1 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

+ + + + +

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

104th MEETING

+ + + + +

WEDNESDAY

MARCH 25, 2015

+ + + + +

The meeting convened at 9:00 a.m., 

Pacific Time, in the Red Lion Richland Hanford 

House, 802 George Washington Way, Richland, 

Washington, James M. Melius, Chairman, presiding.
2 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

PRESENT:

JAMES M. MELIUS, Chairman

HENRY ANDERSON, Member

JOSIE BEACH, Member

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member*

DAVID KOTELCHUCK, Member

RICHARD LEMEN, Member*

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

JOHN W. POSTON, SR., Member

DAVID B. RICHARDSON, Member*

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member*

LORETTA R. VALERIO, Member*

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS:

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor

AL-NABULSI, ISAF, DOE

ASHLEY, MORGAN

BOYD, LARRY

CARY, ANNETTE

CLARK, KYLE

CRAWFORD, FRANK, DOL

DAY, MARY

DEMERS, JOE, DOE

DOMINA, KIRK

ESTRADA, LUIS

FINDLEY, MITCH, ORAU Team

FINE, SADIE, DOL

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A

FORDHAM, CHARLES

FROWISS, AL*

GARZA, MARY

GLOVER, SAM, DCAS

HARTSFIELD, DEKEELY, HHS

HINNEFELD, STU, DCAS

JOYNT, MARCIA

JOYNT, TOM

KINMAN, JOSH, DCAS

KNOX, WAYNE
3 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

LEWIS, MARK, DOL

LIN, JENNY, HHS

MARTY, THOMAS

MCFEE, MATTHEW, ORAU Team

MCKEEL, DAN*

NETON, JIM, DCAS

PANGELINAN, ED

PARNELL, JONI

POKOS, LOU

RHOADS, CARRIE, DOL

RINGEN, KNUT

RUTHERFORD, LAVON, DCAS

SMITH, JAMES

SPLETT, GAIL, DOE Hanford POC

STIVER, JOHN, SC&A

TAULBEE, TIM, DCAS

THOMAS, F. JOEL

VANCE, LADELL

VLIEGER, FAYE

WARREN, BOB*

WORTHINGTON, PATRICIA, DOE

ZABACK, LORNA, DOE Contractor

*Participating via telephone
4 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

T-A-B-L-E O-F C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S 

Welcome and Introduction

by Chairman James Melius................. 5 

NIOSH Program Update

by Stuart Hinnefeld...................... 8 

DOE Program Update

by Patricia Worthington................. 34

DOL Program Update

by Frank Crawford....................... 52

Coworker Dose Modeling

by Jim Neton............................ 68

Kansas City Plant Work Group Update

by Josie Beach.......................... 92

Board Work Session

by Chairman James Melius............... 113

Hanford SEC Petition

by Sam Glover.......................... 176

Public Comment

by Chairman James Melius............... 205
5 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

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

2 (9:19 a.m.)

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good morning, 

4 everybody, and welcome to this, the 104th meeting 

5 of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

6 Health. We're just about to get started, but 

7 first we have to do some administrative issues, 

8 and I'll turn it over to Ted Katz, the Designated 

9 Federal Official.

10 MR. KATZ: Yes. Welcome, everybody. 

11 All right. First, some preliminaries for people 

12 in the room. The materials that are going to be 

13 presented today and tomorrow are on the back 

14 table. So you can follow on. Both the 

15 presentations should be back there, but also sort 

16 of the background reading materials that the 

17 Board Members have that relate to those 

18 presentations, they should be back there too. So 

19 you are welcome to take any of those materials. 

20 They're up for grabs.

21 For people on the line, these same 

22 materials are all posted on the NIOSH website, 

23 under the Board's section, for the schedule of 
6

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 meetings for today's date. So you can go there 

2 and these are all PDFs online. You're welcome 

3 to view them, download them, what you want.

4 Also a note for people that are on the 

5 line: please, as you're listening, keep your 

6 phones muted. There is a public comment session 

7 later today, at 4:30, in which we'll receive 

8 public comments, first from people in the room 

9 and then from people on the line. And then 

10 you'll be able to speak. But otherwise, for 

11 everyone in the public, you should really have 

12 your phones muted.

13 And to mute your phone, most people 

14 don't have that on their phone, perhaps, but 

15 press *6, that'll mute your phone. And then none 

16 of the noise from your phone will make it into 

17 the audio for everyone else trying to listen in 

18 and hear the meeting. Now, you press *6 again 

19 and that'll unmute your phone. So, *6 to mute 

20 your phones.

21 And the other thing is, please, no one 

22 on the line put the call on hold at any point. 

23 Just hang up and dial back in if you need to, but 
7

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 hold often causes problems for the audio for 

2 everyone you've left behind. So, please do that.

3 The agenda for today's meeting is also 

4 posted with the reading materials at the NIOSH 

5 website, as I said, so you'll know what's 

6 happening when.

7 And now let me just run through roll 

8 call for the Board Members. And I will, for 

9 Board Members, where there is a potential -- or 

10 a conflict for a Board Member, I'll note that as 

11 we go through the roll call after you register 

12 your attendance. And we'll just do this 

13 alphabetically.

14 (Roll call.)

15 MR. KATZ: And that covers roll call. 

16 Yeah, that's it, I think. Dr. Melius, it's your 

17 meeting.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thanks, Ted. 

19 And we'll start, as usual, with our NIOSH Program 

20 Update. I will add, just as an introduction to 

21 what Stu is presenting, I asked him to include an 

22 update on NIOSH's sort of quality assurance 

23 efforts regarding dose reconstructions.
8

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Later today, we want to discuss some 

2 issues related to the Board's dose reconstruction 

3 review efforts and so I thought getting an update 

4 from Stu would be helpful as a sort of background 

5 for that. So, go ahead, Stu.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Thank you, Dr. 

7 Melius. And hello, everyone. I'm Stu 

8 Hinnefeld, the Director of the Division of 

9 Compensation Analysis and Support at NIOSH, the 

10 group of NIOSH that performs this work for the 

11 EEOICPA program.

12 Getting right into things here, I 

13 usually try to provide a little program news at 

14 each meeting. I've mentioned here that I'll 

15 cover briefly these bullet topics here.

16 I've mentioned at previous meetings

17 that we had been working with the Department of 

18 Labor and sort of increasing our involvement with 

19 them in certain aspects of the program. They 

20 came to us with a request for assistance, 

21 essentially, on Part B, which is the radiation 

22 and cancer claims, and also on Part E, which is 

23 the toxic exposure and health outcome claims, 
9

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 which NIOSH has no statutory role in.

2 They just said, is there something you 

3 can do in the existing framework to give us some 

4 help there? And so we've had this series of 

5 meetings with them, and let me start with the 

6 Part B which is cleaner.

7 They were concerned that the dose 

8 reconstruction part of a case wasn't getting a 

9 full hearing at the adjudication step. And 

10 because they said, well, that's NIOSH's ball, you 

11 know, NIOSH's bit, we don't really know, you 

12 know, in terms of technical objections, and so we 

13 said, well, ask us. You know, their own 

14 regulation says that the hearing officer can do 

15 whatever investigation is necessary in order to 

16 resolve issues that are raised during 

17 adjudication. And we said, ask us.

18 And so we've now embarked on sort of 

19 a pilot program that they will send us questions, 

20 the hearing officer will send us questions, that 

21 are raised during adjudication. And we would 

22 respond back, either saying something to the 

23 effect that the information that was provided is 
10

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 consistent with the information that we had, and 

2 so the information we built still supports the 

3 dose reconstruction, or we would respond back and 

4 say this information is not consistent with the 

5 information we had, and so the current body of 

6 knowledge does not support the dose 

7 reconstruction, it should probably be returned 

8 for a new dose reconstruction.

9 Now, that does not mean that the 

10 outcome of the case is going to change. You 

11 might still have a dose reconstruction, you know, 

12 the corrected dose reconstruction still could be 

13 less than 50 percent PoC. But we've said, we 

14 have agreed, and we've done a couple of pilot 

15 cases. In addition, in an attempt to decrease 

16 the number of objections brought at adjudication, 

17 as we've changed our communications to claimant's 

18 when we send the draft dose reconstruction, we've 

19 kind of emphasized the language about bringing 

20 questions about the dose reconstruction to the 

21 closing interview and let's resolve those there.

22 This is your best opportunity to get questions 

23 about the dose reconstruction resolved. And 
11

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 let's try to resolve them now before it goes to 

2 adjudication.

3 So we've done those things to try to 

4 improve that process. So far, I guess, we 

5 haven't really had a lot of feedback. It's only 

6 happened in a few instances. And most cases that 

7 we handle don't really have serious questions or 

8 objections when we get to close out interview, 

9 but there are some that do.

10 So we haven't got a lot of experience 

11 on it, but so far it's encouraging. Labor is 

12 encouraged by the information we're providing in 

13 this fashion.

14 With respect to their request about 

15 Part E, we've had a couple meetings with Labor 

16 from people in other parts of NIOSH, not DCAS. 

17 I went, I guess, to introduce people, because I 

18 certainly couldn't add much to the conversation.

19 But when it was clear that there was 

20 going to be an advisory board on toxic substances 

21 and worker health, essentially a Part E board,

22 which is being developed now, when that became 

23 clear, then we at NIOSH said, well, we don't want 
12

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 to start down this road and give them a lot of 

2 advice that may be counter or different, because 

3 they're going to get, probably, their own advice 

4 from this Part E board, let's wait and see what 

5 happens.

6 Whether NIOSH will have any particular 

7 involvement in that is an open question, on Part 

8 E. As long as I don't have to do anything on 

9 Part E, that would be better. Speaking not just 

10 selfishly, it would be better for everybody in 

11 Part E if I didn't have anything to do with it.

12 My computer has a mind of its own 

13 here. So let me get back to where I was. I've 

14 had touchy touchpads before, but I was nowhere 

15 near it, so I don't know what happened.

16 We've had a couple of worker outreach 

17 sessions since our last Board meeting in 

18 February. We went down to Carlsbad. These are 

19 joint outreach task group meetings, which is a 

20 joint organization among DOE, DOL, us, the 

21 ombudsmen for both us and DOL, and the Former 

22 Worker Monitoring Program in DOL. And the Former 

23 Workers Program, I think, was the main emphasis 
13

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 on going down to Carlsbad. That's where the 

2 Waste Isolation Pilot Project is.

3 It's not very high on our claim list. 

4 We had very few claims from Waste Isolation Pilot 

5 Project, and all of them have employment 

6 elsewhere in addition to WIPP. So, but we went 

7 and supported that. That one was, I guess, 

8 modestly attended, you would say. There wasn't 

9 a lot of attendance at that.

10 And then last week, in Denver, we had 

11 a joint outreach task group meeting in 

12 conjunction with our yearly meeting with program 

13 advocates out there. And that was pretty well 

14 attended, as you can imagine. There's always a 

15 lot of interest in Denver about Rocky Flats and, 

16 of course, a lot of comments that they would like 

17 to have the SEC extended, as you would expect.

18 I think those meetings went pretty 

19 well, overall. I don't think you ever convince 

20 anybody, or you don't convince very many people 

21 in those meetings to change their view of you, 

22 but I think being there in public helps. They, 

23 at least, have a face to put with NIOSH. 
14

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Unfortunately, it was mine, but they could have 

2 had a better face than that.

3 And then we also met with, each year 

4 for the last two years, the Department of Energy 

5 and Department of Labor and our Ombudsman have 

6 met with a collection of advocates. And last 

7 year about this time, the advocates announced the 

8 formation of this volunteer advisory board for 

9 Part E, if you recall. And they'd sent some 

10 correspondence, they've had some meetings, and 

11 that's largely the group that we meet with. So 

12 we met with them again. The advocates prepared 

13 the agenda list. It was lengthy, but almost all 

14 of it was Department of Labor issues and Part E 

15 issues. A couple for us. They have to do with 

16 our communication, how we're communicating dose 

17 reconstructions and how can we make more 

18 information available.

19 And we're pursuing some of those 

20 things, like maybe getting some additional 

21 references cleared by DOL to be made public. So 

22 now only our White Papers, but the references 

23 that we refer to in the White Papers might be 
15

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 available to the public.

2 So we're pursuing that with Department 

3 of Energy and it's not clear yet how much of a 

4 work burden we're talking about. It may be that 

5 to do all of them may just be prohibitively --

6 now, I won't say expensive, but there's too much 

7 time involved, too much labor involved in it. 

8 But we'll see what we can work out with them. 

9 We're at the very early stages of figuring out 

10 what we can do in that.

11 So, anyway, that was our part of the 

12 meeting. You know, the NIOSH part of the meeting 

13 was really short. It was a 9:30 to 2 o'clock 

14 discussion and we took about a half-hour of that. 

15 So most of it was Department of Labor.

16 Also, Josh prepares my slides, and he 

17 wanted me to say something about our plain 

18 language efforts that we are embarking on. There 

19 is a Plain Language Act and there are 

20 requirements that documents be written, you know, 

21 government documents be written in plain 

22 language.

23 Now, for health physicists, that's 
16

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 like a foreign language. So we've been trying 

2 to deal with that to a certain extent. We are 

3 chasing down some training. And plain language 

4 doesn't mean dumbing down the language, it means 

5 writing it for the intended audience.

6 So, for instance, a White Paper is 

7 things that we write for Work Groups and 

8 Subcommittees. I think my presentation wants me 

9 to hurry up.

10 (Laughter.)

11 MEMBER ANDERSON: It's on a timer, you 

12 know.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: I think it is. Those 

14 documents are written for an intended audience. 

15 They're written for the Work Group or the 

16 Subcommittee or the SC&A. And so those will be 

17 written for that audience. And so they won't all 

18 be written for a public, they'll be written for 

19 the intended audience. But you can still do some 

20 things to structure the writing better and make 

21 the writing, you know, easier to follow and 

22 structuring the documents better.

23 So we're going to embark on some 
17

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 training for our own staff and for some members 

2 of our contractors' staff to see if we can't 

3 structure these things a little better. Because, 

4 if you look back, you can probably all think of 

5 examples of writing that you've read in this 

6 program that was kind of convoluted. And, you 

7 know, it could have been written in a more clear 

8 fashion. So we're going to be working on that 

9 going forward as well.

10 And despite my computer's desires, I'm 

11 going to go through the rest of my presentation. 

12 I'm almost there. I think I've covered the other 

13 topics that I was going to cover.

14 I did get a little bit of budget news 

15 right before I came out here about our 

16 sequestration amount for fiscal year 2016. The 

17 sequestration percentage is slightly less than 

18 the sequestration percentage we have this year, 

19 which means we will effectively have a littler 

20 more money next year than this year.

21 So we've adapted to our current 

22 spending levels and I think things will be okay 

23 for the time being, absent some, you know, 
18

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 statutory change. But the way things look right 

2 now, the 2016 budget will be very similar to this 

3 year's.

4 Okay. Now, to get onto our internal 

5 blind dose reconstruction review process, we 

6 adopted some time ago, working with the Dose 

7 Reconstruction Subcommittee, to say, well look, 

8 you know, we've had these dose reconstruction 

9 reviews that SC&A has. And, you know, more often 

10 than I would like, they find things that are 

11 mistakes in dose reconstructions.

12 And so we said, well, why are we not 

13 finding those ourselves and can we get some 

14 information about the kinds of things that are 

15 happening?

16 And an idea occurred to us, well, we 

17 can try doing, essentially, blind reviews 

18 ourselves. You know, have the DCAS staff do dose 

19 reconstructions of a case, without seeing the 

20 cases that come over from ORAU, and see how we're 

21 doing. And then maybe you can figure out, you 

22 know, do we need more clarity in the instructions 

23 for dose reconstruction? You know, some things 
19

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 like that to try to diagnose reasons why dose 

2 reconstructions may be getting done with mistakes 

3 in them.

4 And so we started that process a while 

5 ago and we found out pretty quickly that it's 

6 really hard. It takes a lot of work to do this.

7 So, the way the process works is that 

8 each week a case is randomly selected by our 

9 computer system and put into the assignment 

10 queue, you know, the list of cases to be assigned. 

11 And then one of our team leaders has to assign 

12 from that list, assign a case to a dose 

13 reconstructor to do the blind review.

14 The cases that are randomly assigned 

15 have not been delivered by ORAU. These are cases 

16 that came in that we don't have a dose 

17 reconstruction on yet.

18 And so the idea is that our health 

19 physicists will go and do a dose reconstruction, 

20 not write the whole report, but do the math, do 

21 the calculations and come up with dose numbers 

22 for internal, external and ambient and medical, 

23 you know, the various categories.
20

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 And then when the ORAU dose 

2 reconstruction, the official dose 

3 reconstruction, is delivered, then we do a 

4 comparison. The system notifies us that, okay, 

5 you've got both of them now, and then you get a 

6 different health physicist, you know, from DCAS 

7 side to go compare the two dose reconstructions 

8 and see how do they compare.

9 So that's the process and it's run, 

10 like everything we do, on one of our applications 

11 on our staff tools page. I happened to look and 

12 it's not an application that the Board Members 

13 can see. We could, probably, you know -- I don't 

14 think there was any particular reason for that -

15 - but we could make it available to Board Members 

16 to see this application.

17 I'll show you here an example of the 

18 comparison sheet. I think it's called a QA 

19 sheet. This is the form that the -- okay, I'm 

20 not quite there yet. Yeah, I think this is just 

21 a description of the process, which I think I 

22 covered. This is an example of what we call the 

23 quality assurance form, which is the comparison 
21

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 between the ORAU dose reconstruction and the DCAS 

2 dose reconstruction.

3 Again, like I said, this form is 

4 completed by a second DCAS health physicist and 

5 they just look side by side and they try to 

6 explain differences.

7 I have two slides showing examples 

8 that to fit this whole, it would have taken four 

9 slides to hit the entire form, put the entire 

10 form on the presentation. So I just wanted to 

11 show you examples.

12 And you can see it has the various 

13 categories, you know, questions about did we save 

14 all the data we asked for? And then photon 

15 doses, it goes through neutron doses and then 

16 it'll go to the internal doses, and so all the 

17 categories are on it. If you had the full QA 

18 sheet, you'd have all that.

19 And you can see that when there are 

20 differences there -- well, at this point, there's 

21 just a comparison of how they did things. This 

22 is filled out by the ORAU -- or, no, by us, by 

23 the second DCAS health physicist, fills out this 
22

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 form looking at the two dose reconstruction.

2 And this is the bottom of the form, 

3 the second piece of the form. And you can see 

4 there, the comparison down at the bottom, the 

5 Probability of Causation value is compared. And 

6 the idea here is to see if the two dose 

7 reconstructions had the same answers, were they 

8 both less than 50 or above 50?

9 And if they're different, then you 

10 have to take a serious look of what in the heck 

11 happened. Or if the percentages are widely 

12 disparate, even if they're on the same side, 

13 you'd kind of like to know what happened 

14 differently.

15 You can get some widely disparate 

16 answers because, in some cases one, either ORAU 

17 or we will do an intentional overestimate, and 

18 the other side, you know, would not do as much of 

19 an overestimate. And so you'll have, you know, 

20 widely disparate values. And those are easy to 

21 explain because dose reconstructors have a fair 

22 amount of leeway in choosing overestimating 

23 techniques. So, anyway, that's an example of how 
23

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 the case is documented.

2 Now, the actual performance of the 

3 program -- I think I skipped a slide there. 

4 Maybe not. There's a slide missing.

5 What we compared against the 

6 statistics of what we've done, there have been 

7 some 90 of these cases randomly selected by the 

8 computer, but only about 40 of those, or in the 

9 40s. Only about half have actually been assigned 

10 to a dose reconstructor, and then there's this 

11 smaller subset of that, that we have both the 

12 dose reconstructions and a comparison.

13 So, you know, a blind dose 

14 reconstruction, I think SC&A budgets 40 hours for 

15 a blind dose reconstruction. It can be a pretty 

16 big undertaking, depending upon the case. And 

17 so we're taking health physicists' time from 

18 reviewing dose reconstructions or doing site 

19 research to go do this. So it's a pretty big 

20 time commitment to get into this.

21 There's another complication in that 

22 the dose reconstruction tools that are used to 

23 automate many of the dose calculations have 
24

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 what's called executable code in them, and they 

2 were written on ORAU's system. And so we can't 

3 get our computer folks to agree for us to load 

4 those tools onto our computer system.

5 So I'm going to say some things now 

6 that I don't really understand. The computer 

7 people told me, so I can't answer a lot of 

8 questions about specifically what this means.

9 But our two computer systems, ours and 

10 ORAU's, communicate a lot. And they pass 

11 information back and forth regularly and update 

12 each other regularly. And to do that, each side 

13 has a firewall, and that communication goes 

14 through those firewalls.

15 In between those firewalls, there is 

16 some server capacity, some memory capacity. And 

17 so, as a kind of workaround, these tools are 

18 placed in that kind of netherworld between the 

19 two firewalls. So we can access them through the 

20 firewall, but in a limited capacity. So our 

21 ability to use the tools is sort of limited.

22 So, that makes this process difficult 

23 because, you know, it doesn't make much sense to 
25

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 try to build this whole calculation when the tool 

2 is there. Because tools do require selections. 

3 You have to make the right selections in the tool. 

4 So that's complicated the process a little bit.

5 So, as a result, that's why, you know, 

6 we've not really kept up with this whole 

7 selection. Many more cases have been selected 

8 than have been done.

9 In the circumstance where the computer 

10 automatically selects a case and it doesn't get 

11 assigned and then ORAU delivers the dose 

12 reconstruction for that case, the computer sees 

13 that, takes that out of the unassigned queue and 

14 picks a new one to replace it.

15 So, the queue, you know, we don't lose 

16 them in that fashion, or we lose that specific 

17 case, but the cases are still counted. So it 

18 runs a bit behind the process, and what we've 

19 typically learned is that the ORAU dose 

20 reconstruction, since they have pre-access to the 

21 tools, they have a peer reviewer doing it.

22 You know, when we find a mistake or a 

23 difference between their claim and ours, in every 
26

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 case the ORAU dose reconstruction was done 

2 correctly. And our people aren't as good at 

3 doing dose reconstructions as the ORAU dose 

4 reconstructors. That's the main thing we've 

5 learned.

6 So, the question, you know, then gets 

7 into how do you fix that? You know, and can we 

8 fix it and can we invest -- so far we haven't 

9 invested a lot of time into trying to fix that, 

10 you know, into training our dose reconstructors 

11 and things like that.

12 So, like everything else in the 

13 program, it's a balancing act between can you do 

14 what you want to do with the resources available? 

15 So that's kind of what we've run into on this.

16 I will try and get back to where I am 

17 because I don't know what's going on here. I 

18 think maybe I'm shaking the podium. Maybe that's 

19 causing this to go.

20 Okay. I think I've covered this. In 

21 every instance where our result, in terms of 

22 which side of 50 percent was different, there's 

23 like five out of the 49. We run it, you know, 
27

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 the two were on a different side.

2 We looked back and our dose 

3 reconstructor made a fairly -- probably an error 

4 that you would think they wouldn't have made, or, 

5 in some cases, maybe not such a subtle error. 

6 Sometimes it was selection on the tool, that they 

7 chose incorrectly on the tool because they didn't 

8 realize the choices.

9 But five of the 49 were different. 

10 All of the others were of the same. Some of the 

11 cases where you're on the same side of 50 percent, 

12 the difference was maybe a little more than you 

13 would like. But to chase those down and to 

14 really -- it takes a certain amount of effort, 

15 actually, to figure out what was done differently 

16 on the two.

17 So that's where that is. It could 

18 certainly be done. With additional resources 

19 applied to it, it could be done more rigorously 

20 and we could learn more from it than we have, 

21 candidly.

22 And like I said, it's like everything 

23 else in this program, trying to accomplish 
28

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 everything you want to accomplish with the 

2 resources available.

3 In the interest of time and getting 

4 away from my computer, I'll only go very quickly 

5 through the statistics. They're all in your 

6 handout. If anybody has any questions, I'll try 

7 to answer them.

8 Our compensability rate from dose 

9 reconstruction, it's not calculated on there. 

10 That's about 28 percent, or above 50 percent 

11 through dose reconstruction. And these are up12 to-date as of March 19th.

13 So, our submittal chart, which is 

14 quarterly data points, since this was completed 

15 on March 19th, you don't see any particular 

16 change. The last one's down a little bit because 

17 it doesn't include the entire quarter.

18 But it looks about what you'd expect. 

19 It's been pretty flat, around 500 a quarter now 

20 for a while. That's new cases. We still have, 

21 oh, probably 150 returns a quarter, on that 

22 order.

23 DOE's responses, I think, are going 
29

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 quite well. We don't have any particular 

2 problem. Well, periodically a site will get 

3 behind and they'll get nagged at and get caught 

4 up. So that's there.

5 And I'll entertain any questions, 

6 particularly the end where I didn't cover the 

7 statistics, or anything else anybody wants to 

8 ask.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Paul.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Thank you. Stu, I 

11 have two questions. First of all, on the charts 

12 that you put up where you show the differences. 

13 I don't think the people in the audience could 

14 probably see those charts. But do you have some 

15 criteria for saying when your dose reconstruction 

16 really is different? Like you had one that's 

17 four percent and they had five percent and so you 

18 were about a percent apart and you're saying, 

19 well, that's the same. Is there a criteria for 

20 saying you didn't get the same results?

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Not per se, other than 

22 whether it was above 50 and below 50. Those are 

23 clearly considered different results. Other 
30

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 than that, there's not a formal set of criteria 

2 for them.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay. But if they 

4 got five percent and you got 40 or something, I 

5 mean, there's some point at which, at least 

6 intuitively, you'd say that's not the same.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: But right now there's 

9 no numerical criteria?

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Nothing like that 

11 that would trigger special investigation. I 

12 mean, the QA, the second DCAS HP, might chase 

13 that down, but there's nothing that mandates you 

14 have to, you know, explain why it's so much 

15 different.

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: My second question is 

17 SC&A is doing a lot of quality DRs for the Board. 

18 You're calling yours blind, but I don't think 

19 you're using it the same way that we are for the 

20 SC&A ones. But for the regular SC&A ones, do 

21 they have the same limitation you do on access to 

22 those tools?

23 MR. HINNEFELD: I think they might. 
31

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 I don't know if John can comment. I think they 

2 might have that same limitation on access to 

3 tools.

4 MR. STIVER: Yeah, this is John 

5 Stiver. And I can say that our people have had 

6 trouble getting access to those tools as well. 

7 It has been kind of roadblock for us.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, it just seemed 

9 to me that -- and we can maybe talk about this 

10 later -- but for the Board's contractor, where 

11 we're doing hundreds of checks, that access to 

12 the tools for our contractor would seem to me to 

13 be fairly important.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: I'll see. Yeah, I'm 

15 starting investigating that and what can be done 

16 to make this easier. I don't know that we're 

17 going to have a lot of luck with our computer 

18 security people in getting executable files onto 

19 our system.

20 Now, whether it's okay for us and SC&A 

21 to get into ORAU's system, that's another 

22 question. That's also a computer security 

23 question that I'm starting to investigate.
32

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Dave.

2 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Dave Kotelchuck. 

3 It's worth saying, though, that the Dose 

4 Reconstruction Subcommittee has been looking at 

5 a limited number of blind comparisons between the 

6 NIOSH results and the SC&A results.

7 And all of those -- there were about 

8 a half-dozen of them -- all of those, the 

9 decisions are the same. That is to say, there 

10 are no cases we've come across so far where the 

11 blind review, where there was a discrepancy 

12 between whether it should and should not be 

13 compensated. There was agreement on that, and 

14 that's important.

15 And while it's important for you to 

16 figure out how to do that internally within 

17 NIOSH, and that's great, I think that the results 

18 so far, for final results, have been good and 

19 there has been agreement on the blind review 

20 cases.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Dave, we may need 

22 to look at that question again, because I recall 

23 at least one. It was a very significant 
33

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 difference. But that's a --

2 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: We'll take a look 

3 at that.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And these are 

5 different types of blind reviews, let's be clear.

6 Any Board Members on the line have 

7 questions? Hearing none, thank you very much, 

8 Stu. And we'll be coming back and talking more 

9 about dose reconstruction reviews at other times 

10 during this meeting.

11 Our next presentation is from Dr. 

12 Patricia Worthington from the Department of 

13 Energy.

14 (Pause.)

15 DR. WORTHINGTON: All right. Thank 

16 you.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And welcome, Pat. 

18 It's always great to have you here.

19 DR. WORTHINGTON: Good morning. Greg 

20 Lewis will not join us today. He's at the 

21 Federal Executive Institute, becoming an 

22 executive. And I am joined today by Isaf Al23 Nabulsi and by Gail Splett. Gail's actually --
34

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 you know Isaf -- Gail is from Hanford. She is 

2 our primary point of contact here at this site 

3 for EEOICPA-related activities.

4 I want to talk just briefly this 

5 morning about DOE's core mandates. Our 

6 responsibility is to ensure that we provide all 

7 the information to NIOSH and Department of Labor 

8 to support the claims for people that worked at 

9 Department of Energy.

10 DOE's responsibilities. We have a 

11 number of things that we have responsibility for, 

12 and one in terms of responding to the records 

13 requests of individuals for providing information 

14 to DOL and to NIOSH. A little over a year ago, 

15 we instituted a secure electronic records 

16 transfer system. It proved to be a great way to 

17 avoid PII breaches and to get information quickly 

18 to those organizations. We think that's working 

19 very well.

20 With regard to providing information 

21 on large-scale research activities, we're working 

22 with the Board and NIOSH and DOL in doing that 

23 across a large number of projects. We'll talk 
35

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 about that in a few minutes. And we conduct 

2 research in coordination with DOL and NIOSH. In 

3 some cases there's a need to gather some 

4 additional information to support the activities.

5 EEOICPA site contacts, I mentioned 

6 that Gail is one of the site contacts. And while 

7 we have the responsibility in our office, the 

8 Office of Health and Safety, to provide the 

9 information as needed, the information's 

10 primarily in the field.

11 And so with the information being in 

12 the field, we need to have POCs all across DOE to 

13 provide that information to us. And they do a 

14 wide variety of things in terms of making sure 

15 that we have the right SMEs that are available to 

16 help look for the documents.

17 And in some cases the information is 

18 more about getting a tour, getting a feel for the 

19 activities, what kinds of searches might be 

20 needed. And so we rely, again, on these points 

21 of contact to help us to provide that 

22 information.

23 Individual records. Again, it's 
36

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 always about the individuals, about the workers, 

2 and what can we provide. And I'll provide some 

3 additional insights.

4 You've seen these numbers before. 

5 They remained fairly high in terms of 

6 verifications, dose records and DAR information. 

7 And so that's something that we're working 

8 constantly with the site and through our POCs to 

9 be able to provide that information as needed.

10 Providing the information -- and we've 

11 talked about this, I think, at almost every 

12 meeting -- can be a challenging activity for us 

13 and, you know, for the sites, because in terms of 

14 even at a single site, there are many programs, 

15 in some cases many contractors, many systems. We 

16 have the old DOE processes and new ones. Can 

17 they work together? Are they communicating with 

18 each other in order to be able to provide the 

19 information?

20 And I think that over the years as we 

21 worked on this, and working with people like 

22 Gail, we found innovative ways to be able to reach 

23 out and find this information.
37

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 I mention here on this slide that in 

2 some cases, at one site, there were 40 different 

3 places that you had to look. And, again, these 

4 things may not always be communicating with each 

5 other.

6 The large scale projects that we're 

7 working on, again, from our perspective, from 

8 DOE's perspective, if we receive information 

9 requests from DOL and NIOSH, we support all those 

10 requests.

11 We've certainly learned things over 

12 the years, better ways of doing things, providing 

13 some insights to DOL or to NIOSH about the types 

14 of things that they're looking for, but we 

15 certainly honor all the requests that we receive. 

16 And many of these projects have been ongoing for 

17 some time.

18 And the things that I mentioned on the 

19 previous slide about sort of the complexity of 

20 looking for these records and trying to find them 

21 kind of -- we're always looking for quality 

22 information back to you, and completeness.

23 We want to be timely, but that's 
38

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 defined in different ways. The main thing we 

2 want to do is to be able to turn it around, but 

3 to be sure that we've looked in all the places 

4 and that we've identified all of the information 

5 that might be needed.

6 I have a list here of the large scale 

7 research projects that we're working on, and you 

8 can see that there are a number of them and they 

9 certainly represent various kinds of activities 

10 and processes and missions at DOE.

11 I'm going to talk just briefly about 

12 support to Hanford and to PNNL on the SEC and the 

13 kinds of things that, you know, that we've been 

14 doing.

15 So what you'll actually see here on 

16 this slide, and Gail has provided quite a lot of 

17 information to tell you how aggressive they've 

18 been at this site, that we've had over 140 data 

19 captures. And so that's during the time that 

20 they started providing information for the SEC.

21 Eighty-four separate data capture 

22 trips. And, again, those trips are varied in 

23 terms of the number of people that would come to 
39

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 the site and request information, the type of 

2 documents and places that they would look. A lot 

3 of boxes that we looked in that represent a lot 

4 of different type of information. And just key 

5 word searches. And that's very important because 

6 if you're not asking the systems for the right 

7 kinds of things, then you may not get anything 

8 back what may not be meaningful.

9 And that's, again, a reach back to the 

10 idea that our POCs are people that help us find 

11 the right people that are knowledgeable about 

12 these records. And in some cases where it's 

13 important and necessary, we bring people back 

14 that are retired to kind of help with these 

15 searches that know about the information or where 

16 you can receive it.

17 Indexing, that's one thing that we 

18 work on here at this site and at other sites, 

19 because if you don't index the materials then 

20 it's difficult to find them and to do the 

21 searches. So that's always been quite 

22 aggressive.

23 This slide here, I've mentioned, 5,000 
40

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 record boxes of personnel records. It's 

2 different from what you have on your computer. 

3 It's actually an error. I think we had listed 

4 500, but it was 5,000 there. So we will give you 

5 an update with the right information for that.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So there's some big 

7 boxes.

8 DR. WORTHINGTON: Yes, yes, quite a 

9 bit. But, again, just some idea in terms of what 

10 we're doing and the kinds of things that we're 

11 looking at.

12 On this slide we mentioned historical 

13 phone books. And we've talked about this in 

14 previous years, that to go back to records for 

15 the cities or other places or information at the 

16 sites in terms of something that will help us 

17 verify that these individuals were working at the 

18 site. This is another example of kind of looking 

19 for things that were more innovative. 

20 I believe, in recent discussions with 

21 Gail, they indicated, in moving from one area to 

22 another area in their building, they located a 

23 number of phone books they didn't have in place 
41

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 before, and other types of information.

2 So, from time to time we're coming up 

3 with new sets of records that we can certainly 

4 draw from. It's always a challenge when we're 

5 looking for records from subcontractors.

6 Document reviews. From time to time 

7 there are documents that are generated, and we, 

8 again, we're the health and safety organization, 

9 we then reach to our security side of the house 

10 to make sure that they review the documents and 

11 that they turn them around sort of in a timely 

12 manner in terms of whether they are releasable.

13 So, again, we're juggling all the 

14 requirements with a strong need and a compassion 

15 for getting the information back to the 

16 organizations that need it.

17 Facility research. I think we had 

18 some requests even early this morning about the 

19 right location for our website, for the link for 

20 that. It's listed here, but we continue to work 

21 on those things and update them as needed.

22 And I want to point out on this one, 

23 if you're looking at the actual address for the 
42

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 web page, you'll see EHSS in there. This is the 

2 new link after our organization was restructured 

3 into two parts, into AU organization, into the EA 

4 organization.

5 So if you're looking at the facility 

6 lists, or any other kinds of links that are 

7 related to our office, the key thing is if it 

8 doesn't say "EHSS," you may be looking at an old 

9 one and so you may want to update that.

10 I believe that Stu mentioned outreach. 

11 I'll just sort of reemphasize that. The idea of 

12 DOL and NIOSH and DOE coming together under one 

13 umbrella to provide information, offer 

14 clarifications to workers or to others that might 

15 need it, related to the things that we do under 

16 DOE, NIOSH or Department of Labor.

17 We've talked about receiving records 

18 and various kinds of processes have been updated, 

19 but in some cases we need more outreach so that 

20 people are aware of information that might be 

21 available. And we've been joining, as Stu said, 

22 with these organizations in providing some 

23 outreach, some feedback, to individuals.
43

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 We have developed, and I think made 

2 available to the Board, the link associated with 

3 our video where the three organizations described 

4 their processes and the things that they do. 

5 We're in the process of updating that, but this 

6 one is still very informative about the roles and 

7 responsibilities of the three organizations. 

8 So, continue to use it until such time that we do 

9 update it.

10 I want to talk about the Former Worker 

11 Medical Screening Program just for a moment, 

12 because the EEOICPA program certainly looks at 

13 both current and former workers. But the Former 

14 Worker Program itself is that once workers leave 

15 DOE, we make available to them a medical 

16 screening that will target adverse health effects 

17 that could've been associated with some of the 

18 hazardous operations that they worked under when 

19 they were here at DOE.

20 The Former Worker Program is available 

21 to all workers. You know, once they worked at a 

22 DOE site and once they leave, they can -- and 

23 I'll provide some contact information on the next 
44

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 slide -- they can come back to those facilities, 

2 come back, give a phone call, and we'll be happy 

3 to organize or arrange a medical screening for 

4 them.

5 I've listed two of the organizations 

6 associated with this. These are both called 

7 National Screening Programs, where workers, 

8 regardless of where you are in the country, that 

9 you can call one of those numbers and a screening 

10 can be made available to you near where you're 

11 living, if you've moved away from DOE.

12 The first one is focused on production 

13 workers and the second one on construction 

14 workers. And the idea here is that, again, the 

15 screening would be targeted towards those things 

16 that you had been working with when you were at 

17 DOE.

18 This was a fairly, you know, fast 

19 overview of DOE and the kinds of things that we 

20 do, and we're available for further questions on 

21 any of the things that we talked about.

22 One of the key points, and I want to 

23 reiterate that, is that with regard to our 
45

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 overall responsibility for delivering the 

2 information, providing records and various 

3 information, we continue to have innovative ways 

4 and using innovative approaches to get to this 

5 information.

6 I'll use Hanford as an example. Here 

7 at Hanford there are multiple contractors working 

8 on some very specific projects for the Department 

9 of Energy. And so a very important network that 

10 was developed here, for some key things for

11 looking for information, was to bring the 

12 contractors together under a common umbrella to 

13 help locate records.

14 And so it was very bold in that, in 

15 some cases, work schedules were revised such that 

16 these individuals may work four days a week and 

17 then they all come together maybe on the weekend. 

18 And then have a very concentrated effort, 

19 aggressive effort in terms of delivering the 

20 products and things that might be needed.

21 And so, again, our overall goal is to 

22 provide information, you know, as needed and 

23 where it's difficult to look for better ways of 
46

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 getting the data back to the right people and the 

2 right hands. So, we'll end here and take any 

3 questions that you might have.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Thank 

5 you, Pat. You know, actually, I appreciate your 

6 efforts out here at this site, and actually Gail 

7 was able to help us on a conference call we had 

8 talking about the work on the Hanford Site Monday 

9 of this week. 

10 DR. WORTHINGTON: Very good.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So we appreciate 

12 that. I have two questions about two of the 

13 sites where there appear to be some difficulties 

14 getting records; one is Savannah River and the 

15 other is the Los Alamos. And can you provide an 

16 update or have information on that?

17 I know the problem with Savannah River 

18 is relatively recent, but it's causing sort of a 

19 major hold up. And then LANL, I think, has been 

20 more of a longer term problem.

21 DR. WORTHINGTON: I will. And Isaf 

22 can jump in if she has any specifics on that. 

23 I'll talk first about the Savannah River. With 
47

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 regard to Savannah River, it has been a challenge 

2 for us and it's certainly something that we were 

3 aware of and that we were constantly working with 

4 the sites.

5 They had some changes in contracts and 

6 approaches and funding, you know, issues there at 

7 the site. And the problem with that site, and 

8 any site, if at any time the contractors cease 

9 and then we bring them back and try to start them 

10 again, it's not always a quick process.

11 But we are aware of it and we are 

12 working with it. And, when necessary, we raise 

13 it all the way with the site managers. And 

14 sometimes, again, the startup again, get them 

15 moving, is slower than we would like. But we 

16 will certainly continue to work on that until 

17 such time that we can resolve it.

18 I don't know if we have any specifics 

19 on Los Alamos for the moment, but it's a challenge 

20 sometimes, you know, to inspire them. But Greg 

21 has developed a very, I think, aggressive program 

22 where he's actually going out and meeting 

23 individually with the sites, looking at ways that 
48

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 they can do it better and faster and more 

2 efficient.

3 And it takes a while to turn it 

4 around. I'm not going to mention, you know, site 

5 names, but the ones that we've had these issues 

6 and that we work with them, we've been able to 

7 turn them around, I think that our statistics 

8 will show that we can do that.

9 But we always welcome early, you know, 

10 information, early signs, if that's the case, and 

11 so we can work on it. So hopefully when we come 

12 back for the next update we will have turned that 

13 corner on that one as well.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We call it 

15 aggressive inspiration. 

16 DR. WORTHINGTON: Yes. Yes.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Paul?

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Dr. Worthington, I 

19 just had sort of a general question on the 

20 reorganization of EHSS. And you can answer in 

21 general terms. It appears that the 

22 organizational commitment to this program has 

23 been maintained pretty well. Can you just talk 
49

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 a little bit about your staffing and budgetary 

2 levels? Have they been maintained under this 

3 reorganization?

4 DR. WORTHINGTON: Actually, they have 

5 been maintained. And with regard to Greg's 

6 office, where a lot of the information is 

7 generated and a lot of the heavy lifting is done, 

8 Greg just recently hired an additional person in 

9 his organization with lots of experience, from 

10 Emory. She's worked some at CDC, and I think she 

11 brings some new energy, you know, to that office.

12 And so with regard to the commitment, 

13 the commitment is extremely high. We still are 

14 excited and view our primary job to be advocates 

15 for the workers and to do all those things that 

16 we have to do.

17 So we don't think that we've lost a 

18 step, but I think that we've gained a few. Like 

19 I said, Greg has been quite aggressive with 

20 following the money and looking for ways to 

21 improve processes. And where needed, we actually 

22 fund initiatives at the site to make it easier 

23 and faster and better for them to retrieve 
50

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 information, put some new systems in place, so I 

2 think that we're fine.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Board Members on 

4 the phone, do you have any questions?

5 MEMBER LEMEN: None from Lemen.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

7 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: None from 

8 Schofield.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you. 

10 You don't all need to answer. Just if you had 

11 questions let us know. I just want to make sure 

12 I don't forget you out there. Okay. Thank you 

13 very much, Dr. Worthington. We appreciate that.

14 DR. WORTHINGTON: Okay.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Our next 

16 presentation is from Frank Crawford, formerly at 

17 NIOSH, now with the Department of Labor. Welcome 

18 again. And good luck with the computer.

19 MR. CRAWFORD: Good morning. My name 

20 is Frank Crawford. I'm with DOL, as you just 

21 heard. And so far this slide hasn't moved. This 

22 is positive. So, let's see if I can move it.

23 I'm going to start with the usual 
51

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 statistics, the updates, and then we'll talk 

2 briefly about the SEC discussions for today, some 

3 statistics for that, how many cases have been 

4 filed and so forth. And then end with the recent 

5 outreach activity.

6 This we've seen over and over again, 

7 and these numbers only go up. We're now over $11 

8 billion in total compensation. From looking at 

9 later figures here, I assume this includes 

10 medical treatment expense beyond just the cash 

11 awards.

12 This also is familiar, and the numbers 

13 are just a little higher than they were. The 

14 only thing, I think, that needs explaining here, 

15 perhaps, is there's a lot more cases returned 

16 from NIOSH without dose reconstructions and you 

17 might initially consider, but I believe that 

18 almost all of those are going to be cases that 

19 are pulled for SEC evaluations, and then they 

20 never come back in many cases because they're 

21 approved at that level.

22 Now, here's one view of how many cases 

23 are being approved or denied. These are Part B 
52

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 cases only, with dose reconstructions and final 

2 decisions. We see that we have about a one-third 

3 approval, two-thirds denial ratio at that level.

4 In a minute, we'll get to another view 

5 of that same data. But first, the other 

6 category, I was able to confirm, it's a very large 

7 lump at the bottom of the screen, 31 percent. 

8 But that includes beryllium, silicosis cases. It 

9 also includes -- what was the last thing --

10 chronic beryllium disease, beryllium 

11 sensitivity, that's it. So the numbers don't 

12 seem to add up, but that's why there's such a 

13 large number under other. 

14 In some cases, while they're filed, 

15 turn out to be, for various reasons, disqualified 

16 from going further in the process also. Those 

17 will be lumped in there as well.

18 Now we take another look at the 

19 approval versus denial data. Now, this is Part 

20 B, again, radiation cases with final decisions, 

21 but many of these will not have DRs. In other 

22 words, these are SEC cases, in many cases.

23 So we see, when we include the SEC 
53

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 cases, we're now approving over 50 percent of all 

2 cases filed. In terms of raw numbers, we see 

3 here 45,648 Part B approvals.

4 On the former slide, two slides back, 

5 there were just over 10,000 Part B approvals with 

6 DRs. So the impact of the SEC is quite large in 

7 terms of the approvals and raw numbers.

8 Just another view of the data, but we 

9 see that the accepted DR cases, there are little 

10 discrepancies in the data. I don't know what 

11 causes it, but some of them are finals and some 

12 are, you know, recommended decisions and so 

13 forth.

14 So we still are in the 9 to 10,000 

15 area with accepted cases with DR only. Now, we 

16 go down to SEC cases and we're in the 22,000 range 

17 accepted based on an SEC.

18 And there are very few cases in terms 

19 of raw numbers, again, that are both accepted on 

20 an SEC basis and later have a DR issue that 

21 accepts perhaps an ancillary case for -- an 

22 ancillary cancer I should say, for medical 

23 treatment and so forth.
54

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 This, again, our top four sites don't 

2 change much. These are just the sites generating 

3 the most cases, Hanford, Savannah, Y-12 and Los 

4 Alamos, the usual suspects.

5 Here, this is a little bit busy, but 

6 we see the comparison between DOE cases and AWE 

7 cases. And we see that the AWE spiked for a

8 while and now seem to be fading away. Probably 

9 because most of these sites are no longer active, 

10 of course, many of them were active in the 40s 

11 and 50s and not afterwards, so we would expect 

12 those claims to slowly diminish.

13 Now, for the petition site discussions 

14 for today, these are not in order of discussion, 

15 but I don't think we had the agenda when we came 

16 together on this.

17 There's huge relative disparities 

18 between the number of cases for each site. And 

19 then if you look, if you winkle out the 

20 percentages of approved cases versus denied 

21 cases, that varies wildly between sites also.

22 In some cases, of course, a lot of 

23 heavy duty, messy production work was going on. 
55

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Hanford, Savannah River would be two such sites, 

2 whereas, a place like Kansas City, it was 

3 relatively restricted kinds of work with 

4 radioactive material. And we see that their 

5 approval rate is much lower than Hanford or 

6 Savannah River as you would expect.

7 In terms of raw case counts, we, just 

8 on this page alone, we're looking at Dow Chemical 

9 with 91 cases filed versus Hanford with over 

10 16,000 cases filed. So the size of the sites 

11 here is remarkably different. All of this, of 

12 course, is on the website for review. We don't 

13 have to memorize these numbers.

14 And then the remainder of the sites 

15 that will be discussed during this two-day 

16 meeting. We see INL, for instance, a very large 

17 site with over 5,000 cases. And then DuPont 

18 Deepwater and Grand Junction operations center, 

19 relatively small sites, 250 cases, approximately.

20 Moving on to outreach events, which 

21 we're all familiar with. Stu mentioned the WIPP 

22 discussion in New Mexico. I really want to find 

23 that.
56

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 These are coming outreach events where 

2 we have Newport News, Virginia, April 28th, St. 

3 Louis, Missouri, June 2015, and Amarillo, Texas 

4 July 22nd.

5 Now, I seem to have lost a slide in 

6 there somewhere too, which was the most recent 

7 meeting. So let me see if I can recover that 

8 quickly or at all. Here we go. There we are.

9 These are more recent meetings already 

10 completed however. Meetings where since last 

11 October we have had meetings in Paducah, 

12 Shiprock, New Mexico, Carlsbad, New Mexico, 

13 Casper, Wyoming and Riverton, Wyoming.

14 So, these are relatively small 

15 meetings with the exception of the Shiprock 

16 meeting and the town hall meeting in Paducah 

17 which were over one or 200 each.

18 With that I'll ask if the Board 

19 Members have any questions.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, 

21 Frank. Board Members with questions?

22 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, this is Phil 

23 Schofield. I've got a question for you. I 
57

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 noticed that you did Shiprock, you've done 

2 Carlsbad, but are you planning on doing any 

3 meetings in the Gallup, Grants area?

4 MR. CRAWFORD: Unfortunately, I don't 

5 have the answer to that. I will attempt to find 

6 out and get back to you on that. I can send that 

7 to the whole Board if most would be interested. 

8 Great.

9 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay. I don't 

10 know. This kind of sounds bad, but a lot of 

11 those people, particularly a lot of them who live 

12 out on the Navajo Ute reservation, they probably 

13 wouldn't travel to Shiprock or they wouldn't even 

14 know it.

15 A lot of them also have limited means 

16 of getting there. That's the reason why I was 

17 wondering Gallup or Grants, kind of splits the 

18 difference in distance for a lot of those people. 

19 And this is the only reason I was asking.

20 MR. CRAWFORD: Right. And I'm sure 

21 that someone on the Joint Outreach Task Group can 

22 address your concerns there. So I will turn it 

23 over to them and Stu will add to this.
58

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I'll just offer 

2 what I can. Normally, when Labor does an 

3 outreach at a Part E, these are essentially RECA 

4 sites. We generally don't go to those, but they 

5 have had them in Grant, I'm pretty sure. But I'm 

6 not sure about Gallup. I don't know if there's 

7 any planned or how recent it was. But I'm pretty 

8 sure they've been to Grant and I don't know if 

9 they've been to Gallup or not. And again --

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

12 MR. CRAWFORD: Thanks, Stu.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Start with Henry, 

14 go down the line here.

15 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, I was just 

16 interested in the acceptance and denials. You 

17 have the overall numbers there and do you have 

18 that broken out by cancer type because it'd be 

19 interesting and I think the claimants would, you 

20 know. Is a predominance in one type of cancer 

21 versus others as far as which are accepted? I 

22 would expect that to be the case.

23 MR. CRAWFORD: I haven't seen that 
59

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 data coming from DOL. Now, when I was at DCAS, 

2 they were able to produce it from their database 

3 fairly straightforwardly, I think.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, we have a report 

5 on our website that we update periodically. I 

6 don't know when it was last updated, but it wasn't 

7 terribly long ago, that lists the percent 

8 compensable. It lists the cancers in the IREP 

9 model and the percent are compensable by dose 

10 reconstruction.

11 So this is only dose reconstruction, 

12 SEC wouldn't be included, and it's for only 

13 single cancers because it gets too complicated 

14 otherwise.

15 MEMBER ANDERSON: Thank you.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Wanda, then Paul.

17 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, I'm just curious 

18 about the facilities in Wyoming. Both of those 

19 sites are unknown to me personally. What's in 

20 Wyoming that would cause traveling out there?

21 MR. CRAWFORD: I wish I could tell 

22 you. They are actually unknown to me, too. 

23 They're, you know, the nearest thing I know about 
60

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 is INL, but perhaps.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: They're RECA.

3 MR. CRAWFORD: Oh, they're all RECA, 

4 uranium mining cases. That's it, of course.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: I was wondering if the 

6 statistics include cases that go back in 

7 connection with a PER, Program Evaluation Report, 

8 where, and these are closed cases, but they get 

9 reopened because of a PER, but it wasn't clear to 

10 me either in NIOSH or your statistics, whether 

11 those get recounted or how they show up.

12 MR. CRAWFORD: Stu, why don't you 

13 handle that. From my own knowledge and what I've 

14 seen of that, I don't have any statistics with 

15 these very few cases which are called up by PERs, 

16 end up with a changed compensation decision, in 

17 general. There may be an exception or two.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, Paul, I'll 

19 check specifically, but I believe that our 

20 statistics would include, the -- because when one 

21 changes, when a case changes to PER there' is a 

22 new dose reconstruction report sent back out. 

23 And so our statistics should be gathering the 
61

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 most recent dose reconstruction report.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. So it counts as 

3 a new dose reconstruction rather than --

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, it would count, 

5 I believe, you know, we count. And I believe 

6 what we do is we count claim or case numbers.

7 So if a case comes back for a PER 

8 because it changed, we wouldn't count it as an 

9 additional total dose reconstruction, we'd just 

10 move it from one category to another.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: I got you. I just 

12 wasn't --

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: They --

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- sure.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- must recalculate 

16 the whole -- yes. Jim Lockey, I'm sorry.

17 MEMBER LOCKEY: Could you go back to 

18 the Kansas City Plant, Hanford, Dow Chemical 

19 slide?

20 MR. CRAWFORD: This slide?

21 MEMBER LOCKEY: Correct. So I'm just 

22 curious, when we look at Part B approval for 

23 Hanford is 4,591 and then Part E was 4,131. Is 
62

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 there any statistics on what kind of duplication 

2 takes place there? Is it, other words, is the 

3 cancer that was approved for Part B, is that also 

4 part of the Part E approval? Do you know that?

5 MR. CRAWFORD: Generally speaking, 

6 yes. If a cancer gets a Part B, they're 

7 automatically considered as accepted in Part E. 

8 It doesn't work the other way, of course, for 

9 chemical cases, but for the radiation aspect of 

10 Part E, yes.

11 MEMBER LOCKEY: So that would mean in 

12 the no circumstances there were about 400 cases 

13 that were approved for other type of toxic 

14 exposures. Am I reading that right, Jim?

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Except for the 

16 qualification for Part E is different in terms of 

17 the claimant for survivors and so forth. So not 

18 every --

19 MR. CRAWFORD: Right.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- Part B case 

21 qualifies as a claimant doesn't qualify as a Part 

22 E claimant. So they have to get over that hurdle 

23 to get --
63

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 MR. HINNEFELD: Survivor.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, survivor. So 

3 it would be a different number and it'd have to 

4 calculated somehow. I don't recall seeing 

5 statistics on that, but it certainly is a 

6 significant limitation. A significant number of 

7 Part B people who qualify don't qualify for a 

8 Part E.

9 MR. CRAWFORD: There will be some 

10 cases probably where many people simple don't 

11 file under Part E even if they're advised to.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any Board Members 

13 on the phone have additional questions? Hearing 

14 silence and no beeps, I'll assume that's fine. 

15 Thank you very much, Frank.

16 MR. CRAWFORD: Thank you.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And we are running 

18 a little bit behind, but it's not bad. And we 

19 will take a break and we will reconvene at 10:45.

20 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

21 went off the record at 10:26 a.m. and resumed at 

22 10:46 a.m.)

23 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We will get 
64

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 started. Ted, do you need to repeat any of the 

2 instructions?

3 MR. KATZ: No, I don't think so, other 

4 than remind folks on the phone to mute your phones 

5 and if you don't have a mute button, press *6 to 

6 mute your phone. Thanks.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So our next item of 

8 business is talking about the coworker dose 

9 modeling. I think you know we've talked about 

10 this at the last few Board meetings.

11 And the SEC evaluation Work Group has 

12 been working very closely with NIOSH, with Jim 

13 Neton and with SC&A on developing a guidance 

14 document for the review or evaluation of coworker 

15 modeling.

16 We think we're pretty close to a final 

17 version of that. If you remember, we started out 

18 sort of focusing on statistical issues. We're 

19 sort of backing up from that, but and have some 

20 more general guidelines to deal with it. And I 

21 think we're close.

22 So Jim Neton's, sort of, going to 

23 review and go through that. And then I'll have 
65

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 a few comments later about, sort of, what we think 

2 are the next step.

3 For the Board Members that are not 

4 involved in the Work Group, if you can, sort of, 

5 be paying attention, so think about this. I will 

6 say the plan is we're not intending at this 

7 meeting to sort of approve these guidelines. 

8 That will wait until the next meeting. But they 

9 are, I think, very close to completion.

10 We have a couple more things we need 

11 to do, but one of which is to make sure we have 

12 input from all of the Board and all of the Board 

13 has an opportunity to provide input because these 

14 are going to be important in terms of dose 

15 reconstruction even in some of our past methods 

16 for doing dose reconstruction, so. So with that, 

17 I'll turn it over with Jim and go ahead.

18 DR. NETON: All right. Thank you, 

19 Dr. Melius. This is something we've been working 

20 pretty hard on to try to get some resolution as 

21 to how we're going to proceed with the coworker 

22 modeling process. But I'd like to take a step 

23 back at the beginning and just talk a little bit 
66

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 about how we got to where we are.

2 This all started way back with TIB-52 

3 was issued in 2006, which was a TIB that talked 

4 about how we would deal with special cases for 

5 construction trades workers and how maybe some of 

6 those situations like with external dose, we may 

7 need to make some special considerations for 

8 their doses as separate from the general coworker 

9 model.

10 That was issued way back in 2006, like 

11 I mentioned. And then, in 2011, Report-53 was 

12 issued which was a much more detailed statistical 

13 analysis of how we would evaluate potential 

14 stratification coworker models.

15 Remember, I gave those polka dot plot 

16 graphs with the Monte Carlo permutation test, I 

17 think, that we won the award for nicest graphics 

18 at that meeting?

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Still is Number 1.

20 DR. NETON: Still is Number 1.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No one's even come 

22 close to challenging that.

23 DR. NETON: Is that right? I liked 
67

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 those. But that was issued back in 2011 and 2013 

2 SC&A reviewed that report and they had eight 

3 findings.

4 They were broad-based findings. 

5 About four of them were related to statistical 

6 issues. Is the statistics robust enough to be 

7 able to separate these different categories?

8 And four of them, the other half were 

9 really related more to issues on characterization 

10 of the data. You know, Report-53 started with 

11 the assumption that you were comparing apples to 

12 apples and didn't do anything about 

13 characterizing that underlying populations 

14 themselves.

15 So we took a step back, and I think I 

16 volunteered for this actually, to do some sort of 

17 guidelines on how we actually look at the data in 

18 some detail qualitatively before we proceed with 

19 some stratification efforts.

20 And the end result is this draft 

21 criteria for the evaluation coworker datasets. 

22 We've been working, as Dr. Melius said, with the 

23 SEC Issues Work Group. We've had five meetings 
68

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 now over the last year-and-a-half, two in person, 

2 three by telephone.

3 And this last go around is we're 

4 calling Rev 4.1 is very much what we discussed at 

5 our March 10th meeting where, I believe, we had 

6 some very good agreement among the Members of 

7 that Work Group that this document seemed to be 

8 close, or if not, close to final.

9 So what I'd like to do is just to go 

10 over, refresh people, we don't meet very often, 

11 of how this, you know, where we are with this 

12 document, what's in it and maybe after that we 

13 can talk about what the path forward may be.

14 This is Rev 4.1, as I mentioned. And 

15 this is on Live Meeting, so it should be out there 

16 for the folks. Rather than put together a 

17 PowerPoint, I thought I'd just, like I did last 

18 time, sort of scroll through and talk from the 

19 document and entertain any questions as they 

20 might arise.

21 There are five sections of this 

22 document now. I'll go over each one in a little 

23 bit of detail, not exhaustively because it's 
69

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 fairly short and I think everybody probably 

2 should have had a chance to read it by now.

3 But the introduction section really 

4 just sets the stage for, you know, the regulatory 

5 basis of why coworker models are okay.

6 You can see the italics in the middle 

7 of the first introductory section that talks 

8 about, "If individual monitoring data are not 

9 available or adequate, dose reconstructions may 

10 use monitoring data for groups of workers with 

11 comparable activities and relationships."

12 We've been doing that for quite some 

13 time now. The question really is what's 

14 comparable. And that's what we tried to address 

15 qualitatively in this document. And in some 

16 cases at the end, we talk about how you would do 

17 some quantitative analyses as well.

18 So the Section 2, which is the 

19 criteria for the evaluation of adequacy and 

20 completeness of coworker data is that really 

21 tries to get at, we get data sets from all kinds 

22 of different avenues.

23 They come in either the claimant's 
70

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 sets, they come in spreadsheets, they come in 

2 electronic databases. But the first thing to do 

3 is to evaluate the technical adequacy of the 

4 monitoring data. And that's what really Section 

5 2.1 addresses.

6 It talks about whether you have a 

7 bioassay sample, a urine sample, whether you have 

8 an in vivo sample or, you know, a whole body 

9 counting measurement or an external dose 

10 measurement. What generally needs to be looked 

11 at before we consider those data to be valid for 

12 use in a coworker?

13 Are they technically capable of 

14 measuring what they set out to measure? If you 

15 measure a urine sample, is the chemical recovery 

16 appropriately adjusted, that sort of thing. In 

17 vivo measurements, there's a lot of criteria in 

18 here about chest wall thickness and calibration 

19 phantoms, that sort of thing.

20 And film badges, likewise. My class 

21 example, film badges are if you're measuring 

22 neutrons, in the early days the neutrons couldn't 

23 measure below a certain energy. So if you're 
71

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 exposed below a certain threshold energy that the 

2 badge would read zero no matter what you're 

3 exposed to, or be non-detectable at least.

4 So that's this first section. Moving 

5 into the second part of that, which is data 

6 completeness is a little different than that.

7 And this is do we have enough data to 

8 work with? Were the workers monitored in 

9 sufficient numbers for you to be able to apply it 

10 to the unmonitored workers.

11 A way to do this is to look at it 

12 temporally too. You start off looking year one 

13 and you go through the years and see are there 

14 data gaps. Are there some years, like five years 

15 where it drops down substantially? And if it 

16 does, maybe that's okay, maybe there was 

17 production stopped.

18 But that needs to be evaluated and 

19 explained in some way before you move forward 

20 with the data. I did include one graph in here 

21 which is actually out of an SC&A report which I 

22 thought was a pretty good illustration of what 

23 can happen if you don't look closely at the data.
72

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 This is actually from the Nevada Test 

2 Site, one of the reasons Nevada Test Site was 

3 added an SEC. You can see here where we have 290 

4 workers that were monitored, but of those workers 

5 206 were RAD safety staff.

6 And the people who may have been in 

7 harm's way, the workers, wiremen, miners, have 

8 almost no monitoring data, so it gives you pause. 

9 It makes you wonder is that really an appropriate 

10 data set to be using to apply to the unmonitored 

11 workers given that the RAD safety workers 

12 probably had a different exposure environment 

13 than those other workers. So that needs to be 

14 considered.

15 Moving through the other sections of 

16 the document, the review and analysis of the 

17 monitoring program data itself. This really 

18 talks about are the data that were collected on 

19 that group of workers generally applicable to all 

20 workers that were monitored at this site?

21 There typically at a site, can be 

22 several different types of monitoring programs. 

23 You can have a routine monitoring program where 
73

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 all workers were monitored on the monthly 

2 frequency for example or you could have an 

3 incident monitoring program where workers were 

4 only monitored when they believe that they may 

5 have been exposed.

6 Well, those are two fundamentally 

7 different types of monitoring programs and you

8 don't really want to necessarily mix those two 

9 together.

10 MR. KATZ: Jim, can I just interrupt 

11 a sec?

12 DR. NETON: Yes, sure.

13 MR. KATZ: Folks on the phone, please 

14 everybody mute your phone. We're hearing a lot 

15 of background noise. And if you don't have a

16 mute button, press Star and then 6. That'll mute 

17 your phone. That'd be very helpful not just for 

18 folks in the room, but for other people trying to 

19 listen on the line. Thanks.

20 DR. NETON: So if you have these 

21 different flavors, I'll call them, of monitoring 

22 programs, routine, intermittent and there's 

23 another one mentioned in here which is an 
74

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 intermittent monitoring program where sometimes 

2 for short duration jobs you may have a baseline 

3 sample taken and then a sample at the end of the 

4 project.

5 That may be totally acceptable, but 

6 you need to be aware that that's the way it was 

7 done and to what Class of workers that may apply 

8 to.

9 So I think there's generally some 

10 pretty good guidance in here about what needs to 

11 be considered before you start lumping these 

12 things into one category.

13 One thing I think that's significant 

14 in here is when you're talking about comparing 

15 incident versus routine. I think oftentimes we 

16 have lumped those two together. It may or may 

17 not be appropriate, but the last sentence of 

18 Section 3.1, I think is very important.

19 It says in this case, where you have 

20 one group of workers incident monitoring, one 

21 group of workers that are routine monitoring, it 

22 says it would not be appropriate to combine the 

23 monitoring data for these two groups of workers 
75

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 into a single coworker model. Rather, the 

2 default should be to consider separate models.

3 I think that's very significant 

4 because this is where we see this situation most 

5 often is when you have building trades 

6 construction workers who may be on an incident 

7 monitoring program and then the rest of the 

8 workers who are routinely sampled.

9 So this is going to require us to go 

10 back and re-look at a number of the coworker 

11 models that we've had in the past. In my mind, 

12 this is probably the most significant thing in 

13 this document.

14 I mean, there's a lot of good 

15 guidance, but this will probably be the one that 

16 causes us the most pause in going back and looking 

17 at things.

18 Section 3.2, which is analysis of an 

19 application, the unmonitored population, talks 

20 about the nuts and bolts of it. If you do have 

21 a coworker set, you know, what do you with it? 

22 How do you apply it to the unmonitored workers?

23 So it's our normal process of fitting 
76

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 some type of statistical distribution to it. 

2 Typically, it's a log-normal distribution and 

3 then you have to make some judgements as to what 

4 parameters of that distribution are you going to 

5 apply to the unmonitored workers?

6 Typically, we'd say if the worker was 

7 in an environment that did not involve as much 

8 exposure as the high end of the distribution, we 

9 would apply the 50th percentile, maybe with the 

10 general, the full distribution applied about that 

11 or if it looked like the worker really was in a 

12 high end exposure category and for some reason he 

13 wasn't monitored, maybe his monitoring 

14 information was lost, then he may receive the 

15 95th percentile of the distribution.

16 Those types of judgements need to be 

17 made when applying the dataset to the coworkers. 

18 There's one more thing I was going to say about 

19 that. I can't remember. All right.

20 One thing also is this last paragraph 

21 in this section discusses what we've called the 

22 OPOS statistic, the one person, one statistic 

23 methodology now.
77

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 And we've worked through this in the 

2 Working Group, I think, where if there's general 

3 agreement that if you have multiple monitoring 

4 data points on a person in one interval, like a 

5 year, you would take some sort of an average of 

6 those bioassay data to represent that worker's 

7 exposure in that monitoring interval.

8 We have agreed that the most 

9 appropriate statistic would be to use a backward 

10 integrated time weighted average. And I think 

11 we're all pretty happy with that.

12 I think it's the best approximation we 

13 could use for intake which is really what we're 

14 trying to do in this case. So that took a while, 

15 but I think that was a very good outcome of this 

16 process as well.

17 And finally, we need to talk about the 

18 time interval of the monitoring data. You know, 

19 how much data can you lump together in a coworker 

20 model over time.

21 In general, we have data that seems to 

22 fit one year intervals, were not processed and 

23 changed too much, so one year tends to be almost 
78

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 like our default interval.

2 But in the early years, sometimes 

3 quarterly samples were taken and we have an 

4 abundance of data on a quarterly level, so we 

5 would use that if the data were available.

6 It's recommended in here not to go 

7 beyond three years for grouping of data. And if 

8 it does exceed three years, it says a stringent 

9 justification is required.

10 And you have to really look at the 

11 process, you know. Are you confident that 

12 nothing significantly changed over that time 

13 period?

14 Even within a year interval, sometimes 

15 things could have changed. So you need to be 

16 aware of what may have changed in the facility 

17 over time when you start grouping, monitoring 

18 data.

19 And finally, we allow for the fact 

20 that, let's say you get to the end of the rope 

21 here and you say I have like comparisons. I have 

22 two routinely monitored sets of populations or 

23 two incident-based data sets. But I still have 
79

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 a sense that maybe somehow there's a high-end 

2 population out there that was not properly 

3 monitored and I want to see if I should have some 

4 sort of stratification.

5 And this basically gives some general 

6 guidance. I didn't want to tie it to a specific 

7 statistical test, but it gives some general 

8 guidance about how one should proceed to do some 

9 type of statistical analysis both on a 

10 statistical analysis between the two populations 

11 and the interval being evaluated and also on a 

12 practical level as to how it affects the intake 

13 calculation itself, so.

14 And that's the end of the document. 

15 So I'd be happy to answer any questions if there 

16 are any.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Questions for Jim? 

18 Yes, Gen?

19 MEMBER ROESSLER: Mostly, higher. 

20 Dr. Melius mentioned we're not going to make a 

21 decision on this document --

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Mic.

23 (Simultaneous speaking.)
80

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 MEMBER ROESSLER: You have to hold it 

2 down?

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

4 MEMBER ROESSLER: Oh, that'll keep me 

5 on the ball.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That'll keep you --

7 MEMBER ROESSLER: Dr. --

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- awake.

9 MEMBER ROESSLER: Keep me awake. Dr. 

10 Melius mentioned that we're not going to make a 

11 decision on this document at this time. And I 

12 think that's appropriate because I think it's 

13 important for every Board member to have a chance 

14 to look at it.

15 We had a Work Group meeting by 

16 teleconference recently and talked about this. 

17 And I think that it's a very manageable task for 

18 every Board member to look at this report. It's 

19 only 11 pages long.

20 And when Stu made his talk this 

21 morning about one of the goals of NIOSH is to do 

22 things in plain writing, well, I think this is an 

23 example of that.
81

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 It's written for the intended 

2 audience, but it's really very easy to read and 

3 to understand. It covers a lot of material. So 

4 I'm just recommending everybody do take a look at 

5 it.

6 And this plain writing thing is really 

7 nothing new. We've known this for many years. 

8 It is an emphasis now by the Health Physics 

9 Society.

10 There's going to be a special all-day 

11 session at the annual meeting in Indianapolis on 

12 plain language, both in writing and speaking. So 

13 NIOSH is following right along with that.

14 DR. NETON: Thank you, Gen. I'd just 

15 like to say we are anxious at NIOSH's end to get 

16 this moving forward because we have a number of 

17 datasets that we're currently hanging in the 

18 balance and we'd like to proceed applying these 

19 techniques to them. So the quicker, the better 

20 for us.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I would just add, 

22 and again, not to prejudge particular sites or 

23 something, but certainly, this would require 
82

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 reevaluation of coworker models that combine, for 

2 example, construction worker data which tends to 

3 be incident-based along with, you know, general 

4 worker data which tends to be much more routine 

5 monitoring-based.

6 And this would indicate that we would 

7 not combine the two. So both going backwards, 

8 but also going forward there are sites. And I 

9 know, Tim Taulbee's very anxious on some of the 

10 sites he's looking at and others.

11 So it's not without implication, so 

12 it's in terms of what we finally decided. Now, 

13 each site's going to be judged individually. So 

14 again, what I think has been in this document is 

15 not trying to make, you know, strict guidelines, 

16 but rather to have a set of guidelines that will 

17 help with the evaluation and then decisions.

18 Because I think we've found in the 

19 past, that each site is different and the type of 

20 data, the amount of data, the extent of the 

21 exposures are different, so we need to keep that 

22 in mind.

23 But it is going to be important in 
83

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 terms of how we do this. Much as I think the 

2 discussion and the agreement we came together on 

3 some surrogate data and on the evaluation SEC 

4 petitions has been, you know, helpful. But it 

5 also, to some extent, changed what our outcomes 

6 were and, I think, made them more consistent and 

7 helpful.

8 But again, it is something that would 

9 change. And this one we're fairly far along in 

10 the process with, so in terms of having done 

11 coworker models that do that, so. 

12 Questions from Board Members on the 

13 phone?

14 MEMBER LEMEN: Not at this time.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: What we intend to 

16 do for next steps is one, is we want to get 

17 comments from the other Board Members, everybody, 

18 and have a chance to look it over and get 

19 comments.

20 And if you can get comments into Stu, 

21 I think -- well, that was Stu, into Jim, and I 

22 think that would be helpful. If you want to copy 

23 me on them, that's fine, but the most important 
84

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 is Jim Neton, the other Jim, and I'll do that.

2 We are going to go through a process. 

3 We want to, sort of, pilot test the evaluation, 

4 this guidance document, on a coworker dataset as 

5 a way of, you know, making sure we're clear.

6 Again, it's we're not going to try to 

7 do 20 sets and make it perfect or whatever and 

8 anticipate every single situation, but at least 

9 make sure is those things that we could clarify 

10 that aren't clear or that need to be emphasized 

11 more and so forth, again, like any document we 

12 do, it's subject to change over time.

13 So we intend to do that and then we 

14 plan to come back to the next Board meeting which 

15 will be at the end of July and hopefully finalize 

16 the document at that meeting. So that'll be the 

17 time table.

18 But I think we're close enough now 

19 that, I think, NIOSH has some general sense of 

20 how to go forward with this. But I think it's 

21 worth doing at least some test runs and see if we 

22 can improve it a little bit more. Paul?

23 MEMBER ZIEMER: I assume the Work 
85

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Group would have an opportunity to see any 

2 revisions before it came to the full Board. But 

3 I just wanted to ask if it would be helpful to 

4 have a specific deadline for Board Members to get 

5 their comments into Jim? I don't think we want 

6 them coming in the day before the Board meeting 

7 here.

8 DR. NETON: No, no. I think I agree 

9 with Gen that it's a fairly short document. 

10 We've seen this in its current form. It's been 

11 very close to its current form for about 

12 three/four months now. So I think within a month 

13 or so, if we --

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, let's --

15 DR. NETON: -- could see comments that 

16 would be good.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- say April 30th -

18 -

19 DR. NETON: Yes.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- would be the 

21 deadline.

22 DR. NETON: Yes --

23 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And --
86

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 DR. NETON: -- that's good.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- I'll ask Ted to 

3 send a note of reminder out to everybody on the 

4 Board, and do that. Because we'll take some time 

5 to -- then we'll, probably after April 30th, we'd 

6 have another Work Group meeting so to do the trial 

7 run or test whatever we're going to call that.

8 And to be ready in that Work Group 

9 meeting to close to file. Maybe one other, some 

10 more input, but certainly well ahead of the July 

11 Board meeting. Okay. Thank you very much, Jim.

12 Can never tell when it's a lot of 

13 questions whether it's been a good job or whether 

14 everybody says this is so terrible we want -- but 

15 I think it's a good job and I'll give a lot of 

16 credit to Jim Neton.

17 He's really very thoughtful on this 

18 and done a very good job of writing up and 

19 listening to our suggestions and we've had some 

20 pretty good discussions on this, so thanks.

21 We're sort of back on schedule, so 

22 that's good. And the Kansas City Work Group has 

23 been very busy holding meetings and following up 
87

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 on that site. So, and it's something that we 

2 hope will come to closure within the next some 

3 time period.

4 I'm not sure exactly when, but I 

5 thought it would be useful in, sort of, preparing 

6 for that closure on that site at least in terms 

7 of the SEC petition that we get an update on where 

8 the Work Group is in terms of their review, data 

9 gathering and evaluation. So I've asked Josie 

10 to give us an update and she's prepared one.

11 MEMBER BEACH: Are you ready for that? 

12 It's about 20 minutes early. I don't expect 

13 petitioners on the phone, but.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: There's no action 

15 items, so it's not --

16 MEMBER BEACH: All right. I was 

17 hoping to step up here.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I'm trying to 

19 give you the form.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Try to take 

21 about 20 minutes to get this through.

22 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, I was worried 

23 about having the time slot before lunch.
88

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 MR. HINNEFELD: These arrows will 

2 work.

3 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. So these ones 

4 are the --

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

6 MEMBER BEACH: These ones or these 

7 ones?

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I think either 

9 forward and back or --

10 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: I think the forward 

12 and back are the ones that --

13 MEMBER BEACH: Perfect. Okay. So as 

14 Jim mentioned we wanted to update you on what our 

15 progress is for Kansas City. We're right in good 

16 time for that. So Work Group Members are listed 

17 on this slide.

18 This is a picture of the old Kansas 

19 City Plant. Recently, Kansas City moved to a new 

20 plant. I have that at the last photo. But this 

21 is the old Bannister facility which is now 

22 undergoing environmental certification.

23 The land is for sale. It's my 
89

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 understanding that this building will be --

2 they'll start demolishing it in 2016. That's the 

3 scheduled date.

4 Okay. So we've had two Work Group 

5 meetings. We had one in June. Our most recent 

6 one was in January. And this briefing I'm giving 

7 is based on our last Work Group meeting because 

8 we've had a site visit since then. So everything 

9 is just what our Work Group has discussed in 

10 January.

11 We've had one technical call. We've 

12 conducted four site visits jointly with NIOSH. 

13 The earliest one was in December of 2012, that 

14 was when we started with the Site Profile.

15 Of course, we moved into the SEC 

16 petition. Our most recent visit was March of 

17 this year, 2015. And we've also been to 

18 Germantown DOE, that was also a joint review of 

19 classified records.

20 Okay. So what I want to do is just 

21 go over real brief snapshots of the open issues, 

22 then we'll go into what we moved into TBD issues 

23 and then onto our closed issues.
90

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Of course, these are snapshots, so if 

2 you want the full, I mean there's pages of them 

3 and bringing them down into one or two lines is 

4 difficult. So there is, of course, always backup 

5 material out there if you're interested in it.

6 So the first open issue is Issue 

7 Number 1. It's our data completeness, legibility 

8 and accuracy. I know you've seen this at all of 

9 our sites.

10 NIOSH is committed to provide the Work 

11 Group with a sampling plan for validating the 

12 electronic databases using raw records for both 

13 the internal and external dose.

14 Following us getting the sampling plan 

15 at the Work Group level, NIOSH is going to conduct 

16 a sampling review and, of course, provide those 

17 results to us.

18 The second one is Issue 7, radioactive 

19 waste. Much work has been done to ascertain how 

20 radioactive waste was handled, shipped and stored 

21 at KCP. We did that through interviews.

22 Like I said, we've been at the site 

23 four times. Each one of those visits included 
91

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 numerous interviews, weekly activity reports and 

2 from the solid waste information management 

3 systems that were available.

4 During a recent site visit SC&A and 

5 NIOSH identified former workers who were not 

6 bioassayed when handling depleted uranium and the 

7 mag-thorium waste. So NIOSH is going to look at 

8 that new information and it'll, of course, be a 

9 topic at our next Work Group meeting.

10 Number 9 was the external coworker 

11 dose. It's pretty much the same for Issue 1. 

12 NIOSH is going to go ahead and give us a sampling 

13 plan to validate the electronic external dose 

14 records with those raw records.

15 Issue 11, the neutron/photon issues, 

16 originally we were going to use OTIB-024. It was 

17 determined through our Work Group meetings not to 

18 be appropriate to estimate neutron doses at the 

19 Kansas City Plant. So NIOSH proposed a new 

20 methodology which we heard at our last Work Group 

21 meeting in January.

22 They're going to provide to us, to 

23 SC&A, the location of 35 data points. SC&A, 
92

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 they'll look at those and get back to us with 

2 their conclusions for discussion at the next Work 

3 Group meeting.

4 Okay. And then 13 is the mag-thorium 

5 alloy operations. At our last Work Group meeting 

6 SC&A was -- we determined that they needed to 

7 review NIOSH's latest White Paper. There wasn't 

8 quite enough time before the Work Group meeting 

9 to do that. So --

10 MR. KATZ: Sorry, Josie. But --

11 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, no problem.

12 MR. KATZ: -- someone online needs to 

13 mute their phone.

14 MEMBER BEACH: Maybe they did.

15 MR. KATZ: We can hear, sort of, some 

16 music. Well, I can still hear it, so I --

17 MEMBER BEACH: It's on hold.

18 MR. KATZ: I'm not sure what we do 

19 about that because if they're on hold, they're 

20 probably not in the room. If you know you're on 

21 hold and you're in the room with your hold, please 

22 take it off hold, hang up and dial back in.

23 MEMBER BEACH: So are people on the 
93

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 line having trouble hearing me or should I wait 

2 or just go forward?

3 (Off the record comments.)

4 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. So we were 

5 looking at the mag-thorium or, yes, thorium alloy 

6 operations. We do have the White Paper that we 

7 need to look at and, of course, we'll wait for 

8 those results from SC&A.

9 The recent onsite effort was directed 

10 at obtaining the additional information regarding 

11 the years 1966 through 1970 in Departments 20, 

12 and 1971 through '79 in the Thorium Model Shop. 

13 So more work needs to be done there.

14 Okay. So Issue Number 15 is our 

15 thorium oxide operations. Key clarification was 

16 achieved during our most recent visit, which will 

17 be a topic at the next Work Group meeting.

18 SC&A is to complete their final review 

19 of the SRDB database and the nuclear materials 

20 management and safeguard systems, that's NMMSS 

21 records.

22 Number 16, the natural uranium from 

23 1950 to 1958, the application of TBD-6000 was 
94

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 discussed. SC&A validated the application of 

2 TBD-6000 for unmonitored natural uranium 

3 fabrications for the years 1950 to 1955 and then 

4 for '55 through '58, for the residual period.

5 The Work Group is fairly close to 

6 agreement on that assuming there's no other rad 

7 activities present. We kind of held off closing 

8 that based on more site visits that had been 

9 planned.

10 NIOSH also agreed to make available 

11 some radiological mapping for us. Now, we did 

12 get that. It was actually delivered to our hotel 

13 at the last site visit.

14 In the back room I have placed four 

15 maps. The first one gives you periods from 1952 

16 to 1958. The second one is the 1959 time period. 

17 And then the third one is 1963 and then 1983.

18 And you may wonder why we have all 

19 those years covered. That site went under -- it 

20 was constantly changing, rooms were being added, 

21 rooms were being taken away. The maps, I've 

22 highlighted them from what NIOSH highlighted and 

23 what we've discovered, highlighted them, so that 
95

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 you can take a look at where the radiation areas 

2 were and where they moved and changed throughout 

3 the years.

4 I'll leave those maps back there, it's

5 not the best situation because they're very 

6 large, but until the end of the day if you want 

7 to take a look at those that is available.

8 Okay. Issue Number 17 is our D&D 

9 activities. There have been many D&D activities 

10 over the 60-plus year history of the Kansas City 

11 Plant.

12 The Work Group has been looking to 

13 confirm that all workers performing D&D were in 

14 a monitoring program. During recent site visits 

15 SC&A and NIOSH identified unmonitored workers 

16 involved in the internal Kansas City D&D.

17 So we're looking for a path forward. 

18 SC&A is going to come up with a path forward on 

19 the data research and information and that will 

20 be provided to NIOSH before the next Work Group 

21 meeting and then NIOSH, of course, will follow up

22 with a analysis and dose reconstruction.

23 There was one time period, and Joe, 
96

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 correct me if I get this wrong, where Rockwell 

2 came in. It was very clearly documented that 

3 Rockwell came in and did D&D activities.

4 What we're looking for is the as the 

5 rooms changed, as projects were finished, Kansas 

6 City people did some of that and/or they brought 

7 Rockwell in. And it's not very well-documented, 

8 so we've been looking for information on that 

9 throughout these numerous site visits.

10 Okay. Issue 18 was accidents, 

11 incidents and fires in the workers' records. 

12 Early on we heard about fires, so we were looking 

13 for more information on that and continue to do 

14 that with each site visit.

15 So we're still searching for 

16 additional incident reporting and we did collect 

17 a large number of documents in March and we will 

18 search those and review them.

19 So let's see, 20, tritium, this is the 

20 last of the open issues. The Work Group has been 

21 looking for specific information regarding source 

22 terms, operational conditions and workplace 

23 measurements to understand which Kansas City 
97

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Plant workers were involved in these operations.

2 NIOSH is going to update their White 

3 Paper on the tritium issue with new information 

4 on organic tritium source terms. That was 

5 collected at the last document search.

6 Okay. So this is a map I found 

7 online. Joe suggested that I add some maps. So 

8 this gives you kind of an outline of, there's a 

9 difference between GSA workers, they're not 

10 covered within the program and then DOE sections.

11 So there's a DOE custody and control 

12 that's in yellow. The DOE PER permit, I asked 

13 Joe earlier because I wasn't sure what that was. 

14 We're assuming and maybe NIOSH can correct me if 

15 that's wrong, that DOE was using some of GSA's 

16 areas. That's in red and then, of course, the 

17 GSA areas are in blue. And those are not 

18 covered, so it's kind of a difficult site in those 

19 terms.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Did you suggest to 

21 Joe that maybe SC&A, as the contractor, should 

22 provide some maps?

23 MEMBER BEACH: No, no. Well, I --
98

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 yes. Actually I had him look at the ones I 

2 pulled. He kind of told me where I could find 

3 them and then we went from there. He was happy 

4 with the ones I found, so, yes.

5 Okay. So the next slide talks about 

6 what the Work Group determined to be TBD issues. 

7 We combined 2 and 3. And these three have been 

8 put onto the Site Profile matrix. So we're not 

9 finished with them, we've just moved them into a 

10 different classification.

11 So for Number 2, the work location 

12 category and coworker models, questions revolve 

13 around free movement of workers and access across 

14 the facility. Could workers get into the 

15 department? Could they not? Were the doors 

16 open? This was the subject of a lot of our 

17 interviews.

18 How the worker drop categorization was 

19 accomplished, that was a huge topic also of, you 

20 know, the categories didn't always match what 

21 they were doing in some cases.

22 So the remaining issue revolved around 

23 implementation of coworker model, but not the 
99

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 feasibility, additional information regarding 

2 the adequacy and completeness of data used for a 

3 coworker model and it's applicability to various 

4 job categories was also retrieved and will be 

5 incorporated into the next TBD revision.

6 3, chronic versus acute, and again, we 

7 did combine these. Work Group agreed that the 

8 questions regarding chronic versus acute intake 

9 patterns does not represent an SEC issue and can 

10 be accommodated by the TBD Model 6000.

11 The issue of unexplained high bioassay 

12 readings in 1960 and '61 will be addressed under 

13 the matrix Issue 18 as part of the review of the 

14 Kansas City Plant incidents.

15 And then, 10 non-penetrating dose, 

16 clarification was needed on how non-penetrating 

17 dose would be calculated and the recorded data to 

18 be determined if appropriate data was recorded 

19 for dose reconstruction purposes. The Work Group 

20 did agree that these external dose record terms 

21 be clarified and included in the TBD, so.

22 Okay. On to closed issues. So these 

23 have all been agreed upon and closed within the 
100

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 last two Work Group meetings.

2 Issue Number 4, Super S uranium. 

3 While it was likely that some of the uranium 

4 handled at Kansas City has high-fired, there was 

5 no clear evidence of insolubility that would 

6 preclude dose reconstruction with sufficient 

7 accuracy.

8 5 was recycled uranium. TBD-6000 

9 addresses recycled uranium and it's model 

10 calculations. NIOSH will assume recycled 

11 uranium was present at Kansas City Plant and 

12 perform dose reconstructions accordingly.

13 6, the DU after 1971 and during and 

14 after 1997. DU ballasts, we found those on some 

15 of the weekly reports or during some of our site 

16 visits.

17 DU ballasts were actually fabricated 

18 off site and would not have presented an exposure 

19 potential for the workers handling them at Kansas 

20 City Plant. No other DU materials were 

21 unaddressed by the Evaluation Report identified 

22 during recent onsite captures, which I already 

23 mentioned.
101

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Okay. Number 8, metal tritides. The 

2 Work Group agrees that exposure potential at 

3 Kansas City Plant to metal tritide contamination 

4 was minimal and isolated with no evidence of 

5 worker uptake.

6 12, the fading of NTA. Evaluation of 

7 the neutron sources and their utilization 

8 indicated the low-energy moderated neutrons would 

9 not constitute a significant portion of the 

10 neutron doses, therefore, fading of the low11 energy neutron tracks would not be a major issue.

12 And, additionally, individual neutron 

13 readings would not be used in dose 

14 reconstruction. Instead a 95th percentile 

15 coworker value assigned for workers potentially 

16 exposed. So that takes care of that.

17 The post monitoring, 1993, all 

18 documentation in the years between promulgation 

19 of 835 and its implementation at Kansas City by 

20 1993 indicates a comprehensive approach by Kansas 

21 City and DOE to ensure compliance. This included 

22 DOELAP accreditation for Kansas City in November 

23 of 1992. And I apologize for reading this. I'm 
102

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 sure you can read them yourselves, but.

2 Potentially unmonitored exposures, 

3 Number 19, tritium was the only source term 

4 either not discounted and not addressed 

5 adequately in the Evaluation Report. The 

6 question of tritium as a potential exposure 

7 source, we'll address that in the open item 

8 Number 20.

9 So next steps, when I put this 

10 together, it was we were going to have our next 

11 planned Work Group meeting which is going to be 

12 a day-and-a-half.

13 We want to give the petitioners a 

14 chance to view or to air their issues. The last 

15 Work Group meeting we ran out of time and weren't 

16 able to hear from the petitioners adequately.

17 We were originally looking at mid-May. 

18 Now, I think we're into -- well, I switched this 

19 to June and then, now I think it's July. We're 

20 having really a tough time getting everybody with 

21 the summer coming on, together. So I think we're 

22 going to work on that in the next two days to try 

23 to come up with a day-and-a-half where we can 
103

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 meet.

2 And I think most of our stuff we 

3 should be able to close out and have a 

4 recommendation for the Board in July if we can 

5 get together. So that's all I have. Thank you.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Josie. 

7 Questions from Board Members? Wanda.

8 MEMBER MUNN: Thank you for that good 

9 presentation, Josie. That's sure a lot of 

10 material at Kansas City. But a couple of 

11 questions based on things that you said.

12 I was wondering why you'd found that 

13 OTIB-24 wasn't the good basis for your neutron 

14 calculations. What was the basis of the concern 

15 for throwing the OTIB out?

16 MEMBER BEACH: I'm going to let my 

17 technical folks grab that one. And Pete's not 

18 here, so --

19 DR. NETON: I'm trying to remember. 

20 That was a generic calculation we had in one of 

21 our TIBs that had to do with the alpha-n reaction 

22 with -- I think it only applied in situations 

23 where we had highly enriched uranium and this is 
104

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 a natural uranium facility. So it wouldn't have 

2 generated any neutron dose.

3 The neutron exposures actually came as 

4 a result of, I think, some sort of californium 

5 sources and instruments such as that and the 

6 alpha-n reaction in the uranium with a low-Z 

7 material wasn't appropriate. That's my --

8 MEMBER MUNN: That's --

9 DR. NETON: -- recollection.

10 MEMBER MUNN: -- interesting. I 

11 didn't remember that part of the OTIB, but okay.

12 DR. NETON: Yes, there's a TIB out 

13 there that gives you some generic guidance about 

14 what the neutron dose exposure rate would be with 

15 an alpha-n reaction --

16 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

17 DR. NETON: -- in enriched forms of 

18 uranium.

19 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. Well, the other 

20 question is similar, but, of course, an entirely 

21 different thing. With respect to what you are 

22 concerned with relative to the tritium source 

23 that you have, what do you have, I guess, that 
105

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 has some bearing also with your non-penetrating 

2 dose issues? Aren't your badge data adequate for 

3 getting that self beta?

4 MEMBER BEACH: Well, what we found was 

5 a source term that they were doing an operation 

6 that wasn't in the Evaluation Report. We found 

7 it in some weekly activity reports, so we brought 

8 it in as an item to do further research on to see 

9 if we could track down that source and if there 

10 was monitoring done.

11 But so far we haven't been able to 

12 determine who actually did that work. 

13 Understandably, it's a low dose, but just trying 

14 to reconnect all of that. And Joe, if you have 

15 anything else, there's --

16 MEMBER MUNN: So it was project of 

17 some sort that you have questions about right 

18 now?

19 MR. FITZGERALD: It's Joe. This is 

20 not to a typical of a review where you find a, 

21 you know, historic source trend. This one went 

22 way back to the '60s and was a tritium bottling 

23 operation that they were doing on behalf of 
106

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Sandia.

2 They were getting tritium and they 

3 were, you know, taking a larger amount of tritium 

4 and just bottling into I think it was four 

5 milliliter bottles to be used in instrumentation 

6 for DoD. It was one of these work for others 

7 type of things.

8 And we were hopeful that we could put 

9 that one to bed real quick just by finding the 

10 records for how long that went on and who did it 

11 and where they did it.

12 The one thing with Kansas City, 

13 though, you can't assume that you're going to 

14 have the records. So what we established was 

15 yes, they did do it and I think, the NIOSH team 

16 went a long ways to characterizing a timeframe 

17 and a certain source term in terms of, well, what 

18 did this represent in terms of activity levels. 

19 And then doing some modeling as to what the 

20 potential exposure might have been.

21 But, you know, the difficulty is if 

22 you don't have any more than that, you don't know 

23 who actually handled it and where they handled
107

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 it. I think we're guessing it was handled in the 

2 laboratory.

3 So you have some of that 

4 reconstruction going on, but it was tritium, it 

5 was a small operation and it didn't last very 

6 much longer than the mid to late '60s.

7 So the reason it's open, of course, is 

8 that we're hopeful in the last data capture that 

9 we might find a little bit more documentation, 

10 but the records have been a little scanty on it.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Well, this is such an 

12 interesting and complicated site. It's helpful

13 to have the information and to know that we're 

14 just talking about changing bottles for the --

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the other 

16 thing --

17 MEMBER MUNN: -- most part.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: -- too --

19 MEMBER MUNN: Okay.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: -- is at a site like 

21 this, and this is probably typical of some other 

22 DOE sites, they went ahead and destroyed a lot of 

23 records somewhere in the '80s and '90s. And so 
108

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 while the things that, you know, tritium 

2 operation in the '60s was considered a priority. 

3 A lot of it was the records were destroyed. So 

4 --

5 MEMBER MUNN: Well, it's so --

6 MR. FITZGERALD: -- we don't have 

7 that.

8 MEMBER MUNN: -- minuscule and so 

9 pointless, yes. Yes.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: So, yes, we --

11 MEMBER MUNN: It would have been a --

12 MR. FITZGERALD: -- didn't retain it.

13 MEMBER MUNN: -- logical thought 

14 then.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Thanks, Joe. Thanks, 

17 Josie.

18 MEMBER BEACH: Thanks, Wanda. I 

19 failed to mention the last slide, the picture is 

20 the new plant that they moved into the first of 

21 last year or the end of last year.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other Board 

23 Members on the phone, do you have any questions? 
109

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 If not, I will just add to the one, first I'd 

2 like to, you know, commend the Work Group. Your 

3 efforts to get public comments, both, you know, 

4 part of Work Group meetings and so forth, I think 

5 is very good and very helpful.

6 Because I think on a site like this 

7 that's complicated and the getting input from 

8 people who've worked at the site is sort of 

9 critical to understanding the site and making 

10 sure that, you know, records are complete, 

11 incomplete or understanding more about the site. 

12 So it's very good.

13 I also just noticed in a lot of the 

14 outstanding SEC issues are where there seems to 

15 be some uncertainty about whether data is 

16 adequate or procedures to use and so forth.

17 And repeat what I keep getting after 

18 NIOSH about is we need to make sure that we can 

19 do the dose reconstructions. Before we close out 

20 the SEC issue, we need to see some evidence. And 

21 we seem to have gotten away from that with our 

22 Evaluation Reports and presentations.

23 And I would call, you know, it's for 
110

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 the Work Group or for the Board, it's, well, it 

2 doesn't matter, but I really think we need to try 

3 to do our due diligence on that.

4 Again, not always in every great 

5 detail, but enough so that the Members of the 

6 Work Group or the Members of the Board are 

7 confident that what is being proposed can really 

8 be done so we don't have to go back and revisit 

9 these sites, so thank you.

10 Now, that I think we're, for the 

11 morning, we're ahead of schedule a little bit. 

12 We will take a break. We will reconvene at 1:30 

13 this afternoon for those of you that are on the 

14 phone. And we will start with a Board work 

15 session after lunch.

16 So it's a Board work session, not the 

17 Board nap session, so be sure to get your coffee 

18 on your way down the stairs and we'll see. We've 

19 got a busy afternoon in terms of work session and 

20 Hanford presentations and public comment. So 

21 thank you all. We'll see you all back here at 

22 1:30.

23 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 
111

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 went off the record at 11:39 a.m. and resumed at 

2 1:35 p.m.)

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. We're going 

4 to restart the session now. So Board Members on 

5 the line, do you want to do a roll call or how do 

6 you want to do that?

7 MR. KATZ: We don't need roll call, 

8 but let's -- well, except for the Board Members 

9 on the line. Let's check and see.

10 (Roll call.)

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Just that we missed 

12 you all. Okay. So we have this afternoon start 

13 with the Board work period and a session to do 

14 that. I guess my finger will get tired here, 

15 but.

16 So we will start with the public 

17 comments from the last meeting, get that 

18 addressed and do that. I think, when I looked 

19 through these earlier, they all look pretty 

20 straightforward. It's mostly from the Santa 

21 Susana site, do that.

22 We start out with a series of -- if 

23 you turn it's the besides the Board comments it's 
112

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 the spreadsheet portion that should be on it. At 

2 least, all the Board Members should have received 

3 it from Ted. And there's two files and this is 

4 the spreadsheet file.

5 To start out, we have a series of 

6 comments from, I believe she's the petitioner on 

7 the Santa Susana site. I think these are all 

8 straightforward and actually don't require 

9 response. They mostly deal with DOL or other 

10 issues that are out of our control.

11 We had another comment related about 

12 the issue which we've talked about, but again, 

13 it's out of our control. This is regarding what 

14 areas of the site are covered and that's really 

15 a DOL decision, not ours. And I think it's been 

16 brought up and so forth before.

17 We have another person describing some 

18 exposure incidents, again, which is sort of 

19 helpful information going forward to that. 

20 Another person bringing up a number of decisions 

21 again, most of which are unrelated to our work. 

22 But in terms of don't require a response, some of 

23 it's, again, DOL-related issues about other areas 
113

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 and so forth and about some of the environmental 

2 concerns about the site.

3 Another one where there's about, which 

4 has been followed up, a concern about exposures 

5 in a fire and explosion. I think that looks like 

6 it's been followed up.

7 We then had a -- make sure I didn't 

8 skip one here, look down. Yes, we then had 

9 comments from Terrie Barrie concerning one 

10 comment regarding the area designation for Santa 

11 Susana and then two comments related to a Rocky 

12 Flats petition. Again, these were followed up 

13 on, I think, appropriately.

14 We then have it looks like two 

15 comments from Jeff Schultz, again, related to 

16 Rocky Flats again, that were followed up and Mr. 

17 Schultz was interviewed after the meeting, 

18 followed up on.

19 And then, finally, we have a public 

20 comment from Dr. Dan McKeel regarding the GSI 

21 site and again, this issue about citation and so 

22 forth.

23 So I think that's straightforward and 
114

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 I think that takes care of it. Any Board Members 

2 have comments or questions on those?

3 MEMBER BEACH: No.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

5 MEMBER BEACH: Sounds accurate.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thanks. I believe 

7 it's accurate and, I think, appropriately 

8 responsive, so to speak. Okay.

9 Now, I'd like to start the Work Group 

10 Subcommittee session with a little bit of 

11 discussion on the dose reconstruction issue. We 

12 talked about this a little bit in past meetings 

13 and at the last meeting and unfortunately due to 

14 some scheduling issues the Dose Reconstruction 

15 Subcommittee wasn't able to meet between Board 

16 meetings. And had one planned, I believe, a 

17 couple weeks ago and got cancelled. They are 

18 scheduled to meet in April sometime I believe 

19 also.

20 But we're in a situation where we're 

21 very far behind in the resolution of cases. 

22 We're up to Set 13, I believe, and we've got sets 

23 14 through 21 which are left still open for 
115

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 resolution.

2 And it doesn't seem that we're 

3 catching up at a very significant speed. That 

4 it's going to be years before we will at the 

5 current rate of evaluation and response. It just 

6 takes time and just limitations to both what SC&A 

7 and NIOSH can do in terms of preparing for these 

8 as well as the amount of Board time it'd take or 

9 Subcommittee time that it takes.

10 We owe the Secretary a letter, you 

11 know, we haven't done one in quite a while 

12 summarizing where we have. And I think as we 

13 sort of talked about last time was we'd get up 

14 through 13 and then do a letter. But that still 

15 leaves 14 through 21 to resolve and we also have 

16 another, you know, what do we do going forward. 

17 I don't think we can stop doing dose 

18 reconstruction reviews.

19 So at least my sense, and I'm hoping 

20 other people share this, is that we need to sort 

21 of rethink how we're doing this process. Both 

22 how do we clear the, you know, 14 through 21, but 

23 what should we be doing going forward in terms of 
116

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 doing dose reconstructions and reviews?

2 And is there a better way? Do we need 

3 to, you know, try to, you know, go through as 

4 much detail as we're doing now? What sort of mix 

5 of, sort of specific reviews and blind reviews 

6 should we be doing? Are the blind reviews 

7 productive or are the other reviews we're doing 

8 productive under that?

9 So we asked the SC&A to do some 

10 summaries for us that are based in two 

11 spreadsheets, I believe, that they provided to 

12 us, one that's called additional detail Set 14 

13 through 21, and then a summary of sets 1 through 

14 21.

15 These are fairly detailed, 

16 particularly the 14 through 21 set in terms of 

17 information. And so I'd like to do is if, well, 

18 just again, in the context of what do we do going 

19 forward in terms of thinking. If the Board 

20 Members make sure that you've looked at those 

21 today. We'll talk about them during our work 

22 time tomorrow and get a update from the 

23 Subcommittee.
117

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 But what I would hope we could do and 

2 hopefully we could do it between now and our next 

3 Board meeting. Maybe we could reach some 

4 decision today. But I think it's going to take 

5 some time.

6 I want the Subcommittee to think about 

7 how to best approach this also because they've 

8 been involved, but that we sort of revamp and 

9 rethink how we're doing this whole process.

10 It's also why I asked Stu to do a 

11 summary on this sort of QA/QC efforts on the part 

12 of NIOSH, so we know the set there. And I mean, 

13 and I think there's some question, you know, to 

14 what extent are we providing QA/QC for the 

15 overall program and to what extent we should be, 

16 you know, doing, you know. What are the key 

17 parts and focusing on what are the critical 

18 issues in terms of with dose reconstruction.

19 And I think after whatever it's been, 

20 12 years or so forth that we've done these dose 

21 reconstructions, but I think it's time we ought 

22 to, you know, start really taking a very serious 

23 look at what should be done there.
118

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 And we can think about, so how do we 

2 achieve that over the period of the next few 

3 months. I think it's obviously something all the 

4 Board Members need to be involved in because 

5 that's one of our key roles as envisioned in the 

6 legislation and so forth.

7 And at the same time we've got to do 

8 that and I don't want to, sort of, overburden the 

9 Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee because you've 

10 got work to do and we need to keep moving forward 

11 on that.

12 And so one of the thoughts I had, and 

13 we can talk about this more tomorrow, is do we 

14 set up a separate, you know, Work Group that would 

15 include some of the people from that Subcommittee 

16 and some others to think about how to go forward 

17 and come up with a suggestion for the Board?

18 And that Work Group could then meet in 

19 between and come up with an idea and circulate 

20 some proposals to the other Board Members. But 

21 let's think about that and talk about that.

22 But I just don't think we can go on 

23 doing it the way we're doing it now. And I don't 
119

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 think we're doing our job appropriately. And 

2 again, not to fault the Dose Reconstruction 

3 Subcommittee.

4 I think it's a process that we 

5 probably needed to do what we are doing. I'm not 

6 sure that we needed to do it for as long and as 

7 we have been doing without sort of going back to 

8 a hard look at it and so forth.

9 So I think those two spreadsheets 

10 provide some food for thought on that. Again, 

11 we're not going to be able to go through them in 

12 detail at this meeting. We're not intending too. 

13 But it also would be helpful for Board Members to 

14 look at those and think about what other 

15 information might be useful in helping us to 

16 decide to go forward.

17 And I don't think it's a simple 

18 process. These sites are complicated. The dose 

19 reconstruction methods are being used there. 

20 It's, you know, keeps changing because they're 

21 being updated, which is all appropriate.

22 As we learn more about a site and we 

23 learn more about how to better do dose 
120

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 reconstructions, NIOSH is constantly updating 

2 these site -- and we're learning more about the 

3 sites, so it's not static. And I think that sort 

4 of a moving target in terms of reviewing. And 

5 we've got to take that into account also.

6 And I think we're also constrained by 

7 some of the legal issues in terms of that we have 

8 to wait until we're fairly far along on the dose 

9 reconstruction process after a claim is finalized 

10 before we even can really take a look at it. So 

11 that adds a further complication to it.

12 So, anyway, if everyone can look at 

13 that and we'll talk more about it tomorrow. And 

14 if that's satisfactory with everybody?

15 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes. Dave 

16 Kotelchuck. Yes, that's fine.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

18 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Because we 

19 finally finished 10 through 13. I took over as 

20 chair as we were going through 10 through 13 and 

21 we finished it now. We're at 114.

22 So this is an appropriate time to look 

23 at 14 through 21. And if we're going to make 
121

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 changes, make changes. Also, we need at least 

2 another person on the committee since one of the 

3 persons, Mark Griffon, has left the Board.

4 So this is an appropriate time to talk 

5 about it and let's talk about it further 

6 tomorrow. Maybe some of us from the Subcommittee 

7 can also talk together while we're here before 

8 tomorrow. Thanks.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. I would add 

10 just not at the Subcommittee, anybody on the 

11 Board's welcome to talk to each other about it.

12 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right. Oh, 

13 absolutely. Yes.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Maybe can do that 

15 then.

16 MEMBER BEACH: Any ideas are welcome.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, we'll do it. 

18 So in terms of other Work Groups, it would help 

19 me to know if anybody has to leave early tomorrow.

20 We're scheduled to go to 4:30. 

21 Anybody here. I don't -- okay. I think we're 

22 set then. Do you have the list typed? You 

23 always have the list. If not I will do the Work 
122

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 Group list in alphabetical order, so to speak.

2 Ames Laboratory, that's you, Dave.

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Pardon?

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Ames. It's early -

5 - 

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Nothing --

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- so.

8 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes. Nothing 

9 new. We're awaiting, basically, reports from

10 NIOSH, which will come during the summer.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

12 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: So until then, 

13 there's nothing further to report, nor are we 

14 having meetings.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Is it NIOSH or SC&A?

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: No, it's NIOSH.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: NIOSH it is, okay. 

18 Good. Okay. Blockson, I also don't believe 

19 there's any action on?

20 MEMBER MUNN: No. Blockson is 

21 essentially closed --

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

23 MEMBER MUNN: -- so there's nothing 
123

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 happening.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Brookhaven?

3 MEMBER BEACH: Brookhaven, we're 

4 still waiting for the TBD and those are expected 

5 July of this year. So we'll look at those when 

6 they come out.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Fernald?

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: We're pretty well 

9 finished up. NIOSH has still got to deliver us 

10 the neutron/photon ratio. And what Fernald --

11 oh.

12 Fernald, you had some changes in that 

13 one. I'll let Stu talk to that. They've got to 

14 do a little bit of an update on the Site Profile.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, on Fernald we 

16 have to issue the revised internal dosimetry Site 

17 Profile, which will incorporate a number of the 

18 things we've agreed to in the meeting. So I 

19 think it's several things are in abeyance until 

20 the guiding document is out.

21 And then the coworker or the uranium 

22 coworker model at Fernald for NLO, in-house 

23 employees has to be refashioned in the time 
124

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 weighted, backward integrated average so that 

2 coworker has to be remodeled. So I don't have 

3 completion dates right now.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Stu and 

5 Brad. Okay. Hanford, we'll be talking about 

6 later today about one petition we'll be 

7 presenting a little bit later, so we can skip 

8 that.

9 Idaho, we'll be talking about tomorrow 

10 and I think we'll be better to, sort of, do an 

11 update on where the Work Group should be doing 

12 and so forth after we've heard about the SEC 

13 report tomorrow and map what we need to go 

14 forward. Lawrence Berkeley, Paul?

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. I have a brief 

16 report which Lara Hughes provided for me. And 

17 I'll just summarize it quickly.

18 NIOSH had sent two White Papers to the 

19 Work Group in December of 2013. Those also have 

20 already been reviewed by SC&A, but the Work Group 

21 has not addressed them yet.

22 Those White Papers address various 

23 issues with the internal data at Lawrence 
125

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Berkeley. And NIOSH is continuing to work on 

2 several remaining tasks which relate to the White 

3 Paper, such as refining the dose reconstruction 

4 process using the Lawrence Berkeley internal 

5 data, doing some more research on potential doses 

6 from short-lived mixed activation products.

7 And NIOSH has identified some 

8 additional data capture items that need to be 

9 researched before a final assessment. And the 

10 availability of data is reached, so there's an 

11 ongoing effort there.

12 This includes assessing whether or not 

13 any of the newly captured data contain usable 

14 bioassay data and whether or not available air 

15 sample data is suitable for developing dose 

16 bounding approaches for mixed fission products or 

17 rather, mixed activation products.

18 So these tasks are still ongoing. We 

19 had originally thought they would be done earlier 

20 this year, but they have not yet been completed. 

21 So we're simply awaiting for those work products 

22 from NIOSH. Those additional products will then 

23 need to be reviewed by SC&A as well.
126

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you. 

2 Thank you, Paul. Kansas City, we've heard from 

3 already. Los Alamos, I've asked Josie to become 

4 the chair of that after Mark Griffon resigned 

5 from the Board. And so, Josie, do you want to -

6 -

7 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, I requested that 

8 Greg Macievic from NIOSH give me just an update 

9 and I've received that. I'll just give you a 

10 real brief of where we're at.

11 So in August of 2012, we approved a 

12 petition from January 1st, 1976 until December 

13 31st of 1995. The last thing that we asked NIOSH 

14 to look at was the cutoff date, so we cut it off 

15 at '95.

16 We wanted to make sure the site was in 

17 full compliance of 10 CFR 835. And I know from 

18 the report I got from Greg, there's been a lot of 

19 work on NIOSH's part trying to get documentation 

20 from LANL. And that the bottom line is they're 

21 not getting anywhere from what I can tell based 

22 on this email.

23 The last paragraph, it says absent 
127

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 definitive confirmation from LANL to complete 

2 this post-1994 LANL evaluation, NIOSH intends to 

3 conclude that given the assurances received from 

4 pertinent site personnel, LANL does comply with 

5 the requirements of 835. This conclusion will 

6 be reported back to the Work Group.

7 So it sounds to me like they're going 

8 to put it back into the Work Group's hands. So 

9 I think we need to talk to DOE and I think Pat 

10 talked to Joe earlier and possibly they could go 

11 through their records to see if there's anything.

12 And don't know if you could say a few 

13 words, Pat? Not to put you on the spot, but that 

14 might be another avenue to look for records. It 

15 looks like we need maybe to put that, how'd you 

16 put it, that pressure on the site to get some 

17 records? Because I don't think the Work Group's 

18 going to be satisfied with that answer.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

20 DR. WORTHINGTON: Yes, I did get a 

21 chance to talk with Joe and I think we have an 

22 overall strategy. And DOE will go back and look 

23 and report back in terms of what we have or do 
128

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 not have on this particular topic. Okay. 

2 Thanks.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So, aggressive --

4 MEMBER BEACH: Thank you.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- inspiration.

6 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. Yes.

7 DR. WORTHINGTON: Very aggressive 

8 inspiration. Thank you.

9 MEMBER BEACH: Because, you know, 

10 while all sites became into compliance, I know 

11 that once that date was set, it took a while to 

12 come into complete compliance.

13 So we're not going to stop working, 

14 but -- and I know NIOSH has -- I've got the list 

15 of what they've looked for and they've done due 

16 diligence, but we still need to keep working at 

17 it, it looks like. So we'll probably have to set 

18 up a Work Group call and just kind of decide where 

19 we're going to go is, I think, what our next step 

20 will be.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Josie. 

22 Any questions that? I do believe we need another 

23 member for this Work Group. And I also will add 
129

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 that I believe we're going to need another member 

2 for another -- we need to form another Work Group, 

3 so I think it'll come up tomorrow in our 

4 discussions.

5 So when we get to that point, we'll 

6 circulate and give people and people will have 

7 time, who aren't at the meeting or on the phone, 

8 time to -- aggressive solicitation of volunteers 

9 to in our current parlance here. So, yes. 

10 Mound?

11 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. So all the 

12 internal TBDs have been revised. The external 

13 we're set to get in May. And none of these have 

14 gone to SC&A for review, so we're --

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

16 MEMBER BEACH: -- at the point where 

17 all the TBDs will be updated and then we'll have 

18 to move to the next step.

19 And I know there's a long list of Site 

20 Profiles that need to be reviewed, so we'll step 

21 in. We'll get in line, I guess, with the rest 

22 of the Work Groups.

23 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Josie. 
130

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Nevada Test Site, Brad?

2 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, with Nevada 

3 Test Site, we're coming to a close on it. We 

4 have a few Site Profile issues that we're working 

5 through with Nevada Test Site. We also have a 

6 neutron/photon ratio with that one we're waiting 

7 for from NIOSH. And we should be closing that 

8 one.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thanks. Oak 

10 Ridge?

11 MEMBER ROESSLER: I have an update 

12 from Dr. Tim Taulbee, who's the NIOSH-ORAU lead 

13 on this. This sounds awfully loud. It seems 

14 like this has been going on for quite a while, 

15 but I want to remind people that this is the Oak 

16 Ridge National Lab, the X-10 facility which was 

17 in operation for a long time.

18 And then the nature of the work, the 

19 research and development, not only a lot of 

20 years, but a lot of possible sources of exposure. 

21 So you've heard talk about the 250 exotic 

22 radionuclides. That gives you a context for the 

23 work that's involved.
131

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 As you know from past reports, NIOSH 

2 overall has been validating in the bioassay data 

3 that was coded for ORNL claim of data and NOCTS. 

4 Well, as Dr. Taulbee says, unfortunately, last 

5 fall we began to find significant discrepancies 

6 between the NOCTS data set and the electronic 

7 data provided by ORNL.

8 This came about, apparently, because 

9 the data entry was being done by a technician, 

10 not a health physicist, someone who really didn't 

11 understand the situation.

12 And some of the results were entered 

13 as dpm, disintegrations per minute per day. And 

14 in this case the results should have been in dpm 

15 per sample.

16 So it's possible to fix this, but 

17 they're having to go back and redo a lot of this. 

18 According to NIOSH, this validation is nearly 

19 complete. So we hope to have good results on 

20 that. So that's one item of update.

21 Number 2, in addition to the bioassay 

22 data validation, the team has been looking at 

23 thousands of pages of data from the ORNL health 
132

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 physics log books that they captured last summer.

2 And in this review they're looking at 

3 air and smear sample data for these exotic 

4 radionuclides for potential use in dose

5 reconstruction.

6 And then Item 3, this is the first 

7 I've heard of this and probably you too, they 

8 have discovered a possible gap in the iodine 

9 monitoring. And this occurred during the 

10 radioactive lanthanum campaign which took place

11 in the mid to late 1950s. And this was before 

12 whole body counting came into being, but of 

13 course to monitor for iodine you need thyroid 

14 counts anyway.

15 Anyway, they have, just a little 

16 background, reduced the 250 exotic radionuclides 

17 to they've narrowed it down to a potential left 

18 of 12 and of these 12, four are iodine.

19 So this is an important effort that 

20 they're doing right now to determine if dose 

21 reconstruction can be done during this period of 

22 time because of the potential lack of iodine 

23 monitoring.
133

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Anyway, maybe we'll have some more 

2 information on all of this by the July meeting 

3 and maybe not.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

5 MEMBER ROESSLER: We'll have to see 

6 how it goes.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. We'll 

8 certainly have an update for the July meeting, is 

9 that fair? Yes. Yes, thank you and thank you, 

10 Tim --

11 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- also. Okay. 

13 Pacific Proving Grounds, Jim Lockey.

14 MEMBER LOCKEY: We met a couple months 

15 ago and we went through all the issues and I think 

16 resolved those issues. We're just waiting for 

17 NIOSH to fill in some details, but I don't think 

18 we have any outstanding issues at this point.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So the ball's back 

20 in NIOSH's court? Okay.

21 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And you're going to 

23 manage to solve this without a site visit?
134

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 MEMBER LOCKEY: I'm going there 

2 personally, but if you're nice I'll invite you.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Pantex, Brad. That 

4 we've done a site visit on.

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: We've done a site 

6 visit there. Pantex is coming to a close, too. 

7 All we have is TBD issues. We still have one 

8 outstanding issue that NIOSH, in their court, and 

9 that's the neutron/photon ratio. And I've talked 

10 to Stu and Jim on that.

11 They're getting pretty close to being 

12 able to deliver something on that. But it's kind 

13 of a complicated site to be able to deal with on 

14 that. But that's all we've got outstanding 

15 really.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Questions for Brad? 

17 Okay. Phil, are you on the line for Pinellas?

18 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, I am.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Go ahead.

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay. Pinellas, 

21 the one issue that's killing us and has been held 

22 up for a couple years now is the tritide issue. 

23 And we've come to resolution on whether they can 
135

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 do this or they can do a -- somehow they've got 

2 to come up with the solution on this issue because 

3 this is the one issue that has been holding us up 

4 closing out Pinellas.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think we've heard 

6 this before. NIOSH --

7 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: You have heard 

8 this before.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: We've been hearing 

11 this regularly.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: NIOSH have any 

13 comments?

14 DR. NETON: I think I mentioned this 

15 at the last meeting, but the outstanding issue 

16 has to do with reconstruction of tritides. We're 

17 reevaluating the methods that they use to see if 

18 they were adequate to reconstruct those doses.

19 I think it was taken over by events 

20 that got pushed back a little bit because other 

21 sites took higher priority. It's on the 

22 schedule. My recollection is it's sometime later 

23 this year, though --
136

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

2 DR. NETON: -- for closure or 

3 completion.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We'll remind you in 

5 July.

6 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: You know what, one 

7 quick question on that. Is there enough data you 

8 have found yet that you could use coworker data 

9 for some of those or not?

10 DR. NETON: It's not really a coworker 

11 issue. It's there's a lot of smears, is my 

12 recollection, of tritium contaminated areas. 

13 It's just a matter of whether those smears are 

14 valid for reconstructing doses because there was 

15 indication that they had actually filtered the 

16 smears.

17 And if there were tritides on there, 

18 the tritides, presumably, would have been 

19 filtered out of the solution that was analyzed. 

20 And so until we can come to sort of firm 

21 conclusion on what really happened there, it's 

22 difficult to move forward.

23 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So don't go away. 
137

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Let me, then, ask if it turns out you don't have 

2 a dose reconstruction method, then that would 

3 become an SEC?

4 DR. NETON: There are other 

5 alternatives. I can't remember exactly where --

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

7 DR. NETON: -- we were going with 

8 that, but I think there are other alternatives 

9 that may end up increasing the dose, but I think 

10 it still may be boundable --

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

12 DR. NETON: -- but we're still working 

13 on that.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

15 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Phil, keep going, 

17 Portsmouth, Paducah, K-25.

18 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Sorry, I put us 

19 back on hold again. K-25, we still have neutron 

20 dose, how they're going to assign this. 

21 Otherwise all the issues on K-25 have been closed 

22 out.

23 Same thing with Portsmouth. They've 
138

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 basically, with the exception of neutron dose 

2 estimate, has been closed out. And those are the 

3 two that are holding up, Portsmouth and K-25. If 

4 we get the issue of Pinellas closed, a conference 

5 call, we should be able to close out all three, 

6 I would hope.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Good. 

8 Thanks. Okay. Dave Kotelchuck, Rocky Flats.

9 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. We had a 

10 good meeting last week, March 17th. It was our 

11 first meeting of the Working Group since 

12 September of '13. So we had four basic issues 

13 that we resolved there, talked about and 

14 resolved.

15 The first is there were concerns. 

16 People raised concerns that some of the dose 

17 reconstructions that were estimated by folks on 

18 site, some of the health physics people on site, 

19 differed from the reviews that dose 

20 reconstructions that we were doing, that SCA and 

21 NIOSH were doing.

22 So we discussed this and, basically, 

23 the minimum detectable limits for equipment has, 
139

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 in fact, gone down. We're better able to 

2 characterize the exposures.

3 And so there are differences that are, 

4 put it this way, both SC&A and NIOSH agreed and 

5 the committee agreed that there was no inherent 

6 difference between the results.

7 The one thing is that NIOSH said that 

8 they do not use any of the site analyses of dose. 

9 They use the data that was collected, but our 

10 resolution is based on NIOSH's analysis of the 

11 exposure and concurred on by SC&A.

12 So the group decided that there was no 

13 problem there and we proceeded going to the 

14 second issue which was the magnesium-thorium 

15 alloy at the Rocky Flats Plant, which has been 

16 raised.

17 People in the Dow Madison plant 

18 reported that in 1979, I believe it was, they 

19 shipped magnesium-thorium plates to folks at 

20 Rocky Flats.

21 NIOSH looked for a long time for any 

22 record of those deliveries in the plant and in 

23 the records and has spent a long time doing that, 
140

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 looked at lots of different records that might 

2 reveal the presence of the magnesium-thorium 

3 alloy and could not find any.

4 SC&A followed up and did its own study 

5 and looked at other sets of data and could find 

6 nothing. Now, the time period when this was an 

7 issue was in the 1970s that it might be used. 

8 People in the 1970s will be covered by the SEC 

9 that we have already approved for that.

10 So the Committee was faced with the 

11 question should we continue to look that the 

12 reports from Dow Madison are credible. That's 

13 evidence that these were sent. On the other 

14 hand, nothing in the record that we could look at 

15 confirmed that.

16 So the decision was that since we 

17 thought everybody in the SEC is covered, that is 

18 to say most full-time employees in the plant were 

19 covered, well, all of the full-time employees in 

20 the plant were covered who worked the 250 days, 

21 that it just seemed pointless to try to spend 

22 many more months, really, to resolve this.

23 And so we agreed to stop the search. 
141

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 And we think that it would only affect, if there 

2 was magnesium-thorium alloy, it would only affect 

3 a small number of people for whom partial dose 

4 reconstructions were done, that is people who did 

5 not have cancers that were covered by the SEC.

6 And we, just as a practical matter, 

7 felt that it was not worth the time compared to 

8 working on some of the other issues that also are 

9 important for the folks at the plant. So that 

10 was the second.

11 The third item was neptunium-237 at 

12 the Rocky Flats Plant after 1983. There were 

13 reports given to us that there was neptunium work 

14 that continued after '83.

15 NIOSH and ORAU looked into that and, 

16 in fact, they did find evidence that there was 

17 some work that -- there was a report from the 

18 plant that between 1983 and 1987 some work was 

19 done for apparently for a period of about a year 

20 within one small group in the plant, roughly 

21 half-a-dozen people.

22 So what we decided, give me just a 

23 second, was that there was such and there was 
142

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 agreement on all sides that it was a small group 

2 of people, but that the work was done after 1983. 

3 That is beyond the SEC period. And that was just 

4 --

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: I can add a little 

6 bit of technical discussion --

7 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Please --

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: -- to that.

9 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: -- do.

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: Actually, what we 

11 determined was there was a one campaign that they 

12 produced roughly 200 grams after a year or 

13 involved up to 200 grams over a year of neptunium14 237.

15 However, the product that neptunium16 237 was in was actually overwhelmed by the 

17 plutonium exposure. And everyone that was 

18 involved in that activity was on plutonium 

19 bioassay, so.

20 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Good. 

21 Thanks. Last issue was the tritium issues at the 

22 plant. And, in particular, there was follow-up 

23 from finding out about and work that we found was 
143

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 useful for dose reconstruction in working with 

2 the materials that were sent in in boxes, but 

3 delivered to the plant that had tritium where 

4 there was tritium leakage into the crate.

5 And when the crate was opened up the 

6 tritium was found. There were tritium bubblers 

7 and other measurement devices now in place to try 

8 and recover those. And that is going to be part 

9 of any dose reconstruction that are done in the 

10 future.

11 So those issues were resolved. There 

12 are two major issues that are outstanding. One, 

13 and let me just get my notes here, one was a 

14 report from NIOSH on data falsification.

15 We have tried to get information from 

16 the FBI, the records that the FBI had gathered 

17 up. They have yet to release them and maybe 

18 since last week we have some more information?

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: Actually, we did 

20 finally get release of the documents from the 

21 FBI. However, there were a group of documents 

22 that we thought the FBI was responsible for 

23 releasing them all, however, the FBI came back 
144

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 and said, hey, we're going to release these eight 

2 documents.

3 And which they did, but they passed on 

4 the other documents to the other agencies, which 

5 was EPA -- and these are kind of documents that, 

6 you know, we're not sure yet, if EPA's general 

7 counsel's going to get involved or, you know, who 

8 else will get involved in this.

9 But we're going back to those other 

10 agencies. There's a couple of daily documents 

11 that we have to get released. You know, I 

12 anticipate these will be easier to get released, 

13 you know, but, you know, I'm an optimist, so I'm 

14 not going to be for sure. But those are the only 

15 things holding up the report and we anticipate 

16 we'll be able to get the report out quickly as 

17 soon as those documents are released.

18 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right. 

19 Hopefully, we'll be able to meet about those in 

20 early June. There is a second document for the 

21 work on the critical mass lab were assemblies 

22 were taken to the criticality level, people work 

23 there --
145

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 MEMBER BEACH: Mic.

2 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: -- and -- oh.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Just keep the mic 

4 in your hands.

5 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Sorry. People 

6 work there and NIOSH is interviewing workers who 

7 are there and we'll find out more about the 

8 history of that particular lab and NIOSH will 

9 also give us a report.

10 So we have two NIOSH reports coming 

11 up. We hope they might be able to have them by 

12 June and we'll meet at June and I would be -- we 

13 would feel very good if we could finish our task 

14 by the July meeting. But we'll await the reports 

15 and discussion about them. That's it.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Now, being 

17 aggressively optimistic --

18 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- I think, to that. 

20 Thank you for further update. But it's been a 

21 while, so it's good to get that detail. Any 

22 questions for Dave? Okay. Dr. Lemen, are you 

23 on the line? We have the Sandia Work Group?
146

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 MEMBER LEMEN: He is on the line, but 

2 he doesn't have anything to report.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. LaVon?

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: Actually, I'll give 

5 you Dr. Glover for that.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Glover, even then?

7 MEMBER CLAWSON: He's putting his 

8 coat on. That's not good.

9 DR. GLOVER: Well --

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: It's lined.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, folks --

12 thank you, Mr. Rutherford.

13 DR. GLOVER: Yes, thank you very much. 

14 He made me come saying you've got to come down 

15 for this. And I do apologize, Dr. Lemen, I 

16 should have sent you an update. We've been 

17 trying to get the Hanford stuff caught up and so 

18 I did overlook that.

19 Sandia, we had an extensive data 

20 capture out there in October of last year and it 

21 was being very large, required a substantial 

22 effort on the part of the site to clear that. 

23 That documentation is mostly in house and still 
147

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 a little bit left to go.

2 Essentially, the issue comes down to, 

3 we had an SEC through 1994 at the site. And so 

4 post that we're looking at the site had 

5 identified some workers who should have had 

6 bioassay.

7 They had some memos in place and so 

8 those didn't seem to happen. But they also had 

9 a BZ sampling program that they started. And so 

10 we're sort of looking at the issue of who was 

11 assigned, who should have been monitored and the 

12 implementation of this Breathing Zone Sampling

13 Program and how that applies to worker dose and 

14 how that was.

15 So that's where we are right now. And 

16 we're trying to get the rest of the records in 

17 and we'll pursue that.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, 

19 Dr. Glover, yes, for that. Okay. Phil, Santa 

20 Susana.

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: We're still 

22 waiting on the revisions for the internal and 

23 external coworker studies based on coworker 
148

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 studies. I know a lot of those exposure cards 

2 had to be manually entered, which they have done.

3 We have a number of outstanding other 

4 issues and one of them that has particularly --

5 voices concern among some of the claimants is the 

6 fact that we did have people go back and forth 

7 from Canoga and the De Soto facilities in and out 

8 of Area IV as to some of them might have been 

9 assigned safety Canoga, but they quite often go 

10 up the hill to do work in Area IV.

11 So that's going to be another large 

12 issue which is how we're going to shake that one 

13 out, I'm not sure at this point. Lara Hughes is 

14 the one who is working on those revisions and to 

15 be honest with you, I don't know where that sets 

16 at this time.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Jim Neton's 

18 going to answer that.

19 DR. NETON: Well, the coworker study 

20 is virtually complete and there are some issues 

21 with which workers were monitored at which sites 

22 and the database and especially in the early 

23 years.
149

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 But the larger issue here is the 

2 implementation guide. I mean, I'm reluctant to 

3 issue this under the old, sort of, methodology 

4 and then only to have it be reviewed and saying, 

5 well, it's deficient in these following areas 

6 because we know that that's where we're heading.

7 So I think we're going to, you know, 

8 I know we're going to wait until July to approve 

9 the impact, but my gut feeling is that we're going 

10 to probably start moving forward with what we've 

11 flushed out here so far in Rev 4.1 thinking that 

12 it's going to be substantially the same. I don't 

13 want to wait, you know, multiple months to start 

14 revising this document.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, I think we 

16 talked a little bit about this at the Work Group 

17 call on the document and clearly, I think as I've 

18 mentioned, this has implications, Savannah River, 

19 among others to do. And my sense is that things 

20 are largely decided.

21 There was one issue that came up that, 

22 for example, it's going to make some difference 

23 in terms of redoing some of the Savannah River. 
150

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Tim mentioned that as a calculation issue mainly 

2 and I think resolvable.

3 We just weren't sort of able to get it 

4 resolved completely at the meeting we have. It's 

5 sort of a separate issue from the guidelines. 

6 But I would think, you know, go forward.

7 I mean, I think again it's going to 

8 come down to what are the facts related in the 

9 individual situation. And I think what would be 

10 important if you're sort of in midstream enough 

11 is making sure that in the report, on whatever 

12 documentation's put together for the coworker 

13 model is that it addresses the issues that are 

14 brought up so the Board or the Work Group, 

15 whoever's involved can evaluate those issues.

16 Now, I think that's the part we're 

17 really working on now, more than the overall 

18 guidance. Yes.

19 DR. NETON: Good to hear.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

21 DR. NETON: Yes, I think, for example, 

22 it's we can move forward with the one person, one 

23 sample. I think we're in general agreement on -
151

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 -

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

3 DR. NETON: -- that concept, the 

4 backwards integration version anyways.

5 I think some of the vetting that is 

6 prescribed in the IMP guide --

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

8 DR. NETON: -- would be sort of easy 

9 to do.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

11 DR. NETON: I mean, not easy to do, 

12 but I mean it's easy to understand why we would 

13 do that anyways --

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right, yes.

15 DR. NETON: -- which is good things 

16 to do. The remaining issue, I think, is this 

17 treatment of data below the detection limit and 

18 decision level that --

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

20 DR. NETON: -- we had a discussion on 

21 March 10th.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

23 DR. NETON: So, you know, those are 
152

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 simple things to fix, though. I mean --

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

3 DR. NETON: -- once we get the 

4 database structure, it's a matter replacing 

5 value. So I think we can move forward without 

6 creating a lot of extra work if some of those 

7 other details --

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

9 DR. NETON: -- change.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I mean, we're going 

11 to talk a little bit. Oh, we have Work Group 

12 issues that we have to address the SEC Evaluation 

13 Work Group.

14 And for example, on some of those 

15 issues if it would help to have a Work Group call 

16 to sort of get a final resolution so you can go 

17 forward on those, we can do that. We also have 

18 a Dow Madison issue to deal with. And John 

19 Stiver informs me that we're very, very, very, 

20 very close to getting that report out. And --

21 MR. STIVER: Actually, I just got an 

22 email from Nancy --

23 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.
153

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 MR. STIVER: -- and it had fallen 

2 through the cracks while she was sick last week 

3 and she's getting it out right now.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Yes, I'll --

5 MR. KATZ: Repeat that into the mic.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, repeat that 

7 for John Stiver which was that the reports in the 

8 mail and it will be out immediately. So we have 

9 that. And I think in terms of timing, I think 

10 we should talk more offline in terms of 

11 scheduling.

12 Again, the other thing I will say to 

13 that is we also, you know, if there's some 

14 question or if something that come up, but we 

15 also are going to pick out an example to do for 

16 the Work Group to work on the guidelines. So 

17 that may be another opportunity so we don't get 

18 off schedule doing this.

19 All right. So, went a little far 

20 afield from Santa Susana there, but --

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Well, we went from 

22 Santa Susana to Dow Madison and I don't know where 

23 all else we're going, but it'll be interesting.
154

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We went from Rocky 

2 Flats to Dow Madison, too, so we'll do that. 

3 Okay. Brad, Savannah River. Appointed Brad to 

4 be the chair of the Savannah River site group and 

5 added David Richardson to that Work Group. So 

6 Brad, I don't think you've had time to meet and 

7 --

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: We have not met, but 

9 we have been on this Work Group for a long time. 

10 And it comes back to one of our issues and that's 

11 getting information from the site. And we've 

12 kind of been at a standstill for that for almost 

13 a year. So that's becoming an issue.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. I think if I 

15 understand it correctly, in the process now, 

16 we're closer after a year. I don't want to be 

17 too optimistic here, but --

18 DR. TAULBEE: Brad is correct. We've 

19 been delayed in getting information out of this 

20 site from our November and December 2013 data 

21 captures. The good news is is that information 

22 did finally get delivered to us in February.

23 However, it has not been reviewed from 
155

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 a classification standpoint and so the current 

2 staff with the appropriate credentials are 

3 working it within a confined space, if you will.

4 And so the review is going to be 

5 slower than we would if the bolus all this of 

6 information had been released. And so we are 

7 able to begin to make some progress now as of 

8 last month. But it did take until last month for 

9 us to get that information.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: So who's reviewing 

12 that then? Is it DOE then, that's reviewing it 

13 or Germantown?

14 DR. TAULBEE: The information was 

15 sent up to Oak Ridge and so my ORAU team lead, 

16 Mike Mahathy, is the one who has access to it. 

17 And so he has to go into a secured area, limited 

18 area, in order to work with it.

19 I do believe, in talking with Greg 

20 Lewis, that a copy of those disks of information 

21 that got send to Oak Ridge are also going to be 

22 sent to Germantown so that both SC&A and any of 

23 the Board Members, as well, can go in and review 
156

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 that information as well.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So, I would also 

3 add, and we've talked about this and the SEC Work 

4 Group is the coworker guidelines may affect the, 

5 and probably will affect, some of the coworker 

6 models at Savannah River.

7 And so that's another issue that's 

8 going to, I think, take some time to resolve. 

9 And I think NIOSH needs to sort of look at that 

10 and sort of figure out, you know, what do you do. 

11 I mean, is the data, for example, for 

12 construction workers adequate by itself for a 

13 coworker model?

14 And there are more than one coworker 

15 models there, but understand it correctly. And 

16 so that's another part that needs to be taken 

17 into account and some decisions made on what to 

18 do there and so forth. Okay. So, I don't know, 

19 Tim, if you have any more to add to that or --

20 no. Yes, not required, but you're welcome.

21 DR. TAULBEE: You're absolutely 

22 right, --

23 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.
157

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 DR. TAULBEE: -- Dr. Melius, with 

2 regard to the coworker models. Because we'd have 

3 to go back and redo our OTIB-81 which has coworker 

4 models for tritium, plutonium, uranium, mixed 

5 fission products as well as americium, curium, 

6 californium and thorium.

7 So it's a very large undertaking which 

8 is why we've been eager for the coworker IMP guide 

9 to come out.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. I can tell 

11 you when we had the SEC, the coworker, the SEC 

12 Evaluation Work Group, Tim was pushing us along 

13 to reach some decisions. David Richardson, I 

14 don't know, are you on the line, now? I haven't 

15 heard David for a while.

16 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, good. Science 

18 Issues Work Group?

19 MEMBER RICHARDSON: We are at a 

20 standstill as well. And I'm starting to suspect 

21 that when we express interest in our report that 

22 it gets frozen. So we have two reports that 

23 we've been kind of waiting to evaluate, one's an 
158

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 ORAU report from NIOSH and the other one's an 

2 NCRP report on DDREF.

3 And they've both sort of been in 

4 standstill for, well, first one and now the 

5 second one, for a period of time. I'm hopeful 

6 that the second report will come out soon and we 

7 can take some action on it. But we've asked for 

8 a preview of that and not been able to get it, so 

9 we're sort of waiting.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thanks, 

11 Dave. I'm not sure much we can do about that, 

12 right? I think, Special Exposure Cohort Issues 

13 Work Group, I think you've heard we've been 

14 working on the issue with the coworker model and 

15 then we have this Dow Madison issue outstanding.

16 We had a third one which was the 

17 Savannah River Group had asked us to look at one 

18 of the coworker models, but I think that's sort 

19 of back to the drawing board as Tim said it right 

20 now, in terms of what needs to be done. So we're 

21 basically not doing that for a while under that.

22 So, but we'll probably have a meeting 

23 shortly. We need to deal with the Dow Madison 
159

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 issue and then we also need to come back. Maybe 

2 these are separate meetings as to look at an 

3 example coworker model in terms of applying the 

4 guidelines to that.

5 So hopefully we'll do both of those 

6 before the July meeting, so definitely the Dow 

7 Madison one we will. So for other Work Group 

8 Members, put on your calendars to at least plan 

9 to those. Since we're alphabetical, we'll jump 

10 to the Subcommittee on Procedures Review, Wanda.

11 MEMBER MUNN: I trust that everyone's 

12 done their homework and had therefore read the 

13 basic information that was available to you in 

14 the SC&A Work Group and Subcommittee's report. 

15 If you have not seen that, it's on Page 13 where 

16 the Procedures Reviews Subcommittee's reported as 

17 having met on February 19th, which indeed we did.

18 At that time we closed a little more 

19 than a dozen individual findings that were 

20 outstanding and on which we had had deliberations 

21 earlier, came to some conclusions with respect to 

22 those dozen or so. And we were very pleased to 

23 get the plate.
160

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Right now, we are, as you know, 

2 working a number of PERs.

3 MEMBER BEACH: Press the button.

4 MEMBER MUNN: I was doing it, my 

5 fingers just slipped off.

6 We have in our hopper right now, PER7 31, which is Y-12, PER-42, Linde, PER-43 which is 

8 the internal/external organs with the IREP 

9 selection of ICD-9 codes, PER-47, Grand Junction 

10 Office, PER-52, Westinghouse Nuclear Fuels 

11 Division.

12 We also have outstanding issues of 

13 long time period on OTIB-52 -- I mean, pardon me, 

14 we cleared 52, OTIB-82, CNLLL and OTIB-54 which 

15 is internal gross beta and gamma analyses. The 

16 upcoming PERs that we know are in the mix and 

17 coming toward us is PERs for our TBD-6000 

18 revision, BWXT Virginia and Dow Chemical.

19 We just received the SC&A review 

20 comments from NIOSH's response to PER-45, 

21 Aliquippa Forge. And our big issue there has 

22 been concentration of airborne contaminates.

23 We'll be addressing that at our next 
161

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 meeting which I had hoped for in May, but I got 

2 beaten up when I suggested that, so it looks as 

3 though it will probably be June before we meet 

4 again. That date has not been identified yet. 

5 And that's it for Procedures.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Wanda, we wouldn't 

7 dare to try to stand in your way.

8 MEMBER BEACH: Wanda, don't we have a 

9 meeting scheduled in April --

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We do, yes.

11 MEMBER BEACH: It's like the 28th?

12 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, we're on the 

13 calendar for the 28th of April. Yes.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, 

15 Wanda.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Paul, TBD-6000??

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, TBD-6000, I'll 

19 focus mainly today on General Steel Industries. 

20 Just to remind the Board that Appendix BB, which 

21 is the General Steel Industries appendix.

22 Rev 1 was issued in June of 2014 and 

23 after that there were a number of concerns raised 
162

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 by the co-petitioner, Dan McKeel, as well as a 

2 number of findings from the Board's contractor, 

3 SC&A, on the revision. And the Work Group met 

4 in February to try to deal with those issues.

5 We thought, following that meeting, 

6 that -- well, let me just say that at that meeting 

7 of the ten findings that SC&A had, six of those 

8 were resolved, but there were four others that we 

9 were not able to resolve. And NIOSH was to come 

10 back with some additional information to try to 

11 resolve those.

12 We thought at the time that that would 

13 be done very quickly. But in a short time after 

14 that meeting, specifically on February 20th, Jim 

15 Neton notified the Work Group Members that NIOSH 

16 would need more time. In fact, let me, just for 

17 the record, read Jim's brief report to the Work 

18 Group.

19 He said, "After the GSI Work Group 

20 meeting on February 5th, DCAS reviewed the path 

21 forward to resolving the ten findings SC&A raised 

22 in their review of Rev 1, Appendix BB.

23 While we believe that the resolution 
163

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 of six of the findings is straightforward, the 

2 remaining four findings, Numbers 2, 5, 6 and 10 

3 may require more time to address than previously 

4 thought.

5 In our opinion, the additional 

6 discussion of these findings will likely be 

7 required prior to the issuance of Rev 2. In 

8 light of this, we've decided to move forward with 

9 the completion of PER-057.

10 The PER will use Revision 1 of 

11 Appendix BB to determine which cases should be 

12 returned by DOL to NIOSH for a revised dose 

13 reconstruction.

14 After Appendix BB, Rev 2 is issued, it 

15 is likely there will be an additional PER for 

16 claims affected by the changes between Rev 1 and 

17 Rev 2."

18 And I might add parenthetically that 

19 when we began the reviews of Rev 1, the PER 

20 process had been, I guess I would say, 

21 temporarily halted pending the resolution of the 

22 Rev 1 findings.

23 But in light of the extended period 
164

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 needed the PER was completed. And that PER was 

2 issued just very recently on the 11th of March. 

3 And I would just like to read a couple of items 

4 for the Board's benefit here.

5 The document says, "So the changes to 

6 Appendix BB were so extensive that no claims 

7 could be eliminated from further evaluation. 

8 Therefore, all previously completed claims were 

9 reevaluated under this Program Evaluation 

10 Report."

11 Now, what that means is that there 

12 were close to, and this is all claims that were 

13 below the 50 percent value, of course. So it 

14 turns out then that there were a total of 196 

15 claims that were reevaluated by NIOSH. And of 

16 these there were 100 that appears would probably 

17 move to a greater than 50 percent value, which 

18 means that NIOSH would ask DOL to send those 

19 claims back for reevaluation.

20 Stu Hinnefeld has informed me that, in 

21 fact, that list of 196 claims has already been 

22 sent to DOL, including the list of 100 that should 

23 be returned to NIOSH for reevaluation.
165

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 So that has occurred in the meantime, 

2 just very recently, I don't know the exact date, 

3 but since this PER was issued. Maybe Jim can 

4 speak --

5 DR. NETON: Actually, the --

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- to that.

7 DR. NETON: -- request was sent to DOL 

8 the same day that the PER was issued.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right. So the 

10 request went to DOL on the 11th of --

11 DR. NETON: Yes.

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- March. And they 

13 have that list. So the ball now is in DOL's 

14 court to return what appear to be the 100 eligible 

15 ones and then those would be reevaluated by 

16 NIOSH.

17 So that's where we stand on GSI at the 

18 moment. Once the Rev 1 issues that NIOSH will 

19 be addressing, once that has occurred the Work 

20 Group will meet again. And, of course, SC&A will 

21 have a chance to look at those things too, but 

22 we'll try to get those final ones resolved. And 

23 that could lead to a revision, Rev 2.
166

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, 

2 Paul. Comments or questions from Board Members? 

3 Okay. Thank you. I'm going to overrule our 

4 Designated Federal Official and give the Board 

5 and people here a short break. So we will take 

6 a break and return at 3 o'clock this afternoon.

7 MEMBER BEACH: You forgot Worker 

8 Outreach.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, there are other 

10 Work Group -- I --

11 MEMBER BEACH: Oh, we're doing them 

12 right before we finish. Okay.

13 (Simultaneous speaking.)

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Relax. Relax. I 

15 know I skipped over Henry also.

16 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, so and there's 

18 the --

19 MEMBER BEACH: I thought we were at 

20 the end.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Tomorrow we have 

22 another Work Group, you know, session and working 

23 session and we will cover the rest of the --
167

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 MEMBER BEACH: Okay.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- groups and we'll 

3 also talk about the Dose Reconstruction 

4 Subcommittee, hear from Dave. So we have other 

5 work. We have letters and stuff, so.

6 MEMBER BEACH: A breaks good.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

8 MR. KATZ: That's what comes of power 

9 grabs. There's confusion and chaos.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So we will take a 

11 break. We will reconvene at 3 o'clock and at 

12 that point we will do the Hanford SEC Evaluation 

13 Report and then we'll go right into a public 

14 comment period.

15 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

16 went off the record at 2:44 p.m. and resumed at 

17 3:05 p.m.)

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. We are 

19 reconvening and our first order of business is 

20 the Hanford SEC petition. And we will do a 

21 presentation on that, we will then have some 

22 Board discussion on that, could very well have a 

23 vote on that petition and we will proceed there.
168

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 And then, when we are done with that 

2 portion of that, I'm not quite sure how long that

3 will take, it'll take a little while, then we 

4 will go directly into the public comment period 

5 for people.

6 And when we do the public comment 

7 period, we'll start with public comments related 

8 to the Hanford site and then there may be people 

9 calling in that have comments on other sites, so 

10 we'll leave them until last.

11 Again, encouraging you, if you've 

12 already and want to make public comments to sign 

13 in. It just helps us do that. Even if you don't 

14 sign in, we'll give you an opportunity to talk, 

15 but it just helps us keep track of what's going 

16 on and so forth with that.

17 So we'll start with the presentation. 

18 The presentation will be Dr. Sam Glover from 

19 NIOSH and welcome Sam.

20 MR. KATZ: And just for the record, 

21 the two Board Members, Ms. Munn and Ms. Beach, 

22 who have conflicts here, have recused themselves 

23 from this session.
169

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 DR. GLOVER: Thank you, Dr. Melius. 

2 Is this one of those microphones you've got to be 

3 really close to? Probably, we're okay. So 

4 first, I'd kind of like to start out by thanking 

5 some folks who made this -- Pat Worthington 

6 talked early about all the effort.

7 Department of Energy, they certainly 

8 provide an incredible amount of support, but also 

9 the Board has been with us at many of these 87 

10 data capture events. Not all of those were 

11 Hanford, but there were a lot.

12 And obviously, there's a substantial 

13 body that's not a very complex facility, a lot of 

14 different changes over time. A lot of work was 

15 required to understand it.

16 But also the workers there, you know, 

17 I don't know if Pat included there are well over 

18 100 worker interview sessions that we've done and 

19 that the site is supported, but these people have 

20 come in to provide us information. So we've done 

21 an extensive data gathering as we did this.

22 And I am going to start out by driving 

23 my plain language people crazy by starting out at 
170

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 the very end which is how I intended to do this 

2 and talk about the Class Definition and then I'll 

3 explain why we did it.

4 Because it is, as Dr. Melius at our 

5 Work Group meeting talked about, it is very 

6 convoluted. It's really not. When I've talked 

7 to the workers at Hanford who work in this 

8 environment, it makes complete sense because they 

9 understand how things are broken down. But when 

10 you come at it from the outside, it's a Class 

11 Definition by difference.

12 And so what we're going to recommend 

13 to you is that all employees of the Department of 

14 Energy contractors and subcontractors. Now, 

15 you'll notice we're not including in that 

16 Definition the Department of Energy employees 

17 themselves.

18 So we're talking about the contractors 

19 and subcontractors and we're excluding, so all 

20 those are in excluding certain primes in this 

21 timeframe.

22 And so that's really the point that I 

23 wanted to leave, is, sort of, the main other 
171

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 primes that weren't associated with the 

2 construction trades, in particular, I'm told the 

3 Davis-Bacon-type construction work that happens 

4 at a DOE facility that is a particularly 

5 radiological characteristic.

6 So I wanted to kind of start out with 

7 this. As we look into this and walk through why 

8 I go through these slides.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The David-Bacon 

10 Federal wage requirements. It's nothing to do 

11 with radiological.

12 DR. GLOVER: Well, but that kind of 

13 work is what J.A. Jones had to do.

14 And that was the kind of radiological 

15 construction work that had to be done by them. 

16 And so apparently that is partially defined and 

17 so there's people who understand it better than 

18 I, but, so now I'm going to go back and start at 

19 the beginning.

20 So we are talking about the Hanford 

21 site and this, as I had mentioned, it's a complex 

22 site. It's got many diverse facilities and not 

23 only are they diverse, they changed their mission 
172

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 with time. And not only did they change their 

2 mission with time, they change the contractor who 

3 ran them as a function of time.

4 And so every time there's a contract 

5 change, all those people in management and all 

6 those reports change. So there are 7,000 

7 different monthly report types at Hanford over 

8 the period of this.

9 So it's, you know, just following the 

10 thread, it stops and then you start again and go 

11 down a different path to try to find out how 

12 things are going.

13 So as I said, there are significant 

14 research challenges due to the nature of the 

15 site, a large number of classified and 

16 unclassified documents. I think my colleague 

17 here, Gail Splett, could tell me exactly how many 

18 boxes there are, but I'm sure it's that are in 

19 the hundreds of thousands.

20 So we have worked to address this. 

21 And it's difficult and we say that we try to be 

22 timely, it's a large body of work and so it takes 

23 time to do it. We have not, you know, we really 
173

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 have tried to do this in a timely fashion.

2 So SEC-57 comprises the overarching 

3 structure of which we continue to review. And 

4 the Board still has, even after the closure of 

5 this SEC-57, still has an issues matrix that will 

6 be for it. And the timeframe for SEC-57 is from 

7 1943 through 1990.

8 So there are a series of SEC 

9 evaluations that have been completed for Hanford. 

10 We had two of those, the first SEC-57 Part 1 and 

11 2, which were for the DuPont timeframe from '43 

12 to '46 and then '46 through '68 which was mostly 

13 the GE timeframe. And those were for selected 

14 radionuclides in the areas.

15 As we understood better with time, we 

16 realize that we subsumed those two classes under 

17 SEC Petition 152 and added a few more years based 

18 on some additional research in other 

19 radionuclides. So it brought all of those under 

20 and made it all workers for all areas, which had

21 previously been a little more tightly delineated.

22 Additional research brought us up to 

23 where we are right now, which is adding 1972 
174

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 through 1983 for all areas that Hanford 

2 associated with, again, different types of 

3 radionuclides and research that was being done at 

4 the time.

5 And I guess I can't turn my head and 

6 talk. I tried. I think it's actually going to 

7 hit the microphone.

8 So there was one Class that was not 

9 added to the SEC. It was based on falsification 

10 of records. And they were non-radiological 

11 records that were falsified, but that did not 

12 impact the ability to do the radiation research 

13 at Hanford, the radiological dose reconstruction 

14 at Hanford. And that was SEC-155.

15 So as I said, SEC-57 remains open 

16 before the Advisory Board and the issues matrix 

17 continues to be addressed.

18 So during the review of this matrix we 

19 began to come across some memos and 

20 correspondence and began looking at the exposure 

21 records for a particular group of workers that 

22 we're discussing today.

23 The documents and correspondence 
175

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 detailed that these employees were not routinely 

2 bioassay monitored. Essentially, what we had was 

3 they were, in some cases, doing pre-job, but 

4 there was no follow-up bioassay after the job had 

5 been completed.

6 So, as I say here, NIOSH recommends 

7 that a Class be added to the SEC. So workers 

8 claims are processed while the remaining 1984 

9 through '90 Hanford issues are addressed with the 

10 Advisory Board. The latest Hanford petition, 

11 SEC-226, was qualified for evaluation on March 

12 13th, 2015 as an 83.14.

13 So our worker findings include -- so 

14 just a little background. DOE operated Hanford 

15 using many prime contractors, each that have many 

16 subcontractors. So each of these prime 

17 contractors responsible for implementing a 

18 radiological control program including how and if 

19 an individual should be monitored. The 

20 construction support services was conducted under 

21 a separate contractor.

22 Now, I'm not saying that a prime 

23 contractor couldn't have some construction 
176

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 people, but there are certain types of work that 

2 had to be subbed out to the main radiological 

3 support contractor like J.A. Jones. And that was 

4 included the radiological construction work.

5 So as I mentioned here in the next 

6 slide, J.A. Jones Construction Services was this 

7 prime contractor of construction from 1953 

8 through February 28th, 1987 and they maintained 

9 their own radiological control program.

10 And when I say that, they decided who 

11 were monitored and often, they would, as people 

12 worked in these facilities, they would rely on 

13 the health physics guys in those facilities to 

14 help support their people.

15 But they had in office, they decided 

16 how they were monitored and they couldn't tell 

17 them what they had to do. They couldn't say this 

18 is the people. J.A. Jones had to put them on a 

19 bioassay program. It wouldn't be Rockwell even 

20 if they were working in a Rockwell facility.

21 So after '87, Kaiser Engineer Hanford. 

22 There was a transition period of a few months and 

23 you'll see that in the graphs. Since those were 
177

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 annual sum values, you'll see a transition that 

2 occurs.

3 Beginning about December of '86 they 

4 began to transition as the prime contractor for 

5 construction services, with full transfer, we 

6 believe, on March 1st, 1987. And they also 

7 maintained their own radiological control 

8 program.

9 It's amazing the trees are starting to 

10 bloom here and the allergies. They're not ready 

11 in Cincinnati, so sorry for the sniffles.

12 What also became evident as we really 

13 began to look at the type of the work, and this 

14 is almost like a primer for Dr. Neton's, you know, 

15 review of coworker data, is that the type of work 

16 in these programs is fundamentally different than 

17 what was going on at the other places.

18 So they support a broad range of 

19 Hanford activities, including the research, the 

20 fuel handling, the plutonium processing, D&D, and 

21 they also supported the reactor outages.

22 They were the guys getting to, you 

23 know, used up all their dose maybe in a day for 
178

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 that week and then they'd come back the next week 

2 and support that 100-N reactor outage.

3 They worked in high airborne, high 

4 contamination areas. In areas that you would 

5 expect somebody to have bioassay follow-up when 

6 you're in full face or, you know, that respirator 

7 protection may have been provided.

8 These included the 100-N area, the 

9 PUREX fuel reprocessing facilities, research 

10 facilities, plutonium finishing plant as well as 

11 vaults.

12 So a review of the J.A. Jones, and 

13 you'll see JAJ and KEH operating procedures found 

14 the detailed external dosimetry practices, 

15 there's very little if no information regarding 

16 what the bioassay program, to support that would 

17 be.

18 As I mentioned before the work in 

19 fundamental radiological control practices were 

20 very different than the work conducted by other 

21 prime contractors. Monitoring data for internal 

22 dose are available from these other prime 

23 contractors to compare.
179

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 I will mention that J.A. Jones and 

2 Kaiser have a small group of permanent employees, 

3 but essentially, they supplemented those on kind 

4 of an as-needed basis. And so you'll see about 

5 3,000 workers per year, most of those were not 

6 their permanent J.A. Jones.

7 They may be listed in the databases. 

8 It can be very confusing on if they're truly J.A. 

9 Jones or if they're subs, but you can actually 

10 de-convolute that to some degree.

11 So subcontractors are difficult for 

12 the DOE to determine if they worked in the 

13 capacity of construction trades, it's often hard. 

14 What does that title mean?

15 What exact title would you title 

16 construction trade workers who are out there? 

17 Because they also got people doing pre-job 

18 planning and all these different -- I was quickly 

19 disabused of the concept of I would just name a 

20 bunch of titles that this would comprise. And 

21 also importantly, which company is responsible 

22 for the worker dosimetry?

23 So as we looked at this, these 
180

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 subcontractors, they may not only support J.A. 

2 Jones, if we were to say, well, this company 

3 should be excluded, oh, that company, you know, 

4 because they may have supported Rockwell also and 

5 then they in support of J.A. Jones. And this 

6 network of -- it made it very difficult.

7 And there are 60,000 subcontractors in 

8 this timeframe and there are 300,000 overall at 

9 the site. My colleagues have over 400,000 

10 records on their desks right now that they're 

11 trying to get databased and provide additional 

12 information on record or employment. So it's 

13 extremely complex.

14 So NIOSH, in consultation with DOL and 

15 DOE found that we couldn't just limit the Class 

16 to J.A. Jones and Kaiser and say and their subs. 

17 It just wasn't going to happen.

18 So we wrote a Class by difference and 

19 we identified that there are excellent records 

20 that are associated with these other prime 

21 contractors. They know who the real honest to 

22 goodness prime contractor employees are.

23 And we're saying that at this time we 
181

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 know there's a deficiency for our program, for 

2 our purposes of how we do dose reconstruction 

3 that we can't do it for the J.A. Jones people and 

4 the Kaiser people, but we aren't able to state 

5 that for these other primes.

6 So at this time we think it's useful 

7 to move forward on these 700-plus dose 

8 reconstructions while we work out the rest of the 

9 details with the Work Group.

10 This, as my colleague, Gail, has 

11 helped me understand there's Hanford's, they 

12 expand and the contract. So you'll see my graph 

13 or my graphic and it shows that the DOE helped me 

14 and provided. It gets nine or ten and then it 

15 comes back to one with Westinghouse.

16 And so in '87 Westinghouse subsumed 

17 many of these, but there were a couple that still, 

18 and Kaiser still was on the side. And then in 

19 '93 they subsumed all of them. And I think now, 

20 they've re-expanded. So again, it's always 

21 expand and come back to one and it makes it 

22 difficult.

23 So this is the graphic. And this is 
182

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 just a portion in this timeframe of the 

2 contractors. This is actually a much bigger 

3 graph.

4 What I've done is I've circled in red 

5 J.A. Jones and Kaiser. So those are the people

6 and you can see the times better on your screen 

7 or on the paperwork. It's difficult to see this 

8 on screen here.

9 In blue, I've circled the primes. So 

10 and most of them stopped in '87 when Westinghouse 

11 subsumed most of those activities. Now, in the 

12 left-hand corner you've got Battelle PNNL. And 

13 they continue through '95. And actually that's 

14 when PNNL separates, but in this timeframe from 

15 '84 through '90, Battelle is excluded for further 

16 work.

17 Same thing would be for Rockwell 

18 through '87, United Nuclear through '87, 

19 Westinghouse, which then becomes a bigger 

20 Westinghouse after '87, so, but since they're 

21 Westinghouse for the entire timeframe.

22 Boeing Computer Services, they're 

23 also another identified prime, and then, Hanford 
183

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Environmental Health Foundation for that entire 

2 timeframe. So next slide.

3 So bases for our finding. NIOSH found 

4 a virtual absence of monitoring for J.A. Jones 

5 employees for the internal dose period January 1, 

6 '84 through 2/28 of '87. I have some graphs that 

7 I'm going to show you.

8 So Kaiser took over, as I mentioned. 

9 They recognized the limitation from the bioassay 

10 program that had been conducted and they said 

11 they were going to substantially increase that. 

12 However, the next month, essentially, they 

13 realized that they had substantial budget 

14 shortfalls and so it was delayed.

15 So in order to evaluate that, we 

16 decided well, let's look at how it was 

17 implemented. How did these bioassay monitoring, 

18 how did it increase? When did this become like 

19 they look like other primes? And not just the 

20 total number, but are the chest counts the same? 

21 Are there right kinds of bioassay being done? So 

22 let's take a look at those things.

23 And essentially, what we came to the 
184

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 conclusion is that by 1990 those numbers seemed 

2 to support, at that point-in-time, they are doing 

3 what the other primes are doing. So that period 

4 would still be before the Board, but we're saying 

5 up until that time, it's not.

6 And so I kind of stole the graphics 

7 from our SEC Evaluation Report and I combined 

8 them so you could see the transition as the J.A. 

9 Jones on the left begins to fall off and you see 

10 Kaiser coming up.

11 What you can tell very rapidly from 

12 this graphic is that there are virtually no 

13 bioassay records for J.A. Jones in those years 

14 that we're looking at here. There simply isn't.

15 Now, you do see that Kaiser had a 

16 higher rate of bioassay and so you see that 

17 they're definitely coming up and doing more. 

18 Let's take a look at the next graph.

19 So we then focused on that and looked 

20 at in vitro bioassay, so urinalysis program data. 

21 And it really takes through the end of '90. So 

22 these are that 1990 data point is '90 up through 

23 December 31st, 1990. That's the whole year.
185

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 So until that point, really they 

2 hadn't come up to speed of what the other primes 

3 were doing. So that's why we've set this Class 

4 to go through the end of 1990. At that point we 

5 would be looking at how that works and how that 

6 goes with the rest of the Working Group.

7 And at this point, we believe until 

8 that's fully up-to-speed, one year of doing 

9 bioassay does not make a bioassay program. 

10 There's people who fall off. So in the totality 

11 of things, it takes until that point to really 

12 come up to what the other programs are doing.

13 So J.A. Jones and Kaiser employees, 

14 all subcontractors, we recommend that they be 

15 included in this recommended Class. And for 

16 those individuals, and part of the reason why I 

17 wrote -- I wrote this, why we wrote this with the 

18 input from a lot of people was that there's a 

19 difference between partial and full dose 

20 reconstructions.

21 And so if I would have included them 

22 and then said, well, I'm going to, you know, 

23 extract them, we didn't include them in the Class 
186

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 that we would say that we could do full dose 

2 reconstructions for the DOE employees and these 

3 others until a decision is made.

4 So we will use any internal dose data 

5 that those people, personal data they have to do 

6 dose reconstruction. NIOSH will use external and 

7 medical dose to complete those partial dose 

8 reconstructions for the Class that we've named.

9 Now, we will do full dose 

10 reconstructions for the DOE employees and all the 

11 specifically identified primes that were excluded 

12 from the Class.

13 NIOSH and the Advisory Board will 

14 continue to evaluate the remaining issues at 

15 Hanford during the 1984 through 1990 time period.

16 And so again we were, and just a few 

17 points on this, we recommend that dose 

18 reconstruction is feasible and here's the main 

19 primes, which is the DOE, which we didn't include 

20 in the Definition.

21 We're including it on this by -- we 

22 didn't name them, so we're saying right here this 

23 is -- and we can do dose reconstruction for DOE 
187

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 at this time, but tell Westinghouse, Hanford, 

2 Rockwell, Boeing, UNC, and that goes through '87.

3 And you see the list of contractors 

4 decreases because they subsumed by Westinghouse. 

5 But still you have DOE, Battelle, Westinghouse 

6 and HEF through 1990.

7 We're saying that dose reconstruction 

8 is not feasible for all the other employees of 

9 the Department of Energy contractors and 

10 subcontractors, that meaning the J.A. Jones and 

11 Kaiser primes and all the subs at Hanford.

12 For external dose, the same groups are 

13 named as that we can do dose reconstruction. And 

14 we say that, you'll notice that the top of it is 

15 partial dose reconstruction is feasible because 

16 we're going to use their external dose. The 

17 infeasibility is for the internal dose at 

18 Hanford.

19 And so we'll use the external as 

20 partial dose reconstruction feasibility and 

21 you'll that we'll have gamma, beta and neutron 

22 occupational X-ray all marked.

23 Just to give you a feel for the 
188

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 claims, you saw numbers earlier. Right now, our 

2 records show we have 5,384 claims for dose 

3 reconstruction. During this timeframe 2,175 

4 cases. 1,801 dose reconstructions completed.

5 We see internal dosimetry records, 

6 1,532, not saying that those are all cases with 

7 the right kinds of internal dosimetry records. 

8 Those could be pre-job employment, but they had 

9 bioassay records of some kind. Number of claims 

10 with external dosimetry, 2,125. Almost 

11 everybody had an external badge.

12 Now, I will point out the review of 

13 the cases that have an SEC cancer by NIOSH 

14 indicates that there's 723 cases. They have a 

15 dose reconstruction with a PoC less than 50 

16 percent. And that there are 29 cases at NIOSH 

17 awaiting a dose reconstruction that may need 

18 further evaluation under this Class. We have 

19 sent that list to Department of Labor.

20 The Department of Energy has indicated 

21 that they have substantial new information 

22 particularly for the cases that were processed 

23 earlier on employment.
189

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 And so Gail has been working extremely 

2 hard to find all the subcontractors and 

3 additional information. And she has literally 

4 millions of new finding aides associated with her

5 records. And I'm sure she'd be happy to show you 

6 all the work that she's been doing this last nine 

7 years.

8 But, so those early cases have not 

9 been re-vetted against her. So if they're 

10 reopened, she will have to look quite a bit to 

11 find out what the all the updated employment may 

12 be. Obviously, the primes, we believe we've 

13 always had good information. But for 

14 subcontractors that may have changed quite a bit.

15 And I've already, sort of, I've read 

16 through the Class Definition, but for 

17 completeness, I'll go ahead and close.

18 All employees of Department of Energy 

19 contractors and subcontractors, excluding 

20 employees of the following Hanford prime 

21 contractors during the specified time periods.

22 Battelle Memorial Institute, January 

23 1, 1984 through December 31st, 1990; Rockwell 
190

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 Hanford Operations, January 1, 1984 through June 

2 28th, 1987; Boeing Computer Services Richland, 

3 January 1, 1984 through June 28th, 1987; UNC 

4 Nuclear Industries, January 1, 1984 through June 

5 28th, 1987; Westinghouse Hanford Company, January 

6 1, 1984 through December 31st, 1990; and Hanford 

7 Environmental Health Foundation, January 1, 1984 

8 through December 31st, 1990.

9 Who worked at the Hanford Site in 

10 Richland, Washington, during the period from 

11 January 1, 1984 through December 31, 1990, for a 

12 number of work days aggregating at least 250 work 

13 days occurring either solely under this 

14 employment or in combination with work days 

15 within the parameters established for one or more 

16 other Classes of employees included in the 

17 Special Exposure Cohort. Thank you.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Sam. 

19 Board Members with questions? Okay. Paul, go 

20 ahead.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Not really a 

22 question, but a comment, but for the benefit of 

23 the Board. One of the questions that arose in 
191

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 the Work Group session was do we know that DOL 

2 can actually administer this strange Definition?

3 And I think we were told the answer is 

4 yes, at least NIOSH thinks that the case. And 

5 I'm wondering if DOL believes that that's the 

6 case as well? I'm assuming they do or they would 

7 have screamed much earlier.

8 MR. CRAWFORD: There was some 

9 screaming, but the Seattle office has looked into 

10 test cases. And they feel that they can indeed 

11 identify the proper subcontractors and get the 

12 true employment picture now, especially with the 

13 added DOE material which is becoming available 

14 now.

15 So they're willing to take it on. 

16 They believe they can do it. That's the last I 

17 heard.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Yes. Any 

19 other comments or questions? Board Members on 

20 the phone, do you have comments, questions?

21 MEMBER LEMEN: None for me.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Good. Okay. 

23 Jim Lockey?
192

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 MEMBER LOCKEY: Hey, thanks for 

2 holding that for me. That's when you're 68 you 

3 can't hold things anymore. Anyway, the 

4 Department of Energy has indicated that have 

5 substantial new information on employment of 

6 subcontractors that may also have additional 

7 impact. Impact on what?

8 DR. GLOVER: So one of the cases that 

9 we were looking at, when you have an 83.14 you 

10 have to have a petitioner as part of that Class. 

11 And we typically would use a case that has not 

12 has a dose reconstruction completed.

13 And so we were, as we identified a 

14 person in one of the cases we looked at, well, 

15 because we do dose reconstruction, we don't have 

16 like a big bin that just sits around and you could 

17 just pick from and, so we thought, well, perhaps 

18 we would look at some old cases.

19 And so one of the cases we were 

20 looking at and provided as an example case as 

21 well, when they looked at it, the additional 

22 information they found actually qualified them 

23 under the current SEC. And they, obviously, 
193

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 already have told the Department of Labor about 

2 that.

3 And so that sort of information may be 

4 -- and it gives them additional time, even in 

5 previous SEC periods, that was previously 

6 unidentified time at Hanford.

7 And, you know, one of the issues, they 

8 said well, not every subcontractor could be 

9 identified right now. Well, that would have been 

10 the case even for someone who had to do dose 

11 reconstruction anyway. You know, the Class, if 

12 they weren't identified as being at Hanford, that 

13 was always a problem.

14 And, so, in this case we're trying to 

15 include all of that, but obviously, they have to 

16 be put at Hanford and that's always been 

17 something. That's what Gail has been working 

18 very hard to do, and obviously her team with 

19 support by headquarters. 

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

21 questions? My understanding is that the 

22 petitioner for this particular petition does not 

23 wish to make any comments.
194

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 So I think we can move straight ahead, 

2 though Work Group did not make a recommendation, 

3 though I think not all of us were on the call, 

4 and we do think that we were supportive of the 

5 recommendation from NIOSH, but decided we could 

6 wait two days of the Work Group meeting. So I'm 

7 looking for a, if there are no further questions, 

8 a recommendation or action from the Board.

9 MEMBER CLAWSON: Jim, I'm make a 

10 motion that we accept NIOSH's Class as defined.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

12 MEMBER POSTON: Same.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Who's that?

14 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I'll second that. 

15 This is Phil.

16 MR. KATZ: Poston --

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Dr. Poston, gets 

18 this. Beat you to it, Phil.

19 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Oh, I heard 

20 someone. Man, I'm getting lazy.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So thank you. Any 

22 further comments? If not, I'll ask Ted to do the 

23 roll call.
195

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 MR. KATZ: Very good. Dr. Anderson.

2 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

3 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach is recused. Mr. 

4 Clawson?

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

6 MR. KATZ: Dr. Field?

7 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: Dr. Kotelchuck?

9 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

10 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen?

11 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes.

12 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey?

13 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius?

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

16 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn is recused. Dr. 

17 Poston?

18 MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

19 MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson? Dr. 

20 Richardson, perhaps you're on mute?

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

22 MR. KATZ: Not any more. Dr. 

23 Roessler?
196

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

2 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield?

3 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

4 MR. KATZ: Ms. Valerio?

5 MEMBER VALERIO: Yes.

6 MR. KATZ: And Dr. Ziemer?

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: It's a clean sweep, passes 

9 unanimously.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. And I have a 

11 letter ready, but I think we've heard the 

12 Definition enough. So I will save that for 

13 tomorrow just to read into the record and Board 

14 to review and do that.

15 So we will now start our public 

16 comment period a little bit early, but I think we 

17 have enough people signed up. So, Ted, if you 

18 will give the instructions, I'll go out and get 

19 the list.

20 MR. KATZ: Yes, let me just remind in 

21 case anybody came since Dr. Melius addressed the 

22 group. If there are people in the room who would 

23 like to give a presentation, we have a list 
197

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 outside.

2 But if you haven't signed up, don't 

3 worry about it. At the end of getting through 

4 that list, we'll ask again if anyone in the room 

5 would like to give comments and that'll be fine. 

6 You'll just come up in order that you raised your 

7 hand, so no problem there. And then we'll move 

8 to people on the phone for Hanford or for another 

9 site. We'll take the Hanford calls first, I 

10 suppose.

11 So just to let you all know in case 

12 some of you never attended a Board meeting 

13 before, these meetings are all fully transcribed, 

14 so there's a verbatim written record of this 

15 meeting with everything everybody said that gets 

16 published on the NIOSH website for all the 

17 public.

18 And so as part of that, your public 

19 comments also get published verbatim with your 

20 name and so on. So any private information you 

21 give about yourself, understand that information 

22 you're giving to the whole public and take that 

23 into consideration. And we will publish all of 
198

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 that. We'll print all that for the public.

2 But if you speak about someone else, 

3 a third party, we will protect that person's 

4 privacy because we don't have that person here to 

5 be assured that that person wants that 

6 information released. So we'll have to redact 

7 certain information from what you might say about 

8 a third party just to protect their privacy.

9 And that's sort of the basic policy 

10 that we have. If you want to see the full 

11 details, there should be a sheet back there on 

12 this recusal policy and also on the NIOSH website 

13 for people on the line if they want to look at 

14 it. But that's it in a nutshell, so.

15 And with that, that takes care of my 

16 part. Thanks.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Ted. 

18 And the first person I have that's signed up is 

19 LaDell Vance. Are you in the room? Okay. And, 

20 Mr. Vance, if you would prefer to sit down when 

21 you use the mic over there, you're welcome to 

22 rather than stand up. It's up to you.

23 Whichever's your preference, yes.
199

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 MR. VANCE: I appreciate this 

2 opportunity. I'll read the statement I've 

3 prepared here and leave it with you.

4 I have bone cancer that was diagnosed 

5 in August of 2012. The diagnosing physician said 

6 it was the worst case that she'd ever seen and 

7 says I will be praying for you.

8 Although the NIOSH analysis noted it 

9 was less than 50 percent this is caused by 

10 employment at Hanford, I'm certain it was. The 

11 minimum of cancer in my progenitors and none that 

12 I'm aware of that had bone cancer.

13 I spent one year at N reactor and then 

14 the next several years in the 300 area working in 

15 construction quality assurance with the 

16 construction contractors, but I was working for 

17 UNC and Westinghouse.

18 I started working at Hanford in July 

19 of '83, which would have put me under the previous 

20 SEC. But starting in July, I didn't have the 

21 required 250 days working at that time.

22 As I look on the internet, it is noted 

23 that the 250-day requirement is written into law 
200

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 by Congress and that after it originally passed, 

2 there's actually no scientific basis for this 250 

3 days and it notes that.

4 As there's no scientific basis for 

5 this, I feel it should be changed to have worked 

6 at Hanford for 250 days, but in order to keep out 

7 the short timers or the people that don't limit 

8 it to 1984. Anybody working before 1984 and 

9 working for one year should be allowed into this 

10 SEC is my feelings. Does that make any sense?

11 I've been involved with the Huntsman 

12 Institute in Utah for my treatment, participating 

13 in some experiments and this has kept me alive. 

14 Next week, I'll be making my seventeenth trip to 

15 Utah and anxious to find if there are other

16 protocols to help me.

17 They initially put a pain pump in me 

18 and this morphine has kept my pain at bay. I 

19 would strongly suggest this unscientific 250 days 

20 be changed and I be allowed to obtain funds to 

21 help with these expenditures. Thank you.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, 

23 Mr. Vance, appreciate it. Okay. The next person 
201

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 who signed up for public comment is Knut Ringen. 

2 I think I pronounced that correctly.

3 DR. RINGEN: Well, you're getting 

4 better at it. My name is Knut Ringen and I think 

5 this is the ninth time that I've spoken before 

6 you. I'm the senior science advisor for CPWR 

7 which is the Center for Construction Research and 

8 Training. And I'm also the principal 

9 investigator on the National Medical Screening 

10 Program for construction workers that Pat 

11 Worthington talked about earlier this morning.

12 I'm here on behalf of the National 

13 Building Trades of America. The Central 

14 Washington Building and Construction Trades 

15 Council and Augusta Building and Construction 

16 Trades Council have asked me to make some 

17 comments.

18 And the two issues that I'm going to 

19 talk briefly about is the Hanford SEC that you've 

20 just referred to and also the coworker modeling 

21 that was discussed by Dr. Neton earlier today.

22 By background, I met somebody, 

23 somewhere in the last month, and I can't remember 
202

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 who it was who said essence of understanding 

2 construction safety and health is to be able to 

3 anticipate the unexpected. And I thought that 

4 was a very good way of looking at it because so 

5 much what happens in construction is episodic.

6 We had just a week ago or two weeks 

7 ago in Seattle, a situation on a construction 

8 site where one employer was working with a boom 

9 crane and other employer was setting up a wall on 

10 a big scaffold.

11 The one employer hit over the scaffold 

12 with the crane, workers fell down, and this 

13 happens all the time because the unexpected is 

14 not anticipated properly. And we see that also 

15 throughout everything that's happened here with 

16 the construction workers.

17 And I've tried to explain this from 

18 the start of this program, that you have to look 

19 at construction workers differently than you do 

20 in those lower production workers.

21 We held a workshop for NIOSH in 2005 

22 to demonstrate how different industrial hygiene 

23 exposures are in construction, how much greater 
203

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 the statistical variance are and we use their hot 

2 worker weldings and bracing as examples of this.

3 And you cannot take the model or 

4 mindset that you have in typical industrial 

5 hygiene and apply it to construction because it 

6 simply does not work.

7 We also felt and have said several 

8 times that we think NIOSH has had the bias in 

9 favor of what the professional health and safety 

10 personnel and the health physics personnel on 

11 these sites have said.

12 And then not given equal weight to 

13 what the construction workers have said even 

14 though you've interviewed hundreds and hundreds 

15 of construction workers on these sites.

16 And you've heard over and over again 

17 stories that portrayed what Dr. Glover expressed 

18 as the complexities of doing construction work 

19 and being in construction here.

20 You could very easily be a contractor 

21 on one day and the employee of another contractor 

22 the next day because many construction workers 

23 work also as independent contractors frequently. 
204

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 So among those many contractors that Gail Splett 

2 has done outstanding job of identifying.

3 It's very complex to say exactly 

4 what's what and that's what was referred to by 

5 Dr. Glover when he said that it's going to be 

6 very helpful to get additional information or to 

7 characterize who actually was the employer.

8 We maintain a large contract for the 

9 Department of Labor to try to identify or verify 

10 if a contractor has been on a DOE site, if the 

11 worker has been employed by that contractor and 

12 the dates that they have been employed on it 

13 because DOL is unable to get that documentation 

14 readily from its own websites.

15 And since we have now screened and 

16 interviewed close to or over 25,000 workers, 

17 including 4,000 construction workers here at 

18 Hanford, we have a pretty good record of what has 

19 been going on from what the workers have told us 

20 in detailed interviews.

21 So I'd first like to thank both Dr. 

22 Neton and Dr. Glover for their presentations and 

23 for starting to accept maybe a little bit more 
205

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 about what we've been saying for a long time.

2 But having said that I think I should 

3 try to push you a little further and a little 

4 faster. At Hanford, Dr. Glover has agreed that 

5 the cutoff date of December 31, 1990 is, in fact, 

6 an artifact that could change and very well 

7 likely will change and I believe it will have to 

8 change.

9 We know from our own epidemiological 

10 studies which are either published or in 

11 publication right now that the risks for 

12 construction workers continued throughout the 

13 1980s and into the 1990s. And at some point 

14 towards the later parts of the 1990s conditions 

15 started to get better on these sites.

16 So I have no doubt that -- and that 

17 includes a lot of the monitoring. I have no 

18 doubt that that will need to be continued. And 

19 there are many things here that corroborate that.

20 The fact is that up until the present 

21 time there are still problems with monitoring 

22 here as has been documented just recently in the 

23 tank farms.
206

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 So I hope as you go forward, here at 

2 Hanford, that you don't take as long to develop 

3 the additional Classes that are going to be added 

4 here as you have done to get to the point that 

5 you have done so far. And I will explain that 

6 and why this issue of timeliness is so important.

7 With regard to Dr. Neton's plain 

8 English document, it's not as plain to me as it 

9 is to you maybe because the issue is still how is 

10 it going to be implemented. And that's not clear 

11 from the document. And that's going to vary, 

12 obviously, from DOE site to DOE site and it'd be 

13 good to know a little bit more about that.

14 But starting, I would think with 

15 Savannah River there's a huge amount of work to 

16 be undertaken to undo and redo the kind of models 

17 that have been developed so far and that I believe 

18 Dr. Neton's document explains are no longer valid 

19 and should not be valid.

20 The law says that NIOSH may 

21 extrapolate from other data to estimate the risk 

22 to workers. It doesn't say NIOSH has to do that. 

23 And the question is how much time are you going 
207

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 to spend trying to do it before you say you can't 

2 do it?

3 And this has been going on for a very 

4 long time. The Savannah River SEC is now in its 

5 eighth year I believe or something like that, and 

6 it's not completed. The Hanford one is about 

7 equally long and many others.

8 These are old workers. They're frail 

9 and sick workers. And if you wanted to get a 

10 timely decision that will be resolve their claims 

11 in their lives times, then this process has to be 

12 sped up. And I hope, really hope that with 

13 regard to Savannah River you will take that to 

14 heart and make a real effort at it. Thank you.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. And I 

16 think if you may have overheard earlier, we 

17 certainly understand that concern and are moving 

18 forward on it and that includes for the Hanford 

19 site. We're in discussions in the Work Group and 

20 we will continue to look into that follow-up 

21 period that's not currently covered.

22 Next person we have signed up, Faye, 

23 and I also mispronounce your name. I apologize. 
208

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 Faye Vlieger?

2 MS. VLIEGER: I always tell you I can 

3 tell you're not family when you pronounce it that 

4 way.

5 Good afternoon, my name is Faye 

6 Vlieger and I'm the chair of DIAB that was 

7 mentioned earlier by NIOSH. I'm also a member 

8 of Cold War Patriots Advisory Committee.

9 And on behalf of both Cold War 

10 Patriots and DIAB, I would like to thank the 

11 Board, DOE, DOL and SC&A for all the hard work 

12 that we've done so far in the many years that 

13 we've been at it.

14 None of us expected this to be a 

15 lifetime commitment, however, for some of us it 

16 already has been or an end of life commitment. 

17 So I would encourage the Board also to work at 

18 finding ways to make it faster because we have an 

19 aging population of workers.

20 And as you can tell from the numbers 

21 that NIOSH has told you and DOL, you know, we 

22 have a lot of survivor claims now. And they 

23 should have been paid during the workers' 
209

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 lifetime.

2 It's unfortunate that this program is 

3 taking this long, but part of it is the way the 

4 records are not maintained at the sites. And we 

5 should not have to go on an Easter egg hunt at 

6 every document site across the United States to 

7 look for them.

8 The worker advocates are encouraged by 

9 the extension of the Hanford SEC and await the 

10 Hanford Work Group and the Board's further 

11 investigations and report on the excluded 

12 workers.

13 In addition, the worker advocates that 

14 met with DOL, DOE, NIOSH and others last week in 

15 Denver, also look forward to responses to our 

16 answers to the question posed of the agencies 

17 including coworker data and how it is to be used.

18 Once again, I want to tell you thank 

19 you. I know you think all we do is complain 

20 about you, but we really do appreciate all the 

21 hard work and effort that you put into this, 

22 recognizing that, except for one, you're not 

23 full-time government employees. And I think 
210

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 people forget that on a regular basis. Thank 

2 you.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. But 

4 you're welcome to continue to complain also.

5 MS. VLIEGER: That won't stop me.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I know. I know 

7 that's why I said it. Okay. Thank you. Anybody 

8 else here in the audience related to the Hanford 

9 site that wishes to make public comments that 

10 might not have signed up? Well, okay, you're 

11 welcome to. All we need you --

12 MR. BOYD: Well, I'm an ex13 contractor.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. If you talk 

15 into the mic and identify yourself.

16 MR. BOYD: Okay. My name is Larry 

17 Boyd. I ran Universal Builders and Diversified 

18 Builders out in the area working for J.A. Jones. 

19 And going along with the mindset of construction 

20 workers, I just wanted to make one point.

21 You know, I had a badge all the time 

22 and that badge sat on the dashboard of my car to 

23 allow me to get in and out 200/300 Z Plant, you 
211

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 know, I went all over the areas.

2 And that's where my badge sat all the 

3 time was on the dashboard of my car because when 

4 you're doing construction work, I mean, we're 

5 moving and up and down and I'd knock the badge 

6 off all the time and it was just a pain to wear 

7 it. And to try to put it on your pants and you're 

8 catching things on it and it just never worked.

9 And, so I requested some documents 

10 from NIOSH. Many relating to the jobs that I was 

11 awarded with J.A. Jones and I was trying to, you 

12 know, I can't remember that far back about all 

13 the different jobs I had and whether -- I mean, 

14 I remember their Z Plant that I was inside of.

15 Nobody had ever seen a private car in 

16 Z Plant. When I was driving my 280Z around Z 

17 Plant probably had a guard escort behind me, but. 

18 And I put up a metal building in there. And, 

19 again, guards were sitting 30 feet away and my 

20 badge was sitting 30 feet away in my vehicle.

21 And anyway I tried to request some 

22 documents just to refresh my mind on all the jobs 

23 that I had and the length of the contracts and 
212

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 stuff like that. And I got 88 pages of graphs 

2 and charts and graphs and charts explaining the 

3 graphs and charts, but none of it had anything to 

4 do with just the simple question that I asked 

5 about the jobs that I completed and the duration 

6 of time that I spent out there on each of these 

7 jobs.

8 So, you know, the process of 

9 construction workers is different. It 

10 definitely is different. And I've had cancer and 

11 I've had tumors that are unexplained. And the 

12 only cancer I had in my family was my father who 

13 was awarded $300,000 for dying from three 

14 different kinds of cancer and that was 20-some 

15 years ago.

16 And that's the only cancer I've ever 

17 had on either side of my family. And, you know, 

18 I've got cancer again. My whole endocrine system 

19 is compromised now, from my pituitary glands and 

20 my prostrate and my liver, my kidneys. 

21 Everything is starting to bother me now, but none 

22 of these are approved cancers I hear. And I've 

23 been denied any kind of compensation.
213

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 But in, again, in figuring your 

2 radiation dose, there's just no way to do it, I 

3 don't think, because my badge just wasn't on me, 

4 it was in my car. And that's about all I wanted 

5 to say.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you. 

7 Hopefully, this SEC, once it's in place, will

8 make some of that easier, not all of it, but 

9 address many of those. Anybody else that wishes 

10 to make public comments on the Hanford site? We 

11 have some other people from other sites, but want 

12 to give Hanford the --

13 MR. FROWISS: Yes, on the phone, yes.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Is this regarding 

15 the Hanford site?

16 MR. FROWISS: Yes, on the phone. 

17 Yes.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, okay. Good. 

19 If you could identify yourself and then go ahead 

20 and speak.

21 MR. FROWISS: Yes, this is Albert B. 

22 Frowiss. I'm an advocate nationally and I do 

23 Hanford claims. And I just wanted to say, well, 
214

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 thank you for what you're doing, but I think it's 

2 going to be a nightmare for the Department of 

3 Labor.

4 They can speak for themselves, but I 

5 know every examiner there in Seattle and 

6 managers, I don't believe that they're going to 

7 be able to handle this very well. So that's 

8 basically just what I want to say. Thank you.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you. 

10 Anybody else that wishes to make comments 

11 relative to the Hanford site? Okay. Well, 

12 should we just break or just keep going, do you 

13 think? I've got Wayne Knox that's here.

14 Okay. The other person I have signed 

15 up that's to which make public comments who's 

16 here is Wayne Knox. Wayne?

17 MR. KNOX: Well, I'm back again.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

19 MR. KNOX: I haven't given up. As 

20 you may know, I am the sponsor and writer of the 

21 Kansas City SEC. It's been processing for now, 

22 going on two years. My expectation to my wife 

23 was that we should have it roughly done within 
215

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 180 days as specified by law. But it's 

2 continuing.

3 I am concerned about the continuation 

4 of the processing of a document that should have 

5 been completed in 2005 because that's when the 

6 Site Profile was developed. If you do not have 

7 all of the data up to now, how could you deny 

8 people from 2005 up to now? But we have denied.

9 I have some particular problem that I 

10 want to address to the Board and solicit your 

11 support. Again, I wrote the Kansas City SEC. 

12 And I felt that I very well justified the fact 

13 that NIOSH nor even I, who created the data, could 

14 accurately reconstruct these doses.

15 NIOSH now has said things to the 

16 Board, Josie perhaps, and other Members that I'm 

17 not really qualified to speak to the issues of 

18 health physics.

19 And, in fact, I have an affidavit 

20 signed by one person that says that that's what 

21 NIOSH has done. They have attempted to discredit 

22 me and say that I am not qualified to make 

23 statements.
216

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 I have a Master's degree in nuclear 

2 engineering and health physics from Georgia Tech. 

3 I studied under the father of health physics for 

4 one quarter, directly under him debating the 

5 issues with Dr. K. Z. Morgan.

6 I worked in his greenhouse helping 

7 him. We argued many issues. I was a Major in 

8 nuclear medicine science in the Medical Corps. 

9 I was a Captain in the Air Force in radiation 

10 physics.

11 But NIOSH seems to feel as though I'm 

12 not qualified to make statements during these 

13 Working Group meetings. And that's supported by 

14 the Board, that I cannot, when NIOSH makes a 

15 statement that is knowingly false, I cannot say 

16 stop, that's not true.

17 NIOSH and my problems, if you will, 

18 started back in 1997 when NIOSH said that they 

19 could accurately reconstruct these radiation 

20 doses.

21 I maintained they could not accurately 

22 reconstruct these doses and I called the meeting 

23 of the CDC and others to discuss the fact that 
217

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 NIOSH was making false claims about their 

2 capability.

3 Accuracy requires that you know the 

4 answer is how close you get to the right answer. 

5 If you're shooting a gun, the accuracy is how 

6 close you get to the bullseye.

7 So in 1997 I provided data and 

8 information and show where that statement of 

9 accuracy was illogical, unscientific and could 

10 not be satisfied.

11 But I took my eye off the ball and the 

12 next thing I know when the Act was passed, they 

13 had sufficiently accurate, which is not 

14 scientific, it's not logical, it's not even 

15 testable.

16 NIOSH and I have had other issues. At 

17 this point NIOSH health physicists refuse to talk 

18 to me. They refuse to talk to me because I have 

19 challenged them on several issues and I have 

20 proven that they are wrong.

21 They now have a person that's not a 

22 health physicist talk to me. And I have to 

23 relate my concerns to the NIOSH spokesman. And 
218

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 that spokesman, again, a non-health physicist has 

2 to go to a NIOSH health physicist in order to 

3 tell him what my problems are and then come back 

4 to me and explain to me what the NIOSH person 

5 said.

6 This person's name is Brad. He 

7 refuses to give me his name. He refuses to tell 

8 me what health physicist that he talked to that 

9 told him what the response was.

10 Additionally, I asked. I said I must 

11 talk to a health physicist. So NIOSH said, okay, 

12 well, we'll let you talk to a health physicist. 

13 So they call me on the phone and said we have two 

14 health physicists that will listen to you, but we 

15 cannot give you their name, we can give you their 

16 code names.

17 One name was Pat M. I said why can't 

18 we talk health -- they cannot answer your 

19 question, they can only listen to you. You only 

20 asked to being heard by a health physicist.

21 I feel that those problems that I had 

22 with NIOSH has been transferred to our 

23 discussions of the Special Exposure Cohort. Now, 
219

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Josie Beach will not allow me during discussions 

2 to counter anything that NIOSH says and is 

3 patently wrong.

4 It needs to be challenged on the spot 

5 rather than be reserved for later comment. 

6 Again, I'm a health physicist. I'm qualified. 

7 I was born under Dr. K. Z. Morgan. I worked here 

8 at Hanford under what I think was the father of 

9 health physics, Wally Howell.

10 And there's a huge difference between 

11 a health physicist and an operational health 

12 physicist.

13 At Hanford, I came here in 1974. I 

14 was not at a health physicist with a Master's 

15 degree in nuclear engineering and health 

16 physicist could not touch a radiation safety 

17 radiation detector.

18 I could not write down a number. It 

19 had to be done by radiation technicians. And 

20 those technicians were not trained. We had no 

21 training courses in them. I established the 

22 first set of training courses here in radiation 

23 safety and for my health physics technicians.
220

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: One more minute.

2 MR. KNOX: Okay. Okay. The bottom 

3 line is that we're dealing with a situation 

4 whereby we never made all of these measurements 

5 that you thought we made because when I came on 

6 board [identifying information redacted] said our 

7 job is to minimize radiation exposure, not make 

8 all of these measurements.

9 The most important thing you can do as 

10 an operational health physicist is to minimize 

11 worker exposures and that's what we did. All of 

12 those measurements we made have huge error bars 

13 associated with it because it wasn't important to 

14 us. And I'll shut up. Thank you.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Mr. 

16 Knox. I believe we have Dr. Dan McKeel on the 

17 line. Are you on the line, Dan?

18 DR. MCKEEL: Yes, I am, Dr. Melius. 

19 Can you hear me?

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, we can, so go 

21 ahead with your public comment.

22 DR. MCKEEL: Thank you. Good 

23 afternoon to the Board Members. I'm Dan McKeel. 
221

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 I'm the General Steel Industries SEC-105 co2 petitioner.

3 A media reporter wrote to me yesterday 

4 as follows, and I'm quoting, "I see that you 

5 recently have been somewhat successful in your 

6 efforts to challenge the dose reconstruction 

7 methods. I continue to collect information on 

8 the issues and wonder if you might offer your 

9 opinions on the system and the outcome.

10 Is it a fair resolution? Is the 

11 government extending benefits to all workers who 

12 likely developed cancer as a result of job13 related exposure to radioactive material? 

14 Thanks."

15 This is my reply. "Thank you for your 

16 continued interest in GSI-related developments 

17 under EEOICPA-2000. The issuance of Appendix BB 

18 Rev 1 6/6/14 and PER-057 3/11/15 are big news 

19 because a hundred previously denied claims may 

20 and now should be compensated.

21 This result, a hundred claims of PoC 

22 over 50 percent in a Program Evaluation Report 

23 issued for revised site Technical Basis Document 
222

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 is truly unprecedented among 58 PERs issued since 

2 2003.

3 Basically, NIOSH has seriously 

4 underestimated GSI radiation doses since the 

5 beginning, starting in 2004. PER-024 for the 

6 first four GSI dose reconstructions done in 2004 

7 was not issued until September 2007.

8 What is additionally extremely unfair 

9 are the following facts. One, it took NIOSH's 

10 DCAS component, ABRWH, the TBD-6000 Work Group 

11 especially, and SC&A, the Board contractor, over 

12 seven years to revise Appendix BB Rev 0 issued in 

13 June 2007.

14 Moreover, five of SC&As ten new 

15 findings, technical disputes, but NIOSHs Appendix 

16 BB Rev 1 were not resolved at the TBD-6000 Work 

17 Group meeting held on 2/5/15.

18 The five findings will have to be 

19 resolved in the future and Appendix BB Rev 2 and 

20 perhaps a new PER issued. Result, more unfair 

21 delays.

22 Second point is NIOSH should have 

23 revised Appendix BB Rev 0 in October 2007. When 
223

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 a consensus was reached, the average work week at 

2 GSI was 65 hours rather than 48 hours. 

3 Point three, NIOSH should have revised 

4 Appendix BB Rev 0 a second time when Dan McKeel, 

5 the GSI SEC-00105 co-petitioner, provided NIOSH, 

6 the Board and SC&A with 1,016 pages of unredacted 

7 GSI AEC license information as part of his FOIA 

8 request NRC 2010-0012.

9 Those documents provided new 

10 information about GSI having two radium-226 

11 sources that were used for non-destructive metal 

12 testing that led to higher worker external 

13 radiation exposures for the first ten years of 

14 the GSI AEC contract period from 1952 through 

15 1962.

16 These finding along should have led to 

17 the issuance of Rev 1 of Appendix BB in PER-057 

18 in 2011 rather than in 2015. Compensation was 

19 thus denied unfairly to at least 100 GSI 

20 claimants for four extra years.

21 Point four, the ABRWH Board voted nine 

22 to eight on 12/11/12 to recommend the HHS 

23 secretary deny GSI's SEC-105. Secretary 
224

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Sebelius did deny the SEC in March 2013.

2 The GSI petitioner and I then filed an 

3 SEC Administrative Review as allowed under 

4 EEOICPA-2000 with HHS on April the 17th, 2013. 

5 In complete secrecy, a three-member HHS 

6 independent review panel has been deliberating 

7 about our administrative review since April 2013.

8 They will make a recommendation to the 

9 HHS secretary, currently Sylvia Burwell, who will 

10 make a final decision whether to deny SEC-105 or 

11 to reverse the previous denial and approve GSI 

12 SEC-105.

13 The Act imposed no time limit on 

14 anyone for rendering this decision. In my 

15 opinion, that sad fact and the secrecy 

16 surrounding SEC appeals are extremely unfair to 

17 claimants.

18 The HHS review panel should be able to 

19 reach a decision in two years. The SEC 

20 petitioners believe GSI should have received an 

21 83.14 SEC in 2005. NIOSH, the DCAS component, 

22 refuses to tell the SEC petitioners the number of 

23 GSI claimants in the SEC-105 plan.
225

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 The FOIA Dan McKeel filed on 4/10/14 

2 for the complete GSI administrative record is 

3 being held up being acted upon until after June 

4 2015 by the CDC FOIA office. Legally, they have 

5 30 days to provide these FOIA records.

6 It is distressing the DOL indicates to 

7 PER-057 claimants that NIOSH has not submitted 

8 the related case list to them two weeks after the 

9 PER was issued, 3/11/15.

10 Dr. Neton, today, disputes this fact 

11 and states NIOSH sent this list to DOL on 3/11/15. 

12 But I can tell you from personal phone calls with 

13 the people who have called NIOSH and DOL that at 

14 least three claims examiners do not know that 

15 fact.

16 The final part relates to your 

17 question is the government being fair to all 

18 nuclear weapons workers.

19 My eighth and final point is if DOL 

20 refuses to send each of the 196 persons included 

21 in GSI PER-057 an informational letter alerting 

22 them to Appendix BB Rev 1 and PER-057 being 

23 issued. Such a letter is needed because many 
226

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 claimants have no internet access or other way of 

2 learning how these two documents will affect 

3 their claims and financial interests.

4 This is not fair either. I believe 

5 Department of Labor's refusal is unwarranted and 

6 completely unreasonable and have told them so. 

7 The answer is a huge no. The U.S. government is 

8 not being fair on several fronts at GSI.

9 The delay in revising Appendix BB, the 

10 delay in providing FOIA materials, the refusal to 

11 provide basic SEC Class size and much other data 

12 and the refusal to inform denied claimants their 

13 claims for being reevaluated by NIOSH and DOL.

14 Overall DOL has been successful in 

15 enlisting only 25.4 percent of the 700,000 former 

16 and present members of the U.S.A. nuclear weapons 

17 worker pool to file EEOICPA Part B and E claims. 

18 DOE cases represent 47 percent and AWE cases 53 

19 percent of the total mix of cases filed.

20 DOL outreach efforts fall woefully 

21 short in recruiting new EEOICPA Part B and E 

22 claims to be filed.

23 Current DOL, NIOSH and DOE outreach 
227

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 efforts are primarily directed at large DOE 

2 sites, such as Hanford, Savannah River, Oak 

3 Ridge, Los Alamos and Rocky Flats that already 

4 have thousands of compensated claims. Illinois 

5 AWE sites like GSI and Dow Madison are neglected 

6 even though they have among the highest numbers 

7 of AWE claims and cases."

8 My conclusion, the reporter asked 

9 excellent questions. I thank the Board for their 

10 time and I will forward a written copy of these 

11 comments to the DFO including additional 

12 information to correct today's Rocky Flats Work 

13 Group report. Thank you very much.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, 

15 Dr. McKeel. Is there anybody else on the line 

16 who wishes to make public comments? Okay. It's 

17 4:15, so why don't we break for 15 minutes and 

18 then --

19 MR. KATZ: Yes, for sure --

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

21 MR. KATZ: -- because we have time.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. We're going 

23 to take a break now at, it's roughly 4:15. You 
228

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 know, since we scheduled the public comment 

2 period for 4:30, we'll come back into session at 

3 4:30 and see if there's other people might be 

4 calling who wouldn't know that we're running 

5 ahead of schedule.

6 Anybody here is welcome to stay, but 

7 you don't need to. Okay. All right. I suspect 

8 that most of the comments will be about sites 

9 other than Hanford, but I can't predict entirely. 

10 So anyway, thank you all for coming.

11 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

12 went off the record at 4:16 p.m. and resumed at 

13 4:32 p.m.)

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. If everyone 

15 could get seated so we can finish up the public 

16 comment period? Could you, Dr. Ringen? I was 

17 trying to protect Dr. Neton.

18 MEMBER BEACH: Everybody tries to 

19 help Jim.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right. Okay. 

21 We're reopening the public comment period for 

22 anybody that came on the line after 4:15. We had 

23 finished up our Hanford SEC and we took public 
229

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 comments.

2 There are a number of people here and 

3 then one person on the phone that had signed up. 

4 But since the public comment period was scheduled 

5 for 4:30, I thought other people might have 

6 signed on at 4:30 on the phone.

7 So if there's anybody on the phone 

8 that would like to make public comments --

9 MR. FROWISS: Yes.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- now.

11 MR. FROWISS: Yes, sir.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Good ahead. 

13 If you can identify yourself and then --

14 MR. FROWISS: Yes, I had called 

15 earlier and talked about Hanford. This is about 

16 another topic. This is Albert B. Frowiss, Sr. 

17 in Rancho Santa Fe, California. My phone is 

18 [identifying information redacted]. 

19 I'm the petitioner on the new 

20 qualified Lawrence Livermore SEC. And when you 

21 were reading through or going through the Working 

22 Group reports earlier today, I heard Berkeley, 

23 but I didn't hear any report on Lawrence 
230

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 Livermore. Is that going to be in LaVon's report 

2 tomorrow or is there some update today?

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: LaVon will be 

4 updating that tomorrow. We don't yet have a Work 

5 Group on the Lawrence Livermore site. If we form 

6 one, which could be quite likely, it'll be, you 

7 know, after the NIOSH Evaluation Report comes 

8 out. We would need to do --

9 MR. FROWISS: I see.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- one anyway, so. 

11 But LaVon will give an update tomorrow afternoon.

12 MR. FROWISS: All right. Well, thank 

13 you.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Is 

15 there anybody else on the line that wishes to 

16 make public comments?

17 MR. WARREN: Yes, this is Bob Warren 

18 in Black Mountain, North Carolina. This morning 

19 one member of the Board asked Mr. Crawford about 

20 reporting figures about cancer. Mr. Crawford 

21 wasn't aware that DOL had done this in 2006.

22 It would not be that difficult to have 

23 the cancers reported by ICD-9 codes they did in 
231

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 their report for each site and then get the total 

2 for the nation. And I'm wondering whether the 

3 Board would let DOE, DOL report by cancer by site 

4 and then sort it so then you have national 

5 figures?

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Okay. I 

7 think I understand. Yes, for the non-SEC sites 

8 where people that were awarded through dose 

9 reconstruction that information is available 

10 overall on the NIOSH website.

11 MR. WARREN: Right.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And they will look 

13 into a further breakdown by site. They have to 

14 be a little bit careful because of some privacy 

15 concerns in terms of numbers, particularly at the 

16 smaller sites. But I believe if I recall 

17 correctly, Stu Hinnefeld reported this morning 

18 they would look into further information. Stu, 

19 do you want to --

20 MR. WARREN: Well, NIOSH said they 

21 didn't want to do anything and DOL has done this 

22 thing before in 2006. And they can do it for SEC 

23 sites so that we can figure out which cancers are 
232

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 being caused by the plants.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, I actually 

3 think that the dose reconstructions ones, the 

4 ones that NIOSH does dose reconstruction were 

5 actually more informative by plant because the 

6 other ones is, for the other sites, it's just a 

7 list of the SEC cancers. But having both and 

8 being able to compare would probably be more 

9 useful. I don't know.

10 MR. WARREN: Okay.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Stu, do you have any 

12 --

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we have not 

14 typically generated site specific cancer 

15 outcomes, dose reconstructions for just the 

16 reason that you described.

17 If it's a small site, you kind of run 

18 afoul of the privacy guidance because you have so 

19 many bins. You sort these small number of places 

20 into so many bins and you have a small enough 

21 group, your chances are you're going to reveal 

22 private information inadvertently. So we've not 

23 done that on a site specific basis.
233

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 I think Mr. Warren suggested that 

2 years ago DOL prepared some sort of report that 

3 would have been before Chris worked for them and 

4 so he would not have been aware of it. I'm not 

5 aware of -- I don't remember that.

6 So, but we could talk to the people at 

7 Labor and see if they'd be willing to do something 

8 like that.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. I would also 

10 think that something within NIOSH, now that a lot 

11 of time has gone by and certainly for the bigger 

12 sites, that would be --

13 MR. HINNEFELD: I think there might 

14 be a size, yes, we might. You know, at the --

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: -- bigger sites it 

17 might be possible --

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: -- but there are a lot 

20 of, you know, there were what, 20-some-odd models 

21 and depending on how many bins you break it into 

22 --

23 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.
234

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 MR. HINNEFELD: -- you can get pretty 

2 small groups.

3 DR. NETON: It's also, I think it 

4 could be misleading now with all these SEC sites 

5 being added, to report the percentage of 

6 compensation by dose reconstructions because 

7 we're starting to get a lot of non-presumptive 

8 cancers --

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

10 DR. NETON: -- that typically don't 

11 really have a lot of dose, internal dose in 

12 particular, which is usually what gets people 

13 compensated at many of these sites.

14 So you're reconstructing prostate 

15 cancer, skin cancers that don't get a lot of dose. 

16 So I'm expecting -- and I think our numbers have 

17 gone down as the SEC sites are growing.

18 So I'm not sure how instructive it 

19 really is for us to report those numbers. And 

20 Department of Labor, of course, makes the final 

21 decision anyway, so they're the ones that really 

22 have the ultimate data set.

23 We don't see the SEC cancers. They 
235

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

1 get all of our dose reconstructions and they know 

2 which ones have been finally adjudicated. So 

3 just my thoughts.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think you're 

5 worrying a little bit too much, but let's look 

6 into it. I think we can say we'll look into it. 

7 Anybody else on the line who wishes to make public 

8 comments?

9 Okay. I think we're finished for the 

10 day then. We've done that. We thank everybody 

11 on the Board and we will reconvene tomorrow 

12 morning at, yes, 8:00 to 8:30, but --

13 MEMBER BEACH: Jim, I heard we were 

14 going to be upstairs. Is that true or are we 

15 still down here?

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Ted doesn't want to 

17 take a chance on the messing up the phone system.

18 Yes. Anyway, so we'll reconvene 

19 tomorrow 8:00 to 8:30 time. Officially start at 

20 8:30 since that's a -- so 8:25 or whatever.

21 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

22 went off the record at 4:40 p.m.)

23