THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

convenes the 

WORKING GROUP MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

NON-QUALIFYING SEC PETITIONS 

The verbatim transcript of the Working 

Group Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health held in NIOSH, Cincinnati, Ohio on 

March 28, 2007. 

STEVEN RAY GREEN AND ASSOCIATES
 

NATIONALLY CERTIFIED COURT REPORTING 

404/733-6070 
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C O N T E N T S 

March 28, 2007 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 6 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO 

INTRODUCTION BY CHAIR 8 

APPEALED SEC PETITIONS 11 

IMPROVEMENT SUGGESTIONS 76 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 105 
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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 

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 

CLAWSON, Bradley

Senior Operator, Nuclear Fuel Handling 

Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory 

LOCKEY, James, M.D.

Professor, Department of Environmental Health 

College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati 

MUNN, Wanda I.

Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired)

Richland, Washington 

ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

University of Florida

Elysian, Minnesota 
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IDENTIFIED PARTICIPANTS
 

BREYER, LAURIE, NIOSH

BROCK, DENISE, NIOSH

ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL

RUTHERFORD, LAVON, NIOSH 
 

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P R O C E E D I N G S

 (9:00 a.m.) 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO 

DR. WADE: This is Lew Wade, and I have the 

privilege of serving as the Designated Federal 

Official for the Advisory Board, and this is a 

work group meeting of the Advisory Board. 

This particular work group has been asked to 

focus on the review of SEC petitions that did 

not qualify. This work group is ably chaired 

by Dr. Lockey; members: Roessler, Melius, 

Clawson and Munn. Melius is not with us today 

I don’t believe. 

Jim, you’re on the phone? Dr. Melius 

with us on the phone? 

 (no response) 

 DR. WADE: But we do have Lockey, Roessler, 

Clawson and Munn here around the table. I 

would start by asking if there are any other 

Board members attending via telephone? Any 

other Board members on the telephone line? 

 (no response) 
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 DR. WADE: So we don’t have a quorum of the 

Board, and we can continue. We’ll go around 

and introduce ourselves at the table, and then 

we’ll ask everyone on the phone who wishes to 

introduce themselves to introduce themselves. 

We’ll talk a little bit about phone etiquette, 

and then we’ll begin. 

So again, this is Lew Wade. I work 

for NIOSH and serve the Advisory Board. 

DR. LOCKEY: Jim Lockey, Chair of this 

working group and member of the Advisory 

Board. 

DR. ROESSLER: Gen Roessler, member of the 

Advisory Board and a part of the working 

group. 

MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Larry Elliott, NIOSH. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: LaVon Rutherford, NIOSH. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Brad Clawson, Board member. 

MS. MUNN: Wanda Munn, Board member. 

 DR. WADE: And then we’ll go out on the 

telephone. We’ll ask people to introduce 

themselves by height, so will the tallest 

person please introduce yourself. 

MR. KOTSCH (by Telephone): Jeff Kotsch, 
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Department of Labor. 

 DR. WADE: Good job, Jeff. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I think Jeff’s 

got a few inches on me. This is Laurie 

Breyer, the SEC petition counselor at NIOSH. 

 DR. WADE: Anybody else out there in 

telephone land? 

 (no response) 

 DR. WADE: Well, for the two veterans on the 

phone, obviously, mute if you’re not speaking, 

and when you speak, speak into a handset. Try 

not to use the speakerphone. And if anyone is 

snoring, we have a very short list of who it 

would be, and people will come to your house. 

Okay, we’re ready. 

INTRODUCTION BY CHAIR 

DR. LOCKEY: Well, last time we met formally 

was on November 9th, 2006, and I think that was 

a very productive meeting. At the end of it 

we put together at least a draft outline in 

regard to general conclusions and 

recommendations. And, Laurie, I don’t, you 

probably don’t have a copy of that available 

to you right now, but we do have a copy here 

at the working group. 
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One of the aspects that was left 

unresolved was that there were some SEC 

petitions that had been appealed by 

petitioners. And they had gone based on the 

rules to a special review committee under the 

direction of John Howard. We wanted to see 

what the outcome of that review was. In fact 

that has been completed, and LaVon had sent 

out four letters that were under John Howard’s 

signature in regard to the result of that 

external committee review. 

I also, unfortunately, at a late date 

asked LaVon to provide the actual petitions 

here, and we have a notebook with those four 

petitions in. So I thought this would give us 

a chance to hear what LaVon has to say about 

that review process, what conclusions were 

drawn. And if there are any other additional 

recommendations we can make in regard to this 

process, we should try to do that today. And 

then that will be the first part of the 

meeting. 

And then, Laurie, I think your input 

as well Denise’s input as to how we can make 

this process more petitioner friendly and 
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understandable would be very important. That 

was our concern. I think a lot of our initial 

recommendations are in that direction trying 

to make this an easier process for people to 

access to it and understand. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Okay. 

DR. LOCKEY: So your input on that will be 

very important to us in the second part of 

this. So again, thank you for participating. 

I hope Denise is able to join us, too. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Thank you. 

MR. ELLIOTT: To make sure we’re accurate in 

the record, could you add LaVon and Emily to 

the list of attendees in your summary? They 

were there. 

 DR. WADE: Okay, Laurie, I assume you’re 

staying at a hotel. 

MS. BREYER: I am. 

 DR. WADE: Do you have a fax number? I 

could try and fax you this draft. 

MS. BREYER: The fax number is listed as 5-

0-9-9-4-3-8-5-6-4, and you can put it 

attention to my name, room 1-4-7. 

 DR. WADE: So let me repeat, 5-0-9-9-4-3-8-

5-6-4, room 1-4-7. 
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MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Correct. 

 DR. WADE: We’ll work on that. I’m not 

going to go right this minute because I’d like 

to hear what LaVon has to say, but at the 

first opportunity I’m going to have this faxed 

to you. And then it could be in front of you 

and Denise when it’s discussed by the work 

group. It might help. 

APPEALED SEC PETITIONS 

MR. RUTHERFORD: There were four SEC 

petitions: SEC 00039, 00040, 00047 and 00054 

that the petitioner requested an admin review. 

We had determined they did not qualify, and 

they suggested the review. 

SEC 00039, I think if you look down in 

the letter in about the third paragraph, it 

was for a statistician at Y-12 from ’51 to 

’59. And we had actually, we had exposure 

monitoring data for individuals that worked 

during that period and determined that it did 

not qualify. The petition and the actual 

letters were sent to the admin review panel 

for them to review. And their determination 

as you can see in the letter was that we did 

not provide enough clarity to the actual 
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petitioners in our decision. And we also, 

they felt, did not provide enough clarity to 

that review panel as to the basis for the 

reason why we disqualified that petition. 

If you look -- and actually, after we 

reviewed that, and we did our assessment, we 

agreed with that. I mean, we didn’t agree 

with the decision to qualify, that the basis 

was there, but we agreed the fact that there 

was not enough clarity in our description of 

the reason why the petition did not qualify to 

that petitioner. 

 DR. WADE: Which one is this? 

MR. RUTHERFORD: SEC 00039. 

The review panel recommended we 

qualify it. We did qualify the petition; 

however, this is a unique petition. This 

petition is actually for an incident. It was 

for a, they provided medical evidence of a low 

white blood count for a worker that worked 

during that ’51 to ’59 or, yeah, ’51 to ’59 

period. The worker had actually showed a --

make sure I’ve got the right one -- yes, the 

worker had actually had indication of a low 

white blood count in 1958. 
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And that worker was sent to the Oak 

Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies Cancer 

Research Hospital to Dr. Golding Andrews (ph). 

He was a physician who was doing cancer 

research at the time with radioisotopes. And 

we reviewed all the documentation, the medical 

records, the medical reports and all the, what 

the indication was, was the white blood count, 

he had an indication of low white blood count. 

No indication of when that low white blood 

count started. 

The low white blood count continued 

from 1958 all the way through at least 1965 if 

you review the reports. So the white blood 

count, from acute exposure you would typically 

see a drop in the white blood count, and then 

a gradual return of that white blood count. 

So we also looked, we looked at that medical 

evidence. We also looked at the actual 

doctor’s reports. 

The doctor’s reports indicated that 

they did not look at the symptoms and indicate 

that it looked like an acute radiation 

exposure. And these are leading doctors in 

that field that are reviewing that. They 
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actually could not make a determination what 

the cause was of that low white blood count. 

So eventually this person did end up getting 

leukemia in later years and passed away. 

We also looked back, we wanted to 

review all the incident reports at Y-12 during 

that time period. There was a criticality in 

1958 as some of the Health Physicists probably 

are aware of at Y-12. However, that occurred 

at a later date, or actually at -- yes, at a 

later date than what the symptoms started for 

this individual. So that couldn’t have been 

the cause. Also, we have well-documented 

individuals that were involved in that 

criticality at Y-12. 

We also looked at other incidents, and 

then we looked at the area that the worker 

worked in which is we had a specific building, 

and we reviewed monitoring data that we had 

during the time period. And we found no 

indications that would support that, an 

incident occurring at Y-12 during that time 

period either through the monitoring data or 

through incident records. 

We also looked at the individual’s 
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monitoring records who he had. He was a 

monitored individual. He had external 

exposure monitoring data. There was a 

monitoring reading which was brought into 

question by the petitioner of a, it actually 

reads 435 millirem and then it’s X’d out, or 

lined out, and a zero’s put in, but it’s 

written 100 percent light transmission. 

And there is an explanation at the 

bottom where they actually talked to the 

individual because apparently the film became 

exposed in the process, and they determined 

that the 435 millirem was more than likely not 

a real reading, and so they gave it a zero. 

They actually had a PhD radiobiologist review 

this as well, all the information, and the 

point was made that even if it were 435 

millirem that that would not be a level of 

exposure that would cause a reduced white 

blood count. 

So we went through the process and did 

not qualify this. However, if you review our 

letter sent to the petitioner, and it did not 

lay this information out in full detail. It 

did not provide the petitioner a good level of 
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understanding of why we weren’t qualifying it. 

And another thing, and I think if you 

look at the recommendations that you have 

already made, we did not perform a follow-up 

call that could have helped that petitioner 

understand this a little more thoroughly, 

understand this better. We provided all the 

information the admin review panel, but on the 

direction of our General Counsel, we did not 

provide any of our additional reviews that we 

had done internally like with the PhD 

radiobiologist reviewing the data. We did not 

provide that to them. 

We did not provide some of the other 

internal discussions because of by 

recommendation of General Counsel that we may 

be tainting the review panel by feeding this 

information. Which what we determined really 

was we need to make sure that all this 

documentation and all this decision making is 

in the file so when that review panel reviews 

it there is no question. It’s already there. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, it starts with a clear 

explanation to the petitioner in the letters 

and in our verbal communications as to why 
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we’re not qualifying the petitioner. And then 

that will serve to aid in a panel review if a 

panel review is sought. 

MS. MUNN: Does Counsel still have the same 

position with respect to that data? 

MR. RUTHERFORD: You know, I’m not going to 

answer for General Counsel. 

MS. HOWELL: I think that with some of 

these, with the panel review we have to be 

really careful once that procedure is started 

about becoming involved because after it goes 

to a panel by getting involved at that point 

we could interject ourselves into what’s 

supposed to be a separate proceeding. 

And so that’s the concern that we’re 

trying to avoid. Hopefully, we can fix things 

by starting from a better place and getting 

the petitioners all the information that they 

need before they would ever get to the panel, 

and hopefully, thereby avoid needing to go to 

a panel because they’ll understand why their 

petition may not have qualified. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We don’t want our actions to 

be perceived as influencing the panel, and so 
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MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): Now if I 

could just follow up on what Emily said. The 

panel is supposed to be reviewing the 

information that was, that John Howard used to 

make his decision. So any information that’s 

kind of discovered or put together afterwards, 

it wouldn’t be appropriate to give to the 

panel. 

MS. MUNN: I guess I’m trying to imagine 

why, well, I guess at that time we just simply 

were not being as thorough in our information 

to the claimant, were we? 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, you know, and we 

didn’t provide, we didn’t, we were thorough in 

our own internal review, but we did not 

document this well and provide this not only 

to the petitioner, but if it would have been 

documented better, it would have been provided 

to the review panel as well. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Our explanation was not clear, 

and it was not complete, neither to the 

petitioner in my opinion nor was it found to 

be complete by the appeal panel in our 

documentation. 

MS. MUNN: Didn’t know what you had done. 
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MR. ELLIOTT: Right. 

MS. MUNN: Because the claimant didn’t know 

what you had done. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Right. The way I see this we 

owe a petitioner an explanation of why we’re 

not qualifying the petition, and I don’t think 

that happened fully in this particular 

instance. 

MS. MUNN: In which case even if it had gone 

to the panel, the panel would have had that 

information, too. Yeah, okay. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: If you look at the two 

questions actually that the panel asked, and 

we did not provide information, was what 

documentation is there that OCAS’ efforts to 

obtain records to confirm or refute the 

exposure incident on which this petition is 

based. We did look for exposure incidents, 

but we did not document that. I mean, we 

documented it in our professional judgment 

review, but there was nothing really else 

besides that. 

Also, why doesn’t the deceased’s 

medical evidence satisfy the exposure 

incident’s evidence requirement. And if we 
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would have documented the review from the 

radiobiologist and the other information, that 

information would have been made available to 

that panel during their review. 

DR. ROESSLER: Just for the record, as you 

are describing the sequence of events, and you 

described the petitioner as the petitioner 

went to the physician, maybe this was later. 

I thought you said that the person did not 

look at the other acute symptoms. I’m 

wondering if you meant did not. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, what did I say? 

DR. ROESSLER: I thought you said did not. 

I just wanted to be sure that since this is on 

the record what really did, when the 

petitioner presented to the physician in 

addition to the low blood count, were the 

other symptoms --

MR. RUTHERFORD: Right, exactly, the other 

symptoms of an acute exposure, nausea and so 

on, actually, if you look at the discussion on 

that, there is evidence later that nausea 

occurred, but it was after the low white blood 

count was documented. But he had nausea, 

headaches. He had ear infections, things like 
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that, but it was indicated that it did not 

occur, it was occurring months after the 

indication of a low white blood count. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Not immediately post --

MR. RUTHERFORD: Right, it wasn’t post, yes, 

it wasn’t as typical, you know, a typical 

radiation syndrome from a high exposure you 

would expect. 

MS. MUNN: More likely symptoms of the 

developing leukemia. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Which, you know, I can’t 

say that for sure because I’m not --

MS. MUNN: No one ever knows, but more 

likely. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: So what we have now though, 

we have a qualified petition that we are 

evaluating and what we are doing to give you a 

feel, we are evaluating incidents that could 

have occurred during that time period. You 

know, we went back again in a more detailed 

evaluation approach of looking at any 

incidents that occurred during the 1958 time 

period also looking at the monitoring data 

during that time period. 

And then we are getting a doctor’s 
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review again of the medical evidence to 

provide us if there’s any indication that this 

medical evidence would support an acute 

radiation exposure. And all of that would be 

documented in our evaluation. So this is the 

first time that we’ll actually be evaluating 

an incident, a true incident. 

DR. ROESSLER: So the working group’s 

function at this point is just to become aware 

of what happened, what you’re doing to change 

the procedures, and we don’t really have to 

make any decision because the petition will 

come up again. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Uh-huh. 

DR. LOCKEY: I think what we can do is we 

can add maybe two points to our recommendation 

list. And one point would be that a clear 

explanation be provided to the petitioner as 

to why their petition did not qualify and that 

documentation supporting that decision be made 

part of the permanent file. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Great, agree. 

DR. LOCKEY: Everybody okay with that? So I 

think those are two additional things we can 

add. 
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Laurie? 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I think that’s 

an excellent recommendation, and I have 

actually an outline of issues, and I think 

communication being one of them. And I think 

that obviously trying to provide everybody a 

clear explanation of why the petition didn’t 

qualify and a record to show what we actually 

have done is going to be the most important 

for people who are in the petitioning process 

or going to file a petition to understanding 

what’s going on in the process. 

Because I think the process in and of 

itself somewhat overwhelms them. You know, 

they’re filing a petition and the qualifying 

it, the petition evaluation, and then it goes 

to the Board, then it goes to the Secretary, 

then it goes to Congress. I think they get 

kind of overwhelmed just by the process in and 

of itself. So I think every step along the 

way where we can give them a clear explanation 

of what’s happening at that step is needed. 

DR. LOCKEY: And I think that explanation 

needs to be given at a level that could be 

understood by the petitioner. 
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MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I completely 

agree. I think the problem that we have with 

SEC is very similar to the comments we see 

with the dose reconstructions, at least from 

my end, and I don’t have a technical 

background. So people will try to come to me 

to ask questions about these technical issues, 

and then I try to get an explanation from 

someone who does have a technical background 

and try to explain it to them. And the same 

way with dose reconstructions. 

They just don’t understand sometimes 

what these things mean. We actually have a 

wide level of petitioners, some people who are 

much more advanced than others, who are very 

active in the program who do understand these 

technical issues. And then we have the people 

whose spouse or parent may have been working 

at one of these facilities back in the early 

years and are now deceased, and so they get a 

letter explaining we looked back and incidents 

and we go into a kind of a technical 

explanation, and that means nothing to them as 

well, kind of the same issues we have with the 

dose reconstructions. And I think that’s 
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important to note as well. So it does need to 

be in a form I think they can understand. 

DR. LOCKEY: Excellent. Any other comments 

about number 00039? 

 (no response) 

DR. LOCKEY: Okay. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: SEC 00040 actually was from 

the same petitioner as 00039. This petitioner 

actually worked at Y-12 during the early 

years, and her spouse worked at Y-12 during 

the early years. This second petition is 

actually for 1951-’52, and it’s for 

statisticians that worked, or mathematicians 

that worked in Build 9201-3 at Oak Ridge Y-12 

plant. 

The basis provided by the petitioner 

was that there was inadequate monitoring. We 

reviewed the monitoring data, and we had 

monitoring data for individuals that worked in 

9201-3 and made the determination that the 

petition would not qualify based on a lack of 

monitoring data. The review panel reviewed 

the information and asked some specific 

questions based on our review. 

Again, this came down to, in my 
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opinion it came down to how well we documented 

our decision and the lack that we had 

monitoring data. The questions that were 

brought up by the review panel was basically 

associated, well, do you have monitoring data 

for individuals specifically in 9201-3? Our 

review did not lay, did not describe that 

clearly. Our review indicated that we had 

monitoring data for individuals at Y-12 during 

the, you know. 

And so it did not specifically go to 

that building in our review. However, we 

clearly had that data, and if the review, if 

it was written properly and had said that we 

have monitoring data for individuals that 

worked in Building 9201-3 instead of we have 

monitoring data at Y-12 during those years, I 

think the decision by the review panel would 

have been different. 

So again, it’s providing the 

appropriate level of information to the 

petitioners and I think following it with 

verbal, you know, verbally through phone calls 

to the petitioners, explaining everything, 

answering any questions, why the petition’s 
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not qualifying. And then making sure that 

those files, the information and all the 

information that you used to come up with that 

decision are maintained in that administrative 

record. 

In this one we now have a qualified 

petition, but this petition is for a class of 

individuals that are already covered through 

an existing SEC class. Building 9201-3 is 

part of the SEC 26 petition class that 

included 1948 to 1957 and a number of 

buildings that potentially had thorium 

exposures in. So this individual, however, 

another problem with this was this petitioner 

only worked there for 180 days at the site and 

does not meet the 250-day criteria. 

What we are doing for this petitioner 

is the petitioner indicated that DOL did not 

recognize some covered employment at K-25 they 

had which would possibly make up the 

additional 70 days that they would be included 

in a class. So what we will end up doing is 

closing this petition because there is nothing 

more, there’s no new information provided by 

the petition that would adjust the existing 
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class that we already had at Y-12. 

But what we’re waiting to do right now 

is we’re waiting on a decision from DOL to get 

sent through that regional office to review 

their covered employment information to see if 

they did have an additional time period at K25 which would possibly get them the 250 days 

that they need. So that’s pretty much it with 

SEC 00040. 

MS. MUNN: Did I understand you correctly to 

say that this person would be covered under 

the existing SEC? 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. 

 DR. WADE: Be careful of the words. 

MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 DR. WADE: The person would be compensated 

under the SEC. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: They are part of that 

class. Let’s put it that way. 

 DR. WADE: They’re in that class but they 

don’t have the 250 days. 

DR. LOCKEY: Unless you add the K-25. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Unless they add the K-25. 

MS. MUNN: And is the same true of petition 

00039? 
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MR. RUTHERFORD: Actually, yes, and I didn’t 

go into that, but petition 00039 actually 

received a recommendation or a compensation 

decision from the Department of Labor to --

MR. ELLIOTT: Representing. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, yeah. Awarding that 

claimant representing and because they were 

part of that class; however, that petitioner 

would like to proceed with this petition just 

to get that evaluation out. So we are 

proceeding as, you know... They will not get 

any additional compensation, but we are 

proceeding. 

 DR. WADE: Sometimes closure’s important to 

people. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, I understand. 

DR. LOCKEY: Any more comments? 

 (no response) 

MR. RUTHERFORD: SEC 00047, this is for the 

NUMEC Apollo Site. This is a petitioner 

petitioned on the basis that administrative 

workers were potentially exposed due to 

releases from uranium processing buildings, 

plutonium processing buildings, and that this 

administrative staff was not monitored. We 
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reviewed the information, reviewed, and the 

petitioner, all of the information provided by 

the petitioner is in the binder here. 

They provided a number of documents 

that supported that there were exposures that 

occurred during the plant’s operations, and 

that all the potential exposures that one 

could see or they’ve seen at the time. We 

reviewed the information. We had internal 

monitoring data and external monitoring data 

for the plant workers. 

As I said we had internal and external 

monitoring data for the plant workers. We had 

no monitoring data for the administrative 

workers, but the administrative workers would 

not typically be monitored at a site depending 

on where they are. If they’re inside 

obviously in their plants, they would be 

monitored typically, but this was an 

administrative building outside of the plants 

and would not typically be monitored from a 

film badge perspective. 

Some sites may have, you know, routine 

bioassay in later years that they would have a 

person come in. So we looked at, okay, we 
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don’t exactly have monitoring data for those 

administrative staff, do we have an exposure 

scenario? We looked at the information 

provided. Yes, there was releases from the 

plants that occurred during, you know, the 

stack releases it. 

However, all indications were that the 

administrative buildings would have received 

nothing greater than ten percent of the 

exposure concentrations, permissible exposure 

concentrations. So we looked at the actual 

environmental monitoring data, and then we 

also looked at, well, okay, if we need to 

bound or can we bound the workers’ exposures 

based on the data that we have. 

We’ve got to be careful, too, that we 

don’t get into actual evaluation, you know, 

where we’re evaluating a petition. We’re 

actually looking at, okay, do they meet the 

criteria for qualification to move us into 

that next step for detailed evaluation. There 

are individuals where they had admin people 

that were not monitored, and they thought were 

potentially exposed. Yes, the admin people 

were not, we couldn’t find any records that 
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they were monitored. 

However, we also couldn’t find 

indication that they really should have been 

monitored. And that our decision, as well as 

we looked at, we had exposure monitoring data 

for the maximum, or the people that would 

typically be the maximum exposed individuals 

and that would be the production workers. And 

the workers in the area had internal and 

external monitoring data. So we did not 

qualify this petition. 

Now, the admin review panel’s review 

of this is not, they did not question our 

decision. If you look at their fourth 

paragraph down in the letter in 00047, in 

response to the petition it was determined 

there was inadequate support for the 

submission basis by stating that doses for the 

members of the proposed class were monitored 

and are available. 

In the same document, however, OCAS 

acknowledged that office employees were not 

monitored because they were not in locations 

that required monitoring. This apparent 

contradiction conveys a confusing mixed 
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message to both petitioner and the review 

panel. Consequently, they recommended that 

there was not clear justification and we 

should qualify the petition. 

So this came down to, again, providing 

appropriate clarity in our letters in 

responses to petitioners as well as discussing 

it with the petitioners over a phone call I 

think would be appropriate. So we have 

qualified this petition. We are in evaluation 

phase. 

And since that time period this 

petitioner has submitted a second petition, 

and we have qualified that petition as well. 

This petition was only qualified for the 

administrative staff. The second petition was 

for the production workers that worked at this 

facility. And although the petitioner did not 

provide us a basis that would qualify that 

petition, and I think this is a good thing 

from our standpoint, we reviewed it. And we 

were actually, when we looked at other 

information, we determined there is another 

basis that should qualify that petition. 

We recognize that during the first 
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three years of operation we had no monitoring 

data at all for individuals at that site. So 

even though that petition basis, the basis 

provided by the petitioner was not a basis for 

qualifying that later petition, we had already 

recognized that issue and felt it was 

appropriate for us to qualify it, qualify it 

and help the petitioner to understand what a, 

or identify a good basis for that petition. 

MS. MUNN: So you’re saying that this claim 

falls under the period where no monitoring was 

available for anyone? 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Actually, this one did not. 

This one, but the later one did. This one we 

had monitoring data for people. The reason 

why this one qualified by the recommendation 

of the admin review panel was we, and I’ll say 

that we gave mixed messages to the petitioner 

in our letter is pretty much the answer or 

what the review panel said. 

We said they were monitored, and then 

we said they weren’t monitored. And what 

should have been said is individuals that were 

in areas where they could receive exposure 

were monitored. Individuals that were not or 
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that would not receive exposures that would 

warrant monitoring were not monitored. 

MS. MUNN: So let me see if I have the mixed 

messages right. If I understand this 

correctly, the period for which SEC 00047 was 

filed does, in fact, have monitoring data for 

the production people. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. 

MS. MUNN: And that is the basis for the 

original refusal of this petition. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, yes. 

MS. MUNN: There is now a second petition 

for a different time period. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: (Unintelligible) time 

period. 

MR. ELLIOTT: That includes production. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, that includes 

production workers. 

DR. LOCKEY: And these people? 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. Well, it’s mainly 

focused on production workers, but it is 

actually going to encompass all. 

MS. MUNN: You have a bounding issue for 

this one, but you do not have bounding 

information for the new period? The new 
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petition? 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, I don’t want to say 

we had it. I’d say at this time we do not 

have monitoring data for that earlier period, 

and we recognize that as a reason to qualify 

it for evaluation. So we’re, we will, we’re 

moving that petition through evaluation now. 

That’s not to say that we won’t come up with a 

method for doing dose reconstruction, but it 

is clearly a reason to qualify the petition, 

no monitoring data. 

MS. MUNN: So the second petition is for an 

earlier period than this one. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: It actually encompasses an 

earlier period and then up to 1969. I think 

it’s ’69. 

Laurie, am I correct, ’69? 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I believe that’s 

the date, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. 

MS. MUNN: No, I just wanted to clarify that 

the new petition is for an earlier time period 

than this original one. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. 

MS. MUNN: Okay, got it. 

DR. ROESSLER: But it seems the pertinence 
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here is not that, but the missed 

communication, the lack of good communication. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Exactly. I probably didn’t 

even need to throw that in there. 

 DR. WADE: What the heck. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah, you did. 

 MR. CLAWSON: No, it comes down to clear --

because if this was to come up at a different 

time in a later meeting, we... 

 DR. WADE: Better to err on the side of more 

information. 

DR. LOCKEY: Let me ask you a question. You 

had mentioned a number of times that perhaps a 

phone call with NIOSH or from NIOSH to the 

petitioner after they received their final 

recommendation. Are you suggesting that an 

additional step be added to your process that 

once you send out a final recommendation or 

final decision that you follow it up with a 

phone call to spend some time with the 

petitioner explaining what they have in their 

hands? 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, at least attempt to do 

that. Because I think that what happens, in 

my opinion what happens is when we write these 
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letters, look at how many hands touch these 

letters before they actually go out. And 

although we try to be clear, we try to relay 

the information so anyone could understand it. 

But still it’s touched, everybody 

wants their portion, wants it to read a 

certain way. And I think different people 

will read a letter and may or may not 

understand it. And I think it just makes 

sense to follow up with a phone call and to 

say, okay, I’d like to go over the letter with 

you to help you understand the reason we made 

this determination. I think that would be 

very helpful. 

DR. ROESSLER: Are those phone calls 

recorded? 

MR. RUTHERFORD: No, they’re not. 

DR. ROESSLER: Notes made maybe? 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, we do the notes. 

DR. LOCKEY: You’re not doing them now, or 

you haven’t done them in the past. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: We have started recently. 

Laurie’s picked up a few of them and --

MR. ELLIOTT: These are in instances where 

we’re saying we’re denying it for evaluation. 
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MR. RUTHERFORD: Right, we haven’t denied 

very many petitions of late so, you know, I 

think in the future that will be definitely be 

something we should incorporate into our 

process. 

MS. MUNN: How have those calls gone, the 

ones that you’ve made? Do they seem to have 

been helpful for the petitioner? 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Go ahead, Laurie. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I would 

definitely say yes. I think that being able 

to converse with somebody definitely gives 

them a more complete understanding of the 

process because it allows them to interact 

with us and ask us questions. I think it also 

can be perceived as we really do know what 

we’re talking about. 

We have looked at this issue. I think 

the problem with letters as with a lot of the 

things is that even though it goes through so 

many people internally, sometimes people get 

it and maybe they don’t understand what’s in 

the letter because everybody who’s reviewed 

it, we all know what’s going on. So sometimes 

it’s easy to miss things because it makes so 
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much sense to us because we all know what it 

means. 

And then you get a petitioner who has 

little understanding of the program, and they 

read it, and it doesn’t make sense to them 

because they don’t know much about the 

program. Or it just seems like, you know, 

sometimes it can be a two- or three-page 

letter, and that may look like, you know, they 

didn’t even spend much time on it. Look, I 

only got like a two- or three-page letter in 

response. 

Whereas, when you speak to people on 

the phone, and they get to ask you questions, 

and you’re knowledgeable about the subject, 

you know what they’re referring to. If they 

don’t understand something, you’re able to 

provide them an answer. I think it gives them 

a little more confidence, I think, in the 

process. And it gives them that ability to 

understand in more detail than a letter. 

And I think the ones we’ve had so far, 

I think the best example is probably the NUMEC 

petition that LaVon was just talking about. 

That was a petitioner who was not necessarily 
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satisfied with the process in general all the 

way back from when he filed an individual dose 

reconstruction, and letters and e-mails have 

been back and forth with this person. And you 

could tell there was just more frustration and 

more frustration between e-mails and letters. 

And I think once we started speaking with him 

on the phone that greatly diminished. I think 

he was able to get a better understanding. 

Typically, LaVon is on that call, 

Denise, myself and Dave Sundin has 

participated on those calls as well, and 

people are there right there to answer his 

questions immediately so it doesn’t come 

across as a form letter or a kind of a brush 

off of his issues. So I think that that’s 

what he was interpreting from some of the 

letters and the e-mails. So I think the phone 

calls have been tremendously helpful. 

MS. MUNN: I would expect them to be, and 

I’m glad to hear that because a phone call, in 

my view, has two real advantages. The first 

is that you know it’s a real person you’re 

talking to. Nothing that you’d get in the 

mail is ever a real person. It’s a piece of 
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paper. And in this case it sounds as though 

you have the real team there so that it’s 

informing that there are several people 

involved. 

The other wonderful thing is the 

ability for instant response to any question 

you have. It’s so difficult after the fact to 

sit down and try to organize your thoughts 

into a letter. So much simpler to ask a 

question directly at the time it occurs to you 

and have someone be able to respond. 

 DR. WADE: A third thing, if I might add, I 

mean, we have to watch the trap to thinking 

that the whole purpose of this is for us to 

answer people’s questions that we understand 

and they don’t. It could well be that they’re 

going to explain things to us that we didn’t 

understand. 

MS. MUNN: Absolutely. 

 DR. WADE: And so I think we need to be very 

careful in our words as to how we approach 

this. It’s not just do you have any 

questions, stupid. 

MS. MUNN: No, it’s the personal exchange of 

information. 
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 DR. WADE: Yeah, maybe we misunderstood what 

they were trying to say to us. 

 MR. CLAWSON: You hit it there when you said 

the personal aspect because most of these have 

been a miscommunication, and to be able to get 

real time plus the personal touch of being 

able to talk to somebody I think will make it 

a lot better. I think that’s great that we’ve 

gone that extra route. 

 DR. WADE: I would imagine that will come 

into this work group’s recommendations. I 

also think --

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I agree with 

that. 

Oh, go ahead. 

 DR. WADE: Please go ahead, Laurie. 

 (no response) 

MS. MUNN: Your turn. 

 DR. WADE: Go ahead, Laurie. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I just wanted to 

add to that I agree that this is the personal 

touch on the phone communications is so much 

better for strengthening the relationship 

between the petitioners, or even potential 

petitioners, and NIOSH and I think that’s 
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important. I think that relationship there 

helps build trust and understanding what NIOSH 

is doing for the petition whether it qualifies 

or it doesn’t qualify. 

And I think you can see -- I don’t 

have a chart, but I wish I did have one 

prepared, but I just started probably in this 

role July of last year and that was right when 

I started so I probably didn’t start talking 

to petitioners until a little bit later. But 

if you go back and look at the petitions the 

main ones that LaVon has discussed today, you 

know, there was very, probably less 

communication using phones and other means as 

are all the current petitioners because a lot 

of the current petitioners that we have that 

are in the qualification phase or the 

evaluation phase, and I go through and look at 

those, those people have had a lot more phone 

communication from earlier petitioners. 

Like there are very few petitions that 

are either in the evaluation phase or in the 

qualification phase that either I have not 

talked to or Denise has not talked to, and 

probably LaVon has talked to a lot more 
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petitioners as well. And so I think we are 

improving on that, and I think it’s 

interesting to look at probably how many postcommunications we had, you know, when the 

program first started or when the SEC petition 

process really kind of started off and what 

we’re really trying to do now to talk to 

petitioners. Because I think there’d be a 

clear difference between the number of phone 

communications with somebody either at NIOSH 

or Denise in the past and currently. 

 DR. WADE: Just an information question. Do 

Laurie, Denise and you review the letters then 

that go out? 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, we do, and I think 

what Laurie said is very important point. 

Laurie’s been on, and I guess she’s been in --

How long have you been in your 

position now? 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Just about July 

of last year, but I would say I probably 

started, kicking in and talking with more 

people as they started becoming aware of that 

role being there, probably a little bit later 

in the fall. 
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MR. RUTHERFORD: If you look at when these 

petitions were first brought in, you know, 

this was well before her time, and I think 

that the letters, you know, we’re trying to 

get more information, more quality information 

in the letters, and we’re also, as Laurie 

mentioned the phone communications, in fact, 

she’s given me another little graph I’m going 

to have to add to my list are the number of 

phone communications per petition over time. 

So I’m going to have to take a look at that. 

 DR. WADE: So I think making --

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Well, that’s 

something I could do quickly, LaVon, as well 

because I know even in, when I was looking at 

the chart the other day and I was putting Xs 

by all the people I had talked to, there are a 

lot more Xs on the more recent petitions than 

there were on a lot of the previous petitions. 

DR. LOCKEY: Well, one of the things we did 

at our last meeting in November was recommend 

that NIOSH formally institute a policy that 30 

days before a final decision is made that they 

would make a formal second formal phone 

consultation to look at the progress the 
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petitioner is making. 

And I think Lew faxed you that summary 

from that meeting on November 9th . Maybe you 

can take a look at that. I think what we’ll 

add to our list if the working group concurs 

is that as NIOSH is already doing a, add to 

this a final phone consultation after the 

final letter is sent out denying a petition. 

And we’ll also put in this a general 

statement that having the SEC petition 

counselors on board is definitely going to 

benefit the whole process in regard to the 

petitioners as two additional points if 

everybody’s agreed with that. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Do you feel since this is the 

very last one or so forth like this that now 

you’re saying they just take notes on these or 

are these actually tape recorded? 

MR. RUTHERFORD: They just take notes. They 

do not tape record them. 

MR. ELLIOTT: On what? The close-out 

interviews? 

 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, well, the final --

MR. RUTHERFORD: Phone communications. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You, yourselves, can go into 
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the --

MR. RUTHERFORD: SEC viewer. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- SEC viewer, and you can see 

petitions. And you will see they’re tracked 

just exactly like our claims are tracked. 

Every time a conversation is held with a 

petitioner it’s captured in a phone log, and 

that’s where these things are summarized. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Well, I just wanted to make 

sure that we were documenting so that later on 

they couldn’t say, well, I brought this up and 

nothing ever happened. That’s all --

MR. ELLIOTT: What I think we need to look 

at there is if in these close-out interview 

interactions and how we’re capturing that in a 

phone log. If there’s something there that 

says to me we should send a letter back, you 

know, something that stimulates 

correspondence, we haven’t done that yet. You 

know, to document formally what the 

interaction was in the close-out interview and 

to respond to questions. I don’t believe 

we’ve had one of these close-out interviews 

elevate itself to that, requiring that next 

level of correspondence to happen, but that 
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could happen. 

DR. ROESSLER: More written documentation of 

these interaction sets available is important. 

MS. MUNN: But not necessarily communication 

with the claimants after it’s happened. 

Sometimes, you know, if everybody goes away 

happy, then we will have done a good job of 

communicating what went on. And I would 

definitely hesitate to suggest the taping of 

this particular kind of interaction. It 

really does have a cooling effect for a lot of 

people to know that they’re being recorded. 

It’s --

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, we’ve chosen, and we 

can’t go there. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah, I think we’d be unwise to 

do that. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We can’t do that for legal 

reasons. We can’t do that for pragmatic 

reasons. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah, it just doesn’t make sense. 

Recording notes is by far, in my view, the 

better. 

DR. LOCKEY: Larry, when you talk about 

close out interview you’re talking about after 
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they’ve received the final letter? Is that 

what you’re talking about? 

MR. ELLIOTT: After they, yes, after they 

receive our determination of judgment that it 

doesn’t meet, doesn’t qualify to evaluate. 

DR. LOCKEY: We can add that, you’re adding 

this additional step. There will be a close 

out phone --

MR. ELLIOTT: For those petitions which are 

denied I think we should have a close out 

interview once they receive the letter. 

DR. LOCKEY: We’ll call it that, a close 

out. 

MR. ELLIOTT: It mirrors what we do with a 

claim. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Close out personal --

MS. MUNN: Telephone communication. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, communication because 

I’ll be right honest. I’ve read a whole bunch 

of these, and I deal with this in a lot of 

aspects. And I still get lost and fluttered 

and you guys trying to, what are we trying to 

say here. It is, for us that deal with it 

even on a day-to-day basis, we understand the 

process but for somebody that’s walking in out 
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of the street it’s, where are they going with 

this. So I really do compliment you on the 

personal touch if you handle it. I think that 

would make it a lot better. 

MR. ELLIOTT: One more to go. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: SEC 00054. This is 

actually a petition that was a multiple site 

petition that the admin review panel reviewed 

our decision on this one and concurred with us 

that this petition should not qualify. 

 DR. WADE: So you’re batting .250 here. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Actually, no, no --

MR. ELLIOTT: It’s much better than that. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: It’s much better than that. 

 DR. WADE: I think it’s also an interesting 

topic for the work group, the admin review 

panel. You’ve seen their work now, and you 

comment upon it or suggest changes. 

DR. ROESSLER: I was just going to say. I 

think we owe a lot to this panel. They’re on 

the ball. They’re helping the processing. 

They’re identifying things --

MS. MUNN: Very, very detailed, and that’s 

great. 

DR. ROESSLER: Acknowledge their 
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contribution. 

MS. MUNN: Absolutely. Thanks to the panel 

that clearly do a thorough job. 

 DR. WADE: I think that’s a great deal of 

confidence to know that. 

DR. LOCKEY: Well, step forward then. 

Laurie, did you get a chance to review the 

fax? 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): That is what I’m 

looking at right now. I just picked it up. 

DR. LOCKEY: What I would propose we do is 

we’ll add four points that we can add to our 

recommendations, and I’ll add them to the 

recommendations that, our draft 

recommendations from before. Are there any 

other additional points that we should add to 

what we had, what our graph of November 7th , 

November 9th, 2006 says? 

MS. MUNN: What are your additional four 

points? 

DR. LOCKEY: It would be a clear explanation 

as to why an -- I may change the language, but 

and I’ll send this out for everybody’s review 

before we finalize the language and then 

present it to the Board, a clear explanation 
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as to why an SEC petition has not qualified. 

This explanation should be to the petitioner 

in language that the petitioner would 

understand --

MS. MUNN: In the letter. 

DR. LOCKEY: In the letter, right. 

And then the number second --

 DR. WADE: Hey, Laurie, can you hear me? 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I can. 

 DR. WADE: Could you get a hold of Denise 

and get her a copy of that letter because I 

think you’re going to be on deck in a little 

bit. Okay? 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Okay. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you. 

Sorry. 

DR. LOCKEY: The second point would be that 

there would be support documentation within 

the file as to why a petition is denied. So 

if there is an appeal made, when it goes to 

the NIOSH panel at Howard’s headquarters, they 

will have the documentation available so they 

can follow the process through. 

The third point would be that there 

would be a close out personal communication 
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with the petitioner with verbal explanations 

as to why the petition had not qualified, and 

the fourth is just general for comment that 

the SEC petition counselors are going to be a 

tremendous asset to potential petitioners in 

understanding this process. So we are very 

supportive of that, of those positions being 

in place. Language, I’ll modify that 

language. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah, a little verbiage. 

DR. LOCKEY: What I’ll do is I’ll send that 

out to, I’ll add that to what we have already, 

send it out to the working group, wordsmith 

it, comment on it, get it back to me and then 

we’ll present it at the next Board meeting. 

Is that suitable? 

 DR. WADE: Yes, fine. We do want to hear 

from these young ladies as there might be some 

other things. 

DR. LOCKEY: Things that we’re not aware of 

that we can perhaps be helpful with. Sounds 

like it’s going much smoother. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think, you know, as we 

evolved in our understanding and in working 

with petitioners it became apparent to us that 
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a clear explanation is really where we want to 

all be at the end of the day. And we missed 

it in these examples you had before you today. 

DR. LOCKEY: It avoids rework and a lot of -

-

MR. ELLIOTT: And I think if we look back at 

some of the earlier ones, we might have been 

guilty of such there, too, but we’re doing a 

much better job now. 

 DR. WADE: No matter how well you do it 

though the vagaries of communication will be 

such that there’ll be misunderstandings unless 

you can have the immediate feedback with the, 

you know, using feedback techniques on the 

phone to make sure it works. It’s amazing how 

two of us can’t communicate to each other even 

when we speak exactly the same jargon. 

DR. LOCKEY: I find that sometimes I write a 

paper, and I go back and read it six months 

later, and I’m not quite clear on what I said. 

 DR. WADE: One of my favorite newspaper 

quotes is an actual quote, was British left 

waffles on Falkland Islands. The British left 

waffles on Falkland Islands. 

DR. LOCKEY: I had to think about that a 
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second, just think about that a few times. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I really appreciate the 

findings of the working group because I’ve 

heard them and as you, I hope you have heard 

today we’ve implemented some of your work 

already, so much appreciated your efforts 

here. It’s made us much better. 

MS. MUNN: Your efforts are appreciated, 

too. We understand what you’re going through. 

DR. LOCKEY: Should we take a five minute 

break? 

 DR. WADE: We could. There’s one little 

question I’d put before you. I think I 

mentioned it once before. There has been this 

question as to whether or not the names of the 

members of the review panel should be made 

public, and there’s debate on that. I don’t 

know if this group has any sense of that. I 

guess my inclination is to say yes to that 

because it is public business; they’re public 

employees. I don’t know if this group had any 

strong opinion on that. It sort of falls 

within your bailiwick. 

MS. MUNN: How do the panel members feel 

about it? 
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 DR. WADE: I haven’t asked them. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Can I pose a counterargument -

-

 DR. WADE: Sure. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- out of just the spirit of 

throwing it on the table here. I would argue 

that the names not be released. If I were one 

of these people, knowing the calls that I take 

on a daily basis with petitioners and 

claimants, I think these people need to be, 

their independence needs to be maintained. 

And I guess in that light I’d say their 

identity needs to be --

 DR. WADE: See, and I would say, again, that 

we should have this debate between us, but we 

can have it in front of you as well. I mean, 

these are senior government officials. They 

understand the nature of their work. They 

know how to deal with these things. I just 

think on the altar of transparency I would 

make this information public. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): Lew, can I 

add a comment? 

 DR. WADE: Sure. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): And it’s 
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not a comment in favor or against whatever you 

all decide regarding releasing these people’s 

names. But I do want to remind you that their 

decisions are supposed to be made solely on 

the information that was used to make the 

decision previously, so I’m not really sure 

why the petitioners would need to be in 

contact with them. 

That really could lead to undue 

influence on their decision because even if 

they’re not provided with like a written 

statement or some new information, they are 

hearing information that wasn’t before the 

decision maker in this case. So whether you 

release the names or not, you’re going to have 

to be very careful about whether or not these 

people can actually speak with petitioners. 

This is supposed to be a on-therecord, and by that I mean written, these 

people are not allowed to come before the 

panel and plead their case. So we would have 

to be very careful about limiting the contact 

the petitioners have even if they have their 

names. 

 DR. WADE: I’m not proposing that we release 
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contact information. I’m not proposing that 

there is contact. I’m just saying that their 

names be out there. I think these people have 

a right, the public has a right to know who 

these review boards are, and who constitutes 

these review boards. But it’s an issue --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): But in 

doing that you are opening them up to contacts 

that we don’t want them to have. They’re not 

allowed to have. 

 DR. WADE: They have to be instructed not to 

have contact. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): Right, so 

they would have to be instructed not to have 

contact, and I think it would probably come 

down to when these people can’t, you know, 

it’s sort of are you setting these petitioners 

up for more frustration because they’re given 

names but now they’re not allowed to speak 

with these people? So anyway, just a 

consideration. 

 MR. CLAWSON: There’s another consideration, 

too. Let’s make it clear, if you would have 

been sent some information that pertained to 

you or your family or whatever like that, 
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wouldn’t you like to be able to know who the 

people were? That they were qualified to be 

able to make these judgments that they were 

doing? Or is it just some people out there in 

Never-Never Land? 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): I think 

their names are made public after the decision 

is made. 

Aren’t they, Larry, when the memo was 

sent? 

MR. ELLIOTT: No. 

 DR. WADE: No, not at this point. I don’t 

mind it being after the fact. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): I thought 

they were. I definitely wouldn’t have a 

problem with their names being made available 

afterwards. 

MR. ELLIOTT: The problem with that is that 

if some of these people return for the next 

review. 

 DR. WADE: Sure, there’s a little bit of 

variation. Well, if the work group wants to 

speak, that’s fine. If not, I mean, it’s a 

decision we can certainly make on our own. 

DR. ROESSLER: I’d like to kind of bounce 
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off of Brad’s idea. If the petitioner knows 

the name and then knows that they are not 

permitted to contact this person, that’s a 

sort of a frustrating situation. And I think 

maybe very good communication with the 

petitioner would be necessary to explain why 

they can’t. 

 DR. WADE: Well, they can try, there’s 

nothing that stops a petitioner from trying to 

contact these people. They’re free to do 

that. The individual simply, the reviewer 

needs to know that they cannot accept 

information from petitioners, that’s all. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I know occasions 

where I’ve had people -- or one case, I guess 

I should say -- where someone is asking for 

the name of the appeals panel that was 

reviewing a decision, and I don’t know, you 

know, I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I 

don’t know if I would have told that person, 

given them the names and then said but you 

cannot contact them. 

I think that person would have anyway 

because that’s a person who typically 

inundates us with e-mails and phone calls as 
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it is. So I don’t know if you’d be able to 

stop people who were determined if you give 

them the names beforehand. 

DR. LOCKEY: If that panel is not supposed 

to review additional information, in this day 

and age I can essentially contact anybody I 

want to contact just by e-mail. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Right. 

DR. LOCKEY: I mean, it’s very easy to do 

that, and so if, in fact, there’s supposed to 

be a barrier between that panel and the 

petitioner or the general public, and that is 

defined in the regulation, then the only way I 

know to keep that barrier in place is to 

maintain their confidentiality. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I agree. 

DR. LOCKEY: But if that’s not written in 

the regulation as such, it’s not part of the 

regulation, then that perhaps is a different 

issue. I just don’t know the regulation --

 DR. WADE: Maybe I can read it. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): The 

regulation does not specifically say that the 

panel cannot be, the names of the panel cannot 

be made public. But the regulation does say 
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that the panel has to make their decision 

based on the information that was before the 

decision maker. So therefore, if they speak 

with someone who starts telling them about 

their case history and maybe other incidents 

that weren’t involved, then you are 

influencing the panel. So therefore, you all 

can release the names, but you’re not going to 

allow these people to talk to the petitioner 

or anyone else. They are to make their --

 DR. WADE: Well, be careful of your words of 

who you’re going to allow what to do. I mean, 

this has to be discussed. It’s a policy call, 

and we’ll make the policy call. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): But that’s 

a legal call, Lew, whether or not they can see 

other information because that’s not what our 

regulation --

 DR. WADE: Whether they can see other 

information is one thing. Whether they can 

talk to people is a different issue. I mean, 

we’d have to be very careful about the --

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): Yes, 

right, whether they can talk to people is a 

legal question. 
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 DR. WADE: Okay, we’ll work it out. 

DR. LOCKEY: I think this is something that 

the, we’ll have to work out internally with 

legal input on... 

MS. MUNN: If the current process is working 

reasonably, I see no reason to change it. The 

concern is twofold; one, with respect to 

direct communication with these individuals 

which should not occur. But the other side of 

that coin is not just the names of the 

individuals but the qualifications of the 

individuals are important for the petitioner 

to know and understand. It seems that what’s 

being done now appears to be working okay. I 

see no, do we have a reason to consider 

changing that at this juncture? 

 DR. WADE: Well, the issue’s been raised, 

you know, by individuals so that’s what 

triggers it. I think it’s incumbent upon us 

though as public officials to decide how the 

public’s business should best be done. So I 

think it’s reasonable to consider the issue. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Well, and also we look at all 

the transparency that we have tried to do 

through this whole process and in everything 
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that we do. And then we get to a final 

appeals process, and it’s like it’s behind a 

closed door. That’s my only issue is because 

people need, as Wanda said, to know the 

qualifications or so forth like these people 

really did understand the information that was 

looking at them and so forth. 

MR. ELLIOTT: What are the qualifications 

that you feel the panel should be represented 

or should be portrayed in an explanation of 

the panel’s, how it’s constituted? I mean, 

the only qualification about the panel members 

given right at this point in time and has been 

given is that they are not involved in the 

program and have no involvement in this 

program whatsoever, and they report to Dr. 

Howard. 

So I’m curious to know what you would 

ask us to do about explaining qualifications 

because we could add to our letter of 

notification acknowledgement that the petition 

is going to be reviewed by the administrative 

appeal panel. We could say that the 

qualifications of the panel include --

MS. MUNN: The qualifications that you’ve 
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stated are perfectly adequate from my point of 

view. They’re just, they indicate that these 

are individuals of substance who --

MR. ELLIOTT: Senior, senior officials who 

are not involved in the program. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah, they clearly are 

individuals who can review the material that’s 

set before them with some degree of authority. 

And that’s, what you said about them from my 

perspective is more than adequate. It’s quite 

fine. 

I just don’t know how you set about 

explaining what we understand very clearly to 

the claimant which is that these people are 

charged with the responsibility of looking 

only at what our agency has already seen, and 

they’re not an appeals panel in the sense that 

you may bring new information to them. I 

don’t know how you go about explaining that to 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, I think one way we 

could explain it to the claimant is, is if 

they do have new information, that information 

should be provided to us, NIOSH, and we will 

re-evaluate the new information. Even a 
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petition that’s been closed can be opened 

again. 

And new information, if new 

information comes up, in fact, we had a 

petition, and we were ready to make a 

recommended decision that, you know, we 

actually went through that process, and they 

provided new information. At the end we 

pulled back, the administrative closed, and 

put it back through the process again. So I 

think, you know --

MR. ELLIOTT: This is a comment, too, that 

appears in our correspondence with 

petitioners. We advise them that a petition 

can be re-opened, that new information can be 

submitted. I don’t know that it appears as 

often, as frequently, as appropriately as it 

should. I think we can look at that and 

probably do a better job. I don’t think that 

goes to solving Brad’s issue. 

 DR. WADE: There’s a fundamental conflict 

between doing the public’s business openly and 

with complete disclosure, letting people know 

who the review panel is versus the negative 

side of creating pressure for those people or 
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creating an assumed pathway for information 

flow that really isn’t there. And those two 

issues have to be weighed one against the 

other. 

But there is a fundamental good in my 

opinion with, if you’re going to say to people 

you can appeal this decision to a group of 

individuals and not identify those 

individuals, you are depriving them of a right 

to make judgments as to whether that’s 

adequate in their opinion. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah, but we’re not, this group 

is not an appellate group. This group is a 

review group, an administrative overview of 

what the agency has already done. So for that 

reason I see no problem with what’s being done 

now, and certainly since the final 

communications have been changed so that there 

is language, as Larry points out, very 

specifically saying you can re-open this any 

time. If you have new information, bring it 

back to us. That seems to cover the 

requirement from --

 DR. WADE: That was a useful discussion. 

MR. ELLIOTT: It may or may not be 
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important, but I would offer this, and Liz, 

correct me if I’m wrong, but the appeal from 

the petitioner on a denied petition for, that 

won’t make it to evaluation, goes to the 

Director of NIOSH. The appeal doesn’t go to 

this panel. It goes to the Director of NIOSH. 

And the Director of NIOSH turns and identifies 

a panel of his choice. 

And so it’s, in my opinion, ultimately 

the Director of NIOSH’s decision on to name 

the members of the panel publicly or not. But 

be that as it may, I just want you to 

understand it goes to the Director of NIOSH. 

It does not go to this panel. The Director of 

NIOSH could look at it himself and say, well, 

you know, I don’t know that I need to convene 

a panel. I can see the record here, and I 

think this doesn’t qualify, or I think it does 

qualify, and he can send it back to me and 

make it happen. 

 DR. WADE: Well, I mean, the rule does have 

some specificity as to the three-member panel. 

I mean, it’s all laid out. I mean, I have the 

rule in front of me. We could read through 

it. It’s all quite clear. 
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MR. ELLIOTT: But it does come to the 

Director. 

 DR. WADE: It comes to the Director, and the 

Director then appoints three HHS personnel 

appointed by the Director of NIOSH, who are 

not involved in developing the proposed 

finding. Will complete review within 30 days. 

So it specifies, there’s a lot of specificity 

in it. The one fundamental debate is 

transparency at what price, and you know, it 

is the Director of NIOSH’s call, and he’ll 

make it. But I was curious as to the work 

group’s thoughts on it. 

 MR. CLAWSON: It’s like everything is kind 

of split. 

MS. MUNN: I think it’s working. 

 DR. WADE: I didn’t mean to waste time. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I may have 

missed this comment. I was having some phone 

difficulty and had to plug in a charger. But 

I think looking at these points, the first 

point about the working group urging that the 

appeal process be completed within 30 days. I 

think the person who can get to achieving 

that, I hear more complaints on my end about 
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people complaining about the timeframe more so 

than I do wanting to know who’s doing the 

appeal. So if I was to look at which one I 

believe would bother more people, from what I 

hear from petitioners that would be a bigger 

issue. 

DR. LOCKEY: Lew, let me ask you one 

question about our discussion. If one of the 

panel members or all the panel members are 

being lobbied or e-mailed or contacted about a 

particular petition and are being provided 

information, not that they’re choosing to 

accept it, but it comes their way, does that, 

would that disqualify them then from looking 

at that? 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I’m sorry. I 

think some of that question got broken up. 

Could you repeat it? 

DR. LOCKEY: Yeah, my question would be is -

- this is Jim Lockey -- my question would be 

in this review panel if their names were 

publicized, it’s easy to contact them just 

through the web, okay? And they receive 

information that is not part of the original 

review process. Now they can say, well, I 
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can’t look at this information. I can’t read 

it. I doubt whether in fact that would take 

place. Would that put that particular review 

person in a conflict of interest from actually 

reviewing that SEC petition? Would they 

automatically have a conflict at that point? 

 DR. WADE: See, we have to go back to the 

rule. I mean, I don’t think the rule in any 

way speaks to information being provided to 

these reviewers. What the rule basically says 

is that the request may not include any new 

information or documentation that was not 

included in the completed petition. That’s 

all it says on the issue. I don’t think it 

excludes NIOSH providing information to the 

panel. 

As a matter of fact, the way it’s 

written -- but those are judgments that we 

would have to make. And if we were to feel 

that either the spirit or the letter of the 

process was compromised by an information 

dump, then I think we would take action. 

Again, whether that’s going to happen 

frequently or not I don’t know. It’s all 

about transparency versus the problems that 
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come with transparency. 

MS. HOWELL: And one thing that I would 

point out is just that if you were to release 

the names obviously when these panels are 

convened they’re not necessarily always the 

same three people. And a lot of times it has 

to do with their availability. So then you 

also get into the issue of if you release the 

names and you have various petitioners who may 

talk to each other and realize they have 

different people on their panel. 

That could create problems as well 

with people feeling that, you know, one panel 

was returned with the recommendation of 

qualified versus another that was where the 

denial was sustained by two different panel 

groups. I just think that there’s a lot of 

different issues you have to consider here. 

DR. LOCKEY: I would propose that this is a 

working group. We discussed it, but I think 

you need to resolve this. 

 DR. WADE: I might have been remiss in 

raising it, but it was an interesting 

discussion. It goes to sort of fundamental 

value, and it sort of cuts --
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MR. ELLIOTT: The appeal panel is part of 

this process. I don’t think it was out of 

line. 

 DR. WADE: But it triggers all kinds of, if 

we don’t have our act together obviously; and 

therefore, when we don’t have our act together 

it looks bad when we debate ourselves in front 

of you guys. 

DR. LOCKEY: I think that what you need to 

look at is, from my perspective, is what are 

the consequences if additional information is 

given to the review panel. What are the 

consequences based on how the rule is written? 

Is that considered a conflict of interest at 

that point? Has it been compromised or not 

compromised? 

 DR. WADE: I think that --

MS. MUNN: Yes, it’s in contradiction to the 

rule. The rule clearly states thou shalt not. 

 DR. WADE: What does the rule say? 

MS. MUNN: I said additional information was 

in conflict to the rule. Additional 

information being given to the panel is in 

conflict to the rule. 

 DR. WADE: I don’t read that. It speaks to, 
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the request may not include new information. 

That’s all it says. It doesn’t --

MR. ELLIOTT: The appeal request. 

 DR. WADE: The appeal request may not 

include new information. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): I can give 

you the exact language. It says, “Petitioners 

must specify why the proposed finding should 

be reversed based on the petition requirements 

and on the information that the petitioners 

had already submitted. The request may not 

include any new information or documentation 

that was not included in the completed 

petition.” 

 DR. WADE: Right, that’s what it says, yeah. 

MS. MUNN: And that’s what goes to the 

panel. 

 DR. WADE: Other things could go to the 

panel. I mean, you know, it doesn’t, the 

issue of whether or not NIOSH could have 

provided panel members other information isn’t 

clearly answered by that statement. 

MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): Lew’s 

right. This statement clearly says that the 

petitioner may not provide any new 
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information, but that doesn’t necessarily 

limit NIOSH providing new information. 

Although I think it has been interpreted in 

the past to mean that the panel’s supposed to 

be looking at the record as it stood. 

 DR. WADE: And I think that’s a fair 

judgment as a matter of fact. 

MR. ELLIOTT: And we have not to date given 

any new information that a petitioner was not 

aware of. 

 DR. WADE: And I support that. When you 

look at what the rule holds you to, it doesn’t 

preclude that. It’ll be fine. We’ll work it 

out, and the Director will have to make a 

complex decision. 

IMPROVEMENT SUGGESTIONS 

DR. LOCKEY: Let’s move on then. Is Denise 

on the phone? 

DR. ROESSLER: Don’t we need a break? 

DR. LOCKEY: Let’s take a five-minute, we’ll 

take a five-minute break here, Laurie, if 

that’s all right with you. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Okay. 

DR. LOCKEY: And then we’ll, if you’ve had a 

chance to go through the fax that we sent you 
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and comment on it, additions or deletions, and 

we will discuss that. But we’ll take a fiveminute break first. Thanks. 

(Whereupon, a break was taken from 10:25 

a.m. until 10:35 a.m.) 

DR. LOCKEY: Welcome. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Hi, how are you? 

DR. LOCKEY: Nice to hear your voice. 

Thanks for joining us. We appreciate it. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Thank you for 

having me. I’m sorry I was late. I was 

assuming it was ten o’clock my time, and I did 

have a hospital appointment today, and as soon 

as I got in the door, my toll free line was 

ringing with appointments. 

 DR. WADE: Well, we moved up the time, 

Denise, so you are not at all late. 

DR. LOCKEY: We’re moving ahead and we’re 

trying to get our working group work done, and 

maybe this working group can be sunsetted 

after today. 

Laurie, are you on the phone? 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I am. 

DR. LOCKEY: Denise, did you get a copy of 

the, of our draft recommendations from 
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November 9th? 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): I did not. 

 DR. WADE: So I was under the impression 

that you and Laurie were together. I’m sorry. 

Do you have a fax number or fax we can --

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): I certainly do. 

It is -- are you ready? 

 DR. WADE: Yes. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): It is 6-3-6-2-8-

1-6-3-7-4. 

 DR. WADE: 6-3-6-2-8-1-6-3-7-4? 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Yes. 

 DR. WADE: I’m on my way, but I need a copy 

of the letter. 

DR. LOCKEY: I’ll go through the four things 

so you understand what we’re going to add. 

What we generated November 9th was original 

draft recommendations as to how to make the 

SEC petition process more user friendly. 

Based on the morning meeting, we came up with 

an additional four recommendations. I can 

review those with you now while this fax is 

being taken care of. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Okay. 

DR. LOCKEY: One was a clear explanation as 
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to why an SEC petition did not qualify. And 

the explanation should be written in language 

that the petitioner would understand. And 

also with that should be support documentation 

within the NIOSH file as to why that 

particular petition did not qualify. 

The third thing would be, and this is 

what I think you’re already doing, a close out 

personal communication session with the 

petitioner after they receive their final 

letter in regard to their petition that was 

denied. The purpose of that close out 

communication was to try to explain the 

reasons the petition was denied and be able to 

answer questions, so a close out personal 

session. 

And then we have a fourth 

recommendation was that bringing on board both 

yourself as well as Laurie was going to be a 

tremendous help to this overall process, and 

it’s going to make it much more petitioner 

friendly. And we’re thoroughly supportive of 

that process. 

So those are the four additional 

things that will not be on the fax that 
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hopefully you will receive in the next moment 

or so. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Somehow I missed 

the first one. The second one you said the 

reasons why it didn’t qualify, and the third 

was basically the close out personal 

communication interview with the petitioner, 

and then the fourth one would be Laurie and 

myself. What was the first one again? For 

some reason I didn’t --

DR. LOCKEY: The letter that goes out --

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): The letter. 

DR. LOCKEY: -- that denies the petition, 

and it should be clearly explained as to why 

the petition has been denied in petitionerfriendly language. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Okay. 

DR. LOCKEY: Not legalese language but 

something that I would understand or I’ve read 

some of the letters, and I have to read them 

three or four times before I understand it. 

So I’m not saying to make it more friendly in 

that, but at least friendly on my level. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): I sure felt that 

it was very helpful with the petitioners that 
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Laurie and Bomber and myself were on recently 

when we were talking about why it didn’t 

qualify. I thought it went very well, so I 

think that that actually helped. 

DR. LOCKEY: Laurie? 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Yes. 

DR. LOCKEY: Do you want to start, and then 

we can start through this process and Denise 

will have the draft I think relatively 

quickly. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Yeah, it’s coming 

through for me now. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Would you like 

me to start with going over these bullet 

points as kind of an overview of some of the 

issues that, you know, I hear or have seen? 

DR. LOCKEY: Why don’t you start with the 

issues you’ve heard about first and then go 

through the bullet points? 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I get a wide 

variety of calls I would say. I do get 

individuals who already might have the SEC 

petition form, and that’s not clear to them, 

and so they have questions about how to fill 

out the form. I get individuals who don’t 
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even know what the SEC process is so they may 

have just heard the term SEC and want to find 

out more information. So they’re not really 

to that point where they’re having difficulty 

with the process so they just want to find out 

more information about what the SEC is and how 

to go about potentially filing an SEC 

petition. 

I also get calls from people who are 

currently petitioners, and they have questions 

about a letter they received or anything else 

that they might have a question about in 

general. For instance, what’s the next step 

in the process because it can be a lengthy 

process with the qualification stage, the 

evaluation stage. Then they get the petition 

evaluation form, and they might call and say, 

okay, I don’t exactly know what’s going to 

happen next again. 

And we’ll go over the Advisory Board’s 

role, their opportunity to speak to the 

Advisory Board, what happens after the 

Advisory Board, once they make a decision and 

then the Secretary and then the Congress and 

so forth, and we’ll walk through that. 
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I also get a lot of calls about the 

Department of Labor’s involvement in the SEC. 

And my vehicle for that is twofold. I’ll 

sometimes get a call about people who want to 

know I just heard that an SEC class passed 

for, you know, Y-12. Am I going to qualify 

under that? And in those cases I refer them 

to the Department of Labor and try to explain 

to them the class definition and the SEC 

qualifications. You have 250 days aggregate 

and the 22 SEC cancers, then refer that on to 

the Department of Labor. 

Or I get calls by people who thought 

they should have been in the class based on 

the class definition and maybe the Department 

of Labor told them they weren’t in the class. 

So that’s kind of a rough estimate of the type 

of calls I get. And I get the random calls 

about people who just don’t understand the 

program, may not even have filed a claim, and 

have seen my name on the internet and just 

want to call and ask me what this whole, what 

the program is. So I get a wide range of 

calls, and I also call petitioners if I’m 

asked to. 
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If like ORAU or LaVon have pointed out 

something that they think might be confusing, 

sometimes they’ll e-mail me and ask me to 

contact a petitioner and speak with them. I 

also notify petitioners of working group 

meetings and Board meetings. So that’s kind 

of the role that I play right now and kind of 

the broad group of questions that I get on a 

daily basis. 

My general comment about I think that 

would improve all of these type of questions 

is communication, and I think everybody talked 

about that at length this morning. But I 

think there’s really three stages. There’s 

the pre-petitioning process, and that’s the 

stage where people have not filed a petition 

who might be thinking about it or they just 

have general questions about the SEC. 

Then there’s the petitioning process 

which is people who have filed an SEC petition 

and just need help through that. And then I 

think there’s the post-petitioning process, 

and that’s maybe where people have questions 

about the appeals process and what’s going on 

there. Or people, like I said, who just heard 
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that an SEC passed and want to know 

information about where they stand or what 

that means to their claim. So I think those 

are kind of the three stages. 

As far as the pre-petitioning stage, I 

think that part of what Denise and I are going 

to be doing are these SEC outreach meetings. 

The goal of those meetings are to go to 

facilities where someone might call us, you 

know, call Denise and myself and say, hey, we 

don’t really understand the process. Maybe 

you can come and explain it to us. And so far 

we’ve had two requests, and Denise might get 

into this as well, one of those being at 

INEEL. And so we’re going to try to do one of 

these meetings, SEC outreach meetings, at 

INEEL. I hope probably after the May Board 

meeting, soon after that. 

And then Denise got a request from 

somebody for Santa Susanna which is out in 

California. And so I think that might help 

with communication is getting out there and 

getting at kind of the grass roots level and 

explaining to people what this is , what it 

means. And part of the hard part is the SEC 
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obviously doesn’t cover everybody, and I think 

there’s a lot of miscommunication about that 

so I think that needs to get out there as 

well. 

I think having access to Denise and 

myself, the more we can get that out there to 

people in the pre-petitioning process the 

better. I know since word has been getting 

out about my role I’ve been receiving a lot 

more calls. You know, some people who are 

filling out the forms and get to a section and 

they say I have no idea what this means, and I 

can walk through that with them. 

Or people who, I’ve had people who’ve 

already gotten their petitions done and have 

sent it to me just to look at, you know, to 

say can you think of anything else I should 

add or if I should organize it differently 

before I submit it. And I think that’s 

helpful to people because it gives them a 

starting point before they even feel like they 

have to submit it and then go through a 

process to have somebody that can help them 

before that. 

And I think that more information on 
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the web, I think we should put, Chris Ellison 

and I have been talking about some 

communication measures for the web, for 

handouts to take to public meetings, whether 

they be Board meetings or meetings that Denise 

and I might go to. 

And I should also clarify here that 

there are several meetings, like this Hanford 

meeting that we’re at right now is to gather 

information from workers for a current SEC 

petition. So this is really more like a 

worker outreach meeting for the purposes of 

gathering information for a current SEC 

petition where the SEC outreach meetings that 

Denise and I are going to do are going to be 

more on the pre-petitioning phase, and they’re 

going to be more SEC outreach meetings for 

people who have not filed a petition but are 

interested. 

And then Denise and I are going to be 

going to Los Alamos next week, and that’s not 

really going to be an SEC outreach meeting 

either. That was one where someone invited 

Denise and I to come out. So there’s already 

a group of union members, representatives, who 
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have already organized the meeting, and 

they’re just asking us to come out as guests 

to that. And so I foresee Denise and I 

fulfilling those types of roles as well. 

And then obviously those are 

communication areas that are in the prepetitioning phase, and I think that fits in to 

get to the handout, bullet point number two, 

that NIOSH has considered auditing the 

audience in regard to the recognition of the 

availability of the SEC petition process. I’m 

not sure how we go about auditing the 

audience, but I think that’s an interesting 

point. 

I think the potential SEC audience is 

huge because it can be anybody who has cancer 

or someone could file as a representative. 

They haven’t had cancer, but they’re filing on 

behalf of a class. So there could be some 

difficulties in auditing the audience, but I 

do agree that we need to get out more so that 

people do have a better knowledge of the 

petitioning process. And I think that these 

SEC outreach meetings can help with that. 

DR. LOCKEY: Perhaps a better term would be 
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consider surveying the audience. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Yes, I’m sorry? 

DR. LOCKEY: Maybe rather than audit, 

surveying the audience. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Right, and we 

had talked about doing that on some other 

communication issues so I think that it could 

be an interesting approach to see what’s out 

there. I know that --

MR. ELLIOTT: I didn’t have any problems 

with your language, should consider. I think 

it offers us the opportunity to look at what 

we might consider an audience to be. And I 

think it’s a segment of the overall audience. 

I think maybe we can look at those people who 

are contacting Laurie and Denise. And that 

would be a segment of the audience, and we 

could poll them, and we could understand 

better. From that maybe we can make some 

decisions about how to apply it on a broader 

scale. We could define the audience 

differently than that, of course. I found the 

wording to be appropriate and welcomed it. 

DR. LOCKEY: Okay, go on, Laurie. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): And I also think 
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-- I kind of talked about the pre-petitioning 

phase. I think on the petitioners, once 

someone actually has filed a petition, we 

talked about some of the letters that can go 

out, and I’m working on phone calls as well, 

especially when there’s a unique issue. We 

look at these as individual petitions. You 

know, every petition has or can potentially 

have something that’s unique to that petition. 

I would say that’s going to be the case in 

most of them. And I think the phone calls in 

those instances will help. 

And also on this sixth bullet point on 

the handout that the letter should be reviewed 

and made more audience-friendly as well as the 

point that Dr. Lockey made to Denise this 

morning when he (unintelligible) points of a 

clear explanation of why they don’t qualify 

and the supporting documentation. I think 

that’s going to help in that phase. And 

again, I think access to Denise and I also 

will help petitioners in that phase of the 

process. 

The post-petitioning process, and I 

don’t know, there’s not too much communication 
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that can go on except for explaining to people 

the appeals process if that’s what they’re 

calling about. Or they’re calling about their 

qualification under the SEC that involves 

referral to the Department of Labor in that 

instance. But I do think that that also ties 

in with this last bullet point, consultation 

with NIOSH. 

I do have that Denise and I were in 

ORAU, and we listened in to some phone calls. 

And I know that’s something that we’re all 

striving to do, and I think they are all 

comprehensive and informative. I think as 

Denise and I mentioned, the last few calls 

that we participated in it just has really 

turned around, I think, the view of the 

petitioner who might have had a negative view 

coming in or a misunderstanding coming in 

because I think that’s a really important 

point, that eighth one, with these phone 

calls. 

So that’s kind of the overview of my 

comments on the communications, and what I 

hear from the claimants, and how I think that 

fits in with the bullet points, especially the 
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second, the sixth and the eighth bullet point 

on here. 

DR. LOCKEY: Comments? 

DR. ROESSLER: I have a comment. My 

reaction right now is that this Breyer-Brock 

team is really a positive in this whole 

program. Of course, we all know communication 

is really the key to everything. And I look 

at Laurie’s academic background and her 

knowledge of the SEC process. And I think the 

Board has been familiar with her communication 

skills, and she’s very forward thinking. I 

think this is a real good effort to have come 

about. And then with Denise’s experience with 

workers, I think this is a real good team. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Thank you. I 

really like that, the Breyer-Brock team. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Yeah, I like 

that, too, B and B. It sounds pretty good 

doesn’t it, Laurie? 

DR. ROESSLER: I had to look up your new 

name on the internet, and then I saw that we 

have the two Bs here. 

 DR. WADE: I just wouldn’t give up top 

billing so easily, Denise. 
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DR. LOCKEY: Laurie, do you have, is there 

any changes you would make in our Board points 

or additions you would make beyond what we 

already talked about this morning, the four 

additions that were put to these? 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): I think the 

Board, the working group and everybody that’s 

just sitting in this meeting have a pretty 

well, good understanding, I believe of the 

issues so I think it really does boil down to 

communications. And I think the letters, I 

think the phone consultation calls that we do 

or even just in our everyday phone 

communication that we try to make that as 

understandable as possible. And that we try 

to focus it on each individual petitioner 

which can be hard to do with the amount of 

work that comes in, but it should still be our 

goal. 

You know, we might miss that mark 

sometimes unfortunately because of our work 

load, but I think our goal should always be to 

try to reach that mark of being as 

individually responsive to people as we can. 

And I think that is what I heard the working 
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group, I heard as kind of the meat of the 

working group’s suggestions and what I read in 

these bullet points. 

DR. LOCKEY: Thank you, and we appreciate 

your input. 

Denise? 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Yes. 

DR. LOCKEY: Did you get a chance to review 

what we had, our draft from November 9th? 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): I did. I went 

over that as quickly as I could and was 

listening to Laurie at the same time. And I 

agree with Laurie. We actually get a variety 

of phone calls each day, and it does seem that 

since everything’s on the bios or on the web 

page that my calls are increasing as well. 

And as soon as I walked in the door 

this morning, the phone was ringing, and I had 

a call. And it actually was an issue with a 

claimant whose parent is deceased and had 

several siblings as well. And it was in 

reference to the Y-12 SEC. And I think Laurie 

may have gotten a few of these calls as well 

where there are some issues with the 

Department of Labor and how these cases are 
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actually being assessed with the 250 days and 

where they were actually placed at within the 

facility. 

So this claimant was very aggravated 

and thought that they belonged in a special 

exposure cohort. So they asked if they could 

e-mail me a letter that they had written, and 

I told them I’d be happy to take a look at 

that. Beyond that, again, I get a variety of 

calls from anywhere from somebody interested 

in filing an SEC. 

As Laurie said we’ve got someone that 

worked at Santa Susanna, also at Thomas 

International which as we looked was just a 

beryllium site. Laurie and I talked about 

that. She had found that it looked like it 

was originally designated as a Department of 

Energy. And then people that maybe call and 

say, well, if an SEC’s approved, how does that 

affect my case. 

Maybe they have one of the 22 cancers, 

maybe they don’t or even if they’ve been 

denied, then their concern is, well, I’ve been 

through dose reconstruction, but we matched 

the criteria. How will that affect my case? 
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And so there’s just a multitude of 

calls and I think it’s very helpful to have a 

couple of different people to go to, and so I 

think that it’s very positive. And one of the 

things that I thought was just amazing was the 

calls that we’ve had with the NUMEC 

petitioners because, as Laurie said to you, 

sometimes folks can get a feeling of distrust 

or think that it’s such an adversarial 

process. 

And I think that all of us bring 

something different to the table, and we all 

help each other, and I think it makes a very 

good team. And I know in that particular case 

with the petitioners, I feel that they’re very 

happy, very pleased. Bomber, you have to 

include LaVon in that, too, because he worked 

so hard on, and that was a unique situation as 

well because there were actually two 

petitions. 

Originally neither one had qualified 

and since that time they’ve both qualified. I 

think they’re actually talking about merging 

that into one. So the petitioners actually 

feel very comfortable, and their trust factor 
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has increased. And I thought it was very 

helpful. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Well, I think 

from having someone like LaVon who has a 

technical background, obviously, I think the 

reason I can build a relationship with people 

as far as on the trust issues and background 

information by having someone like LaVon who 

gets on the call as well, and when someone 

brings up technical issues can answer those 

technical issues and be informed and 

knowledgeable about what’s going on really 

helps in those situations. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): He’s kind, too, 

the way he, he makes it easy for them to 

understand, I mean, because a lot of it is 

very difficult, you know, but the way he 

speaks to them. I think that really, 

honestly, I think that makes a big difference 

with folks. 

MR. RUTHERFORD: Thank you. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Everybody’s 

laughing. Is LaVon usually not nice? 

 MR. CLAWSON: No, no, his head is swelling 

so much we’re having to give him more room. 
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No, LaVon does a very thorough job, and I’ve 

told him many times when he’s done processes, 

he’s a valuable asset to this. 

DR. ROESSLER: Denise, I have a question, 

Gen Roessler. I was just looking at the 

website, and I do like the bios for both you 

and Laurie. You have a phone number listed. 

I’m wondering if it would be helpful to you to 

have your e-mail address listed so that you 

could take these responses at your 

convenience. I kind of figure with the phone 

number people could contact you at any hour of 

the day. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): And they do, 

believe me. I’ve had calls at three and four 

in the morning, and I just have to turn the 

ringer off. And you’re right; that would be a 

very good idea. Because sometimes, just for 

example, I believe Laurie had e-mailed 

somebody to try calling me, and it was on that 

toll free line, and obviously, I was tied up 

with a claimant. 

So that probably would have been the 

best thing was that if you couldn’t get me, 

and she did get me through my home phone which 
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was fine. But sometimes all three phones will 

ring at once, and then you’ve got e-mail 

coming in, too. So that probably would be a 

good idea. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): Yeah, we could 

also, I know Denise was trying to get a CDC email set up. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Uh-huh. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): We can always 

put the ocas@cdc.gov e-mail for yours as well, 

and then have like Chris did the other day 

when somebody had sent an e-mail to you, 

forward it on --

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Yeah, forward it. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): -- to your 

personal account which is an option. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): (Unintelligible) 

McCarthy does that for me as well. And I have 

people will fax or they’ll call and say, well, 

what is your e-mail address, but I do notice a 

huge influx of calls. And I think, Laurie, 

you probably do, too, don’t you now that 

that’s on there. I’ve gotten several more 

phone calls actually. And you’re right. They 

come in at all hours, day and night, doesn’t 
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make any difference. 

And as far as the outreach meetings, 

Laurie’s touched on that, too. As she said 

we’ve got a meeting in New Mexico, and then 

we’ve got INEEL and a lady had called actually 

interested in handling a petition for the 

Santa Susanna. And I expect we’ll probably 

get more calls in reference to that because 

there are several people inquiring if, you 

know, like Fernald. Some people oddly enough 

don’t even realize there’s been a petition 

filed, and they’ll ask about it. So I expect 

we’ll get a lot more calls that way. 

MS. BREYER (by Telephone): And I think 

another good thing is the Santa Susanna lab, 

if we go out there for that site. Wasn’t that 

the site where we thought there might have 

been several other AWEs in the area that we 

could target all at once while we were out 

there? I think we had looked and there were 

several other labs or facilities in the area 

so we could go out there and it wouldn’t 

necessarily, not just for Santa Susanna but, 

you know, other facilities in that area. 

MS. BROCK (by Telephone): Right. 
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DR. LOCKEY: Very good. Comments? Any 

other comments from the working group or 

NIOSH? 

MR. ELLIOTT: We’re glad to have them on 

board. 

 DR. WADE: Well, I hate to add to this sort 

of love fest, but I feel obliged to make a 

comment. I think it’s terribly important that 

we do all these mechanical things as well as 

we can. And no matter how well we do that, 

we’ll always slip. The only thing that is our 

last line of defense really is that when our 

people fundamentally care about the people 

that they’re serving. And in this case it’s 

true it states from Bomber to Denise to 

Laurie. They care about the people they’re 

serving; and therefore, they’ll get the best 

of this that they can. But we appreciate your 

guidance in how to do it better, but we offer 

you our best when we offer you this team. 

DR. LOCKEY: It all comes down to people, 

and when you have good people, the program 

will be a good program. 

MS. MUNN: You are all marvelous, and Boomer 

is a saint. 
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MR. ELLIOTT: You just got re-nicknamed. 

 DR. WADE: It’s getting a little silly here. 

DR. LOCKEY: Well, then to adopt something 

that Lew uses all the time, step forward, step 

forward. What I propose is that I will add 

the names from November 9th to that summary. 

And then I will put an additional page on this 

from today’s meeting with the four additional 

recommendations that we have and send that out 

for the Board to review, give you a chance to 

comment on it and give it back to me. And 

then we will present that to the Board at our 

next meeting as it be formally adopted. 

 MR. CLAWSON: It sounds good. 

MS. MUNN: Will that be on our April agenda 

for the phone call --

 DR. WADE: If we make it, that’s next week. 

DR. LOCKEY: I’ll have it out this 

afternoon. 

 DR. WADE: Well, if so, we have room for it. 

DR. LOCKEY: I will have it out this 

afternoon because I’d like to get this working 

group, you know, at least we can say we have 

one working group that --

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like to throw out with this worker outreach 

and stuff, it’d be nice to be able to know of 

some, you know, the ones that are coming up 

and so forth like that so that if we could 

participate or be able to listen or something 

like for us it gathers a lot of information 

for us and makes it nice for us to be able to 

perform our jobs a little bit better. 

MR. ELLIOTT: We are, we heard you before on 

this Brad, and it’s a very valid point that 

you make. And we have taken steps to make 

sure that Board members are notified of our 

activities that occur in their areas or the 

Board at large knows what’s going on in case 

they want to participate. So I hope you’re 

seeing these things come through now. 

 MR. CLAWSON: You are right. I saw it in 

Hanford and so forth like that, and you know, 

that’s one being on that group I really would 

have liked to have attended. Unfortunately, 

we had some other things that came up, but and 

I do appreciate that. 

 DR. WADE: Well, I think we’re done. Thank 

you very much for good work. 

DR. ROESSLER: Good job. 
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DR. LOCKEY: Thank you everybody. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you on the phone. 

MR. ELLIOTT: All done for this working 

group. 

(Whereupon, the meeting was adjourned at 

11:03 a.m.) 
______________________________ 

105 

1 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 March 28, 

2007; I, Steven Ray Green, then transcribed the 

proceedings, 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 

2nd day of August, 2007. 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102