seem intuit-- it 


would seem intuitive obvi-- intuitively obvious 


at the beginning that one would just pick the 


red bone marrow as the dose reconstruct-- organ 


to dose reconstruct for chronic lymphocytic 


leukemia. It's not necessarily the case. 


There is some lymphatic tissue involvement 


here. So then if one needs to reconstruct the 


lymphatic dose versus the red bone marrow dose, 


it can make huge differences in the end result 


for the claimant. We've asked Dr. Dong to work 


with scientists in this area to try to come to 

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some conclusion on this. It turns out it's not 


obvious. We've asked -- we've gone through a 


number of scientific publications. We've 


polled a few practitioners, a hematologist and 


such, and there does not seem to be a 


definitive answer that we can put our finger on 


at this time, but -- but we are working towards 


that. 


Dose rate/dose rate effectiveness factor, SENES 


Oak Ridge has completed an extensive review of 


the IREP assumptions and distributions. That 


is, they brought their review of the literature 


up to the current date. We're going to review 


this pending looking at the new Radiation 


Effects Research Foundation data and the BEIR 


VII data. 


But I will say that SENES has put together a 


fairly nice comprehensive overview of this 


DDREF issue that's been submitted for 


publication in Health Physics and should be 


coming out in the very near term. That's a 


shortened version; I think the Health Physics
 

version may be 20 to 30 pages. We also have a 


250-page document that summarizes it in quite a 


bit of detail. 

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 I just summarized here on this slide the four 


changes that we've made to the NIOSH-IREP model 


since the inception of the program by year. 


You might recall in 2003 we modified the 


leukemia and thyroid models to confer some risk 


down to zero years post exposure. I think in 


the beginning we had a -- it was all or 


nothing. It was zero risk and then there was 


some risk conferred, and now this is more 


consistent I think with what we do with solid 


tumors where we have an S-shaped curve that 


ramps up over time. It's almost zero at -- at 


the exposure period, and then it kind of ramps 


up in an S-shaped fashion. That was added. 


We removed the risk reduction factor for 


thyroid cancer for exposures prior to age 20. 


That had to do with modeling of the -- of the 


risk related to medical exposures. If you 


recall, a lot of the thyroid cancers were 


modeled using medical exposure criteria and 


those involved X-rays. One has different 


quality factors for the X-rays versus high 


energy gammas. So we've gone back and looked 


at that and the risk reduction was taken out. 


I think all these have been discussed with the 

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Board in the past. 


Again in 2005 we modified the latency 


adjustment for bone cancer to reflect a shorter 


latency. We -- it was our opinion that that 


latency period needed to be shortened somewhat. 


And then as I talked -- I just discussed, we 


implemented the combined lung cancer risk model 


by adding the alternative NIH lung model in 


2006. 


Thus far for each of these four changes, 


they've all been claimant favorable in the 


sense that there's been no reduction in 


probability of causation for any possible set 


of inputs for any claimant, so they've all been 


to the benefit of the claimant so far. 


Okay, that sums up the -- what I call the risk 


model changes. 


 The overarching issues list -- I think the last 


time I talked to the Board about this, we had 


eight issues. We're now up to ten. Most of 


these you've seen before. I've identified the 


issue, as well as I've tried to pick out where 


the issue was first identified and what reviews 


-- what prompted us to add this issue or to 


become aware of this issue. Most of these, as 

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you can see, were related to, you know, the 


Board's review process with SC&A. 


It's no surprise, I think, that the oro-nasal 


breathing and workplace ingestion came out of 


the Bethlehem Steel site profile review. Hot 


particles was identified in NTS. 


 Non-standard external exposures, that is 


exposures to different geometries, the badges 


worn on the chest. And as we heard yesterday, 


I think someone from Fernald was commenting if 


your head's inside a piece of equipment, how -- 


how accurate is that reading on the badge. At 


Mallinckrodt it -- it was brought up by SC&A 


and we've -- we've fixed this already, at least 


for Mallinckrodt, that if you're working in a 


contaminated area of a planar source, we now 


have corrections to adjust for the planar 


source to the effect it has on the badge. 


I think these two, assumptions for unmonitored 


workers and cohort badging -- my original 


reaction was Ames, and then I -- the more I 


thought about it, it actually was Iowa, the 


Iowa Army Ammunition Plant is where these two 


issues first surfaced. I had Iowa on my mind, 


but got the wrong site. 

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 Interpretation of unworn badges -- that is 


people who left their badges in the locker, 


that sort of thing -- was first brought up in 


our Hanford review. 


Tracking of materials throughout the complex 


was something that Brad Clawson on the Board 


brought up in the deliberations -- I think it 


was the NTS site profi-- no -- yeah, it had to 


do with NTS and the RaLa, the radioactive 


lanthanum that was -- was present at Los Alamos 


but it was manufactured at -- at INEEL, and we 


are now tracking that -- we're now trying to 


put together a position so that we make sure 


that when we identify these unique sets of 


exposures, the material must have come from -- 


us-- typically came from some other source, 


whether it be Y-12 or Los Alamos or whatever. 


We want to make sure we close the loop on these 


unique exposure scenarios. This happened at 


Rocky Flats most recently where we had thorium 


surrogate parts shipped from Y-12 over to Rocky 


Flats for testing and we -- we need to go back 


and make sure that the Y-12 site profile talks 


about those thorium parts. 


The two that I've added to the list since the 

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last time we talked are the internal dose from 


super -- super type S plutonium, which was 


originally brought up in the Rocky Flats 


profile. It's now become a complex-wide issue 


and I -- I will report briefly on the status of 


that, and I think we've got a good solution to 


this problem. 


 And this issue, thoriated welding rods, just 


emerged at the last Rocky Flats working group 


meeting -- that's a very productive working 


group; to add things to our list, anyways -- 


has to do with welding rods themselves. Not 


all of them, but many of them contain a certain 


amount of thorium, sometimes three to four 


percent thorium -- I assume by weight -- and 


consuming those welding rods doing your job, of 


course, you generate a -- some potential for 


exposure. So the workers -- this came out at 


the meeting. We agreed that this is not just a 


Rocky Flats issue. Welding occurred at -- 


throughout the complex. We're going to 


investigate this issue and -- and make -- see 


what we need to do, if anything, to amend our ­

- our treatment of exposures to particularly 


construction type workers or trades workers who 

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were involved in welding operations. 


Thus far it's kind of a mixed bag on that. The 


-- turns out that the Nuclear Regulatory 


Commission exempts thoriated welding rods from 


regulation, which kind of leads you to believe 


that the potential exposure's probably pretty 


low, but it's certainly not going to be zero. 


So we need to -- we need to figure out how to 


meld this into our system somehow and deal with 


it. 


Okay, I'm going to go over the two issues 


related to Bethlehem Steel, oro-nasal breathing 


and ingestion, and then talk about super S. 


These are three areas where I think we've made 


some progress and I'd just like to -- to throw 


out there for the Board's knowledge. 


 We've been working on this oro-nasal breathing 


issue for quite some time. I think you all 


know that we've asked -- tasked EG&G to work on 


this for us. They've completed a literature 


search as of last month. They've collected 


more than 80 publications that were identified, 


collected and reviewed. Interestingly, there ­

- there were some very good publications they 


gleaned from the literature, directly 

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applicable to steel mill environments. We did 


not have knowledge of these things when we were 


first doing the Bethlehem Steel site profile. 


And it also includes some very good estimates 


of work practices and ventilation rates. That 


is, they went through and actually measured 


steel workers doing different -- doing 


different operations. 


As a result of that, we're not -- we're going 


to not only evaluate the oro-nasal breathing 


issue, which is what percentage of the worker 


breathe through their mouths and do they get 


higher exposures, but also the appropriateness 


of the default ventilation rates, particularly 


in a steel mill environment. As you may or may 


not know, the -- as the ventilation rate -- the 


breathing rate increases, the difference 


between oro-nasal breathing and regular 


breathing diminishes. In other words, the 


heavier you breathe, the more people breathe 


through their mouth anyways, so we need to look 


at that in context of how that plays out at a 


steel mill environment where people are 


breathing heavily anyways and look at the 


delta. There is no doubt in our mind that -- 

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that breathing through the mouth definitely, in 


many circumstances, can deliver a higher dose 


per unit, you know, intake to the worker 


because you're not filtering out through the 


nasal passages. 


 We're getting very close on that. I think the 


last time I presented we were hoping to be done 


by the end of January. We're now projecting 


this will be done by the end of February. 


Workplace ingestion is another one of those 


issues that we debated pretty -- pretty heavily 


with SC&A. There's many publications out 


there, particularly from the EPA, that talk 


about sort of ancillary ingestion from -- you 


know, in the -- in the home environment and 


thereabouts from fields -- you know, 


environmental kinds of ingestion as opposed to 


occupations. There are -- there are very few 


studies out there that deal specifically with 


occupational ingestion, so we're kind of 


pushing the envelope forward here in this area. 


EG&G was able to pull out 35 what we consider 


to be directly applicable references. We --


we've got a model structure in place now that 


we're going to use. It's going to be initially 

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applicable only to uranium because that's where 


we've got the most data. Uranium tends to be ­

- have been distributed the most -- the most 


contamination, just being the heavy metal that 


it is, as opposed to plutonium and those types 


of nuclides, so it's easier to model. And this 


model's going to be based on the coefficients 


and transfer factors that we found in this -- 


in this literature review. And of course we're 


going to do our best to incorporate the 


uncertainty in the model itself. And again, we 


predict this is hopefully going to be finished 


by the end of February as well. 


I throw out here just a -- a starting point for 


the ingestion model. It's -- it's a fairly 


simplistic box model. You can go through it 


yourself, but it -- sort of a two-way, you 


know, intercompartmental transfer model that 


one can model if you've got the right 


coefficients and the surface areas and that 


sort of thing. One thing that might be missing 


here that we need to add, and this is something 


that we debated a long time with SC&A, is to 


what extent can you model airborne -- airborne 


concentrations in the plant depositing on the 

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surfaces. And we feel we can do that. We've 


got some data to incorporate that. 


Our intent is to develop this model and then 


semi-- empirically validate it to the extent 


possible, relying on some bioassay results that 


we've -- we have from -- from places like 


Fernald and other uranium facilities where one 


can speculate how much did the person ingest, 


and you can look at the urine and see if that 


actually does bound your -- your analyses. 


Okay, super S. I think this is a really 


interesting story. It's the last one I want to 


talk about today, but the original lung model, 


the ICRP-30 lung model, had clearance halftimes which combined both solubility and 


mechanical clearance from the lung. There's 


only two ways you can get material out of the 


lung when you breathe it in. You either -- 


dissolves in your lung, gets in your 


bloodstream, or it's mechanically cleared and 


swallowed. 


The new lung model separated those two, and now 


you have a solubility component and a clearance 


component that can be modeled separately. In 


the ICRP-66 model this type S, so-called slow ­
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- there's a F, M, S, fast, medium and slow, 


there's nothing tricky about those 


designations. Slow is the default model and 


it's the default for what we -- what's 


considered very sparingly soluble material. 


Well, it turns out that if you look across the 


complex, and Rocky Flats is a good poster child 


for this, there are forms of plutonium that 


dissolve much more slowly than anything super ­

- anything type S would -- would predict. 


The reasons for that are really unclear. It's 


not -- it's not necessarily that the material 


is more soluble -- or less soluble. It may be 


that it's -- there's physiologic damage done to 


the lung. There may be that there's unique 


cases out there of people who have differential 


clearance that are different than the normal 


population. It's not really clear why this 


material stays where it does. Nonetheless, we 


have very good evidence of -- of this type of 


material being in existence. Those that were 


involved in the 1965 Rocky Flats fire are a 


good example. But it's not just rela-- not 


just confined to fire workers, which is 


originally what we thought. Now there's -- 

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anyone working with plutonium in the oxide form 


has a potential to have inhaled this very 


insoluble plutonium. 


We also have evidence from the U.S. 


Transuranium and Uranium Registries where 


they've looked at autopsy tissue and found more 


plutonium in the lungs than would have been 


predicted, based on the standard models. 


There's also evidence out there -- as I 


mentioned, the USTUR, but the Mayak facility, 


which is the Russian equivalent to Hanford. 


There are a number of people there with large 


amounts of plutonium in their lungs, and this 


is where they speculate that it might be 


related to fibrotic lesions being created by 


the high specific activity of the plutonium 


irradiating the lung and just -- just causing 


physiologic tissue damage and making it less -- 


less capable of -- of removing the particulate. 


 Then again this just talks about how some -- 


some of these may be bound to the lung and are 


not cleared by physical means. 


We took all these issues and -- and we said 


well, our current approach might not be as 


claimant favorable as we thought using super -- 

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using S. So we developed this OTIB-49, which 


estimated -- which is titled "Estimated Lung 


Doses from Plutonium Strongly Retained in the 


Lung." That relied on cases from Rocky Flats 


and Hanford. There were I think nine cases 


from Rocky Flats and one from Hanford that were 


selected because they had exhibited this very 


long retention time in the lung and they were 


fairly well documented with bioassay. It turns 


out that there were two cases out of those ten 


design cases that really stood out among the 


other ones as being extremely insoluble 


compared to the others, and those were selected 


to develop the -- the new approach for -- for 


analyzing super S. 


 And essentially we're not developing a new 


model here because the models are the models. 


We have tried to develop a bounding scenario 


that we could use based on these very insoluble 


cases to bound what a person's exposure could 


be for any organ, not just the lung -- the 


lung, the systemic organs, the tracheal-


bronchial lymphs nodes, the GI tract -- all 


those organs need to be -- be assessed in some 


way. It turns out that it's not just 

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solubility that drives this. It's kind of 


interesting. You can -- you can turn off -- 


you can make the insol-- make the chemical 


dissolution infinite in the sense it's not 


leaving the lungs by chemical means, and the 


mechanical transport portion of the ICRP model 


will still clear it faster than -- than what's 


-- what's your -- observed, so there's clearly 


something else going on besides just 


solubility. 


 Anyway, we took these ten design cases, took 


the two highest of the design cases -- that is 


the case from Hanford, Hanford -- so-called 


Hanford-1 and Rocky Flats-874 -- and used those 


to model -- to predict what the exposures would 


be to workers if they were exposed to that type 


of plutonium. We have developed a series of 


factors and tables that are in this document. 


It's about a 50-page TIB that goes through and 


provides in some detail what the projected 


exposures were. 


I just -- I give you a little bit of a -- a 


snapshot into how -- how this works. If one 


looks at the bottom curve here, the green curve 


I think it is, that's what would one predict if 

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it was just a normal -- this is excretion of 


the urine over time, days post-intake. The 


green curve is what you would predict coming 


out in the urine from zero to 18,000 days -- 


that's 50 years -- from -- if it was purely 


type S material. 


The blue curve and the red curve represent the 


two most insoluble cases, HAN-1 and Rocky 


Flats-872. And if one takes the sup-- type S 


material and multiplies it times -- multiplies 


it times four, you get this upper curve, and 


that's what we believe is a bounding analysis 


to assign these workers as far as excretion 


goes. So we would take and analyze for type S 


and then multiply it times a factor of four and 


assume, over all time periods, we've bounded 


that person's excretion, even though in these 


later years we're over-predicting a little bit. 


We just don't know the model is that robust and 


that accurate to be able to just, you know, 


pick these differences over every time 


interval. It became somewhat cumbersome so we 


just adopted a factor of four, and this is for 


a chronic exposure scenario. 


The next one represents what would be predicted 

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for an acute, and again a factor of four bounds 


the expected excretion at all times, except for 


this little blip in the beginning for an acute 


intake, which we feel we can handle in incident 


situations separately. 


So that's pretty much what we have for the 


OTIB-49. That has been issued and it's -- it's 


being applied complex-wide. It's not just for 


Rocky Flats. It would be used at places like 


Savannah River, Los Alamos, Hanford -- Savannah 


River, I guess that's about it. 


And this is a summary of one of the tables 


right out of there, which is how the 


adjustments are made. You see the factor of 


four for urine analysis, and these Table B 


adjustments are just adjustments for the lung, 


how much was in the lung. You do a normal type 


S calculation, and then the adjustment factor 


for the dose to the lung is provided in these 


tables out to 65 years post-intake. 


We think it's a pretty -- a pretty interesting 


approach to this. I don't think anybody's ever 


done anything close to this before, and I think 


it's a very unique solution to a somewhat 


difficult problem. 

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And that's all I have to say. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Jim, for that update. 


Could I ask about the ingestion model where it 


implies at least that the surfaces you're 


looking at are things like tables and so on. 


What about floors and resuspension from walking 


and subsequent inhalation as opposed to 


contaminated hands and so on? Is that a 


separate thing that --


DR. NETON: That's a separate issue. That 


would -- the resuspension would contribute to 


the surface contamination itself -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


DR. NETON: -- and then you eat it, but there's 


also a -- an inhalation component of the 


resuspension model that -- that we -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right, that's --


DR. NETON: -- we're working on. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- that -- so --


DR. NETON: That would be separate and apart 


from this one. 


 DR. ZIEMER: This is on-- you're only looking 


at the --


DR. NETON: Contamination transfer from -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- tabletop and --

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DR. NETON: -- the hands to the mouth. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- hands and so on in this 


particular one. Right? 


DR. NETON: Right. It turns out that in most 


of these actinide exposure scenarios the dose 


from the ingestion pathway is fairly small, but 


it's not zero so we need to definitely address 


it. This is one of the main omissions we had 


when we first started doing this was we -- we 


assumed it was negligible and it's -- it's not 


exactly negligible, but it's not huge, either. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Roessler and then Dr. Melius. 


DR. ROESSLER: I have a couple of comments and 


a couple of questions. My first comment is on 


your slide that talks about the grouping of 


cancers, and I think it was the very first 


meeting of this Board where this topic came up, 


and I think there was some concern at that time 


as to whether the groupings were correct or 


not, so that's a long time. And I think also 


at that meeting the emphasis was given on using 


the very best science in this project. And we 


talk about so many other things, all very 


important things, but I'm glad to see that 


NIOSH is still continuing to -- to address the 

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best science. So I -- I think that's a -- a 


good thing to be following. 


I do have a question on that one, though, and 


what is -- and I haven't read BEIR VII, I have 


to admit that. Does BEIR VII group -- or do 


they have groupings that will shed some light 


on this? 


DR. NETON: Not necessarily groupings, but 


individual comments on certain risk models that 


we might be able to look at and pull them out 


separately. I -- I've forgotten the exact -- 


they didn't model all that many organs, but 


there -- there's a number that we can go in and 


look at and see how they might -- they might 


play out, but I haven't looked at that in a 


while myself, either, to be honest. 


DR. ROESSLER: The other area that I wanted to 


comment on or ask a question about is with 


regard to chronic lymphocytic leukemia. And 


again there, I think this is using the best 


science possible and I'm a bit out of date on 


that, but I don't know of any reference to or 


relationship between CLL and radiation. I'm 


pleased to see you have an MD/PhD on board and 


she's smiling; apparently she knows of some 

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more recent information. I -- what I've read 


is that there is a relationship between CLL and 


insecticides and herbicides and there may be a 


family disposition toward it, but is there new 


information that there is some relationship 


with radiation exposure? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, do you have a --


DR. NETON: Well, I don't know if Maxia wants 


to speak to this or not, she's fairly new on 


the staff --


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, (unintelligible) -- 


DR. NETON: -- but there are -- there are a few 


studies that -- that make some linkage. Of 


course one -- one study in itself doesn't 


necessarily become conclusive. 


 DR. MCKEEL: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


DR. NETON: Steve Wayne*, but that was a review 


-- essentially the -- the opinion -- it comes 


down on the side of -- it's not that you can't 


-- not that CLL is not related to radiation, 


you can't prove it isn't. Okay? And then --


then you have -- you get in the position of 


saying is there a different mechanism that 


radiation would work on CLL that's different 


than all other radiation-induced cancers. And 

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we solicited expert opinions on this, five 


different expert opinions, and the cons-- the 


consensus among those was that you can't. You 


can't say that the biological damage done by 


ionizing radiation that caused CLL could be any 


different than any other radiogenic cancer. 


It's just the power in these statistical tests. 


CLL is such a -- it's so hard to pick up in the 


population, partly because the diagnosis was 


pretty poor early on, but the statistical -- 


statistically you can't show an association, 


but biologically it's hard to come up with a 


reason why it's not plausible, let's put it 


that way. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Maxia, do you have any other 


comments on that? 


 DR. DONG: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: You need to come to the mike. 


 DR. DONG: I think the experts -- the review on 


the CLL and radiation exposure come out also 


differently. One review I think said we can't 


exclude CLL as -- by review of European -- the 


category of CLL is -- belongs to the 


classification or the group (unintelligible) is 


the same as lymphoma, which is included. So if 

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we exclude CLL won't be fair if we include 


lymphoma but exclude CLL same time so because 


same (unintelligible) -- or same 


(unintelligible). Try to think about other 


things -- so I -- I think -- yeah, that's -- 


DR. NETON: I think that's pretty much where 


we're at. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Gen, did that 


complete your question? 


Okay, Dr. Melius. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, couple of questions. One, I 


would -- glad to see you're making progress and 


really do ap-- appreciate the report and the 


up-- the update and it -- the -- the last set 


of slides -- I missed that part of the meeting 


and you -- you were absent from the meeting and 


we were -- actually had a -- got a slide that 


actually said that BEIR VII wasn't out yet and 


had me very confused -- like waiting on BEIR 


VII, so -- but I thought, you know, I'd missed 


something or whatever -- a year of my life had 


gone or something, but -- but anyway, by that. 


I think one of the issues that I certainly urge 


you to keep moving along, it appears to be 


getting some priority, is this whole issue of 

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the occupational studies. That was actually a 


mandate that was in original -- in the original 


legislation and I -- I think it's a -- you 


know, a concern we all have and it -- would 


like to be able to say one way or the other is 


are -- is the basic approach we're using 


properly taking into account the fact that 


these are workplace exposures and could -- 


could affect this one -- one way or the other ­

- that. 


My other question is with the -- in OTIB-49, 


the last part of your presentation is -- in 


that -- is that something that SC&A is 


reviewing? Is that one of the procedures 

they're --

DR. NETON: Yes. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- looking at? Okay. 

DR. NETON: Yeah. 

 DR. MELIUS: 'Cause I -- just thing on that -- 

I think it's helpful for all of us to have peer 


review, and I'd also urge you to get that -- I 


think that as a scientific publication. It 


sounds like --


DR. NETON: I agree, I think it's -- 


 DR. MELIUS: -- interesting work and ought to 

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be getting out into the scientific literature 


also. 


DR. NETON: I definitely agree with you. SC&A 


is -- they're essentially complete with their 


review of TIB-49. I mean it's -- there's only 


one little piece left, which is are these 


bounding cases truly bounding. We made a 


decision to release it because if anything 


would change it would be some of these 


coefficients a little bit, but the general 


approach -- I think they -- they are okay with. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. John Poston? 


 DR. POSTON: Jim, good to see you back again. 


DR. NETON: Thank you. 


 DR. POSTON: I wanted to clarify a couple of 


things that -- hopefully you misspoke, but if 


you didn't, then I need to be educated. 


On the oro-nasal breathing, you indicated that 


this would indica-- this would increase the 


dose per unit intake, and I don't think that's 


correct. It would increase the dose, but I 


don't think it would -- 


DR. NETON: Not the unit intake. It would 


increase the intake itself -- 


 DR. POSTON: Yes. 

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DR. NETON: -- per -- per --


 DR. POSTON: It would increase --


DR. NETON: -- (unintelligible), actually. 


 DR. POSTON: Yeah, and so that would increase 


the dose. 


DR. NETON: Yeah. 


 DR. POSTON: But per unit intake, the dose is 


going to be roughly the same. 


DR. NETON: Well, it depends on what per unit ­

- if it's per breath, I guess it would go -- 


but you're -- you're right --


 DR. POSTON: I'm just trying to understand 


because --


DR. NETON: You essentially don't have the 


filtration of the nasal passages and it would 


go directly to deposition -- 


 DR. POSTON: Right. 


DR. NETON: -- in the deep lung. 


 DR. POSTON: Right. One other question about 


your ingestion model. I don't know if you can 


get it back up there, but I was a little 


confused about one of the -- one of the 


pathways, and I just -- a five-second 


explanation will make me very happy. 


(Pause) 

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160 

In the lower right-hand corner where it says 


oral --


DR. NETON: Uh-huh. 


 DR. POSTON: -- there happens to be an arrow 


going back to surfaces. Is that for 


expectoration or something or what is that? 


How does it go past the intake boundary back 


out to the surfaces? 


DR. NETON: I think that's what it says, 


spitting out of saliva is -- is next to the 


arrow there. 


 DR. POSTON: Well, I wasn't sure whether that 


was associated with that particular line or 


not, that's why I'm asking for a clarification. 


DR. NETON: I think so. I think --


 DR. POSTON: Okay, I'm happy. I just wanted to 


understand the model. 


DR. NETON: Expectoration does happen. 

 DR. POSTON: Oh, yes, I know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Sneezing. 

DR. NETON: Sneezing. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Or whatever. 

 DR. POSTON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

 DR. POSTON: Thank you. 
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161

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Phillip. 


 MR. SCHOFIELD: (Off microphone) 


(Unintelligible) a few questions 


(unintelligible) (on microphone) actually loom 


large in Los Alamos's SEC. One is the issue of 


secondhand smoke, how it affects the lung and 


the modeling of these people who were not 


smokers but they were -- coworkers were always 


issued cigarettes, as many as they wanted, and 


they were confined to small areas during these 


times during these lunch breaks, and they -- 


not only would there be a lot of smokers, but 


they also would drink coffee, eat donuts, eat 


sandwiches, all at this time. How is that 


going to affect the lung models for the nonsmokers? It has definitely got to be an issue 


there, secondhand smoke and how it's going to 


affect their intakes. 


DR. NETON: Well, there's a couple of things. 


One is it -- secondhand smoke would definitely 


af-- should affect their chance of developing 


cancer, if that's what you're saying. But 


you're talking about the -- the impairment of 


the mechan-- the clearance of the lungs from 


breathing in secondhand smoke -- 

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162

 MR. SCHOFIELD: What I'm talking --


DR. NETON: -- or something like that? 


 MR. SCHOFIELD: -- is the impact of their 


inhaling any radionucleides (sic) into their 


lungs, and then this effect of the secondhand 


smoke come in where, you know, you modeled 


where this -- what effect it has with the 


smokers. 


DR. NETON: There -- there --


 MR. SCHOFIELD: What about the people who are 


receiving all this smoke second hand? Are you 


going to look at that? 


DR. NETON: We have not looked at that to this 


point. I'm not sure there's a lot of 


literature on that itself, but it could be 


looked at. I think what you're suggesting is 


that the -- the traditional lung model would 


not apply to smokers. Now we apply a 


traditional lung model to smokers themselves. 


There is no smokers lung model. I mean it's --


it's a model that has certain uncertainty 


parameters associated with it, but we don't 


adjust for smoking as far as mechanical 


clearance goes or anything like that. So I'm 


not sure it's possible to do what you're 

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suggesting. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Let me insert here, Jim. If a 


person is a smoker and has lung cancer, in -- 


in effect the models attribute some of that -- 


the probability to the smoking. 


DR. NETON: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: So if you -- even if a person had 


secondhand smoke, if you didn't take that into 


consideration, would it not be more claimant 


favorable --


DR. NETON: Yes, that's right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- to assume that they had no 


secondhand smoke? Their probability of 


causation would actually be higher than if you 


considered --


DR. NETON: That's true. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- I believe. 


DR. NETON: Yeah. I -- when I was speaking of 


the models, I was talking about the lung model 


itself. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


DR. NETON: The risk model is another issue, 


but you're right, Dr. Ziemer, exactly. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: And that's what I heard in the 


question, what -- what is the risk -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, the --


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- associated with secondhand 


smoke --


 DR. ZIEMER: It actually --


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- for a non-smoker, you know, 


what's the POC going to be if you only used the 


lung model --


 DR. ZIEMER: It favors --


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- with no smoking adjustment -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- the claimant not to consider 


secondhand smoke. 


DR. NETON: If a person was a non-smoker, 


they'd be considered a non-smoker for -- for 


calculation (unintelligible). 


 MR. SCHOFIELD: Okay, next question. How are 


you going to model for those particular people 


in different jobs who had to use lead aprons 


and were required to wear their film badge 


because obviously they're doing a job that is a 


higher level radiation than their coworkers 


around them or they would not be told to do 


this, so how are you going to account for that 


when the claimant --


DR. NETON: Yeah, that's a -- that's a good 


question, and this comes up from time to time. 

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165 

The best scenario is if we know who wore lead 


aprons, and not only if they wore them, but 


where they wore the badge relative to the 


aprons is critical of course to know. Barring 


that, then we would have some conservative 


default factors that would be built into the 


calculations to account for that. 


 MR. SCHOFIELD: Okay, on to my third question 


now. You're talking about cancers to the male 


genitalia, and this would actually apply to a 


lot of the female is because of the common 


practice of the way they did, quote, bag-outs 


as removal of materials or equipment from 


gloveboxes. I know some people at Rocky did 


this. I know -- I've been told at Hanford this 


has been the common practice. I know Los 


Alamos has been standard practice. Regardless 


of the level of the radiation of that material, 


they -- it is actually held between their 


knees. So when you go to do this modeling, if 


they did -- were in a particular process where 


they used a lot of -- you know, handled a lot 


of high exposure equip-- equipment or high 


exposure materials, how are you going to take 


this factor into -- for the claimant? 

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DR. NETON: Well, to -- to the extent we 


understand it and can deal with it, I mean we 


will account for it. That falls under this 


category here, fourth bullet on the list is 


non-standard external exposures. We've already 


made adjustments, as I mentioned, for planar 


sources of contamination. We have made 


adjustments for glovebox workers already 


because if you're wearing a badge and the 


exposure is to your GI area, it's likely going 


to be higher, so we've got -- we've modeled 


that already. The intent of this issue is to 


address these various types of non-standard 


exposures, and you raise a good point with the 


-- with the exposure scenario you brought up. 


And I've not heard this one before. I don't 


know if it's covered in any of our documents or 


not, but I appreciate that input. We might 


want to talk to you in more detail about that. 


 MR. SCHOFIELD: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Lockey? 


 DR. LOCKEY: I -- I really enjoyed your 


presentation. It was -- in relationship to 


prostate and testicular cancer, different age 


groups, different risk factors, one's an old 

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person disease, the other's a young person 


disease. I think there's a lot of 


misclassification if you lump those together. 


DR. NETON: Yeah, I'm not an expert on the risk 


model so I'll have to beg off on the question. 


I know that there are age adjustments built 


into the -- but I'm not -- I'm not certain as 


to where -- how that is treated, specifically. 


So I -- I can't comment on that. I can 


certainly find out for you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Larry, do you have a comment on 


that? 


 MR. ELLIOTT: No, I have a comment on Phil's 


second point about the lead aprons. When we --


when our folks go through the interview process 


and this comes up, you know, we want to make 


sure we understand was a lead apron worn, and 


then we want to understand was the badge on the 


outside, was it required to be worn on the 


outside or was it required to be worn 


underneath. And they're different -- during 


different time frames across different sites, 


that changed, you know, depending upon what 


they were trying to understand. And our 


interest is to make sure we understand how the 

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badge was worn, if it's -- if it's -- and I'm 


not going to offer where this goes, but I 


believe that we would like to reconstruct the 


dose recognizing if the badge is worn on the 


outside, we'd give that dose from that badge to 


the individual whether they wore the apron or 


not, you see. So it's important that we find 


that out when we talk to the claimants. 


 MR. SCHOFIELD: The reason I bring up this 


point because it was standard practice, at 


least at Los Alamos, that when you wore a lead 


apron you wore your badge under the lead apron 


so you did not record this higher rate of 


exposure. 


DR. NETON: Of course that would be appropriate 


for modeling doses to things like the lung and 


the GI tract, but if you have a cancer of the 


area of the head or the extremities, then your 


-- the dose would be very underes-- very much 


underestimated. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Let's see, John, did you 


have an additional question? Or Jim? Okay, 


any others? 


If not, thank you very much for that update and 


we look forward to continued updates from time 

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to time. 


Board members, let me ask you if you wish to 


continue moving ahead? We are at the lunch 


break time. However, I think we can probably 


conclude by 1:00 if we delay lunch, and I'm not 


guaranteeing anything, but what is your 


pleasure? Would you like to continue? Would 


you like a brief break? 


 MR. CLAWSON: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we will take a Brad break 


and -- but not a lunch break. Well, let me -- 


let me make sure that's consensus. Is everyone 


else going to go to lunch and Brad and I'll 


come back? Okay, we'll take -- would you -- 


would you wish to continue? Yes, okay. Let's 


take about a -- make it quick, ten minutes if 


you can, and let's get back here and continue 


work. 


 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 12:10 p.m. 


to 12:27 p.m.) 


BOARD WORKING TIME:
 

STATUS OF SITE PROFILE REVIEWS
 

FUTURE MEETINGS
 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR


 DR. ZIEMER: We have some action items that are 


left from earlier in the week. First of all, 


action on the subcommittee report. 

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 (Pause) 


Mark is not here, but we have -- we have a 


recommen-- recommended cases from the 


subcommittee. Lew, do you have those handy 


there? 


 DR. WADE: I do. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Board members, I think the case 


numbers were read to you earlier in the week. 


You have the opportunity to add or -- or -- or 


delete, if you wish. Lew, do you want to reread those? There were 28 cases -- or do we 


need to read them even? 


 MS. MUNN: I don't think so. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I think everybody has the numbers, 


you have them all marked. Let -- let me ask if 


anyone wishes to add additional cases to the 


list of 28 that's been recommended by the 


subcommittee? Wanda --


 MS. MUNN: No. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- you don't. Okay. Or -- or 


deletions, any deletions? 


If not, this is a motion that's before us. It 


comes as a recommendation from the 


subcommittee, does not require a second. Are ­

- are you ready to vote? Voting yes will add 

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these 28 cases. They will then go to SC&A for 


their roll, as well, and we will also need to 


assign teams to those cases. So all in favor 


of the motion or the subcommittee 


recommendation, say aye. 


 (Affirmative responses) 


 Any opposed? 


 (No responses) 


Mike, are you on the phone? 


 (No response) 


 We've lost Mike, but we do have a quorum. And 


any abstentions? 


 (No responses) 


I'll declare the motion has carried with-- 


without exception. 


 DR. WADE: Procedures, Task III. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. We -- we do need to -- I 


wonder if we should go ahead and assign the 


review teams. Do we need to do that today or ­

-


 DR. WADE: I don't think so. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Lew, maybe to save time, 


you and I can do those using the conflict of 


interest. We'll let Kathy know and let each of 


you know your assignments. 

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 DR. WADE: I think this gives SC&A the ability 


to begin to assemble the cases that -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right, we have plenty of time to 


make the assignments before -- 


 DR. WADE: Correct. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- the call will come, in any 


event. Okay. 


Next we have the recommendation from the 


workgroup on procedures review. Ms. Munn, your 


recommendation was for six additional 


procedures. 


 MS. MUNN: That's correct, and to accept the 


asterisked procedures that we had identified at 


our previous Board meeting -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


MS. WHITE: -- but had not, I believe, 


incorporated in our expectation of Task III 


items for SC&A for the fiscal year 2007. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. The asterisked procedures 


are in Tables 2 and 3 of the materials that 


were distributed to you on the -- the list of 


procedures. And then the additional ones were 


 MS. MUNN: Were highlighted on --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- were highlighted --

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 MS. MUNN: -- that one. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Anyone need those additional six 


repeated? Apparently not. This is a formal 


motion. It comes as a recommendation from the 


workgroup. It does not require a second, so if 


you -- if you vote in favor, we will add this 


to the task of our contractor. Okay? 


All in favor, aye? 


 (Affirmative responses) 


 Any opposed? 


 (No responses) 


 Any abstentions? 


 (No responses) 


And there again let me see if Mike is on the 


line. Mike, are you on the line? 


 (No response) 


Apparently not, but the motion carries then. 


 DR. WADE: One very quick item of business is 


our next meetings. If you look at the tab in 


your book headed "upcoming meetings", all those 


in blue we've talked about before and I would 


suggest we maintain. The two in red at the end 


I've asked for slight changes by Board members 


and would propose to change December 3rd to 


December 6th for a call. This is the end of 

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2007. 


 MS. MUNN: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


Thursday (unintelligible). 


 DR. WADE: Correct. That's the only change, 


really. No change in the January 8 to 10 


dates. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Give us that again, Lew, just -- 


 DR. WADE: Changing the date of a call from 


December 3rd originally scheduled to December 


6th. 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 


(Unintelligible) 


 DR. WADE: That's a call. 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Unintelligible) full Board 


meeting. 


 DR. ZIEMER: He's asking about the October 


meeting. 


 DR. WADE: October is 3, 4 and 5. 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 


(Unintelligible) 


 DR. WADE: I'm sorry, for -- I'm sorry, should 


be three, sorry. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And then December again is -- 


sorry. 


 DR. WADE: The 6th. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: December 6. 


 DR. WADE: I will send out -- I'm proposing a 


call in mid-February and a face-to-face meeting 


the end of March of 2008, and I'll send out 


tentative dates to you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 DR. WADE: That's all I have. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Any questions on this -- on the 


meeting schedule? 


 MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


got a question (unintelligible) July. 


 DR. WADE: No. 


 MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


 DR. WADE: Yeah, Alaska's under consideration. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 


 DR. WADE: The Linde site profile. 


 MS. MUNN: Are we going to attempt to identify 


a time -- a place for July? 


 DR. WADE: I mean I -- I think -- the way we've 


done our business is we go to where the action 


is and where we need to be in front of the 


people, and I can't project at this point where 


that would be. So every time we've tried to 


forecast location well out, we always wind up 


changing to, you know, the SEC petition that is 

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hot at the moment. So I'm willing to take 


suggestions on July. 


 MS. MUNN: No, it's just -- it's helpful from a 


personal point of view if we have some concept 


of what part of the world we're going to be in 


at that time. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I think the -- the issue 


perhaps is the earlier we know, the better for 


-- for many folks in planning their travel, but 


it -- it has become somewhat dependent on where 


we need to be in terms of SEC petitions and 


that sort of thing. Hopefully we'll know -- 


well, I don't know if we'll know by our phone 


time --


 DR. WADE: Well, I'll define a location on the 


April call. 


 MS. MUNN: That would be helpful. 


 DR. WADE: Although I -- I'm al-- it's always 


subject to change. I mean I'm sorry about 


that, but we will on the April call tell you 


where we're planning to have the July meeting. 


 MR. PRESLEY: We had talked at one time about 


going and -- and hitting the smaller companies 


up north. That might be a good time. 


 MS. MUNN: It would be a good time. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, another item of business we 


committed to last time was to establish a 


working group for the Linde plant. Linde plant 


is in New York. In connection with that, let ­

- we'll address that in just a moment, but if 


you would pull out the -- the document that was 


in the front folder or the front pocket of your 


folder, you'll have the list of status of Board 


actions on SC-- SC&A's site profile reviews. 


And I might add, just for completeness, you 


might jot Ames down there, too. Ames we did an 


SEC review, so although it wasn't a site 


profile, but there is -- we did have a sort of 


review on Ames in the nature of the SEC review, 


so you might add that to the list. That was a 


-- that's a completed item. 


So you notice here the ones marked priority one 


through five we have tasked for this year to 


SC&A. The one marked priority six has not been 


tasked, but it was listed as our priority so I 


put it on the -- the chart. So those are all 


coming down the stream. 


The ones that say response matrix developed or 


the words "No R," these are completed site 


profiles where we have not done anything as a 

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Board. In some cases we do have workgroups in 


place -- well, let's see. There -- there's 


some -- yes, we have -- we have a num-- I guess 


none of the no’s, so we don't have workplaces 


on any of the no’s here. We want to add Linde. 


We may want to identify at least one or two 


others on the list where we need to get 


underway. It's been suggested, for example, 


that Los Alamos may indeed be one of those. We 


need to be moving on that one certainly, and 


there may be others. 


We'd like to have three or four people on a 


workgroup, if possible, and as you know, 


generally tried to get volunteers to help on 


these. And just for your thinking, in addition 


to Linde I'd like -- like to -- the Board to at 


least identify -- can you identify what you 


think would be the next two site profile 


reviews that we need to address? 


I will suggest some if no one has any, but -- 


 MS. MUNN: I certainly think Los Alamos ought 


to --


 DR. ZIEMER: Wanda has suggested Los Alamos, I 


 MS. MUNN: Absolutely. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: -- wonder how others of you feel 

on that. 

 DR. POSTON: Well, since I've been sensitized 

to it, I notice that Chapman Valve's not on the 


list at all. 


DR. ROESSLER: That's 'cause we have a 


workgroup on it. 


 DR. POSTON: But we haven't done the profile 


reviews. 


 DR. WADE: No site profile review, that's 


correct. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I'm not sure --


 DR. POSTON: We didn't even get the SCA review 


until the 6th. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. I think when I made the 


list up, I don't think I had the Chapman -- 


remember you and I were talking about that, 


John, 'cause John helped me with the list at 


that time. 


DR. MAURO: Yeah, I was trying to help out. On 


-- on two, Blockson and Chapman, we have done 


quite a bit of work related to the SEC. In the 


process -- it turns out both those sites have 


what's called an exposure matrix, which is a 


relatively brief document, on the order of -- 

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less than 100 pages, so it's not the typical 


very large site profile. Where I'm going with 


this is a great deal of work has been 


accomplished in terms of reviewing the -- the 


SEC-related issues, and in the process of doing 


that we did review the site profile. So I -- I 


would say that though we did not prepare a 


report that would be called a site profile 


review for either Chapman or Blockson, both 


those reports contain a great deal of material 


which addresses the -- the exposure matrix, 


which is effectively a site profile. So -- now 


-- but -- in -- in our formal reviews of site 


profiles, there are certain things we do and 


certain sections that are contained in our 


reports that are not contained in the work 


product that you've looked at and -- and that 


Wanda's looked at, so you -- so there may be 


some need to develop some additional material, 


but -- I guess where I'm going with this is to 


convert the work product that you have before 


you for SEC issues on Chapman and on Blockson 


into what might be called a site profile review 


is a very small delta. And to the extent you 


wish to do that, it could be readily done. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: But we don't have a document 


called a site profile review -- 


 DR. POSTON: John --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- on either of those. 


 DR. POSTON: John, are you going to develop the 


matrix for Chapman Valve? 


DR. MAURO: We cer-- I -- I think that'll be 


very useful for our working group meeting. I 


could take care of that readily. It basically 


will draw upon the last chapter in the Chapman 


Valve report where there -- I think there were 


seven issues. We will simply take that -- I 


could do that very readily, be happy to take 


care of that. 


 DR. POSTON: 'Cause we need to get that done. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Yeah, well, you already 


have an SEC task on Chapman. 


DR. MAURO: We have an SEC task on Chapman and 


on -- on Blockson, and they're both active. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. And for what we need now, 


that's -- that would take care of Chapman and 


Blockson, and there is -- there is no site 


profile of the usual type and we have not 


tasked you to do a site profile review, in any 

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event. But we do have workgroups on those, 


also, so those, in a sense, are covered. 


 MS. MUNN: It would -- it would seem even 


unwise to being to think in terms of setting 


this type of site up in the same way that we do 


site profiles. I would hesitate to -- to being 


that process. 


 DR. WADE: We should just keep doing what we're 

doing. 

 MS. MUNN: I think what we're doing is 

appropriate. 


DR. MAURO: What I -- that's what -- I very 


much agree with that recommendation. 


 DR. WADE: We have a plan, let's keep to it. 


 DR. ZIEMER: So we have -- we have a suggestion 


for a workgroup for Linde and for Los Alamos. 


Now we -- we can add others here and, in 


essence, try to get underway. But keep in mind 


that the next step on all of these is the 


matrix, really the issue and just formatting 


that into a matrix. The next step on any of 


these would be to ask NIOSH to -- to prepare 


their responses. So even if we had a 


workgroup, there would be a time lag before 


much could be done until we got the set of 

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responses and the -- then the opportunity for 


the exchange. 


 DR. WADE: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: John, just to help us out real 


quickly, I know that on -- on the newer site 


profile reviews you're going ahead and -- and 


preparing the -- the first version of the 


matrix anyway because you know that that's the 


way we're going. 


DR. MAURO: Yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: How many of these that currently 


say no is -- does the matrix already exist? 


And that's basically a formatting of your 


findings. 


DR. MAURO: Hold on one second. 


(Pause) 


Okay. There are -- let's see, we have -- 


currently there -- I guess the best way to look 


at it is we have a matrix for -- okay, 


unfortunately -- all I have here is whether the 


closeout process has begun or not. I'm sorry 


to say I can't tell from the table I prepared 


whether some of those site profile reviews 


included a matrix or did not include a matrix. 


So unfortunately I can't answer your question. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Well, for example, in Los Alamos 


did you already prepare your findings in matrix 


form? 


DR. MAURO: That's what I was trying to see, I 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, okay. 


DR. MAURO: -- I don't -- I don't know. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Well, in any event, that's 


not a -- yeah. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: We went ahead and prepared 


matrices for Los Alamos, Mound, all the ones 


that were done last year -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: -- so the only question is I'm 


not positive they were actually transmitted at 


the time of the reports. So we could certainly 


release those handily. 


 DR. WADE: Let's set up (unintelligible). 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Let me ask, first of all, 


for volunteers for the Linde plant, three or 


four individuals. Okay, Josie --


 DR. WADE: Gen. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- Gen Roessler, any -- yes, Jim 


Lockey. 


 DR. WADE: Mike and Jim. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Gen, are you in a position 


to chair that one? I ask that in terms of -- I 


know you're involved in a lot of -- this is -- 


DR. ROESSLER: (Off microphone) I was 


(unintelligible) better assume my 


responsibility. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I think that's a yes. 


DR. ROESSLER: (Off microphone) Yes, I 


(unintelligible). 


 MR. CLAWSON: I would answer for her, yes. 


 DR. WADE: And I can poll --


 DR. ZIEMER: We'll -- we'll -- we'll find one 


other person. That gives us three to start. 


don't want to put two new people on the same 


one. I'm going to save you, Phil, for a 


moment. 


 MR. SCHOFIELD: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay? Not that -- not that that 


wouldn't work, but just let's -- let's spread 


out the rookies, I guess. 


Now actually -- I'm thinking about this -- if 


we -- if we do a Los Alamos, we can't put Phil 


on that, can we? 


 MS. MUNN: That's right, we can't. 


 DR. WADE: Phil was (unintelligible), we talked 


I 
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about putting Phil on Fernald. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, actually -- and if -- if we 


put Phil on Fernald and -- let's go ahead and 


do that. That -- that will put them at five. 


 DR. WADE: Right, that's fine. It's active now 


and I think it would be a good training ground. 


 DR. ZIEMER: It'd be a good training ground, 


Phil. We'll add you for the moment to the 


Fernald -- and the Chair -- I don't need 


approval for that. If you agree, the Chair's 


authorized to make the appointment. 


Right now we'll -- we'll set the Linde group at 


three, but I will try to add one. I think --


and we're trying to get some balance here, 


maybe want to get -- I don't know, Mike, are 


you back on the line yet? Or --


DR. ROESSLER: Jim Melius? 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- or Jim. 


 DR. WADE: We'll talk to Jim or Mark or Mike. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, maybe get Jim. Let's talk ­

- how about Los Alamos, I'm -- I'm taking it -- 


 (Speakers interrupted telephonically, 


apparently not participants, but audible 


through a transmission problem.) 


I'm taking it that you wish to proceed on Los 

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Alamos, and Mark has told me that he would like 


to be on that, Mark Griffon. I think someone 


else told me they wanted to be on that and -- 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Unintelligible) Los Alamos. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Josie would like to be on 


that one, and Robert Presley, and we need one 


other person there. 


 MS. MUNN: I'll be an alternate or -- if you -- 

 DR. WADE: Wanda. 

 MS. MUNN: -- if you need one more. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Huh, Wanda Munn? 


 MS. MUNN: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, and Brad. 


 DR. WADE: No, John. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, I'm sorry, John, okay. 


 DR. POSTON: I know the hair (unintelligible) 


we look a lot alike. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, hard to tell you apart, I 


know. 


 DR. WADE: That's five. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 DR. WADE: The rest we can do in April. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Mark has indicated a 


willingness to chair that. I -- I don't know 


if he -- he's -- he has a tendency to get 

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overloaded, though, but -- 


 MS. MUNN: Does he think we're going to wrap up 


Rocky that soon? 


 MR. PRESLEY: I hope. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, hopefully. I'll -- I'll --


 MS. MUNN: Have to think about --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- specify him as chair for now, 


if that's agreeable. There's -- there's two 


other possible workgroups and I want to kick 


this around for a minute. There -- Mike, are 


you back on the line? 


 MR. GIBSON: Uh-huh, yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Mike, we're -- we're at a 


position -- well, first of all, we were working 


on workgroups for Linde and Los Alamos. Do you 


have an interest in either of those? We could 


use someone on Linde if you're available. 


 MR. GIBSON: Sure. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Now Mike, you had a motion 

to propose. I'd like to recognize you now for 

that motion. 

 MR. GIBSON: Okay. You know, given the Board's 

authority and -- and the things -- things that 


we have seen, I have a concern that -- you 


know, we've been to 40-some meetings and we've 

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heard public comments and I feel there's a duty 


that we need to look into, so I'd like to make 


the following motion, to form a working group 


to review the activities of the worker outreach 


program. This workgroup would be trusted, 


tasked and -- with reviewing all activities of 


the worker outreach program, including but not 


limited to, number one, the NIOSH/ORAU approach 


to organizing the worker outreach meetings; 


number two, to approach and look at how the 


meetings are conducted; number three, the 


impact that the claimants' and/or survivors' 


information is gathered at worker outreach 


meetings that are included in (a) the dose 


reconstruction program; (b) the site profiles; 


and (c) the site-specific petitions. 


 DR. ZIEMER: What was the last one, Mike? 


 DR. WADE: SEC petitions. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, the SEC petitions. 


 MR. GIBSON: Yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. Is there a 


second to that motion? 


 MR. CLAWSON: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


 DR. ZIEMER: Seconded by Brad. Now the motion 


is open for discussion. So as I -- if I've 

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jotted this down correctly, Mike, and make sure 


that everyone here has this, this is a working 


group to review the worker outreach program and 


-- let's see, worker outreach program and 


review all aspects of the worker outreach 


program, including NIOSH/ORAU approach, the 


approach to how the meetings are conducted or 


review how the meetings are conducted or -- 


three, the impact of the information gathered 


on (a) dose reconstructions, on site profiles 


and (c) on SEC petitions. Do I --


 MR. GIBSON: Correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- have it correct? 

 MR. GIBSON: Correct, yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So this -- this motion 

then, as I understand it, would accomplish some 


of the things we were talking about earlier 


today, and that is to -- to in a sense confirm 


that -- that the worker input makes its way 


into the system, both in terms of the site 


profiles and the SEC petitions, as well as the 


dose reconstructions themselves. Is that 


everybody's understanding or -- 


 DR. WADE: Yes, uh-huh. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Let's have discussion on 

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the motion, pro or con. And -- and also I 


might add, one of the -- and -- and this -- 


this workgroup could certainly look at this, 


but one thing that is supposed to occur when we 


audit the dose reconstructions, our auditor 


also supposedly looks at the -- the record 


that's in there, the individual information, 


and -- and confirms that that has been taken 


into consideration. But nonetheless, this -- 


this group may want to look at specific cases 


again to -- to assure that that has happened. 


Okay, any discussion, pro or con? Josie. 


MS. BEACH: I have a question. Are there 


currently procedures to any of those points 


that Mike brought out? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, as I say, for the dose 


reconstruction, in a sense -- it's -- it's not 


called out as a -- as an emphasis, but one of 


the -- one of the questions I think in the -- 


the list that SC&A uses, it's almost like a 


checklist initially, you know, is the 


information there, was it used, and John, you 


can -- I don't have the array before me, but -- 


DR. MAURO: One of the checklist items is the 


degree to which the dose reconstruction itself 

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has taken into consideration the computerized 


telephone interview. There's a form that's 


used by NIOSH, it's very formal process, where 


they pose a series of questions to the claimant 


and they fill the information in. And very 


often -- there's special places where there's a 


free -- free discussion where the claimant or 


the claimant's representative has an 


opportunity to provide -- provide additional 


information that they feel is relevant. So 


with-- within that context, that type of 


information is captured for a particular 


claimant. What I'm hearing here is now this 


goes more towards the site profile, and -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well -- well, all three. 


DR. MAURO: Well, I guess all three. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. And -- and I think here, 


and perhaps this relates to the discussion 


earlier today when we were talking about 


annotating those -- those items that resulted 


from worker input, that would help such a 


workgroup to identify in fact places where that 


did occur 'cause basically we were asking Kate 


how -- how would the Board know that something 


in the site profile, for example, has been 

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changed or added-to as a result of worker 


input. So we're -- we're looking for ways, in 


a sense, anticipating this -- this sort of 


workgroup, that would allow them to actually 


audit the system. Yeah, Wanda. 


 MS. MUNN: Isn't -- my memory of the CATI, of 


that telephone interview, is that there's also 


a question in there about are there -- are 


there coworkers or other people who worked in 


the same area who could perhaps give additional 


information. So there is -- there is a prompt 


in there about -- and who else would you like 


to have us talk to if -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: But -- but we have not formalized 


the Board's role in sort of confirming that -- 


that this transfer of information has taken 


place, and I think in this -- this is a -- 


perhaps a good follow-up that allows us to in 


essence confirm, outside of just yes, we -- we 


listened. We can document yes, those things 


really did occur. So -- so it would seem -- I 


shouldn't be moderating this, but -- 


 MS. MUNN: You're supposed to. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- I feel free to speak in behalf 


of the motion as well. So --

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 DR. WADE: Right, let's (unintelligible). 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Are we ready to vote then? 


Okay, with that fanfare -- 


 MS. MUNN: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and Dr. Melius is just entering 


the room and so that he is aware of what we are 


voting on so he can vote, we have a motion from 


Mike Gibson to form a working group to act -- 


or to review the actions of the worker outreach 


program in order to, first of all, evaluate the 


NIOSH/ORAU approach to worker outreach, to look 


at how they conduct the worker outreach, and to 


assess the impact of the information gathered 


from worker outreach with respect to three 


items. The impact of that on dose 


reconstructions, the impact of that on site 


profiles, and the impact of that on SEC 


petitions. 


So folks, are you ready to vote then? 


Okay, all in favor of this motion, please say 


aye. 


 (Affirmative responses) 


 Any opposed? 


 (No responses) 


 Any abstentions? 

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 (No responses) 

 Mike -- 

 MR. GIBSON: Aye. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- can I assume you favor your 

motion? 

 MR. GIBSON: Yes, Paul. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Now, that having been done, 

we need to form a workgroup. The -- the Chair 


would ask whether or not Mike would be willing 


to chair the workgroup. Now you better -- you 


better say --


 MR. GIBSON: Dr. Ziemer --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- yes. 


 MR. GIBSON: -- I would, and I would also 


invite our new colleagues on the Board if they 


would be interested in taking on some 


assignments, if they'd be interested. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 


 DR. WADE: Josie and Phil both say yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Josie and Phil both say yes. And 


we need one more person. Any volunteers? 


 MS. MUNN: Boy, I'm getting overloaded here. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well --


 MS. MUNN: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Wanda wants to volunteer. 

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 MS. MUNN: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, that's good. 


 DR. WADE: We've got it. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Mike, you have a workgroup 


and you can get underway as -- 


 MR. GIBSON: I'm sorry, who was -- who was the 


 DR. ZIEMER: We got -- you and Josie and Phil 


and Wanda. 


 MS. MUNN: Uh-huh. 


 MR. GIBSON: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay? 


 MR. GIBSON: Good. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Very good. Thank you very much. 


 MR. GIBSON: Thank you. 


 DR. WADE: That's it. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Now I believe that we have 


completed our business -- not too bad, 1:00 


o'clock. 


 DR. WADE: No, 1:00 o'clock. 


 DR. LOCKEY: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


 DR. ZIEMER: Hang on, put your ques-- get your 


question in the mike here, Jim. 


 DR. LOCKEY: Last two weeks in March, looking 


at our calendars for having working group 

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meetings so we can --


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, yes, we --

 DR. LOCKEY: -- (unintelligible). 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- were going to try to, if 

possible, schedule some workgroup meetings. 


 DR. WADE: I would target the week of March 


26th. 


 DR. LOCKEY: That's a good week. 


 DR. WADE: Let me know, workgroup chairs, who 


would like... 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, so we're going to try to 


schedule a number of workgroups the week of 


March 26th, if possible. 


 DR. WADE: If possible. Let me know and we'll 


try to coordinate. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And in some cases, if you can't 


travel but can be present by phone, that will 


help as well. Larry, do we have an issue on 


that? 


 MR. ELLIOTT: No, I guess I (unintelligible) 


SC&A folks were hopeful that you discuss how to 


approach the Los Alamos National Lab SEC and 


the Hanford SEC. In that context, we were 


hoping that you would parse off and ask SC&A to 


come up with their cate-- their list of SEC­
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related issues, knowing that we're going to 


deal with -- with those evaluation reports very 


shortly. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Los Alamos and -- 


 MS. MUNN: Hanford. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- Hanford. 


 DR. MELIUS: Have we formed a workgroup on Los 


Alamos? I apologize, I -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: We just -- we just now formed one 


and Mark will be heading that up. 


 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I guess -- I guess --

 DR. MELIUS: Then can I --

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, we -- we could -- we could ­

- we could actually -- and we have the -- we 


have the site profile reports on both of those, 


so it's the issue of tasking for -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Before John speaks --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- SEC --


 DR. MELIUS: -- let me add -- offer a quick 


motion. I think -- I think I understand what 


we need to do, which is that -- I move that we 


authorize SC&A to begin work on an initial 


focused review of the Hanford and the Los 


Alamos SECs -- petitions and associated 

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information in the context of the -- their 


current review of the -- ongoing review of the 


site profiles. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Seconded? 


 MR. PRESLEY: Second. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Discussion? And I'd just ask 


Larry -- and that -- that is what you need to ­

- yeah. 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Multiple speakers) 


(Unintelligible) 


 DR. WADE: Presley. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Presley seconded, yeah. Okay, are 


you ready to vote on that motion? 


Okay -- and John, you had a separate item to 


speak to, not on the motion. 


Okay, let's vote on this motion. All in favor 


of tasking the contractor to do the SEC reviews 


for Hanford and Los Alamos, say aye. 


 (Affirmative responses) 


 Any opposed? 


 (No responses) 


 Any abstentions? 


 (No responses) 


Mike? 


 MR. GIBSON: Aye. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, motion carries. John 

Poston. 

 DR. POSTON: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

-- (on microphone) Oh, you turned me off? A 


couple of things. One, on Wednesday we 


received an e-mail from Joe regarding a meeting 


in Senator Salazar's office next Friday, and I 


wondered if any member of the Board was going 


to be present for that briefing. Seems to me 


we should be represented. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Let -- let me tell you that we 


have a Board policy on those meetings. Number 


one, generally we -- if SC&A does get called to 


do that, we -- we do respond to those 


positively. They will do the briefing. The 


policy is that they notify the Chair and -- and 


Lew of these. The third part of it is that 


although it's -- the Board would like to be 


present at these, we cannot insist on it 


because they're at the invitation of the 


various offices, so we -- we're not in a 


position to impose ourselves. Whenever SC&A 


does make such a briefing, they do provide us 


with a summary of -- of what was discussed, the 


questions and the responses. But unless -- 

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unless we have a specific invitation to those, 


we generally are not attending. 


Lew, can you add anything to that to -- 


 DR. WADE: That's correct. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- clarify? 


 DR. WADE: That's correct. But if any Board 


member wishes to attend, they let us know and 


we try and arrange that. 


 DR. POSTON: Well, I -- I want to go on the 


record, I think that's a very poor policy. 


This is the Board. The Board has the 


responsibility, not SCA. And it's okay to let 


SCA brief whoever they want, but the Board 


should be represented at these meetings. I 


don't see that as imposing ourself (sic). I 


think that's a ridiculous position. It's our 


work that -- that's being briefed. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 


 MR. PRESLEY: I agree with John on this, by the 


way. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Well, and -- and we've had 


those concerns from time to time and -- and 


yet, you know, Congress has the ability to call 


whoever they want to -- to provide them 


information. 

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 DR. WADE: I'll certainly put it on the agenda 


to be discussed -- well, here we go. 


 MS. JACQUEZ-ORTIZ: Lew -- Lew, I -- could I 


speak to that -- just as a representative of 


Congress, or -- is -- is there a suggestion 


that every time a Congressional staff member or 


anyone of us requires a briefing from those 


associated with the program, specifically SC&A, 


the auditor, that an Advisory Board member 


would need to be present? 


 DR. WADE: That's not the Board's policy. That 


was just a comment made. 


 DR. ZIEMER: That was a comment that he felt 


that a Board member should be present. 


 DR. POSTON: As I understand it, SCA works for 


the Board. They are our contractor, and 


therefore if they're representing us, it's my 


opinion that someone from the Board should also 


be present. The Board -- SCA doesn't work for 


NIOSH or anyone else, they -- they are our 


contractor to help us oversee the activities. 


Therefore we should be present. 


 MS. JACQUEZ-ORTIZ: Yeah, it was my 


understanding that -- and -- and I would 


probably need to dig out where this is stated ­
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- that the auditors were required to respond to 


Congressional inquiries and the -- the 


circumstances under which that occurs. I don't 


know that that's spelled out in detail, so -- 


anyway, I -- I just think that candid 


discussions -- I have candid discussions -- 


 DR. POSTON: I'm not trying -- I'm not trying 


to stop any discussion or any -- at all. All 


I'm saying is, if they are our employees and 


they're representing the Board, then somebody 


on this Board should have cognizance of what 


they're -- what they're briefing you on. 


 DR. WADE: And that's what --


 DR. POSTON: And I think that's a very 


reasonable position. I don't understand --


 DR. WADE: We'll put this on the agenda -- 


 DR. POSTON: -- why it is not reasonable. 


 MS. JACQUEZ-ORTIZ: I won't belabor the issue 


in terms of who's -- who's whose boss at the 


end of the day, you know. I think the funding 


comes from Congress and I -- I don't want to 


get into that. I just think that -- that there 


-- there are -- my boss, for example, he serves 


on the Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee 


for Health and Human Services, HHS, and there 

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are some oversight responsibilities that we 


have because of his role, and part of that 


oversight is being able to talk to the various 


players. So -- I won't belabor the issue. 
I 


just --


 DR. WADE: The Board has a policy. We'll put 


this on the April call and we'll discuss it. 


We'll put the policy before the Board and 


discuss it and we can modify that policy. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MS. MUNN: May I make a --


 DR. ZIEMER: Robert, do you have an additional 


item? 


 MR. PRESLEY: I'm going to bring up something 


that's not real popular, but I think we need to 


talk about a time period on our presenters -- 


or not our presenters but our -- some of our 


people that talk for the public comment time. 


It's not fair to some of these people that come 


and they have to set all night long just to 


maybe speak two or three minutes. We need to 


talk about that, about limiting the time that 


people --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, maybe we can put that on the 


agenda. Many of you know and I've talked to 

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individual Board members, I'm -- I'm hesitant 


to cut people off when they're giving a 


presentation. If -- and -- and we never know 


in advance. In fact, most of the speakers -- 


they're -- they're like many of us, we think 


we're going to be brief. Sometimes I'm the 


worst of those, but people don't always know 


how long they themselves are going to talk, 


even when they estimate it, and we -- we never 


know how many speakers we're going to have. So 


it is a -- it's kind of a difficult situation. 


I understand the -- and -- and sometimes I 


think even last night there were folks, local 


folks here, that left because they kind of ran 


out of steam before we could get to them. So 


it certainly is an issue and if -- if someone 


has a really good solution -- we don't want to 


-- we don't want to cut people off and miss 


what they have to say, and yet in fairness we 


need to be able to distribute that time. So if 


you would add that to the agenda -- 


 DR. WADE: I will add -- I have indeed, thank 


you. 


 MR. GIBSON: Dr. Ziemer? 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- we can -- yes, Michael. 

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 MR. GIBSON: I agree with your comments and 


some of what my motion was -- number -- I mean, 


number one, there will all be -- always be 


public comments, but part of what my motion was 


is that maybe this will decrease the need for 


people to feel so frustrated. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, hopefully that will be the 


case. Thank you, Mike. 


Others? 


 (No responses) 


This then concludes our meeting. We're 


adjourned. Thank you very much. 


(Whereupon, the meeting was concluded and an 


adjournment taken at 1:11 p.m.) 

______________________________ 

207 

1 

2 CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER 


STATE OF GEORGIA 


COUNTY OF FULTON 


 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 


Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 


above and foregoing on the day of Feb. 9, 2007; 


and it is a true and accurate transcript of the 


testimony captioned herein. 


 I further certify that I am neither kin 


nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 


have any interest in the cause named herein. 


 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 


22nd day of April, 2007. 


STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 


CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 


CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102