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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

 CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL 

+ + + + + 

 NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL 

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

 ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND 

WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

 65th MEETING 

+ + + + + 

 THURSDAY 

OCTOBER 22, 2009 

+ + + + + 

 The meeting convened in the Conference 

Room of the Danford's Hotel & Marina, 25 East 

Broadway, Port Jefferson, New York, at 9:00 a.m. 

Paul L. Ziemer, Chairman, presiding. 

PRESENT: 

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Chairman 

JOSIE BEACH, Member 

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member 

MARK GRIFFON, Member 

WANDA I. MUNN, Member 

JOHN W. POSTON, SR., Member 

ROBERT W. PRESLEY, Member 

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member 

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member 

THEODORE M. KATZ, Designated Federal 

 Official 
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REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS: 

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor 

AQUINO, LITA, NIOSH 

BRADFORD, SHANNON, NIOSH 

BUSCEMI, FRANK 

HINNEFELD, STUART, NIOSH 

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL 

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 

McFEE, MATTHEW, ORAU 

McGOLERICK, ROBERT, HHS 

RUTHERFORD, LaVON, NIOSH 
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

ITEM PAGE

Welcome..................................... 4 

Subcommittee Report on Procedures........... 5 

 Review 

Subcommittee Report on Dose................ 17 

 Reconstruction 

Work Group Reports......................... 19 

Follow-up Actions on Petitions............. 40 

SC&A Tasking............................... 65 

Document Review........................... 134 

Adjourn 

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

9:15 a.m. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Good morning. We 

have an agenda which is somewhat shortened by 

the fact that the SEC petition status part 

that's on the agenda was covered yesterday, so 

our goal will be to try to finish up by noon 

if possible. So if you will bear with us, I 

know some will have planes to catch, and we 

hope to finish in a timely fashion. 

 I will remind you, again, to 

register in the foyer your attendance with us, 

if you haven't already done so. 

 Also, we want to double check on 

phone lines, I guess, and make sure that phone 

lines are open. Yes, they are. Thank you. 

Mr. Katz, do you have any preliminary remarks? 

 MR. KATZ: Good morning. That's 

it. Thanks. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. So 

we'll begin today with both subcommittee and 

work group reports, beginning with our two 
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subcommittees and then moving on to the work 

groups. So let me begin with Ms. Munn, and 

she has the report for the Subcommittee on 

Procedures Review, and as she begins her 

report I want to remind you that she 

distributed to the Board members a draft 

report or letter report that her subcommittee 

is proposing be sent to the Secretary as 

their, what I'll call second annual report, 

which is basically a report of progress being 

made in the review of procedures. And with 

that introduction, I'll give the chair or the 

podium or the mic to Wanda. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Thank you, Paul. The 

Procedures Subcommittee is continuing to meet 

at fairly regular intervals. Our most recent 

meeting was last week, October 15, in 

Cincinnati. Our most significant activity 

continues to be the development and updating 

of our electronic database methodology. As I 

think most of you know, we anticipate that 

this type of database structure will 
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eventually be the method of choice for most of 

the working groups in tracking their 

activities. So we've tried to lead the way in 

that regard. 

 We have a fairly complex set of 

data with which to work, and we've been very 

fortunate in having some very fine support in 

getting that together. The problem is that 

evolution of this kind of thing is really 

painful. We've gone through at least four 

major changes in approach to how the database 

is maintained and how detailed it is. The 

switch over that we've all been experiencing 

with our IT issues has not helped us any. It 

has slowed us down a little bit. 

 And even as recently as last night, 

I was trying to pull up the full set of data 

that we work with and try to check my numbers 

for the status, current status, and was having 

a hard time getting in. As a matter of fact 

could get to the database but couldn't get 

into it. This morning, I can get in to it 
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just fine. So that is, I think, a matter of 

timing for us and for all of you. Once that's 

done with I believe we're hoping that it will 

be helpful to all of the members of the Board 

and to the individual working groups. The 

electronic changes have also affected our 

ability to follow through on setting up a 

mechanism for easy transfer of responsibility 

from one work group to another or from the 

Procedures Work Group to individual site work 

groups. 

 We had hoped to be able to make the 

database acceptable and accessible to everyone 

in such a way so that the work groups could 

work through our points of contact that 

maintain the database for us and as they made 

progress with their tracking systems be able 

to maintain it on the master database as well. 

 Right now it's not quite possible for us to 

do that. We suspect it will be several months 

before that will go on. But in the meantime, 

those of you who are members of working groups 
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to whom responsibility for an issue is being 

transferred, we'll just have to work with 

ordinary electronic format that you are 

familiar with. 

 As Paul mentioned, I did send to 

all of you last week our draft of a letter to 

the Secretary giving a very brief overview of 

what this Subcommittee does, what our progress 

has been. Steve Marschke, who is our 

contractor point of contact, sent me the most 

recent numbers that he has for the total 

amount of findings that we have and the amount 

of open findings, which will change slightly 

in the letter that you have in your hand. The 

total findings are 538. The open findings are 

100. That's the number that I anticipate 

providing to Dr. Ziemer for his letter for 

transmission to the Secretary. Does anyone 

have any question about that letter or any 

suggestions with respect to its content. I've 

not heard from anyone. I'm assuming that 

there, therefore, is no major difficulty with 
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the language or with the report as it stands. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Wanda, one thing 

I would like to do, sometimes silence can be 

misinterpreted. I want to make sure, number 

one, everyone has the letter, and then I want 

to move to what I would call the bottom line 

issues on the letter and make sure that 

everyone is agreeable on that. You may have 

some editorial things, and, Wanda, with your 

permission I'd like to lead the group through 

a few items on this. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I would be delighted 

to have you do that. Go right ahead. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Is there anyone 

that would admit to not having been able to 

find the letter in their files? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Well, I actually 

cannot pull it up right now. My email is not 

working. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Well, let 

me go through this. 

 MEMBER MUNN: It was sent out on 
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the 15th. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I do have it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: There will be 

opportunity to edit it further, as Wanda has 

indicated. The first paragraph of the letter 

simply points out that this is the second 

report that we are making in accordance with 

the provisions of the rules and the law that 

is cited here. And then it also indicates why 

we are reviewing procedures, and it points out 

that this is being done as part of our 

responsibility to assure the scientific 

validity of and completeness of the work of 

NIOSH in dose reconstruction. There is a 

little bit of information about the background 

of the Subcommittee, including its membership. 

 There is a bit of information about the 

numbers of procedures that have been reviewed 

and the numbers of findings and the percent of 

those that have been closed. So that's 

basically all simply factual information. The 

Subcommittee has been editing on it so at 
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least the Chair is certain there aren't any 

dangling participles. However, there may be 

other problems that you will identify. 

 Now, when you get to the fourth 

paragraph, it begins to talk about the 

results. And I think that is where we want to 

make sure that the Board is comfortable. It 

talks about sort of the range of findings in 

terms of their impact, and then it goes on in 

the, I guess it is the fifth paragraph that 

indicates the results of the reviews, and it 

has several bullet points that describe what 

has occurred as a result of the reviews. And 

there's those three bullet points, which I 

think are important. 

 The first of which is the multiple 

modifications have been made to procedures, 

including some changes of such a nature that 

new revisions of the document were required. 

So that's a first impact item. 

 The second is, by highlighting 

subjects which reoccurred in the review of 
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procedures for individual sites, the Board has 

been able to identify several overarching 

issues which have the potential for complexwide concern. The third bullet point is the 

procedures or, I'm sorry, the process of 

identifying these reoccurring topics has been 

a major factor in the ongoing process of 

administering and eliminating redundancy from 

the procedure collection. Those are three 

impact points that the Subcommittee 

identified. 

 And then I think the next paragraph 

has the key sentence, and this is the 

important one for the Board. It is the 

consensus of the Board that this process 

continues to be effective in assuring the 

clarity, efficiency, and scientific accuracy 

of the procedures in use. That is the key 

bottom line sentence. And that is the one I 

think is important, that there be agreement on 

if this letter is to go forward. Beyond that, 

the letter says there is some attachments, 
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which summarize the findings. 

 So I guess, Madam Chairman, it 

would be important for us to get concurrence 

on the letter, particularly with respect to 

that bottom line issue. 

 MEMBER MUNN: It is my request that 

the full Board recommend the letter go forward 

to the Secretary. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And that 

basically is a motion from the Subcommittee. 

It doesn't require a second so that we can 

discuss that. I ask if there is any 

discussion, pro or con, or if there are 

particular items that you believe should be 

changed, and certainly we can do edits 

afterwards, but the bottom line items are very 

important. Brad? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Who's this going 

to? Is this going to -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: This would go to 

the Secretary of Health and Human Services, 

Secretary Sebelius. 
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 MEMBER CLAWSON: Secretary who? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Sebelius. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Sebelius. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I just wanted to 

make sure when I saw that it didn't go to 

John. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: No, this would be 

a report to, I mean, we report to the 

Secretary of Health and Human Services. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. 

 MEMBER MUNN: That's why it says 

the Honorable Kathleen Sebelius. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We would probably 

transmit this through John's office in NIOSH 

as we do our other materials to the Secretary, 

but it would be addressed to her. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: There appears to 

be no discussion of particular concern. Does 

that mean there's a comfort level and that you 

are ready to vote? I see nods. Okay. Then 

we will, let's -- actually, since this is 
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going to the Secretary I would like to get a 

voice vote on this individually. We will go 

down the roster here. 

 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Gibson. Oh no, he's 

not here. Excuse me. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But we will have 

to obtain his vote. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay, we shall do that. 

 Mr. Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: And then same with Dr. 

Melius. I'll get his vote. Ms. Munn? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston? 

 MEMBER POSTON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Presley? 
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 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Ziemer? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: It's unanimous with ten 

votes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: The motion 

carries, and since this is a report to the 

Secretary, I think we will treat it as we do 

our other recommendations to the Secretary, 

which specify that we do obtain the votes of 

the other Board members, so they will have the 

opportunity to be on record on this one as 

well. Thank you very much. 

 Ms. Munn, do you have additional 

comments? 

 MEMBER MUNN: That's the extent of 

my report. Thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 
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much. Then we will go to Mr. Griffon for the 

 Subcommittee on Dose Reconstruction. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, a very brief 

report from the Dose Reconstruction 

Subcommittee. We did have one meeting since 

the last Advisory Board meeting. We continue 

work on the sixth, seventh, and eighth set of 

cases. We are very close to closing a few of 

those out. I know this has been a report of 

mine for the last several Board meetings, but 

we are very close to closing out the sixth and 

seventh set. We also began the process or 

deliberation process on the Subcommittee 

regarding the first 100 cases report. If you 

remember, the Board tasked us to go back and 

reconsider. We did forward a report on the 

first 100 cases, but we wanted to sort of 

reconsider what impacts some of those findings 

had on the bottom line question that Paul had 

raised regarding scientific accuracy of the 

dose reconstructions to this point in the 

program, so we began deliberations on that. I 
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owe the Subcommittee a draft for the next 

Subcommittee meeting, and then we are going to 

start getting more specific to try to bring 

something back to the Board with regard to 

what we think we can say about a bottom line 

on those issues that were raised in the 

previous report. But other than that, we just 

continued our regular work on the sixth, 

seventh, and eighth cases. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you, Mark. 

 If I might add one thing for informational 

purposes. SC&A has completed their review of 

the 11th set of dose reconstructions, and they 

are ready to begin work with our Board teams 

on the individual cases. The list of cases 

and the team assignments are in my hands 

currently. I am looking at them. Actually I 

promised John Mauro I would have them by 

today, and today is going to be a long day. 

It is going to stretch into tomorrow, but 

these are just about ready to go. General 

counsel will have to look at them for ensuring 
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that we don't have conflict of interest, but I 

think we'll be, we are basically set to go. 

You will be contacted very soon by the SC&A 

folks to set up your review time with them. 

So that will be coming. Probably you will 

hear from them next week I would gather. So 

just that as a status report. 

 Thank you. Let's proceed with the 

work groups, Ted. Let me preface this also. 

If your work group has nothing to report and -

- other than that you met, just tell us that. 

 We don't need any lengthy reports on actions 

that have not occurred. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. So Blockson is 

not necessary because we've addressed that at 

the meeting already. But Chapman Valve, Dr. 

Poston? 

 MEMBER POSTON: No report. 

 MR. KATZ: And then Fernald, Mr. 

Clawson? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: No report. 

 MR. KATZ: Hanford is Dr. Melius 
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who is not here with us today, but we spent a 

good bit of time. Is there a further update 

on Hanford? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: No, I'm on that 

Work Group as well, and Hanford we were 

waiting for the most recent action, which 

impacts on the original matrix and related 

things that we had from SC&A. My 

understanding is Jim now intends to assemble 

the Work Group in the very near future and 

we'll proceed from there. But the matrix that 

we have in hand will be greatly impacted by 

the action taken this week. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. 

Idaho, Mr. Schofield? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Larry Elliott 

said they will not probably be ready with that 

until April. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: That, ready with? 

 Can you just specify what “that” is? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: The review that 

SC&A did was a TBD. It is back with NIOSH, 
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but he does not expect to have anything ready 

for the Work Group until April. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Very good, thank 

you. 

 MR. KATZ: Linde, Dr. Roessler? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Our Work Group 

held its first meeting after being reestablished to look at SEC issues on September 

2, and I reported on that meeting at our Board 

teleconference. So I'll just bring an update 

to this one. At that meeting we had made some 

assignments to SC&A and to NIOSH. SC&A has 

completed their assignment. NIOSH has 

completed most of the work that we had 

assigned them, but there's one small thing 

left open on -- dealing with radon. We were 

scheduled to have a Work Group meeting on 

November 4, but I think we need to reschedule 

that and make sure we have everything complete 

from NIOSH first. So we're looking at another 

couple of dates. November 16 is one that most 

Work Group members can meet. We are also 
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looking at December 1. We've heard from our 

petitioners' representative, [identifying 

information redacted], and she's available at 

least for the 16th. But we have not heard yet 

from Steve Ostrow, who is SC&A's person on 

this. So right now we don't have a 

rescheduled date. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much, and, Dr. Roessler, if you'd permit me to 

reword something. We don't actually assign 

tasks to NIOSH. We request them. So Dr. 

Roessler meant to say that, and I just wanted 

to make sure you knew that's what she really 

meant. 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: That's what I 

really meant. Thank you. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. Los Alamos, 

Mr. Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: No report at this 

point. We are getting closer though to having 

a Work Group meeting I think. 

 MR. KATZ: Mound, Ms. Beach? 
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 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, for Mound. We 

have scheduled a two-day meeting for early 

January. My hope is that we will be able to 

present the Work Group's findings to the full 

Board at the February meeting. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. NTS, Mr. 

Presley? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: I'm going to cut 

this two page down to about a half a page. In 

the last little bit there's been some concerns 

about NTS not meeting, and I want to tell you 

why that's been going on. When we met in Las 

Vegas last year, we thought we were really 

close to closing this, and it was brought to 

our attention that some data had been found 

for bioassay results at the Test 

Site. At the Advisory Board meeting in 

Amarillo, NIOSH committed to obtaining these 

results or this data, and when I say data it's 

actually five electronic databases, it has 

over a quarter of a million, a quarter of a 

million bioassay data on it. It takes some 
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time to do this. So they are looking at the 

data. The data is from 1955 until 2000. I 

believe it's all workers. It has Social 

Security numbers, names. So it is a very, 

very high quality database for them to use. 

They are going to report back to the Board, I 

have been told, hopefully in two to three 

weeks. When the Working Group gets this, then 

we will forward a copy on to John Mauro for 

their review and hopefully then the NTS 

Working Group will be able to move on, on the 

TBD as well as the SEC petition. We're close, 

we're a whole lot closer than we were a year 

ago, but we want to make sure that all the 

strings are pulled and all the doors are 

closed. Thank you. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. Pantex, Mr. 

Clawson? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Nothing to report 

at this time. We did go down and have data 

capture, and we've got a few problems we are 

trying to work out, but nothing at this time. 
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 MR. KATZ: Pinellas, Mr. Schofield? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Nothing to 

report at this time. 

 MR. KATZ: Rocky Flats, Mr. 

Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I'd like to give 

my two minutes to Jeff Kotsch to report. Is 

that appropriate at this point, to have DOL 

come forward -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I guess Mark is 

asking about Labor's review of the Ruttenber 

data, I believe. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, there's 

nothing else. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Labor had 

indicated that they would be looking at that 

and the possible impact of that information. 

I guess we are asking for an update on the 

status of that. 

 MR. KOTSCH: Good morning. We are 

still not quite done, but let me just give you 

an update of where we are at. DOL plans to 
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use the billing information in the database, 

in the Ruttenber database to assist in its 

assessment of whether Rocky Flats workers can 

be included in the SEC. The database shows an 

employee's job location as one of the 

buildings identified as involving potential 

for neutron exposure during the year of the 

class. This evidence will be -- this will 

demonstrate that the employee should have been 

monitored, that is a requirement, for 

neutrons, which is one of the requirements of 

the class. We are also talking with or trying 

to talk with Margaret Ruttenber to figure out 

or get a better handle on the neutron exposure 

data that is in the database. We have some 

difficulties with determining what some of 

those neutron numbers because there is a 

variety. I forget how many columns are in 

that database but there's quite -- it's thirty 

something, and some of that neutron data is, 

we are not quite sure what, what some of those 

numbers mean and how they were computed. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: So, I mean, do you 

have a time line on when they might be 

completed, or if you finish this analysis 

before the next Board meeting, would you 

notify the Board via email, let the word out 

kind of? 

 MR. KOTSCH: Yes, we can do that. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. 

 MR. KOTSCH: We just have to, like 

I said, we are just trying to communicate with 

Ms. Ruttenber to interpret that. Once we do 

that -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: But if I 

understand this right, you are considering 

whether you can assume neutron exposure if 

they were in the Ruttenber database and that's 

dependent on what -- 

 MR. KOTSCH: Yes, I think that's 

the direction the policy is headed with that 

because they have to revise their bulletin on 

interpreting that class. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: All right. I 
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think there's a lot of people anxious to find 

out, and you know that. So, yes, okay. Thank 

you. Thank you, Jeff. 

 MR. KATZ: Santa Susana, that's 

Mike. Josie or Bill? 

 MEMBER BEACH: I can say there's no 

report. We haven't met since the last Board 

meeting. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. Savannah 

River Site, Mr. Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Just a brief 

report. We did have a site visit which was 

actually a pretty good site visit. We do 

have, DOE has asked us all individually for 

follow up on how we can improve because we did 

have, it involves some tours in classified 

areas and one of the problems that sort of 

arose is every time we went to a new area, the 

team that was there to greet us and take us 

through said "so what do you all do? Why are 

you here?" And obviously I think it could 

have maybe, it might have benefitted all of us 
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if they had sort of a notion up front of what 

we are looking for and why we are there and 

that we were interested in historical. I 

think one of our tour guides at one of the 

buildings was, you know, looked to be 17 or 

18. He was a very young man, bright, but very 

young, and I'm not sure he remembered back to 

the 50s of that facility. 

 But anyway, overall it was, it's 

better than some that we've been involved in. 

 So we are looking to improve that a little 

bit. The other thing we've, I'm working with 

the NIOSH contact to have a classified meeting 

down at the site. We have some classified 

issues. I think that is more of a meeting, 

not a tour, and subsequent to that we are 

going to have our first Work Group meeting in 

Cincinnati, so this should all happen 

hopefully before the holidays. We are going 

to work close to getting the first Work Group 

session rolled out. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Mark. Okay, 
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the next is the SEC issues, Dr. Melius. I can 

say that I don't believe it has met. 

Following that we have TBD-6000, Dr. Ziemer? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. TBD-6000 

Work Group met in Cincinnati on the 14th of 

October. We are focusing mainly on General 

Steel Industries. There are many issues 

there. We are looking, continuing to look at 

the Landauer database. 

 An interesting offshoot of the 

General Steel effort on that Landauer database 

is that it has been discovered that Landauer 

is part of an early buyout of another company 

and has ended up with film badge records from 

the old Picker X-ray company. Picker was a 

film badge supplier as well as a medical X-ray 

supplier in the early days, and Landauer now 

has, in addition to their own archive of film 

badge data, has the old Picker archive. 

 It's not completely clear what is 

in that, but Jim Neton reported to us earlier 

this week and may not realize that connection, 
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but NIOSH has contracted with Landauer to not 

only go through their own database and 

organize it but to review the Picker records 

as well and try to cull out. Much of this 

originated with the GSI concerns, but they 

have some broader implications for other sites 

that might have been serviced by Landauer and 

that are of interest in the NIOSH program. 

 Our Work Group will be meeting 

again on December 16. We will be pursuing the 

General Steel Industries issues as well as two 

other assignments which have resulted from 

this Board meeting. So we have a fairly heavy 

workload ahead of us. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. 

We have then Surrogate Data, which has not 

met. That is Dr. Melius. And then next we 

have Worker Outreach. Mike is not here, but 

Josie is going to present for Mike. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, Mike asked me 

last night about 9:00 to report for him. The 

Worker Outreach has been busy. In addition to 
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our last meeting which was held on September 

29, we've had Work Group members go to the 

Weldon Springs meeting. We've sent people to 

the Dose Reconstruction meeting and also the 

Santa Susana meeting. We attended those three 

meetings representing the Worker Outreach 

Group. 

 Let's see, the Work Group, you have 

been given the results of our last meeting on 

September 29. The mission outreach statement 

has been reworded. I will read that into the 

record and ask that we take a vote on that 

today. You also have the draft copy of the 

plan we are working on. We are going to fine 

tune it at our next meeting scheduled in 

December, December 2. We will probably be 

able to bring that to the Board in February. 

So at this time I will go ahead and read the 

new mission statement. 

 The mission of the Advisory Board 

on Radiation and Worker Health's Worker 

Outreach Work Group is to evaluate the 
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effectiveness of NIOSH's activities and 

obtaining and making use of information from 

current and former workers and their 

representatives. The mission also includes 

monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of 

NIOSH sources of assistance to assure this 

information is available to as many potential 

EEOICPA claimants as possible. 

 So that's the wording that we would 

like to have voted on today. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: That represents a 

motion from the Work Group. It does not 

require a second. It is before us for action. 

 Any comments or questions? Anyone wish to 

speak to this proposed mission statement in 

terms of either affirming it, modifying it? 

Mark Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I was just going 

to ask if you could read the last line one 

more time since we don't have it in writing 

yet. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. We do, it's 
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right there. I would be happy to. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: The copy is right 

here. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Zaida worked very 

hard to get those copies out in the last ten 

minutes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I thought most of 

them were the other motion. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: It's the, all the 

words in italics represent the mission 

statement. The rest of the document is draft, 

just for information. No action will be 

required today. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Correct. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: So are there any 

questions on this? 

 MEMBER BEACH: So I want to make 

sure we are clear. We are only voting on the 

mission statement. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Not the draft. It 

was just part of the document. I didn't have 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: It's the words in 

italics. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Correct. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: All right, now I 

just want to make sure I have the words right 

before I ask the question. I'm not sure I 

understand. Evaluating the effectiveness of 

NIOSH sources of assistance. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Sources of 

assistance. What are sources of assistance? 

Is it to evaluate -- 

 MEMBER BEACH: Sources of 

assistance to assure that -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: It may be that --

NIOSH's resources or NIOSH has a resource to 

assist. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I believe we are 

trying to say how NIOSH's, the sources that 

they bring to us. Wanda, was that part of 

your wording, I believe? 
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 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, it was. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I can see. I 

think I get the point. How good of a resource 

is NIOSH to the claimants. Am I interpreting, 

is that kind of what you are getting at? 

 MEMBER BEACH: I believe it's all 

that NIOSH brings to the worker outreach 

activities. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: All their 

documents? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Correct. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. I'm a 

little confused then. 

 MEMBER MUNN: What sources they 

bring to the table. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: You might have 

thought of it as resources actually. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Possibly. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I was thinking 

resources. 

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intent is about the same. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Pretty close. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Resources of 

assistance wouldn't really help. 

 MEMBER MUNN: No. 

 MEMBER BEACH: We would have to 

reword the whole sentence. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, you would 

have to reword the whole sentence, yes. 

 MEMBER MUNN: The thought was NIOSH 

has many sources that they use to provide 

assistance, and we're saying that we evaluate 

the effectiveness of not only what goes to the 

worker but where it comes from as well. Is 

this an effective use of that source? Are the 

sources that NIOSH uses being effective for 

our purposes? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think I get it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Josie? 

 MEMBER BEACH: And we have reworded 

this several times. We could actually wait 
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until the next meeting. I was just hoping to 

get the mission statement through. I didn't 

really think about that part of it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: It seems to me 

the intent here is fairly clear, and you can 

massage it a little bit if needed. But 

certainly the intent is what we are wanting to 

focus on. I know that Dr. Lockey originally 

had a concern about the word evaluate. Do you 

still have that concern or is that, is it 

understood in this context what they are 

doing? I guess the proof will be in the 

actual working papers, but are you okay with 

it? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I'm okay with it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. Are 

you ready to vote then? We can do this by 

voice. All who favor the motion which is to 

adopt the mission statement for the Work Group 

on Worker Outreach say aye. 

 (Chorus of ayes.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Those opposed, 
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no. Abstentions? The ayes have it; the 

motion carries. The mission statement is 

approved. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Thank you. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Josie. And 

then Oak Ridge Hospital has reported out so I 

don't know if it is time to disband. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Oak Ridge 

Hospital Work Group has, unlike many others, 

has completed its work. Thank you, Dr. 

Lockey. We appreciate that. We have to give 

you more difficult tasks in the future. Dr. 

Lockey had another work group earlier that 

finished its work in an extremely timely 

fashion. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, he gets the 

big ones. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: He's making notes 

here, Brad, so be careful. Okay. Okay. Do 

we have any others? 

 MR. KATZ: That's it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: That's it. 
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 MR. KATZ: That concludes the work 

group reports. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much, everyone. Let's go ahead and move on to 

the next item. We have follow up actions on 

the petitions. Dr. Lockey has provided us as 

the trainee to Dr. Melius, has provided us 

with the wording for, I believe we have five. 

 We have a number of actions going forward to 

the Secretary. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: There's new, I got 

some comments this morning. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: There's a 

revision coming. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: There's new drafts 

being distributed. I don't think there was 

any change on Brookhaven, right? So maybe we 

can start on that, and by that time the other 

ones will be back down. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, very good. 

 Let's move to the Brookhaven one. All of 

these start with the standard statement which 
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instructs the Chair to submit this material 

within 21 days, and so that is common to all 

of these. We don't need to read through that. 

 The description of the class, I think in each 

case is given in the second paragraph. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: That's correct. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: My understanding 

is that these descriptions NIOSH has had an 

opportunity to look at this. Labor, Jeff, you 

have looked at these, and counsel has looked 

at these. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: No, there were some 

changes made on all but Brookhaven. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Brookhaven is 

exactly as it was presented to us by the NIOSH 

evaluation report. Is that correct? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: It's gone through 

legal and Labor review yesterday. Is that 

correct? And there were no changes on it from 

their perspective. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, and then 

the bulleted items are always ones where we 
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identify factors which led to the decision. 

And the first one is that they were a covered 

facility. That is common to all of these. 

The second one is the statement concerning the 

conclusion that NIOSH, well you can read it 

there. Appropriate amount of work was 

conducted. Documentation of appropriate 

monitoring practices. I'm looking for the 

words here. Retrievability of database of 

doses for members of the class. Is something 

missing here? Prevent NIOSH from confirming. 

 That's the word, it is there, and that we 

concur, and then the health endangerment 

statement, and that we concur. Emily Howell, 

do you have a comment? 

 MS. HOWELL: The only issue with 

Brookhaven which actually appears in all of 

the document is the language in the very last 

paragraph referring, or the second to last 

paragraph, rather, referring to a TIB for 

diagnostic X-ray procedures, and I believe 

that Dr. Lockey picked up that language from 
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Norton which had come from Standard Oil, but 

prior to those couple of SECs which are 

recent, this language had never appeared in 

the letter before. We spoke with this about 

Larry who's a little unsure of whether it 

would have any effect, but Jim may want to 

speak to that. I don't know. We were going 

to leave it to the Board to kind of discuss 

whether or not that language should remain in 

all of these. The thought was that it might 

limit NIOSH in the kind of information that 

they could use for medical X-rays. 

 DR. NETON: That was my concern. 

It's very specific, if the TIB actually 

changes number or something like that it could 

be problematic, and it's never been a problem 

before. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, I 

understand. Emily, can you remind us of how 

we worded it on the earlier documents? 

 DR. NETON: I don't think it was 

there before. It was not, for some reason it 
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appeared in a fairly recent one, Standard Oil. 

 But I'm not sure it really is necessary. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well for example, 

can we simply end with the sentence that nonpresumptive cancers NIOSH will use individual 

internal/external monitoring data 

to complete dose reconstruction? 

 DR. NETON: I would say do that. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, I think 

that's consistent with most of the SEC 

transmittal. 

 MS. HOWELL: Nancy has said that 

normally it just ends after special exposure 

cohort status be granted. The sentence 

beginning for non-presumptive cancers is what 

never appeared. So it's not even just the 

medical doses. It is also that other 

sentence, although I think that that sentence 

is less problematic. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: It doesn't 

actually matter in terms of this letter that 

we say that because that's part of the 
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 MS. HOWELL: Right. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Is there any 

objection to simply deleting that? It is not 

required for the SEC class. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: What would we 

delete? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Delete everything 

after the fact that we recommended special 

cohort status be granted. All the statement 

about non-presumptive cancers to the end of 

the paragraph would be deleted. It must have 

appeared at least in one of the earlier ones. 

 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: It had to have 

appeared because I think Jim is the one who 

raised the issue to make sure that this 

language would be inserted. As I recall -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: What particular 

site was it? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: That I don't know. 

 I don't know. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: I mean, I was 

almost thinking just dropping the last line, 

but then if you look back at the next to last, 

and maybe NIOSH can help me out here, but I 

think that you have the same potential problem 

because it limits you because it says NIOSH 

will use any individual internal/external 

monitoring data to do, and I think sometimes 

for external, for non-presumptives you can use 

other means, right? You are not limited to 

just individual data, are you? I don't know. 

 DR. NETON: Well this is SEC classspecific, and in this particular case I think 

that's accurate. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay, okay. I was 

just thinking it was generic language. I was 

worried about that. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: That wouldn't be 

in every case. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, yes. 

 MS. HOWELL: I mean, I would just 

argue that could cause confusion, as it has in 
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this instance, so better to take it out. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Any objection to 

removing that? Okay, then by consent we will 

just delete the rest of that. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: So, I will take 

those out from all five of them. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, and we can 

just do that as we proceed here. It is common 

language. Any other comments? Now we've 

already approved the motion for this so we 

don't need to take action. I have consent 

that there's no further objection to the final 

wording. There appears to be none, and that 

will be the final wording. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: If we can wait a 

few minutes, we'll get the new drafts for the 

other four. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Are all the other 

four changed? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes, a little bit. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, in order to 
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move us along here -- are we okay, or do we 

need a break? Okay. 

 If you will pull out the other 

document that was distributed at the time that 

the Worker Outreach Work Group document was 

distributed, you have a draft called Advisory 

Board policy on meeting transcripts. You may 

recall that at our telephone meeting last 

month or the most recent one, I forget the 

date, we talked about how we would handle 

transcripts and whether or not we could put 

them on the website early on. We agreed 

informally that after Privacy Act review, we 

would put the transcripts on the website even 

before they were reviewed for technical 

accuracy with a disclaimer statement that they 

had not been reviewed for technical accuracy. 

 And in fact that has already begun, and if 

you look at the most recent transcripts on 

there, they now have the disclaimer. This 

proposed policy simply will codify what we are 

already doing and that I've broken it down 
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into a series of statements. The first of 

which says that following PA review the 

transcripts will go immediately on the 

website. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Which needs to be 

spelled properly, S-I-T-E. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: When you draft 

things at 11:30 at night. Thank you. All 

such transcripts will bear the disclaimer. 

And this is the disclaimer that currently is 

on there. It is verbatim, in case you haven't 

looked at it. And it also says the transcript 

has not been reviewed and certified by the 

chair of whatever it is, the Board or the Work 

Group, for accuracy. Then the second item 

here has an instruction relating to the Board 

transcripts that within 30 days of posting 

that the chair will certify them for technical 

accuracy. That means the chair has to review 

them, and if there are changes, it describes 

that. If technical changes are required they 

will be made and a corrected version will then 
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be posted and have the following 

certification. And I haven't checked this 

wording out with counsel yet, but it is pretty 

close to what was already there. The 

transcript of the Advisory Board on Radiation 

and Worker Health has been reviewed for 

concerns under the Privacy Act, and personally 

identifiable information has been redacted as 

necessary. And then, this transcript has also 

been reviewed by the chair of the Advisory 

Board who has certified it as being an 

accurate transcript of the meeting. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Can I comment? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I have a bit of a 

concern with putting in 30 days because what 

happens if we don't get it done within 30 

days. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well the chair 

has imposed this on himself, and you will 

notice the we is me. And the way I have 

structured this, you will notice that the 
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chairs of the other groups don't have a 30-

day. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: However, the 

Designated Federal Official has informed me 

that at least for the subcommittees, they have 

to parallel what we do in the Board. So we 

would have to modify the subcommittee ones to 

30 days. So I'm quite willing to extend this 

out, but in reality if we go very far beyond 

30 days, because it is already a month, almost 

a month to get the originals posted, we will 

have some grumbling. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Can that task be 

delegated if the chair of that Work Group does 

not have the ability to -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: The chair simply 

has to certify. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Has to do it, okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I myself, if I 

see something I don't understand or am not 

knowledgeable in, which was the case, and Brad 
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knows, in some security things that I thought 

was mumbo jumbo, and it was really good stuff. 

 I didn't know the jargon, but I had to have 

help to determine that it was correct. So, 

sure, you can ask for assistance. So there 

would be a parallel statement for the 

subcommittees and a parallel statement for the 

work groups. I think, Ted, are you saying 

that the work groups would not necessarily 

have the 30 days? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Actually as soon 

as practical. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. That 

allows much more flexibility for the work 

groups but not for the subcommittees. In any 

event this is, the first item is already our 

practice. The second item is an effort to 

prescribe a time limit for the chair of the 

Board and the two subcommittees. And the 

third is a commitment that the other chairs as 

practical will review for technical accuracy. 

 And then because we have had concerns from 
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the public about what we mean by reviews and 

editing, I have put a note here, and you can 

read the note, that reviewers are not 

permitted to correct grammar, reword 

sentences. I should have added remove 

dangling participles or otherwise edit the 

transcripts. The technical, I've given some 

examples of what can be done. You can correct 

a misspelled person's name or misspelled 

technical term. And sometimes that occurs. 

And then correct designation of a technical 

term. For example, if the speaker is talking 

about mR per hour, and the court reporter puts 

little m, little r per hour, I will correct it 

to little m, big R because that's the 

nomenclature, so sometimes those nomenclature 

things are permitted, and then sometimes one 

word that sounds like another and this is an 

actual one. Inhalation of thorium has an 

“effect” on the lungs, sounds just like the 

inhalation of thorium has an “affect” on the 

lungs. 
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 MEMBER POSTON: I thought you were 

going to say site. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, a wise guy, 

and site would be another good example. We've 

had one like, one of the members attended a 

motherboard meeting. A motherboard meeting? 

It was the other Board meeting. I mean there 

are things like that. This is the document 

so, and unless there is some wording issues on 

certification, then I would ask Emily and Rob 

to help on that. Then the 30 day issue comes 

before us. 

 MR. KATZ: That may be coming up, 

but just another example I would put in here 

because it has occurred quite a number of 

times and it is one of the more important, I 

think, examples is misattribution of a 

statement where a statement is attributed to 

one individual and it was really made by a 

different individual. That can make a big 

difference. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right, and I've 
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had a number of those also where I'm quite 

certain that it was a different speaker. Or 

sometimes the chair is referred to as Dr. 

Lockey and then the court reporter may record 

what I say from that point on as Dr. Lockey. 

He doesn't want to -- yes. Okay. That does 

occur and through no fault of anyone. It just 

happens sometimes. Okay. Dr. Roessler? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: I've only done 

one of these, and it was 246 pages, and it was 

a short meeting, and so it takes a lot of 

time. I guess my main concern is I looked 

over it and things like radionuclides 

activities, amounts, units, that sort of 

thing. Just in order to really do this 

accurately during a work group meeting the 

chair or someone would have to take minutes 

too to make sure, especially with 

radionuclides. They are so easy to be 

confused. I read our report looking for those 

sort of things, but what responsibility comes 

on me if I miss one? 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I don't think 

it's that big a deal. I think you will pick 

up the obvious ones. If, for example, if 

somebody is talking about cobalt-60 and 

somehow the court reporter wrote cobalt-50 and 

you know that it couldn't have been that, I 

think you are okay in changing it. We had one 

in a recent transcript in a discussion of the 

Oak Ridge Hospital where the presenter 

indicated that at the Oak Ridge Hospital the 

high radiation areas exceeding six micro R per 

hour were roped off. And I said it can't be 

six micro R per hour. In the first place you 

wouldn't rope off a six micro R per hour area. 

 Number two, at the time of the Oak Ridge 

Hospital work, they couldn't measure micro R. 

 And incidentally Nancy Adams does a 

preliminary review of these, too, and so she 

helps with that. I said to Nancy, "I don't 

think the speaker said micro R." Maybe the 

speaker said mR or something and somehow it 

got recorded as micro. So Nancy went back to 
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the court reporter, and they listened to the 

transcript, and the transcript said micro R. 

So the transcript says micro R. I know that's 

not the correct, but that is what was said in 

the meeting. That's how it remains. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think that issue 

came up with one of mine, too, that someone 

said and I questioned it. It said radon-226, 

and I knew they meant radium, but they 

listened to it again, and it was actually said 

radon so, you know. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: So true 

transcripts will be accurate in that they will 

record errors in the communication as well as 

other things. It is okay because that was 

what was said. We want to be true to that. 

So we do not edit in the sense that we correct 

everything technically but if something is 

obvious particularly if words sound like. I 

think you are fine on that. Or if you spot 

something that could easily have been 

misheard. I think you can take care of that. 
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 MR. KATZ: Can I just add to that, 

Paul? This is just an attempt to get as 

accurate as possible a transcript. But really 

I would hate to think that you would sort of 

go through the transcript with a fine-tooth 

comb spending eight hours or twelve hours 

reviewing it so carefully. That is really the 

point, I think as Paul said, is to read it 

through and just to see what jumps out at you 

as possibly incorrect and to flag those and 

then we will get those sorted out. You folks 

don't have the time to spend days reviewing 

these transcripts. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: No, and you know 

I certainly believe that what we get from the 

court reporters is already accurate. It is 

very accurate. 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: It's amazing how 

accurate they are. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But sometimes 

people's names are misspelled or things are 

heard differently. I remember when K.Z. 
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one of our meetings. I think someone said 

that they had studied under K.Z. Morgan and 

then the transcript, it came out something 

like K.P. Morgan or oh, K.C. Morgan, the 

letter C. Well those two could easily be 

confused. So I said well I know that they 

said K.Z. and so I changed it. But otherwise, 

what's in the transcript usually is quite 

accurate in terms of what was actually said, 

but sometimes the things we describe do occur, 

and you can change it. Again, you can scan 

through pretty quickly actually, chairs, and 

spot some of these things. Beyond that, I 

mean you just do the best you can. We want to 

try to achieve accuracy, but it's not going to 

be perfect. 

 Do we need a comfort break? 

 Okay. Ten minutes. The longer you 

take, the longer it will be before you leave. 

 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 10:17 a.m. and 
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resumed at 10:32 a.m.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I want to bring 

to closure the policy on meeting transcripts. 

 I'm going to ask for a motion to approve 

this, but what we will need to do since as I 

have been advised the requirements for 

subcommittees legally are the same as the 

requirement for the Board itself. So we would 

combine items 2 and 3 into one that would 

simply indicate the chair of the Advisory 

Board and the chairs of the various 

subcommittees will review the transcripts, and 

then it would follow exactly the way the 

paragraph two wording is with the 30-day 

requirement. And then the fourth paragraph 

would become the third, and that leaves for 

the work groups an open-ended non-specified 

review time other than the words as soon as -- 

what word do we use? Practical, as soon as 

practical after posting. So that leaves a 

fair amount of leniency there. So with those 

modifications as well as the word website, I'd 
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like to have a motion to approve the policy. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I'll go ahead and 

make the motion to approve the policy with the 

corrections you've mentioned. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you, and is 

there a second? 

 PARTICIPANT: Second. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Are you ready to 

vote? All in favor say aye. 

 (Chorus of ayes.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Those opposed? 

No, and abstentions, no. The motion carries. 

 It does not require a vote of the missing or 

absent members. 

 Now are we ready to return to the 

follow up actions on petitions? Do we have 

the revisions ready? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I laid them in 

front of you there. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Oh, here they 

are. I'm leaning on them. We have revised 

Brookhaven copies for everyone. Basically 
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we've already agreed on the Brookhaven one. 

Oak Ridge Hospital? Just take a look at that 

and see if you have any questions. On all of 

these then you would delete the words in the 

bottom paragraph, all of the words beginning 

with for non-prescriptive cancers. Those 

would be deleted through the end of those 

paragraphs in each case. Is that correct, Dr. 

Lockey? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: That's correct. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Did you say all the 

way to the end of the paragraph? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. Any 

questions on the Oak Ridge Hospital draft? If 

not I'll take it by consent that that's agreed 

to. 

 Metals and Controls Corporation? 

Again, delete the words in that last paragraph 

on the first page to the end of the paragraph 

beginning with for non-presumptive cancers. 

Any questions then on that one? If not I'll 

take it by consent that Metals and Controls' 
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wording is appropriate. 

 Piqua Organic Moderated Reactor. 

Again, deleting the same wording that we did 

on the others. 

 MEMBER MUNN: May we assume someone 

has carefully checked the appropriate dates 

here so that we don't individually have to go 

back and check? Those have been carefully 

checked? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I believe both 

Dr. Lockey and the others, Labor, counsel and 

NIOSH have checked that. Thank you. Any 

other concerns or questions on Piqua? If not, 

we will take it by consent that the wording is 

agreed to. 

 Hanford, same deletions. Questions 

or concerns? If not, I will take it by 

consent that the wording is also agreed to. 

 That covers five recommendations 

that will move on to the Secretary through 

NIOSH over the next couple of weeks, three 

weeks. Let me thank Dr. Lockey again. We 
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appreciate your effort in getting this wording 

for us, Dr. Lockey. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Say something nice, 

Brent. 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: And you didn't 

even get lost. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, we have 

some SC&A tasking to take care of and some 

related matters. First of all we need to 

address the issue of Electro-Medical -- no 

wait a minute. I will get the right one here. 

 Electro Met, we have assigned to TBD-6001, 

and we already then can task SC&A on that 

because they are working with that. I don't -

- do we require any separate tasking? 

 MR. KATZ: I mean if you want them 

to initiate before you meet even, initiate a 

review, then this would be a good time to do 

it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Yes, 

because as it stands now they are doing 

tasking as the work group meets. So it would 
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appropriate for us to task SC&A to review the 

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Metallurgical and prepare that for the Work 

Group. So, let me ask Ted, do we need an 

actual motion or just concurrence on that? 

 MR. KATZ: We don't need a motion, 

just concurrence. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Any objections to 

tasking SC&A to begin reviewing the evaluation 

report for Electro Medical -- Electro 

Metallurgical? There are no objections so we 

will so task them. I would like to ask John 

Mauro just by way of scheduling, that Work 

Group has a meeting scheduled for December 16, 

almost two months off. I won't ask you to 

commit, but is there a likelihood we will have 

at least a preliminary review of that by then? 

 Take this into consideration with other tasks 

that you are working on. 

 DR. MAURO: We're in the fortunate 

position that we are, it turns out, many of 
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the dose reconstruction audits. For example, 

one of them was a case. So we've all -- and 

interestingly enough, we have a heads up on it 

already because in reviewing the case we often 

find ourselves having to go to the appendix. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: And this is one of 

them. So -- as there are others. So my 

answer is that we will be in a position, we 

may not actually have a formal report in your 

hands because of the process for a report 

going to DOE, going through PA. But I will be 

in a position to give a briefing and a summary 

of the status of our findings. I don't think 

the actual formal paperwork will move that 

quickly. It just takes time to move through 

the process. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. 

 DR. MAURO: So on the various items 

that we've been discussing, I believe we will 

be in a position to be able to give a fairly 

substantial status report on where we are. 
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What the issues might be. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 DR. MAURO: And what issues we 

don't think are going to resolve, that sort of 

thing. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Very good, thank 

you, John. We need to -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: John, actually I 

just wanted to add. That probably was a 

fairly, I think you said it already, but a lot 

of times these smaller sites when we do the 

dose reconstruction review, they end up being 

what I've termed mini site profile reviews so 

you probably have a pretty good jumpstart on 

that. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, they do. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think he said 

it. 

 DR. MAURO: We always do a mini 

review. That's the only way to do the review 

of the case. But we don't usually have a 

separate appendix. There have been some 
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special cases where a harsher chemical was 

used, for example, there were many, many cases 

and it was felt that we would like a special 

appendix to a dose reconstruction report, 

where we do a review, a mini review, and the 

nature of the review goes beyond what we would 

just do to that case. In other words, 

normally for a case we just look at the issues 

relevant to that case. When we do a mini 

review, it is something that we do under the 

direction of the subcommittee and then we will 

include in our deliverable to you folks an 

attachment that will actually have the mini 

review. At that point, but even that is not 

of the same level of detail. For example, it 

does not include a site visit. We leave it to 

the subcommittee to decide, okay we'd like and 

this hasn't happened yet but it's the judgment 

of the subcommittee to say, listen I think 

there's enough here, enough issues, enough 

concern that we may want to turn this into a 

site profile review. So there is a process 
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there. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you John. 

So we have tasked them to proceed on this one. 

 Board, we also need to establish a Work Group 

for Piqua for the earlier period. We agreed 

to an SEC for the later period, but the early 

period still needs to be addressed. I don't 

think we are in a position to know at this 

point whether or not we need any tasking. It 

would be my judgment right now that we would 

establish a Work Group, and they would have to 

determine whether or not additional work 

needed to be done with the assistance of SC&A. 

 I think it would be appropriate for us to 

have a Work Group to address the issues at 

Piqua, and I think that was the understanding 

when we took the action on the SEC that we 

would do that. It would be my intention to 

have at least one of the new members as part 

of that Work Group again as we do for the 

Brookhaven one, and then I would like to ask 

if there are others who are interested in 
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serving on that particular one. Okay, Phillip 

Schofield is interested. And Mark Griffon. 

Piqua Nuclear -- and John Poston. And I think 

with a new member on that, we'll be fine. So 

let's use those four. If it looks like the 

work will become more substantial and we need 

assistance, we may add an alternate to make 

sure we are covered and then tasking can 

occur. I think on this one perhaps John 

Poston would be willing to chair that one. 

 MEMBER POSTON: Okay. 

 MR. KATZ: Could I ask Dr. Ziemer, 

it would be good for SC&A just to familiarize 

themselves with that so that when they come to 

that Work Group meeting, don't you think, with 

the material? Not to have done a review but -

- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, I'm not 

sure at this point if SC&A would be involved 

in that Work Group even unless we task them. 

I don't think in other cases where we haven't 

tasked them to do something specific that they 
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necessarily have attended the work group 

meetings. But if you feel that you would like 

them to do preliminary review, that's a sort 

of tasking. John, did you have a comment? 

 MEMBER POSTON: I would like a 

clarification since you indicated you were 

going to appoint one of the new members. That 

means that we will not be able to meet until 

the new member is appointed? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well the new 

members have been appointed. They have to be 

cleared. 

 MEMBER POSTON: I mean until they 

are cleared? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And actually we 

are trying to move this forward very rapidly. 

 We're hoping to have the orientation session 

within the next couple, two or three weeks, I 

believe, if possible. But it depends on some 

schedules of those four people as well as 

others participating. 

 MEMBER POSTON: My first meeting is 
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dependent on your appointing someone to that 

committee, the Working Group? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, although I 

guess there would be nothing to prevent you if 

you have a date and want to get underway, 

there's no reason why the three of them can't 

get underway. 

 MEMBER POSTON: Well that's what 

I'm asking. I mean that's your call, Dr. 

Ziemer. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: You have three 

people to start with. You can get underway. 

 MEMBER POSTON: Okay. So we have 

Phil and Mark? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 MEMBER POSTON: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: John Mauro? 

 DR. MAURO: I have a procedural 

question. As you prepare for Piqua Work Group 

meeting, whatever that schedule turns out, at 

some point in the process, John, you may say 

that you would like SC&A to attend that 
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meeting and let's say the judgment is made and 

it might be a good idea for you folks to give 

it a read and get a sensibility of what you 

feel might be some of the issues so we could 

bring that to the table. My question would be 

is it appropriate for the Work Group to, at 

that point in time, maybe two or three weeks 

before let's say, the meeting will be held, to 

task SC&A? Or is that something that can't be 

done by the Work Group? 

 MR. KATZ: Well I could task you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And I think if 

the chair makes the judgment early on that 

some assistance is needed and communicates 

that to Ted, you can do a preliminary tasking. 

 I think I've always had that ability to do 

that with the concurrence of the chair of a 

subcommittee. 

 Let's talk about PER tasking. 

 MR. KATZ: Before we speak about 

that, let me just make a note. We have 

distributed, I've distributed, received from 
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John Mauro and distributed to the full Board a 

listing of the PERs with some sort of rough 

information about their complexity and other 

factors that might play into whether you want 

at this point SC&A to review any of those. 

But before we go forward this is one of these 

situations under the new, the sort of new 

understanding of the ethics rules where it is 

a little bit difficult. Everybody really 

needs to be at the table because you have a 

whole host of sites on the sheets. In some 

cases, for some of those sites, some members 

may be conflicted or are conflicted. So what 

I would just let you know for the procedure 

here is if you are conflicted on a site, 

clearly you shouldn't speak to that site at 

all. And then when it comes to voting, if 

there's a vote regarding the PER for that 

site, just please orally abstain from that 

vote so that we have a record that you 

abstained. That way, no one needs to leave 

the table for this, at least this interim 
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procedure, but we can have a functional 

dialogue between all the members since we have 

a whole host of sites that are going to be 

discussed. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Josie? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Before we leave work 

group assignments, are we finished with that? 

 I was curious about Brookhaven. We never did 

talk about the chair, and I was interested in 

taking that responsibility. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Actually 

I'd be glad to have you chair that, Josie. I 

indicated yesterday that I wanted to have an 

opportunity to look at the bigger list and 

assignments. I believe you are only chairing 

 one group right now so that would be fine. 

I'm certainly pleased to have you pick that 

up, unless we need to have an arm wrestling 

amongst the other members as to who is going 

to chair. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: You win. 

 MEMBER BEACH: And then the other 
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thing on that subject. SC&A, we did mention 

that they would review. Do they need to be 

formally tasked to go ahead and look at 

Brookhaven and do a review? 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, they do. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Actually we do 

not have an SC&A review of -- 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, we do. They 

haven't fine-tuned it, I don't believe. 

 DR. MAURO: Let me help out. We 

have been tasked. We completed our review of 

the site profile. As you may recall, we were 

authorized to do that in anticipation by this. 

 We are at the point now we have completed our 

site profile review, and you all have copies 

of it. And so the question becomes, in light 

of the time period that's covered in the SEC, 

which I believe goes to 1979, the question 

becomes is there anything that the Board would 

like us to do to look at is that a good place 

to draw the line? Questions like that. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, you have as 
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a starting point the site profile review 

already so that involves them, and then it's 

the follow up and sort of more of a focus 

review dealing with this particular petition. 

 DR. MAURO: Normally we would, 

given that this is not enormous site profile 

this would be an SEC focused review. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: SEC focused 

review, yes. 

 DR. MAURO: And we would need to be 

tasked. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. Thank you 

for that reminder. Are there any objections 

to tasking SC&A to proceed with the focused 

review of Brookhaven SEC? There are none, 

Ted, so we can proceed. 

 MR. KATZ: All right. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 MEMBER BEACH: There was one other 

one we discussed yesterday, the Bliss & 

Laughlin. I had it down as assignments, but I 

don't know if we actually finished discussing 
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that either. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Bliss & Laughlin 

is TBD-6000. That has been assigned to the 

TBD-6000 committee and so we will be taking 

that up. We haven't specifically tasked SC&A 

to, well they've already reviewed the TBD6000. We are working through that matrix, and 

there's not an appendix for them to review on 

that. So I think we are okay on that for now. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Just making sure. 

Thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. Yes John? 

 DR. MAURO: Just so I understand. 

So we will not take any action on this until 

so requested by the TBD-6000 Work Group. So 

there is no action item. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, the 

possible action item would also be to look 

specifically at the evaluation report for 

Bliss & Laughlin that you have not done. 

 DR. MAURO: We have not done, and I 

just want to make sure that we are not at this 
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point being tasked to do that? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 DR. MAURO: Or are we? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well you have not 

yet been tasked to do that, and I think one of 

the questions was whether or not the Work 

Group, and I don't think we are even in a 

position to answer that, and some of the other 

Work Group members are here, whether or not we 

know whether we need to task that. We do have 

an evaluation report that does need to be 

looked at. So in my view it would be useful 

to task that as well. I would sort of like to 

hear from the other work group. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think if we -- 

we just tasked Electro-Met so -- which also 

falls in the TBD-6000 category. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think it's a 

more complex site, but I think we probably 

should do -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well and the 
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review is comparable, too, yes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. I think it 

certainly is appropriate. Any objection to 

tasking that one as well? There appears to be 

no objection so we will do so. 

 Well does everyone have the PER 

listing, currently issued Program Evaluation 

Report sorted by number of cases affected and 

level of complexity? Now and realize again so 

at the top of the list, you have the PER that 

affects the most cases on down through those 

that affect the least number. For example, 

there are some that affect one case all the 

way up to the top one which affects nearly 

5,000 potential claims and nearly 2,000 reevaluations. So there is a broad range of 

impacts as far as dose reconstructions are 

concerned. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Can you kind of 

explain what the process would be so I 

understand? 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well when we have 

a Program Evaluation Report that affects 

claims, NIOSH goes back and reconstructs, redoes dose reconstructions. I guess the 

question that arises in terms of monitoring 

this, there are probably multiple questions. 

And questions of, I guess, the application of 

the PER to the cases. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I guess what I am 

wondering is would it be a task that we would 

assign to SC&A and for the Work Group? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We would be 

asking SC&A to do certain evaluations. It 

would probably require, we would have some 

options. We could attach this to specific 

sites, but some of these are not necessarily 

site specific. So the more likely approach 

would be to have a Work Group work with SC&A 

on this. There's possible alternative ways to 

do it. John Mauro, if you would elaborate 

because you've thought about this. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, under our 
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contract, PERs are considered part and parcel 

of task three, which are procedure reviews. 

So you could think in terms of this as a 

special type of -- this is -- when we wrote 

our proposal and it was contracted and put in 

place, the PERs were considered within the 

group of work that we will call task three, 

and as a task three it would automatically 

fall under the authority of Wanda's Work Group 

Subcommittee. And we do have a procedure for 

reviewing PERs and in essence it is a matter 

of the review process, the steps go like this. 

 What triggered the need for the PER? In 

other words, what was the new information that 

came about said maybe we've got to revise our 

site profile. And as a result of that a site 

profile or a procedure has been revised. And 

that in itself then triggers a judgment that 

yes we will have to revisit many cases that 

are affected. Now part of the process is 

criteria are developed by NIOSH to say, okay, 

which ones are we going to redo? Now in the 
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simplest terms, NIOSH has said in the past we 

are going to redo every one that -- let's say 

it is a site -- every one that was denied and 

we are going to review them all. And that has 

happened. Or they may decide, no we will only 

review some subset of the ones that were 

denied within reason. And they would lay that 

out. And then so then they made that 

selection. And then finally they would 

actually perform their reviews. 

 What we do is write a report that 

says (1) here's the genesis of how it came 

about. Here's the criteria that were used on 

which ones would be redone, which dose 

reconstructions would be redone and the 

rationale and we would review that rationale 

whether or not it was sound. That is if it 

turns out it is all that were denied, there 

would be no work for us to do. So that's why 

we feel that that's a lower priority. There 

really is no controversy there. They are just 

going to review every one that was denied. 
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 And finally the last stage is to 

select three cases. Amongst the PERs, if the 

 picks, when the rework has to be done, if it 

is something very simple and straightforward, 

unlike high-fired plutonium or thoracic 

lymphoma. These were complex fixes. We had 

the work that had to be done under the new 

protocols. It was not a simple matter. Then, 

so our criteria for, in fact we discussed 

this. Ted and I discussed this, and Kathy 

Behling, I don't know if she's on the line, 

did the work, did the heavy lifting. 

Basically we tried to lay it out so you have a 

sense of, okay, here are all of the PERs that 

affect a lot of workers and that's important. 

 That's a criteria. Here are the PERs we had 

the decision criteria of which ones we are 

going to redo and which ones we are not going 

to redo is somewhat complex. It is not just 

simply doing them all. And third, here are 

the PERs where the nature of the work that had 

to be redone is not simple. The nature of the 
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re-analysis was fairly sophisticated. So in 

our opinion in selecting, making your 

judgments on which ones you think might be 

time well invested, it would be ones that (1) 

have a lot of cases, (2) ones with a selection 

criteria. It wasn't straight-forward. There 

was some new ones to it. And (3) ones that 

when they did redo them that it wasn't just a 

simple fix. It was a fairly complex fix. So 

those that meet those three criteria in our 

opinion will be those that will probably 

benefit the most from the review by the Board. 

 So we provided you with some material that 

identifies which of the various PERs you would 

sort of give or we felt you may want to give 

more priority to, regarding those three 

criteria. I hope that helps. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: That's very 

helpful, John. And I don't know that we as a 

Board have a good feel for the workload that 

entails if a tasking is done. Maybe you don't 

either, but you certainly have kind of a feel 
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for it, and it will be different for every one 

of these boxes. 

 DR. MAURO: We've actually, in our 

proposal have costed out the estimated cost 

for each PER. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: On average. 

 DR. MAURO: On average. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. And can 

you remind us, or, Ted, can you remind us, did 

we budget specifically this year for PER 

reviews, or is it enveloped in procedures 

review? 

 DR. MAURO: It's enveloped in the 

procedure review. There's a -- basically we -

- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Did you break out 

in your submission on procedures review a 

portion for PER review? 

 DR. MAURO: No, the way, what we 

did we said there would be, I believe there is 

a certain number of procedure reviews/PERs. 

So we didn't separate procedures reviews. We 
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set aside a certain amount of funds from the 

overall annual budget for this year for what 

we call past three activities which consist of 

any combination of procedure/PER reviews. As 

of this date we have really not performed very 

many procedure reviews because there aren't 

that many procedures that need to be reviewed. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: That remain? 

 DR. MAURO: That remains. We have 

already reviewed well over 100 procedures. We 

are in the process, of course, of issue 

resolution on these procedures and that's want 

we want. But as far as reviewing new 

procedures, we've only reviewed one. That was 

OCAS-IG-004. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: So in effect if we have 

resources for task three then for all 

intensive purposes you could say well perhaps 

they would be well spent on PERs. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And you could get 

underway with these almost immediately. 
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 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And then the 

other side of the question will be, for 

example, if one assumed at least initially 

that this is in the purview of the Procedures 

Review Subcommittee, I think, Wanda, you would 

have to assess what impact that would have on 

the workload. I mean, and you might not be 

able to access that until you have an actual 

output or deliverable from SC&A and look at 

what will be required to resolve findings on 

this kind of a review and how does that fit 

into a regular procedures review? So those 

are issues we probably don't know the answer 

to those right now. I guess my inclination 

based on the discussion would be that at least 

initially we would indeed keep this in the 

Procedures Review Subcommittee and allow them 

the opportunity to see how they can manage it, 

and, you know, if it looked like it was 

becoming untenable in terms of the regular 

workload, I think the Subcommittee could also 
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be authorized to establish some sort of work 

group or ask for work groups, either one, I 

suppose. I'm looking to Ted. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, I think the Board 

would establish a work group rather than do 

that under the Subcommittee, but I just want 

to add another note about resources. SC&A as 

it reports to you each month on their work as 

you will see, although they haven't done a lot 

of procedure reviews. They've been spending a 

lot of resources as necessary on resolution of 

issues with procedures existing as well as 

other site profiles, et cetera. But be that 

as it may, there's still, I think they are 

doing pretty well in the budget sense. They 

have a little bit of room, they have a little 

bit of daylight still in terms of their budget 

for this year. So it might not be a bad thing 

to give one or two PERs and sort of get a 

sense, a practical sense, for what that 

requires but also to just sort of make a 

little bit of progress since we have a little 
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bit of breathing room in terms of resources of 

SC&A even if the Subcommittee doesn't have 

time immediately to address the results of an 

SC&A review. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you, Ted. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I would like to 

suggest a separate work group just because I 

know how busy the Procedures Subcommittee work 

group is at this time. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Well by the same 

token we have for the first time really gotten 

through at least our first view of all of the 

procedures that have been placed before us and 

now have a much stronger feel I think of 

exactly what we have yet to look at. Our 

ability to transfer to site specific groups is 

also going to help to some degree. And as a 

matter of fact we've had some discussion in 

the group with respect to whether there need 

to be another set of procedures involved or 

exactly what. So my instinct would be to get 

a feel for what the PERs are going to involve 
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since it has been quite some time since we 

looked at our task three of procedures, and we 

have gotten through the first look at them 

now. 

 DR. MAURO: There's some good news 

here that I'd like to point out. There are 

over 500 findings of the over 100 procedures 

we reviewed. We, for all intents and 

purposes, have this position, over 70 percent. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, close to 80 

percent. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, pushing 80 

percent. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: So I think that we have 

broken the back of that challenge. I feel as 

if we are in the homestretch of either closing 

the issue, transferring it and certainly there 

has been a number of transfers, but in the 

point of view of the backlog of work, the 

procedures, we are well along in getting 

through that process. So I just want to point 
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out that though a considerable amount of 

resources have certainly been invested in the 

task three, I think we are in the homestretch. 

 MEMBER MUNN: There's no question 

in my mind that it is not even the same 

picture it was six months ago. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. Ted? 

 MR. KATZ: Let me just add another 

thought. I know we are making this up as we 

go, but in terms of tasking, I think it might 

be a good idea actually to do that at the 

Board level instead of at the Subcommittee 

level. And the reason I say that is because, 

again, as I addressed in the beginning here, 

we have conflict of interest issues with 

individual members for some of these PERs. I 

think it is easier to work around that 

actually as a full Board than a Subcommittee. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. I don't 

think we'd be asking the Subcommittee to do 

the tasking on this, only to work on the 

disposition once, for example, let's say we 
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assign several of these reviews and the 

reviews have to go somewhere for disposition. 

 The discussion seems to revolve around 

whether the Subcommittee will handle it or 

whether we need a new work group to handle it. 

 I believe Wanda and John were making the case 

that probably the Subcommittee is in a 

position now to take on some additional work 

because they are well through the, actually 

three different sets of procedure reviews, 80 

percent of which have been dealt with and they 

are indeed on the homestretch on those. 

 MR. KATZ: But, again, I guess my 

concern still applies even for the disposition 

because the Subcommittee for certain of these 

procedures if they were assigned, the 

Subcommittee couldn't take those up either. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Oh, I see what 

you are saying. In other words, the 

resolutions themselves would be a problem. 

 MR. KATZ: Exactly. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: So what you are 
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saying is that the disposition may need to 

come back to the full Board itself. 

 MR. KATZ: Or to be assigned to, in 

some cases there are work groups. There are 

work groups for some of these PERs that would 

relate to some of these PERs. So it could be 

done a number of ways. If you don't have a 

work group, yes, then we would have to find. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: For example, I'll 

just pick out one here which seems not to be 

site specific but construction trade workers, 

which is comprehensive. There are 

construction trade workers on all sites pretty 

much. But this would not, I don't think, 

present a conflict for anyone, would it, per 

se? Or would it? 

 MR. KATZ: I don't think so. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, clearly not 

in the sense of site conflicts. There may be 

others. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. If there's a Board 

member that has a conflict related to having 
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done a lot of work for the construction 

trades, that might be an issue. I'm not sure. 

 I couldn't answer that definitely at this 

time. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Can you answer it 

generically, Emily? 

 MS. HOWELL: I mean generically it 

is probably not going to be a concern. Some 

of these analyses will have to be on a case by 

case basis. For instance -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, let's take 

high-fired plutonium then, which is across the 

board. 

 MS. HOWELL: I don't think that 

would be a concern. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 MS. HOWELL: But when you get into 

the PERs -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But if you did 

Hanford TBD revisions, then we would have 

Hanford specific issues. 

 MS. HOWELL: Right, or if you had 
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the equivalent high-fired that only affected 

five sites. That might be an issue. Those 

are the kinds of things that we are going to 

have to evaluate more case specifically. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well certainly 

any of these, like high-fired, there will be a 

-- it's not going to affect every site on the 

list of eligible sites. It may affect five or 

ten, yes. 

 MS. HOWELL: That's the area that 

we are going to have to deal with. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, and we'll 

need some help from counsel on that. If your 

site is one of those ones affected, there's 

some issues like high-fired plutonium that 

might have the impact of eliminating a vast 

number of the Board members if they have some 

association with a site that had high-fired 

plutonium. 

 MR. KATZ: Like Hanford, yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. So we may 

need to have some help on interpreting those 
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things. So I guess probably this may, we may 

need some additional discussion on this. I 

guess the first thing would be, the starting 

point in any event, if we task the contractor 

to begin work we can have additional 

discussions on what to do with the work 

product. I don't know that we have to decide 

that today, whether it is at the Subcommittee 

or a separate work group, all of which have 

their own problem, even if it's the full 

Board, which could raise some problems. We 

may need to have some additional help from 

counsel on what to do on things like highfired plutonium. 

 MS. HOWELL: I was just going to 

ask, could you clarify for me who exactly is 

on the Subcommittee and the alternates? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I am on that. 

Mark, Wanda, I believe Mike is on there, and 

Bob Presley is an alternate. 

 MS. HOWELL: Maybe we can have some 

additional discussions about this because I do 
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see the value of having it initially go to the 

Subcommittee but then having to farm out some 

specific ones to -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: To the full 

Board. 

 MS. HOWELL: -- specific groups of 

Board members. Well I don't know if pulling 

it back to the full Board will fix it or not. 

 We're just going to have to talk about it 

some more. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Well let's 

proceed with the understanding that the 

disposition of this, we're not going to have a 

work product for a while, at least not before 

our next meeting. And if we do any tasking, 

for example, if we say okay let's task the 

Hanford TBD, then those who have Hanford 

conflicts can't participate in the discussion 

and vote on that. That would be the ruling, 

right. 

 MR. KATZ: Right. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. And also I 
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certainly don't have a good feel for the level 

of tasking that should be done. It would seem 

to me that two or three at the most would be a 

starting point. I guess I wouldn't feel very 

comfortable moving beyond that. We have some 

flexibility. I mean we could just pick out 

one, we could pick out a couple, could pick 

out three that we think are high priority and 

ask that those get underway. 

 Mark, do you have a comment? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: A couple of 

things; I've been waiting. I guess I'm not 

sure that, I know there is some urgency to 

task here, but I was wondering whether a 

better path forward would be to bring it back 

to Wanda's, to the Procedure Subcommittee and 

let the Procedures Subcommittee make a 

recommendation for which PERs to review. The 

reason I say that is because and then we can 

have the whole Board vote so it's not, we have 

the same conflict issues we would here. You 

can still look over the whole list and say 
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wait a second. Why did you eliminate this one 

or whatever. 

 But I mean part of the reason I 

want to do this is because I don't know and 

perhaps we have, we probably have, but John 

mentioned a procedure that they have for 

reviewing PERs. Did the Board review that? 

I'm sure we have copies of it, but I'm not 

sure if we ever looked at it. Anyway, that 

would be one thing that I would want to look 

at before I made a decision. The other thing 

I think we need to reflect on, and this comes 

up constantly in Dose Reconstruction 

Subcommittee. Stu can certainly elaborate on 

this if I'm getting this wrong. But John 

mentioned three cases. Now I'm not sure that 

three makes sense for all these because the 

Super S affects a lot and some others affect a 

lot less. Maybe at some percentage or 

something like that. That's another question. 

 But then when we do these cases, I 

think the thing, my question also and this 
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could be on a Subcommittee, we could sort out 

like how are we going to look at these things 

because you've got to look at the selection. 

In other words, did they likely get the right 

people that they should have been 

reconstructing under the PER? That's one 

thing. But then if you are gong to review a 

select number of cases, often times, and Stu 

correct me if I'm wrong, but often times when 

you redo cases they could have multiple PERs, 

and you are making changes, but then on top of 

that you are also making changes from 

modifications in TIBs from TIBs. 

 And then if you, you might get into 

a point where it's, you can use overestimating approaches on certain things again. 

 So you end up using a best estimate. So it's 

like a whole dose reconstruction review. So 

my question would be to what end? Does that 

go back to the DR Subcommittee because the 

whole dose reconstruction review? I don't 

think we want to do that but how do we, what's 
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the construct then, you know? How do we 

approach? So I would propose that we move 

this to Wanda's Subcommittee and come back 

with a recommendation of the PERs that we want 

to task SC&A to do and also maybe a strong man 

methodology of how we want to approach using 

John's procedure maybe to an inform us on 

that. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Let me make a 

couple of comments and then -- John, I believe 

the procedure you described was an internal 

SC&A procedure. Is that not correct? And I 

don't recall that we have ever officially sort 

of said yes. 

 DR. MAURO: I have to say I know 

we have a procedure. Whether it went through 

review, I don't recall. I certainly will find 

out. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I don't recall 

us doing that but perhaps we need to look into 

that. And then let me point out, Mark, if we 

do what you described, for example, I don't 
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think we can even discuss at the Subcommittee 

level whether or not we should do Hanford. 

 DR. MAURO: Right. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Because we can't 

discuss yea or nay on them, as I understand 

it. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I don't know. I 

don't know. I mean I will oblige by any of 

these law of the rules, but if the 

Subcommittee is making a proposal back to the 

full Board to make the determination, I don't 

know why that's a -- 

 MR. KATZ: I mean, absolutely not. 

 I mean a conflicted member cannot do a 

recommendation for tasking on a site for which 

they are conflicted. That is black and white. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: But conflicted 

members have done that in the dose 

reconstruction selection process. We've had 

40 cases. Some of them affect conflicted 

members and they pick a case. We all come 

back with a unanimous recommendation from the 
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Subcommittee. 

 MS. HOWELL: These tasking issues 

have only come up in the past few months and 

we are still trying to address them. I think, 

based on the discussion here, this gives Ted 

and I a lot more context to go back to the 

other ethics people involved and try and maybe 

work something out on our end and then come 

back to you all about it. I'm just not sure 

that we can resolve anything right here. 

 MR. KATZ: Well, I'm going to -- I 

think it's comfortable for a member to abstain 

here at the full Board meeting. 

 MS. HOWELL: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: And go forward that 

way. But in a very small setting which is a 

Subcommittee with a very few members, that I 

think, I am very doubtful that we will end up 

with sort of permission to have tasking occur 

with the very few members in the first place 

and where some members are conflicted for some 

sites. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. Well, of 

course we are not talking about the 

Subcommittee doing the tasking. We would 

still be talking about the Board doing the 

tasking. I think the issue here is whether or 

not Subcommittee members can discuss even what 

to recommend to the Board, which may be part 

and parcel to the tasking issue. 

 MS. HOWELL: I think that's -- 

right. I think that's going to be a problem, 

too. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 MS. HOWELL: What I am thinking Ted 

and I need to discuss further is the how to go 

about making assignments once attached to 

Board, Working Group, Subcommittees, et 

cetera, once the tasking has taken place. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: So I agree with 

that part of it. So we have to change the 

process for selecting cases, too, then you are 

telling me. 

 MS. HOWELL: Let's not say that 
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right now. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well I mean, you 

know, I think this is a little bit stretching 

it a little far. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, right now 

that -- we don't allow Board members to review 

actual cases from their site. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: But we allow them 

to select them. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right, and the 

case selections that are made, are made on the 

basis of some other criteria such as numbers 

from each site and so on but again I guess 

we'll need guidance on that. Now we really 

have a couple of issues here. One is whether 

or not we are prepared to task now. We have 

these issues of conflict-of-interest issues. 

We have the issues of actually the procedures 

by which the reviews would be done, I think is 

the point you were making, Mark, and whether 

or not you want to go ahead and task in the 

absence of resolving the issues of how we 
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handle the output. And in the absence of 

complete understanding of how the reviews will 

occur and how they interact with the other 

parameters once the dose reconstruction is 

done. So, there's some sort of interwoven and 

sort of complex issues here that are 

presenting themselves. Wanda Munn? 

 MEMBER MUNN: One of the things 

that perhaps we might consider is doing the 

issues from a slightly different perspective 

than we have traditionally the other things 

that we have attacked. For example, I think 

the Hanford PER is a good one to discuss 

because, even if we constituted an additional 

working group, you still would encounter this 

business of having to make up the working 

group of someone who did not have any conflict 

in any of these things. But if we have sitespecific PERs of that type, then there's 

always a possibility that, since we have 

working groups on those sites already, dealing 

with other aspects of that site -- and we know 
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that none of the members of that particular 

work group are conflicted, then perhaps as a 

pattern of behavior, our first step might be 

to ask that work group to take a look at the 

PER to see if they did in fact feel that it 

was adequate as it stands or that it needs to 

be reviewed. If the site-specific work group 

did not feel that there was reason to pursue 

the PER further, then that would automatically 

eliminate it from any list that we might have. 

 But that would require our rethinking how to 

address the issues. We've not attempted to do 

that, I think, in the past but that might be 

worthy of some consideration. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 

Josie? 

 MEMBER BEACH: And while I think 

that's a good suggestion, it only covers a 

couple. Is it possible to have Legal look at 

maybe the first three and then give us an idea 

of what's necessary for each one of those? I 

mean when I went through the list, I marked 
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the first three as ones that I would recommend 

to get started on right away. Brad just 

pointed out four. So maybe just give us 

direction individually for each PER? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, certainly 

 these cover some of the issues for example. 

You have the high-fired plutonium which is 

multiple-site and then we raise some issues on 

that and those need to be answered. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Right. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We have one that 

is site-specific, the Hanford, and that has a 

separate sort of set of issues. And then the 

construction trades is multiple sites but in a 

different way than high-fired plutonium in 

that it involves organizational things. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Right. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: In conflict. So 

those are certainly interesting in terms of 

addressing issues. I guess what you are 

suggesting is if we are going to task, we 

would task those. But at the same time we 
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still have the other issues as to where do 

they go then and also the issues Mark raised 

about the review procedures. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I guess what I am 

suggesting, I'm suggesting if Legal gave us 

direction for each one -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: How those would 

be handled. 

 MEMBER BEACH: -- we would have 

some idea of how we could task those, if that 

makes sense. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, that 

certainly is a good suggestion. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: One of the things 

that Josie is saying here, we've got, if you 

took the first four, we've got about 

everything that's going to be there. You've 

got two of them that are actually sitespecific. One of them that goes over most of 

the sites there of how we would be able to 

handle it. And then on the construction, I 

think it would give us a good basis of how we 
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would be able to handle everything else, 

because each one of those has got their 

uniqueness. We've got some that would be able 

to come to the work group. The other two, good 

luck. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Let me interpose 

a question here because -- and I know where we 

seem to be moving into a sort of a new realm, 

it certainly is for counsel as well as for us. 

 But for example, here we are discussing, for 

example, the first four on here only in terms 

of trying to get an understanding of how we 

would task. But in that process, we are 

looking at a couple of sites which we have 

conflicted people on. But we aren't talking 

specifically about tasking them but using them 

as examples of how do we think about it. I 

feel like we are okay on that grounds but, 

Emily, see, you are a little uncertain about 

that. Can we even have that discussion? If 

we are going to have the general discussion on 

the whole list in the Board framework on how 
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to go about tasking, it would be very 

difficult if we eliminate everybody with a 

conflict. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Let's keep in 

mind the name, too. These are program 

evaluation reviews. We all are advising on 

the program. 

 MS. HOWELL: Let me first thank you 

all for elucidating the many, many concerns 

and problems about this issue that will be 

helpful when we have this transcript to 

present to others who are not as informed 

about how this program works. That will be 

helpful. But the problem is that it's not 

just a decision that those of us who are more 

aware of how the program works get to make. 

So, you know, we're just, I just think at this 

point, we are going to have to take it back 

and look at it and see if something like what 

Brad has proposed where you have kind of 

categories of the PERs and we can get an 

opinion about those. But frankly we haven't 
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been led to believe that a categorization 

approach will work. But we can look at it 

again. I'm kind of not sure I see. 

 MR. KATZ: I don't know. It just 

isn't seeming that complex to me to handle it 

at the Board level. I mean, as far as, if you 

want to have a discussion about methodology 

where the identifies of the particular PERs 

such as, Mark, your issue about how SC&A goes 

about -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Which can be 

handled at the Subcommittee level. 

 MR. KATZ: -- that could be handled 

by the Procedures. No problem there. There's 

no conflict issue there. The only conflict 

issue comes into play when we actually are 

talking about specific PERs, not as examples 

to illustrate methodology, but as up for 

tasking. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: But we're not 

going to task. 

 MR. KATZ: But methodology and 
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tasking is the same thing. It's equivalent to 

actually doing the tasking. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: So to go back to 

my example. We do it for the cases all the 

time. 

 MR. KATZ: I think there is 

probably differences between individual dose 

reconstruction cases and procedures in terms 

of that. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: If someone can 

tell me, that would be great, because I don't 

understand it. These are criteria as well. 

 MR. KATZ: We will get into that, 

 okay, Mark. I mean we will go explore that 

issue of the nuance there. But anyway these 

are procedures. If they are site-specific, 

they are much more equivalent to a site 

profile or what have you in a sense, than they 

are to an individual dose reconstruction. And 

so again, for talking about methodology for 

how we go forward and so on, that can be done 

by a subcommittee, by a work group, what have 
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you. But the actual tasking should not be 

done, I don't believe, unless we get different 

guidance down the road by a small group. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, I don't have 

a problem with that. I just thought that, 

part of my problem with not having the 

Subcommittee at least look at it first, and I 

understand that right now we are not being 

allowed to do that, but for the Procedure 

Subcommittee to look at it, it is the same 

rationale we used for the case selection that 

there is some nuance in here. I think if I 

were forced, well if I were forced to vote 

today, you know, it is obvious on this presort that we would probably look at high 

number, high criteria, high scientific impact 

or whatever, difficult science. They stand 

out. But I think there's some nuance in here 

that we want, we might want to consider 

further in the selection. The Subcommittee 

would come back, like we do with the others 

and make our case. At that time the full 
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Board deliberates and tasks. So I guess if 

you say it's not allowed, it is not allowed 

but I think that would make -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: It seems to me 

there's additional difficulty as these issues 

have emerged. We are all at the table right 

now with a list. And one could argue that the 

fact that we're even -- let's say that we are 

not going to task Hanford, but it's on the 

list from which we make the decision. Are the 

Hanford people allowed to sit at the table as 

we have the list before us and participate in 

the decision even not to include it. That's 

sort of -- 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. As I said at the 

outset of this, just like if we had a list of 

site profiles here. With a list of these it's 

not practical until we get some different 

guidance from TIB to just have everybody swept 

off the table here that way. So what I had 

said as my instructions was that we would go 

through the list and that members that have 
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conflicts would not speak to the site for 

which they have a conflict and they would 

verbally on the record abstain if there's a 

vote for that particular one and you would 

have to vote for PERs one by one, not as a 

group. And that way, the person with a 

conflict has not voted on an item for which 

they have a conflict and have not spoken on 

the record for an item for which they have a 

conflict. I think that really -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But they can sit 

at the table. 

 MR. KATZ: That way they can sit at 

the table. We can't do anything about that 

problem because again, there would be no one 

at the table then. I think that and that's 

why again to explain, I was arguing for doing 

this tasking at the Board level because you 

have more people at the table and then you can 

still have the proper dialogue about each of 

the items with just the conflicted members 

staying out of the discussion for their items. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. To move 

us forward, two things. One I think it is 

pretty clear what legal is going to pursue 

some issues and try to bring clarity to this. 

 Number two, Board members, I think you need 

to decide now whether you are ready to task or 

whether you wish to resolve some process 

issues and I would say some of those can be 

discussed in terms of, not in terms of sites, 

but kinds of issues. In other words, the 

thing that Mark, that you raised, could it be 

addressed at the Subcommittee level in terms 

of kinds, site specific PERs, multiple site 

PERs of this type and then the procedures 

issue on how SC&A reviews those and how we 

respond? So we need some direction. This is 

a Board decision on whether we ask the 

Subcommittee to examine those kinds of issues 

first or whether we go ahead and task. And if 

we task then we would have to select from the 

list and specifically vote on each one. 

Wanda? 
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 MEMBER MUNN: Although I hesitate 

to make this into a more protracted thing than 

it is already going to be, it seems that until 

we have at least some outline of how to 

proceed, it would perhaps be counterconstructive to try to make some decision 

today about that. I don't think -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: About tasking? 

 MEMBER MUNN: About tasking and 

about what the process is going to be. Until 

we all and we aren't all here. Some of our 

Board members have gone and when they are not 

sitting at the table, then certainly those of 

us who are here are not always all here. I 

speak for myself. It would seem at the very 

least that we need to have some of the 

questions that have been raised in this 

discussion resolved or at least laid out in 

clear thought form before we actually take any 

action. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 

 Phil you have a comment? 
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 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, I would 

just like to go ahead and just say let's just 

do the first four because the selection 

criteria and how high they are. 

 MR. KATZ: As I said Phil please, 

if we are going to propose any, we are going 

to propose them one by one so that people who 

can vote, can vote for each one. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I don't think 

Phil is making a motion right now. 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I'm not making a 

motion. I am just making a suggestion. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Just a comment. 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: This way I don't 

think you really have to break it down. If we 

just say we will just take them in the order 

they listed them. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, Josie, a 

comment? 

 MEMBER BEACH: I prepare that we go 

ahead and task one of them. I think that 

legal has time in between the tasking and the 
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next time we meet to come to a decision on 

what we can discuss and who can't discuss. So 

I'd like to go ahead and pick one and task. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Is that a 

motion? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Sure, I'll make that 

a motion. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Are you making a 

motion simply that we should task or that are 

you making a motion that we task a particular 

one? 

 MEMBER BEACH: I'm suggesting that 

we task SC&A. We've decided on one and task 

SC&A to start reviewing that PER. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. So this is 

a process question that we proceed to task 

today and is there a second? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Second. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And discussion? 

This is not a discussion on a particular task 

but simply should we go ahead and task before 

some of these other questions are answered 
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that the nature of the motion in essence? 

Mark do you have a comment? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I mean I guess I 

don't. This is sort of a, I guess we could do 

a, sort of interim tasking. I mean we can 

task, certainly I think most of us would agree 

that there is at least one on here or two on 

here that can be tasked. So I guess I 

wouldn't have a problem with that but I would 

like to have the legal clarify in between and 

then possibly bring the methodology questions 

back to the Procedures Subcommittee and come 

back to the full Board with a better 

understanding. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well and 

certainly if we agree to task, we can have a 

motion to do exactly what you described. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: So I guess I'm 

speaking partially in support of the motion. 

I guess I support that motion to task. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Any other 

comments? Okay, let's just vote, voice vote. 
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 All in favor of the motion to task, say aye. 

 (Chorus of ayes.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And opposed? The 

motion carries. No abstains. 

 Was there a no? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, I voted no. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I'm sorry I 

missed that. There is a no, okay. The motion 

carries. I would like to ask and I'm not sure 

counsel can answer at this point but let us 

suppose that the motion is to task to do highfired plutonium, which is the multiple site 

issue. I don't think we know or you have 

raised the question whether or not we know 

that those sites for which that has been an 

issue are those people automatically 

conflicted. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I'm pretty sure we 

wouldn't have anybody at the table or a 

majority left to vote on that one. 

 MS. HOWELL: Give me a ballpark of 

how many sites that affects? 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Jim Neton might. 

 It affects quite a number of sites. Maybe 

people could split their votes and I would 

like high-fired plutonium addressed but for 

all but my site. 

 DR. NETON: I can think of at least 

three sites, but there are probably more, like 

four or five would be my guess. 

 38? Okay, well it's a huge number. 

 I'm sorry. I was thinking the original model 

was developed on -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, I understood 

that but now it applies to many, many sites. 

 DR. NETON: So I guess it is 

something like 38. 

 MS. HOWELL: I would say based on 

the information we have received at this time 

that would be something that would be a 

particular matter of general applicability 

that even -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Broad enough. 

 MS. HOWELL: -- that everyone could 
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vote on. I reserve the right to change that 

in a future meeting date. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well it maybe too 

late Emily. Okay, thank you. That is 

helpful. It does have broad applicability, 

not that site specific. Now, Mark, do you 

want to make a follow up motion in terms of 

process. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, first I wanted 

to clarify. You said when we did the voice 

vote. You said a motion to task. I think the 

original motion that Josie offered was a 

motion to task one. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, that was my 

understanding. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Task one, okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I guess a follow 

up motion would be to have the Procedures 

Subcommittee look at methodology concerns 

regarding how we are going to approach the PER 

reviews including review of the SC&A PER 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, that's a 

motion. Is there a second? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I'll second. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Phil, 

comment? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Oh, no I think 

Mark just kind of said what I was -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 

 Wanda? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. I was going to 

comment on the fact that of the list that is 

before us, there are only two that have, I 

mean one that has high selection criteria and 

high science involved and we've not and the 

Board had a discussion that I'm aware of as to 

whether or not we agree with the criteria that 

SC&A has used in terms of their priority here. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And that is, oh 

on this list? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Oh yes. And 
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certainly that would be an issue for the 

Subcommittee to review if Mark's motion 

passes. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I would think so. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. Are we 

ready to vote? All in favor, aye? This would 

be to ask the Subcommittee to review the 

criteria and the SC&A review procedures? 

Question? 

 MR. KATZ: Does this need to be 

roll call for methods? Is the motion about 

methods, which is general applicability? So 

this is a vote about tasking the Subcommittee 

on Procedures to take up the question of what 

methodology should be applied by SC&A when 

they do their procedure review. And then how 

the Board will then disposition that 

subsequently. Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Unrelated to any 

sites. Unrelated to any sites as far as I 

know. Okay. A voice vote is okay. All in 

favor, aye? 
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 (Chorus of ayes.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Opposed? 

Abstentions? Motion carries. The final thing 

then would be to have a motion for the 

specific tasking to be undertaken. 

 MEMBER BEACH: So are you talking 

about specific PER? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. We have 

agreed to task one PER and we now we have to 

identify that. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Well I would make a 

motion to task the third construction trade 

workers as the first one. 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Second. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: To task SC&A? 

 MEMBER BEACH: To task SC&A, yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, wait. I do 

want to ask a question on this one. Do we 

have any conflicted members? 

 MS. HOWELL: This one may be more of 

a problem. That's why I asked for 

clarification for what the motion was. I 
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thought the motion had been to task the highfired plutonium. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: No. We have not 

made any motion yet. The previous motion just 

had to do with having the Subcommittee review 

how SC&A was going to process. Now we are 

asking for a motion which I thought was going 

to be high-fired plutonium but was 

construction works. High-fired plutonium we 

already have agreed is broad enough that it 

would be considered complex-wide and we 

probably don't have conflicts. We don't know 

if that is the case on this one. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Then I would like to 

modify my motion to the first PER. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: You withdraw the 

original motion. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Correct. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And you are 

moving that the first PER on highly insoluble 

plutonium be tasked to the contractor? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Correct, thank you. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And is there a 

second? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Second. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And seconded by 

Phil. Further discussion on that? Okay. Do 

we need a roll call vote on this Emily? 

 MS. HOWELL: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Roll call 

vote. 

 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Do I need to get votes 

for these? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: This is not a 

recommendation to the Secretary. I don't know 

believe others votes? 

 MR. KATZ: Okay, Mr. Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: No, he's not 
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here. 

 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry. I didn't 

realize that. Ms. Munn? 

 MEMBER MUNN: I'll abstain. 

 MR. KATZ: Abstain. Dr. Poston? 

 MEMBER POSTON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Presley? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Ziemer? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: The motion 

carries and you are so tasked Dr. Mauro to get 

underway with that review. I believe we have 

completed the agenda. Does anyone have any 

issues that we need to get covered? 

 MEMBER POSTON: I move adjournment. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Motion for 
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adjournment. 

 Second. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: All in favor will 

please leave, thank you. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Are we adjourned? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Do you have an 

issue? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, just one 

thing that came up yesterday. The question of 

the document review process and I think Ted we 

talked about maybe clarifying that today at 

the meeting of exactly what the public 

commenter was talking about, anonymity and the 

question of when they are interviewed and I 

think it has really become an issue at several 

of the sites lately. It is complicated by the 

classification issues. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We haven't voted 

yet to adjourn. The adjournment assignment 

was to leave the table. Nobody did. We are 

still in session. So who can speak to this 

issue on document review? 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: I was going to ask 

if maybe if maybe Joe Fitzgerald has been 

pretty close to it. If he could at least 

describe what currently is the policy and I 

think it's outlined in the DOE policy that we 

have but maybe you can give an overview of 

that. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: This issue has 

been treated certainly in the past six to 

eight months pretty heavily. I mean the DOE 

security policy which I think you are all 

familiar with, the PROC-0010 and 11 exchange 

we went through. The way it is laid out is 

pretty clear. What isn't properly as clear is 

the evolution. The first I would say three or 

four years of the program, we would in this 

case conduct interviews at sites and we would 

tell the interviewees that they are specific 

interviews. The individual interviews would 

be held confidential and we would in fact 

generalize them in a report to NIOSH so that 

their identity would be protected. Now, with 
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the advent of the DOE security policy. This 

is about a year, a bit over a year ago. It 

became very clear that there would be a very 

rigorous screening by DOE of all we use 

including interviews. So at that point in 

time we had to adjust and make it very clear 

to interviewees that no, we could not assure 

them of any anonymity on their specific 

interviews because essentially all the raw 

interview notes would go through DOE 

classification screening first and there would 

be reason for them to want to know who the 

interviewees are. That was sort of the second 

iteration that we went through about a year, 

over a year ago where we had to make it clear 

to the interviewee that no, there would be no 

longer any assurance given that certainly 

those specific interviews identified by the 

individual interview could be kept 

confidential of any sort. And we gave a 

little disclaimer up front. So that's been an 

evolving process. Now the third iteration is 
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perhaps more recent, although I think there's 

been some discussions over the past six months 

or so, which is this question of government, I 

use that in a broader sense, access to 

anything the support contractor, meaning us, 

would gain access to. Meaning that if we did 

an interview, essentially the interview notes 

from that interview would be accessible by, 

certainly by NIOSH and CDC. So in essence 

that wasn't clear perhaps in the beginning of 

the process that was the case. And it's only 

been over I guess the last several months 

where Ted and others clarified the fact that 

any documents that we received, any interviews 

that we conduct are immediately accessible by 

the government, by NIOSH. And so in addition 

to the security implication that the fact that 

DOE would have access, in this case, in terms 

of the raw interview notes, certainly NIOSH 

has access as well. So we have adjusted yet 

again to make clear to the interviewees that 

essentially any interviews that we conduct 
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will be accessible by the government DOE 

and/or NIOSH and the identity of those 

interviewed would in fact be accessible as 

well. I think this realization and our more 

or less notifying the interviewees of this 

reality, I think has caused some concern 

obviously since this is somewhat an evolving 

process and now there is some concern over 

whether an early process identified last 

night, whether the identity of the interviewee 

is something that we can't really protect. We 

can't give any assurances on. I think that is 

pretty where it sits right now. So to some 

extent we have evolved during this five or six 

year time span in terms of the recognition and 

this is not just our recognition but the 

recognition in NIOSH and DOE of what the 

status of information collected would be. I 

think this is where we are right now. So this 

is really a current issue but it has had a 

history. 

 MR. KATZ: Joe, could you also 
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elaborate the person commented last night was 

under the impression that all your interviews 

with the named individuals in all cases goes 

immediately to DOE from you for that kind of 

scrutiny and I thought when we discussed this 

after the meeting, I understood from you that 

that's not really the case. That at sites 

that have high sensitivity in terms of 

security concerns, anyone who has, for 

example, who is interviewed and that had a Q 

clearance for example, theirs would certainly 

go for review but that at sites where isn't 

such the same concerns, an individual wouldn't 

necessarily his information provided 

automatically to DOE for review. Is that 

correct? 

 MR. FITZGERALD: That's kind of the 

interpretation we have been operating under 

but I'll put an asterisk beside that. In one 

instance where we did an interview a nonclassified site, unclassified interviews, an 

issue arose because you do have people moving 
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around the sites and it may come about that 

somebody has information which may be 

sensitive. So, you know, I think we along 

with DOE on the security side are learning 

some of these issues. So I would say that was 

the one area where we could not have gone 

through that process necessarily but we find 

exceptions that arise. So even there I'm not 

sure whether DOE may not insist to see all the 

interview notes from all sites. And the way 

the DOE policy reads and the way we have 

submitted this, is everything that is 

collected, anything that would be in fact 

reported, would be screened by DOE for 

security reasons. We have followed that. So 

there isn't any exceptions to that. Anything 

that is generated goes to DOE for security 

review. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you Joe. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you Mark. 

Did you want to follow up? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, one follow 
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up. I mean this might be really a DOE 

question but when you say DOE, Joe, I think in 

most cases you are talking like at Pantex it 

would be, it wouldn't be headquarters? This 

is a site DOE? 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Because that might 

make a difference to people. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: The policy is if 

they are in fact as an operating site and this 

is as compared with a site that has been 

closed. If there is an operating site, that 

site would handle the security review. The 

premise being they would understand better the 

operation. So for Pantex it would be the 

Pantex security office that would review all 

of our material. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Which is an 

interesting possibility to follow up. I mean 

I also know that, I believe that -- well I 

won't say that. I'll withdraw that comment. 

But I think that some people might, although I 
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think that this does have a stifling affect 

possibly on some people coming forward to 

interview. I mean the issue has been not only 

in current workers but also former because 

they have relatives still at the sites and 

there is concern. But anyway, the possibility 

of having headquarters do the review may 

slightly alleviate some of their concerns 

rather than having it done at the site level 

because then they are pretty sure that it's 

going to be close to home. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: I think this is 

the issue that Dr. Ziemer asked to be taken 

back to Glenn Podonsky, which is there a way 

to mitigate some of these concerns. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: And I think that 

is something we will have to look at. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And I think last 

time when Glenn Podonsky was here he 

indicated, somebody asked about generating a 

letter from the highest levels indicating the 
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policy that there be no retaliation and Glenn 

indicated that in his experience those kinds 

of things haven't been very effective and it 

is what has to be done and I think committed 

to trying to do it to get to those at the top 

level and make sure and follow up that word 

gets down into middle management and below 

that really has got to be enforced because as 

you have indicated and we heard in the public 

comment period there certainly can be a 

stifling affect if people believe that there's 

not some either confidentiality which we can 

assure or some level of assurance that there 

won't be some kind of retaliation or some or 

they at least feel like some bad things will 

happen if they say anything. Or some don't 

want to take the chance. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. And this 

is a real ongoing issue at Pantex. I just 

conducted interviews there this summer and 

there are some real questions because a Pantex 

security officer was present at all the 
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interviews, which I think may have an 

implication. That wasn't an option on our 

part of course. The other issue is that we've 

had to reschedule an onsite interview visit in 

November because the petitioners and other 

workers don't feel comfortable going to Pantex 

to be interviewed. And they are looking for 

an offsite venue. So it is definitely a 

burden at least at the Pantex review. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Perhaps this is 

something that we can DOE to come to our next 

meeting, even on the phone possibly and give 

us at least an update and where they stand and 

a possible path forward. I mean I know for 

and it was a different format but for some of 

the interviews I did with the medical 

surveillance work, we had a circumstance where 

we had DOE Oak Ridge actually come in and 

initiate the meeting and in that format it 

ended up being -- I was very reluctant at the 

start but I kind of had no choice. So if I 

was going to do the interviews and the net 
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result actually was positive because in that 

case the DOE Oak Ridge individual sort of gave 

these retirees an update on what they could 

because you know a lot of them were reluctant 

even in a classified setting to say anything. 

 And he says let me just give you an update. 

Some of the things that you in the fifties 

that were classified are now not, have been 

declassified. And so he kind of gave them a 

briefing on that and it actually expanded the 

dialogue probably for me in that setting. But 

we are talking about compensation here and it 

is a little, it's a different program and so I 

think we should at least ask DOE to reexamine 

this and see if we can improve it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thanks. Brad do 

you have a comment? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, I just want 

to make a comment and Joe want to. One of the 

things that is kind of bad is like Joe said, 

it goes to headquarters but right now when we 

do interviews and I'm just going to say Pantex 
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because also the same thing happened at 

Hanford, all of our notes that are taken are 

initially then handed right over to the site. 

 Those people have those notes and it is the 

site DOE. They review it. Then it goes to 

DOE headquarters and in my personal opinion it 

has had a stifling affect on a lot of things. 

 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thanks. Well 

clearly we will have to follow up on this with 

DOE and we will make sure that happens. Then 

 I am going to now ask for action on Dr. 

Poston's motion. All in favor of adjourning 

say aye. 

 (Chorus of ayes.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We are adjourned. 

 Thank you very much, all of you for your 

participation. 

 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 12:05 p.m.) 
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