THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 


PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 


CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 


NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 


convenes the 


MEETING 42 


ADVISORY BOARD ON 


RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 


VOL. IV 


DAY THREE 


The verbatim transcript of the 42nd 


Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 


Worker Health held at the Holiday Inn Select, 


Naperville, Illinois, on Dec. 13, 2006. 

 

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C O N T E N T S 

Dec. 13, 2006 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL 

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WORKING GROUP REPORTS 

WORKING GROUP CHAIRS 

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OCAS PROGRAM UPDATE 

MR. LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH/OCAS 

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SC&A TASK V 

DR. LEWIS WADE, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

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SEC MOTIONS 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 

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SELECTION OF ADDITIONAL PROCEDURES 

TO BE REVIEWED BY SC&A 

DR. LEWIS WADE, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

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APPROVAL OF MINUTES 235 

FUTURE MEETING DATES 237 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 258 
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TRANSCRIPT LEGEND
 

The following transcript contains quoted material. Such 


material is reproduced as read or spoken. 


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


an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 


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


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


word(s) when reading written material. 


-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 


of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 


reported. 


-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 


the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 


available. 


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


"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 


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


without reference available. 


-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 


failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 

 

 

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


(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 


BOARD MEMBERS
 

CHAIR
 

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D. 


Professor Emeritus 


School of Health Sciences 


Purdue University 


Lafayette, Indiana 


EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
 

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D. 


Senior Science Advisor 


National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 


Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 


Washington, DC 


MEMBERSHIP
 

CLAWSON, Bradley 


Senior Operator, Nuclear Fuel Handling 


Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory 


GIBSON, Michael H. 


President 


Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union 


Local 5-4200 


Miamisburg, Ohio 


GRIFFON, Mark A. 


President 


Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc. 


Salem, New Hampshire 


LOCKEY, James, M.D. 


Professor, Department of Environmental Health 


College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati 

 

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


Director 


New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund 


Albany, New York 


MUNN, Wanda I. 


Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired) 


Richland, Washington 


PRESLEY, Robert W. 


Special Projects Engineer 


BWXT Y12 National Security Complex 


Clinton, Tennessee 


ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D. 


Professor Emeritus 


University of Florida 


Elysian, Minnesota 


STAFF
 

LASHAWN SHIELDS, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH 


STEVEN RAY GREEN, Certified Merit Court Reporter 

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SIGNED-IN AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS
 

BAKER, ELAINE, MASO 


BREYER, LAURIE, NIOSH/OCAS 


BROEHM, JASON, CDC WASHINGTON OFFICE 


BURGAN, LARRY 


CASE, DIANE L., DOL 


CHANG, C, NIOSH 


DUNGAN ANITA, CLAIMANT 


DVORAK, CHUCK 


ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH 


ENGLE, MEETA, GAO 


FITZGERALD, JOSEPH, SC&A 


FOLKERS, LAURA 


HINNEFELD, STUART, NIOSH 


HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 


KOERNER, LINDA 


KOSTAL, GEORGE R., NIOSH 


LEWIS, MARK, ATL 


MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A 


MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 


MCFEE, MATTHEW, ORAUT 


MCKEEL, DAN, WU-VI NEWS 


MCKEEL, LOUISE, VILLAGE IMAGE NEWS 


MILLER, RICHARD, GAP 


OZBOLT, ARNIE 


PRESLEY, LOUISE S., WIFE OF ROBERT PRESLEY 


RAFKY, MICHAEL, HHS 


RAMSPOTT, JOHN 


RECH, DON 


RUTHERFORD, LAVON, NIOSH 


TORKELSON, DAVE, NIOSH 


TURCIC, PETE, DOL 


ZACCHERS, MARY JO 


ZIEMER, MARILYN 

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P R O C E E D I N G S
 

(8:45 a.m.) 


WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS
 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR
 

DR. ZIEMER: Good morning, everyone. We're ready to 


begin our deliberations for the third day of 


this 42nd meeting of the Advisory Board on 


Radiation and Worker Health. Before we get 


into the agenda items, we have one item left 


from yesterday. We committed to reading into 


the record a letter from one of the Illinois 


delegations. Jason, you have the letter and if 


you would identify who it's from and then read 


it into the record, we'd -- 


 MR. BROEHM: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- appreciate it. 

 MR. BROEHM: Is this on? Okay. I'm Jason 

Broehm from the CDC Washington office. We have 


one letter from last night that Senator Obama's 


staff brought on behalf of U.S. Congressman 


Jerry F. Costello, and this is his statement 


that I'll read into the record. 


(Reading) On behalf of the hundreds of 


residents throughout the 12th Congressional 

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District of Illinois who were former federal 


nuclear weapons program employees at the Dow 


Chemical Company in Madison, Illinois, and the 


General Steel Industries in Granite City, 


Illinois, I want to share my concerns regarding 


serious performance delays at the National 


Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in 


processing my constituents' dose reconstruction 


claims from both of these sites. 


Senator Obama and I, and other members of the 


delegation, are working together to assist the 


former employees of Dow Chemical and the 


General Steel Industries who developed our 


country's nuclear weapons defense program 


because they were likely exposed unknowingly to 


harmful chemicals and substances. I support 


the remarks and conclusions Senator Obama has 


made during this ongoing investigation, and 


believe these employees should be considered 


for compensation under the federal Energy 


Employees Occupational Illness Compensation 


Act. 


Five years ago the employees filed dose 


reconstruction claims with the Department of 


Labor, who in turn referred the claims to 

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NIOSH. As of today my constituents' claims 


have not been completed and a long period of 


time has elapsed with no indication if any 


progress has been made. Of particular concern 


to the two sites in the 12th Congressional 


District are, one, General Steel Industries is 


unlike any other EEOICPA site, therefore it is 


impossible to use coworker data in dose 


reconstructions for General Steel Industries 


workers; two, Dow Chemical Company has no site 


profile and no worker monitoring data; three, 


the class definition under the Dow Chemical 


83.14 SEC should be extended from 1957 to the 


present time. 


I request NIOSH to respond to my office within 


ten days as to the status of the dose 


reconstruction claims filed from Dow Chemical 


and General Steel Industries, and provide a 


time frame for when they will be -- for when 


they will be completed. Further, I urge Dr. 


John Howard, Director of NIOSH, to implement 


performance standards and goals for all 


employees working on dose reconstruction claims 


for workers in Illinois on this important 


program, and to share their progress with 

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Congress on a quarterly basis. 


Thank you for consideration of these issues, 


and I look forward to hearing from you soon. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Jason. Next 


I believe, Larry, we have a spot for you on the 


agenda this morning for an item to bring to the 


Board. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. Yesterday 


evening I received a FedEx package from the 


Department of Energy. Libby White, Greg Lewis 


and Roger Anders have been pursuing some data-


related issues for several people, one of which 


is -- concerns the Dow Chemical facility and 


Senator Obama's inquiries into certain types of 


documents that establish the contractual 


arrangement between AEC and Dow through 


Mallinckrodt. And so -- another one deals with 


the Mound site and the Board's review of that 


site profile. SC&A raised questions about a 


destruction of records at Mound -- that 


actually occurred at LANL. 


And so in this package of information DOE is 


providing -- for Dow Chemical they're providing 


three paper copies, one of which is for the 


Board, one for SC&A and one for NIOSH, that 

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represent some documents that were provided to 


Senator Obama's office regarding the 


contractual arrangement. They also provided 


three compact disks of information about the 


Dow contractual arrangements and changes in 


that contract over time, and I've given Mark 


Griffon a copy of the full set. I think you 


have -- have that from him. I passed along the 


information also to -- to Arjun and -- and Joe 


Fitzgerald from SC&A, and we'll make sure at 


NIOSH that this information is loaded up into 


the site research database files respective to 


Dow Chemical and Mound. 


I assume from this that -- that DOE is 


providing Senator Obama's office this similar 


information, as well as Dr. McKeel, but I'd be 


happy -- if Dr. McKeel hasn't got this -- to 


pass it along to him, as well. 


 The Mound issue -- there's one -- one memo 


about that, DOE provides the background 


information about the destruction of the 


records, as well as a -- a memo from Los Alamos 


that provides the decision to destroy. 


Just wanted to enter that into the Board's 


record so you knew that DOE was being 

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responsive to some of these requests. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you --


 MR. ELLIOTT: I think Libby White or somebody 


at DOE is on the line if -- if anyone has any 


questions about this information. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Libby White, are you on the line? 


MS. WHITE: Yes -- indeed I am, and Roger 


Anders is also here with me. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So maybe let us take this 


opportunity to see if any Board members have 


any questions pertaining to this information, 


and we appreciate you making it available, and 


all of these documents will be entered on the O 


drive, I believe, as well, so they're available 


for Board members and we have -- have the hard 


copies here as well the disks this morning. 


MS. WHITE: Now if I could just quickly mention 


that there's some additional information that 


will be sent to you, as well. The history 


division also has classified information. 


Roger Anders found that there was what, about 


six inches of classified materials? 


 MR. ANDERS: No, about four inches. 


MS. WHITE: Four inches? So that will be 


declassified and provided to you, as well as 

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our DOE Office of Legacy Management may have 


some records as well because they inherited the 


records from the Rocky Flats plant, and it's 


possible that these records may contain 


relevant information. So we are working with 


them to ascertain whether they contain this 


documentation and we'll make sure that -- that 


if so, that that gets to you in a timely 


manner. 


 DR. ZIEMER: We certainly appreciate that. 


There's -- there's at least one question here 


for you. This'll be Michael Gibson from -- a 


Board member. Mike? 


 MR. GIBSON: Ms. White, could you give me any 


idea of the amount of records that were 


destroyed at LANL from Mound? 


MS. WHITE: What we understand is that it's 


about 400 boxes of -- of records that were 


destroyed. 


 MR. GIBSON: And if -- if my memory serves 


correct, those 400 boxes are four foot by eight 


foot by four foot LSA boxes full of records. 


Is that correct? 


 MR. ANDERS: No, I don't think we're talking 


about that. I think we're talking about the 

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one-foot cubic sized boxes, and the figure that 


I remember is about 458, of which about 43 of 


those were duplicated and copies of -- of the 


duplicates are in the custody of DOE's Office 


of Scientific and Technical Information. 


 MR. GIBSON: Okay, and one last question. Do 


you have a time frame when those records were 


sent from Mound to LANL? 


 MR. ANDERS: 1995. 

 MR. GIBSON: Okay. Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, and -- and we should make 

copies of this document -- the Mound records 


issue document, maybe the Board members would 


like to see it and some of your questions will 


be answered here, Mike. It has the information 


about the boxes and the time frame and so on. 


 Board members have not seen this document yet, 


Libby, so you know -- I know that your memo, or 


whoever prepared the memo, does answer some of 


those questions. And again, we appreciate your 


digging in and finding this additional 


information. 


MS. WHITE: Sure. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Are there other questions this 


morning for the folks at DOE? 

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 (No responses) 


If not, we'll -- we'll proceed on our agenda. 


You're welcome to continue listening in, 


although you may have more important things to 


do -- oh, hold on just a moment 'cause Dr. 


McKeel is here and he may have a question on 


this issue on behalf of his petitioners. 


 DR. MCKEEL: Yes, I just wanted to thank Libby 


White for providing that information to me so ­

- and I think Senator Obama's office, I assume, 


is also going to get a copy. 


I did want to mention that in February of this 


year, February the 9th, specifically, I sent a 


Freedom of Information Act request specifically 


to the Department of Energy Office of Legacy 


Management asking for this same information 


about the Dow Madison site. Now I didn't ask 


specifically about the Rocky Flats contract, 


but I'm -- I'm hoping very much that they will 


be more responsive now than they were back then 


to this request because it actually took six 


weeks for that request to get routed through 


the history division into the FOIA office at 


DOE, and after that it took about another three 


or four months to get back an interim response 

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form. So I think this is terrific that we're 


getting the Rocky Flats/Dow contract now, but I 


really hope Ms. White will encourage OLM to be 


forthcoming 'cause a lot of people need that 


data. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. And Libby, we -- we 


certainly appreciate anything you can do to 


implement these efforts to -- to get the 


appropriate records. 


 Joe Fitzgerald also, from our contractor SC&A, 


has a comment or question. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, Libby, Joe Fitzgerald. 


I have the Los Alamos memo, and of course we've 


been working this since last year, and just a 


point of clarification maybe we could get. I 


notice from the three pages in the memo, the 


cover page is dated May 15th, 2003; the second 


page is dated December 7th, 2006; and the 


signature page is dated May, 2003. So the 


second page appears to be sort of this year and 


the other two pages are 2003, so I don't know 


if you can clarify that or find out what -- 


what may have happened. 


 DR. ZIEMER: The second page appears to be 


somehow on --

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 MR. FITZGERALD: It's dated December 7, 2006, 


at least on the -- on the item up top. And 


maybe that's just a label that was added, but 


just to clarify that this is all 2003. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And Libby, if you're not able to 


answer that now, perhaps have a chance to -- to 


find out and -- and pass that information along 


to -- I guess it can go to Larry and we can 


distribute it again. 


MS. WHITE: Absolutely. We actually -- I had 


not noticed that and we will -- we will 


definitely look into that, so thanks for 


bringing that to our attention, Joe. And I 


also wanted to respond to Dr. McKeel's question 


about whether these materials will go to 


Senator Obama, the Dow Madison materials, that 


is. They are actually -- a letter is working 


its way through the DOE system, and we will 


provide the same information that we have 


provided to the Board to his office, and also 


follow up with copies of the declassified 


information and any information that the Legacy 


Management Office has. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, very good. Thank you very 


much. 

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MS. WHITE: Sure, thank you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Let me just pause a minute and see 


if there are any further questions or comments. 


 (No responses) 


 Apparently not, so we are going to proceed then 


with our agenda. Thank you very much. 


MS. WHITE: Thanks so much. And thanks, Larry, 


for bringing this up, as well. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Let me -- let me start with my 


usual reminder to sign in on the registration 


sheet, if you haven't already done that. And 


Lew, any preliminary comments before we move 


into the agenda? 


WORKING GROUP REPORTS
 

WORKING GROUP CHAIRS
 

 Apparently not, or -- then we'll go to our 


working group reports, and Lew, if you will -- 


you have a list before you of our working 


groups. I think we can just go down the list 


and ask each working group chair to make a 


report on the status of items they are working 


on and if there are any issues they wish to 


raise to the Board for discussion, so -- 


 DR. WADE: Right, the order I was going to 


follow, just to give you a sense, is Nevada 


Test Site, Savannah River Site, Rocky Flats, 

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Chapman Valve SEC, the 250-day SEC issue, SEC 


petitions that did not qualify, Hanford, 


Conflict of interest and last, Blockson SEC. 


will also touch upon the subcommittee, only 


because Brad Clawson had made the 


recommendation that for each entity there be a 


co-chair or a vice chair, you can decide which, 


that should be designated, and this might be a 


reasonable time to accomplish that. I don't 


know if we'd do it as we go down the list or if 


we wait until we're completed, but I would then 


touch on the subcommittee to see how we wanted 


to deal with that. 


 DR. MELIUS: Can -- can we also talk about the 


issue for the 83.14? 


 DR. WADE: Then the issue of new -- new and 


potential --


 DR. MELIUS: Workgroups. I don't know if we 


need to do it this morning or in full Board 


work time, but I just don't -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: No, we'll do the reports and -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- we have some other work time if 


we need to do it then, so -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Okay, I just --

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 DR. ZIEMER: -- one way or the other. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- didn't want it off the agenda. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So let's begin with the first one 

on that. 

 DR. WADE: The first is Nevada Test Site, and I 


see that the chair of the workgroup, Robert 


Presley, is at the podium. To remind you, that 


workgroup is chaired by Presley; Munn, Clawson, 


Roessler are the members. 


 MR. PRESLEY: I'm not going to bore you with a 


lot of things. The Nevada Test Site site 


profile -- the last meeting that we had was 


September 15th, Cincinnati. I thought it was a 


very, very good working group meeting. We 


started out with 25 total comments from SC&A. 


NIOSH submitted their responses to each. NIOSH 


accepted SC&A's comments and recommendations on 


ten issues. Ten issues are complete at this 


point. Ten issues incorporated -- 


incorporating 34 responses are awaiting review 


by the Board. 


Now, what these responses are pertain to the 


revisions for Chapter 4, 5 and 6 of the site 


profile, and at present NIOSH is preparing 


those as we speak. Hopefully we will have a 

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meeting sometime in January. We're pushing to 


meet after the 250-day group because this 


really ties into the NTS work, so what we're 


hoping to do is meet the day after they do, go 


through all of the 34 responses and be able to 


report back to the Board then at the next Board 


meeting in February. 


As you can see, we've gone through every bullet 


that's up here yesterday, all the way from dose 


reconstruction of significant nuclides through 


the assumption of non-monitored workers. These 


are items that are -- pertain to a lot of SEC 


petitions. 


Our number one issue of course is oro-nasal 


breathing. We will be revisiting that when the 


written comment from NIOSH comes out. The 


working group will hopefully be able to go over 


this at our next meeting. 


Issue two is resuspension models. A draft 


response is out for internal review. When we 


get it, then we will review it for accuracy 


along with SC&A. Hopefully it will be accepted 


and we'll move on. 


Issue three is the site interview data. The 


working group has asked SC&A -- I'm sorry, 

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NIOSH to provide interview data to SC&A. At 


present this is still in a classification 


office as we know it at NTS. I can tell you, 


as a classification officer, things work very, 


very slow. And I'm sure that they don't have 


the number that we have at Y-12 out at the Test 


Site, and I can understand why it's taking a 


while to get this thing. We will try to do 


what we can to get this speeded up. 


Arjun, you haven't heard anything on it yet, 


have you? 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, sir. 


 MR. PRESLEY: I haven't -- I haven't, either. 


Okay. 


 Working group members, do y'all have anything 


to add to the report? 


Okay. SC&A? Arjun, do you have anything? 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: No. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Okay. Thank you. 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: Could I make a request, if 


we're going to have the meeting around the same 


time, the revisions that NIOSH has proposed to 


make are -- are, as you know, quite major. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Yes. 


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revisions a little bit of time before the 


meeting, that would help us, you know, close 


out issues more rapidly so we can actually have 


a substantive meeting. 


 MR. PRESLEY: I think NIOSH is well aware of 


that, and I'm sure that they're going to be 


working with us to -- to try to get that to us 


so that not only you all have time to work on 


it but also the working group have time to work 


and review it. 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: Thank you very much. 


 MR. PRESLEY: I see Stu coming up. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, Robert, I -- I did manage 


to find some people to hunt down Mark Rolfes 


back in the office and so I have a brief status 


of where we are on some of these things. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Thank you. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: He responded directly with two 


issues that are being investigated. One is the 


-- the revised model for resuspension that Gene 


Rollins is working on, that should be, they 


believe, done in the next five weeks, so in 


order -- it would be sometime after that then 


in order to provide SC&A time to review it 


before the workgroup could really have a 

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substantive discussion. 


 The other issue he responded with respect to is 


the hot particle exposure issues, and where our 


contractors are -- are in the process of 


gathering information related to the reactor 


tests where the hot particles were really an 


issue from DOE and what information was 


available, so that's -- so they're not as far 


along and they don't have a predicted date for 


when that issue will have a proposed 


resolution. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Okay. Thank you very much, Stu. 


Anybody from the Board have a -- a comment or a 


question or anything? Arjun? Arjun's got one 


more. 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: Mr. Presley, there are a number 


of other major issues also. There was going to 


be, for instance, the model for reconstructing 


shallow doses up to 1966 because there are no 


records of shallow doses, so I -- I think there 


is a model for that that's supposed to be in 


the works. There are -- as you pointed out, 


there are about ten significant issues. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: I didn't hear anything -- I 


didn't hear anything about that, but I will see 

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what I can find out. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Okay. Anybody on the Board have 


anything? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you very much, Robert 


and working group, and I know this was a -- 


this one is one of those really extensive 


tasks. We appreciate the work that's gone into 


this. We talk a little more later. This --


this particular effort, in terms of our 


contractor, is -- has taken considerably more 


time and effort than we originally planned on 


and that will have some impact later -- 


actually I'm thinking of Rocky Flats when I 


said that, yeah, so I was -- I said that and I 


was thinking of Rocky Flats, so I withdraw that 


statement. But nonetheless, the statement 


about the good work you're doing still holds, 


so thank you very much. 


Now let's go to the next one, Lew. 


 DR. WADE: Next is Savannah River Site chaired 


by Mike Gibson; members Clawson, Griffon, 


Lockey. 


 MR. GIBSON: Okay. This -- this working 


group's going a little slower than what we had 


hoped, partially due to the fact that we're 

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having a little bit of difficulty getting 


information from DOE. On the one hand, the 


requests that NIOSH sent to DOE, they kind of 


overwhelmed them with information, more than 


asked for. And once NIOSH sifted through that 


information and got the pertinent data out of 


there, it was not all-inclusive. So Sam Glover 


I believe has been heading up the team for 


NIOSH and he's been working with DOE, a guy 


named Greg Lewis, and the one bit of 


information we needed was something to do with 


the data fault tree, which was never mentioned 


until that was brought up a second time, and 


now DOE claims there's classified information 


intermingled in with that data. So we're 


working on that issue, which Brad reminded me 


and that should not be an issue because Brad 


and Mark Griffon both on this subcommittee 


(sic) both have Q clearances, so hopefully we 


can get that resolved soon. But there was -- 


there's about 16 items that we had. There's 


about ten of them still open, each of them with 


some subsections. So between SC&A's staff, I 


think mainly headed up by Joe Fitzgerald and 


Sam -- and the rest of the staff, and Sam 

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Glover and the rest of the NIOSH staff, 


progress is being made but it's just going a 


little slower than what we thought. 


Any of the Board members or NIOSH or SC&A staff 


want to make any comments? 


 DR. ZIEMER: One, Mike. 


 DR. MELIUS: Just in the interest of 


disclosure, when we were doing the Hanford 


conference call -- which I'll report on later 


about the Hanford site profile -- got to 


talking about incidents and the definition of 


incidents and so forth, and so actually did get 


-- Bob Alvarez was on the call and we actually 


got in a discussion of not only a database from 


Savannah River on, you know, reported incidents 


there and -- and so forth, which I believe 


NIOSH has under review through their -- their 


contractor. It wasn't clear to me in the call 


as to sort of exactly how it -- what the 


connection was. I just wanted to make sure you 


were aware of that and that issue came up and 


so forth. Bob -- Bob Alvarez is the one that I 


think had pointed out the existence of that 


database. 


 DR. WADE: Next --

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 DR. ZIEMER: Next? 


 DR. WADE: -- Rocky Flats, ably chaired by Mark 


Griffon, with Gibson, Munn, Presley as members. 


 MR. GRIFFON: We -- you know, we had a 


workgroup meeting between the last Board 


meeting and now. We also had a couple 


technical phone calls after that workgroup 


meeting. And I think we're in a position -- I 


think we all want to be in a position where 


February we're -- we have everything pulled 


together and we're in a position that we can 


bring -- that SC&A can bring an evaluation 


report to the Board and that we should be in a 


position to hopefully vote on this. 


The -- there are several outstanding items -- 


I'll go through them in a quick fashion, not as 


detailed as we've previously done. Data 


completeness is the -- is the primary remaining 


action, and right now SC&A is reviewing 


individual radiation files for sort of two 


subsets: likely exposed workers or production 


workers, however we define that; and then a 


random selection of claimants' files. And this 


is really to answer a question that's been kind 


of ongoing in our deliberations about potential 

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data gaps in -- in -- in some of the radiation 


records, and in some cases it's not clear 


whether there's gaps where -- because an 


individual wasn't required to be on a 


monitoring program or whether there is actual 


missing data. So we want to get to the bottom 


of that, and I think -- I think we're close. 


This final sampling should do that. 


The second item is other radionuclides. The 


primary thing left there we've -- we've gone 


through several different radionuclides, but 


the primary one that we're focusing on now -- 


remaining action is on thorium. We still have 


some questions about thorium use. NIOSH is 


researching some more on some historical 


documents to get us a final determination on 


that. Also NIOSH is -- is -- is -- is to 


provide SC&A and the Board another sort of 


empirical model to demonstrate that their -- 


the model on the table now is actually a 


bounding approach. So we've got a couple of 


things going on thor-- on thorium, but that's ­

- I think that's the remaining item on the 


other radionuclides. 


And the third item is D&D workers, and on the 

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D&D workers -- again, the issue here was that 


they weren't in the original coworkers models. 


There was a question of whether the bioassay 


program continued in a similar fashion as it 


was for the earlier production years, and so we 


-- we pursued this because we wanted to see how 


NIOSH was handling reconstruction of D&D 


workers from the period of about '92 on in -- 


at the site. 


And right now where we stand, NIOSH is 


providing us additional information about the 


bioassay for the D&D period. I guess I'll 


leave it at that. I don't want to get into the 


details of that, but they're going to provide 


us additional information and they've also 


modified O-- OTIB-38, which is their coworker 


model for internal dose reconstruction to in-- 


to include those D&D periods, so that is -- is 


something new to -- to the workgroup and SC&A, 


as recently as what, last week I think. We 


just received an update on that TIB to include 


those D&D periods. So we still have to look 


at that, but that's the outstanding actions on 


that. 


The fourth item that we've -- of -- of these 

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remaining action items, the logbook analysis. 


We -- in -- in the course of our deliberations, 


again, we've -- we've gone back to original 


logbook records for purposes of -- of 


validation -- originally validation of the 


database. To make a long story short, now 


we're -- we're really using the logbooks to 


validate that the indiviation (sic) rad-- 


radiation files are complete. So NI-- NIOSH 


did a comparison of the logbook records versus 


the individual radiation records and provided 


that report to the workgroup and SC&A, and 


SC&A's in the process of reviewing that and I 


think they're going to give us a -- a product, 


but they're also incorporating it -- they're -- 


they're in the process of drafting their final 


evaluation report, too. So they're including 


that all into their final evaluation report. 


1969 data gap is another question we've been 


pursuing. This is an issue that came up sort 


of on the analysis of the database records, and 


SC&A reviewed these records and noticed that 


there was an odd fluctuation in -- in that time 


period, '69 to '70 or -- or something like 


that, that -- that detail's not important for 

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this meeting, but in pursuing that they -- they 


-- NIOSH provided a monthly report and -- and 


they've posted all these -- I think they're 


monthly or quarterly reports -- health physics 


reports on the O drive now, and basically they 


-- their explanation of this increase in the 


amount of zeroes I believe is -- is why we -- 


we saw this sort of odd trend in the data. And 


the explanation is based on this memo in 1969 


which -- which indicates that there was a 


change in policy at that time -- or even though 


people were badged, they -- they all had badges 


incorporated into their security badge, they 


made a policy decision at that time not to read 


out the badges for the people that were on 


quarterly programs. For the likely -- less 


likely to be exposed individuals, they made a 


decision not to read those badges out, so that 


would have increased the zeroes. The -- the 


question that we're still wrestling with is -- 


this was a policy change clearly stated in this 


monthly progress report, but it's not clear if 


it was a trend from then till the next change, 


which was in the '80s I think, or -- or if it 


was a -- you know, something that was just done 

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for a short time period and we're -- we're 


trying to get a handle on that. And that --


that could be really important in reviewing the 


completeness of the records. Obviously, too, 


it has other implications, so this is kind of 


an important thing to get to the bottom of. 


NIOSH is pursuing further information on the 


badging practices. 


The sixth item, there's still some neutron 


dosimetry questions. We're -- I think we're 


close to resolving some issues on how neutron 


doses are reconstructed. We still have some 


remaining questions on neutron-to-photon 


ratios, how they were established and applied, 


and the -- the TIB-58 document, but those are 


the remaining items. The actions haven't 


changed, we're just waiting for final products 


from NIOSH on these -- on these questions. 


The seventh item is a super S plutonium 


question, and the only remaining item -- and 


this has been a remaining item for a while -- 


is we -- we've -- SC&A, along with the 


workgroup of -- have asked for the files of the 


-- the other individuals in the 1965 fire that 


were not used in the TIB-49, I think it is -- 

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TIB-49 model. The TIB-49 model is an empirical 


model for how to handle super S, and it's based 


on -- not all 1965 fire-related individuals, 


but also some other known super S intakes, and 


I think it's seven or eight individuals. And 


the question was, you know, does -- is it 


bounding of all these 19 or 20 others that were 


involved in the fire. We've yet to receive the 


-- the radiation files on those and there's a 


little bit of a -- I think it's a matter of a 


DOE office has actually changed locations so 


the records were packaged up and they're in -- 


you know, so there's a little delay on that -- 


in that standpoint, but otherwise I think the 


model itself -- SC&A has -- has accepted the 


model itself, so it's a matter of just 


demonstrating that we're comfortable that it's 


bounding. 


Last two items, safety concerns, these were 


some safety concern documents that NIOSH and 


SC&A reviewed. Again, this was mainly focused 


on questions around the dosimetry program 


around the question that the petitioners have 


raised about no data available. Several of 


these other items were captured within this 

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safety concerns item and the data integrity 


item, which is the next item. Both of those 


NIOSH has submitted a report to the workgroup. 


SC&A I think is quite far along on their review 


of these. I think they've actually given us a 


draft on the safety concerns review. And in 


both cases they're going to give us separate 


drafts, but also incorporate it -- they're in 


the process of incorporating it in their final 


evaluation report. 


So I -- I think -- you know, the upshot is, I 


think we're far along the -- the primary 


action. The most time-consuming action that 


remains clearly is this data completeness 


question, but we -- we do believe and we -- we 


discussed this yesterday, we -- you know, we do 


believe NIOSH and SC&A think that we're 


probably on track to -- to get -- we have a 


January 9th workgroup meeting scheduled, and 


then we're hoping to be in a position to -- to 


bring this to the full Board on -- in the 


February meeting in Denver. 


And that's all I have for now. Other workgroup 


members? 


 MS. MUNN: My only comment, Mark, is that, as 

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the Board knows, the very close scrutiny that's 


being given to each item in our original matrix 


has caused our deliberations to expand 


considerably. And it's now difficult for me -- 


I don't know whether -- I'm sure it is for the 


Board members, and I think the other working 


group members have a hard time trying to keep 


in mind the list that we just went through, as 


opposed to the original matrix. It's hard to 


fit all of it together. It would be very 


helpful to me, before our next meeting, if we 


could have your list of items that you just 


went through, Mark, so that -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 MS. MUNN: -- we can be eq-- we can either 


relate or not relate them to original matrix 


items, but --


 MR. GRIFFON: I -- I did -- I did provide -- 


and I don't know if I sent this to the entire 


Board or just the workgroup, but the 11/6 


meeting -- a -- a few days after that I sent -- 


at your request --


 MS. MUNN: Yes. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- actually, Wanda, I sent -- 


 MS. MUNN: Yeah. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: -- a summary list. 


 MS. MUNN: Yeah, a summary list. 


 MR. GRIFFON: It's changed a little bit since 


then. I will update that. 


 MS. MUNN: And that's where I am -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: I also want to update the full 


matrix 'cause I want to reflect back to that 


and it's just this -- putting this list 


together -- in putting this list together, it 


was a little easier than me updating the 


matrix, it -- time-- time-wise, right now. 


 MS. MUNN: It's terribly time-consuming -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 MS. MUNN: -- and I don't whether we'll even 


get that or not before January -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: But I will -- I do want to get a 


 MS. MUNN: -- but a -- a tie-in to the matrix I 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I do want to do a --


 MS. MUNN: -- believe is helpful. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- a final update for the matrix 


and well in advance of the January meeting I'll 


get that out to people. 


 MS. MUNN: That's great. Really appreciate 

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that. 


 MR. GRIFFON: For our Christmas presents and -- 


 MS. MUNN: Thanks ever so. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- look for it. 


 MS. MUNN: Ribbon, please. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Melius has a --


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, two comments. As -- as 


usual, I agree with Wanda. It would be very 


helpful I think certainly for us Board members 


who've not been as involved in this workgroup 


and -- to have been periodically updated -- 


sort of have the updated list of issues, and if 


you can, a little glossary or cover memo that 


would sort of help us to focus on what we need 


to -- need to focus on. I mean I -- you know, 


given the -- you know, this is a -- some sense 


a potentially huge SEC. It's a difficult site 


for various reason, given its history and so 


forth, so I -- I think everyone understands why 


it's taken so long and so much effort involved 


and so forth, but if we're going to be able to 


make progress in -- at the February meeting 


it's a full Board I think you -- the more help 


you can give us, the better. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Yes, I -- I certainly agree. 


I'll -- I'll distribute these to all Board 


members 'cause as we get closer to full 


deliberations I think we need everyone more in 


the loop. I was trying to avoid circulating 


all the details, you know, all along 'cause it 


would be too much -- yeah, yeah, I will do 


that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And let me add that my previous 


comment now applies. This -- this group -- and 


by this, I mean this workgroup plus SC&A and 


NIOSH have put considerable effort into this 


particular site review, and we really 


appreciate the work that's been done. As you 


point out, there are a number of key issues, 


each of which is fairly complex. So we 


appreciate the work this workgroup has done 


partic-- on this particular site. 


 DR. WADE: If I may ask a question of -- of 


Mark and Paul just lead-- leading up to the 


February meeting. Is it the expectation that 


the workgroup would bring a recommendation to 


the Board, or would the workgroup make a report 


to the Board and then the Board would form its 


own decision? We've not been through this 

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before so I was just -- I think it might be 


worth some thought as to how we're going to 


proceed more formally. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I'm -- I'm -- I'm thinking 


-- I -- I'm just worried -- I am worried about 


the time line. I think we'll be in a place 


where we can bring a report to the Board. I 


don't know how we -- how we did this for Y-12, 


Lew. Do you recall? It's been a while. 


 DR. WADE: I think it basically -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: I don't --


 DR. WADE: I think it was a report, and then 


the Board --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. WADE: -- deliberated and voted. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think -- I think -- I -- 


I don't know, unless directed otherwise, I 


think we'd stick to that format where we 


reported, but -- but in the report I think 


we're going to highlight where there's, you 


know, definitive agreement or -- or disagre-- 


you know, if there's any remaining questions or 


-- or disagreement, we'll certainly highlight 


those. But I think we'll -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: I -- I think it will be --

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 MR. GRIFFON: -- report rather than -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- it will be important if there 


are issues, particularly issues where you 


haven't come to closure, that you identify 


those. And particularly cases where you're 


asking the Board to, for example, make a 


decision, which way do you want to go on 


something or other where there perhaps is not 


closure. If -- it seems to me that if the 


workgroup has particular issues that they would 


like to recommend that the Board take action 


on, then that would be helpful, too. 


Other com-- yeah, Jim, you have a comment, too? 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, just two comments. One is 


the -- I think it's important we leave enough 


time on the agenda 'cause I think the most 


important thing at this meeting is sort of the 


full Board, you know, come to grips with sort 


of the status -- where issues are and so forth, 


and then at least we -- best we can, come to a 


consensus on what are the next -- next steps 


going forward and now -- again, if -- if they 


can come with a recommendation, fine. But I 


think it's more important that we leave enough 


time that we -- we -- we sort of, you know, as 

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a Board, become familiar with the issues and 


come to some idea on how to go forward. It may 


be further work by the workgroup, it may be -- 


on certain issues, you know, there's lots of 


possibilities, but -- but I just think we need 


to spend time as -- as a Board doing so. 


 DR. WADE: Given that, and then given the 


tremendous amount of effort that's gone into 


it, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that we 


might want to schedule a telephone call of the 


Board a week before the face-to-face Board 


meeting where this information could be walked 


through and the Board would have it in their 


hands and be in a position to completely 


understand what they have. 


 DR. MELIUS: I -- I don't know, I would -- I'm 


not sure if a conference call's the best way to 


handle the information. A lot of it needs to 


be displayed, I think, and -- and I think sort 


of face-to-face and spending time -- I think 


what's key that the right people from NIOSH and 


their contractor, from SC-- SCA be there, but I 


-- I'd much rather have, at least personally, 


have the information to read. I just don't 


think there's enough time on a conference call 

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and enough chance and -- not -- you know, the 


opportunity to, you know, talk at the break and 


-- about something we don't understand. I -- I 


think we just have to spend the time at the 


meeting and -- and doing it. I think getting 


the information ahead of time, though, the 


report, is -- is critical. 


 DR. WADE: Okay, understand. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Any other comments on that issue? 


I mean I -- I would tend to agree that a report 


like this is -- be very difficult to sort of do 


anything by phone other than to outline what's 


in it and just say here -- you know, here it 


is. But I'm not sure that that would be 


necessary. And certainly when we go through 


it, even with the Board members, I think this 


is a Denver meeting we're talking about anyway, 


so we want to be sure that all of these things 


are -- are sort of aired in the framework of 


the constituents there who are the -- the Rocky 


Flats workers, so... 


 DR. WADE: The only -- the only suggest-- the 


only point to my suggestion was just to clarify 


a meeting so that everyone would know what they 


had. Because again, I think we want to go into 

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the Denver meeting prepared to deliberate and 


not go through the process of understanding 


what's in front of us. But I think at a 


minimum we want to get the materials to the 


Board members well before so they can read, 


study, and be prepared to -- to move towards a 


decision. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, we -- we'll work with that. 


I know that, you know, as we look at this where 


the timeline does close in on you quickly, so I 


know, you know, we -- we've already -- we've 


got a January 9 meeting scheduled and -- and 


hopefully all these actions on our list now 


will be complete by then. That's -- that's 


ambitious, though, on a few of them, I think, 


so --


 DR. ZIEMER: You may not be at closure on every 


item. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Well, we -- we -- you know, we 


hope and we -- you know, I just don't know how 


I want to make -- you know, I guess we -- we 


need at least to get to the Board a -- a week 


before the full meeting -- I'm looking at Joe 


'cause I'm thinking, calculating back on this 


time line, that we also have to build in for 

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this data completeness question the report that 


SC&A generates has to be run by Emily Howell's 


office for Privacy Act concerns review before 


it can be distributed, so there's at least a 


week delay probably in there we -- we -- we've 


said. So you know, calculating back, I just -- 


you know, I -- I think we'll try our best to 


get all materials to the Board a week before 


the Denver meeting, and if we -- we -- you 


know, I wouldn't be against a phone call just 


to explain, you know, sort of what the pieces 


are so that all Board members can re-- 'cause 


there is a -- there is a lot of -- of -- a lot 


-- a lot of -- there's quite a bit of volume, 


but also some very technical issues that, you 


know... 


 DR. ZIEMER: It may be, Lew, that we could 


leave that --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- to the Board's discretion if 


Mark -- or the workgroup's discretion if Mark 


felt like they wanted to have that opportunity 


to sort of explain what the package contained. 


We could certainly schedule that and -- 


 DR. WADE: Maybe even an hour just to say 

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here's what you have and define it, but it's -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: I mean --


 DR. WADE: -- not necessary. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- we -- I can also do the -- the 


best I can in the e-mail, you know, in 


describing what's com-- you know, what these 


things are and not just sending here's an 


attachment, you know. I'll try to --


 DR. WADE: I just wouldn't want us to come to 


the Board meeting where we're intending to 


deliberate, and have those kind of clarifying 


issues then raised and then that then push it 


back another --


 MR. GRIFFON: I agree. Yeah, yeah. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I just want to reiterate 


something that Mark raised earlier, that we -- 


as we've already done with safety concerns, 


some of the other issues, we're going to send 


those sections forward to the Board in advance, 


just so you don't get a 300-page document a 


week before, two weeks before the meeting. So 


we'll give you those pieces -- and some of 


these are pretty voluminous. Safety concerns 


itself is almost 80, 90 pages by itself, so 


these separate sections we'll forward over the 

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next couple of weeks and you'll have them. And 


so it's not going to be just one slug. You'll 


have the installments before the main package 


arrives, but this will be a lengthy report. 


And to some extent I think just trying to 


handle the logistics of providing you the 


information and distilling it so you have a 


road map, as I've heard mentioned, I think 


that's going to be our challenge to make it 


easier for you to understand what these issues 


are and, again, which ones bear your attention 


and certainly not distract you on issues that 


we've come to closure with NIOSH on, so we'll 


be very clear on that. 


 DR. WADE: Maybe just a brief discussion on 


some Privacy Act issues 'cause it might come 


up. As -- as Joe and -- and Mark have 


mentioned, some of the materials that -- that 


are being looked at relative to data 


completeness really have to be reviewed to see 


if there are Privac-- Privacy Act information 


in them and therefore they'll go to Emily's 


office and she'll coordinate that review. It's 


possible, given the tight time frames, that it 


might be necessary to share some of that 

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information with Board members before it's 


scrubbed, and we can do that. If you get that, 


it'll be clearly marked and stamped that this 


could contain Privacy Act information and 


you're really not to make it public. It's our 


hope not to do that, but if we come to a 


situation where we're down to a very tight time 


line, it's possible you might see some 


information of that type. 


 MR. GRIFFON: I just want to be -- I think we 


should be clear on this 'cause I think in the 


meeting in -- in Cincinnati we -- I committed 


that -- that -- and SC&A committed that before 


releasing this report on completeness we would 


-- they wouldn't release it before they sent it 


through Emily's office, so I just want to make 


sure we don't violate an agreement that SC&A 


made, you know, in -- in doing -- expediting 


this. 


 DR. WADE: The Board can see information that 


might contain Privacy Act information, they 


just can't share it beyond the Board. 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: Just -- just kind of to have 


some contingency plan, in the first round when 


we had the detailed information from the claims 

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but raised some concerns, we had also prepared 


a summary memo where all the information was 


collapsed and there was -- there was no 


claimant information. It was collective 


information for 12 workers. I'd like to send 


Ms. Howell that memo, just to see whether that 


format is okay and at least I think that much 


could be provided publicly, even if there are 


delays. We'll try to get everything done by 


the Board -- by the Board meeting, but at least 


to prepare a contingency plan so the Board has 


the data on the essential things, ev-- even if 


we can't get through the Privacy Act issues. 


don't know if that would be acceptable. 


 MS. HOWELL: That's fine, and both Lew and Mark 


are correct. We do want to scrub these things 


as much as possible, but the Board can see 


them. You all are covered by the Privacy Act, 


but again, we're going to have to have 


everything clearly marked and please do not 


share anything that you're receiving further. 


We will, you know, resend the scrubbed matters 


if we're not able to scrub them before we send 


them to you. 


The other thing is that, you know, we can all 


I 
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work together to make sure that we get things 


in a piecemeal fashion, if need be. If -- if 


there are documents that SC&A has finished that 


-- but not the, you know, entirety of what it 


is that they want to pass to the working group 


and the Board, then they can go ahead and get 


us those as soon as possible so that we can be 


working on them and we'll make every effort to 


get things done so that the Board has enough 


time to review them prior to that meeting. 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, in -- in -- if -- if Ms. 


Howell's willing to look at sort of unpolished 


work or spreadsheets, which really last time 


were at the core of the concerns, what -- we 


have a rough draft of the spreadsheet around 


the highly exposed workers that I can finish 


somewhat this week and early next week and 


maybe send you that so we would know the format 


and what you're scrubbing and sort of ease the 


process for the work we haven't done yet, if 


that would be acceptable. 


 MS. HOWELL: We can talk more about that. My 


concern is just that we do need to see the 


final copies of anything that's going forward. 


I don't want to be reviewing rough drafts that 

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then have additional changes made to them and 


then go public without our office having gone 


through the final copies that are made public. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And you can work that out with -- 


and Mark -- work out the details of that. 


 Any further comments for this workgroup, or 


questions? 


 (No responses) 


Thank you very much. Next? 


 DR. WADE: Next is the workgroup on Chapman 


Valve SEC chaired by Dr. Poston; members 


Griffon, Clawson, Roessler and Gibson. Dr. 


Poston is not with us. Dr. Poston, are you on 


the phone? 


 (No response) 


Dr. Poston on the phone? 


 (No response) 


I don't know if anyone on the workgroup can 


report. I don't believe the workgroup has met. 


 MR. GRIFFON: No, we -- no, we -- we didn't 


have a meeting. I mean I can give a brief 


update of what I know. I think SC&A is close 


to finishing their review -- have you submitted 


a draft, though, or... I -- I don't think I've 


seen a draft report, but... 

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 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, Dr. Mauro is the 


principal author of that and I'm principal 


reviewer. We have submitted a working paper -- 


which is really more than a working paper; it's 


kind of -- pretty much a report -- for the 


working group's consideration a few days before 


this meeting. Dr. Poston has -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Oh. 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- it. I think the rest of the 


working group also has it. Are you --


 MR. GRIFFON: I -- I don't -- I -- I've got a 


lot of data lately so I may -- 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: I believe you should -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- I may have received it, I'm 


not sure. 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: I believe you should have it, 


Dr. (sic) Griffon. 


 MR. GRIFFON: At any way -- at any rate -- 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: So the -- the interviews are 


finished with the petitioners. They are 


currently reviewing the interviews so we do not 


have a final version of the interviews approved 


by the interviewees. That may take some time, 


but we've already taken into account what 


they've said. The report is -- is pretty close 

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to complete for working group review. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, just in between -- from the 


last meeting till now, I think the -- the 


primary thing -- actions that have happened is 


that we did -- actually I requested some of the 


data be posted on the O drive, some of NIOSH's 


analysis files. They were posted. We -- we --


I should say SC&A conducted interviews out in 


Massachusetts near the Chapman Valve site area 


and I think John Poston attended that, as well 


as NIOSH -- right? Is that correct? So --


yeah, so they -- they did some final interviews 


there I think and basically have -- have 


completed this draft write-up, so I think we're 


-- you know, we're -- but we haven't had a 


workgroup meeting yet to -- to discuss it, but 


I think the -- the pieces are there, so... 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Questions on Chapman? 


 (No responses) 


Okay, let's proceed. 


 DR. WADE: Next is the workgroup on SEC issues, 


paren, including the 250-day issue, chaired by 


Dr. Melius; members Ziemer, Roessler, Griffon. 


 DR. MELIUS: You want me to report, and Arjun, 


you want to come up and get miked and we'll do 

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the high road/low road. He can do the high 


road and I'll do the low road here -- 


presentation. I knew Wanda would like that. 


High road/low road, right. 


The 200-- the -- our workgroup is focused 


mainly on the 250-day issue, or less than 250­

day issue, and we had a meeting in November. 


The workgroup is myself, Mark Griffon, Paul 


Ziemer and Gen Roessler, who -- we had a 


meeting in -- in Cincinnati and with SC&A and 


NIOSH there. We met for about a half a day. 


SC&A had presented us a couple of working 


papers. Initially what we were trying to do is 


focus on how do we determine incidents that -- 


that might qualify under the current SEC 


regulation for being, you know, significant 


exposures so less than 250 days and SC&A did 


some background work for us looking at the 


range and -- of reported criticality incidents, 


prepared a report for us on that. I think we 


had talked about it briefly at the last full 


meeting we had. We reviewed that. 


We also sort of generally brainstormed about 


how we might approach the issue and what to do. 


We decided to do most of our focus on Nevada 

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Test Site because that was sort of the most 


immediate concern, and really the three sites 


where we have sort of immediate issues with are 


Nevada Test Site, Pacific Proving Ground and 


then the Ames Laboratory in -- in Iowa. Now 


Ames is a little bit different, and so decided 


we'd try to deal with the Test Sites first. 


And we developed out of our discussions -- and 


as I said, they were -- but basically we -- I 


won't say rejected, but decided not to pursue a 


sort of a quantitative approach as -- as 


proposed by SC&A in their report, but rather 


try to come up with a way of -- a number of 


factors that one might use in evaluating 


incidents and determining whether they were, 


you know, significant and, you know, might lead 


to exposures that would endanger health and not 


be able to be reconstructed in some way. 


So let me turn to -- over to Arjun for a second 


'cause I think he has some slides on -- on some 


of the factors that we discussed, and then I'll 


sort of tell you what our next steps are and -- 


and plans are. 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, this is the -- this is 


the part of the rule from which all the factors 

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come and all of you know it. I just -- I have 


it there for the record. It involves high 


exposures, incidents, failure of radiological 


controls for workers to be included if they 


have less than 250 days of employment at 


eligible sites. And so the broad criteria are 


exposure during an incident potential for 


exceptionally high dose, which was defined as 


similar to criticality accidents, and failure 


of radiation protection controls. 


 And the overall idea is that there should be an 


inability to estimate dose arising from an 


incident. This was the basic thrust of the 


discussion during the working group meeting, as 


we understood it. 


There is the problem of defining incidents in 


the absence of monitoring 'cause the absence of 


monitoring is required, because if you have 


monitoring you can reconstruct the dose and 


then you don't need to be included in the SEC. 


We did an evaluation of criticality doses. It 


was a summary of work that had already been 


done at Los Alamos. I believe that this paper 


was distributed. Anyway, it'll be part of our 


-- our report to you. And we also summarized 

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this for the purpose of extracting information 


for -- for this report. But unfortunately, 


critica-- or fortunately, criticality doses are 


from very low to very high, fraction of a rem 


to 10,000 rem or more, and so it doesn't help 


in defining exceptionally high exposures, and 


so we have the problem of defining 


exceptionally high exposures. And as Dr. 


Melius mentioned, instead of a quantitative 


criterion, it was kind of a brainstorming 


session trying to have examples of incidents 


and factors. So criticality accidents, an 


explosion in an ion-exchange column, 


significant medical intervention due to 


radiological exposures, explosion with 


potential for high intake through a wound, 


substantial fires like that at Rocky Flats or 


the thorium drum fires at Fernald. So that 


actually brings in the internal intakes into 


the ambit of the less than 250 days, and that 


was the one major issue on which we did develop 


some kind of understanding between NIOSH and 


the working group members and us, because this 


was a major question for us before that 


meeting, is that if there were high intakes 

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that were unmonitored during a failure of 


radiological controls, this would be considered 


the equivalent of an incident. So inadequate 


radiological controls. A -- a planned nuclear 


explosion would not be an incident, but an 


unplanned criticality such as the one that 


appears to have occurred during one of the 


safety tests at NTS would be considered an 


incident. 


And so here are some examples, incident with 


non-- it should say non-stochastic effects, I'm 


sorry -- non-stochastic effects, sorry. So 


levels -- levels of -- various level -- you can 


measure things down to quite low levels of 


radiation these days, so there was some kind of 


debate as to whether there was a quantitative ­

- there was agreement that 25 to 50 rad would 


produce white blood cell counts that would be 


easily detectable. I thought that that level 


was ten rad, but there was not agreement on 


that. Was chelation therapy administered. 


High dose rate in the context of a failure of 


radiological controls. This was discussed and 


Dr. Ziemer pointed out that there are high dose 


rates during planned exposure times, like 

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repairs, and those would be excluded. 


Then there are some internal exposure examples, 


medical evidence of toxicity of high levels of 


exposure, high intake -- a couple of examples 


from Fernald during very dirty maintenance 


operations, and exposures due to blowouts of 


the reduction -- in the reduction furnaces. We 


are currently evaluating that for the Ames 


example, which will also be part of our report. 


Fighting the fires that appear to have occurred 


fairly frequently at -- at Ames, for instance; 


we're also evaluating that. 


So the -- the major question in my mind, which 


I passed on to Dr. Melius, is if we're not 


going to have a -- some kind of an overall 


definition of exposure potential to include 


everybody who had less than 250 days, but 


define smaller groups who were part of 


incidents, and incidents had to be unmonitored, 


then you have a problem that to establish an 


incident you really need monitoring. But you 


cannot es-- you know, you have -- you have -- 


if you have monitoring, then there's no need to 


discuss an SEC. Then you can just calculate 


the dose. So it seems a little bit like a 

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catch-22 situation and I'm a little puzzled as 


to how we establish this high exposure 


potential and an incidents and define groups 


with less than 250 days. That's sort of been 


my major question that has arisen. 


The other -- the other -- so far as -- so far 


as the -- actually working out the examples and 


examining the data and so on, we're pretty much 


well along for Nevada Test Site and Ames, and 


we're not started on Pacific Proving Grounds as 


yet. 


 DR. MELIUS: So -- so -- so Arjun keeps sending 


me e-mails saying how are we going to figure 


this out, and I tell him just don't worry, just 


-- we'll keep working. We'll figure out 


something. So -- so our -- our next step is to 


examine a number of possible incidents, I guess 


that we would call them, from Nevada Test Site 


to go through the available information on them 


and see if -- if we can, as a workgroup, come 


to an agreement on the -- yes, these -- these 


would qualify as being, you know, significant 


exposures, not be able to rec-- reconstruct 


dose with sufficient accuracy, but would en-- 


would endanger health in less than a 250-day -- 

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day period. So our plan is I believe that SC&A 


is gathering the information on -- on a number 


of incidents and we were planning to meet again 


in the middle of January to -- to review this 


and plan to have a -- at least an update and -- 


or report back to the Board for the February 


meeting. So Paul, Gen -- I guess Gen has 


(unintelligible). 


DR. ROESSLER: Yeah, thanks, Jim and Arjun. 


Arjun, I think it would be helpful to the 


working group to have a copy of what you put 


together. That really summarized I think what 


-- what we did at the meeting. 


I would like to comment on that, though, is 


that what you presented were talking points. 


don't think that in any way the work-- all 


members of the working group necessarily agree 


that that's the route we're going. I think the 


one thing that we probably have some discussion 


-- we should have discussion on is what do we 


mean by significant exposures, and you kind of 


implied something and I don't think we all 


agree on that. But you're right on this major 


question. We're going to have to address that. 


And my final thing is a question to Jim. Do 


I 
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you have a meeting date? 


 DR. MELIUS: We're -- I should hopefully have 


it by the end of today today. 


DR. ROESSLER: Good. 


 DR. MELIUS: Can I just respond to -- is -- one 


is I -- actually Arjun and I talked about 


distributing the reports. I wanted to wait 


till after this meeting 'cause I was afraid if 


we sent the reports out we'd scare the other 


Board members and ask -- you know, trying to 


figure out what the hell were we doing and is 


this what we concluded or -- or whatever, and 


so I thought it was better if we explained and 


then we'll submit -- I -- I think the reports 


were ver-- very helpful in terms of how to 


think about this in -- in different ways and so 


we will -- we will get those around. 


The other thing I -- since Bob and I are 


sitting next to each other, he and I have been 


talking and -- with the Nevada Test Site group 


and we certainly want to involve him and that 


group in our discussions on -- on the Nevada 


Test Site in particular. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And I mi-- I might add to this 


discussion also, I don't think we -- in fact, 

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Arjun pointed out we didn't really agree on 


what constitutes a high or significant dose, 


unless -- unless you're at the ends of those. 


It's always easy to agree on what is really low 


and what's really high, and -- and we 


understand if -- if there's clear evidence of ­

- of short-term biological effects from -- or 


non-stochastic effects, that that probably was 


a high dose. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: It's when you get down to sort of 


the transition point between where you have 


pure stochastic events and -- and maybe some 


non-stochastic that the debate arises. But 


these are issues I think the working group will 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- will struggle with, so we don't 


have those answers yet. 


Wanda? 


 MS. MUNN: I would request that the slides that 


we've just seen be available to all of the 


Board and not just the working group because 


these do help us zero in on -- especially for 


those of us who are involved with what's going 

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on with NTS. This is really key to some of the 


issues that we have to deal with, as well. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, right. 


 MS. MUNN: So please -- please do make them 


available. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, both workgroups could 


benefit from that summary, both the NTS 


workgroup and the 250-day workgroup -- from 


your summary slides. 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: Should -- should I send these 


slides out to the working -- the whole Board or 


the work--


 DR. MELIUS: The whole Board, yeah. 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: Should I send them out to the 


whole Board? 


 DR. MELIUS: To the Board and -- the reports 


and everything, yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: That pretty much covers the whole 


Board anyway, between the two workgroups. But 


yeah, that would be good. 


 MR. CLAWSON: With the correction. 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Robert, do you have an additional 


comment? 


 MR. PRESLEY: Question. The 250-day study I 

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thought was going to be for areas where people 


would have been on-site for an extended period 


of time. If we start going by site and 


incident, would that not be covered or should 


that have been covered in the other site 


profiles for places that did have incidents? 


think here we're -- we might be -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, we --


 MR. PRESLEY: -- studying this thing twice. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- we have -- we have Pete here 


this morning can help interpret this. My 


understanding was, for example, on places like 


the Pacific Proving Grounds, if someone's 


living there 24/7, the Labor Department 


automatically takes that into consideration. 


They use a -- what you might call a weighted 


250-day thing. 


We also -- the -- the short-term incidents are 


al-- also already covered in the legislation. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Right. Uh-huh. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And so we've been more struggling 


with what are those. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. You know, our focus is -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: So -- so in a sense, I think you'd 


have to say we've moved away from the issue of 


I 
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the 250-day since we've found that that's sort 


of accounted for in -- if it's an issue of 


eight-hour days versus 24-hour days, and we've 


moved -- seem to have moved toward trying to 


figure out what we mean -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, we --

 DR. ZIEMER: -- by an incident. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, let me ju-- we -- we're not 

focusing on well, if you were there for six 


months, 180 -- you know, whatever the -- you 


know, that adjustment. It's more the issue of 


-- of can we -- how do we define incidents 


where -- was -- those cannot be reconstructed 


with sufficient accuracy, so they quali-- so 


it's an SEC qualification issue. They qualify 


on the first point. Second point is they 


qualify on health endangerment. The health 


endangerment is 250 days, and that may be 


adjusted -- the Department of Labor has a way 


of doing that for -- for people that, you know, 


live on the island or -- or whatever, spend 


extended periods of time. But we're really 


focusing on the health endangerment for less 


than 250 days, but we're really talking about 


relatively short-term exposures -- hours or 

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minutes or what-- I mean that -- where -- where 


health would be endangered -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: If you were present during some, 


quote, incident --


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and what -- what constitutes 


that incident. 


 DR. MELIUS: Right. Now -- now I think there's 


a broader question that was the overarching 


science and -- I forget how we renamed it 


yesterday already -- issue, which is sort of 


how to deal with various different types of 


incidents. Not all those are going to qual-- 


qualify in terms of SECs, and that is issues 


related to how do you identify incidents, how 


are they -- how are they -- were they kept 


track of in various different facilities, 


definitions of those may change over time. But 


our -- our focus is the SEC qualification and 


so it's not the whole gamut of -- of every 


incident at each facility. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Pete, did you want to speak to 

that issue? Are we interpreting that 

correctly? 

 MR. TURCIC: Yeah, you're -- you're 
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interpreting it correct, that's exactly what we 


do at Nevada Test Site and Pacific Proving 


Grounds. We adjust if they were there around 


the clock. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Brad? 


 MR. CLAWSON: I -- I guess I was a little bit 


confused because I know on the Nevada Test Site 


that was part of our issue because some of our 


claimants that we've seen come in, come in for 


four or five days and they're there, then left. 


And the 250 days was part of the issue that I 


understood. So I guess I was a little bit 


amazed at which way we were going there, so I 


guess I ought to ask Bob, are we still having 


trouble with the time frames then for these 


people, for these claimants? 


 MR. PRESLEY: I don't think so, not if Pete's 


doing the -- the 80-day thing. I -- you know, 


if that's being done -- 


 MR. TURCIC: That's being done. 


 MR. PRESLEY: -- I don't see where we have a 


problem with the 250-day then. 


 MR. TURCIC: If -- if somebody -- for example, 


Bob, if somebody was there for five days and 


they were there around the clock, that's 

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equivalent to 15 days. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Right. Now what if you've got a 


person that -- we have -- we have people from 


Los Alamos and Livermore and -- and EG&G and 


everybody that was out at the Test Site, and we 


would go out there and spend maybe a week prior 


to the test, the test, and then go home. Or 


they would be out there for a week at this test 


and then it might be another month, they would 


be out there for another week or two and, you 


know, we shot somewhere in the neighborhood of 


about 50 a year or more, which -- 


 MR. TURCIC: We -- we would just continually 


add those up --


 MR. PRESLEY: Okay. 


 MR. TURCIC: -- and --


 MR. PRESLEY: Then I don't --


 MR. TURCIC: -- for -- for each time period, if 


you were there around the clock, it's, you 


know, three times whatever the -- 


 MR. PRESLEY: If you're doing that, I don't see 


 MR. TURCIC: Yeah. 


 MR. PRESLEY: -- a 250-day problem with the NTS 

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 MR. CLAWSON: But that's got -- that's got to 


be within one year. Correct? According to the 


 MR. TURCIC: No. 


 MR. PRESLEY: No, huh-uh, that's --


 MR. CLAWSON: Okay. 


 MR. PRESLEY: -- that is --


 DR. ZIEMER: No. 


 MR. PRESLEY: -- that is for --


 DR. ZIEMER: That's aggre-- aggregate, is it 


not? 


 MR. PRESLEY: Right, aggregate at -- from the ­

- for the SEC petition. 


 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, that's what I wanted to 


make sure. 


 MR. PRESLEY: As I understand it. The -- okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, any further questions on 


this -- for this workgroup? 


 (No responses) 


Okay, let's proceed. 


 DR. WADE: Next we have the workgroup to review 


SEC petitions that did not qualify, chaired by 


Dr. Lockey; members Roessler, Melius, Clawson, 


Munn. 


 DR. LOCKEY: We met in -- November 9th in 

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Cincinnati and all members of the working group 


were there. There were -- NIOSH was there, of 


course, and there were 29 SEC petitions that 


were available and -- for us to review. And we 


were able, over a six-hour period of time, to 


get through approximately two-thirds of those ­

- those folders. 


We had -- I'd sent out to members of the 


working group a draft findings from that. 


They're not finalized as yet, but overall what 


we found was that -- that the process that 


NIOSH was following in regard to their SEC 


petitions review were -- were according to the 


final rule and were well-documented in these 


folders. It reflected that the legislation was 


being followed in relationship to the review 


process. 


We also felt that NIOSH, particularly in their 


phone consultations with the petitioners, were 


-- were -- were very helpful and very friendly 


and very forthright in -- in what they were -- 


how they were trying to guide the petitioners 


through the process. 


We did have some recommendations to try to make 


it more user-friendly -- and again, these are 

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just preliminary recommendations that we -- 


probably finalized at our next -- our next 


meeting. One, that we thought that NIOSH 


should consider actually auditing their 


audience that they're serving to see if there's 


recognition of the availability of the SEC 


petition process and whether the audience has 


knowledge as to how they have to access that 


process. In other words, is NIOSH -- their -- 


their audience is the -- the people worked in 


this industry and is the audience aware of this 


process and how to access the process. They 


should do some type of audit to see if that's 


actually taking place. 


It was also suggested that -- when NIOSH finds 


a potential deficiency in the petition, the 


petitioner gets a letter from NIOSH outlining 


the potential deficiencies and then the 


petitioner has 30 days to respond. And we felt 


that there actually should be a second phone 


consultation after that letter goes out and the 


second phone consultation should take place 


approximately ten days before that 30-day 


period expires. In that phone consultation the 


NIOSH representative can determine whether 

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progress is being made to correct any 


deficiencies, and if there is progress being 


made, perhaps another 30-day extension can be 


provided to allow the petitioner an additional 


30 days to try to complete the process. And 


that's -- I think that would be helpful, 


particularly to petitioners. 


We also felt that it should be made clear in a 


final letter that disqualifies an SEC petition 


that the petitioner can reopen that petition at 


any time in the future if additional 


information is provided. That is stated, but 


it's not as clear as it should be. It should 


be really well-stated that this is not a final 


process. It's just the 30 days is closed down. 


But at some point in the future the petitioner 


feels they gathered additional information, 


they can reopen at any time. 


Overall, we felt that NIOSH letters could be 


made more audience-friendly, taking into 


consideration legal concerns as the final rule 


was written, and that would have to be -- help 


-- help provided through legal counsel. 


There was also in the procedure manual the 


terms "adequacy" and "credibility" were used, 

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and we felt that those terms really needed to 


have some guidance provided as to what they 


meant. But overall, we felt -- particularly 


the phone consultation through NIOSH -- they 


were comprehensive, they were informative, they 


were certainly well-documented, and they were 


petitioner-friendly. 


The final rule also states that there is an 


appeal process, and if the petitioner -- can 


appeal NIOSH's findings initially disqualifying 


the petitioner, they can appeal it, and that 


appeal goes to a three-panel review panel under 


the direction of the NIOSH director. That is 


sort of a -- it's not clear who's on that 


three-panel review committee, and the final 


rule says that that should be completed within 


30 days, and it's not clear that's being done 


within 30 days. 


 Before this presentation, Jim and I talked and 


apparently there are three or four that are in 


that review process and -- and we haven't had a 


chance to look at the outcome of those that 


were undergoing this three-panel review and the 


NIOSH director review, and we'd like to look at 


those before we finalize this report. I don't 

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think we're going to need to have another 


meeting in person. I think I can probably work 


with Larry to have that done through phone 


consultation. So we should have our final 


report to give to the Board by the next 


meeting. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So at this time we should 


look at this as a status report rather than a 


report to adopt or to -- 


 DR. LOCKEY: That's correct. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Now in -- also -- this working 


group -- its activities were prompted by the -- 


basically the question: Has NIOSH acted 


appropriately in acting on a group of petitions 


-- or categorizing this group of petitions as 


petitions that do not qualify, have they 


followed the appropriate procedures in, in 


essence, saying they do not qualify. And I 


think you have told us yes, they have 


appropriately acted on that. 


 DR. LOCKEY: Yes, it's well-- it's well-


documented in their files as to the process 


they went through. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. And then you have a number 


of what I -- what you call recommendations, and 

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they -- if you read through them, they are -- 


they look to be suggestions. 


 DR. LOCKEY: That's correct. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And I'm talking about the sense in 


which they are -- they are not mandated 


recommendations so much as ur-- urging NIOSH to 


perhaps consider some changes to improve some 


things. 

 DR. LOCKEY: Trying to make it more audiencefriendly. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, right, right, understood. 

So at -- at our next meeting when you have your 


final report, if we adopt the report we will be 


doing, I think, two things. One will be 


confirming that the Board agrees that NIOSH has 


acted appropriately on these petitions. And 


number two, we would be endorsing the 


suggestions of the workgroup, which -- as they 


currently are written, at least -- are not 


mandated changes but are simply suggestions to 


the agency. Am I interpreting that correctly? 


And I think it's fine, I think -- 


 MR. CLAWSON: I think -- I think that's right. 


There's only one -- one that -- with the way 


the Board works, out in the clear and 

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everything else, it should be -- the review 


panel should be more obvious so people can see 


from there. Now that one we feel is -- it's 


not a suggestion. It should be -- it should be 


more (unintelligible). 


 DR. ZIEMER: This is --


 MR. CLAWSON: The -- the final -- the review by 


the --


 DR. LOCKEY: There's a -- there's a three-panel 


review that if a petitioner -- if NIOSH says 


your petition doesn't qualify -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: I'm looking for which bullet it 

is. 

 DR. LOCKEY: That'd be the first bulletin -- 

first bullet. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, the first bullet -- okay, and 


-- and the recommendation is to urge that the 


appeal process be completed as stipulated. 


 DR. LOCKEY: Right, but also that the three-


panel that reviews these appeals from the 


petitioner, it's not clear who's on that panel. 


 MR. CLAWSON: Should be more transparent of -- 


of who's been there. 


 DR. MELIUS: Can I add a --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

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 DR. MELIUS: -- My recollection from the 


meeting. I think a number of these 


recommendations were -- are things that were 


either underway at NIOSH or, you know, came out 


of our discussions and I don't think there's in 


-- NIOSH objects to any of these. I mean --


 DR. ZIEMER: No, I understand --

 DR. MELIUS: -- it's a small number of 

petitions. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MELIUS: They were in the process of 

improving their communication on -- on these 


and so forth and a -- a lot of what went on was 


verbal. I'm not sure it was the same person 


all the time, so something might not have been 


in the letter, but it was probably conveyed 


verbally in some way. But I think at the same 


time there's people at NIOSH recognize that 


communication needed to be im-- improved on 


these. I -- I think the -- the bigger issue on 


well, were all these petitions treated 


appropriately -- I mean I -- I guess I'm the 


one that was -- wanted -- I thought we should 


look at the ones that were under appeal now 


because they were the ones that might more 

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likely indicate if there was a problem. And 


again, not saying that there was. I think 


NIOSH in general has been trying to be 


accommodating with these. Some of the ones 


that had been appealed -- it's a combi-- of, 


you know, they get mi-- combined with other 


petitions and -- and so forth, so I -- think -- 


going to have startling conclusions, but I 


think we do -- under -- but the recommendations 


I think -- I think somebody might feel more 


strongly about. I think if NIOSH disagreed or 


something, but I think it's a -- just -- some 


of this just needs to be cleaned up a little 


bit. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, it appears that you're 


awfully close to closure, so your final report 


is not going to look very different from this. 


 DR. MELIUS: No. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I might suggest that on your first 


bullet you might add what you have told us here 


because this only seems to address the 30-day 


period and not the issue of -- of transparency 


and making known who's on the panel, if that's 


what the thrust is there. You might want to 


clarify that. 

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But let me see if others have comments or 


suggestions. So --


DR. ROESSLER: I'd -- I'd --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- we'll look forward to the final 


report probably at our next meeting then. 


Gen? 


DR. ROESSLER: I'd just like to amplify on 


what's point number two on the list that Jim 


handed out. This was one that bothered me in 


going through these is that it seems that 


there's misinformation out there about the 


process of -- of doing this petition. To me, 


as I looked at them, there were some that 


should not ever have gone through the petition 


process. They just would not qualify and I -- 


I felt rather badly for the petitioner that the 


petitioner had misinformation and probably 


spent a lot of time doing this, and yet it -- 


it wouldn't qualify. And I -- I don't know how 


that can be addressed, but I think that's what 


you were trying to capture in point two there. 


I don't know whether -- I think NIOSH is trying 


to be very open and -- and let -- let any 


petitioner have a chance. But yet there's the 


other side of well, it takes a lot of time and 

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maybe some false hope. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. Thank you. Okay, thank 


you very much, Jim and workgroup. 


 DR. WADE: Before we do the next, counsel did 


remind me that if we put slides up, as we have 


in two cases today, we need to make sure that 


those slides are available to the public. 


Robert, you did, and Arjun, you did, so we'll 


need to get copies of those and make them 


available to the public. 


Next on our list is the workgroup on Hanford 


site profile, chaired by Dr. Melius; members 


Clawson, Ziemer, Poston. 


 DR. MELIUS: The Hanford workgroup met by 


conference call on -- I believe it was December 


1st, about two -- two and a half hours. NIOSH 


made -- number of their staff were available on 


the call, some of the contractor's staff was on 


the call and John Mauro and Bob Alvarez, I 


can't remember who else from SC&A, were -- were 


on the call. 


The purpose of the call was to go through the 


issue resolution matrix. It updated a number 


of -- this site profile and the site profile 


review go back some time. There's been a fair 

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amount of updating that had -- had -- is going 


on or had gone on and -- and so forth. And so 


rather than try to get a huge group together 


and try to go through the issue -- issue-byissue in person, thought it'd be more efficient 


to do it over -- over the telephone, go through 


and just get a status report on the issues, not 


to talk about any -- any particular issue. 


I -- I should add, there were a number of 


people from -- representing various groups at 


the Hanford site that were also on -- on the 


call, also. We made some effort to reach out 


to them and make sure they were aware of it and 


could participate. 


Went through the issues, essentially got a 


status on where everything was and we'll be 


scheduling a workgroup meeting where we'll get 


together and -- and I think the major focus 


will be issues related to neutron exposures in 


terms of do-- dose reconstruction so forth. 


That was the major thrust that -- that -- it's 


something that we really probably need to sit ­

- sit down and spend a day -- significant 


amount of time discussing, so that will be 


scheduled shortly as -- as our next workgroup 

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meeting. 


There are a number of other issues, some of 


which are awaiting updates from NIOSH. A 


number of them are in -- in review or I think 


close to being ready and so forth so I think 


there'll be some other issues added to the -- 


to -- to discussion -- our workgroup. 


 And then finally mention that a SEC petition at 


Hanford has just qualified. I haven't had a 


chance to read it. I think it was literally -- 


what, late last week? -- it came out, but I 


suspect that as the evaluation report goes 


forward and so forth that our -- our workgroup 


may get to get involved in that. But given 


what I would expect the schedule to be, I think 


we should have made significant progress on the 


review of the site profile by the time we 


really have to sit down and consider the -- the 


petition. At least I'll be optimistic about 


that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Questions? Wanda? 


 DR. MELIUS: I -- I'd -- Joe, do you have 


anything to add? I -- made me think. You 


weren't on the -- weren't available on the call 


and I don't know if --

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84

 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, go ahead and make your 


comment. I'll just add something to what you 


just said. 


 MS. MUNN: My comment is an observation of the 


irony involved in our technical contractor 


having selected, as a part of their team for 


this site -- for which I am conflicted and 


cannot be involved -- an individual whose 


qualifications we discussed here earlier and 


who is now apparently not only not being 


publicly used but is being identified as a part 


of the technical team on this site. That's a 


very interesting political move. Whether it 


serves the needs of our scientific technical 


review for that site is another question. 


There's obviously no action that I can take in 


that regard, but it's unfortunate and I think 


is probably a clear message. I have the 


message, and I think it's unfortunate that 


we've chosen that route. In my -- I think the 


subcontractor needs to be aware of that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Lew, do -- what -- what's the 


conflict status on the individual that -- that 


-- or maybe SC&A -- I -- I think I know who 


you're talking about, but has a determination 

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been made on -- is there a conflict under the 


rules on this individual? 


 MR. FITZGERALD: We certainly have covered this 


before, and certainly we're using the site 


knowledge, operational knowledge, as a -- as 


input to the discussions and -- primarily on 


recycled uranium. But you know, again, I think 


this has come up before and we've -- the Board 


certainly has discussed it. 


 DR. WADE: There is no conflict and we 


appreciate the comment. 


 DR. MELIUS: And I would just like to add to 


the record that Mr. Alvarez made a very 


significant and very helpful contributions to 


the work here and to our conference call. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Joe? 


 MR. FITZGERALD: I just want to add that -- 


that, you know, we -- going back -- this -- 


Hanford's one of the very earliest reviews, and 


a lot of us had to go back and just frankly 


catch up and refresh. And in refreshing, I 


think during the conference call Dr. Melius 


recognized that some of the findings weren't as 


clearly laid out because of the complexities of 


some of the individuations. The neutron issue 

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in particular is a very important fundamental 


question for the reactors. And what Hans did, 


I think at your request, Jim, was to go back 


and simply to not so much change anything but 


just lay it out a lot clearer than this site 


profile review of two years ago. I think the 


editors got ahold of the report and after they 


were done it was grammatically correct, but it 


was hard to figure out where one issue ended 


and another issue began. 


So I just wanted to alert again that on 


December 8th Hans sent this clarified treatment 


of the neutron issue to all the Board members, 


just so you would have that piece -- and to 


NIOSH -- just so we would have that piece 


because that issue itself is -- is a lot of 


detail, a lot of issues that are built into 


that, and they're going to be very fundamental 


I think to the SEC review when it comes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I -- I probably should have 


mentioned -- but I -- again, I think it was the 


-- worthwhile getting people together ahead of 


time to talk about and identify issues and -- 


rather getting into a sort of how are we going 

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to deal with these technically. It was I think 


helpful to say well, look, some of this has 


been updated, some of this is -- views -- 


technical views have changed a little bit based 


on individual dose reconstruction reviews and 


so forth and that sort of an update of the -- 


that -- on that issue and actually read it on 


my way out here and I thought it was very 


helpful and -- and I think will be useful as 


part of the workgroup's site profile review. 


 DR. WADE: Last is the workgroup on conflict of 


interest policy for the Board. And for the 


record, the Board had put that at a lower 


priority when it was looking at assignments and 


allocating time, but Dr. Lockey is chair; 


Melius, Ziemer, Presley. 


 DR. LOCKEY: Since I -- since I was chairing 


two at one time, we're coming to close on the 


one and I think we'll -- we'll probably call a 


meeting for this in January or February to get 


started on the conflict of interest issue. 


 DR. WADE: The only other workgroup was just 


commissioned yest-- yesterday or the day 


before, Blockson SEC, Munn chairman; Roessler, 


Melius, Gibson. I assume no report. 

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 MS. MUNN: No report, other than I have had a 


conversation with the NIOSH folks about getting 


our calendars in order so that we can get the 


group together at the earliest possible moment 


and, with any luck at all, try to do what we've 


done with other groups in identifying days when 


crossover people can be in the same place at 


the same time. 


 DR. WADE: The only issues open then are the 


vice chair issues and the 83.14 proposal. We 


can deal with them now or at your convenience. 


 DR. MELIUS: Could I actually follow up on 

Blockson? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Blockson. 

 DR. MELIUS: I haven't had a chance to talk to 

Wanda, but I -- I think two -- two thoughts on 


that is, one, I think Larry has made progress 


on scheduling a site meeting there. At least 


one -- one is underway relatively soon and I 


think it important to get some feedback from 


that as we go into our review -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: You're talking about the worker 


outreach --


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, the worker outreach meeting 


and so forth, and then also I would just hope 

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that somebody from SC&A can at-- attend that 


'cause I think that would also make our later 


work more efficient and -- and save some time 


and so forth. 


 DR. ZIEMER: We have a few minutes here and I 


think the issue of new workgroup we can come 


back to, but let me first ask about the issue 


of having what you might call a co-chair or a 


vice chair for each -- each of the workgroups. 


I -- I think from sort of an administrative 


point of view, and certainly from my point of 


view, it would be sufficient if each chair 


would appoint a vice chair that would serve in 


-- if -- if it's necessary from the legal point 


of view, the Board Chair can make those 


appointments, but I -- I would certainly want 


to give the chairs of each workgroup the 


opportunity to -- to appoint a vice chair from 


amongst their workgroup. But how do the others 


of you feel? Would -- are -- would you be 


agreeable to proceeding in that fashion? 


Wanda? 


 MS. MUNN: I have a slightly different 


suggestion. The point is well taken with 


respect to what happens when the chair has a 

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problem. Would there be any reason why the 


chair could not select an alternate who would ­

- would -- rather than a co-chair? 


 DR. ZIEMER: No, whatever you want. 


 MS. MUNN: Our -- our groups are small -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 MS. MUNN: -- and if we -- if -- if there were 


some other person on the -- on the workgroup 


who recognized that they had the responsibility 


in the absence of the chair, then I think that 


would meet the criteria. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I think this is mainly a 


nomenclature issue, whatever you want to call 


it. But from my point of view, the chairs can 


make that selection. 


Jim, do you have --


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, though initially I sort of 


liked the idea of co-chairs or vice chairs, I'm 


wondering if we should just keep it informal 


within the workgroup, 'cause it may depend on 


the circumstances. You know, I'm on vacation 


and going to be difficult to reach for a week 


or something. If, you know, some action's 


needed regarding, you know, whatever workgroup, 


I may know that, you know, Gen's available that 

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week and -- do it, you know, can -- would 


handle it and --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I think what you're 


suggesting is the idea that the chair had the 


flexibility of --


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- of appointing an alternate. 


 DR. MELIUS: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Which is what -- what -- basically 


what I'm suggesting. 


 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 


 DR. WADE: And one of the reasons it is 


worthwhile considering is that I take direction 


from workgroup chairs to schedule meetings and 


also to direct the contractor legally. So if 


the workgroup chair tells me something as to a 


meeting or a need to task SC&A, then I take 


action on that and I listen to the workgroup 


chairs. 


 DR. ZIEMER: But if -- if a workgroup needed to 


meet and -- and the chair was comfortable in 


having a proxy there, in essence -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- I think that that vice chair or 


ad hoc chair --

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 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- whatever it is going to be 


called, would still have the responsibility of 


reporting any actions back to the chair and the 


chair would continue the -- whatever the 


communication with Lew, that would -- 


 DR. WADE: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- continue. The chair would 


still have the ultimate responsibility for the 


workgroup. But we're talking about a practical 


method of allowing a workgroup to meet. 


 Yes, Brad. 


 MR. CLAWSON: And -- and I understand that -- I 


just don't want to be able to see that it -- I 


guess the reason I was putting out that one 


should be aware of his position is so that he 


could put a little bit more emphasis on it, 


because if you're getting called the day before 


you're flying out here to be able to do this, 


it's kind of a hard time to pick up a lot of 


the pieces. And as a co-chair, I believe that 


-- or whatever you want to call it, I could -- 


you know, that's immaterial to me. It's just 


so that you could be better apprised of what's 


going on and have a better idea so that this 

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could -- could be more of a professional 


conversation and so forth and still be able to 


continue on. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right, thank you. Let me ask from 


a legal point of view, and I don't know anyway 


if this is something that you can address, is 


there anything in the rules for working groups 


that mandate, for example, that all members 


have to be present for a meeting or that -- 


there's nothing that dictates how they -- it's 


pretty ad hoc, isn't it? 


 MS. HOWELL: Right, working groups are kind of 


at the Board's pleasure. When we get into a 


subcommittee issue, if your subcommittee needed 


a co-chair or a vice chair, then that might -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Might be a different matter then. 


 MS. HOWELL: -- be a charter issue there. But 

--

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, right. 

 MS. HOWELL: -- in terms of the working group, 


y'all are welcome to organize them as you see 


fit. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Very good. That's what I assumed 


and we have a high degree of flexibility. 


Michael. 

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 MR. GIBSON: I kind of like the idea that Jim 


brought up of just leaving it kind of open and 


appoint an alternate. The groups are small 


enough that it could run into the possibility 


you pick a co-chairman and both of you are 


unavailable when an event comes up, so you have 


the flexibility of leaning on any member of the 


group if something came up. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right, and I think within -- 


within what I'm talking about, you could do 


that on a meeting-by-meeting basis. You could 


have an acting chair and wouldn't have to be 


the same person every time. I think Brad has 


asked that -- you know, you don't want that to 


happen like as you get on the plane; oh, by the 


way, you're chairing the meeting. 


 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, I --


 DR. ZIEMER: And -- and -- and --


 MR. CLAWSON: -- maybe that's a -- maybe that's 


a personal thing to me, I don't -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: No, I understand, when -- 


 MR. CLAWSON: -- when I do something, I --


 DR. ZIEMER: In a given situation or for a 


given workgroup, if a given workgroup chair 


decides they want that to be a -- the same 

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person on an ongoing basis, I would say that's 


fine, too -- give the workgroups that 


flexibility. 


 DR. WADE: So for the record, if a workgroup 


chair wants to name someone as acting for a 


particular meeting or a particular situation, 


that's their prerogative. Please let me know. 


I would assume that that acting workgroup chair 


would have all of the authorities of the 


workgroup chair unless the workgroup chair was 


to notify me of the circumstances. 


 DR. MELIUS: Also gets the same pay grade as 


the workgroup chair. 


 DR. WADE: Exactly. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Robert, comment on this? 


 MR. PRESLEY: I have some-- I have a comment on 


something that -- that was said a while ago, 


not on the --


 DR. ZIEMER: Not on this topic? 


 MR. PRESLEY: No. 


 DR. ZIEMER: All right, we'll come back to you 


in a moment. 


Then without objection, we will proceed under 


the pattern of allowing workgroup chairs to 


appoint individuals, as needed, to assist them 

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as acting chairs for a particular workgroup 


meeting. This can be on an ad hoc basis. 


 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: With the caveat that they need to 


let Lew know when this occurs, that they've 


asked one other individual to act as chair for 


that particular meeting. That chair is -- or 


that acting chair is still responsible to 


report back to the regular workgroup chair for 


purposes of -- of ongoing communication with 


Lew on issues and related scheduling matters. 


So without objection, that will be our action. 


We don't need to vote on that. 


Now, Robert, you have another -- odd comment? 


 MR. PRESLEY: Something that's near and dear to 


my heart, when the Senate or Congress -- House, 


whoever it is -- has a meeting to discuss say a 


-- something about the NTS site or anything 


else, or we have a town meeting to discuss a 


SCA (sic) petition or -- not -- not an SCA 


petition but a SEC petition or something like 


that, I would like to know if the Board could 


be invited to these things, if possible. Now I 


realize some of this stuff takes effect 


overnight, but we are the Board for these 

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issues and I think that if somebody's going to 


talk to these people that we ought to at least 


be invited to sit in on this and to hear the 


discussions that go on if possible. I know 


when we had our meeting in Oak Ridge, when they 


had the first or the second meeting, I was 


notified and was invited and did go and learned 


quite a bit from the people that were there. 


The second meeting was a horse of a different 


color; I didn't know about it. But when they 


have these things, I think somebody from the 


Board ought to be present if at all possible, 


and at least have the -- have the opportunity 


to go and hear what's said. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other Board members, 


you want to chime in with your views on this 


issue, and then we'll ask if there's a 


mechanism to bring this about if Board members 


so desire. How do the rest of you feel on 


that? Are -- are you sort of neutral or anti 


or for -- Brad? 


 MR. CLAWSON: My personal opinion is is that I 


feel that it would be a good idea, maybe -- 


maybe not the whole Board or whatever like 


that, but we're getting back to these -- these 

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working groups, if nothing else, the chair or 


alternate or what'll ever be able to attend 


something like that so that -- so that we have 


a better idea of what the feelings are. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. And you're talking 


about the worker outreach meetings or similar 


meetings of the --


 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah, if -- if somebody has a -- 


the thing that's being set up on Blockson. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Somebody from the Blockson 


committee might want to be there to hear what's 


being said. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Jim. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, and -- I mean in general I 


think that it can be helpful to make sense. 


think we have to be careful about not intruding 


on the scheduling of these and drive Larry or 


whoever's trying to set up these meetings crazy 


with that. 


Secondly, I think we also need to be careful 


that, you know, the workgroup or -- we don't 


get too many people there and -- and give the 


appearance that the group is taking action or 


expressing views of the Board as a whole and so 


I 
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forth. I -- there's -- we try to do everything 


we do on the public record and that -- and with 


proper notification and so forth, and I don't 


think this is likely, but we don't want to come 


back and say well, you know, three of us were 


at the Blockson meeting and we decided this or 


 DR. ZIEMER: No --


 DR. MELIUS: -- you know, something like -- I 


(unintelligible) --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- I -- I think -- as I understand 


Robert's suggestion, it's strictly observing 


and -- and becoming aware of issues... 


 MR. PRESLEY: I think we're all aware of the 


fact that we all have the thing with -- with 


legal about so many of us being in one room at 


one time constitute a Board meeting, and I 


think that we're all aware of that and I don't 


think we're going to let it happen. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Any other comments on this issue? 


Larry. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: This has taken me somewhat by 


surprise because it's been our intent to 


include Board members at meetings where we know 


there's an interest from the Board to -- 

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whether you have a working group or just a 


general interest to be in attendance at a 


meeting. We've had -- you know, I know we've 


had Dr. Melius at meetings up in -- in New 


England, and Mark in -- in those meetings, but 


we certainly, as we do our worker outreach, 


we'll make sure that you're informed and we -- 


we make sure that the right people are noticed. 


What I can't help you with -- I don't feel that 


I have a -- any ability to know when -- you 


mentioned Congress or some other -- DOE or some 


other entity is holding a meeting at a given 


site, I'm not -- you know, we're not always 


aware of all of these other meetings. I can 


only, you know, include you in the meetings 


that we establish, that we set up. 


 MR. PRESLEY: And I -- I understand that, 


Larry, and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit your 


blind side, but I do have a problem with 


somebody going to the Congressional side of the 


house or wherever it is on our behalf and 


nobody being there from the -- from the Board. 


 DR. WADE: The Board does have official 


procedures in place for, the example, SC&A 


being requested to make a Hill visit. Those 

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procedures are in place. I could review them 


for you if you would like. But that the Board 


has spoken to. If there are other issues where 


we need more specific instruction from the 


Board, then we should work that through. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I think now in the case of -- 


since we have working groups related to many of 


the sites where we have SECs and related 


actions, as a starting point we need to make 


sure that the chairs of those workgroups are 


notified of any worker outreach meetings and -- 


and Larry's cognizant of that. 


 These Hill visits, as -- as Lew has indicated, 


in many cases these are specific requests made 


by Congressmen or their staffs that particular 


individuals appear before them. For example, 


John Mauro appeared recently before Congressman 


Hostettler's meeting at their specific request. 


 DR. WADE: Right. Now again, I think the rules 


for SC&A -- and Arjun or Joe, or Paul, correct 


me if I'm wrong -- if SC&A receives such a 


request, they notify the Board of that request. 


The individual Board members can then speak and 


say I would like to be present. If that is the 


case, then SC&A or NIOSH will take that request 

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back to the member and clear it with the 


member. And again, if the member says fine, 


then we let -- we allow that to happen. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, of course in the case of 


Congressional hearings, I -- I think that most 


of those, if not all, are open anyway -- 


 DR. WADE: True. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- so if -- and -- and John does 


make us aware -- for example, if he's called on 


to testify, I'm notified of that -- 


 DR. WADE: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and we would have the option of 


being present. 


 DR. WADE: Now NIOSH --


 DR. ZIEMER: I mean that doesn't mean we're 


going to testify, but we certainly -- anybody 


can come in the door and listen to the 


proceedings. 


 DR. WADE: Now NIOSH is often called up on the 


Hill to -- for a visit, so -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 DR. WADE: -- and at this point I'd be willing 


to listen to the Board's desire to participate 


in that. I'm certainly not prepared to offer 


that, but if there is a sense of the Board, 

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then I would be more than willing to hear that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: All right. And then also we have 


-- there are cases where staffers on the Hill 


request -- they may have requested in several 


cases for our contractor to brief them on say 


iss-- emerging issues or particular site 


issues. And again, we're always notified of 


that. It's -- it's a little -- shall I use the 


word awkward -- we -- we can't, in a sense, 


invite ourselves to those sessions which are 


simply staff briefings. 


 DR. WADE: Right, but there the Board has 


voted, through a motion on this, as I recall. 


I don't have it in front of me, but again, my 


understanding is that if SC&A receives a 


request for such a meeting, they notify all 


members of the Board. Any member of the Board 


could say I would like to be present at that. 


At that point SC&A or NIOSH would approach the 


-- the person requesting and say Ms. So-and-so 


would like to -- to come and sit in on this. 


And if the member says yes, then it's fine. If 


the member says no, then it's not. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Another comment, Robert? 


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love to be notified more than in the morning of 


the meeting if -- if they know about that, I 


would like to be notified -- 


 DR. WADE: I think S--


 MR. PRESLEY: -- or the Board I think would 


like to be notified. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I do know that on a number 


of occasions these have been very short notice, 


even to SC&A. They get called in on -- they 


have been, at least, in the past -- almost -- 


almost overnight. 


 DR. WADE: Yeah. For the record, I am 


satisfied with SC&A's -- 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I --


 DR. WADE: -- timeliness of notice. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: -- actually I think this 


process, even though in the very beginning 


there was some un-- ambiguities, it's worked 


pretty smoothly over the last year, year and a 


half. As soon as we get a request, we 


immediately notify the Board, Paul -- Dr. 


Ziemer. And then, you know, some of these have 


short leads, unfor-- fortunately, so we try to, 


you know, at least give the notification, then 


move forward. And if there's enough time, you 

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know, certainly there's the option -- you know, 


I -- to my way of thinking, it's worked out 


fairly well. Usually the committee kind of 


indicates is a, you know, informational 


briefing, in which case we just simply tell -- 


tell the staffer where we are, where things are 


and there really isn't too many issues, per se. 


And then we -- after the meeting, certainly if 


the Board wants a -- some kind of summary, we 


can do that, too. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, John has been providing me 


with summaries of all of hi-- and I think -- 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- Lew, as well --


 DR. WADE: Well, we require the summaries from 


John. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- of the information that he pro­

- provides on these briefings. 


 DR. WADE: Right. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, I think it's --


 DR. ZIEMER: As you say, they've almost -- 


well, they've always been just information. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Here's what they asked and here's 


the information I gave them, and in all cases 

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it's been public information in any event. 


There's --


 MR. FITZGERALD: Either that or process. If 


we're in the middle of a review, just, you 


know, where does the review stand, when do you 


think you'll have a report -- I mean -- and 


things like that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Wanda? 


 MS. MUNN: The problem arises both with respect 


to timing and to availability of members who 


might be interested in doing this. There have 


been several such meetings that I would have 


been interested in. As Dr. Wade points out, if 


the member refuses a -- a Board member's 


presence, then the seat of power has spoken and 


it's -- it's unfortunate that this is the case 


since the Board -- correct me if I'm wrong -- 


is the authoritative body here, and yet the 


requests are made of our contractor, who is of 


course available to the halls of Congress, as 


they should be. But it seems, with respect to 


the -- the travel issue, even, is -- is a major 


one. I would not know personally how to 


address the travel issue to get to such a 


meeting if I were wanting to be there and the 

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member had agreed to it, which has occurred in 


several cases. Not just the timing issue, but 


travel alone. Or is our -- is our current 


financial status such that this type of travel 


is reimbursable for a Board member? 


 DR. WADE: Yes. 


 MS. MUNN: It is? So it's not an issue of 


cost, it's -- it's -- boils down to time and 


the agreement of the Congressional member. 


 DR. WADE: It's not an issue of cost now. I 


mean, you know, if this was to escalate, 


certainly we might have to revisit it, but at 


this point it's not an issue of cost. Timing 


does become an issue. 


 MS. MUNN: Yeah, it is. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Additional comments? 


 (No responses) 


Okay. Thank you. I -- I think -- I notice our 


break is -- is pretty late in the morning so 


let's -- let's take the break now and then 


we'll have the OCAS program update right after 


the break, so we'll recess for about 15 


minutes. 


 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 10:45 a.m. 


to 11:05 a.m.) 

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OCAS PROGRAM UPDATE
 

MR. LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH/OCAS


 DR. ZIEMER: We're ready to resume our 


deliberations. The next item on our agenda is 


the OCAS update from Larry Elliott of NIOSH. 


Larry, we're pleased to have your report at 


this time. 


 DR. WADE: Could I just --


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh --


 DR. WADE: -- before Larry does report, I would 


like to -- to complete the record. There was a 


working group that was not listed. It's the 


working group looking at procedures review. 


Remember, SC&A has a task to review NIOSH 


procedures. At one point those procedures 


review were under the auspices of the 


subcommittee. They are no longer, so the Board 


formed a working group to look at procedures 


review, chaired by Wanda Munn; members Gibson, 


Griffon, Ziemer, with Presley as an alternate. 


That group has not been active at this point, 


but I wanted to make sure that was on the 


record. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Let me ask one thing while Lew's 

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on the subject. At our last meeting we talked 


about a working group to discuss the different 


types of materials that were being used 


throughout the complex. Have -- have -- are we 


going to do anything or have we done anything 


on that? 


 DR. WADE: We've not done anything. It's --


it's your pleasure as to whether or not we want 


to consider that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Can you expand th-- remind me of 


what that entails and -- 


 MR. PRESLEY: I'd have to back and look for -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- is that -- is that one of those 


technical -- overarching technical issues that 


we should be tracking, or -- 


 MR. PRESLEY: Well, we talked about coming -- 


trying to come up with a list, and it would -- 


it's going to take some time, it's going to 


take some effort -- of what materials and 


nuclides that we used at the various sites, try 


to come up with a more comprehensive list. At 


our last meeting we talked about that, and we 


didn't discuss anything about it or anything 


like that, and I just wondered. 


 DR. WADE: It did -- it did make its way onto 

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what we're now calling the complex-wide 


technical issues list -- 


 MR. PRESLEY: Okay. 


 DR. WADE: -- under the heading of "Tracking 


Materials Throughout the Complex" -- 


 MR. PRESLEY: Right. 


 DR. WADE: -- this is the issue that Brad had 


raised. So it's captured on that list of -- of 


technical issues. There is no workgroup that's 


been formed for that or for the entire list at 


this point. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Okay. If we -- as long as we 


(unintelligible) --


 DR. ZIEMER: At least it's captured at that 


point, so -- okay. Thank you. 


Okay. So now -- thank you, Lew, for reminding 


us of that additional workgroup that we had 


omitted in the report period. 


Now we'll hear the OCAS update. Larry. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer, members of 


the Board and members of the public. It's a 


pleasure to be here in my home state of 


Illinois, don't get back here often enough and 


so I relish this opportunity to return to 


Illinois and visit my folks and visit the good 

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people of Illinois. 


As of November 30th of this year, just last 


month, 22,761 cases had been referred to NIOSH 


from Department of Labor for dose 


reconstruction. And as you see here on this 


slide, about 79 percent of those have been 


returned to DOL, or 18,069. If we break that 


down further, the cases that we have submitted 


back to Department of Labor with a dose 


reconstruction report total 16,317, and we have 


currently 631 cases that have been pulled by 


the Department of Labor. When I say "pulled," 


that refers to the claim having been determined 


by DOL to have been ineligible for some reason. 


There's a variety of reasons that that might 


occur. They sent us a claim that should -- 


should have been under Subtitle D or Subtitle E 


and was not a cancer-related claim, or -- 


there's various reasons why those have been 


pulled. Chronic lymphocytic leukemia, in the 


early days there were claims that were 


submitted and processed and given to us, and 


then they were retrieved by DOL, so... The 


cases that are currently pulled by Department 


of Labor for Special Exposure Cohort 

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determination total 1,121 at this point in 


time. 


 These numbers fluctuate because the cases -- 


there's a flux here. There's a dynamic that 


goes on with DOL and the eligibility and -- and 


the SEC determinations and so we see some -- 


this number grow in size and then it decreases, 


and so it does change. 


 Twenty percent of the claims that are still at 


NIOSH total 4,491. I know this is a little bit 


different numbers than you've seen from DOL 


yesterday and there's reasons we can explain 


the differences. There's lag time and the way 


we track and the way we account, and DOL has 


district offices that provide rollup to them 


where we only have one location that we deal 


with all these claims. 201 claims, or one 


percent of our total claimant -- claim 


population, has been administratively closed. 


And that means that, for whatever reason, the 


individuals have been -- have -- who have been 


given a draft dose reconstruction report have 


not provided us the OCAS-1 form indicating that 


they are ready -- they have no further 


information and are ready to move that claim on 

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to DOL, so just provide that for your 


information as well. 


Of the 16,317 dose reconstructions that have 


been returned to DOL for decision, we have 


observed 4,265, or about 26 percent, have been 


found to be compensable; whereas about 74 


percent, or 12,052, were determined to be noncompensable. 


If we look at the type of dose reconstructions 


that are performed and the breakdown of the 


claims that fit into those specific approaches, 


they're presented here and you can see that the 


vast majority, a little -- close to 11,000, 


have been performed using an overestimate of 


internal and external dose, and that dwarfs all 


of the other types of categories, as shown on 


this slide. 


If we look at the 4,491 cases that are still at 


NIOSH for dose reconstruction, 1,075 are 


assigned to health physicists currently. 


They're in -- they're in the workload of the 


dose reconstructors. 1,063 claims have initial 


draft dose reconstruction reports in the hands 


of the claimants, and NIOSH is awaiting the 


return of that OCAS-1; 2,353 claims or cases 

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have -- have been -- or have not yet been 


assigned to a health physicist for dose 


reconstructions. They're in the stages of -- 


various stages of development, from the 


Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview to data 


collection, dose -- dose-related collection 


information from DOE, et cetera. 


3,110 cases, or about 69 and a quarter percent, 


are older than a year old. This is an 


important characteristic right now we're 


tracking very closely in our goal to try to 


complete the oldest claims. And take you into 


that particular aspect of our work, the oldest 


claims. We, as you know, assign a tracking 


number in sequential order to these claims. 


Our goal has been, of late, to try to finish 


the first 5,000 claims that were sent to us. 


To date, as of November 30th, we've seen 4,264 


of those first 5,000 achieve a final decision ­

- or a recommended or final decision at DOL. 


The dose reconstruction report has made it to 


DOL and the decision has been garnered. 


There's been 54 of those in the first 5,000 


that were administratively closed. We've seen 


264 of the first 5,000 pulled -- as I said 

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earlier, either for chronic lymphocytic 


leukemia, a non-covered cancer in this program 


right now, or some other demographic issue 


associated with the case that was -- caused it 


to be pulled back from us. 147 of this first 


5,000 have been pulled because of SEC 


eligibility determination; 31 of these 5,000 


claims are now with the -- in the hands of the 


claimants awaiting their OCAS-1 signature; 58 


have been -- have been returned to DOL, let me 


see -- oh, these are -- these are cases that 


have just come back to us from DOL, so that 


influences the number of active cases in the 


first 5,000; and then we have 182 that are 


awaiting dose reconstruction in the first 


5,000. 


 Traditional graphics that I present to you on ­

- on how we are performing across the 


population of claims. These -- this chart 


shows you the breakdown by 1,000-increment 


tracking numbers. The green line, as you see 


here, the green bar indicates those cases that 


are pending -- pended for some reason; the red 


bar -- part of the bar indicates those that 


have been pulled or administratively closed 

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within that block of 1,000; and then the blue 


are cases that have been completed. 


Now at our last meeting in Vegas I told you 


that I was going to update this chart -- we 


haven't done that yet -- to include the SEC 


pulled. I think I was asked to keep this in 


there, by popular demand from one Board member, 


and we will -- we'll keep it here, but we're 


going to -- we are going to change this and add 


the SEC returned claims. 


 This gives you a sense of the trend in our 


production relative to our backlog of claims 


that were received early on in the program, the 


backlog being this part of the curve here, 


cases received from DOL. You can also see from 


this blue line that it's been pretty static -- 


pretty level receipt of claims from DOL over 


each month since back in February of '04, I 


think. Around 200 a month is what we're 


getting, on average. 


The green line indicates those draft reports 


that have been sent to the claimants, and you 


can see this nice spike here with -- after a 


valley. But what is going on here with these 


different peaks and valleys, we have a new 

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document that comes on line, a new tool that's 


being used and the spike occurs in the number 


of dose reconstructions produced. And then we 


work all those claims off and we drop back down 


until we can find more claims to work on. 


The red bar -- red line of this graph indicates 


those that have gone back to DOL after we've 


had the OCAS-1 signed by -- by the claimants. 


I think it's important to note that the ORAU 


team has achieved a capacity in -- over the 


last eight, nine months of 160 completed dose 


reconstructions per week, and that's resulted 


in our reduction of our backlog. We've also 


had a number of dose reconstructions done by 


OCAS staff, and then we're starting to see -- 


and I'll report on this momentarily -- dose 


reconstructions coming in from the Battelle 


contract. So that's all included in -- in what 


you see in this particular graphic. 


I'm showing you our administratively-closed 


claims and -- and what trends we might pick out 


of this particular graph, why the spike here 


back in June of '06. If you go back and look 


at the other graph you'll see that we had a -- 


another one of those spikes where we sent out a 

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lot of claims back in the -- probably the 


March-May time frame and that put a lot of 


claims in the hands of the -- of the folks. 


And for whatever reason, we see a large number 


-- 22 there in June -- that chose not to send 


back a OCAS-1. 


 You heard Pete Turcic talk yesterday about the 


reworks that are returned to NIOSH for rework 


under dose reconstruction, and this graph shows 


you that we've received 1,900 and we've 


returned to date, as of November 30th, 1,518 of 


those reworks. And I won't belabor you with 


the types of reworks. I think Pete covered 


that very well yesterday for you. 


With regard to our requests to Department of 


Energy for dose-related information on each 


claim, we have a num-- we have 279 outstanding 


requests. And of that right now there are 58 


that exceed 60 days. I'd remind you that we 


follow up on these requests every 30 days. We 


track them. We talk to DOE sites about 


problems that they're experiencing trying to 


find the data. We ask them to report to us, 


whether they feel they cannot or they are still 


confident that they can find some data. So we 

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monitor these on a -- on a 30-day periodicity. 


And I know I'll probably get a question about 


this, so the -- the problem children that we're 


dealing with right now are -- we've got two 


requests from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, 


Argonne East and West, that are over 300 days 


old and there's some difficulty in the DOE's 


having and finding the particular data for 


those individuals. At some point they're going 


to have to decide whether they have it or they 


don't have it and we can move forward. And 


then we have -- from the K-25, Y-12, Portsmouth 


and Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plants we've got 


13 situations -- requests that are over 240 


days old. The remainder are sprinkled across 


the 60, 90, 120-day time frames. 


1,143 claims are currently at DOL for class 


member status determination and claim 


adjudication under the Special Exposure Cohort 


classes that have been added, and you can see 


the breakdown of number of claims for classes 


in this slide. 


We are currently operating the dose 


reconstruction program in using 142 approved 


Technical Basis Documents and 59 Technical 

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Information Bulletins. 


There are 13 Technical Basis Documents that are 


currently in various stages of development, and 


I have them listed here on this slide and the 


next. They include Harshaw Chemical Plant -- 


and this goes to the partial dose 


reconstructions that we would be doing there; 


Sandia National Lab; the NUMEC sites, Apollo 


and Parks Townships; Metals and Controls 


Corporation; Sandia National Laboratory at 


Livermore; the West Valley facility; Ames 


Laboratory; the Battelle King and Jefferson 


Street facilities; South Albuquerque Works, 


these are at Peek Street; another facility, an 


Extrusion Plant, also called RMI; and then 


lastly, GE Vallecitos. 


We have two Technical Basis Documents that are 


being produced by the Battelle contract, and 


these go to uranium metal processing and 


uranium refining processing. The -- these two 


Technical Basis Documents will be used to treat 


a number of claims across the sites represented 


by these two categories. 


When we gave this contract to Battelle, as you 


note, we had 1,400 claims that cut across 256 

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sites. That represents about 15 percent of the 


claims and 85 percent of the covered 


facilities. We've seen DO-- or we've seen 


Battelle produce, as of November 30th, 221 dose 


reconstructions for our technical review, and 


we've moved on 143 of those dose 


reconstructions to the claimants. 


Battelle was also charged with identifying 


situations where dose cannot be reconstructed 


with sufficient accuracy and an 83.14 


determination needs to be made. The first one 


that is coming out of that part of the process 


with Battelle is Dow Chemical. There'll be 


others behind that. 


Moving on to construction workers, trying to 


keep the Board informed about our progress on 


constructions trades dose reconstructions, we 


have hand-sorted our claims to identify those 


construction trade job titles that are included 


in the claims population and we see about 4,473 


claims that have had some experience in working 


in construction. Of those, we've submitted to 


DOL 3,618 dose-reconstructed claims. We have 


observed a compensability rate of about 25 -- 


little over 25 and a half percent, and a non­
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compensability rate in that dose reconstruction 


population of about 74. This mirrors pretty 


much the total program averages. 


We have about 855 claims awaiting dose 


reconstruction for construction trade workers, 


and we're working on those. 


To date the Board has reviewed about -- has 


reviewed 80 dose reconstructions, seven of 


which included construction trade workers. 


You've identified in the next 40 another 16 


claims that have construction trades job 


titles. 


The last time we talked about -- in Las Vegas 


at your meeting we talked about Program 


Evaluation Reports. The Program Evaluation 


Reports have been placed on our web site. We 


hope that you've had a chance to look at those. 


We've sent you copies via e-mail. This is a --


these are activities where a change has been 


made in our dose reconstruction approach or our 


process, and we are required by our rule to go 


back and look at those completed claims that 


were found to be non-compensable and evaluate 


whether the change that has occurred in a dose 


reconstruction approach would change the 

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outcome of the decision for the claim. 


So I've listed these here, the ones that -- we 


have seven final Program Evaluation Reports. 


These have all been completed. 


 The Hanford bias factor -- I won't go into any 


details. I have these here with me if you want 


to see how they read. We can certainly provide 


that to you. 


There's been another one that's been conducted 


on misinterpreted dosimetry records for 


Savannah River dose reconstructions. 


A third that resulted in looking at an error in 


surrogate organ assignment resulting in an 


underestimate of X-ray doses, also in Savannah 


River dose reconstructions. 


Then we have a fourth that is -- has looked at 


the effect of adding ingestion intakes to 


Bethlehem Steel cases. 


We've got another one at -- that concerns 


photofluorography use at Pinellas, and we had 


done a set of claims there without this 


particular type of X-ray being considered, and 


so we went back and looked at that. 


We've got another one that's -- has looked at 


external dosimetry target organs for prostate 

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cancer. 


And then we have an evaluation of the effect of 


the second revision of the Bethlehem Steel site 


profile. 


Now as we go through some of these we report 


out in our Program Evaluation Reports the 


changes that are observed in the claims. Some 


go one way and some go another way. We report 


those changes back to DOL and they return a 


case to us and we rework it or we give them the 


reworked case, and then they make the decision 


on how to inform and advise the claimant. 


We also have just recently changed our Program 


Evaluation Report procedure to include what 


we're calling Program Evaluation Plans. And 


this is a situation where, for example, with 


regard to the -- the revised risk cancer model 


for lung cancer and the lymphoma changes that 


we made, there's a large number of claims that 


are -- are to be addressed under these two 


program revision-- evaluation reports, and we 


needed -- we felt we needed to have a -- an 


agreed-upon plan about how to go about looking 


at those large data-- datasets of claims. And 


so we've -- we've added this Program Evaluation 

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Plan and we include those on our web site. 


A Program Evaluation Plan will have the same 


number as -- as it evolves into a report. Once 


the evaluation of all the claims has been 


completed, then the report -- the plan will 


change into a report. So much of what you see 


in a Program Evaluation Plan will also be 


resonant in the report itself. What'll --


what'll be added to that to make it a report 


will be the final outcome of the review and 


what claims were evaluated, the number, how 


they changed and what happened next with regard 


to providing notification to the claim. 


There are two Program Evaluation Plans that are 


in review at this point in time, I mentioned 


them earlier, the revised risk model for lung 


cancer and the lymphoma target organ selection 


change. There are other Program Evaluation 


Plans and Program Evaluation Reports on the 


horizon. There has been several Technical 


Basis Documents that have received such 


modifications we feel it appropriate to go back 


and look at claims that were completed under a 


previous version. 


Moving into our communication initiatives, we 

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have revised the dose reconstruction 


acknowledgment packet. This is the information 


that is sent to claimants acknowledging for 


them that we have received their claim from DOL 


for dose reconstruction. The -- the Board has 


reviewed this and given us good input and 


constructive advice, and this -- the 


distribution of these new acknowledgment 


packets will start occurring in January of -- 


of next year. 


 We've also revised -- or proposed a revision to 


the draft dose reconstruction report. We've 


had several Board members comment on that. 


I've collected one -- an additional set of 


comments here at this meeting, and certainly if 


anyone has not had a chance yet to give us 


comments, please do so. We intend to come live 


with this revised dose reconstruction report in 


January, so -- I know we've had -- I think 


about five now of you give us comments on this, 


so appreciate any other constructive input that 


those of you who haven't had a chance to do -- 


to give us, please do so. 


You've heard about our dose reconstruction 


video. We've got final approval on this and 

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distribution to the DOL district offices, to 


the resource centers, streaming live on our web 


site, copies provided upon request, all Board 


members will get a copy. We'll be -- that 


distribution will start occurring also in 


January. So we -- we've also proposed, through 


a NIOSH program on public health practice, to ­

- to create more dose rec-- more videos on 


different topics than dose reconstruction, and 


we're hoping that we get approval for that, and 


some monies to do that, under the NIOSH public 


health practice initiative. 


Our conflict of interest policy that the Board 


had been instrumental in reviewing has been 


approved. It was approved on October 17th. A 


copy is on the web site if you -- if you need 


to see it. NIOSH is busy working on 


implementing this policy, and we will be 


providing -- on our web site -- the disclosure 


forms and statements from all of the NIOSH 


staff who are involved in this program. We 


will have -- under our related links on our web 


site we will direct you to our contractors who 


support this program, and that will show and 


share with you their disclosure statements that 

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-- on their web site. We can't put those on 


our web site, but we will have a related link 


that will direct you to theirs. 


I think my last slide here, I want to talk a 


little bit about quality assurance/quality 


control again. I've -- want to maintain this 


as a theme, and I think it's most appropriate. 


I do maintain this since at the hearing of the 


House Judiciary Subcommittee a couple of weeks 


ago, three weeks ago or so, you may have heard 


Ms. Kathy Bates provide testimony about her 


experience in having her mother's claim 


processed through dose reconstruction. She 


also made presentation to the Board in one of 


the public comment sessions in Oak Ridge about 


her concerns or problems. Essentially we have 


-- we -- we recognize the frustration that she 


and her mother have experienced. What has hap­

- what happened here is they -- in this 


particular instance, the DOL district office 


sent us a recommended referral that had the 


wrong -- several wrong things; date of birth 


was wrong, the type of cancer was wrong, the 


Social Security number was wrong. We had no 


way -- we don't develop that type of 

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information and we didn't have a way to correct 


it, and so we propagated that mistake and 


propagated it through into her dose 


reconstruction. 


I can tell you that there's only been two 


instances that I have been made aware of, after 


much -- much review, of where a dose 


reconstruction report was sent to a claimant 


and had the wrong information in it. We sent 


this -- this one went out this way, and there 


was another one that got mixed up in the wrong 


envelope. We sent a dose reconstruction report 


for an individual in the wrong envelope, and 


the person called me and said don't think this 


is mine; what should we do with it. So --


however, this is -- this is still not something 


we -- we find very satisfying. We're very 


disappointed by -- by these two instances, and 


we've taken a very strong and hard look at our 


-- our policies and our QA procedures, what 


process improvements can be made, and you see 


those working he-- working through here on this 


slide that we're going to start taking up a 


little more advanced checks and balances in our 


QA/QC programs. This cuts across not only what 

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OCAS does, but into the ORAU team as well. 


 And then we're going to do a little bit more 


training with staff on how to handle 


situations, like how do you find an SSN deeper 


into the file that we get from DOL, how -- how 


far do we go to make sure that we have the 


correct Social or we have the correct 


diagnosis, et cetera, to start with. 


So I think I'll conclude at that point. I'll 


be happy to answer any questions, if I can. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, Larry. Let's 


open the floor for question then, or comments, 


on this report. Dr. Melius. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, Larry. My first question is 


on PERs and PEPs. I guess we can combine, 


they're a PERP or something, I don't know what 


the terminology. I believe the PERs have been 


-- are available on the web site? 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, they are. 


 DR. MELIUS: Are the PEPs going to be available 


on the web site? 


 MR. ELLIOTT: They are there now. 


 DR. MELIUS: Oh, they are there now. Okay. 


That was --


 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, they are there now. You'll 

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see them listed as PEP-007 and PEP-008. 


 DR. MELIUS: Okay. And wha-- wha-- and my 


question, when I looked at the original PERs, 


was the numberings was not consecutive. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, yes. That's because one 


got finished -- I think number three or number 


 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- five got finished before 


number four --


 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- or something like that. 


 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: I think if you go there now, 


you'll find them all in place. 


 DR. MELIUS: So -- so they're -- they're num-- 


numbered as you're drafting them rather than as 


they're completed. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: That's right. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, okay. Okay. It just was 


confusing in -- in terms of that. 


I also have some questions on the 


implementation of the con-- conflict of 


interest policy and -- do that. As we had 


talked before at these meetings, I think one of 

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the key issues is going to be the 


implementation of a strong and competent and 


active document owners on these, and I was a 


little disturbed in the -- or actually more 


than a little disturbed in the Hanford 


conference call that we had in -- December 1st 


where the -- almost every question that was 


asked to NIOSH and ORAU and so forth was 


referred to the one person on the call that had 


a significant conflict of interest and that -- 


this individual essentially was -- was the 


document owner, acting as the document owner, 


in essence, in there and without any sort of 


other involvement. I don't know if that was a 


scheduling issue with who was the official 


document owner or if this is a sort of a legacy 


of -- as we're getting caught up and getting 


this implemented, but it -- it certainly, you 


know, raises all the issues that we talked 


about in terms of, you know, credibility of -- 


of the program and -- and apparently just we -- 


we need to address this -- this issue and make 


sure that we have a program where the document 


owners are evident and involved and really, you 


know, at least appear to be acting as -- as if 

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they -- they are -- understand the technical 


issues and are basically in charge. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I noticed the same thing on our 


call, and I -- I was assuming at that time -- 


and clearly the individual is a site expert, 


but is not the document owner. And we didn't 


really hear much, if anything, from the 


document owner on the questions. I'm --


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- not even sure if the document 


owner was on the line, so -- 


 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't believe the document 


owner was on the line. I think the site expert 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- unfortunately was answering 


most of the questions and coming across -- I, 


too, was concerned about it. It sounded like 


they possessed the document, they -- they 


emulated the document owner. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right, and actually, in a general 


-- in sort of the general case, I think this 


has been sort of a problem at other locations, 


as well, but it comes across that the -- the 


document owner is a figurehead as opposed to 

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really being an owner --


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and that's what we want to 


avoid, of course --


 DR. MELIUS: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and make sure that the document 


owners are sufficiently knowledgeable -- and 


certainly one recognizes that from time to time 


they -- they may not have all the answers, but 


at least to -- to the extent that they can 


demonstrate to the outside world that they have 


an idea of what's going on on the site will be 


important. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Point -- point well taken. I 


share your concerns. I -- not to make an 


excuse, but I do think, you know, we've got a 


little bit of a legacy issue that we're trying 


to overcome here. We've given ORAU clear 


direction, as well as the other contractors 


that are working on the program, that -- that 


we need to have clearly-identified document 


owners who are not conflicted and who also 


perform in that role admirably and explicitly 


as a document owner. They -- they need to take 


charge and provide the leadership in what the 

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document contents merit. And so it -- I know 


that Kate Kimpan is very much on top of this 


and working through this. At the next Board 


meeting I think we'll have -- we have an -- I 


hope we'll have an opportunity to provide an 


update to the Board on where we all stand on 


implementing this conflict of interest policy. 


 DR. MELIUS: Right, then, I -- I'll hold that 


question. I still have some other -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I'm looking to see if there 

are others. If not, we'll -- go ahead. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay. Just to continue on 

conflict of interest, I certainly would be 


interested in having an update on -- on where 


they are in implementing, and particularly the 


promise, I guess I'd call it, that Kate made to 


us and was indicated that there was going to be 


this retrospective annotation of -- of 


documents and so forth. We have some very 


significant actions underway regarding sites 


where there have been issues with conflicted -- 


where that -- sort of individuals involved have 


been changed and so forth and, Rocky Flats 


being among them, and I think we really need to 


understand as we're taking action on some of 

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these documents -- completely understand the 


sources of the information and -- and so forth. 


So getting that -- that activity done I -- I 


also believe to be important. 


 Another issue that came up I believe yesterday 


was the use of EG&G on one of the overarching 


scientific issues and so forth. And again, 


just thinking more about that company's 


involvement over multiple sites -- and again, I 


don't know about the individuals involved -- 


but it certainly -- with a contractor that's 


been involved in so many sites, it certainly 


raises questions when they then -- as to their 


appearance of conflict when they're involved in 


a -- one of these overarching issues. Again, 


if it's a -- someone from a single con-- you 


know, someone's operated a single site or 


something, that may be different. But I -- I 


think -- as you said yesterday, I think it's 


important that we take a very careful look when 


we're -- who we're assigning on -- on some of 


the-- these issues and it -- I think as we 


discussed at our earlier meetings, it's 


difficult 'cause often the people with sort of 


the knowledge, the expertise, are the people 

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that have worked at sites where this is an 


issue. But same time, we need to make sure 


that there are document owners on these 


overarching scientific issues documents that -- 


that where there is no conflict they can 


hopefully draw on people with -- with the 


expertise, but not be -- not be reliant on 


them. 


And then finally, I'm -- continue to be 


confused as to the implementation of the 


corporate conflict of interest and wha-- what's 


happening with that. I certainly indicated 


when the doc-- when the policy was implemented 


that that issue had not been completely 


addressed yet, at least not to my satisfaction, 


and we seem to be going back and forth on the ­

- on what forms are involved and so forth and 


we also seem to be witnessing instances where 


people involved in -- reviewers seems to be 


shifting from one contractor to another and -- 


and you wonder if that's simply a way of -- of 


expedient way of addressing corporate conflict 


of interest or is it a -- a -- and I'm not sure 


it's a satisfactory way to -- to address that 


issue since we have individuals may have worked 

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for many years with this one corporation 


suddenly appearing working for another 


corporation and suddenly pretend that conflict 


of interest has disappeared. And I think it's 


just critical that, one, we sort of understand 


what's happened with the -- that imple-- 


implementation of that conflict of interest 


policy, be interested in seeing the -- the 


various ones that have been used as part of 


NIOSH's contracting procedure -- review. And 


secondly, that we get a firm and -- and sound 


policy in place there, and a transparent policy 


so we -- we know what's being -- being done 


there. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I'm not sure if that was -- if 


there was a question built into that. Larry, 


you may want to respond --


 DR. MELIUS: Lar-- Larry's welcome to respond. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I think those are all good 


comments and -- and things that we, too, are -- 


are concerned with and want to make sure that 


we have a full airing of and are transparent 


about. And I would, you know, hope that at the 


February meeting you'll -- you'll be satisfied 


with what we come forward and -- and report on. 

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There's a lot of work underway to implement 


this policy, and it -- it's not fully -- fully 


implemented at this point in time. And so I --


I can -- you know, I don't know if Lew has 


other comments to offer here, but you know, the 


-- Dr. Howard has appointed a conflict of 


interest officer who stands in review of what 


is going on right now. That person's already 


had one meeting with NIOSH staff to make sure 


that things are proceeding on the 


implementation phase of this policy. 


I would -- I would offer that the EG&G folks 


that we talked about yesterday and you brought 


up just a moment ago -- these are not document 


owners. These are people who are -- who are 


doing some research and preparing some 


information that a NIOSH person will take up as 


a document owner and will make decisions on 


where things go with the particular content of 


a document. So the-- these are support -- 


technical staff to Jim Neton in -- in aiding 


him in getting positions developed for us to 


present to the Board. 


 DR. ZIEMER: In a case like that where they're 


sort of developing background information, 

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though, the identities of those individuals 


still is made known, is it --


 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- not, under this policy, so -- 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, we will make them known, 


and they will have disclosure forms -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- so if they have --


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- as well. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- some particular connections to 


the site outside of the cor-- whatever the 


corporate connection is, that would be made 


known, as well. 


 DR. MELIUS: I just think we need to make sure 


that -- and get into the practice of when we're 


announcing new document development or 


implementing various documents that -- that we 


clearly identify, or you clearly identify, 


document owners, the role of people in -- in 


the -- in the various documents that -- as 


they're being developed as well -- and at -- as 


well as when they're presented 'cause the other 


thing that we've experienced, and some of this 


simply may be, you know, appropriately 


addressed in conflict of interest issues, is 


that people -- people's apparent role or 

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reported role in a document appears to change 


over time. And again, that -- I think while 


this annotation issue is so important that we 


need to understand the source and simply 


someone dropping out as the document owner or 


what-- or become a site expert becoming a 


subject expert or vice versa, you know, once a 


document's 90 cent -- percent completed is not, 


I don't think, really addressing the policy. 


Now again, it may very well be very appropriate 


as part of the implementation. You've 


recognized the conflict of interest and you're 


making the -- the appropriate changes, and I 


think we -- we understand that, that's not 


always going to be straightforward to do, 


but... 


 DR. ZIEMER: And particularly during the trans­

- transition period, there will be a -- a time 


where there are some older documents where this 


wasn't in effect and they're trying to make 


corrections and re-view the documents and so 


on. 


But Lew, you have additional comments on this, 


and then Michael. 


 DR. WADE: I have an agenda item for the 

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February meeting that would be under the Board 


heading of a NIOSH update on implementation of 


conflict of interest. It would include 


specifically an update on the implementation 


from ORAU. This goes to the issue of their 


annotation, attribution and review of past 


documents. An item on EG&G on the transparency 


of that implementation and whether or not there 


are individual or corporate conflicts that come 


into play on their work on complex-wide 


technical issues. We need a specific update on 


corporate conflict of interest implementation 


by the contractors, and then we need an update 


on the role of owners, using Hanford as an 


example, where there has been less than optimal 


performance in terms of document owners versus 


site experts on working group meetings. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Michael. 


 MR. GIBSON: Yeah, just -- form of a comment. 


I looked up on the OCAS web site last night the 


three individuals listed who worked for EG&G 


under this subcontract. And while I didn't 


recognize any of the names, they were all 


listed as very senior radiological 


professionals. And it just seems to me that 

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with EG&G being involved in litigation, with 


workers bringing litigation against EG&G for 


shoddy rad protection, certainly seems like the 


potential exists that these people may have 


been involved in helping def-- to defend that ­

- that -- that litigation. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, we can certainly -- 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, they --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- find that out --


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- they would have to disclose 


that, and I don't believe that -- in my 


understanding of these individuals, they have 


not performed any kind of duties for EG&G in 


that regard, and so... 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. Other comments 


or questions for Larry on this report? 


 MR. ELLIOTT: I think that before your next 


Board meeting we will have ORAU provide the 


Board a copy of the revised, fully annotated 


and attributed Rocky Flats site profile. That 


has -- that has been the first one they've been 


working on. We've seen, you know, their 


preliminary efforts but we want to get that in 


front of you in advance of the Board meeting. 


I have to -- I think that will also help inform 

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you as how they're going about doing this 


business. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. There appear to be no 


further questions. Again, thank you, Larry, 


for your report and -- and update on the 


activities. 


We have -- do we have any time? 


 DR. WADE: I'd say six, seven minutes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let me -- let me look here 


and see if we have anything -- well, let's 


outline what remains to be done. We -- we have 


the SEC motions, and I want to make sure 


everyone has copies of those, the written 


motions for Monsanto, General Atomics, Allied 


Chemical and Harshaw. You -- you should now 


have the detailed written versions of those 


motions and we will have the opportunity after 


lunch to actually act on these and make sure 


that we are all agreed on the -- on the wording 


of these as we go forward. So that -- that's a 


main item after lunch that we need to take care 


of. 


We will have an opportunity to identify 


procedures to be reviewed by our contractor. 


This is under the procedures review task. 

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We have some minutes to -- to approve. That 


should not take very long. 


And then we have an item relating to I believe 


it's Task V, as I recall, that -- it's sim-- 


simply to make the Board aware of projections 


as we go forward of the costs relating to SEC 


reviews. 


Lew, are there additional items that you are 


aware of that we would need to cover? 


 DR. WADE: The only one is I would like to try 


and pin down meeting dates. You know -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, yes, and we have the 


preliminary dates. We'll go through those and 


-- and see if we can finalize those, and 


hopefully that will go rapidly. 


Lew, I'd like to ask, on the item dealing with 


the -- the Task V cost, is that something we 


could do in about five minutes? It's mainly 


reporting, is it not? 


 DR. WADE: Sure, we can try. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let -- let's see if we can 


do that. 


SC&A TASK V


 DR. WADE: Okay. I'd ask Joe to -- I -- I'll 


do it, Joe, but I'd like to have SC&A present. 

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As you know, SC&A has a contract that has a 


variety of tasks. Those tasks include site 


profile reviews, procedures reviews, individual 


dose reconstruction reviews, SEC support, and 


then efforts on program or project management. 


John Mauro recently notified the contracting 


officer, myself and Dr. Ziemer that he saw a 


potential issue on the horizon. 


Next year, or the year we're in now, Fiscal 


Year '07, SC&A has allocated approximately 


6,000 hours to do SEC reviews. We imagine that 


would be six reviews at about 1,000 hours 


apiece. And again, none of that money has been 


spent. All of those hours are available. 


John alerted us to the fact that the Rocky 


Flats SEC review is likely to consume 


approaching 4,000 hours. John would also let 


us know that other reviews that they've done 


are well under 1,000 hours. So we don't know 


how this will play out. Rocky Flats is all -- 


the cost of Rocky Flats is covered in last 


year's contract action, so it's not about Rocky 


Flats. John is just saying if there are other 


Rocky Flats that appear and they take a 4,000­

hour bite out of 6,000 hours, that brings into 

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question what's left for -- our resources to 


spend on SEC tasks. So he wanted to alert us 


to that issue and that's been done. The Board 


can discuss it as it would like. 


But I think, Joe, that's an accurate telling of 


the issue? 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and you know, clearly 


with the 6,000 hours per year and the 


assumption that those are roughly six SEC 


petitions, that's -- actually has held fairly 


well up until now, and Rocky has been proven 


the exception and the implication as -- as been 


-- as been stated is the fact that with the 


growth in Rocky, it does pose a problem for 


roughly the two addit-- the two additional SECs 


that were budgeted for out of the '06 


resources, which may well -- 


 DR. WADE: And -- but that -- that's dealt with 


by the contracting officer. The '06 work is -- 


it was budgeted with Rocky to completion. 


There was money. And now we're looking forward 


to '07. But we have to remember that there 


looms the possibility of another Rocky, and 


then what -- what's the Board's wishes. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Sure. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: So basically it's a heads-up 


issue, folks, that -- for example, let's say 


Hanford or Savannah River Site were to consume 


a large chunk of hours similar to -- to the 


Rocky situation. Then it would be unlikely 


that we could expect, as a work product, six 


site profile -- or six SEC reviews for -- for 


the upcoming year under Task V. So -- well, 


it -- it's actually -- Task V is -- 


 DR. WADE: SEC. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- SECs. So if -- if that were to 


occur, what the Board would have to do would be 


to pri-- prioritize in some way and recognize 


that -- that -- well, there are other options. 


One would be -- say to shift money from another 


task if we had the -- if we had some unused 


funds in another task, that could be done and 


the contracting officer agrees that's a 


possibility. One could always go back and ask 


for a larger budget for the contractor, but 


under present budget situations and 


Congressional funding and so on, that may not 


be a very cap-- or very likely to be 


accomplished. But in any event, this is more 


of a heads-up looking forward. Okay. 

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A question now -- Jim, did you have a question 


on this? 

 DR. MELIUS: Well, I would --

 DR. ZIEMER: And then Wanda. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- if I -- if I recall when we did 

the tasks for this year and sort of figuring 


out what was in what category, I think we, you 


know, recognized that -- particularly the SEC 


task was going to be very hard to -- to 


estimate what was being done on that and -- and 


how much that would -- would cost over time. 


 DR. WADE: At that particular time. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Particularly since it was a new 


effort. 


 DR. MELIUS: It was -- one, it was a new 


effort, and secondly, we were moving on to 


larger sites and there's just a lot of -- more 


-- more effort involved and -- and so forth. 


So -- and giv-- given the time pressures on 


these, even though ours aren't as 


Congressionally-mandated as Larry has to put up 


with and they s-- I mean we -- we do recognize 


there's pressure to get these done, so one is I 


would hope that we recognize early if there's 


going to be budget issues. Secondly, I'm -- 

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I've -- we can shift. It may provide some 


short-term relief, I'm -- I -- but, you know, 


where do you shift from? I mean it -- the case 


reviews are -- are important and frankly we're 


behind on the procedure reviews, I think, and 


it -- that -- overall, I think they're 


important to the program, both in a technical 


and in terms of the credibility sense. So I 


would hope that we would, you know, recognize 


early if there's going to be a money problem, 


and I think the Board has to be willing to tell 


Congress that our -- you know, in order to 


fulfill our function, more money is -- was 


involved. 


I would also add that I think -- and I don't 


know whether this is a short-term issue because 


of, you know, end of fiscal year issues and 


continuing resolution issues and all things 


happen with bud-- budget or simply just the 


overwhelming, you know, amount of work that 


needs to be done, but -- but if you recall, we 


had always sort of operated that our -- our 


contractor identifies issues for NIOSH to 


evaluate, you know, essentially, that -- you 


know, to do that. And it seems to me that 

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there's a shift going on that where more and 


more of the follow-up is being shifted over to 


-- to our contractor to do. I -- I think it 


just is much -- may be an issue of the workload 


and so forth for everybody, but -- you know, so 


the number of hours put in by the staff of SC&A 


I think goes up partly because of that, partly 


'cause of the need to get things done quickly 


and -- but we -- we have to recognize that, you 


know, this is the major outside technical 


review that's done on these documents and 


involve both the SEC documents and other 


documents, and -- and just basically to get it 


done that way is just going to take a adequate 


amount of -- amount of resources. And to the 


extent that we have them more actively involved 


in sort of follow-up on issues and so forth, 


the -- that's even more resources. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. And Jim, you sort of 


underlined a point I -- I hope that I made 


yesterday, and that is we have to be very 


careful when an issue is identified that if 


it's a -- if it's a task that NIOSH should be 


doing, that our contractor is not doing the -- 


the agency's work, tracking down things or 

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going through records that -- on-- once we 


identify a gap, for example, that initially 


it's NIOSH's task to address an issue that may 


be identified. It's not our contractor's job 


to do the agency's work, so -- and you simply 


have emphasized we -- and it's a careful line 


to say when -- when do we pull the string and 


when does NIOSH pull the string. 


Wanda. 


 MS. MUNN: In Board action yesterday, you 


charged SC&A with a review of OTIB-43 relative 


to --


 DR. WADE: Blockson. 


 MS. MUNN: -- the Blockson Chemical Company and 


the radon issue with the phosphates. Is that 


going to fall under Task V as an SEC issue or 


does it fall under the routine procedural 


review? 


 DR. ZIEMER: I think this is a focused SEC 


review. It would be a Task V. It comes under 


this fiscal year, and as we indicated, the -- 


we're not in trouble on this fiscal year. 


We're looking ahead. I mean I -- I think Task 


V, for all practical purposes, is fully funded 


for the year that we're looking ahead. It's 

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just the issue that we have to be careful not 


to insist that there will be six separate SEC 


reviews under that if -- if one of them happens 


to be of the size of Rocky Flats. 


 DR. WADE: Yeah, I think the Blockson review, 


for example, will probably come in under the 


average -- not projecting, but I would imagine 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I wouldn't expect it to be 


another Rocky Flats at all. 


 DR. WADE: -- but it will be under that task. 


 MS. MUNN: No, neither would I. Just wanted to 


make very clear that -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 MS. MUNN: -- in all our minds --


 DR. ZIEMER: But that would be under Task V. 


 MS. MUNN: -- that's a Task V issue and we will 


proceed with it --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. And as -- as we move along 


 MS. MUNN: -- posthaste. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- if in fact the situation is 


such that we see very clearly that another one 


of these SEC reviews is going to be 


substantial, and that -- that can be identified 

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early and it's simply a matter of the Board 


saying okay, we recognize this and what's our 


priority and what comes next. And if there's 


other sites that have to be done and -- and we 


say we don't have the funds to -- to do that, 


what do we do. You know, is it shifting money, 


is it asking Congress for more money. And keep 


in mind, this -- this is more than a money 


issue, usually, because whenever this occurs 


you have resource issues -- manpower issues, 


womenpower issues -- for the contractor and for 


the Board. I mean it -- it typically means 


more workgroups and so on. So concurrent with 


this sort of thing, one would hope -- and I've 


talked to Lew about this, that -- and this 


isn't something the Board can do directly, but 


I would -- I would certainly go on record as 


saying that this Board could benefit from some 


additional members that would help us man the 


workgroups, as it were. 


Okay. Let's see, Jim, you have a comment. 


 DR. LOCKEY: Just to follow up on what you 


said. You know, if additional monies are 


needed, we can always ask Congress, but I think 


in relationship to the task that NIOSH is 

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doing, that also applies to NIOSH. And this 


Board I think should, where we feel 


appropriate, say that NIOSH needs additional 


resources internally to perform their tasks in 


a timely manner. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, NIOSH of course has ways to 


-- to make their requests known anyway, so I'm 


sure they won't be shy about that. But I --


your point is --


 DR. LOCKEY: But it doesn't (unintelligible) -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- your point is well made. 


 DR. LOCKEY: -- the point is, the Board 


(unintelligible) --


 DR. ZIEMER: Whenever this occurs, it's 


stretching everybody in --


 DR. LOCKEY: That's correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- the system, so... Further 

comments? 

 (No responses) 

Okay. I think that -- this is mainly to keep 


the -- make the Board aware of this issue as we 


go forward into the new year. 


We need to recess now, get -- get everybody -- 


well, unless the Board wishes to work through 


lunch, but I think -- I think we'll be in 

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pretty good shape. I know that some have to 


leave about mid-afternoon to catch planes, so ­

- but if we're -- if we're back here at roughly 


1:00 o'clock, we should be able to finish in a 


timely fashion. So let's take a break, get a 


little food, and return. 


 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 12:07 p.m. 


to 1:09 p.m.) 


SEC MOTIONS
 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR
 

 DR. ZIEMER: We're ready to proceed with the 


afternoon session. The first item we want -- 


want to take care of while we still have a 


quorum are the -- well, it's on the agenda as 


SEC write-up review, I think. That's what we 


mean by -- it's the write-ups of the SEC 


motions. We have four such documents and we'll 


just take them in the order that they came to 


us originally, beginning with Monsanto. The 


Monsanto draft was put on the table subject to 


the -- let's see, did we table it just to get 


the wording? I mean I -- I think it 


automatically comes off the table. We don't 


need a motion to that because we said we -- it 


would -- it was coming off the table during 


this meeting, so I now declare that it's the 

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time, so we don't have to have a separate 


motion to bring it back to the -- to the group, 


so... 


We now have the wording of the Monsanto motion. 


And since this, in a sense, was already a 


motion before us, I'll declare it to be such, a 


duly-seconded motion --


 MR. GRIFFON: It wa-- I don't think it was ever 


a motion. It was never a motion. 


 MR. PRESLEY: I think we just went ahead on 


this one we just -- we just tabled -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: We tabled --


 DR. ZIEMER: We tabled it before it was a 


motion? Okay, then let me ask for a motion to 


-- to approve the recommendation for the 


Monsanto SEC, and we'll get the draft on the 


table then. 


 MR. GRIFFON: I -- I guess I -- I'd rather make 


a motion to take this draft up in the next 


meeting, if we could, in the January 9th phone 


meeting, because in -- in the meantime I've 


asked NI-- part of the reason I tabled this was 


I asked NIOSH to answer a few questions on the 


data. They did post some stuff on the O drive 


which I was looking at last night and this 

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morning to some extent, although I lost contact 


with the -- you know, I lost my connection. 


But there -- there's quite a bit of data in the 


annual reports. LaVon also said that he's -- 


he's in contact with the -- I think LaVon left 


now, but he had called the ORAU individuals 


involved and they were getting together the 


spreadsheet for the polonium work and also the 


justification -- my -- my major concern with 


this one is that there's quite a bit of 


information in these annual reports, but I -- I 


don't necessarily dispute NIOSH's conclusion, I 


just think that we need to understand when they 


say sparse information for -- for being able to 


reconstruct the other radionuclides other than 


polonium, I think we need to understand what 


sparse means 'cause I know in -- in man-- in 


other -- other sites we have the circumstance 


where we have fairly little data, but we are 


able to at least bound -- or -- or NIOSH 


presents that they can bound exposures, so I 


just wanted to see what this sparse data -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right --


 MR. GRIFFON: -- meant. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and actually I --

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159

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- I just want to make sure, and 


this is a procedural thing, can you help me 


recall? Is this one that we did put on the 


table without having a motion to approve? 


 DR. MELIUS: My recollection is that this one 


we actually had a motion to approve, pending 


full wording. I think the only one that we 


tabled -- officially tabled was General 


Atomics, and that was pending -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: That's not true. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- pending -- pending LaVon 


getting some clarification on some issues. Now 


maybe I have it reversed with Monsanto. 


 MR. GRIFFON: I'm pre-- I'm pretty sure we -- 


I'm pretty sure this one got tabled before any 


motion was made to approve, and it was a split 


vote on the tabling actually, so I do recall -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: There was a split vote on the 


tabling --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- I'm -- I -- I am not actually ­

- I -- I thought we had approved -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: I think we --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- recommending the SEC. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Emily --


 DR. ZIEMER: Emily, can you shed light on what 


we did --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- without us having to go back 


through the transcript here? 


 MS. HOWELL: This was a motion to table, with 


five for tabling --


 DR. ZIEMER: But what --


 MS. HOWELL: -- three against --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- were we tabling? 


 MS. HOWELL: -- and you -- you had said that 


you were going to -- you called for a generic 


vote to approve or disapprove, to come back 


later with exact language, at which point it 


was tabled. So that motion -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay --


 MS. HOWELL: -- didn't ever pass. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- the motion to approve actually 


was --


 MR. GRIFFON: That was for Monsanto? 


 MS. HOWELL: Yes, this is for Monsanto. 


 MR. GRIFFON: And also for General Atomics, or 


 MS. HOWELL: Yes, there were two motions to 

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table, 'cause Monsanto was the first day. 


 DR. WADE: So when again --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. WADE: -- what -- so the -- this was tabled 


before --


 DR. ZIEMER: It was tabled before we voted. 


 MS. HOWELL: There were -- right, there were 


two motions on the floor. The motion to table 


was laid upon the motion to approve, with 


specific language to come later, so the tabling 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 MS. HOWELL: -- you never passed -- you never 


said that you were approving it. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 MR. GRIFFON: I guess the difference is, for 


General Atomics we actually voted on the motion 


to approve --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, well, we'll come -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- whereas we didn't --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- we'll come --


 MR. GRIFFON: -- for Monsanto. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- we'll come back --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- to that, so -- but what -- what 

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actually comes back to us off the table is a 


motion to approve Monsanto. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Which -- which is with the proper 


wording, which is this document. Now, that 


being the case -- this is before us -- it would 


be in order for you to move that action be 


delayed until this information that you 


described came to us. That would be an 


appropriate motion. 


 MR. GRIFFON: I'll make that motion. 


 DR. ZIEMER: An action to delay --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- would -- would supersede the 


action -- the main motion itself. And let me 


ask if there's a second to the action to delay 


-- to delay this approval. 


 DR. MELIUS: I'll second. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Wanda, do you want to speak 


to this issue of delaying till we get the 


additional information that was described? 


 MS. MUNN: Yes. Is it then presumed that the 


information that we have will be of such 


consequence that we might reverse the NIOSH 


recommendation to the SEC? 

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 MR. GRIFFON: It's hard for me to hypothesize, 


but I -- I -- I mean based on what was 


presented, I would say no. But I think that, 


you know, my -- my position is that I'd like to 


-- and I'm not asking for us to pull this and 


pull a workgroup and put SC&A involved -- you 


know, none of those steps. I think -- I just 


think it's worthwhile seeing the data and the 


steps before we unders-- so I understand better 


what sparse means, 'cause we have a lot of 


sites that have a sparse amount of data, and I 


think we need to make sure we're even-- 


treating these evenly in that regard. So as 


long as -- and -- and it sounds like -- from my 


conversations on the side, it sounds like, you 


know, the right decision was made in this 


regard. But it -- we've been trying to -- 


LaVon has tried to get this data to me real 


time, and it's just -- there's quite a bit of 


material, but you know, there's probably -- the 


health and safety reports are probably 600 or 


700 pages alone, but then they also said they 


took data out of that and did some analysis on 


it, and the analysis files I haven't seen yet. 


That might -- that might sum it up and then we 

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can say okay, now I understand. This is very 


sparse and the justification's there and I -- I 


would -- I would think that wouldn't change the 


-- the wording or wouldn't change the 


conclusion, so --


 MS. MUNN: Okay, so --


 DR. ZIEMER: And --


 MS. MUNN: -- so let me be very clear since, in 


my mind, sparse could cover an entire range of 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 MS. MUNN: -- you know, there's -- we're going 


to encounter all degrees of sparseness as we go 


along. So what we're -- what you're really 


asking is just more time for you to personally 


look at this data. That's --


 MR. GRIFFON: More time for us to personally 


look at this data, yes. 


 MS. MUNN: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And let me also offer, if -- if 


the Board is uncomfortable with a motion to 


postpone, another option for you would be to 


approve the motion, with a change in the 


instructions on when the Chair is to submit the 


letter. This -- you could instruct the -- the 

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Chair to delay issuing of the letter until the 


Board has a chance to examine that data, at 


which point you could have an opportunity to 


modify the letter. That would be an 


alternative if -- if some of you would like to 


go on record in terms of sort of the overall 


issue of -- of approving the action. Dr. 


Melius. 


 DR. MELIUS: I just think that if we did it 


that way, we'd have to word that motion in a 


manner that if the Board heard from one or more 


-- I mean some threshold -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: You would have --


 DR. MELIUS: -- saying -- requesting that it -- 


that it be held, because -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: You would have to change the first 


paragraph on the time issue, and add some 


instruction on -- on what would happen -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- yes. 

 DR. MELIUS: Correct. And do that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm just -- I'm just suggesting 

that if -- if Board members feel like they 


would go on record -- but you see that -- it 


still opens the possibility that -- that 

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subsequent data could cause you to -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- want to change, so in one sense 


you may be better off with -- with a motion 


simply to delay, and we're -- I think -- I 


think you could -- you could specify even how 


long that delay is that -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: I mean I -- I would -- I -- I 


think -- I -- I mean it was my intent -- I 


didn't say this in the motion necessarily, but 


the intent would be -- maybe it's a friendly 


amendment to my own motion, but to take action 


on this in the -- is it January 11th? I --


 DR. ZIEMER: January 11th. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- January 11th Board conference 


call meeting --


 DR. ZIEMER: Which is a delay --

 MR. GRIFFON: I don't want to delay it a lot. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- of several weeks. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Further discussion? This 

-- we're discussing the motion to postpone 


action. Did you have an additional comment, 


Jim? 


 DR. MELIUS: No, I'm sorry. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Board members, are you ready to 


vote? Does anyone wish to speak against the 


motion to postpone? 


 (No responses) 


 Anyone wish to speak for it? 


 (No responses) 


Anyone wish to speak? 


 (No responses) 


I'm going to assume by the silence that you're 


ready to vote. Oh, yes. 


 MS. HOWELL: Could I have a clarification of 


who is making the motion and who is seconding 


it? 


 DR. ZIEMER: The motion was made by Mark, 


seconded by Jim Melius. Motion to postpone -- 


is it to postpone until January 9th? 


 DR. WADE: 11th. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Or 11th, rather -- postpone action 


on this -- until January 11th, pending the 


receipt of additional information to clarify 


the adequacy or inadequacy of the data. Is 

that a fair statement? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Are you ready to vote then? Okay, 

all in favor of this motion to postpone, say 

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aye. 


 (Affirmative responses) 


UNIDENTIFIED: Let's do hands. 


 DR. ZIEMER: We'll do hands, okay. One, two, 


three, four, five, six -- the Chair will vote, 


seven. 


 And opposing? 


 (No responses) 


 And abstaining? 


(Indicating) 


One abstention. And the motion carries. 


 DR. WADE: Seven for, one abstention, Poston 


and Lockey not voting. The abstention was 


Wanda Munn. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, then we -- we're not going 


to spend any time on the wording of this at 


this time since it could change. 


 Next, General Atomics. May-- may--


 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) Emily 


(unintelligible). 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- Emily, does your record show 


that we did the same thing, or did we actu-- I 


thought -- I thought that we had approved but 


then tabled -- or not -- 


 MS. HOWELL: I mean if somebody has anything 

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different, what I have in my notes is that we 


actually voted in favor of tabling this when it 


first came up, which I think was on Monday, and 


then -- and that there were eight people in 


favor of tabling it. But then when it came up 


again yesterday, I think that's when LaVon 


introduced some additional information. There 


was a motion made to take it off the table, 


which it was taken off the table, and then Dr. 


Lockey made a motion to approve it generally, 


which was seconded by Presley with the idea 


that the language would be fixed. And then we 


had a vote with five in favor of general 


approval and three ag-- and three abstentions. 


So if you want to wordsmith with the language 


and people who abstained previously would like 


to change their vote, then proper motions to do 


so would have to be made. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I'm --


 MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


back on the floor. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, but I'm -- I'm not tracking 


with that completely. Are you saying we had 


this twice? 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

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 DR. WADE: First time it was tabled. 


 MS. HOWELL: First time it was tabled, and it 


came off the --


 DR. ZIEMER: After LaVon's initial -- 


 MS. HOWELL: Yes, on Monday --


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MS. HOWELL: -- it was tabled. 


 DR. ZIEMER: On Monday. And then when did it 


reappear on Tuesday? 


 MS. HOWELL: I'm not sure when. 


UNIDENTIFIED: Following Senator Obama? 


 MS. HOWELL: Following -- perhaps following 


Senator Obama's speech. 


 DR. ZIEMER: No, we went --


 DR. MELIUS: Actually might have done it prior 


to his --


 MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


whole time. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I think it was one of those 


-- the fillers we used. 


 MS. HOWELL: Right. I think you're right, I 


think it was one of the fillers. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, he brought the additional 


information, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 'Cause I 


-- I hadn't written that down. Okay. 

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So the -- the last action that was taken again, 


repeat that, was --


 MS. HOWELL: It was --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- to approve, but to table it 


with the understanding that we -- or not table 


it, but that it would be -- come back with 


revised words. 


 MS. HOWELL: Yes, and I would characterize it 


as a motion to proceed with wording the proper 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 MS. HOWELL: -- class definition. I just want 


to be clear that since we did have three 


abstentions, if -- if, after getting into 


specific language, those people would like to 


change their votes, then they need to motion to 


reopen it and to have another vote -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, that --

 MS. HOWELL: -- on it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, that would be a motion to 

reconsider, but that is actually not necessary. 


It still comes before us and we have the final 


wording that can be --


 MS. HOWELL: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- acted on, yes. 

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 MS. HOWELL: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: So this comes back to us now with 


the wording that's here and represents a motion 


before the Board. Now, Wanda. 

 MS. MUNN: No problem with the content. A 

couple of nits with respect to grammar. In the 

first paragraph, the fourth line, "promptly 


inform" rather than "informs". The same is 


true of the next line, "immediately work" 


instead of "works". We're presuming future 


activity and would not use the present tense 


there. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Fine, we'll take those as friendly 


amendments to this, or grammatical corrections. 


 MS. MUNN: No, they're grammatical corrections. 


The --


 DR. ZIEMER: Unfriendly grammatical -- no -- 


 MS. MUNN: In the first --


 DR. ZIEMER: Without objection, we'll make 


those changes. Go on. 


 MS. MUNN: In the first bullet, this of course 


is an entirely new paragraph, and although the 


specific areas have been listed in the 


preceding paragraph, when we say people working 


"in these areas," we do not say what areas, 

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even though they were listed earlier. The 


word designated perhaps should -- would 


immediately refer back to the list of specifics 


-- areas listed as covered. 


 DR. ZIEMER: So you're suggesting that the word 


"these" as it shows here, is perhaps somewhat 


vague. Would -- would -- if we said "people 


working in the areas listed above"? 


 MS. MUNN: Or des-- I suggested designated 


(unintelligible) would -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Designated areas? 


 MS. MUNN: Uh-huh, either would do. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Would -- is that agreeable as a 

friendly --

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I have no --

 DR. ZIEMER: "People working in the designated 

areas"? 

 MS. MUNN: Uh-huh, since it does not cover all 


of GA. And essentially the second typ-- the 


second bullet has the same kind of "these" 


reference, which --


 DR. ZIEMER: "In the designated areas". 


 MS. MUNN: Either "designated" or -- I used 


"specified" so as to not duplicate the 


language, but either would do. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Let's just call it "the 


designated areas" in both cases, to be uniform. 


Thank you. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Can I -- can I make a comment? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Legal -- if we put "designated" 


on here, it doesn't tie anything back to this 


document. If we say "above-listed," then it 


would tie these areas back to this document. 


Do -- if we say "designated," is that going to 


cause some heartburn down the road? 


 MS. HOWELL: Could you point out where you're ­

- where "designated" -- 


 MR. PRESLEY: Second -- second bullet -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, first and second. First 


bullet would say "People working in the 


designated areas" and so on. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Or should we put in there "the 


above-listed" since this document -- 


 MS. HOWELL: Well, the issue is always going to 


be that in the past, when the Secretary has 


made a designation, they're typically looking 


at the second paragraph -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: The second paragraph. 


 MS. HOWELL: -- here. The bullets may or may 

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not be included, so that's why we've been 


advocating pulling as much detail -- if you 


want it to -- to get into the designation, then 


put as mu-- then if it's that important, then 


put it in that second paragraph. I'm not so 


concerned about --


 DR. ZIEMER: The bullet --


 MS. HOWELL: I mean I think I would maybe not 


use the term "designated," but that I'm not as 


worried about. I just want to be very clear 


that if it's important enough for you to be 


listing it in these bullets, if you want to 


make sure that it gets into that designation, 


you need to put it up here and then NIOSH -- we 


all need to work together to make sure we have 


everything in that package necessary because 


that's where we're getting the problems. 


 DR. ZIEMER: It is already there, so --


 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah, it's there, but I just want 


to make sure the word "designation" rather than 


"the above-listed" is not going to cause 


heartburn down the road. 


 MS. HOWELL: I -- I would go with "abovelisted". 


 MR. PRESLEY: I was afraid of that. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: The "above-listed"? Is that okay? 


 MS. MUNN: Fine. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, if that makes it clear, 


we'll do that. 


 MS. MUNN: I just wanted to tie it to the 


preceding paragraph is all. 


 DR. ZIEMER: So in both of those cases we'll 


put "the above-listed areas". Any other? 


 DR. MELIUS: Can I just... 


 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 


 DR. MELIUS: Want to draw people's attention to 


sort of how this -- this follows the pattern 


that we have been following in our previous 


letters and so forth with the -- the basis for 


our recommendation being, you know, a -- a 


series of -- of points and so forth. The --


probably the most significant change that we 


made is that -- is the last sentence of the -- 


that -- instructions, the first sentence of the 


first paragraph to the Sec-- to the Secretary. 


That's, you know, the Board notes that although 


NIOSH found that they were unable to completely 


reconstruct -- in all of the letters here that 


we're considering or would have considered 


today, there was some -- I think uncertainty -- 

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that NIOSH is in the process of evaluating at 


least some of this and in some cases, like for 


medical X-rays they were certain, others they 


weren't. There were gradations in there and 


rather than go into a great deal of gradation, 


I think we have the sentence there "they 


believe that they are able to reconstruct" and 


then I tried to (unintelligible) at least some 


specificity about the -- you know, external 


versus internal and if they said specifically 


they could do uranium and had already 


demonstrated that, then it sort of says that. 


But -- but I -- I think that's fine and Larry 


and I actually talked about it and I gave them 


a chance to review the letters last night, so ­

- but this would sort of be the -- the pattern. 


It would be drawn from their presentation and 


so forth. If we had taken an active role in 


sort of completely reviewing that data that 


they -- where they could do external rec-- they 


-- reconstruction or if they were farther along 


in that process, then we might, you know, 


change the wording in that slightly, but I 


think this would be the pattern that we go from 


if what I understood from what Pete Turcic 

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said, this was sort of satisfactory from -- 


from their -- their perspective and I think 


it'll -- by moving it up, it makes it clear 


that -- hopefully in what the Secretary issues 


is -- this is a possibility. 


And I -- I think -- the other thing I think -- 


again, I just want to point out so everyone's 


aware of it is -- is it sort of used the term 


for partial dose reconstructions. That's how 


we refer to them. I don't know if it's sort of 


an official part of NIOSH's glossary or 


something, but it's the -- something that we 


have usually referred to these as. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right, I think NIOSH has referred 


to them that way, too, and -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- Larry, you're okay with that 


wording, I believe. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. And I want to ask a 


further question, maybe I'll direct it to 


Larry. In some of our previous letters, which 


are somewhat parallel to this, NIOSH had some 


questions on our references to 42 CFR Section 


83.13 and 14. You may recall, Larry, I think 

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the last letter I sent you were somewhat 


questioning whether that was -- whether we 


referred to the correct section. And I'm --


 MR. ELLIOTT: The way --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- I want to make sure that we're 


correctly citing what requirements are in play 


here. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: We're okay with the way it's 


phrased. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Sorry. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I just wanted to make sure that 


was clear. 


And -- and then we should mention perhaps, and 


I'd have to go back and check the last letter 


we sent, but the issue on health endangerment. 


The correct wording as it is here now should be 


"may have endangered health". The finding is 


not that it has, but that it may have, and 


we'll make sure to make -- make that the 


wording as we go forward. 


 DR. MELIUS: There -- Larry and I actually 


talked about this and there -- actually the 


four NIOSH ones received all have slightly 


different wording in them and those were not 

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all always consistent and so forth. I think 


we've captured everything here. As I said, 


they've had a chance to review these and so 


forth, but we --


 DR. ZIEMER: And Pete --

 DR. MELIUS: -- we certainly need to be -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- and Pete is here and -- and has 

indicated to me that they -- Labor is 


comfortable with this wording, as well, but -- 


but I know if -- you can speak for yourself 


since you're still here, but -- 


 MR. TURCIC: Yeah, we're comfortable. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Larry, an additional 


comment there? 


 MR. ELLIOTT: We're -- we're okay with the 


wording as we see it and the changes you've 


already talked about. I think there was a 


question raised during the discussion of 


General Atomics about 400 boxes that only a 


sample had been -- of information had been 


reviewed. I have it -- an update on that if 


you want to hear it. If not, we'll --


 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I don't (unintelligible) -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes --


 MR. GRIFFON: -- I don't know if I have to 

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reopen or -- 'cause I abstained vote, so I 


don't know the procedure. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Go ahead? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, no, the -- yeah, in that -- 


no, it's before us. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, no, you --


 MR. ELLIOTT: I mean it just adds clarity -- I 


hope it adds clarity to a question that was 


raised about did NIOSH or did ORAU and NIOSH 


look at all the records for General Atomics. 


The reference was that 400 boxes were found and 


only a portion of those had been reviewed. 


That comes out of the very first draft version 


of this Technical Basis Document that -- which 


was written about a year and a half ago. So 


the writing of that was done at the early 


stages of data capture. 


What has happened since that time is a number 


of -- of additional boxes have been reviewed 


and -- and appropriate materials, documents, 


have been retrieved pertinent to this site in a 


Technical Basis Document that speaks to that 


site. I can even give you the data collection 


efforts -- July 11th, 2005 to July 14, 2005 

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there are 40 additional documents retrieved 


pertinent to dose reconstruction for General 


Atomics. August 15th, 2005 through August 


18th, 2005 another 194 documents had been -- 


were retrieved and used for the site profile or 


this Technical Basis Document. October 31st, 


2005 to November 3rd, 2005 another 68 documents 


were retrieved for inclusion. January 9th 


through January 13th of 2006, 73 more documents 


were retrieved. So we feel we have covered the 


document retrieval effort on this. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Mark, do you have 


additional questions on that issue or -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: I -- I don't think so. I mean 


you -- you -- it sounds like they went through 


-- at least looked at all the boxes -- is that 


the notion? -- and then took relevant documents 


as... 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, what I'm told here is they 


looked through all those boxes, and even more 


boxes, and -- and these are the documents that 


were pertinent to the General Atomics 


situation. 


 MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) That satisfies 


(unintelligible). 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, you have an additional 

comment? 

 DR. MELIUS: No, I'm sorry, I... 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now the Chair also recognizes that 

-- there were several who abstained yesterday. 


I think in part because of the issue of -- of ­

- the status of those boxes was one issue. And 


was there another issue that was kind of an 


open issue? I want to make sure that before we 


vote on anything that there are no loose ends 


that --


 MR. GRIFFON: It was the -- the boxes, but also 


as it related to this -- this list of buildings 


and whether some of these buildings -- you 


know, they -- they -- some of them on -- on the 


surface may seem like they weren't high-risk 


areas and -- but -- and yet they're included, 


but I guess the -- the -- what we've heard is 


they can't exclude them, is part of the -- part 


of the problem here with the data they have, so 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I guess that -- that issue 


goes to the idea of whether you can place 


people in certain buildings or not, and we had 


that kind of discussion because some of these 

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buildings, on the surface, would appear to -- 


the -- the likelihood for them being high-risk 


buildings seem to be low. But unless we can 


establish that workers didn't have access to 


the other buildings, then you're kind of stuck 


with the whole picture. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I would turn this around 


and say that the data retrieval and the 


information that was reviewed supports the 


evaluation report that we've provided to you. 


It -- it -- that's our basis. That's what 


we're -- we're founding this -- this 


recommendation on, that -- that all of these 


different areas on this facility had these kind 


of exposures that --


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- we cannot reconstruct. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Not necessarily that we cannot -- 


or can put people in those buildings, but we 


know the exposure occurred. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

 DR. MELIUS: I guess --

 DR. ZIEMER: Comment? 

 DR. MELIUS: -- my concern with that is that -- 
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not what was reported, but the way it was 


communicated in this report was far from clear, 


is that that was the basis for including these 


buildings. And -- and I think that certainly 


for future reference that we need to try to 


communicate that better in the actual 


evaluation report. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: I think we have clearly 


identified this in our evaluation report. I 


pointed this out when we talked about this. If 


you look at each one of those facilities, we 


tie it to thorium. We talk about what happened 


in the laboratory, why thorium was an issue 


there. If you want us to go to greater detail, 


sure, we could go to greater detail, but it's 


going to make a more voluminous report, so I 


feel we had -- we had done just service to 


this. If we missed the mark, I'd like to have 


it clearly pointed out to me where. 


 DR. ZIEMER: No, so -- so it really is not an 


issue of placing people in -- in the site, but 


basically the evaluation is -- and there's a 


list of -- of the issues on each of the 


buildings and -- and they do make that point, 

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so I -- I think in the presentation it wasn't 


that clear, but it is in -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Well, I respectfully still 


disagree. I don't think that the report 


clearly reflects the fact that people moved 


between buildings, that it's not possible to 


identify people by building or by operation 


within building, and I think -- all I'm -- 


would be asking for would be some clearer 


statement about that in future reports when 


that is the case. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, I -- I -- I'm not -- I don't 


think that's what he said. I -- I think -- I 


think Larry's saying that each -- you -- you 


don't have to indicate that people moved 


between buildings. Each building --


 MR. ELLIOTT: That's right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- represents the same problem on 


-- on dose reconstruction. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: That's right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: So whether you're in one building 


or all of them, the issue remains the same, as 


I -- as I read it now, but -- 


 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Anyway, that appears to be 

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the case here. 


 Further questions or comments? 


 (No responses) 


Then let me ask if you're ready to vote on this 


with the modifications that we've made, which 


are basically friendly amendments? 


 DR. WADE: Emily might want to address this. 


Do you want to speak to this, Emily? We have a 


vote with Lockey's vote registered. The 


question is, do we want to vote without Lockey 


or do the members who abstained wish to change 


their vote? 


 MS. HOWELL: I guess what I would say is you 


can have a couple different things happen here. 


You do need to vote to accept this language as 


a whole, but so that we have Dr. Lockey's vote 


and we're not getting rid of the previous vote, 


if the three members who abstained have changed 


their mind, they may motion to change their 


votes for the record, and then you can also 


vote to accept this language and then you'd 


have everybody. But it's really up to y'all. 


 DR. ZIEMER: A comment on that, on procedure? 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, just a comment on -- I mean 


Dr. Lockey spoke with us before he left and his 

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preference -- I think partially based on my 


advice -- was to delay this -- del-- delay 


action on this, on approval of the final 


language, until the -- the next meeting, the 


same as the last one. Now he didn't hear this 


information about the -- that -- that Larry 


just gave us. That was part of what we were 


waiting on. So I -- I don't know -- he -- he 


didn't really leave us with a vote -- 


 MS. HOWELL: Without -- without him being here 


and without us having his preference -- his 


proxy --


 DR. WADE: Right, we can't vote his proxy. 


 MS. HOWELL: Right. 


 DR. WADE: What we could do is vote and then 


Dr. Ziemer and I could try and secure his vote 


prior to reporting of the -- the final vote 


tally. We've done that before. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, also let me call attention 


to the following: That in parliamentary 


procedure, you can always do a vote to 


reconsider, which is a second vote on the same 


item. You can only do that once. But in a 


sense, what -- thi-- this, in my mind, 


constitutes that. If -- if we want a formal 

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motion to reconsider, we can do it that way and 


put this on the floor as a reconsidered motion 


with these words, and then -- and then we -- we 


have a clean slate. Everybody can vote clean. 


 MS. HOWELL: And that's -- that's completely 


fine, I -- and then you guys can try to secure 


Dr. Lockey's vote after the fact. The issue 


is, we were just trying to get as many Board 


members as possible in --


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

 MS. HOWELL: -- on the vote. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So at -- at the moment -- 

the Chair has to figure out the status of this 


-- the motion as it is before us simply was 


bringing this back. It -- we had a -- had a 


motion to table, was it, with some abstentions 


on this one, but we had -- had we only moved to 


table without -- no, we had already moved to 


accept --


 DR. WADE: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and then we moved to table. 


 DR. WADE: For both -- table for wording. 


 DR. ZIEMER: The abstentions were on which of 


those motions? 


 DR. WADE: The motion to accept the intent. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: The motion to accept the intent in 


-- was the motion on which there were 


abstentions. 


 DR. WADE: Correct. 


 DR. ZIEMER: The motion to table -- you didn't 


abstain on the tabling motion. No, okay. 


Okay, so it -- it come-- it comes off -- it 


comes off the table automatically. 


 MS. HOWELL: It was already --


 MR. GRIFFON: Already off --


 MS. HOWELL: -- off the table. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- the table. 


 MS. HOWELL: So the mo-- the abstentions were 


to actual-- for the -- actually whether or not 


to accept the SEC. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. And after that occurred, 


after we voted with those abstentions, then -- 


then we agreed that -- that it would come for 


final wording. 


 DR. WADE: Correct. 


 MS. HOWELL: Yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So I -- I think to make 


this clean, we could ask for a motion to 


reconsider the original mo-- 


 DR. MELIUS: Well, before we -- before we do 

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that, I just would state that I would still 


maintain my abstaining from any vote to approve 


this, either in the final wording or in the 


original motion. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 DR. MELIUS: I'm still not satisfied and I 


think it's very hard for us to review this any 


further. LaVon's not here and so forth and -- 


understandable and... 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, and perhaps you should 


express that issue because there may be others 


that would share that and so -- 


 DR. MELIUS: In -- as I said, I've already 


expressed it. I -- I do not believe that the 


justifications provided for the individual 


buildings are complete and I'd like to have 


more information on that and... 


 MR. GRIFFON: And -- and -- I mean I agree with 


that. The only thing I would say is that -- 


that it's encouraging -- what Larry just said 


is very encouraging. I'd just like to look at 


it, same as the last set, not -- nothing with a 


workgroup or anything, just to -- to make sure 


we understand what they did -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

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 MR. GRIFFON: -- what they sampled, what they ­

- I mean I -- you know, this is a very -- as 


you said earlier, Paul, this is a very 


complicated site and we want to just make sure 


we have the -- you know, that they've done a 


thorough job, and it sounds like they have, but 


I think we need to -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Well, I don't think -- they may 


not have communicated the thoroughness of their 


-- their work, at least in the way that 


satisfies me, and that I think that in -- when 


one is dealing with an 83.14 and expanding from 


a single case up to a larger part of a site -- 


which is what we ought to be doing; I mean that 


-- that's for our (unintelligible) 'cause not ­

- we'd have to be doing it case by case and be 


too much work. I think that we just need to 


make sure that the justification for the 


expansion is adequate. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. Let me suggest a track or 


a procedure to follow, because I -- I don't 


think the abs-- I don't want to 


mischaracterize, but I don't think abstentions 


help us get where we want to get. I would 


suggest, if there are one or -- it would take 

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two or more Board members who believe that 


there should be an extension or delay on this, 


you should make an appropriate motion and we'll 


-- that will tell us whether or not that is a 


widely-held view. And -- and if it is not, 


then we proceed. But I think -- I -- I don't 


think it's necessarily helpful simply to 


abstain. Abstain-- abstentions are more for 


cases where you have a conflict, and I -- I -- 


I mean it may be that everybody feels that way 


but nobody is expressing it except Jim. 


 MR. GRIFFON: I guess -- I guess that's why I 


was reflecting Jim Lockey's -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Who's not here to --


 MR. GRIFFON: -- position to me --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- which was to delay --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- delay action. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 MR. GRIFFON: So... 


 DR. ZIEMER: Brad. 


 MR. CLAWSON: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


we delay action on this (unintelligible) -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: See, he abstained --

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 MS. HOWELL: Sorry, but you're going to have to 


bring it back up in order to delay anything. 


You've already passed on this. 


 DR. ZIEMER: It's already on the table. 


 MR. GRIFFON: No, but he abstained. Right? Is 


that the issue? 


 DR. MELIUS: No, he did not. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Oh, he didn't? 


 DR. ZIEMER: It doesn't matter. Anybody can 


call for a motion --


 DR. WADE: To reconsider. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- once it's back on the floor. 


 MS. HOWELL: But you need to make and pass the 


motion to reconsider it if you're not going to 


vote it out at this meeting, 'cause you already 


-- technically, once this meeting is adjourned, 


it has been voted out. 


 DR. WADE: Right, so you need a motion to 


reconsider --


 DR. ZIEMER: Motion to reconsider first? 


 DR. WADE: Correct. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And when we do the motion to 


reconsider, then we can supersede that with a 


motion to delay. 


 DR. WADE: Correct, and then you can -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: We get it parliamentary-correct 


here. Okay. 


 DR. WADE: That's correct, I think you need a 


motion to reconsider. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MR. GIBSON: Motion to reconsider. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Michael has made a motion to 

reconsider the -- the previous action, and 


seconded by Brad Clawson. Motions to 


reconsider are debatable, if there's anyone 


wishes to express pro or con on this. 


 MS. MUNN: I'd like to make a comment. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Comment? 


 MS. MUNN: Since the matters that we deal with 


are repeatedly brought to us in an emotional 


fashion, it seems to me we can't have it both 


ways. Either we wish to move these issues as 


expediently and fairly as possible, or else we 


wish to delay them until we have satisfied 


every conceivable concern that might be raised, 


regardless of its magnitude. I have not heard 


anyone say that they anticipate further review 


of the material that's before us as being 


likely to change the position that this group 


of petitioners constitutes an SEC. If that is 

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the case, then either we need to move forward 


with it, or else we need to agree that, 


regardless of the emotionalism that's brought 


in other cases, we will continue to work these 


issues as long as we possibly can. It seems 


unwise to postpone voting on issues that are 


not perceived even here and now as being likely 


to be changed as a result of the review. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. So you are speaking 


against the motion to -- well, actually the 


motion to reconsider does not in itself carry a 


delay. It's simply a motion to reconsider the 


previous vote where there were abstentions. So 


I -- if -- if this comes before us for 


reconsideration, then someone can make that 


motion to which your remarks would actually 


apply, I think. 


The motion to reconsider, anyone speaking for 


or against that -- which is simply to revote on 


the -- on the original issue. 


 (No responses) 


Okay. All in favor of reconsidering the 


General Atomics SEC petition recommendation, 


say -- raise your right hand. Motion to 


reconsider, this -- this gets the motion on the 

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floor. It's General Atomics. 


 (Affirmative responses) 


 Any opposing or abstentions -- 


 DR. WADE: So the vote is eight to zero, all 


members present voting on it. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Now -- now the General Atomics 


draft is before us for action and vote, unless 


someone wishes to move to delay that action 


till later. Jim, are you making a motion? 


 DR. MELIUS: I move to delay consideration of 


this draft until our January 11th meeting, 


particularly concerned about inadequate 


information justifying some of the buildings 


that are included in the list of -- in the 


definition of the class, particularly the 


laboratory building. 


 MR. GRIFFON: I'll second. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, the motion has been made and 


seconded to delay. The motion does not 


necessarily need to include reasons for delay, 


although it can -- or that is -- at least 


becomes part of the context for the motion. 


Also in the context of the motion we have at 


least one member who was not privy to the 


information that's been shared with us today 

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and had left instructions that he wished to 


delay. 


Does anyone wish to speak for or against the 


motion to delay action? Yes, Robert. 


 MR. PRESLEY: I'd like to speak against it. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MR. PRESLEY: I -- I cannot see anything that's 


going to change or broaden the scope of this. 


I mean this speaks to what the SEC petition 


was, and I -- I mean I'm -- I'm sorry, I just 


can't -- I don't understand that -- why, if we 


add just a few more things, it's going to 


change this to make a great big difference. 


I'm sorry, I don't. It's -- it's here. It's 


in black and white. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Anyone else to speak 


for or against the motion to delay? Yes --


 MR. GRIFFON: I'll -- I'll spe-- I'll speak for 


it, I guess -- with enthusiasm. You know, I 


guess in my mind it's -- it's this question of 


-- I mean this is a SEC petition to approve a 


class, and I feel like we, as the Board, have 


to give considerable -- or at least reasonable 


effort in reviewing this and understanding the 


basis for it before we vote. And myself, I 

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haven't seen -- I mean it -- the data's not 


there. The data is underlying -- the data's on 


the O drive and I want to see a little better 


the basis for the selection of these buildings, 


and I think that -- my concern I guess is that 


in some situations we've -- we've -- we've 


taken laborator-- the one example would be Y-12 


where we actually excluded a thorium laboratory 


and -- and NIOSH indicated they would use a 


separate type of model, a new Reg. 1400 model 


or approach to model workers that were in that 


laboratory. They took it off the list, even 


though it was in -- it was clear that thorium 


was used in -- used in there. There were 


thorium workers, so to speak, but they -- they 


indicated that it was a laboratory setting, 


very small quantities. Now the one difference 


here -- at -- at least -- I just want to see 


mo-- you know, I just want to see the data on 


this, but apparently there's less known about 


the source term for this laboratory. In other 


words, they're not sure exactly what kind of 


quantities, but -- but you know, a lot of us 


have questions about that, that -- you know, an 


analytical lab. I -- I just think we need to 

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at least look at the data that was the basis 


for this so that we keep consistency on our -- 


on -- on our -- our record on doing these. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Both when it's advocating an SEC 


and when it's advocating that there not be an 


SEC. So for you, it's -- it's an issue of 


satisfying yourself what -- what the underlying 


inf-- information says on the O drive. Yeah. 


Okay, others, pro or con? 


 (No responses) 


I might observe, and I -- I suspect that Mark 


and maybe Jim would also agree, that the 


likelihood of this changing is probably pretty 


small, so it gets to the issue of making sure 


that you've sort of done due diligence on 


examining the issues in this case. I -- I 


don't want to read more into it than -- than I 


should, but I -- I don't sense that you expect 


this to --


 MR. GRIFFON: I gue-- I guess it's -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- change over the --


 MR. GRIFFON: -- it's hard for me to --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, you can't say in advance. 


Right. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- yeah, say in advance, without 

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looking at the data, whether this might likely 


change my opinion on the -- on the described 


class. 


 DR. ZIEMER: This basically becomes an issue 


whether one thinks you could reconstruct dose 


with the data available, which is the thorium 


data. Jim. 


 DR. MELIUS: And I would just remind everyone 


that -- you know, again, this is a situation 


where you don't have a site profile that's been 


reviewed. You know, we're seeing this -- 


essentially dealing with this site I believe 


for the first time. I don't believe we've had 


-- had any involvement in the site, and so, 


again, I think the mor-- all the more reason to 


take some care and diligence in terms of our 


review. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other comments now? 


 (No responses) 


Okay, then we're ready to vote this -- oh, I'm 


sorry. Wanda, I didn't see your flag up there. 


 MS. MUNN: So -- well, that's because I didn't 


put it up, sorry. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh. 


 MS. MUNN: So what we're saying is if I vote 

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not to delay this, then I am voting for a lack 


of due diligence. That's what I'm hearing. 


Right? 


 DR. ZIEMER: I -- I think that this becomes 


each individual's issue of when -- when you are 


personally satisfied. I don't -- I -- I don't 


think any of us would say that has to be the 


same point for everyone. I certainly wouldn't 


want to declare that. I -- I sense that Mark 


is uneasy with what information he's been able 


to establish. I -- I'm simply in a sense 


trying to provide opportunity for Board members 


who are not at the point -- I'm sure we're 


often at different points of all of these 


issues as to the point at which we're satisfied 


with both the information and its 


interpretation. So I -- I don't want to read 


any more into --


 MS. MUNN: No. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- that or -- or if someone votes 


against this motion, to put them in a category 


of saying they're for or against some 


particular interpretation. I -- I don't -- I 


don't think we want to do that. Just -- I thi­

- if members are -- are ready to go with this, 

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that's -- that's entirely fine, and there 


should be no sort of dispersions (sic) cast on 


that basis, so let -- let's please not -- not 


do that at all. 


 Further -- further comments? 


 (No responses) 


Okay, let's vote and those who are in favor of 


the motion to postpone action until the January 


11th meeting, raise your right hand. 


 MS. MUNN: Oh, let's do, let's not... 


 (Affirmative responses) 


 DR. ZIEMER: One, two, three, four, five, six, 


seven -- and eight. 


 DR. WADE: So the vote -- all eight members 


present voted yes. 


 MR. PRESLEY: I'll go ahead and vote for it. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MR. PRESLEY: For the unity of the Board. 


 MS. MUNN: Uh-huh. 


 DR. ZIEMER: That's -- that's fine. 


 DR. WADE: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, so there is a motion to 


delay and that has been approved. This wording 


stands when it -- when it comes back to us, 


unless there are changes based on what is found 

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in the meantime. And I don't -- I don't know 


if we count Dr. -- Dr. Lockey's vote at this 


point. 


 DR. WADE: No. 


 DR. ZIEMER: We probably need to --


 DR. WADE: I would not count his vote. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Until -- until we --


 DR. WADE: Yeah, we don't do proxy votes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, we don't need it at this 


point anyway. 


 MR. CLAWSON: Dr. Ziemer? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 


 MR. CLAWSON: You said the letter stands as is 


until the 11th. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, we -- we've made -- we've 


made some amendments, so that's the document 


that will come back to us as the starting -- 


 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, with the corrections -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah --


 MR. CLAWSON: -- that have been made. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- as a starting point. Unless 


Emily --


 MR. CLAWSON: Unless Emily tells us we're 


wrong. 


 DR. WADE: You did it good. You did -- you're 

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doing well. 


 DR. ZIEMER: If we have enough labyrinths here 


we'll quickly lose even Emily's ability to 


track what we're doing. 


Okay, so that's General Atomic. We've done --


 DR. MELIUS: We've already lost the silver 


medalist, so... 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- Monsanto --


 DR. WADE: Harshaw and Allied Chemical. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Harshaw. What did I do with my 


copy of Harshaw? 


(Pause) 


 DR. WADE: I would say on the record that the 


last two votes to delay I think clearly 


underscore the need for a working group to look 


at 83.14s. I mean what's happening is people 


seeing this information for the first time, and 


again, everyone has a different comfort level 


and therefore a mechanism to allow for these 


things to be looked at before the Board sits I 


think is appropriate. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Let -- let's do Allied. We're 


just taking them in the order that we handled 


them. Allied would be next. Now on this one 


we approved and agreed to -- to have the 

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wording come back to us. I don't think we 


tabled anything here. Am I correct on that? 


 MS. MUNN: No, I think you're correct. 


 DR. ZIEMER: So here's the wording that's back 


to us, so this now is the motion that is before 


us. Wanda Munn I think has some corrections. 


 MS. MUNN: The same grammatical corrections 


that were made on the preceding document -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 


 MS. MUNN: -- apply here. 


 DR. ZIEMER: So that would be in paragraph one 


that the Chair promptly "inform" the Board -- 


incidentally, as I look at this, to be 


consistent, the Board should be capitalized in 


both places, not just one, so let's make that 


change, as well. Is that -- do you agree with 


that? 


 MS. MUNN: Correct. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And that would be true of the 


previous documents as well. 


 Promptly inform the Board, capital B. And then 


down --


 DR. WADE: No, and immediately "work". 


 MS. MUNN: And "work". 


 DR. ZIEMER: And immediately "work". 

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 DR. MELIUS: Then Board should be capital 

again. 

 DR. ZIEMER: In that last line, another capital 

B for Board, thank you. 


 DR. MELIUS: And -- and I actually think that ­

- I actually think it applies to Harshaw, also. 


These are in essence plant-wide. We're not 


designating particular -- particular buildings 


or areas, so it would say "people working in 


the Allied Chemical" -- I don't think -- "in 


these areas" is sort of redundant. I don't 


think it's needed, if you want to -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right, so on Allied, it says 


people working -- we would say "at the" Allied 


Chemical --


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- Corporation plant. 


 DR. MELIUS: And then in the second bullet, 


people exposed to radiation "in the" Allied 


Chemical Corporation plant. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right, just leave out "in these 


areas of" --


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- in the second bullet. 


 DR. MELIUS: Right. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: So those are all friendly 


amendments. 


Now, any other wording changes? 


 (No responses) 


If there are not, are you ready to vote on this 


-- on this mo-- on this wording? It's really 


an approved motion for which we are polishing 


the wording. Wanda, an additional -- 


 MS. MUNN: No. 


 DR. ZIEMER: No? Okay. 


 MS. MUNN: Sorry. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Ready to vote? All in 


favor of the proposed wording on Allied 


Chemical with the changes just noted, say -- 


raise your right hand. 


 (Affirmative responses) 


And any -- obviously would be no no’s or 


abstentions, so the record will show an eight-


zero vote on Allied. Thank you very much. The 


motion carries. 


 DR. MELIUS: Racing to the table for a last-


minute vote. 


 DR. ZIEMER: On Monsanto -- on Monsanto -- 


 DR. WADE: No. 


 MR. PRESLEY: We've already -- we've already -- 

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 DR. MELIUS: Harshaw -- Harshaw's next. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Harshaw's next. 


 DR. MELIUS: Same -- same --


 DR. ZIEMER: I'm sorry, did I pick up the wrong 


one? 


 DR. MELIUS: Same changes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Hars-- yes, Harshaw -- do we have 


any designated areas on this one? 


 DR. MELIUS: No, it's a --


 DR. ZIEMER: So people working "at" -- 


 DR. MELIUS: "At the". 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- "at the" Harshaw Harvard 


division, and then in the next bullet -- 


 MR. PRESLEY: The next one's all right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Next one's all right -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. I have no idea --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- for some reason. 


 DR. MELIUS: I was --


 DR. ZIEMER: Are there any other wording 


changes on Harshaw? 


And we already have the ones in the first 


paragraph, the same as previously, capital Bs 


on the Boards and deleting the s’s on "informs" 


and "works". 


Are you ready to then vote on the final wording 

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on Harshaw? Okay, all those who favor this 


wording, raise your right hand. 


 (Affirmative responses) 


And there are no no’s or abstentions, so the 


eight-zero vote favors that motion, and that 


completes those four items. Thank you very 


much. 


 DR. WADE: Emily, any last comments? Do you 


ha-- Emily's happy. 


 DR. ZIEMER: She's still smiling, at least. 


Right? Okay. 


SELECTION OF ADDITIONAL PROCEDURES 


TO BE REVIEWED BY SC&A
 

DR. LEWIS WADE, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
 

We have an item called selection of additional 


procedures to be reviewed by SC&A. Lew, you 


can kick that off. I think we have -- Stu is 


going to help us with this, is he -- 


 DR. WADE: And Joe --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and Joe --


 DR. WADE: -- Fitzgerald for SC&A. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- Fitzgerald for SC&A. In your 


booklets or in handouts, there are two things. 


One is the OCAS document inventory that Stu 


prepared for us, and the other is SC&A's list 


of procedures reviewed. It's a bigger packet, 


so --

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 DR. WADE: Joe, if you could -- if we could 


have you come when you get your papers, and 


just give us the arithmetic up to this point in 


terms of the task for the year and what has 


been assigned to this point and what's 


remaining. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Sure, you should have this 


handout, which is something we prepared based 


on, you know, the procedures to date, what have 


you. This is dated September, and Stu and I 


have spoken. There's some procedures and 


documents that have come out since the end of 


September, so there's maybe a little bit of 


update from Stu's standpoint. But if you 


recall back to the Las Vegas meeting, we were 


chartered with looking at 14 of these 


procedures, plus seven that involve site-


specific procedures. These were ones where we 


have already looked at them in the context of 


the site profiles, what have you, and with 


minimal additional work we could provide those 


as well, so a total of 21 procedures. 


Now in addition to those 21 that were, you 


know, voted on at the Las Vegas meeting, since 


then two more have been identified at this 

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particular session and the past session, 


construction -- the construction OTIB. OTIB-52 


I think was identified at -- in Las Vegas as a 


-- as a separate entity under sort of a 


different charter than the -- this procedures 


thing, but yet again, it's an OTIB document 


we'd be looking at. 


At this particular session the -- I guess it's 


OTIB-43, which deals with the radon, was just 


identified so I might add that those two, in 


addition to the other 21, sort of gives us 


these 23 that were -- either have been 


chartered with or just chartered with and we're 


working -- so that's 23. 


Now I think the idea was to supplement that 


with -- with up to 16 more procedures. And in 


discussing this with Stu before the meeting, I 


think that's going to be -- the Board may be 


hard-pressed in a sense that there's not a 


whole lot, based on what we can look at, that 


are left. Perhaps half that number, at the 


max, would be certainly ones that might have 


some relevance, and that's certainly what we 


can discuss and certainly what you can decide. 


I might add from this morning's discussion the 

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OCAS procedure on PERs certainly is a new one 


that has just been developed and issued, and 


that's something that we don't have on our 


list, for example, which obviously is a fairly 


significant development that would be something 


that could be reviewed. 


We also have some procedures -- procedu-- and 


this is not on our list -- Procedure 94, PROC 


Procedure 95, these are, respectively, 


verification of validation process for tools 


for -- dose reconstruction tools in 


development. Procedure 95 is generating a 


summary of statistics for conducting coworker 


bioassay. So there's additional -- several 


others that are substantive. 


On this list in the right-hand column I think 


you -- you'll have this matrix, maybe not; I'm 


not sure what you're looking at. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, what I'm looking at -- 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, you have the same one. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Is that what you have there? 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, this is the matrix I 


believe that -- does it say "SCA's list" up 


top? 


 DR. WADE: Yes. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: September 2006? 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yep. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, on the left-hand side 


you should see circled the 21 that were 


assigned. And on the right-hand side under 


"Review Status" you'll see "not reviewed" or 


"review complete" or "review in progress," and 


there's some other ones that fall in between. 


The ones that say "not reviewed" are -- are 


certainly the ones which would be available, 


based on this matrix. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: The ones that are not included 


in this matrix are the -- I think up to six 


PERs -- I think there's six or seven PERs -- 


six PERs that -- you know, this is, again, a 


new procedural document that we -- we'd -- 


certainly have had access to, but those would 


be supplemental to this list. So there's six 


PERs, as well as several procedures that postdate the end of September, which is the date 


that this matrix was issued. 


And I would defer to Stu in terms of any 


updates or revs that have come out. But in 

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comparing the lists, I think we certainly 


looked at and identified six or seven that 


would be pertinent, and we can go over those 


certainly if you want to -- just mention -- 


 DR. WADE: At this point in time, Joe, you're 


raising the issue that we would add OTIB-52, 


OTIB-43, Procedure 94, Procedure 95 and the six 


PERs. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Those would be certainly the 


scope of what could be added. 


 DR. WADE: Okay. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: I would also point you to 


Implementation Guide 001, which is an OCAS 


Implementation Guide, Rev. 2. If you look on 


the very first one on page one, you have 


Appendix A of that Implementation Guide. And 


it's our understanding that that guide has been 


revamped in a relatively major way, and 


certainly the overall guide would be another 


candidate. Is that correct, Stu? 


 MR. GRIFFON: Isn't that -- okay, go ahead, 


Stu. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah, Implementation Guide No. 


1 is the external dosimetry implementation 


guide, and there have been a number of 

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revisions made to it based on the prior review 


and comments made in dose reconstruction 


review. So there have been revisions made to 


that based on actions of the Board, so it may 


be worthwhile to evaluate, you know, 


essentially effectiveness of corrective action. 


You know, what -- were the revisions in accord 


with what was expected when the original 


findings were made. You know, that would be -- 


that's actually a pretty decent candidate, I 


would think. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Mark? 


 MR. GRIFFON: I -- I'm just trying to remember. 


I thought that -- in terms of tracking, I 


thought in our action items -- outstanding 


actions in the proc-- in the DR reviews -- Stu 


might remember better than me, but I think that 


in our actions in the -- either the procedures 


review, the initial set, or the DR reviews, I 


thought we indicated that we wanted follow-up ­

- now I don't know how -- this is, again, a 


tracking issue, but I thought -- 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- we wanted SC&A to follow the 


changes, especially in this Appendix A, I don't 

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-- I don't know... 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I mean we can do it in 


this fashion or we can do -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: -- it in -- in the context of 


follow-up to what actions were taken in 


response to those findings. I think --


 MR. GRIFFON: I guess as long --


 MR. HINNEFELD: -- probably what 


(unintelligible) --


 MR. GRIFFON: -- as it gets done and we -- 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- track it, we're -- you know... 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: I would comment, though, by my 


notes, the first two PERs, number one and 


number two, I believe were reviewed in the 


original procedure review, so I believe those 


have already been evaluated in the original 


procedure review, and the -- well, I'll just -- 


I was going to --


 DR. ZIEMER: The ones on the first page -- 


well, it could --

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 MR. HINNEFELD: This is -- this is on -- I'm on 


OCAS Document Inventory, the sheet -- one of 


the sheets I handed out. 


 DR. ZIEMER: No, he's on the OCAS -- 


 MR. HINNEFELD: I'm on -- I'm on OCAS Document 


Inventory. That's what -- that's what I've 


been working from. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Oh, well, this --


 MR. HINNEFELD: And if you go to the second 


page, the last --


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, that's -- that's the same 


thing. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: -- the last six items are PERs 


and I believe number one and two were in the 


original procedure review, so it would be the 


remaining four then that have not been 


reviewed. I think the PER procedure, which 


should also maybe be reviewed in accordance 


with that. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, we -- we agree with that 


and the PER schedule was not part of this 


package, so that's not on there, but I -- I 


agree with what Stu's saying. 

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 The only other item, and I would point you to 


page two of our handout, and it's listed is 


"not reviewed," is the OTIB-02, the maximum 


internal dose estimates for certain DOE complex 


claims, is certainly one that would be relevant 


that -- we're listed as not having reviewed. 


And the only other one which -- I think it's on 


the cusp -- is the OTIB-05, which is the IMBA 


organ, external dosimetry organ and IREP 


selection by code. And Stu and I have 


discussed -- that's literally a long list of 


ICD-9 codes, so there's some question as to 


whether that would be particularly relevant 


and, you know, useful for our purposes. So 


certainly maybe the OTIB-02, that's listed as 


not reviewed, and somewhat more questionable is 


OTIB-05. And that's pretty much it from -- 


from what we can see in this long list, 


combined with what Stu has. 


 DR. WADE: Clarification. We have the 


individual PERs, we were talking about 03, 04, 


05 and 06. Is there a generic guide that would 


also be reviewed then? 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Procedure number eight, I 


believe it is, just above that in the OCAS 

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inventory, on the OCAS document inventory on 


the second page, you're the -- OCAS-PR-008 is 


the --


 DR. WADE: Okay. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: -- preparation of Program 


Evaluation Reports, so that is the procedure 


that describes the process by which the PER 


reports are generated. 


 DR. WADE: Okay. So to summarize, and then we 


can talk about it, the -- the proposal on the 


table are to add the following: OTIB-52, OTIB43, OTIB-02, OTIB-05, Procedure 94, Procedure 


95, OCAS-PR-08, IG-001, and then four PERs, 03, 


04, 05 and 06. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Actually there is no 05 yet; 


it's 06 and 07. 


 DR. WADE: I'm sorry? 


 MR. HINNEFELD: The numbers are assigned as the 


issue is identified, but the reports sometime 


gets -- you know, the later reports sometime 


get finished before the earlier report, so five 


is not yet published. 


 DR. WADE: 03, 04, 06 and 07. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And how many total is that? 

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 DR. WADE: One, two, three, four, five, six, 


seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven -- twelve. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Twelve. 


 DR. WADE: Which is fine. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And Joe, you indicated that it was 


-- it -- SC&A's feeling that that pretty well 


takes care of the -- what we would call the 


high priority ones --


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, actually I would say 


that's the universe of anything that comes 


close to being relevant. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: I wouldn't say that 


necessarily all of them would be -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: -- this is the Board's 


decision --


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: -- significant or critical, 


but certainly those --


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: -- that's the universe. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Do we need a motion to task this, 


Lew? 


 DR. WADE: It wouldn't hurt. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Well, discuss or --


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, let's make the motion and 


then we can add or delete some, so a motion to 


task SC&A to begin work on reviewing those 12 


procedures would be in order. 


 DR. MELIUS: I so move. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Moved and -- seconded? 

 MR. GIBSON: Second. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Seconded by Mike. Now, we can add 

to or delete or whatever. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Really just -- not adding or 


deleting, just some questions I -- I -- this 


listing in -- in your matrix, Joe -- and may-- 


maybe -- just for our clarification -- 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Uh-huh. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- are there cases where TIB 


numbers were assigned -- Stu may be the better 


one to answer this -- but were not used? For 


instance, you skip from 40 -- TIB-40 to 47. 


You know, are there, you know, interesting 


documents that are under development that we 


might want to reserve -- Yeah, yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Are you reserving spaces for other 

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 MR. GRIFFON: And if so, what are they -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- or non-existing --


 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, unfortunately, I only had 


brought with me the list of published titles, 


and so the list of -- the total list of 


published titles skips from 40 to -- 43 to 47, 


43 being the characterization of radium and 


radon exposures from phosphate plants, which 


has been added today, to (unintelligible) -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: The implication is there could be 


others in process that have those numbers. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, that have not yet been -- 


assigned and are not yet in use, so there may 


be topics assigned by the ORAU document 


controls system, similar to the way we would 


assign a topic to a PER as it's identified, and 


then they may not get completed in the same 


sequence as they were -- as the topic was 


identified. 


And I might mention -- I might mention, a lot 


of OTIBs that have been published recently are 


-- are coworker dataset compilations that 


generally go with a site where there is a site 


profile review underway, and so the data that ­

- those coworker compilations are vetted as 

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part of the site profile review, TIB -- that 


happens -- as a general rule, that happens 


pretty much every time. 


 MR. GRIFFON: But I -- I guess what -- what 


would have been helpful to -- would be -- even 


if -- you know, even if we could have a column 


saying "not published," but just to see a -- a 


comprehensive list to date of all TIBs, PROCs, 


et cetera --


 MR. HINNEFELD: I could probably --


 MR. GRIFFON: -- 'cause I hate to -- I hate to 


select something for review that, you know -- 


you know, we -- we want to be -- just -- Joe 


just indicated some of these may not be of 


significance to the Board. Well, they may be 


ones that are -- that are not listed that are 


coming out soon. We might want to just hold -- 


you know --


 MR. HINNEFELD: I --


 MR. GRIFFON: -- a place for, yeah. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: I can probably get that, with 


some effort. I mean I -- I chose things that I 


had readily available to prepare to come, so I 


could get it from ORAU, I would think. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: But at any time, if something came 


out that we thought was really pertinent and -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and critical, we could just ask 


that that be added immediately or -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- something like that, so I -- I 


don't think it would pose a major problem to 


insert another -- and we could even ask, you 


know, that something be done in -- in a higher 


priority than what's going on. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Sure, and just to clarify, I 


think the Board approved the construction OTIB52 at the last meeting, so that's -- I'm not 


even sure that's really something that -- you 


know, it's on the list as something -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: That's fine. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: -- that we're doing, but 


certainly is not a new item. And the other 


thing is the site-specific OTIBs for K-25, 


Paducah, there's a number of them that are on 


this list as not having been done, but 


certainly we're doing them now, so that's one 


reason we didn't cite them as such. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Brad. 

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 MR. CLAWSON: I guess we're getting so many of 


them and stuff like that, I know that we've got 


-- some of them I know that we're waiting 


Nevada Test Site for some chapters, and I just 


want to make -- 'cause those are some of the 


critical things we're waiting on are some of 


these reviews for -- I believe it was Chapter 


4. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, do we know -- are there any 


that you're waiting on that haven't -- that 


aren't on the list? 


 MR. CLAWSON: Well, that's -- that's what I 

wanted --

 MR. GRIFFON: That's under --

 MR. CLAWSON: -- to make sure. 

 MR. GRIFFON: -- I think that's under site 

profile. 

 DR. WADE: They can come under site profile. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Right, the site profile 


documents are what are being revi-- 


 DR. ZIEMER: They'll pick it up there. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: -- revised for NTS. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: So it's a new -- it's the site 


profile chapters, which I didn't necessarily 

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produce and bring along, so -- 


 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, I just -- I just wanted to 


make sure that --


 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. 


 MR. CLAWSON: -- 'cause we were waiting on 


those that -- just want to make sure they were 


up for review. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. Right. 


 DR. WADE: There's a great deal of overlap. 


For example, today we've asked SC&A to look at 


the Blockson SEC issue that really encompasses 


OTIB-43, and we've added OTIB-43. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Uh-huh. 


 DR. WADE: I think it's better to err on the 


side of inclusion, so if anyone knows anything 


that's missing, they should raise them. These 


things will be covered sometimes under a 


variety of tasks. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: I just wanted to clarify -- was 


I asked to provide a while ago to the Board the 


list of all the projected -- you know, the 


assigned numbers and titles as envisioned, 


whether published or not? 'Cause I think that 


would be a relatively straightforward thing for 


me to obtain and provide to the Board. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: If you could conveniently provide 


that so we know what -- 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And that'll give us an idea of 


what's coming down the line, as well. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: And it does happen sometimes 


that a topic is identified and the number's 


assigned, and then ultimately it's not needed 


and so it was determined -- so that could be on 


there, too. There could be some of those. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Board members, are you 


ready to vote on this -- this is a motion to 


add those --

 DR. MELIUS: I'm not ready. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, I'm sorry, I missed your -- 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- the flag there. Go ahead. 

 DR. MELIUS: The -- my question goes back to 

what we were talking about earlier in terms of 


some of the SC&A budget -- potential budget 


issue and so forth. And I guess my question is 


if -- if we're -- I think we need to be careful 


about not to be assigning resources to reviews 


that may not be of sufficient priority, given 


that we have a potential budget issue. And I ­
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- I guess I need an update from Lew or whoever 


that would sort of tell us where we are in that 


regard and so forth and -- and -- 


 DR. WADE: And again --


 DR. MELIUS: -- how careful we need to be about 


that because I just... 


 DR. WADE: I think that's -- that's wise always 


to be prudent. Let me give you an idea of the 


SC&A funding for this year, and I think that'll 


-- that'll give us -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: This current fiscal year -- 


 DR. WADE: This year that we're -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- '07? 


 DR. WADE: '07. Again, approximately $3.5 


million has been allocated to SC&A. Task I, 


site profile, is $1.4 million. Task III, the 


task we're talking about now, procedures 


review, in total is $220,000. Task IV, the 


DRs, is $668,000. Task V, the SEC task, is 


$921,000. And Task VI, project management, is 


$270,000. We've already assigned SC&A let's 


say three-quarters of Task III, so what's at 


play here is not a great deal of money. You 


could wait the assignment of that -- I would 


say there's maybe $50,000 in play here. You 

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could wait that. I don't think it's a -- it's 


a huge resource, so I don't think it's a 


resource-critical decision at this point. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And therefore delaying of some of 


these isn't going to give us too much 


additional funding, if you're talking about 


moving it to the Task V category. There's not 


a whole lot there to be saved, yeah. 


 DR. MELIUS: Well, I -- I wanted that on the 


record, that's all. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Yeah, Robert, and -- 


 MR. PRESLEY: Down the road we do have the 


means of cutting it off if we need to, if it 


gets -- we get -- if it gets where we have a 


problem, we can stop things. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 


 DR. WADE: Certainly, we can do that. I mean 


efficiency would -- would temper that, but of 


course we could. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Brad, an additional comment? 


 MR. CLAWSON: No, I'm sorry. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Wanda, a comment? 


 MS. MUNN: It would be very helpful I think for 


us to take a look, at our next full Board 

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meeting, at the list and perhaps attempt to 


prioritize some of those because it -- it will 


be obvious to some of us that we need this, we 


need this, we need this. But without the list 


in front of us, it's difficult to do that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Which list are you referring to 


now, the --


 MS. MUNN: The list of -- of actions -- of 


reviews that SC&A's being tasked with doing 


right now. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


because our -- our SEC petitions are going to 


come up when NIOSH gets finished with the 


reviews of this, and then SC&A's got to look at 


it as long -- along with the working group, so 


that's another one they've got to look at to 


try to get this NTS site profile going. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Now I think the list we 


have here is pretty inclusive. I'm trying to 


determine whether this meets what Wanda is 


asking for. This list that SC&A has provided 


us with today includes all the procedures that 


you have already reviewed -- that's correct; 


some that have been recommended that postponed 

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or are -- I see, for example, recommended 


postponing review; review complete, not 


reviewed, authorized for review and so on. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, that --


 DR. ZIEMER: Joe. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: -- that's a pretty 


comprehensive assessment of the interactions 


taken place on the list of active 


(unintelligible) --


 DR. ZIEMER: And those that Lew has just 


outlined are on this list. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Pardon me? 


 DR. ZIEMER: And those that Lew just identified 


are all on the list here. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Now the only thing that 


certainly Stu has done is bring us up to date, 


because this was the end of September and we 


did not include the PERs, for example, nor the 


radon one which was just issued. So there's a 


number of supplements, but we've -- went ahead 


and added those just now to make sure that is a 


complete treatment. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I want to make sure that we 


provide the information that's been requested 


as --

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 MS. MUNN: That's all right. I'll ask Lew for 


the list so that I am sure that my list is 


correct, and I will work from the list that SCA 


has given us. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Other comments 


or -- oh, Mark. 


 MR. GRIFFON: This is more into minutiae, but 


ORAU-OTIB-4, is that the most current one? I 


think it is, that version 03 PC-1, or is there 


an updated version of that? I know it's gone 


through several revs. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I'm looking at Stu on 


the revision. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, 'cause that one's certainly 


an important one we've... 


 MR. HINNEFELD: According to the roster printed 


this -- I believe it was at the end of last 


week I printed this, Rev. 3 PC-1 is the -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: The lates--


 MR. HINNEFELD: -- current version -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- is the -- is the current 


version. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: -- of OTIB-4. 


 DR. ZIEMER: That's what he has here. 


 MR. GRIFFON: And the second -- second question 

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is TIB-5 Rev 2, is that the most current and 


does it -- it is the most current? 


 MR. HINNEFELD: It was current on the day I 


printed this --


 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: -- which was a few days ago. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, and does that include these 


-- Larry discussed the pros-- the changes on 


prostate for the organ -- 


 MR. HINNEFELD: External target organ for 


prostate? 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, that's in -- reflected, as 


are the lymphoma --


 MR. GRIFFON: That's reflected in this -- 


 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, as are the lymphoma target 


organs, the change in lymphoma target organs -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Lymphoma target organs, okay. 


 MR. HINNEFELD: -- are also reflected in this 


version. 


 MR. GRIFFON: All right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Okay, then Board 


members, are we ready to vote? This would be 


to task SC&A to review the 12 procedures that 


were listed. All in favor, aye? 

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 (Affirmative responses) 


 Any opposed, no? 


 (No responses) 


Abstentions? 


 (No responses) 


 Motion carries, thank you. 


 DR. WADE: So it's an eight to nothing vote, 


all members present voting aye. 


APPROVAL OF MINUTES


 DR. ZIEMER: We have several sets of minutes 


that we need to take action on. First of all, 


the minutes of the Subcommittee for Dose 


Reconstruction and Site Profile Review, we will 


act on these as a full Board since these are 


minutes that carry over from the old 


subcommittee structure. There's a new 


subcommittee, but it's not this one, so they're 


not authorized, in a sense, to -- to approve 


tho-- the subcommittee minutes. But these were 


distributed to you earlier. Summary minutes 


dated September 19th, 2006, Subcommittee on 


Dose Reconstruction and Site Profile Review. 


Let me ask if anyone has additions or 


corrections to those minutes. 


 (No responses) 

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There appear to be no additions or corrections, 


so without objection, those minutes stand 


approved as distributed. 


Next we have Summary Minutes of the 40th 


Meeting for September 19th through 25th (sic). 


This is the Las Vegas meeting. I hope you've 


all had a chance to at least review those items 


that are attributed to you. Let me ask for 


additions or corrections to these minutes. 


 (No responses) 


Then in this case I'm going to ask for a motion 


to approve the minutes as distributed. 


 MS. MUNN: So moved. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Seconded? 

 MR. GIBSON: Second. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Seconded by Gibson -- moved by 

Munn, seconded by Gibson, all in favor of 


approving the minutes, say aye. 


 (Affirmative responses) 


 Any opposed? 


 (No responses) 


 Any abstentions? 


 (No responses) 


 Motion carries, those minutes are approved. 


We have Summary Minutes of the 41st Meeting, 

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this is our telephone meeting of October 18th. 


I'll ask for corrections or additions for those 


minutes. 


 (No responses) 


 Then a motion for approval? 


 MS. MUNN: So moved. 


 MR. CLAWSON: Second. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Moved, and seconded by Clawson. 


All in favor, aye? 


 (Affirmative responses) 


 Any opposed, no? 


 (No responses) 


Abstentions? 


 (No responses) 


Motion carries, and the minutes of the 41st 


meeting are approved. 


 DR. WADE: All we have left are meeting dates. 


FUTURE MEETING DATES


 DR. ZIEMER: One item of business to take care 


of and that is meeting dates. Lew distributed 


-- or gave us some proposed dates earlier in 


the week. You've had a chance to look at 


those. Lew, let's go through them and see what 


we can settle on. 


 DR. WADE: Okay. And again, thank you for your 

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forbearance. I think it's easier if we can get 


this done now. What I would do is, whatever we 


do today I'll send to you in an e-mail on 


Monday and again give people one more 


opportunity, but I would like to have always a 


year of meetings scheduled in advance. 


We have a telephone call scheduled for January 


11th. We have a face-to-face Board meeting 


scheduled for Feb-- February 7, 8 and 9 in 


Denver. We have a May 2nd, 3rd and 4th Board 


meeting scheduled, location as yet determined. 


We had an April 5th phone call of the Board 


scheduled. Dr. Lockey asked me if we could 


move that to either the 4th or the 6th. 


 MR. PRESLEY: The 6th is a holiday. 


 DR. WADE: Okay, the 4th. 


 DR. MELIUS: And the 4th is -- does not work 


for me. I have a -- I'm chairing another NIOSH 


meeting all day. 


 DR. WADE: Okay. So --


 MS. MUNN: The 6th is Good Friday. 


 DR. ZIEMER: This is April. 


 DR. WADE: Okay. So I'm going to keep it on 


the 5th. I'll tal-- I'll speak to Dr. Lockey. 


He just made that request. 

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 Now we're into just dates that I've tentatively 


proposed to you. I've proposed tentatively a 


Board call on June 12th. A Board call on June 


12th. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Now wait a minute, you've got 


something in April. 


 DR. ZIEMER: He just -- that was April 5th. 


 DR. MELIUS: That was the April -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: May 2nd --


 DR. WADE: I said May. 


 MR. PRESLEY: I mean May, I'm sorry. 


 DR. WADE: 2nd, 3rd and 4th, those are all set. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 


 DR. WADE: Now we're into the subjective area 


beyond that. A phone call on June 12th. 


 (No responses) 


A phone call on June 12th. Hearing no 


objection, I will tentatively set that. Now 


again, Dr. Poston's not with us. I'll have to 


do some work there. Dr. Lockey agrees. 


I then had proposed a Board meeting on July 24, 


25 and 26. I've heard from Board members that 


that's not a good date. I would propose that 


we do it on the 17th, 18th and 19th -- July 


17th, 18th and 19th. It's acceptable to Dr. 

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Lockey. 


 DR. MELIUS: I -- I believe it's okay, but I'll 


need to check. I didn't know we were going to 


do this here. 


 DR. WADE: Okay. So I will tentatively put 


that down and e-mail to you. 


Then we're looking at a telephone call on 


September 6th. It's proposed that we move that 


a day or so, so I would propose September 5th. 


 DR. MELIUS: What day? 


 DR. WADE: September 5th is a Wednesday. 


 DR. MELIUS: I can't. 


 DR. WADE: September 7th, a Friday? September 


4th, a Tuesday? 


 (No responses) 


September 4th, a Tuesday for a call. 


Then I have a Board meeting on October 2nd, 3rd 


and 4th. Doc-- I think the attorneys asked 


that that be rescheduled to the 3rd, 4th and 


5th, so October 3, 4 and 5. 


 (No responses) 


We then have a Board call for December 6th. 


I've been asked by Dr. Lockey to change it to 


either the 3rd or the 4th. 


DR. ROESSLER: I would prefer that, also. 

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 DR. WADE: Sorry? 


DR. ROESSLER: I would prefer the 3rd. 


 DR. WADE: Okay, let's say the 3rd of December 


for a Board call. 


And then lastly, in the Year of our Lord 2008, 


January 8, 9 and 10. 


 (No responses) 


I will send you an e-mail on Monday with these 


dates and -- and give you anoth-- another 


opportunity, but I would like to lock these in, 


for your benefit as well as the schedule. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you, Lew. 


 DR. WADE: That was fun. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Now is there any other business to 


come before us today? 


 DR. MELIUS: I'd just like to --

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- point out one thing that -- by 

moving from the July 24th through 26th, the 


silver medalist gets another shot at the title 


-- in Prague. 


 DR. WADE: That's wonderful. Wonderful 


outcome. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 DR. WADE: But what happens if he comes back 

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with less than a silver -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Well, I -- I think we should form 


a workgroup to come up with a contingency plan. 


 DR. WADE: That's a risk/reward kind of thing 


he's got going there. 


 MR. PRESLEY: He's had plenty of practice. 


Let's talk about some of the places to go to. 


You know, we've talked about Pinellas. We've 

talked about going to Los Alamos again. We're 

going to Denver, hopefully be ready. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Hanford. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Hanford we need to go back to. 


 DR. WADE: We have an A list and a B list. My 


A list now is LANL, Hanford, Fernald; my B list 


is Pinellas, Pantex. 


 MR. PRESLEY: LANL, Hanford and Fernald? 


 DR. WADE: LANL, Hanford, Fernald is my A list. 


And my B list, Pinellas, Pantex. 


 MR. CLAWSON: Would you send that out with your 


letter? 


 DR. WADE: Sure. But you know, something else 


can come up. I mean we --


 MR. PRESLEY: Let's be sure --


 DR. WADE: -- this Board has been great in 


going to where the action is and being in front 

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of the people it needs to be in front of, and 


that will continue to be our -- our operating 


strategy. Who knows, we might find a meeting 


where we have some flexibility. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Be sure and let's go to Pantex in 


the middle of winter. 


 MR. GIBSON: The A list on Fernald, there could 


be the possibility that Mound SEC could be 


coming up. We might be able to kill two birds 


with one stone --


 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah. 


 MR. GIBSON: -- if they want to put that on the 


other list. 


 DR. WADE: Okay. 


 MR. PRESLEY: That'd be good. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Comments? Suggestions? 


 MR. PRESLEY: I'd -- hey, Henry Anderson and I 


still want to go to Bikini Atoll. 


 DR. WADE: You and Henry just go. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Do we have any other 


business? Wanda, you have an item? Okay --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- for the good of the order -- 


Mark. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- I have other bus-- question on 

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the -- the SEC reviews that -- that -- the 


future SEC reviews. I know we -- we have 


Fernald and I believe Hanf-- Fernald's already 


out, the evaluation report. We've got Hanford 


pending. I don't think we've established any 


workgroup on -- on Fernald or haven't assigned 


SC&A -- if -- if we want to assign SC&A that 


task, to work on Fernald, so -- you know, I 


think it's -- we should discuss that. 


 DR. WADE: And we do have the 83.14 workgroup 


we --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, yeah. 


 DR. WADE: -- still have to talk about. 


 MR. GRIFFON: That, as well, 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh. 


(Pause) 


What do we anticipate schedule-wise for 


Fernald, as far as where we will be when? 


 DR. MELIUS: The evaluation report is -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Is completed. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. And the site profile review 

is complete. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Are we -- are we on schedule next 

time for that presentation? 


 DR. WADE: I don't know. I mean it's possible. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Could be, huh? 


 MR. ELLIOTT: We've given you -- we've given 


your evaluation report. If it's on the agenda 


for presentation in February, we'll present. 


If you postpone it, that's your discretion. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Great. 


 DR. WADE: You can assign SC&A that task now, 


if you wish. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, it certainly appears we need 


a separate workgroup for Fernald, and they may 


or may not need the assistance of SC&A. Let's 


look for a four-person workgroup for Fernald as 


a starting point. Do we have anybody that's 


not on a workgroup that... 


Well, again, let's ask for volunteers to start 


with. 


 MR. PRESLEY: I'll -- I'll work on it. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we've got Presley. 


 DR. WADE: Mark. You -- you have Mark? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Mark Griffon. Any others? Brad, 


okay. Okay, let's see, volunteers -- the 


Chairman's going to jump in, too, okay. 


 DR. WADE: So you're joining? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 DR. WADE: Chair? 

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 DR. ZIEMER: I'm wondering -- let's see, maybe 


Brad, you're about due to chair something here, 


aren't you? You want to chair this one? 

 MR. CLAWSON: Maybe. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Bonuses. 

 MR. CLAWSON: That's what I hear. 

 DR. WADE: And this is the Fernald SEC. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Board members, do you want to -- 


do you want to task SC&A at this point or do 


you want to wait till the workgroup looks at 


this? 


 MR. CLAWSON: I'd like SC&A to look at it, 


myself. 


 DR. ZIEMER: What -- what's on your platter 


right now? What do we have going, SC&A -- 


 DR. MELIUS: On SECs. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- on SECs? 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, on --


 DR. ZIEMER: You've got Rocky. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: We've got Rocky, but that's in 


drafting, so --


 DR. ZIEMER: And -- and we -- and we've got 


Blockson coming up. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Blockson out by early January. 


 DR. WADE: Chapman Valve. 

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 MR. FITZGERALD: Chapman Valve, which is also 


fairly far along, I'd say half drafted and in 


process. 


 DR. WADE: The only tasking we've done for '07 


is Blockson. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Blockson, that's correct. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I -- I don't have a good feel at 


this point for what we have for them to look 


at. I've not looked at the ER yet -- or the 


evaluation report. Jim. 


 DR. MELIUS: I believe we've done this before. 


We've asked them to take a preliminary look at 


the report to become familiar with it, sort of 


cross-walk it with the site profile review and, 


you know, so that then when the workgroup first 


meets, SC&A sort of started on the task and can 


-- can -- might be able to make a little bit 


more efficient. And given that this report's 


already out, it's -- I think it would be 


helpful to get the-- get them started -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: You --


 DR. MELIUS: -- given that they don't have a 


lot of other stuff lined up. 


 MR. GRIFFON: You've completed the site profile 


review. Right? On Fernald. 

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 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, yes. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, it's been -- it's been 


issued. 


 MR. GRIFFON: But there's no -- I mean we -- 


you -- yeah, we could roll it in that way, I 


guess --


 MR. FITZGERALD: Uh-huh. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- in the context of the site 


profile review and just maybe modify a 


resolution matrix, as we've done in the past, 


you know. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: We've done this in the past -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: -- you know, just use it as a 


jumping-off point. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 


 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 


 DR. WADE: So the workgroup would be Fernald 


site profile, with emphasis, as appropriate, on 


SEC task. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, what -- what we could do 


for a starting -- if I might suggest it for 


your consideration, is I could prepare a two­
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tiered matrix from the review, having look-- 


take a look at the evaluation report and 


prepare a two-tiered matrix of issues that are, 


at least as a first cut, relevant to the SEC -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And separate out the issues and -- 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- and -- and then separate out 


the issues --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- that -- that would be 


strictly site profile issues and send that to 


you as a first cut, maybe -- maybe before your 


January 11th meeting or whenever the workgroup 


-- whenever you choose to do the workgroup 


meeting. 


 DR. WADE: Thank you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, so without objection, we'll 


 DR. WADE: I can take --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- take the steps to task SC&A to 


assist on that. 


We talked also about a workgroup to -- or had 


we appointed? We hadn't appointed yet -- 


 DR. WADE: No, not for 83.14. 


 DR. ZIEMER: The 83.14 workgroup. We may have 

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to appoint the four new members of the Board, 


who have not yet been identified, to -- to this 


workgroup. 


 DR. WADE: Well --


 DR. ZIEMER: Just joking. You're volunteering? 


 DR. MELIUS: I'm not going to -- I'm going to 


volunteer not only myself, but you and also -- 


but I mean one -- one way of thinking about 


this, given that there may be new members or 


something, is to fold this into sort of the SEC 


general group right now to do that, and then 


let's figure out -- I think we need to talk to 


Larry and sort of figure out when the schedule 


is -- little bit more about the scope of some 


of these and -- and then -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I -- I think what you're -- 


you're volunteering the SEC workgroup -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Group to -- to --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- to take the first look at this 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and if necessary we can spin 


off a separate workgroup. 


 DR. MELIUS: Right, exactly. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And that certainly makes sense. 

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 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Why don't we do that for the time 


being, when we get a jump on this and -- 


 DR. WADE: The workgroup on SEC issues, paren, 


including the 250-day issue, so it doesn't 


preclude that. Melius chair, Ziemer, Roessler, 


Griffon. Thank you for your service. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, so I think we've covered 


them now. How many workgroups are we up to? 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I would just remind us that 


LANL's going to be another huge task, and I 


don't think we have to do anything at this 


meeting, but we ought to be -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: It's coming up rapidly, yeah. 

 DR. MELIUS: -- yeah, down the road. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Emily. 

 MS. HOWELL: I just wanted to make a request 

that Dr. Wade go ahead and send the updated 


list of working group assignments, as well as 


the meeting dates. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, we'll do that. 


 DR. WADE: It'll be my pleasure. 


 DR. ZIEMER: We'll do that. 


 DR. WADE: And we'll add a discussion of LANL 


workgroup or action to the agenda items -- 

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 DR. ZIEMER: To the agenda. 


 DR. WADE: -- for January. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Now I'll ask again if there's any 


other business --


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I've got to stop asking this. 

Jim. 

 DR. MELIUS: This is sort of old business. I 

believe we will be able to have our SEC 


workgroup to focus on the 250-day issue -- 


should be able to meet on January 17th. I -- I 


still need -- that was the date that you said 


was good, Gen. 


DR. ROESSLER: (Off microphone) 


(Unintelligible) 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. That was the -- and my -- 


my problem was whether or not I had a conflict. 


At -- at worst, I may have to move it back to 


the 16th, which wasn't as good 'cause that's 


the day -- and I should know -- 


 MR. PRESLEY: That's on a Wednesday? 


 DR. ZIEMER: So yeah, we said 16 or 17, and 17 


is it, did you say? 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I may know as soon as I get 


this voice mail. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 DR. WADE: Face to face or telephone? 


 DR. MELIUS: Face to --

 DR. ZIEMER: Cincinnati. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, Cincinnati, face to face. 

 DR. WADE: Starting time? 


 MR. PRESLEY: That would leave us then the day 


afterwards, on the 18th, for the NTS working 


group. Now the problem is is where we can get 


enough information from NIOSH to meet. I mean 


they -- we -- they still got a lot to do on 


that --


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, you can block off the day. 


You can always cancel it if -- 


 MR. PRESLEY: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- if we're not there. 


 MR. PRESLEY: So we -- we'll go ahead and -- 


Wanda, what does that do to you, Thursday the 


18th? 


 MS. MUNN: I already have plane tickets for a 


meeting that weekend. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, you may have to go to Plan 


B, but --


 MS. MUNN: I could do it the following week, on 


the 25th. 

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DR. ROESSLER: How about the 16th? 


 MR. PRESLEY: Well, the problem is if we do it 


on the 16th we do it before they have any 


action --


DR. ROESSLER: Oh, that was right, they wanted 


to be first. 


 MR. PRESLEY: -- so it's got to -- it needs to 


be the -- the week after. I'm open the next 


week. I have no problems. That just means 


that -- that -- that Brad has to -- to come 


back the next week. See, Brad's got to be in 


Cincinnati on the 16th. 


 MR. CLAWSON: You're trying to make me -- 


 MR. PRESLEY: We're trying to -- we're trying 


to hold the money down for -- but -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Is there a reason that your 


meeting has to come after our meeting? 


 MR. PRESLEY: I'd like for it to. 


 DR. MELIUS: I --


 MR. PRESLEY: I'd like to find out what you all 


found out. 


 DR. MELIUS: I know, but I -- frankly, I don't 


think we're going to -- 


DR. ROESSLER: Get that far? 


 DR. MELIUS: I'm not sure we'll get that far 

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and that -- I think it's more import-- we may 


want to -- we're -- probably as interested to 


find out what your -- you found out. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Well, okay, let's discuss this 


right now. We just got through saying in the 


meeting today that the 250-day does not matter 


for NTS because Labor has told us that they 


automatically go to what, 83 days, is that what 


he said -- or 87 days? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, they do the weighting thing, 


so --


 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- that part is not an issue. 


 MR. PRESLEY: So I mean that -- that part -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: So we're focusing now -- 


 MR. PRESLEY: -- is not --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- on what an incident is. 


 MR. PRESLEY: And so it's not an issue, so we 


could have our meeting later on. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Yeah. 


DR. ROESSLER: Or before. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Or before. 


 DR. MELIUS: Or before, yeah. 


DR. ROESSLER: Let's do it before. What --


what do you think? 

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 MR. PRESLEY: Do it on Tuesday? Wanda, would 


that --


 MS. MUNN: I -- I can do that. 


 DR. WADE: The 16th? 


 MR. PRESLEY: The 16th, and if -- and that's -- 


that is dependent -- totally dependent on NIOSH 


being able to support us. 


 MS. MUNN: Well, yeah, and Rocky is meeting on 


the 9th, preceding week, so -- 


 DR. WADE: Start time, Dr. Melius, for the 


17th, 10:00? 


 DR. MELIUS: 10:00, does that work for 


everybody? 


 DR. WADE: Let people travel in in the morning. 


Start time for the meeting on the 16th, 10:00? 


 MR. PRESLEY: 10:00 is fine. That way I can 


fly up that morning. 


 DR. WADE: Okay. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Tuesday the 16th, NTS. Brad --


 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah? 


 MR. PRESLEY: -- sorry about you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Is there anything else to 


come before the -- the Board today? 


If not, I declare the meeting adjourned. Thank 


you very much. 

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 DR. WADE: Thank you for your service. 


 (Whereupon, the meeting was adjourned at 2:55 


p.m.) 

______________________________ 

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1 

2 CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER 


STATE OF GEORGIA 


COUNTY OF FULTON 


 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 


Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 


above and foregoing on the day of Dec. 13, 


2006; and it is a true and accurate transcript 


of the testimony captioned herein. 


 I further certify that I am neither kin 


nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 


have any interest in the cause named herein. 


 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 


18th day of February, 2007. 


STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 


CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 


CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102