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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

+ + + + +

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

71st MEETING

+ + + + +

TUESDAY

AUGUST 10, 2010

+ + + + +

The meeting convened at 8:15 a.m., 

Mountain Daylight Time, in the Shilo Inn 

Suites Hotel, 780 Lindsay Blvd., Idaho Falls, 

ID, James M. Melius, Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

JAMES M. MELIUS, Chairman

HENRY ANDERSON, Member

JOSIE BEACH, Member

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member*

MICHAEL H. GIBSON, Member*

RICHARD LEMEN, Member*

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

JOHN W. POSTON, SR., Member
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PRESENT: (CONTINUED)

ROBERT W. PRESLEY, Member

DAVID B. RICHARDSON, Member

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official
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REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS:

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor

ANDERSON, H. JOHN

BAILEY, DONNA

BAILEY, KEN

BASTIAN, BEVERLY

BATEMAN, DEE

BEASLEY, DELOY

BRADFORD, SHANNON, DCAS

BREYER, LAURIE, DCAS

BROEHM, JASON, CDC

BURGOS, ZAIDA, NIOSH Contractor

CAMERON, BUCK, ATL

CANO, REGINA, DOE

CRUZ, RUBEN, CDC

DARNELL, PETE, DCAS

DAWDY, JOHN

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A

FRY, DAVID

GIBSON, PATRICIA

GLOVER, SAM, DCAS

GOODY, ARLA

GRAHAM, IRENE

GRAHAM, LINDA

HALL, DENNIS

HAND, DONNA, Pinellas Petitioner*

HANSON, GAYLON

HAROLDSEN, RAY E. 

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS

HINNEFELD, STU, DCAS

JESTER, DON

JOHNSTON, RALPH

ANNA JONES

JONES, ROBERT

KINNEY, KAREN

KNIGHTON, RICHARD 

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL

LAMPRECHT, EGON

LEWIS, GREG, DOE

LIN, JENNY, HHS

MACKOWIAK, DAVID

MACKOWIAK, DEONNE
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REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS

(CONTINUED):

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A

MCCRACKEN, JOHN

MECHAM, NORMAN

MERRELE, ENA

MULLINS, J.P. 

NELSON, MARK

NETON, JIM, DCAS

ORR, MARVIN

OSTROW, STEVE, SC&A

OVERDORF, DOROTHY

OVERDORF, MARLOWE

PEREZ, ADOLFO

PODONSKY, GLENN, DOE

PETTINGILL, REED

PRESLEY, LOUISE

RABINOWITZ, RANDY, NIOSH Contractor

RAY, SARAH, Pantex Petitioner*

ROY, FRANCES

RUTHERFORD, LaVON, DCAS

SHEPHERD, BUDDY

SIPLE, RALPH J.

STEPHENS, BRENT

STONE, BARBARA

TEEL, DALE

THURNSON, KELEL

WADE, LEW, DCAS

WARD, JERRY

WILLIAMS, GARY

*Participating via telephone
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C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S

Page

Welcome

Dr. James Melius, Chairman ........... 5 

NISOH Program Update and 

Program Evaluation

Mr. Stuart Hinnefeld, NIOSH ......... 10

Dr. Lewis Wade, NIOSH ............... 43

DOL Program Update

Mr. Jeffrey L. Kotsch, DOL .......... 50

DOE Program Update

Mr. Glenn Podonsky, DOE ............. 74

Mr. Greg Lewis, DOE ................. 87

GE Evendale SEC Petition

Mr. Stuart Hinnefeld, NIOSH ........ 108

Science Update

Dr. James Neton, NIOSH ............. 161

Board Working Time....................... 208

INL Update

Mr. Pete Darnell, NIOSH ............ 229

Public Comment........................... 238

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

2 8:43 a.m.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We will get 

4 started. Now we had a little technical 

5 problem with the sound system, particularly 

6 getting the people on the phone. We have 

7 three Board Members, a number of other people 

8 who hopefully will be able to hear us and we 

9 will be able to hear them on speaker phones. 

10 I think that we at least have that temporarily 

11 taken care of and hopefully it will get better 

12 later.

13 So anyway, welcome to meeting 

14 number 71 of the Advisory Board on Radiation 

15 and Worker Health. And let me turn it over to 

16 Ted for some updates.

17 MR. KATZ: Yes, so welcome also 

18 from Secretary Sebelius of HHS and from Dr. 

19 Howard of NIOSH to everyone here in the room 

20 and to everyone on the line.

21 And let me just, I'd just like to 

22 check at this point before we have any 
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1 speaking can the people on the line hear us. 

2 Maybe if someone on the line would just let us 

3 know that they can hear us and that we can 

4 hear them, that would be great.

5 So I am having an indication that 

6 they can hear us, but I need to know that we 

7 can hear them as well. If someone on the line 

8 would speak, like Dr. Lemen, perhaps.

9 Okay. We will proceed. We don't 

10 have to -- if they can hear us, that is good. 

11 We won't need to hear from them quite yet.

12 So just a few things to note. For 

13 the people on the line, at the point when we

14 can hear you, it will matter. Please mute 

15 your phones, and if you don't have a mute 

16 button, please use the *6 to mute your phone 

17 and use *6 to take your phone back off mute. 

18 But keeping your phone on mute will help with 

19 the audio situation here.

20 And also we need to record a vote 

21 that was taken, actually, at the last Board 

22 meeting, which was a teleconference in July, 
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1 July 14th, which was on Blockson Chemical. 

2 And that was an SEC petition. The Board voted 

3 in favor of adding the Class at Blockson nine 

4 to six, but one Board Member, Dr. Lockey, was 

5 absent for that vote. And as is the tradition 

6 for this Board, we collect votes after the 

7 meeting when a Member is absent to complete 

8 the vote. Dr. Lockey voted on July 26th in 

9 opposition to adding that Class, which made 

10 the final vote nine to seven, still in favor 

11 of adding the Class.

12 So that action is completed, and I 

13 believe the Board's letter has been 

14 transmitted. Is that correct? Yes?

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Just now.

16 MR. KATZ: Just now to Secretary 

17 Sebelius.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We just received 

19 it now.

20 MR. KATZ: Thank you. Dr. Melius.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, well we 

22 have one other item that is not on the agenda 
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1 that we would like to do, and I will turn it 

2 over to Lew Wade.

3 DR. WADE: Thank you, Dr. Melius. 

4 I have a presentation to make on behalf of 

5 Secretary Sebelius and John Howard, the 

6 Director of NIOSH, presented to Paul L. Ziemer 

7 in grateful appreciation for your eight years 

8 of outstanding leadership and dedication as 

9 Chairman for the Advisory Board on Radiation 

10 and Worker Health, 2002 to 2010.

11 I had the pleasure of sitting next 

12 to Paul during a number of those eight years. 

13 And I had a number of opportunities to 

14 evidence the leadership that this plaque 

15 speaks about. I also watched Paul's uncanny 

16 ability to edit motions on the fly and his 

17 knowledge of Robert's Rules of Order. But 

18 what will stick with me the most is Paul's 

19 unlimited compassion and concern for the 

20 people that this program was designed to 

21 serve.

22 Paul, it was really an honor to 
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1 sit next to you during these times, and I add 

2 my thanks to those of the Secretary and 

3 Director.

4 (Applause.)

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: It's a nice 

6 plaque. The gavel is attached so I can't use 

7 it anymore.

8 (Laughter.)

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Thank you very 

10 much.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: You can, but it 

12 is awkward.

13 DR. WADE: You'd have to want it.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. Okay, one 

15 other announcement. It will be for people in 

16 the audience. It is confusing. We have two 

17 meetings going on here today about this 

18 program and one will be the DOE sponsoring a 

19 meeting which will involve people from NIOSH 

20 and people from Department of Labor, I 

21 believe, and is being held down the hall here, 

22 I think, starting at 10:00 this morning and 
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1 again at 6:00 tonight. So those of you that 

2 want to go also to that meeting, we will 

3 probably take a break a little bit before 

4 10:00 so as not to disrupt. Just so you all 

5 know that that meeting will be taking place 

6 nearby here. Right next door.

7 Can we start? And, Stu, you are 

8 up, the NIOSH program update.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Thank you, Dr. 

10 Melius. Good morning, everyone. For those of 

11 you who don't know who I am, I am Stu 

12 Hinnefeld. I am the interim director of the 

13 Division of Compensation Analysis and Support 

14 in the Office of NIOSH, who carries NIOSH's 

15 responsibilities under the EEOICPA program.

16 I am here today to give a little 

17 progress report. I do this pretty much at 

18 every meeting, kind of a status report and 

19 report on some things that we consider perhaps 

20 newsworthy, things that have been accomplished 

21 that may be of interest to the Board and to 

22 the audience.
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1 So starting with the program news 

2 this time, the first thing I will mention is 

3 the completion, almost completion of the 

4 updating of our memorandum of understanding 

5 with the Department of Energy. When the 

6 program was first established, we entered into 

7 a memorandum of understanding with the 

8 Department of Energy about information sharing 

9 and how we would act in terms of information 

10 sharing. And we are now all familiar with 

11 that process because we have been doing it for 

12 about nine years.

13 But these memoranda of 

14 understanding have an end date and this one 

15 actually ended a while ago. We have continued 

16 to behave in accordance with it and share 

17 information as we have agreed. But since it

18 expired and it needed to be redone, we made a 

19 few updates to it, none of which really affect 

20 too much or I don't think they affect anything 

21 with the operation of the Board and the 

22 Board's contractor, and very little of ours. 
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1 It mainly just cleans up some things.

2 But the update of backgrounds and 

3 responsibilities relates to essentially the 

4 elimination of Part D of this program because 

5 the original memorandum of understanding was 

6 written while Part D was still in effect. And 

7 so there is a paragraph in there that kind of 

8 describes the history and how Part D is not 

9 there any more and there is a Part E in its 

10 place.

11 It also directly references the 

12 security plans and policies that we have been 

13 working in accordance now for some time that 

14 we have developed with the DOE.

15 It updates the reference to the 

16 HHS Privacy Act System Notice update. That 

17 kind of describes things like routine use and 

18 identifies these DOE records, these certain 

19 DOE records available for us for our routine 

20 use in this program.

21 There is an added requirement for 

22 DOE to coordinate with us before they destroy 
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1 any records in certain particular categories 

2 that are described in there. And so they have 

3 asked us on a couple of occasions about 

4 acceptability to destroy certain kinds of 

5 records. And we make the best judgment we can 

6 about whether we think those records would 

7 ever have any utility to us or to help 

8 research in general before they proceed.

9 The clause that was added 

10 clarifying disposition of records just says 

11 that each agency will dispose of the records 

12 from the program in accordance with their own 

13 records retention policy. So when we obtain 

14 things from DOE, they essentially are in our 

15 system of records, and we treat them and 

16 disposition them in accordance with that.

17 And the final one is the clause 

18 adding clarifying responsibility for 

19 determination under FOIA for release ability

20 determination describes the current practice 

21 we have followed for some time now. If we at 

22 NIOSH receive a FOIA request for information 
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1 from our data holdings and that data 

2 originated from the Department of Energy, we 

3 then provide that FOIA request to the 

4 Department of Energy for them to determine.

5 Now the basis -- I believe the 

6 basis for that is similar to the bases, you 

7 know, some reasons why we do some other 

8 things. The Department of Energy, in order to 

9 expedite providing us with the things we have 

10 asked for, does not necessarily review them 

11 for all the levels of control that you would 

12 put on that. And so they will send us 

13 official use only information. They will send 

14 us business sensitive information and anything 

15 else. So there are certain kinds of things 

16 that would fall into a FOIA exclusion that 

17 they don't worry about, they just provide it 

18 to us.

19 So since those are their records 

20 and they best know the purpose and the reason 

21 for that when a FOIA request comes in, we then 

22 provide that back to the DOE so they can then 
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1 make a determination at that time about the 

2 release ability of those things in a FOIA.

3 It also has to do with -- well, 

4 essentially, that is the reason for it. Now I 

5 think I got a slide out of -- no. No, this is 

6 right.

7 At the Board's last phone call, 

8 there was a discussion about the desirability 

9 to have NIOSH put out information to the 

10 claimant community about the list of specified 

11 cancers, the origin of the specified cancers 

12 and the fact that neither we, NIOSH, nor the 

13 Advisory Board can really affect the cancers 

14 that are on that list. That is a statutory15 derived list. So we did that initially or 

16 what we have been able to accomplish so far is 

17 to put a frequently asked questions on our 

18 website on our frequently asked questions page 

19 that kind of describes the history of the list 

20 of cancers and also includes a sentence saying 

21 that neither NIOSH nor the Advisory Board 

22 developed the list of 22 specified cancers and 
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1 neither of us can modify the list.

2 So it kind of attempts to address 

3 the issue that was discussed at the last Board 

4 conference call. And then our FAQ includes a 

5 sort of table about the various statutory 

6 origins of the cancers and so what is covered 

7 where and how that evolves. So that is all on 

8 our website, our public website available for 

9 anyone there. I think we probably will also 

10 move that, something like that, to our SEC 

11 page. There is probably a link to specified 

12 cancers on our SEC page and so you should be 

13 able to get to it from there as well. So that 

14 was in response to the conversation at the 

15 last Board telephone call.

16 Okay, moving on now to -- I won't 

17 say anything about the program review which, 

18 of course, is still going on because Lew is 

19 going to say a few words about that when I am 

20 done. But that also is a newsworthy item for 

21 the program.

22 Moving on to the statistics for 
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1 claims processing, here is our tally so far on 

2 cases that have been referred to us for dose 

3 reconstruction and how we are doing in the 

4 disposition of those claims. I compared this 

5 number to the previous report I made, and the 

6 total number of claims that have been referred 

7 to us is almost exactly 600 higher than my 

8 previous report, which was three months ago. 

9 And I was kind of reassured to see that 

10 because I tell people we get about 200 new 

11 cases a month, and for the last three months, 

12 I was correct. We get about 200 new cases a 

13 month. But that seems to be the rate and that 

14 we have been kind of receiving claims, new 

15 claims at that rate for a while. It almost 

16 seems like a steady state sort of condition 

17 has been developed in terms of new claims 

18 coming into the program.

19 The breakdown of cases that we 

20 have returned to DOL, some 25,000 have gone

21 with a dose reconstruction report. And then a 

22 number of claims have been pulled from dose 
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1 reconstruction and that falls into two 

2 categories. The Department of Labor will pull 

3 a case from us for any one of a number of 

4 reasons. I don't know that I can name them 

5 all, but I know that sometimes one will be 

6 incorrectly referred. Sometimes, this is 

7 really sad, a claimant will pass away without 

8 a survivor, and there is no one to continue 

9 the claim. But there are certainly many, many 

10 other categories as well for some reason a 

11 determination is made that this is not a valid 

12 claim or it is not a claim that should have 

13 gone to dose reconstruction.

14 For a while, there were some 

15 claims referred to us for chronic lymphocytic 

16 leukemia, which we don't do dose 

17 reconstructions on because, right now, in the 

18 regulation, it has a risk coefficient of zero 

19 and so they were actually kind of referred to 

20 us by mistake.

21 And then the cases that were 

22 pulled for SEC consideration are cases that 
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1 those are for sites where we have recommended 

2 and the Board has, or at least the Board has 

3 recommended to the Secretary and the Secretary 

4 has designated additional Classes beyond the 

5 statutory-defined ones. And in this instance, 

6 these claims would have already been sent to 

7 us for dose reconstruction at the time that 

8 the SEC case is added, the SEC Class is added. 

9 So they are then sent back to the Department 

10 of Labor because they no longer need a dose 

11 reconstruction.

12 For any claims that would come in 

13 for a Class after we have added the Class, we 

14 would never see those claims. The Department 

15 of Labor would just go ahead and process them. 

16 So we don't know the total count from that 

17 standpoint. I don't know an easy way for us 

18 to obtain from our statistics a count of the 

19 total number of claims that are compensated 

20 through SECs that have been added.

21 So you can see that remains, 

22 leaves about some nine percent still to be 
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1 dose reconstructed and that has excluded 

2 already, I believe if I did the arithmetic in 

3 my head correctly, the 600 and some that were 

4 administratively closed. I speak about that 

5 every time, but I guess not everyone is at 

6 every meeting so I guess I should speak about 

7 it in the end.

8 Cases were administratively closed 

9 for primarily the reason that the claimant 

10 essentially drops out of the process. In 

11 other words, the claimant has certain things 

12 to do in the process and most notably when the 

13 dose reconstruction is complete and the 

14 claimant has received the draft dose 

15 reconstruction, we ask them to essentially 

16 certify to us that they have no additional 

17 information to provide us that would be 

18 relevant to the dose reconstruction and they 

19 sign a form. They don't have to agree with 

20 the dose reconstruction. We just ask them to 

21 agree that they have no more information. And 

22 some people just decline. They kind of stop 
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1 participating in the process at that time. 

2 The compensation outcome is 

3 usually pretty clear from the draft dose 

4 reconstruction and so some people choose to 

5 kind of drop out at that point.

6 This is just another more detailed 

7 breakdown of the claims and how they fall into 

8 categories. The same categories are there and 

9 then the claims that are with us for dose 

10 reconstruction are just broken into two 

11 categories down at the bottom, active and 

12 pending. Those are the ones that are still 

13 with us for dose reconstruction.

14 And a pending case, a pending is 

15 a classification or a case status that we 

16 assign to a case in an instance where there is 

17 some piece of information missing in order for 

18 us to complete the dose reconstruction. I

19 have put in sort of the main -- did I go the 

20 wrong way? Okay. No, there was one slide in 

21 there I forgot about. Sorry about that.

22 So this is a description of the 
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1 cases that are still with us for dose 

2 reconstruction and talks about the various 

3 phases of how we work it. So 564 cases in the 

4 dose reconstruction process means those cases 

5 have a health physicist's name on it, and a 

6 health physicist is assigned to complete the 

7 dose reconstruction for that case.

8 Now we certainly don't have 564 

9 health physicists working in the program so 

10 any particular health physicist has an in-box. 

11 And you know, any particular DR, just because 

12 it is assigned to a health physicist does not 

13 mean it is at the top of his or her inbox. 

14 But that is how many have been designated to 

15 be completed. And that also means the 

16 preliminary work has been completed like 

17 obtaining the exposure records and any other 

18 records we need.

19 Of those 2,747 claims that we say 

20 we still are responsible for completing a dose 

21 reconstruction for, we have completed a draft 

22 dose reconstruction for 416 of them. So those 
24

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1 draft dose reconstructions are in the hands of 

2 the claimant, and the claimant is determining, 

3 from the dose reconstruction and from their 

4 close-out interview, if they have additional 

5 information to provide. And they may provide 

6 additional information or they may say I have 

7 no more to provide and sign the OCAS-1 form. 

8 So that is where those 416 are at.

9 And then the remainder, the 1,700 

10 are in development to begin dose 

11 reconstruction. And the things you do in 

12 development is you will request, of course, 

13 the exposure record if the person worked at a 

14 site where we are able to obtain individual 

15 exposure records. And then there is 

16 additional aligning, sort of getting the case 

17 ready to work so the dose reconstructors, the 

18 health physicists can work efficiently when 

19 they pick up that dose reconstruction case.

20 This is what I thought was the 

21 next slide. It describes the pended cases. 

22 And this is the five major categories. There 
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1 are additional categories that have smaller 

2 amounts in here so these numbers won't add up 

3 to 299.

4 You can see the largest single 

5 Class by far reflects the cases that are 

6 affected by the SEC Classes that the Board 

7 recommended at its May meeting. The process 

8 being what it is, the effective date on those 

9 SEC Classes, I believe, is this week. I think 

10 it is Thursday or Friday. So quite a number 

11 of those will be pulled on the effective date 

12 and sent back to the Department of Labor.

13 There may be some in there that 

14 are non-compensable claims that we will still 

15 do the dose reconstruction on. We have 

16 refrained from doing non-compensable dose 

17 reconstructions in this interim, between the 

18 recommendation of addition of a Class and the 

19 actual effective date of the Class, because 

20 when we do a dose reconstruction for a non21 compensable claim from an SEC or a 

22 nonspecific, a non-SEC cancer claim from an 
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1 SEC site, we say in the dose reconstruction 

2 that there is some component of the dose that 

3 we could not reconstruct. That is the reason

4 why the SEC Class was added.

5 And since we say that in the dose 

6 reconstruction, essentially there is no real 

7 official act that that has been adopted. And 

8 so we have generally waited to do those non9 presumptive or the non-SEC cancer cases from 

10 SEC sites until the Classes are effective.

11 Some of the -- well the DR 

12 methodology and I think that actually pertains 

13 to some of those non-presumptives. They may 

14 all fit in that category. I am a little 

15 confused on my categories now.

16 On dose reconstruction on occasion 

17 we will find that the individual exposure 

18 record we receive for the individual we felt 

19 wasn't complete enough, there was some 

20 additional detail or there was maybe an 

21 incident described that we wanted to try to 

22 find information on and we will try to find 
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1 additional data and make an additional data 

2 request back to DOE. Now this doesn't relate 

3 to the original request we have made, but this 

4 is where we say oh, we need some more 

5 information and we go back to DOE. There are 

6 a certain number of cases and then we wait to 

7 hear from DOE before we proceed.

8 The COI issue means close out 

9 interview issue. And I told you a while ago 

10 about all those cases that are in the hands of 

11 claimants. The draft dose reconstruction is 

12 in the hands of the claimant, and the claimant 

13 is deciding whether they have more information 

14 that may be relevant, and they have a close 

15 out interview to talk to us about it. And 

16 when they identify information that seems that 

17 this is relevant to the dose reconstruction 

18 and there may be more information coming that 

19 we need to wait, we wait. And that is why 

20 those 27 are pended. Those are in that 

21 situation.

22 And then the Technical Basis 
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1 Document, there are still a few technical 

2 questions and details for certain 

3 circumstances at some sites where we still 

4 need to work out some of the details of how we 

5 are going to interpret the dose reconstruction 

6 from those places.

7 And a breakdown of compensability 

8 versus non-compensability of the cases that 

9 are completed by dose reconstruction. And we 

10 have been hanging around 30 percent for quite 

11 some time in the program and that is about 

12 where we are now, 31 percent being 

13 compensated. Recall that there are another 

14 roughly 2,700 that have been pulled from dose 

15 reconstruction for the SEC. And so you would 

16 expect somewhere around 2,700 additional cases 

17 that were originally referred to us from the 

18 32,000 to be compensated as well, in addition 

19 to the 7,000 that are here.

20 And I show this slide every 

21 meeting. I am sure that the Board Members are 

22 probably full of it, you know, tired of it by 
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1 now because it is the same. It looks the 

2 same. Every three months it looks the same.

3 We have the large number of quite 

4 small -- Probability of Causation is kind of a 

5 declining slope down to the closest 

6 compensability line, the 40 to 49 percent, 

7 which of course we all are discouraged to get 

8 one of those. And then all of the above 50s 

9 are compiled into one bar and so it seems like 

10 quite a large bar there.

11 At our last meeting, I provided a 

12 graph of the percent of claims that were 

13 completed within one year of being referred to 

14 us. And it showed a really nice dramatic 

15 improvement. It was grouped by groupings of 

16 5,000 claims. You know, claim one to claim 

17 5,000, claim 5,001 to claim 10,000, because we 

18 assign those NIOSH tracking numbers on the 

19 order in which we receive the claim. And it 

20 showed this real nice upward movement, we are 

21 getting higher and higher percentages of 

22 claims done within one year.
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1 And then since the last meeting, 

2 we have gotten a year past the original 

3 referral of claim 30,000 and we ran that chart 

4 again and it was the same number for 20,000 to 

5 25,000 as it was 25,001 to 30,000. And I said 

6 this doesn't seem right to me because I know 

7 that we have made so much progress towards 

8 completing cases in one year.

9 I found what I think might be an 

10 error in how we ask the question. And so 

11 depending on how you ask the question to your 

12 computer people, you get exactly what you 

13 asked for. And I think we may have asked the 

14 question incorrectly. So we want to check on 

15 that and also look for the reasons on why that

16 number isn't higher.

17 So I didn't include that graph 

18 here. I intend to provide it in the future, 

19 but I didn't include it here. By the time we 

20 ran the data because our data are up to date 

21 through July 31st, so we didn't run these data 

22 until last week and by the time we ran it, we 
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1 had just run out of time to diagnose it. So 

2 we didn't include it this time.

3 Okay, this is DOE's response to 

4 requests for exposure records. We have some 

5 258 that are outstanding, 32 above 60 days. 

6 These numbers are down from last month. Both 

7 the numbers are down. Let's see if I have it. 

8 Last month was -- I'll have it for you in a 

9 minute. Yes, 278 were outstanding and 46 were 

10 above 60 days. And so it reflects the low 

11 number of claims total and the fewer number 

12 above 60 days reflects DOE continuing 

13 dedication to providing time to response to 

14 our exposure requests.

15 Our Special Exposure Cohort, we 

16 will have a more complete presentation of this 

17 later in the meeting. If we get to it early 

18 enough in the meeting, LaVon Rutherford will 

19 provide it, but he can't stay for the whole 

20 meeting. So if we provide it later in the 

21 meeting, I will be back again. So let that be 

22 a warning to everybody. Ted, if you don't 
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1 want to hear me up here again, you need to get 

2 him on the agenda.

3 There is one number that is 

4 incorrect on this slide, and that is the 103 

5 qualified. That number should actually be 104 

6 qualified. When the slide was put together, 

7 you can see the effective date is July 20th. 

8 A claim qualified right about on July 20th. 

9 It was the 20th, 21st, something like that and 

10 I think that is what happened here. The 

11 qualified number didn't get bumped up, but 

12 somehow when we looked at the number that were 

13 remaining, they were waiting for 

14 qualifications and so there were only five on 

15 July 20th. We managed to get that number 

16 right. So that seems to be what happened but 

17 that is the difference, the 104 have been 

18 qualified.

19 These numbers below the 103 or 104 

20 don't add up to 103. For those of you who are 

21 like me and start adding up numbers who look 

22 like they should add up and they don't add up 
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1 on slides. And so they do not add up. The 

2 reason is because certain numbers of petitions 

3 were merged together in the addition of a 

4 Class.

5 For instance, down here you have 

6 got five between 62 petitions resulted in the 

7 addition of a Class, representing 57 Classes. 

8 That means five of those petitions got merged 

9 in with something, one other petition. And so 

10 that took care of those. Some of the 

11 petitions that are with the Board, I believe, 

12 also are the result of merged petitions. That 

13 accounts for some of them, the merging of 

14 petitions.

15 If you look carefully at the steps 

16 in the process we have described here, we 

17 actually have left out -- there are a couple 

18 of steps that aren't accounted for. And one 

19 is that there are eight petitions between the 

20 Secretary's recommendation and the effective 

21 date. So they are not with the Secretary 

22 awaiting a decision and the Class has not been 
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1 added yet. So there are eight in there. Those 

2 are the ones from the May Board meeting and 

3 there is one petition that the Board's 

4 recommendation has been made but it hasn't 

5 made it to the Secretary. The NIOSH position 

6 has not made it to the Secretary yet. So 

7 there are a number of odds and ends like that 

8 that are the reasons why the numbers don't add 

9 up there.

10 Okay, for the two processes, of 

11 course, for adding SEC Classes are described 

12 in 83.13 of 42 CFR 83 and then in Part 14 of 

13 that same regulation. Part 13 is the process 

14 by which a petitioner sends us a petition and 

15 provides a basis for believing that doses 

16 cannot be reconstructed. And then we do the 

17 investigation, and eventually the Class is 

18 added after a determination there is some 

19 infeasibility to dose reconstruction of that 

20 site. Twenty-nine of the 57 had gone through 

21 the 83.13 process.

22 The 83.14 process is where, 
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1 without being petitioned by anyone outside the 

2 office, we realized that, gee whiz, we don't 

3 have enough information to reconstruct 

4 radiation doses from this site and so we are 

5 going to recommend adding a Class. And then 

6 we solicit a petitioner and then the petition, 

7 then, really just consists of signing the form 

8 and returning it. That is really all the 

9 petitioner has to do at that point. For an 

10 83.13, the petitioner is essentially required 

11 to provide the basis, a thought process for 

12 why they believe the dose is not 

13 reconstructable.

14 So it breaks pretty much even 

15 between the two processes. The Classes come 

16 from 44 sites and 4,331 potential claims. 

17 That number is higher than earlier because as 

18 far as I know, that may include the eight that 

19 are hanging on there and it may also include 

20 some claims that look to us as if they will be 

21 paid through SEC but the DOL determines, well, 

22 actually this for some reason did not meet the 
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1 qualifications for the SEC and they send it 

2 back for dose reconstruction. For instance, 

3 the employment wasn't 250 days or something 

4 like that, or the diagnosis they had referred 

5 us originally was incorrect and the correct 

6 diagnosis is not a specified cancer. Some 

7 reason like that.

8 This year, we also engaged by June 

9 1st in obtaining a management objective to 

10 complete draft dose reconstructions within one 

11 year. I reported on this in May because we 

12 were almost at the date and I said how we 

13 expected to finish. And we did, in fact, 

14 finish at June 1st the way we expected we 

15 would. The cases from -- where SEC Classes 

16 have recommended, where the Class is not yet 

17 effective, there are certain cases where we 

18 require additional information really from 

19 DOE, not so much from DOL, but we have as one 

20 of those supplemental requests in the DOE. 

21 And it is not like DOE has waited a year. 

22 Usually a good portion of that year went by 
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1 and it was getting on, you know, after we had 

2 had the claim for close to a year, then we 

3 realized, you know, we are going to need to 

4 ask for more information on this. And so we 

5 make the request. So it is not like the 

6 request to DOE necessarily took a long time, 

7 but it is just that we are waiting for them 

8 before we get the data and the claim is one 

9 year apart. And then there are a few 

10 approaches still under discussion that for 

11 some pretty small, you know, like ones and 

12 twos kinds of claims.

13 To keep up with that, we monitor 

14 our claims now weekly and have a two-month 

15 look ahead every week to see what is coming 

16 up. So what do we need to worry about? What 

17 are the claims we need to get done? So we are 

18 always, when we say reviewed quarterly, we 

19 pretty much always are looking at the progress 

20 we are making on maintaining that one year 

21 objective.

22 Now going forward, it is our 
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1 intent to shorten up that one year to a 

2 shorter time period. We are working now on a 

3 strategy on changing that one year target to a 

4 nine month target by next May. So we are 

5 working with our contractor on that, and we 

6 believe that sometime next spring, we believe 

7 by May, we will be in a position to be able to 

8 complete dose reconstructions within nine 

9 months of them being referred to us.

10 And we also have adopted a 

11 secondary objective to completing a reworked 

12 claim within 60 days, if we don't have to ask 

13 for additional records. A rework is a case 

14 where we have completed the dose 

15 reconstruction. We sent the final dose 

16 reconstruction to the Department of Labor, and 

17 then some of the information about the claim 

18 changes.

19 A frequent and clearly 

20 understandable occurrence for this is that the 

21 claimant may in fact acquire an additional 

22 cancer. And so the causation for that 
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1 calculation, you do it for all the primary 

2 cancers, and so since they didn't have that 

3 second cancer or third cancer, the case is 

4 returned to us for new dose reconstruction.

5 There are other instances as well 

6 where there might be, at the Final 

7 Adjudication Board, they may question the 

8 diagnosis and the diagnosis that they 

9 ultimately determine is the correct diagnosis 

10 may not be the one that they referred to us 

11 for dose reconstruction. So cases will come 

12 back for that as well.

13 But anyway, that is what we call a 

14 rework case. And for those cases to come back 

15 to us, since they have already been in the 

16 system, it didn't seem fair to put them, 

17 essentially, at the bottom of the pile and so 

18 we try to get those in a more accelerated 

19 manner, and especially if we don't ask for 

20 additional records, we try to get those back 

21 out within a couple months.

22 That is the end of my slides. If 
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1 anyone has any questions, I will be happy to 

2 try to answer them.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any questions 

4 for Stu? Paul.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Stu, you had been 

6 in the past reporting, at least on occasion, 

7 the status of the first 1,000 cases. There 

8 have been a few that were sort of hanging on. 

9 Can you remind us of where we are on those 

10 early cases? Are there still some not closed?

11 MR. HINNEFELD: We still generate 

12 that report internally, it just kind of comes 

13 out automatically, and the last one I remember 

14 seeing there were about two or three out of 

15 the first thousand that are not yet done. I 

16 don't know today which those are. I mean, 

17 they could be in those SEC sites which are 

18 about to become effective and that might take 

19 care of them. Or it could be that they were 

20 done for quite a while and then returned to us 

21 for some reason. And so this time around, 

22 they are relatively new and we may be having 
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1 to get additional information. But there were 

2 about two or three I think that were not done 

3 in the first thousand.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: So we are almost 

5 done with those or --

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- pretty well 

8 along.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Are you in a 

11 position to talk about the next group, the 

12 second thousand?

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we went to 

14 5,000.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Oh, if you were at 

16 5,000 okay.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: The second group 

18 we tracked was the first 5,000.

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: So is the two or 

20 three out of the first 5,000?

21 MR. HINNEFELD: No, it is two or 

22 three out of the first thousand.
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay. And then 

2 the 5,000.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: The 5,000, I don't 

4 recall. I am pretty sure it is less than a 

5 hundred. It is considerably more than two or 

6 three.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Maybe update us 

8 on that at our next meeting.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: I can have it for 

10 you by tomorrow for sure --

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: -- if you want me 

13 to.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, that would 

15 be good.

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: If I might add, I 

17 think, just as a matter of interest, we are of 

18 course trying to -- the Agency is trying to 

19 get the turnaround time down and I know you 

20 have been concentrating on those older cases 

21 as well, and some of them have had some 

22 particular problems, but I think it is helpful
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1 for us to keep abreast of where we are on 

2 those. So if you would report on that, it 

3 would be helpful.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: I can make sure I 

5 report on that every time. I will report on 

6 that every time.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

8 questions for Stu? Does the phone have -- do 

9 we have people that --

10 MR. KATZ: For Board Members on 

11 the phone, do you have any questions?

12 (No response.)

13 MR. KATZ: Okay, we are reporting 

14 that they don't have questions, but let me 

15 just check attendance on the phone. One Board 

16 Member who should be here is running late, 

17 Mark Griffon. Everyone else we expected here 

18 in Idaho is here, but let me just check at 

19 this point. Can you give us an indication?

20 Dr. Lemen we have heard from, but 

21 Mr. Gibson, is he on the phone as well? And 

22 then Dr. Field. Very good.
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1 So just to register for the 

2 record, all Members are in attendance, with 

3 the exception of Mr. Griffon, who I think 

4 probably has travel difficulties.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, we will 

6 now hear from Lew Wade again.

7 DR. WADE: Thank you, Dr. Melius. 

8 I would like to give you an update on the ten 

9 year program review. I remind you that this 

10 is a ten year review of NIOSH's activities 

11 related to the program. It is not a review of 

12 the Board's activities or DOL or DOE, but it 

13 was commissioned by the NIOSH director to 

14 review NIOSH's performance relative to the 

15 program.

16 The design is to have the review 

17 accomplished in two phases. The first phase 

18 is to be largely a data-driven exploration of 

19 five areas. Those areas are performance with 

20 regard to individual dose reconstructions, 

21 performance with regard to SEC petitions, the 

22 timeliness of NIOSH's efforts, the quality of 
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1 science that's practiced by NIOSH, and NIOSH's 

2 customer service interactions.

3 The second phase is designed to 

4 build upon the results of that first phase and 

5 it will be John Howard as the NIOSH Director 

6 and a senior group of NIOSH leadership 

7 exploring ways in which the program can be 

8 changed, the program can be improved, based on 

9 lessons learned from that data-driven phase. 

10 So again, two phases. We are well into the 

11 first phase.

12 You now have in your possession 

13 three of the draft reports of the five 

14 promised relative to Phase I. They should be 

15 on the O: drive. They are on the table here. 

16 Those are the pieces with regard to 

17 individual dose reconstructions, the 

18 timeliness piece, and the Special Exposure 

19 Cohort piece. The authors of those three 

20 documents are here this week to answer your 

21 questions either now or to engage in one-on22 one discussions with the Board Member, 
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1 concerning where they are, where they are 

2 headed, to take your suggestions.

3 Let me introduce those authors to 

4 you. Randy Rabinowitz, the author of the 

5 piece on Special Exposure Cohort in the back 

6 right of the room; Nancy Adams, the author of 

7 the piece on timeliness; and I am the author 

8 of the piece on individual dose 

9 reconstructions.

10 I had hoped to have in your 

11 possession today the piece on quality of 

12 science. That is about 80 percent complete. 

13 I hope to have it to you within a month. It 

14 is being authored by Doug Daniels of the NIOSH 

15 staff and Professor Spitz from the University 

16 of Cincinnati. We are waiting for one piece 

17 from Professor Spitz that deals with the 

18 vexing question of the use of surrogate data. 

19 As soon as that piece is complete, I will 

20 have it to you in draft.

21 The customer service piece will be 

22 the last piece you will get. Hopefully, have 
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1 it well before your next meeting for you to be 

2 able to comment. We are receiving comments 

3 from individual Board Members, and my 

4 commitment to you as sort of the overseer of 

5 this review is that any written comment we 

6 receive from a Board Member we'll either take 

7 to heart and make the suggested change or we 

8 will get back to you in writing with the 

9 reason why we didn't accept the recommendation

10 made by the Board Member.

11 I would encourage you, while the 

12 authors are here this week, if you have 

13 concerns or issues, take the author aside and 

14 have a discussion with them. We really want 

15 to have heavy Board input in this. And 

16 remember, the ultimate purpose of all of this 

17 is for the NIOSH leadership to change the 

18 programs in ways that better serve the people 

19 that we are all here to serve, the claimants, 

20 and the petitioners, and the workers.

21 So if there are any questions, 

22 clarifying or substantive, now for either 
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1 myself or the authors, we can do that. 

2 Otherwise, they will be available to you 

3 throughout the week.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Lew, one 

5 question. What is the timetable? I am just 

6 trying to figure out how long do Board Members 

7 have to get comments in? Do we want to have 

8 this on our next agenda for our next call?

9 DR. WADE: Well, I would imagine, 

10 Dr. Melius, that we will finish the Phase I 

11 process after your November meeting, --

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

13 DR. WADE: -- when you have had a 

14 chance to have all of the pieces in hand. And 

15 I would imagine Dr. Howard would begin his 

16 deliberations before the end of the calendar 

17 year in terms of changes in the program.

18 So the sooner the better, but, 

19 again, we will be taking comments from the 

20 Board through and after the November Board 

21 meeting.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I believe all of 
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1 us just received the drafts over the weekend 

2 or late last week. I don't know if anybody 

3 has any, any Board Members have comments at 

4 this point in time; do they? We will put it 

5 on the agenda for our next Board call also, 

6 but I think getting individual comments to Lew 

7 is also helpful. I know I will have some --

8 DR. WADE: Thank you.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- and I know 

10 others will.

11 DR. WADE: I certainly appreciate 

12 it.

13 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Could you 

14 clarify? You have laid out a couple of 

15 different processes for providing you comments 

16 back. The first one was to provide you 

17 written comments. Another one was to take 

18 people aside and have a one-on-one 

19 conversation. Maybe could you give me a 

20 little bit more advice on what is the optimal 

21 way to get you feedback. How are we going to 

22 guarantee that it is effectively used?
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1 I mean, the easiest thing for me 

2 is to take a hard copy and mark up comments in 

3 the margins, but we could do this a couple 

4 different ways, I suppose.

5 DR. WADE: I think the best way 

6 for us and for the commenter is to get your 

7 comments to us in writing, be it email or even 

8 a marked up copy that you would present to us 

9 with your comments clearly identified. Then 

10 we would commit to get back to you on each of 

11 your comments. If we have just a verbal 

12 interchange, then it depends upon our ability 

13 to capture the essence of what you were trying 

14 to tell us.

15 So I think the more formal you can 

16 be, the better, but whatever suits your level 

17 of concern, if you want to have sort of a 

18 probative discussion with the authors, feel 

19 free to do that, as well.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

21 questions for Lew? Okay.

22 DR. WADE: Thank you.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Lew.

2 Jeff Kotsch.

3 MR. KOTSCH: Good morning. I am 

4 Jeff Kotsch with the Department of Labor. 

5 This is the update of -- the routine update 

6 that we provide for the Advisory Board.

7 Just a little bit of background 

8 for anybody that hasn't heard this 

9 presentation before, the background of the 

10 Energy Employee Occupational Illness 

11 Compensation Program Act. Part B became 

12 effective on July 31, 2001. Since that time, 

13 72,003 cases or 108,506 claims have been 

14 filed. Just a note here that there are always 

15 more claims than cases because in the event of 

16 a survivor cases, there could be one or more 

17 survivors for that case.

18 The Department of Labor has 

19 referred 32,572 cases to NIOSH for dose 

20 reconstruction. And these numbers, 

21 unfortunately, never seem to -- they will 

22 never exactly jibe with numbers that Stu 
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1 presents because of the timing for the capture 

2 of the numbers.

3 Part E, which is the other part of 

4 our program, which we will also talk about a 

5 little bit, became effective on October 28, 

6 2004. And since that time, about 63,500 cases 

7 or a little over 90,000 claims have been 

8 filed, and over 25,000 cases were transferred 

9 from the old Part D program from the DOE.

10 And this is just a brief summary 

11 pie chart of the compensation to date or as of 

12 August 2nd; 5.9 billion in total compensation, 

13 3.4 billion for Part B, 2 billion for Part E, 

14 and 543 for the medical benefits that are 

15 supplied in addition to the compensation.

16 And cases paid under the Act, 

17 about 61,000 payees and about 45,500 Part B 

18 and E cases. You can see the other numbers 

19 for Part B, 41,696 payees for 27,200 cases. A 

20 little over 19,000 Part E payees for a little 

21 over 18,000 cases. About 60 percent Part B 

22 and 40 percent Part E.
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1 A real quick overview for people 

2 in attendance that haven't heard, again, who 

3 haven't heard the presentation, Part B 

4 addresses radiation-induced cancers. It 

5 includes the Special Exposure Cohort and 

6 involves Probability of Causations that are 

7 developed from NIOSH's dose reconstruction 

8 effort.

9 Part B also includes chronic 

10 beryllium disease and beryllium sensitivity 

11 for the workers and silicosis for the miners 

12 in Nevada and Alaska, and the supplement for 

13 the RECA Section 5 uranium workers.

14 The eligibility under Part B is 

15 DOE employees, federal employees, DOE 

16 contractors and subcontractors, Atomic Weapons 

17 Employers, the beryllium vendors, and as 

18 listed there, the survivors of the deceased 

19 workers. That is a little bit different. You 

20 will see it in the Part E survivor list and 

21 the RECA Section 5 uranium workers.

22 Continuing with that, presumptive 
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1 coverage for workers with the 22 specified 

2 cancers at the Special Exposure Cohort sites. 

3 That started with the four legislated sites, 

4 the three gaseous diffusion plants, K-25 at 

5 Oak Ridge, Portsmouth, and Paducah, plus the 

6 Amchitka test site, I am not quite sure. And 

7 as of August second, 56 SEC classes have been 

8 added.

9 The general benefits under Part B 

10 are $150,000 lump sum payment, plus medical 

11 benefits for the covered conditions. And 

12 medical treatment and monitoring is only 

13 provided for cases involving beryllium 

14 sensitivity.

15 The distribution of the final 

16 decisions is 29,000 -- again, August 2nd 

17 numbers, 29,182 final decisions approved and 

18 21,392 final decisions denied. And the other 

19 bars, the yellow, green, and light blue bars, 

20 629 survivors not eligible, a little over 

21 15,000 cases with Probability of Causations of 

22 less than 50 percent, and about 5,700 cases 
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1 where the medical information was insufficient 

2 to support the claim.

3 Just a quick overview for Part E. 

4 Again, this is a federal entitlement program 

5 like Part B and provides lump sum payments up 

6 to $250,000, usually on top of the Part B 

7 payment, plus medical benefits for accepted 

8 conditions.

9 The eligibility for Part E 

10 includes DOE contractors and subcontractors. 

11 It does not include the Atomic Weapons 

12 Employers or the beryllium vendor workers. 

13 And there is a listing of the survivors. It 

14 is a little different from the survivors for 

15 the Part B program but both of those survivor, 

16 I mean the survivor conditions were provided 

17 by Congress in the amendment to the Act.

18 Part E is any occupational 

19 disease, any toxic exposure, including Part B 

20 diseases. So there is essentially dual 

21 eligibility. Again, Part B is radiation, 

22 beryllium and silicosis, Part E is basically 
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1 any toxic exposure.

2 Part E also includes compensation 

3 for impairment and a determination of the 

4 percentage. A permanent whole-body impairment 

5 due to the covered illness is based on the 

6 AMA, the American Medical Association's Guide 

7 for the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, 

8 5th Edition and awards $2,500 per percent of 

9 impairment.

10 Part E also includes wage loss 

11 based on medical evidence showing a decreased 

12 capacity to work and there you see the 

13 employee compensation, the way that is 

14 allotted.

15 The final decisions for Part E 

16 cases, 24,296 approved, final decisions 

17 approved, 19,706 denied, roughly 6,200 of 

18 those, the cancer is not work related. The 

19 Probability of Causation is less than 50 

20 percent and about 13,500 for insufficient 

21 medical information.

22 The status, the case status for 
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1 NIOSH referrals we are showing as of August 

2 2nd, 32,572 cases referred to NIOSH. Of 

3 those, 28,881 returned by NIOSH that are 

4 currently at DOL, a little over 25,000 with 

5 dose reconstructions. A little over 3,800 

6 without dose reconstructions that were 

7 basically pulled back.

8 There are 3,691 cases that are 

9 currently at NIOSH. We are indicating about 

10 2,600 of these are initial referrals and a 

11 little over 5,000 are reworks. Again, reworks 

12 are cases that already have a dose 

13 reconstruction from NIOSH and have been 

14 returned, primarily because of an indication 

15 of additional employment or additional 

16 cancers.

17 This slide is for the HHS-added 

18 SEC classes; 3,077 cases have been withdrawn 

19 from NIOSH for SEC class review. About 2,600 

20 had final decisions issued and 2,530 had final 

21 approvals.

22 The DOL process is such that after 
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1 the dose reconstruction comes back, a 

2 recommended decision is rendered by one of the 

3 four district offices and then after the 

4 claimant has the option to object or provide 

5 additional information during the period after 

6 that, in which case the final adjudication 

7 branch, which takes all the recommended 

8 decisions and basically makes them into final 

9 decisions, incorporates whatever information 

10 is provided. And things are cycling -- can 

11 cycle back to NIOSH either prior to the 

12 recommended decision or between the 

13 recommended and the final from the FAB or even 

14 afterwards if they are appealed, essentially 

15 or ask for reconsideration.

16 Continuing with those numbers, 88 

17 recommended decisions but no final decisions. 

18 So those are the ones that are with the FAB. 

19 Then 169 cases were pending for additional 

20 information and 227 cases were closed. Those 

21 are actually July 19th numbers.

22 This slide is the NIOSH dose 
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1 reconstruction case status, indicating about 

2 25,000 cases returned by NIOSH currently at 

3 DOL with a dose reconstruction. That has 

4 resulted in about 66 percent denials or 34 

5 percent final approval. The numbers are about 

6 7,500 final approvals with a PoC greater than 

7 50 and a little less than 14,500 final 

8 denials.

9 And then this is just a summary of 

10 the Part B cancer cases with final decisions 

11 to accept, showing a little over 7,000 

12 accepted dose-reconstructed cases for a 

13 little under 10,000 payees or about 1.04 

14 billion in compensation. Accepted SEC cases, 

15 11,314, a little over 18,000 payees, 1.65 

16 billion in compensation.

17 Cases accepted based on SEC status 

18 and a PoC greater than 50, 421 and you see the 

19 payees of 62.9 million on compensation. And 

20 then the total for all accepted SEC and dose 

21 reconstructed cases, about 18,800 or about 2.7 

22 billion in compensation.
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1 This is just a quick graph or a 

2 chart of the last, what is it, ten months, 

3 eight or ten months. And like Stu said, we 

4 consider an average for about 200 cases that 

5 we send to NIOSH. We obviously get a few more 

6 in that are dispositioned without a dose 

7 reconstruction. But for the last couple 

8 months, 263 in May and 354 in June.

9 And this is our incoming, 

10 basically, into Department of Labor, Part B 

11 cases. It is trending upwards a little bit 

12 May 473, June 535.

13 Just of interest, the top four 

14 work sites of where we have new Part B cases 

15 coming in, Hanford, Y-12, Savannah River, Oak 

16 Ridge K-25. And, again, just the distribution 

17 for those, a little bit of an uptick, probably 

18 associated for Hanford with the SEC class a 

19 little while ago and dropping back down again. 

20 Again, new Part B cases. Y-12 essentially 

21 fairly steady. Savannah River looks pretty 

22 steady, at least recently. And K-25 again, 
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1 except for a peak back in March, it seems to 

2 be pretty steady.

3 These are the percentage of the 

4 Part B DOE cases. The next slide will be the 

5 AWE cases that are coming in every month. 

6 About 90 percent of our cases coming in every 

7 month are related to DOE sites and about ten 

8 percent or a little bit less are coming as new 

9 cases from the Atomic Weapons Employer sites.

10 And we won't go through all these 

11 numbers, but we try to provide the basic 

12 numbers for the sites that are either being 

13 recommended for SEC class status at this 

14 meeting or are of local interest like the 

15 Idaho National Lab. 

16 And so just quick ones, Blockson 

17 Chemical we have had 216 Part B and E cases. 

18 Again, this is only a Part B facility. And we 

19 have had 54 approvals for 8.2 million. GE 

20 Evendale at Ohio, 744 cases, 34 Part B 

21 approvals, 56 Part E approvals, 10.1 million 

22 in compensation and medical bills paid.
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1 With the Idaho National Lab, 4,167 

2 cases. NIOSH has done 1,153 dose 

3 reconstructions that we have received. We 

4 have 1,473 final decisions, 356 Part B 

5 approvals and 554 Part E approvals. Total 

6 compensation and medical bill payment 89.9 

7 million.

8 Revere Copper and Brass, 11 cases. 

9 We have had eight dose reconstructions 

10 returned, six Part B approvals, and a little 

11 under a million dollars in compensation.

12 The Ames Lab, 543 cases, 213 final 

13 Part B decisions, 138 approvals for Part B, 

14 137 for Part E for 28.3 million.

15 The Met Lab, Metallurgical Lab, 87 

16 cases, 31 final decisions for Part B, 27 Part 

17 B approvals, 15 Part E approvals for 5.5 

18 million in compensation.

19 Mound, 1,731 Part B and E cases, 

20 680 final decisions, 249 Part B approvals, 274 

21 Part E approvals, 58 million, roughly.

22 BWXT, BWX Technologies, Part B 
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1 only 143 cases, 23 final decisions, five 

2 approvals for a little under a half a million 

3 in compensation. 

4 Argonne West, Argonne National Lab 

5 West, 763 cases, 216 dose reconstructions, 269 

6 Part B final decisions, 61 B approvals, 114 E 

7 approvals, and 18.2 million compensation and 

8 medical bill payment. And that is a pie chart 

9 of the Part B cases filed.

10 The rest of the handout or slides 

11 are from the last presentation which are not 

12 applicable to this presentation. I was on 

13 vacation for the last week and a half so I 

14 didn't get the opportunity to see what was put 

15 together. And so those are just sitting there 

16 from the last presentation.

17 The other thing we were asked to 

18 just quickly talk about was a status of the 

19 review of the Rocky Flats Worker Study 

20 Database, which is often called the Ruttenber 

21 Database. Department of Labor, we have been 

22 working with NIOSH on this, and our policy 
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1 unit is developing a bulletin on how we are 

2 going to use, we will call it the Ruttenber 

3 Database, the information in that database. 

4 We will use the building information that is 

5 provided in that database as a criteria for or 

6 as information to fulfill the criterion for 

7 the building designation for the SEC class.

8 Our bulletins 0801, 0803, and I 

9 forget the other one, basically. But the 

10 first two basically, in consultation with 

11 NIOSH, we have determined which buildings have 

12 neutron, potential neutron exposures. Those 

13 are listed in those buildings, I mean in those 

14 bulletins.

15 So information in the Ruttenber 

16 Database that provides any of those building 

17 numbers will be evidence that that person was 

18 in that building. And then that will be along 

19 with, obviously has to be considered along 

20 with a specified cancer and employment in the 

21 period of -- 250-day employment in the period 

22 of the class.
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1 The other piece of that is the 

2 neutron data that is in that report. We 

3 evaluated it, looked through our database, 

4 looked at neutron numbers that were greater 

5 than zero, obviously positive numbers, neutron 

6 values. We looked for cases that have been 

7 denied that fit into the time period for the 

8 SEC class at Rocky Flats that had specified 

9 cancer. And we came up with a number. I 

10 forget exactly, but I know it is less than a 

11 dozen.

12 We are further evaluating those 

13 cases to determine, well, basically pooling 

14 them to determine whether when NIOSH did the 

15 dose reconstruction, whether there was 

16 neutrons accounted for in that dose 

17 reconstruction. If there were not, I don't 

18 know if we have completed this part but 

19 basically we will talk to NIOSH then and see 

20 whether, ask them, you know, whether -- well, 

21 it is their decision, obviously, whether they 

22 want to consider any kind of neutron dose for 
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1 those cases.

2 Obviously for the new cases that 

3 come in from now on, again we will look at the 

4 Ruttenber Database. If there is buildings 

5 indicated that fall within the class, the way 

6 that we have interpreted those buildings, they 

7 will be included in the SEC Class. And I 

8 guess we will just provide -- we haven't 

9 closed this loop, but I guess in our referral 

10 to NIOSH we have indicated that the Ruttenber 

11 Database indicates positive non-zero neutron 

12 dose and NIOSH can proceed with the dose 

13 reconstruction.

14 Any questions?

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Board Members 

16 with questions for Jeff?

17 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Just a 

18 question about the Ruttenber data.

19 MR. KOTSCH: Sure.

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Are there 

21 indications of -- is there building 

22 information in the Ruttenber Database that you 
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1 didn't have from another electronic source?

2 MR. KOTSCH: That we don't have?

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

4 MR. KOTSCH: Well, I mean, the 

5 building information, well we also use the 

6 Neutron Dose Reconstruction Project, the NDRP 

7 data from Rocky. So that used to be like the 

8 primary source of information for each 

9 employee. Now we are supplementing 

10 essentially that with the Ruttenber Database 

11 information.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Paul?

13 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I'm sorry, I 

14 didn't --

15 MR. KOTSCH: The NDRP provides the 

16 primary information. The Ruttenber Database 

17 will now provide supplemental information as 

18 far as building information, other than what 

19 the person provides and/or what we get as far 

20 as verified.

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I mean, but 

22 Ruttenber's data, as I understood it, was a 
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1 request I think for -- it was electronic 

2 dosimetry files and maybe electronic payroll 

3 files. I don't think he did a lot of -- he 

4 didn't reconstruct buildings and manuals.

5 MR. KOTSCH: No.

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And so there 

7 should be an electronic source of this same 

8 information from Rocky Flats.

9 MR. KOTSCH: Well, I mean, we also 

10 get information from Rocky when we go to DOE 

11 for employment. Of course, I don't know 

12 whether that -- do either of you know whether 

13 that includes -- I can't say whether that 

14 includes building data or not.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, and why 

16 wouldn't they? I guess I am wondering -- an 

17 analytical file from a deceased epidemiologist 

18 derived from electronic records provided by 

19 the site, you should be able to get the same 

20 information directly from DOE, if you want a 

21 large electronic database that tells you the 

22 building information that was available is 
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1 coded on dosimetry and payroll records.

2 MR. KOTSCH: I understand. I 

3 mean, I understand what you are saying. I am 

4 just not sure. I have to admit that I am not 

5 that familiar with what comes back from when 

6 we query DOE as far as what information comes 

7 back for employment verification. But that is 

8 a good point.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Paul.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well I wanted to 

11 follow up also a little bit on that and also 

12 ask whether our Rocky Flats Work Group had 

13 looked at this final use of the Ruttenber 

14 Data. But is it correct that the definition 

15 of the Class itself remains the same? Is that 

16 correct?

17 MR. KOTSCH: Yes.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: You are just using 

19 this to help you identify those who are in the 

20 Class. Is that correct?

21 MR. KOTSCH: Yes, the Ruttenber 

22 Database, like I said, it is just, Paul, it is 
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1 just another supplemental source of 

2 information for us to place people in the 

3 Class.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: I seem to recall 

5 that Mark Griffon and the Work Group were 

6 awaiting the outcome from the Department of 

7 Labor as to how this would be used. And I 

8 just wondered if they were planning to look at 

9 this at all and have additional comments, 

10 maybe along the lines of what David has raised 

11 here this morning.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I don't think 

13 they even knew about this yet. 

14 MR. KOTSCH: This is the first 

15 they have heard about it. And like I said, 

16 the actual bulletin that will implement the 

17 use of the Ruttenber, I will just call it the 

18 Ruttenber Database, as a supplemental source 

19 is in process.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: So there will be 

21 an official sort of document that will allow 

22 them to look at this and weigh in on it, I 
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1 guess.

2 MR. KOTSCH: Yes, because 

3 basically every time we implement an SEC 

4 Class, we create a bulletin.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Could I follow up 

6 with a separate question?

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: On one of your 

9 slides, I think it was slide 19, where you 

10 indicated the monthly input of cases for Part 

11 B, and I know your numbers and NIOSH numbers 

12 don't always agree, but I recall Stu saying 

13 that they got almost exactly 600 cases from 

14 you in the last three months. And as I look 

15 at your slide, it looks like considerably more 

16 than that. Is it again just a matter of the 

17 dates? For example, May and June together 

18 exceed the 600 value that --

19 MR. KOTSCH: No Paul, it is not 

20 just the dates. This is basically the raw 

21 incoming numbers for us.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Oh, okay. So it 
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1 includes more than the --

2 MR. KOTSCH: Yes, from those --

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: I got you. 

4 MR. KOTSCH: Yes, we will have 

5 disposition cases that don't meet the various 

6 criteria for SEC classes.

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Thank you.

8 MR. KOTSCH: Yes.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I had the same 

10 question, Paul, and I was trying to figure it 

11 out.

12 MR. KOTSCH: Yes, I mean, 

13 basically --

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Although I thought 

15 the slide indicated, let me look at 19, I 

16 thought it indicated the cases sent to NIOSH.

17 MR. KOTSCH: There is one there. 

18 I haven't gone back far enough, I don't think. 

19 Am I going in the right direction? 

20 Percentage Part B --

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Slide 19 is cases 

22 sent to NIOSH, and that is where the, as I 
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1 read it --

2 MR. KOTSCH: I am going to the 

3 wrong way. I'm sorry.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: If you notice, May 

5 and June themselves exceed the 600 value, 

6 which was -- and I know that the numbers never 

7 match exactly. I was just a little curious 

8 as to --

9 MR. KOTSCH: This one also 

10 includes the reworks.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Oh, okay. Got 

12 you. Thank you.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other Board 

14 Members with questions? And any Board Members 

15 on the phone with questions? And what we are 

16 going to do until we get the phone system 

17 fixed is give your question. Ted is listening 

18 in. Ted will then repeat the question into 

19 the microphone here and we will try that.

20 MR. KATZ: So just to do this in 

21 an orderly way, let me just start with Dr. 

22 Field, do you have any questions? Okay, no 
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1 questions from Dr. Field. Dr. Lemen? No 

2 questions from Dr. Lemen. And Mr. Gibson? No 

3 questions from Mr. Gibson.

4 And let me just also check, is 

5 Mark Griffon, any chance you are with us by 

6 phone? Okay, no.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We will check 

8 later and make sure you weren't just making 

9 that up.

10 Okay, good timing. Thank you, 

11 Jeff. We are scheduled for a break now. So 

12 we will take an extra -- come back at 10:14 

13 for our next session.

14 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

15 matter went off the record at 9:55 a.m. and 

16 resumed at 10:19 a.m.)

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We will 

18 reconvene now. Ted, any updates?

19 MR. KATZ: No, no updates. 

20 Thanks.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. And Board 

22 Members, we will now get an update from the 
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1 Department of Energy. Glenn Podonsky. Glenn, 

2 welcome back.

3 MR. PODONSKY: I have to note that 

4 half the workers left, but that is good 

5 because they went to the Ombudsman's meeting.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That's why I 

7 made the announcement.

8 MR. PODONSKY: Actually I want to 

9 thank you all. Thank you, the Board, for 

10 actually assembling. This is the first time I 

11 have addressed you in about a year. 

12 For those of you who don't know, I 

13 am Glenn Podonsky. I am the Chief Health 

14 Safety and Security Officer for the Department 

15 of Energy.

16 I have actually worked for --

17 under the last nine Secretaries of Energy and 

18 directly for the last four, and I came out 

19 here because I think this is a very important 

20 program. There are about 24 programs like 

21 this that come under HSS, but none are more 

22 important than taking care of our workers.
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1 Come October, the EEOICPA program 

2 will be ten years in its anniversary. And 

3 oftentimes when I talk to groups, I talk about 

4 the government, that is, all the federal 

5 contracts, all the different panels and 

6 boards. Sometimes we lose our humanity, and I 

7 talk about that frequently. The EEOICPA 

8 program, as far as I am concerned, is actually 

9 a program to help get the humanity back.

10 Sometimes we haven't done a very 

11 good job at DOE and other agencies. But early 

12 on, DOE and Labor were not getting along well. 

13 That is not the case today. We are at great 

14 relationships with DOE and NIOSH. And I hope 

15 also we are responsive to the Board, as well.

16 We have had problems obtaining 

17 records early on. Any time we have those 

18 problems now, we go directly to either the 

19 under secretaries or the assistant secretaries 

20 that are responsible and we try to get that 

21 fixed immediately. Immediate, by the way, by 

22 definition, is not as fast as we would like to 
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1 have it happen, as exemplified by when the 

2 Board -- you asked us for a letter to state 

3 the Department of Energy's position on the 

4 intimidation that some of the workers were 

5 feeling. And I remember that I made the 

6 commitment that I would get the letter. And I 

7 was terribly surprised that immediately meant 

8 about four and a half months, even after I 

9 went to each under secretary immediately, and 

10 I went to the deputy and I went to the 

11 Secretary. But by the time we got it out, it 

12 was about four and a half months. The good 

13 news is it got out. The bad news is it is not 

14 immediate by my definition.

15 We have also had problems getting 

16 the data to the public from the Site Exposure 

17 Matrix. But now I am happy to report that DOE 

18 has released 53 sites and we have got 20 more 

19 sites pending further review.

20 That is one of the things that was 

21 great -- I use the term loosely -- great about 

22 the creation of HSS four years ago this 
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1 October, is that we are able to put together 

2 those functions, the Office of the 

3 Classification, the Office of Security, the 

4 Offices of Worker and Health and Safety, so 

5 they all have to report to one individual 

6 group, as opposed to multiple assistant 

7 secretaries. So when the Office of 

8 Classification was slowing down the review of 

9 documents, I was able to pull in the Director 

10 of the Office of Classification, I was able to 

11 pull in the head of Worker Health and Safety, 

12 put them in the same room together and solve 

13 the problem. And that is where a lot of the 

14 improvements have come from, by putting people 

15 in the room together and getting them to do

16 their responsible due diligence to get the 

17 records forwarded in a timely fashion.

18 Our office, I believe, and I have 

19 seen it first-hand, I hope the Board has, I 

20 hope NIOSH and DOL, is very dedicated to 

21 sustain the work that we are doing. As time 

22 goes on, our work is lessening in the amount, 
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1 but that doesn't lessen our commitment. I 

2 want the Board, NIOSH, DOL to know and the 

3 workers to know our commitment remains strong 

4 and it doesn't waiver.

5 Before the project officer, Greg 

6 Lewis, comes up to give you an actual detailed 

7 update, I do want to acknowledge and recognize 

8 the tremendous contributions of Gina Cano, 

9 who's worked both DOL and the Department of 

10 Energy. She will be moving on to another very 

11 important project in the Department that 

12 requires both her passion and her dedication. 

13 And we are going to miss her, but the 

14 organization that she is going to was as --

15 equally as impaired as this was when Gina 

16 first came on board. So I want to just 

17 acknowledge her to the Board today.

18 Let me go back to this inhumanity 

19 piece. I am a very frustrated bureaucrat in 

20 Washington. I get very concerned about how 

21 long it takes things to happen, just as I gave 

22 the example of the letter. One thing that has 
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1 frustrated me probably as much as it has 

2 frustrated some of you, for example, the tour 

3 at Pantex. I just heard today that this has 

4 been a long-standing delay and it wasn't 

5 because my folks haven't been talking to the 

6 right folks. It is just that we haven't been 

7 moving them.

8 I assure you, I assure you that, 

9 since the Board has decided and agreed upon 

10 what facilities you want to visit and Pantex 

11 have agreed, the fact that there is water 

12 damage from the floods that they had, that is 

13 not going to be an excuse to delay this 

14 further. I am meeting with the administrator, 

15 Under Secretary Tom D'Agostino on Friday. I 

16 will let him know that we want to do this 

17 before the end of this calendar year. That 

18 can be put on you all's schedule and we can 

19 work that. I don't want it to drag out.

20 When I was talking to my staff 

21 about just the bureaucracy of how this 

22 happens, when they finally got to right level 
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1 of people, then things started to happen. And 

2 something that I and HSS try to push all the 

3 time and that is, we have to remember when a 

4 board or individual workers, petitioners, they 

5 ask questions of the government, we need to be 

6 responsive. If any of the petitioners or the 

7 workers were our family members, we would not 

8 want the government to say, we are studying 

9 it. I know we have to be responsible. We 

10 have to be good stewards of the tax dollars, 

11 but the last thing we want to do is delay 

12 getting people help. 

13 I want to commit here and now 

14 again to the Board, anything that DOE can do 

15 within the parameters that we are allowed to 

16 do, we will get it done. We will get it done 

17 timely, and when it is not timely, I want to 

18 know about it. I would like to know about it 

19 as the head of the HSS organization. I don't 

20 want to hear it just from my project officers. 

21 I would like to petition the Board to make 

22 sure that you contact us and let us know so 
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1 that we can help out at the right level. It 

2 is all about commitment and it is about 

3 action.

4 And I think from my perspective in 

5 all of our worker health and safety programs, 

6 I think our Former Worker Program and the 

7 EEOICPA program are vitally important to 

8 demonstrate not only to the former workers but 

9 current workers that DOE and the United States 

10 government, DOL and NIOSH, that we care about 

11 people.

12 I don't mean to lecture or preach 

13 but it is a passion I have for the last half a 

14 decade in working these programs. And when 

15 HSS was created, we discovered there is a lot 

16 more that we could be doing to help the Board 

17 and help the folks at DOL and NIOSH and that 

18 is what we are going to continue to do.

19 So with Gina's departure, that 

20 doesn't mean that we are going to stop. That 

21 means that we are going to put even more 

22 emphasis and broaden the responsibilities of 
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1 that office to make sure that inside the DOE, 

2 we can make things happen.

3 I just want to leave you with one 

4 example. When HSS was first stood up in 

5 October of 2006, before the end of that year, 

6 I had the Labor Department project manager go 

7 out to multiple sites with me to talk with the 

8 site managers, to talk to them about how 

9 important it was to help find the records and 

10 not to treat this like I experienced this 

11 during Hazel O'Leary's time at the Department 

12 when we were looking at human radiation 

13 experiments records, where you would go to a 

14 contractor and the contractor would say yes, 

15 DOE, we will be happy to give you the records. 

16 It is just going to cost you ten million 

17 dollars. We fixed that, and we are going to 

18 fix this as well and continue to fix it.

19 So we are passionate about the 

20 program. We are committed to it. I will 

21 leave to Greg Lewis the more details to answer 

22 -- to provide you on the updates. But I 
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1 wanted to at least even fly out here for a 

2 round trip ten hours for 20 minutes just to 

3 tell you that we are committed.

4 So thank you very much.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, 

6 Glenn. Are there questions for Glenn?

7 I would certainly like to thank 

8 you for the letter. Four and a half months 

9 was less than I expected it to take, and so I 

10 really do appreciate the effort. I think the 

11 effort on the records and dealing with the 

12 security issues has been very helpful. We 

13 have noticed that and noticed the improvement. 

14 So Brad?

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: Excuse me. I 

16 usually like to be able to talk to someone 

17 right in the eyes but this won't allow it.

18 I am very happy to be able to hear 

19 your commitment. As you know from your staff, 

20 this tour is very frustrating to me over a 

21 year and a half. And I have a lot of 

22 petitioners wondering many things about it and 
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1 I am glad to see that we are proceeding on and 

2 going forward. And I understand about 

3 timeliness as what I consider immediate to 

4 other people really is.

5 But I want to thank you, number 

6 one for the letter; number two for having such 

7 great staff. Gina, she is going to be missed. 

8 I was a little bit upset to hear that she was 

9 leaving. Greg is still doing a wonderful job.

10 We still have areas at Pantex that 

11 we need to push and we will probably need your 

12 assistance. The thing that is frustrating to 

13 me is that we are able to reconstruct all of 

14 these doses for sites that have been destroyed 

15 and have been gone for 50 years but we can't 

16 even get into a working site that is there. 

17 We understand the national security and we 

18 hold that very important because most of the 

19 people in the Work Group are involved in 

20 homeland and national security. So I would 

21 like to tell you that I am thankful that you 

22 are pushing buttons, believe me, and I was 
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1 glad to hear that we will be in there before 

2 the end of this year. And I just wanted to 

3 tell you personally thank you for your support 

4 and what you are doing. And we may be calling 

5 you.

6 MR. PODONSKY: If I can comment on 

7 the statement.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Please.

9 MR. PODONSKY: Because the Office 

10 of Classification resides within HSS and 

11 because, yes, I am certain there are national 

12 security issues but we should never hide 

13 behind them because what happens for a delay 

14 of a tour for that long, yes, there is factors 

15 that include who is going to agree to what 

16 locations you want to go and the contractors, 

17 et cetera. But at the end of the day, there 

18 is no excuse to say you can't come because of 

19 national security. You work around it. That 

20 is why you put the right people who have the 

21 responsibilities together and say, solve the 

22 problem.
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1 So I assure you if Pantex, its 

2 contractor, or the site office has any issues 

3 along national security, I will be happy to 

4 send the Director of Classification down there 

5 to help them work through that. And that is 

6 not a flip answer. It is just that that is 

7 why so many things in our federal government 

8 get delayed, because people don't get behind 

9 what it is that is being asked for with the 

10 urgency that those of us who are asking for it 

11 looked towards them to do.

12 So that is one of the things that 

13 I know Dr. Ziemer will remember when HSS first 

14 stood up a lot of concerns about the creation 

15 of HSS. But the reality is, we have 

16 sustainability because we have continuity 

17 because as the administrations change, we 

18 don't change the management structure of the 

19 organization. So you can continue wheedling 

20 away at the groups that are delaying.

21 The last thing. I don't believe 

22 and I don't know for a fact but I don't 
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1 believe that it was deliberate. I will be 

2 optimistic and say that the perception is 

3 there; the perception with the letter was 

4 originated out of Pantex, the perception of 

5 how long it is taking to get there. So we are 

6 going to have to break that through our 

7 actions.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. And 

9 I would also like to add our thanks to Gina 

10 for all her work. I think I can speak on 

11 behalf of all the Board and I think also 

12 NIOSH. We are going to miss you and we really 

13 thank you for all your efforts and being such 

14 a good person to be able to work with and try 

15 to deal with these issues. So thank you very 

16 much.

17 MR. LEWIS: All right. Well, I am 

18 Greg Lewis, and I am the Program Manager for 

19 DOE on the EEOICPA program. I just want to 

20 start out by thanking Glenn for his support. 

21 Obviously, we have tremendous management 

22 support on this program and as evident, it is 
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1 sometimes needed. So we are glad to have him 

2 and we are glad to be part of HSS.

3 And also before I get started, I 

4 do want to thank Gina again. Her staff is 

5 going to miss her, as well. We are going to 

6 do our best to live up to the standards she 

7 has established and the expectations that you 

8 all have of our office because of Gina's 

9 leadership. So we are going to do the best 

10 that we can as we go forward.

11 And so again, our core mandate at 

12 the Department of Energy is to work on behalf 

13 of the program claimants to ensure that all 

14 available worker and facility records and data 

15 are provided to DOL, NIOSH, and the Advisory 

16 Board. So basically what we do is provide 

17 records. We do everything we can to find the 

18 records that we have and provide them in a 

19 timely manner.

20 We have basically three main 

21 responsibilities under this program. We 

22 respond to the Department of Labor and NIOSH 
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1 for an individual request for each claim. We 

2 also provide support and assistance to DOL, 

3 NIOSH, and the Advisory Board for large-scale 

4 records research products like the Special 

5 Exposure Cohort research or the Site Exposure 

6 Matrix Database for the Department of Labor. 

7 And then our third responsibility which is a 

8 bit smaller but nonetheless important is we 

9 conduct research with DOL and NIOSH for issues 

10 related to covered facilities. So if there is 

11 a question of whether a facility should be 

12 covered for additional years or is incorrectly 

13 designated, we will look into that and try to 

14 find the right records to resolve the issue.

15 So as far as the first item on 

16 that list, the individual request, we respond 

17 to about 6,500 requests from Department of 

18 Labor for employment verification; about 3,000 

19 requests from NIOSH for dose records and about 

20 6,500 requests for DARs as we call them, and 

21 that is basically for all other exposure 

22 information, industrial hygiene, medical 
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1 records, that type of thing, for individual 

2 records.

3 And, again, as both Stu and Jeff 

4 mentioned, not all of these numbers match up. 

5 It is just the next slide that runs about 

6 15,900 in 2009 total requests that we handled, 

7 and we anticipate about the same, 16,000, this 

8 year. And, again, the reason that doesn't 

9 quite match up with what Department of Labor 

10 and NIOSH have in their numbers, if many of 

11 these workers have worked in multiple 

12 facilities or there might be a supplemental 

13 Request for Additional Information. And we 

14 count by the request, not by the individuals. 

15 So we do multiple record searches for one 

16 individual.

17 So the backbone of our program is 

18 really our EEOICPA points of contact out in 

19 the field. They are the folks that manage the 

20 field activity. They respond to the requests 

21 that you all send, both individual and records 

22 research. Any time we have a problem or need 
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1 records from some part of the site, they are 

2 the ones who work within the site to find the 

3 right contacts and locate the records.

4 So some of the things they do, 

5 they attend local public meetings. So the 

6 outreach meeting next door for the Idaho 

7 workers, we have our Idaho point of contact, 

8 actually a few folks over there to talk to 

9 folks and handle any questions that may come 

10 up about records. They set up site visits and 

11 tours for NIOSH and DOL staff, which actually 

12 yesterday we set up a tour for many of the 

13 folks in this room to go around the site, 

14 showing some of the major facilities, giving 

15 an overall site history and kind of help the 

16 folks that in and around these facilities, you 

17 know, we understand that the better they are 

18 aware of our facilities and what they do, the 

19 better they will be able to do their job. So 

20 we hope that that tour went well. It seemed 

21 to be well received, and I hope everyone is a 

22 little bit more enlightened about the site 
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1 now.

2 We work with both DOL and NIOSH to 

3 facilitate interviews on site. Some of our 

4 points of contact are aware of the various 

5 site folks. They may even be retired, but 

6 because of our POC's knowledge of the site, 

7 they may be able to find folks with knowledge 

8 of radiological exposures or rad controls or 

9 site operations, and they will identify and 

10 locate some of these folks and arrange for 

11 interviews with the NIOSH and DOL technical 

12 staff.

13 We provide site experts to 

14 participate and contribute to the Advisory 

15 Board Working Group in conference calls. 

16 Every week or every few weeks, we usually have 

17 someone from our site participating on the 

18 Board calls in case we are needed.

19 And we are an onsite source of 

20 EEOICPA information to workers. So, again, 

21 just like we are participating in that 

22 outreach meeting, we will also provide 
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1 information and be a contact for current site 

2 workers who may have questions about the 

3 program. You know, they can always contact 

4 our POC. 

5 And so again, the second major 

6 responsibility I mentioned was providing 

7 support to large-scale site research projects. 

8 These are a few of the projects we have 

9 supported in the last year. We haven't really 

10 been active on all of these in the last month 

11 or so. I am going to talk about a few of 

12 them, just as an example. But these are all 

13 research projects we have supported over the 

14 last year.

15 At Mound or for Mound, we have 

16 facilitated meetings where the Board and NIOSH 

17 have been able to discuss classified matters. 

18 I know when these SEC decisions get down to 

19 the important issues that are really giving 

20 them trouble, sometimes they have to deal with 

21 classified information, and we want to make 

22 sure that the Board and the contractors can 
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1 talk about this information without having to 

2 talk around certain things or omit certain 

3 information. So we are always willing to 

4 facilitate a secure space where they can 

5 discuss any and all issues at hand and 

6 hopefully come to a resolution.

7 At Mound, we have facilitated over 

8 40 worker interviews. Some of those have been 

9 offsite, but in certain situations we have had 

10 to facilitate a secure location for a 

11 classified interview. And again for the same 

12 reasons, we want to allow workers to be able 

13 to talk about any and all of the issues that 

14 they feel it is important for the Board to 

15 know. And so when that happens, we want to 

16 make sure to facilitate classified locations 

17 so they can have full and unencumbered 

18 discussions.

19 And then we have set up numerous 

20 document review visits at a couple different 

21 locations. Actually for Mound, because it is 

22 a closure site, we had to work within the DOE 
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1 complex at a bunch of different locations to 

2 find the right records. So we have been at 

3 the NSA Service Center in Albuquerque, the 

4 NARA National Archives in College Park, Oak 

5 Ridge facility, Pantex, Los Alamos, Denver, 

6 and I am sure a few others that I have 

7 forgotten to mention. So we really do try to 

8 facilitate record searches anywhere we might 

9 find relevant records for these projects.

10 At Pantex, we already discussed 

11 that somewhat, we are continuing to facilitate 

12 worker interviews and obviously working on 

13 this tour, which we will do our best to get to 

14 you in a timely manner. Savannah River, I 

15 have a few stats. Again I think we have --

16 for the most part have responded to all of the 

17 requests but obviously, as issues come up, we 

18 will continue to do so.

19 And at Sandia, which is a 

20 relatively new SEC, I think the petition was 

21 recently qualified. We just held an open 

22 meeting there last week trying to identify all 
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1 of the relevant site and staff that are going 

2 to need to be involved that we are going to 

3 need to support the effort for NIOSH. And I 

4 think we had a good visit and it is probably 

5 going to be quite an extensive project and the 

6 site is ramping up and gearing up to support 

7 it in every way possible.

8 And then also with Sandia, we have 

9 recently identified a collection of Sandia 

10 radiological records. And I am not sure why 

11 we didn't find them until now but as we are 

12 going through records both for this program 

13 and for everything that the site does, at some 

14 point in the various records, they will find 

15 a box of records that may be mislabeled or 

16 labeled one thing and there may be other 

17 records in it. And that is what happened at 

18 Sandia. We found microfiche records with a 

19 lot of radiological information for 

20 individuals on there. We realized that we 

21 were not using this for EEOICPA and we hadn't 

22 had it in our system, so to speak.
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1 So we contracted with a group we 

2 work with within DOE to scan, index, and 

3 create a database of these records. It will 

4 be searchable records. It can be used for all 

5 EEOICPA claimants. So we will work with NIOSH 

6 and DOL, if necessary, to go back through past 

7 claimants and make sure that we are providing 

8 all of the information and then, obviously for 

9 future claimants, this collection will be 

10 merged into our active records.

11 And then also this will be 

12 valuable for the SEC project. So we are 

13 anticipating we will be finished with this 

14 scanning effort at the end of September, 

15 actually hopefully the middle of September, if 

16 we can complete it a little bit early, and we 

17 are hoping that will be valuable to this SEC 

18 research effort.

19 Now document reviews, because 

20 within this program there have been classified 

21 records, we do review everything before it 

22 goes offsite, but as an extra check and 
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1 balance just to make sure that there is no 

2 national security information released, we 

3 review draft and final reports of documents 

4 from NIOSH. We want to make sure to not hold 

5 up the process and complete these in a timely 

6 manner. So you know, we try to get our folks, 

7 both at the site and the headquarters, to 

8 respond to these as soon as possible.

9 Our security plan details all of 

10 the procedures we follow for that. They can 

11 be found on our website. I have the link 

12 there, and the documents are on the back 

13 table. So if you need it, some of it is 

14 there. You can always, depending on secrecy, 

15 then can talk to me after.

16 So since May of 2010, NIOSH and 

17 their contractors have submitted 51 documents 

18 for review. The average turnaround for the 

19 reviews has been eight working days. So about 

20 two weeks. And in certain cases where an 

21 expedited review is necessary, the document is 

22 particularly important, we have been able to 
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1 turn it around in one to two days.

2 And then kind of a third major 

3 responsibility that I mentioned before is 

4 research to maintain a covered-facilities 

5 database. There are over 300 facilities 

6 covered under EEOICPA, including AWEs, 

7 beryllium vendors, DOE facilities. The full 

8 listing is also on our website.

9 And actually I will mention first 

10 Legacy Management supports us on this 

11 research. So we have folks that have been 

12 within DOE for, I guess, an average of 20 

13 years each. There are four or five people 

14 that we can pull from that, not only can 

15 search their holdings in national archives and 

16 federal records centers but they also have 

17 contacts around DOE and in the records world 

18 within DOE. So if they need to get a record 

19 from Oak Ridge or think that Oak Ridge may 

20 have responsive records, they know who to 

21 call. And the same goes for the MSA sites --

22 MR. KATZ: Greg --
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1 MR. LEWIS: -- or pretty much any 

2 site within the DOE.

3 MR. KATZ: Greg, I am sorry to 

4 interrupt. I just got an email from the 

5 phone. If you could just speak up a little 

6 louder. You are very soft-spoken.

7 MR. LEWIS: Sorry.

8 MR. KATZ: Thanks.

9 MR. LEWIS: I'm too tall for the 

10 mic here. I will try to bend down. Sorry 

11 about that.

12 And, again, just to mention a few 

13 of the facilities that we are working on right 

14 now, the St. Louis Airport Storage Facility, 

15 the United Nuclear Corporation in Hematite, 

16 Missouri, we are researching Shiprock Uranium 

17 Mill in Shiprock, New Mexico. I don't know 

18 exactly what the issues are, but there is 

19 always various questions and concerns about 

20 coverage and the years. And we want to make 

21 sure that what we have on our website and what 

22 we are covering under the program is accurate.
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1 So we have a number of initiatives 

2 that we have undertaken recently over the last 

3 few months. We hold routine conference calls 

4 with NIOSH and its contractors to assure that 

5 everyone is getting the information they need 

6 from DOE sites, that there is no problems or 

7 issues. And if there are, we do do our best 

8 to try to resolve them as soon as possible.

9 I think I mentioned this before, 

10 but our subject matter experts participate in 

11 Advisory Board conference calls. We also 

12 facilitate secure meetings and video 

13 conference calls both for interviews and site 

14 research.

15 Stu mentioned this in his 

16 presentation, but for those of you who weren't 

17 there, we are just about to or just have 

18 reinitiated the MOU between DOE and Health and 

19 Human Services. We have basically been 

20 working under most of the provisions of the 

21 MOU since the last one expired, but we wanted 

22 to formalize it and get it official. So that 
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1 kind of sets forth the responsibilities and 

2 authorities under both agencies. The security 

3 plan and security provisions were included in 

4 there. We also talked about routine use to 

5 make sure that NIOSH has access to the right 

6 DOE records and we can provide them to them.

7 And again, we are going to make 

8 sure that all of the activities conducted 

9 under this MOU are coordinated within our 

10 office and we make sure to fulfill the needs 

11 of NIOSH, DOL, and the Advisory Board -- well, 

12 I guess NIOSH and the Advisory Board under 

13 this, but obviously we are going to support 

14 DOL and we are working on an MOU with them as 

15 well.

16 Another success that we have had 

17 recently is after probably two years, and Gina 

18 initiated this effort about two years ago 

19 working with some of our records folks, we 

20 have been working to revise the acquisition 

21 requirements within DOE. So when we have a 

22 contract or a subcontract, in the past many 
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1 times, particularly with subcontracts, that 

2 subcontractor, when the contract was over, 

3 would leave the site and take their records 

4 with them, particularly human resources 

5 records and things about their workers. You 

6 know, project records would, of course, stay 

7 with DOE, but we did not always have access to 

8 worker records, which obviously can present a 

9 problem for this program.

10 So recently we have this DEAR 

11 clause. It has been signed. It is going to 

12 the comment period, but when it gets through 

13 the comment period and is formally approved, 

14 this will make sure that DOE retains access 

15 and ownership to these vital records once the 

16 subcontracts are finished and that group 

17 leaves the site. So we think this will be of 

18 tremendous benefit to future EEOICPA claimants 

19 and to DOE workers in general. So we are very 

20 excited about this.

21 And then just to talk quickly 

22 about outreach. You know, along with the 
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1 Department of Labor, NIOSH, the Ombudsman's 

2 Office, we have all initiated what we call the 

3 Joint Outreach Task Group, and that is 

4 actually who is in the meeting next door. We 

5 are trying to combine efforts. We realize 

6 that all of these groups are essentially 

7 trying to reach the same group of former 

8 workers. And instead of having separate 

9 efforts, we wanted to pool resources and pool 

10 knowledge and make sure that these workers can 

11 have a one-stop shop to get any information 

12 they want to know about former worker 

13 screening, about the NIOSH program, dose 

14 reconstruction, about Labor's program, about 

15 how DOE provides records. And so those have 

16 been pretty successful. We have had a good 

17 turnout, including a pretty good turnout next 

18 door. So we are hoping that there are going 

19 to be new workers that are aware of these 

20 programs and are taking advantage of what they 

21 have to offer.

22 Oh and again, just to mention for 
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1 those of you who don't know, there is a 

2 meeting at 10:00 next door and there will also 

3 be one at 6:00 p.m. tonight. So for anyone 

4 who would like to attend that meeting, 6:00 

5 p.m. tonight you will have your chance.

6 And then Glenn mentioned the 

7 review of the DOL Site Exposure Matrix 

8 Database but that has been a big project. 

9 Originally, that database was available only 

10 to the DOL claims examiners, but recently they 

11 had asked us to review that database and to 

12 allow it to be published on their website and 

13 that full information be available to the 

14 public. And we have initiated that process. 

15 We are working closely with DOL and with all 

16 of our sites to make sure that they are 

17 reviewing this information.

18 And currently, I guess as of April 

19 30th, we have released 48 of the 116 DOE 

20 facilities, along with the uranium mills, 

21 mines, and ore buying stations. And then on 

22 June 30th, we released an additional 21 sites, 
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1 and we are hoping to have the rest of the 

2 almost 50 sites completed as soon as possible. 

3 We will probably have another release within 

4 the next couple of months. So, and again, the 

5 public website for the Department of Labor 

6 Site Exposure Matrix can be found at that link 

7 on the DOL website.

8 And then the Former Worker Medical 

9 Screening Program is a program that we work 

10 closely with within DOE. They provide free 

11 screenings to former workers, try to identify 

12 anything they may have been exposed to. They 

13 will refer them then for treatment and also, 

14 if necessary, they will refer them to the 

15 EEOICPA program. So further information on 

16 the Former Worker Program can be found on our 

17 website. And here are the local contacts, and 

18 representatives from both of those groups will 

19 be -- are next door right now and will be 

20 there this evening as well. So if anyone is 

21 looking for information on the Former Worker 

22 Program, you can find it this evening at 6:00 
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1 or contact either one of these individuals.

2 So have I forgotten anything? And 

3 if anyone has any questions --

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Questions for --

5 want to check the -- yes. For those of you on 

6 the phone, Ted will be with you in a second 

7 here.

8 MR. KATZ: Okay, thank you. So 

9 let me start with Dr. Lemen, do you have any 

10 questions? No questions from Dr. Lemen. Dr. 

11 Field? Very good. No questions from Dr. 

12 Field. And Mr. Gibson? Thank you. No 

13 questions from Mr. Gibson.

14 And let me just check. Okay, 

15 thank you.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. Any other 

17 Board Members? If not, thank you. Yes, I am 

18 surprised, too.

19 Okay, our next topic is an update 

20 on GE Evendale. Evendale? I can't remember, 

21 even though I lived there.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Most of us call it 
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1 Evendale, but I don't know if that is right 

2 nor not.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Jim?

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: Evendale.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Evendale. Yes, 

6 okay.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: You know, this is 

8 a really unusual meeting on three counts now. 

9 I am getting two presentations in the same 

10 morning. Well, I am talking so that happens 

11 twice, and three, I am doing tech support with 

12 the computer, which has never happened before.

13 Okay, I am here to provide the 

14 update for, or a report on our efforts on the 

15 General Electric SEC petition. I wanted to 

16 present this myself to make sure that no one 

17 is trying to conclude that this may be the 

18 evaluating health physicists' opinion. The 

19 evaluating health physicist, our point of 

20 contact for General Electric, is here at the 

21 meeting, Pete Darnell, and he may be able to 

22 help me if I get some questions I am not 
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1 prepared to answer.

2 But if you will recall a little 

3 bit of history here for this petition, a 

4 petition was first generated, and it was an 

5 83.14, by us in December of 2009. And at that 

6 point, since in 83.14, we had reached the 

7 determination at that point, that based on the 

8 information we were able to find, that the 

9 reconstruction for the covered period at GE 

10 was not feasible. And we could also find very 

11 little information to sort out the workforce 

12 at GE. GE is an AWE, so they did other work 

13 in addition to the DOE work and we have not 

14 been able to find a method to sort people into 

15 the AWE work.

16 So we qualified the petition, of 

17 course, quite quickly since it was a .14 and 

18 the Evaluation Report was issued fairly 

19 shortly after that. Again, those are all 

20 functions of using the 83.14.

21 When describing the radiological 

22 work at GE, they actually had several periods 
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1 or maybe one long, continuous period of 

2 radiological work. But only one piece of 

3 that, sort of the middle piece, is covered out 

4 of the program because that was the work that 

5 was done for the Department of Energy or its 

6 predecessors. So they had done other work for 

7 the military, which is not covered under the 

8 program.

9 So when we are trying to find out 

10 what work they did and how much we can learn 

11 about it, we couldn't find a lot of 

12 information about the work. From what we can 

13 tell, the work they had with DOE was to do 

14 testing on reactor components, like reactor 

15 fuels and other components and, particularly, 

16 I believe, fast reactor kinds of effects, what 

17 happened to these various things, but we don't 

18 really have much information on how they did 

19 that, you know, what equipment was involved in 

20 that examination and testing.

21 And we also don't really know how 

22 much radioactive material -- what the source-
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1 term of the radioactive material would be. 

2 Now you can presume, you can make some 

3 assumptions about what radionuclides were 

4 there and irradiated fast fuel but in terms of 

5 quantities, we weren't able to find any 

6 information.

7 We couldn't put job tittles or job 

8 assignments with the specific radiological 

9 operations or conditions. There didn't seem 

10 to be any unique name of job titles that would 

11 put people on this project. And the people 

12 that we have talked to indicated that, well, 

13 people could come and go to the areas where 

14 the radiological workers performed. And in 

15 some instances, unmonitored workers had their 

16 work places in the buildings where the 

17 radiological work was performed, and we don't 

18 have really much information about material 

19 control or contamination control practices in 

20 those buildings.

21 And finally we have obtained very 

22 little personal monitoring data for the 
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1 covered period in our request. And General 

2 Electric does provide the records they have. 

3 When we ask for an exposure record from 

4 General Electric, they provide it, what they 

5 have, but they have very little from this 

6 period.

7 Most of this work occurred before 

8 we originally presented. We have presented 

9 this, of course, to the Board before. Most of 

10 this work occurred before our first 

11 presentation, the documents that we located, 

12 the internet searches that we had pursued, and 

13 obtained additional documents.

14 We had some contacts with the GE 

15 office in the UK on some thought that there 

16 might be some records stored there. 

17 Apparently, there might be some stored there. 

18 We have no idea whether they would be helpful 

19 to us or not and we just had no luck in a 

20 continuing engagement with GE in the UK.

21 And since we presented this in, I 

22 think we may have presented this in February, 
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1 but since the last Board meeting, we have not 

2 been able to obtain any new documents to help 

3 us understand and reconstruct the doses at GE.

4 But since then, at the request of 

5 the Board, we have gone back and tried to find 

6 any other information we can, mainly through 

7 interviews that would help to describe who did 

8 the work and how can we apportion these. If 

9 nothing else, how can we apportion people? 

10 And so we had two group 

11 interviews. These were arranged through our 

12 outreach contractors ATL, and mainly 

13 represented labor organizations who came to 

14 those groups. And we also have had five 

15 additional interviews, individual interviews, 

16 since May that we have conducted for other 

17 folks to try to gain some information.

18 And the results of those 

19 interviews and that discussion are the things 

20 I have talked about before. People come and 

21 go and we didn't hear anything that would 

22 allow us to parcel out the population.
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1 A summary of the data we have, 

2 there is only one of the claims that we have, 

3 and 118, that is the data of this slide but 

4 that may not be the exact count today, but of 

5 the 118 we had when this slide was prepared, 

6 only one individual had internal monitoring 

7 data for the covered period. And 32 of the 

8 118 had some type of external monitoring data 

9 for the covered period, whether or not it was 

10 complete or not. It is unlikely that it 

11 covered the entire covered period.

12 We did obtain some source term 

13 information and other information about the 

14 other radiological operations that occurred at 

15 GE, the ones that occurred before and the one 

16 that occurred after. But in fact, maybe even 

17 the majority of what we learned in our data 

18 searches was about the work that is not 

19 actually covered in the program.

20 And so we have concluded that 

21 still we have not been able to locate 

22 sufficient data to estimate the doses, 
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1 certainly the unmonitored GE Energy workers. 

2 And we would probably use any data we had for 

3 a claimant, we would use to the extent we can 

4 interpret it with our current guidance and use 

5 that if we have to do a non-presumptive 

6 partial dose reconstruction for the people who 

7 don't fit into the Class.

8 So just a quick reevaluation of 

9 the two-pronged test here, in terms of 

10 determining whether to recommend any new 

11 Class, the first question is is it feasible to 

12 estimate the level of radiation doses of 

13 individual members of the Class with 

14 sufficient accuracy. And we concluded it was 

15 not.

16 Is there a reasonable likelihood 

17 that such radiation dose may have endangered 

18 the health of members of the Class? 

19 So in feasibility, in terms of 

20 feasibility, we feel like we can reconstruct 

21 the medical exposures based on the complex22 wide Technical Bulletins that we have used in 
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1 a number of places, so we can reconstruct some 

2 medical diagnostic exposures.

3 We determined that there were 

4 insufficient data for estimating internal and 

5 external doses for all the workers, but we 

6 will use any relevant data that we have for a 

7 claimant in that person's dose reconstruction, 

8 if we need to do it.

9 And since we can't reconstruct the 

10 dose or we have reached the determination that 

11 we don't believe it is useful to reconstruct 

12 the dose since we can't really put a bound on 

13 it. And so since we can't put a bound on it, 

14 we can't say that there was no potential for 

15 harm. So the second prong of the test would 

16 be met then as well.

17 So our proposed Class, this is 

18 just restating what we have stated before. It 

19 is all employees and their contractors who 

20 worked at GE during January 1, 1961, through 

21 June 30, 1970. That was the period of the 

22 work for the DOE, for a number of days 
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1 aggregating 250. So that is our recommended 

2 Class. That has been our recommended Class 

3 since we have first presented.

4 And of course, a reminder the 

5 summary table in terms of the feasibility of 

6 dose reconstruction. It doesn't appear that 

7 we will be able to reconstruct anything about 

8 occupational medical dose for claims, except 

9 in those cases where we happen to have some 

10 data for the claimant, if we need to do a dose 

11 reconstruction for a non-presumptive.

12 So that is the conclusion of my 

13 presentation. This is just a brief reminder 

14 of the information we have presented before 

15 and what we have done in the meantime since we 

16 have done some additional investigation to the 

17 extent and done what we could and have not 

18 found anything that gives us any other 

19 indication that we are going to be able to 

20 find information where it is likely to 

21 reconstruct doses or that we are going to be 

22 able to find a way to parcel people from the 
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1 radiological workers at GE from the non2 radiological or somebody may have been non3 radiological exposed at GE.

4 So that is where we stand today. 

5 And I am coming today, I guess, and sort of 

6 re-bringing this back to the Board once again 

7 with our recommendation to recommend adding a 

8 Class for this group of employees.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Stu. 

10 Questions? Yes, Jim Lockey.

11 MEMBER LOCKEY: Stu, does that --

12 I remember our last conversation on this. And 

13 so essentially because we can't identify 

14 buildings and access to buildings, this 

15 essentially represents all GE employees at the 

16 site --

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

18 MEMBER LOCKEY: -- between '70 and 

19 --

20 MR. HINNEFELD: '61 to '70 or 

21 whatever the dates were in the Class, yes.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Other questions? 
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1 Yes, Paul.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: My question is 

3 along the same lines as Dr. Lockey's. I think 

4 we had the issue of the numbers of people who 

5 might have been on that site and the fact that 

6 it was difficult or impossible to put them in 

7 a particular building. Is that not the case?

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, that's right.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: And how many 

10 people are we talking about here?

11 MR. HINNEFELD: According to the 

12 GE Public Information Office, in that period 

13 there were about 8,000 people.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Now I have been 

15 thinking about this after I reread this thing 

16 this past week. And I guess I sort of know 

17 the answer, but I am going to pose the 

18 question anyway. And this sort of goes to 

19 Department of Labor, so, Jeff, I will kind of 

20 pose it to you.

21 And that is, if DOL cannot exclude 

22 people from any particular building, is there 
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1 any way to require that the claimant at least 

2 provide an affidavit that they may have been 

3 in the buildings in question? I think 

4 intuitively we know that there probably are 

5 thousands of people on that site that got 

6 nowhere near the locations where the 

7 radiological work was done. The problem is, 

8 we don't know who those people are. Is there 

9 anything that would prevent us from asking the 

10 people to -- and maybe they don't know, and if 

11 they don't know they would not be able to give 

12 an affidavit to the contrary, but is there 

13 anything that would prevent Labor from saying, 

14 with your claim you should provide an 

15 affidavit indicating that you may have at 

16 least possibly been in one of those buildings?

17 I mean, if a person knew that they 

18 were never there, it seems to me, it is 

19 difficult for me to see why it is fair to 

20 provide them compensation. I mean, these 

21 programs aren't free. And those that deserve

22 to be compensated should be, but I am also 
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1 concerned about those who don't deserve to be 

2 with the taxpayers' money.

3 MR. KOTSCH: Paul, I don't think 

4 we have ever been in that position before. We 

5 do accept affidavits from people that -- all 

6 our reviews are done on a case-by-case basis, 

7 but we do accept affidavits from people, 

8 basically putting them into buildings we know 

9 that are Classes.

10 You know, we recognize, too, 

11 obviously there is a larger population there 

12 that probably was potentially exposed in like 

13 I think if the buildings were COD or 

14 something. I think that was where the work 

15 was done. Or I don't know, maybe that is 

16 wrong.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: They are large 

18 buildings.

19 MR. KOTSCH: Yes, I know the 

20 buildings that were there were pretty large. 

21 I mean, I guess we could. We probably -- I 

22 don't know if we would ask that. The Board 
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1 might. 

2 Go ahead.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I am just 

4 trying to look at this from the reverse side. 

5 I mean, we obviously want to be claimant 

6 favorable. And I would say if a person 

7 believes that -- and maybe they are not sure. 

8 If they are not sure, you give them the 

9 benefit of the doubt. But is there any reason 

10 why we shouldn't ask the person to confirm 

11 that in the course of their work they either 

12 know that they entered those buildings or they 

13 believe they may have, or something along 

14 those lines?

15 It seems to me that we have to 

16 think about both sides of this issue, and this 

17 is kind of a new one that has come up. We 

18 have had some other sites like Oak Ridge 

19 Hospital, a much, much smaller size where we 

20 have said, oh, well, okay. We can go ahead 

21 and err here. But here we are talking about 

22 possibly thousands of people who never got any 
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1 exposure. And I am just wondering why is that 

2 fair to the taxpayers in terms of the fairness 

3 of the program? Maybe we can't do that, but I 

4 would sort of like to get some idea.

5 Maybe other Board Members have 

6 some ideas or some ways of thinking about this 

7 that would help me understand how we can deal 

8 with this fairly.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: I would like to 

10 offer a perspective, Dr. Melius, if I could, 

11 on this question.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: From our 

14 standpoint, we feel like in that situation 

15 when we take an action like that, we are 

16 placing the burden of evidence back on the 

17 claimant. And view our role in this program 

18 as supposed to be trying to relieve the 

19 claimants of that burden.

20 One of the attractive portions of 

21 this law is that, and previously in a Workers' 

22 Compensation Occupational Illness claim, an 
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1 individual claimant had to pursue that claim 

2 on their own against their employer and was 

3 limited by their resources. And in this 

4 program, we take on the role of providing the 

5 evidence for that claimant.

6 And in this case, when we draw 

7 these distinctions and say, well, we don't 

8 think there is any record that establishes who 

9 was there and who wasn't, but we are going to 

10 require people to provide the evidence that 

11 they were there. That is why we generally 

12 prefer to make an all-employee recommendation. 

13 And then the additional complication is that 

14 since they are also survivor claimants in all 

15 likelihood, a situation like this would 

16 disadvantage the survivor claimants 

17 significantly because of the secret nature of 

18 the work that the workers were working on. 

19 And they may not be in a position to be able 

20 to even provide any kind of evidence at all.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Paul, do you 

22 want to follow up?
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: If I could 

2 respond, I actually was not suggesting that 

3 there be any burden of proof. I was 

4 suggesting that it is sort of the opposite way 

5 of looking at that. And certainly if it is in 

6 the survivor's hands, then they have no way of 

7 knowing. But if the potential claimant knows, 

8 in fact, that they never were in those 

9 locations, all I am suggesting is why not ask 

10 them if there is any doubt. They don't have 

11 to prove it. They just say I believe I may 

12 have been in those buildings, even if they are 

13 not sure. And there will be no burden of 

14 proof beyond just asking them, were you in 

15 those buildings. If they know they never

16 were, why not ask them to say so?

17 That is sort of the way I am 

18 thinking about it right now. Not to put any 

19 burden of proof but to ask people. I can sort 

20 of guess that if you open the doors, people 

21 are going to say, well, I wasn't there but I 

22 am entitled to it because it is the way it is 
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1 written.

2 So that is sort of the way I am 

3 thinking about it. If they can't exclude 

4 themselves, fine. Let them say I may have 

5 been there or the claimants will say -- as far 

6 as we don't know that they weren't, therefore, 

7 we accept that. That is what I am thinking of 

8 in terms of an affidavit, not that they have 

9 to come up with any proof. Simply a 

10 statement.

11 So if I know in my heart of hearts 

12 that I never was there and I really don't 

13 deserve it, then say so. That is all I am 

14 saying. Ask the people to say so, if they 

15 really don't deserve it. Maybe no one will do 

16 that, but I think there are some honest people 

17 that work with GE. Maybe one honest person, 

18 two maybe, three, a hundred? Who knows. A 

19 thousand?

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Bob.

21 MEMBER PRESLEY: I have a real 

22 problem with this because I didn't agree with 
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1 the Oak Ridge Hospital deal either. Can you 

2 go back and refresh my memory on the work that 

3 was covered with this petition?

4 MR. HINNEFELD: This petition, GE?

5 MEMBER PRESLEY: The GE.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. The nature 

7 of the work was testing fuel element materials 

8 and high temperature reactor material; testing 

9 the effects of radiation on refractory metals 

10 and alloys; examining the radiation effects 

11 in beryllium oxide; examining fission product 

12 transport processes in reactor fuels; testing 

13 the effects on clad uranium oxide fuels in 

14 meltdown environment; developing a process of 

15 densification of thoria; and calcination of 

16 thorium oxide in high-temperature furnaces.

17 So those activities we seem to 

18 have found somewhere as descriptions of the 

19 things that were done.

20 MEMBER PRESLEY: Those particular 

21 items would have to be done in a certain area. 

22 That is something that couldn't be done all 
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1 over that plant.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

3 MEMBER PRESLEY: I mean, by nature 

4 of that work, that has got to be done in a 

5 pretty defined area, enclosed area. I would 

6 like to see additional work on this. I don't 

7 think this is -- we owe this to the taxpayers.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Josie?

9 MEMBER BEACH: I need to borrow a 

10 microphone.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And then Wanda. 

12 Go ahead.

13 MEMBER BEACH: I recall that at 

14 our Manhattan meeting in February that we had 

15 asked the 250-day Work Group to look at this 

16 issue. And I don't think that --

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I don't think 

18 they did.

19 MEMBER BEACH: We haven't done 

20 that.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right.

22 MEMBER BEACH: So I am wondering 
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1 if we need to just keep that in mind.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. I mean, 

3 that is an option for the SEC evaluation. I 

4 think we first were going to have, as I 

5 recall, was for NIOSH to go back and gather 

6 some more information first and think about 

7 it. I think it was that.

8 Wanda and then Henry.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Stu made a reference 

10 to the fact that they have pretty decent 

11 records regarding the amount of radioactive 

12 materials that were handled prior to and 

13 following this particular period.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Actually, I didn't 

15 mean to imply that.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Oh, well. I got the 

17 impression that at least you had better 

18 records.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: I think we may 

20 have had more information about the 

21 radioactivities before and after than during.

22 MEMBER MUNN: I guess my primary 
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1 concern derives from the fact that GE is not a 

2 novice to this type of activity. Quite to the 

3 contrary. For example, they operated the 

4 entire Hanford Site for a number of years and 

5 were very instrumental in the early health 

6 physics programs.

7 It is really difficult to imagine 

8 that so few records were kept of that period 

9 that we can't even -- I guess I can almost 

10 understand how we would not have a handle on 

11 source-terms because of the secrecy of the 

12 projects that were involved. But it seems 

13 unreasonable that they have such a small 

14 amount of bioassay data. Of the folks that 

15 you have spoken to, especially the people that 

16 you have interviewed personally, have you 

17 gotten any feel from them as to why there 

18 would have been such a paucity of data?

19 MR. HINNEFELD: It could be that 

20 that particular division in GE that did this 

21 work actually moved to the UK and that then 

22 the records might be there. And that might be 
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1 the records that we were unable to get from 

2 the UK. That might be the case.

3 MEMBER MUNN: Do we have fairly 

4 significant evidence of that?

5 MR. HINNEFELD: No. I think that 

6 is --

7 MEMBER MUNN: It is just a 

8 possibility.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: That is a 

10 possibility. It is anecdotal.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Okay. And I am 

12 gathering, from the few number of personal 

13 interviews that you had, that you actually 

14 don't have much in the way of management, 

15 worker, employee, survivor data, whether there 

16 are claimants or not who could help contribute 

17 to this. You don't have a lot of people that 

18 you have identified that could give you 

19 helpful information.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I know we 

21 interviewed the radiation safety officer from 

22 GE for some period of time. Okay, so the 
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1 radiation safety officer for that entire 

2 period we did interview.

3 MEMBER MUNN: I am wondering, out 

4 loud I guess, whether there is not a larger 

5 pool of potential expert testimony that we 

6 could have that would give you a better feel 

7 with respect to source-terms.

8 This is no longer classified data, 

9 and they must have had some idea of how much 

10 material was coming in and going out. 

11 Clearly, they handle a lot of radioactive 

12 material. Clearly, they were doing crucial 

13 work at the time, Cold War stuff that was 

14 really important to everybody and, 

15 understandably, very secretive.

16 But now that it is no longer 

17 secretive, it is hard to imagine, out of that 

18 body of potential claimants that you have, 

19 even non-claimants, that there aren't a larger 

20 group of people that we could be talking to, 

21 trying to tie down some better information 

22 with respect to being able to define this 
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1 class a little better.

2 MR. DARNELL: I would like to 

3 point out that -- my name is Peter Darnell. I 

4 am a health physicist working with GE 

5 Evendale. With ATL and our contractor ORAU, 

6 we are still working on contacting unions to 

7 find out more information.

8 Currently, we have been through 

9 two union -- had interviews with two unions. 

10 And what we did basically was have a large 

11 group discussion where I facilitated that 

12 group to try to get the workers to focus in on 

13 the two buildings, C and D, and the work 

14 period '61 through '70.

15 Basically, the workers themselves 

16 argued between themselves on who was there, 

17 who wasn't there, what controls were there, 

18 what controls were not there. The knowledge 

19 within the two unions we have spoken with is 

20 very spotty. More concern from them and more 

21 talk about the health and safety issues was 

22 for chemical, rather than radiological.
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1 I don't believe -- the workers at 

2 this period don't really appear to have a good 

3 knowledge of the radioactive materials they 

4 were working around or working with. The only 

5 exception to that were some of the maintenance 

6 personnel that were there that talked about 

7 moving different materials that were used in 

8 Buildings C and D throughout the remainder of 

9 the site.

10 Basically, at GE, if you use 

11 something in C and D, where the radiological 

12 work was going on, it was moved to wherever it 

13 was needed throughout the site. So it just, 

14 what the union said to us reinforced the idea 

15 that there was no real control on who could 

16 access it, or the materials that were in the 

17 project where that was controlled later on.

18 MEMBER MUNN: And your radiation 

19 control officer tells the same story, that 

20 there was no radiation control.

21 MR. DARNELL: Well, his initial 

22 interview told us that there was great 
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1 controls. And then he would remember that the 

2 secretaries were working in the loft above the 

3 areas where the radiological work was going. 

4 And then after a little while, he remembered 

5 some contamination incidents that people were 

6 walking through until they found it.

7 Basically, he reinforced the idea 

8 that the controls there, while not lax for the 

9 times, were not up to the standards that we 

10 would expect now.

11 MEMBER MUNN: And I am still kind 

12 of pushing this point, I know, but it seems to 

13 me that we need a lot more information from 

14 the people who were there. And certainly, if 

15 the records have gone off somewhere else, and 

16 they probably do exist but if we can't get to 

17 them, they have no value, before we simply 

18 cast the broad net over everyone who walked in 

19 the gate during that period of time, it would 

20 seem wise that we make further effort to 

21 attempt to identify the kind of employment 

22 records and the kind of job titles, as well as 
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1 individual people who could give you more than 

2 just the yes, I was there or no, I wasn't.

3 Is there any plan to try to do 

4 that?

5 MR. DARNELL: That work is 

6 ongoing. We are still trying to get in touch 

7 with the third union to get more information. 

8 Part of our problem is, is that the unions 

9 are not very willing to speak to us. They 

10 feel that they have already been working with 

11 NIOSH. That was actually for other projects 

12 and not for this. So we have had some uphill 

13 battles to get them to even talk to us.

14 And then the workforce itself is 

15 not really interested in coming and having a 

16 meeting about this information and talking 

17 about what they did. Our last effort netted 

18 ten personnel that showed up and, I believe, 

19 five of the people that showed up were 

20 actually the current union officers. We got 

21 very few that want to come and talk to us.

22 MEMBER MUNN: You do have 
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1 employment record information. Right? You 

2 know people who work there. You have names.

3 MR. DARNELL: We have contacted 

4 those people.

5 MEMBER MUNN: All of them? No, I 

6 am not talking about just union members. You 

7 know, plants like this, plants all over this 

8 complex are made up not just of union members 

9 and not just of management. They are made up 

10 of a great many individuals who are non-union, 

11 non-management people who have technical 

12 information that could assist you.

13 My question is don't we have 

14 information about other people who worked --

15 all of the people who worked at that plant 

16 must be of record to GE, regardless of whether 

17 their dose records and things of that sort are 

18 being moved. Surely, GE knows who worked 

19 there during that period.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we have not 

21 pursued the employment roster for this period. 

22 And we rarely pursue the employment roster 
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1 from a site.

2 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, I understand 

3 that. That is why I am pushing the point, I 

4 guess, Stu. I am not trying to be combative 

5 here. I am just trying to look for another 

6 source of available information, given the 

7 large pool.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: So your thought 

9 here is that the employment roster would 

10 provide us with enough information to identify 

11 people who worked in the two buildings we are 

12 talking about in order to ask them.

13 MEMBER MUNN: Who would have 

14 knowledge of people who worked there and who 

15 would have knowledge of the process that could 

16 add to the information you already have, 

17 which, after you talk to them for a while, oh 

18 yes, there were secretaries upstairs. Oh yes, 

19 there were these incidents that occurred. 

20 There must be additional folks around who are 

21 not, who don't just jump out at us.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I don't 
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1 doubt there are. I am really trying to figure 

2 out a way we can find them off the roster. 

3 What will be on that roster that will tell me 

4 these are people worth talking about to tell 

5 me about C and D --

6 MEMBER MUNN: Well, probably job 

7 descriptions --

8 MR. HINNEFELD: -- of the, if 

9 there are 8,000 people on the roster.

10 MEMBER MUNN: Well, a job 

11 description ought to help. Shouldn't it?

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, it may or 

13 may not, but chances are, the same job 

14 descriptions were used across the whole 

15 project.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Well, that's true. 

17 But it seems as though it is one thing we 

18 should pursue before we give up completely.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, I want to 

20 try to summarize here.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, don't 

22 summarize yet.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, I won't 

2 summarize yet. Go ahead.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: There are other 

4 Board Members that have some questions. Let's 

5 hear from them. Henry?

6 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, just 

7 briefly, I just wanted to respond to Paul's 

8 issue.

9 And from my perspective, it would 

10 be very interesting to know of all of those 

11 people who would qualify who aren't filing 

12 claims, who don't get paid, those are probably 

13 the most harmed individuals than somebody who 

14 might apply but clearly was not exposed.

15 So it will be interesting. We 

16 know how many claims have come through but we 

17 should also be able to estimate the 

18 populations that were there. You could easily 

19 apply a distribution of death to estimate how 

20 many of the various cancers would have 

21 occurred. And I would guess that of those, 

22 probably a very small percentage have actually 
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1 applied and gotten into the program because 

2 anyone who was somewhat older back in the '40s 

3 and the '50s who would qualify, you are now 

4 talking about grandchildren because the person 

5 has long died and nobody remembers what they 

6 did and they haven't heard about the program 

7 and they have moved around the country.

8 So I think there is probably more 

9 people who would be compensated who aren't 

10 filing a claim than those who would file a 

11 claim that we might feel as being a wrongful 

12 claim. So I think that is really an area I 

13 would say we need to push more on the outreach 

14 to find those individuals. Because simply 

15 qualifying an SEC, nobody starts receiving 

16 checks in the mail without having to have 

17 first heard about it, file a claim, organize 

18 their material, go through the process.

19 So it is still, I think, a pretty 

20 narrow door that claims processes go through.

21 MEMBER MUNN: Oh, but here we are 

22 talking about people in the '60s. We are not 
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1 talking about people in the '40s and '50s.

2 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, but 

3 somebody who was 60 in 1960, that is now 50 

4 years ago, that person would now be 110.

5 MEMBER MUNN: Most of them were 

6 not 60.

7 MEMBER ANDERSON: Well, but even 

8 50. So now that person would be 100. Now if 

9 they were 40 in 1960, they're -- I am just 

10 saying the number of individuals who would 

11 have died of a compensable thing early in 

12 their life are long missed.

13 So I am just saying we have to 

14 place our priorities on the people who really 

15 would qualify who we don't know about yet. 

16 And there is attempts to do outreach but it is 

17 very difficult and especially, like the 

18 individuals you are saying, try to find, who 

19 aren't in the union, who aren't in the 

20 management. How do they find out about these 

21 programs?

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, there are 
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1 some data on claims on the DOL presentation.

2 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So that provides 

4 some sense.

5 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And there is a 

7 significant number. I don't know what the 

8 time frame on those are, but we'll do that.

9 Jim, did you have another 

10 question?

11 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. Stu, in your 

12 summary of radiological data, one of 118 have 

13 internal monitoring data and 32 of 118 have 

14 external. Where did that data come from, just 

15 so I know?

16 MR. HINNEFELD: That was GE. GE 

17 responds to our requests for radiological 

18 data, individual exposure reports.

19 MEMBER LOCKEY: Right.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: We get a claim. 

21 We send them a request for individual exposure 

22 information. They send a response if they --
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1 with what they find.

2 MEMBER LOCKEY: And how does that 

3 compare with other sites where you are 

4 proposing --

5 MR. HINNEFELD: There are AWEs who 

6 have no record of radiation exposure as seen 

7 by employees. So we don't get anything from 

8 some AWEs. For a DOE site like INL, we get a 

9 response every time, and most of them have 

10 radiological monitoring data.

11 I mean, it is hard to identify a 

12 typical one.

13 MEMBER LOCKEY: One more question. 

14 The 8,000 figure, that represents total 

15 employment at the Evendale site. Is that 

16 correct?

17 MR. HINNEFELD: That is the way it 

18 was represented to us by the Public 

19 Information Office.

20 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay, thanks.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Bob, you had 

22 another question?
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1 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes, I do. 1960 

2 to 1970, this type of material didn't just 

3 come through the back door of this place. We 

4 kept up with it. There ought to be NMC&A 

5 records. There ought to be transportation 

6 records. This was the type of material that 

7 was not generated at GE. This stuff has got 

8 to come from somewhere. And there ought to be 

9 shipping records. There ought to be NMC&A 

10 records. There ought to be health physics 

11 records. I find it hard to believe that at 

12 that point in time there is nothing up there.

13 And as far as employment, we ought 

14 to be able to come up with some type of health 

15 physics or rad techs or something that worked 

16 in this area with this material.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, we did in 

18 fact find some NMC&A reports and 

19 transportation reports under data capture, and 

20 it's part of the documents we reviewed to try 

21 to assemble the story.

22 I don't know, you know, 
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1 presumably, we didn't get a complete set. We 

2 got what we were able to get.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: David.

4 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I have, I 

5 guess, several points. I think this has been 

6 a useful discussion.

7 Let's start off with Paul and 

8 Wanda's concerns that this is an extremely --

9 the proposed group, the proposed class is 

10 extremely large and you are recording numbers 

11 of about 8,000 workers. This is what I 

12 remembered from our previous discussion about 

13 this. When it was first put forward, it 

14 wasn't really clear how large this class was.

15 In fact, I did a little bit of 

16 digging, and it is one of the largest 

17 employers in Ohio. I mean, in the 1950s they 

18 had 12,000, 13,000 workers. I mean, that is 

19 larger than, I think, the number of workers at 

20 INL. Today, it has got 7,500 workers on-site, 

21 and most of them are not doing radiation work. 

22 Most of them are working on the manufacture 
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1 of jet engines.

2 And so one of my concerns in 

3 thinking about, well, you have got 100 -- I'm 

4 not quite sure -- 140 claims and you find a 

5 small amount of bioassay data for them. One 

6 interpretation of that is that most of them 

7 were not working in radiologically controlled 

8 areas, and they weren't in a bioassay 

9 monitoring program. That is at least one 

10 interpretation. That doesn't necessarily 

11 imply that there is a large amount of either 

12 missing bioassay data out there or an 

13 extremely incompetent health physics program 

14 which wasn't doing internal monitoring on 

15 people when they needed it. It may just be 

16 that the number of workers in the 1960s and 

17 '70s who were actually employed doing this 

18 work was a small fraction of the jet engine 

19 manufacturing going on by GE in Ohio, and 30 

20 of them had dosimetry records, were badged. I 

21 mean, again, this may give us a sense that the 

22 large fraction of the workers, even among the 
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1 claimants, were not in areas where they were 

2 within the HP program. 

3 I have to kind of agree. I can't 

4 imagine in the '60s and '70s that this work 

5 was not fairly well controlled. It seems 

6 somewhat implausible, and the descriptions of 

7 the problems that the health physics

8 management was describing sounds similar.

9 I mean, if you talk to people at 

10 Oak Ridge, for example, they would also say 

11 yes. There were periods where there was 

12 contamination outside that somebody walked 

13 through and we found that there were 

14 secretaries who were subsequently found not to 

15 be badged when they should have been badged. 

16 I mean, that is true throughout the complex. 

17 I think that there was an evolution over time 

18 of being more inclusive in the monitoring, but 

19 it doesn't mean that there wasn't a program in 

20 place.

21 One, I had a question about 

22 looking at the employment records, something 
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1 else that we have done, as opposed to trying 

2 to get a full kind of roster of the workers 

3 there is to ask for the organizational charts. 

4 And then at other facilities, anyway, 

5 there's, aside from getting the payroll 

6 records, you can get year-by-year management 

7 charts or organizational charts with names of 

8 points of contact and that may be a useful 

9 place to start identifying. Again, this is 

10 the '60s and '70s. I think that there is 

11 reasonable chance that you would be able to 

12 contact some of these people.

13 In reading over the document, one 

14 of the concerns I had was I thought it was 

15 very useful and yet I know you are having a 

16 hard time describing the process, but it would 

17 seem when you would talk to people, there 

18 should be some more recollection of, you know, 

19 are there hot cells there or some more 

20 description of what was going on. People had 

21 to have, I would think, be able to give a 

22 little bit more detail about what was going 
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1 on. Maybe not.

2 MR. DARNELL: What we did -- this 

3 is Peter Darnell. What we did during these 

4 group discussions was have a led discussion. 

5 I would talk about access controls. And one 

6 person would get up and speak about how he 

7 remembered this. And somebody else would be 

8 shaking their head. And I would go to that 

9 person, what are you thinking about, and try 

10 to build upon the initial information that was 

11 given, once the first questions would get out. 

12 It was all led conversation. It was not, 

13 someone said something and then we went on to 

14 something else. We tried to get as much of 

15 the group in on every question that we asked 

16 that we could.

17 I did bring the questions if 

18 anybody would like to take a look at them. 

19 But it was all directed to try to gather, try 

20 to encourage people to remember what was going 

21 on at the time. The unfortunate part of it 

22 is, is most of them remembered the Aircraft 
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1 Nuclear Propulsion Project, the ANP Project, 

2 which is prior to the covered period. That 

3 was the big thing that they remembered. That 

4 was the big thing that they talked about.

5 The covered period was not much 

6 recollection no matter how much we directed. 

7 No matter how much we tried to bend the 

8 conversation to the covered period, there just 

9 wasn't a lot of recollection.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: All right, we 

11 will now go to the Board Members that are on 

12 the phone.

13 MR. KATZ: So let me start with 

14 Mr. Gibson. Do you have questions? Mike, you 

15 may have put your phone on mute.

16 MEMBER GIBSON: I have no 

17 questions at this time. There is a whole lot 

18 of side conversations going on on the phone 

19 line that is really making it hard to hear the 

20 Board meeting.

21 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry. Your voice 

22 -- maybe you can start over. Your voice is 
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1 actually coming through somehow. Wait, maybe 

2 he is hearing the phone. Can you repeat that?

3 MEMBER GIBSON: I said I don't 

4 have any questions at this time. But it is 

5 hard to hear the meeting because there are 

6 several side conversations in the background 

7 by these five people on the phone line.

8 MR. KATZ: Okay. So Mike doesn't 

9 have questions. He has difficulty hearing at 

10 times because I guess he is picking up 

11 conversations -- people's side conversations 

12 on the phone.

13 So people on the phone, if you 

14 would press *6 if you are not trying to 

15 address the group, that will mute your phone.

16 And how about Dr. Field? So Bill 

17 is asking the slides we have, where it 

18 indicates that information is not available, 

19 it is unclear to Dr. Field, and probably to 

20 everyone, whether that information is not 

21 available or won't be provided, what the 

22 impediment is, whether the records don't exist 
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1 or --

2 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we have been 

3 unable to obtain them. We have attempted to 

4 obtain them and have not been able to.

5 I think probably a lot of records 

6 that were generated at the time no longer 

7 exist because of a records disposition 

8 schedule. And so I would say some things we 

9 were trying to find don't exist. There may be 

10 stashes of records that we haven't uncovered 

11 yet. And so they may exist. We just have 

12 tried to find them and have been unable to. 

13 MR. KATZ: Oh, I am sorry. I 

14 missed that, Dr. Field. 

15 So his question is really more 

16 specific to the documents in the UK, that are 

17 stored in the UK.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: We don't know for 

19 sure what documents are stored in the UK. We 

20 believe there are documents stored in the UK. 

21 We have been unable to obtain those after 

22 repeated contacts with GE UK.
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1 MR. KATZ: Would it be possible --

2 say that again. 

3 So Dr. Field is asking, then, if 

4 our requests at our level in the government 

5 are ineffectual with respect to these records 

6 in the UK, is it possible to go up the chain 

7 and get a request from a higher level in the 

8 government to GE to try to obtain those 

9 records in the UK?

10 MR. HINNEFELD: We have never 

11 tried that before. So I don't know. We can 

12 find out.

13 MR. KATZ: Thanks. That is it for 

14 Dr. Field. Okay. And then let me go to Dr. 

15 Lemen. Okay, Dr. Lemen doesn't have 

16 questions. He is having difficulty hearing as 

17 well.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any further 

19 questions from the Board? I think we have one 

20 recommendation early from Josie that we defer. 

21 My sense from everybody speaking on the Board 

22 is that we are uncomfortable moving forward on 
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1 this at this point in time. We certainly can 

2 refer it to the SEC Evaluation Work Group, if 

3 that is people's preference, or we could set 

4 up a new Work Group.

5 We can do the SEC Evaluation Work 

6 Group if that is fine with people.

7 Yes, Jim. Jim Lockey.

8 MEMBER LOCKEY: Maybe I need to 

9 have a little more discussion. If we are 

10 directing NIOSH to go to higher up to see 

11 those records in Great Britain or the United 

12 Kingdom, I think that is a worthwhile 

13 endeavor, if that could be pursued.

14 But I don't see how this cohort 

15 can have their dose reconstruction, I don't 

16 see how they can identify people that have 

17 been exposed versus non-exposed.

18 We have approved SEC petitions on 

19 much more, firmer reconstructive data than 

20 this. And so I don't have a feeling that 

21 postponing this -- other than we give them 

22 specific directions of what we are looking 
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1 for, perhaps United Kingdom records that have 

2 not yet been released. Otherwise, I don't 

3 think there is much we can add to this.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, what I was 

5 hearing, and others can speak up, there were 

6 several requests for either further 

7 interviews, collect more information from 

8 workers, and secondly, for pursuing other 

9 information, what Paul was talking about 

10 earlier in terms of approaches.

11 I also just would add, I think 

12 that we really don't have a good summary of 

13 the interviews that have been conducted so 

14 far. And one advantage of referring it to the 

15 Work Group is that with a smaller group we can 

16 get a better sense of what information has 

17 been collected so far. You may very well be 

18 right, Jim. I don't know what the outcome 

19 will be, but my sense was that people were 

20 asking for a little bit more follow-up and 

21 more detailed follow-up, before feeling ready 

22 to make a decision.
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1 Now if people are ready, that is 

2 fine, and someone should make a motion. I am 

3 just trying to get a sense of where people 

4 were.

5 Wanda.

6 MEMBER MUNN: My personal 

7 preference would be that NIOSH make an attempt 

8 at a couple of the things that we have 

9 suggested here before we make the decision to 

10 refer it to a Work Group for a more deep 

11 parsing of what we have already.

12 The concept of trying to find a 

13 better method for getting a positive response 

14 from the UK is certainly well taken. And the 

15 possibility of closer, of an attempt to 

16 interview some more individuals on a face-to17 face basis is certainly well taken. But other

18 than that, it is hard to see what the Work 

19 Group could do. But now in addition to that, 

20 until those items are -- at least until an 

21 attempt has been made to address those.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That is fine. 
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1 Any other? Okay, go ahead.

2 MR. KATZ: Let's make just a 

3 process. It probably doesn't apply yet 

4 because you have these other inquiries you 

5 want to do, but it also is within the 

6 discretion of the Board to make a 

7 recommendation for a Class that is far 

8 narrower than the Class that is prescribed by 

9 DCAS, as recommended by DCAS. It is entirely 

10 within the Board's discretion to define its 

11 Class and then what happens following, of 

12 course, you know, depends on the Secretary of 

13 HHS and so on. But I just wanted to make that 

14 clear.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, I think we 

16 also need more new information, more 

17 information first, if it is available. Let's 

18 sort of cross that bridge in good time. Is 

19 that fair?

20 Okay, I think for the time-being, 

21 why don't we just defer? I think there are 

22 several things that need to be followed up on 
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1 and perhaps you can update us on the next 

2 Board call in October.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: I'll see what I 

4 can do by then.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If not by then, 

6 then certainly by the next Board meeting.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: We will provide 

8 updates as we go, as we have something to 

9 report.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you.

11 We are ready for a break now and 

12 we are 15 minutes late. So we were scheduled 

13 to start again at 1:00. So realistically, 

14 let's plan on meeting again at 1:15.

15 MR. KATZ: We will disconnect the 

16 phone lines and reconnect at 1:15, then. 

17 Thank you, everyone, for hanging in there on 

18 the phone.

19 (Whereupon, at 11:49 a.m. the 

20 above-entitled matter went off the record and 

21 resumed at 1:32 p.m.)

22
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1 A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N

2 (1:32 p.m.)

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Everyone, we 

4 will get started now. Check on the phones, 

5 please.

6 MR. KATZ: So let me check on the 

7 phones for Board Members if you are with us, 

8 Dr. Field, Dr. Lemen, and Mr. Gibson.

9 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes, Ted, this is 

10 Mike. I am here.

11 MR. KATZ: Great. And Dr. Lemen 

12 and Dr. Field?

13 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes, I am here.

14 MEMBER FIELD: Yes, Dr. Field.

15 MR. KATZ: Thank you.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And our science 

17 update, Dr. Jim Neton. There you are.

18 DR. NETON: Thank you, Dr. Melius. 

19 I know I have drawn the after lunch 

20 presentation. So I will try to be at least 

21 moderately entertaining to keep you all awake 

22 during this presentation.
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1 This has sort of been a routine 

2 presentation that I present the Board 

3 periodically. I think I missed the last one 

4 in Buffalo and prior to that, the most recent 

5 one I have given is in Manhattan Beach, the 

6 Manhattan Beach meeting. At that time, there 

7 was some -- well, let me do this slide first.

8 I want to announce that we have a 

9 new staff member on our DCAS staff. It is an 

10 epidemiologist. Those of you that have been 

11 on the Board for a while might remember that 

12 Maxia Dong, who was with our program, MD/PhD 

13 person had left our program quite some time 

14 ago, and we have been looking for someone for 

15 a while. And we are fortunate now to obtain 

16 Susan Reutman, Ph.D., some time, I think it 

17 was in March, the March time frame. So she 

18 has been here for a few short months. She is 

19 formerly with NIOSH's Division of Applied 

20 Research and Technology, and she is currently 

21 really working hard reviewing our past efforts 

22 and looking for ways to address some of the 
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1 existing issues that I am going to talk about 

2 a little bit later.

3 In addition to that, Susan is also 

4 looking at some ways that we might be able to 

5 utilize our unique database of 30,000 plus 

6 cases of cancer incidence. We realize that 

7 there are a lot of issues associated with 

8 that, being self-reported and all that sort of 

9 thing. But we think there might be some 

10 useful information we might be able to glean 

11 from that database in and of itself, 

12 recognizing, of course, we have to be mindful 

13 of Privacy Act issues and human use, and all 

14 that sort of thing, informed consent.

15 So I look forward to having Susan 

16 work with us and hopefully eventually be able 

17 to address the Board on some of these risk 

18 model issues herself.

19 As I started to say a little bit 

20 ago, at the Manhattan Beach meeting I know 

21 there was a few new Board Members that had not 

22 had the benefit of our discussions on what we 
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1 call our outstanding or overarching issues. 

2 And these fall into two categories, risk model 

3 issues and the dose reconstruction issues. 

4 So I am going to spend a little time, some of 

5 this will be redundant, just to get the new 

6 Board Members up to speed, but I would like to 

7 go over where we are with these various issues 

8 to get everyone on the same playing field.

9 There are six risk model issues. 

10 There are more than six issues totally out 

11 there but there are six issues that the Board 

12 and NIOSH quite some time ago had jointly 

13 agreed that were of significance that needed 

14 to be evaluated. And these are listed here. 

15 They include the evaluation of chronic 

16 lymphocytic leukemia as a covered cancer under 

17 this program, which I will talk about today in 

18 some detail; the incorporation of nuclear 

19 worker epidemiological studies into the IREP 

20 risk models; the Dose and Dose Rate 

21 Effectiveness Factor and how its adjustment is 

22 used to modify the risk coefficients for 
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1 various types of exposures; the grouping of 

2 rare and miscellaneous cancers; age-at 

3 exposure analysis; and interaction with other 

4 workplace exposures. 

5 I am going to talk today about the 

6 first three to some degree. And the last 

7 three on this table, although we have not done 

8 zero on these things, not as much has been 

9 accomplished as in the first three.

10 The grouping of rare and 

11 miscellaneous cancers refers to the fact that 

12 when the IREP program was developed, it relied 

13 heavily on the Radiation Effects Research 

14 Foundation Analyses and the decision was made 

15 only to use those cancers, develop individual 

16 models for those cancers that had 50 or more 

17 cancers. And since then, more cancers have 

18 been identified and there is a bigger 

19 population. So we want to go back maybe and 

20 look at those cancers to see if we could tease 

21 out more relevant risk models. Critically 

22 cancers like prostate cancer now, I think 
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1 there are more than 50 out there that we might 

2 be able to use and develop an individual 

3 model.

4 The age-at-exposure analysis issue 

5 has to do with the modification of the risk 

6 models themselves for certain time-dependent 

7 parameters, such as when a person is exposed 

8 might be a different risk associated with 

9 that. As you get older, perhaps your immune 

10 system might not function as well as when you 

11 were younger or something of that nature. And 

12 so we were committed early on in this program 

13 to review this parameter as well, although it 

14 is not unique to NIOSH. There are a number of 

15 researchers that have pointed to this issue in 

16 the past.

17 And the last one on this list that 

18 I am not going to talk much about today is 

19 interaction with other workplace exposures. 

20 That is, synergistic effects between chemicals 

21 and radiation and how that might modify the 

22 risk of developing cancer.
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1 So moving on to the first topic, 

2 chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

3 MR. KATZ: So, Jim, just for the 

4 record, Dr. Richardson has recused himself 

5 from this CLL discussion and presentation.

6 DR. NETON: Okay, thanks.

7 Chronic lymphocytic leukemia is 

8 the most prevalent form of leukemia in the 

9 United States, and it is the only type of 

10 cancer that is regarded a priori as non11 radiogenic under the Probability of Causation 

12 rule. That was decided for a couple reasons 

13 early on, and those were that there were no 

14 definitive studies that would link, at least 

15 at the time, link CLL and radiation exposure 

16 in cancer. And secondly, even if there were 

17 some associations, it was not obvious to us 

18 that risk models could be developed, 

19 quantitative risk models could be developed to 

20 express a cancer risk.

21 We have been looking at this for 

22 quite some time, even in fact in our own 
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1 documentation for IREP we indicated that we 

2 would look at this in the future as new 

3 scientific evidence emerged. So we have been 

4 engaged in reviewing the relevant studies for 

5 quite some time. Of course, rulemaking would 

6 be required to add CLL because the rule 

7 specifically exempts or assigns a Probability 

8 of Causation of zero right now for CLL.

9 If CLL were to be considered in 

10 this program as a covered cancer, there are 

11 three separate issues that need to be 

12 addressed. And these would be, first of all, 

13 have we decided that chronic lymphocytic 

14 leukemia is potentially radiogenic. That is 

15 the first bullet. And if we could, is there a 

16 quantitative risk model that could be 

17 developed to express the risk associated with 

18 exposure? And thirdly, we would need to have 

19 some way to reconstruct the dose associated 

20 with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

21 It became apparent after we got 

22 into this, and this was after we reviewed the 
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1 lymphoma modeling effort, that chronic 

2 lymphocytic leukemia, the etiology of chronic 

3 lymphocytic leukemia is not quite well-known. 

4 It could be a disease. It is not a 

5 traditional leukemia in the sense that you 

6 would just look at the dose of the bone 

7 marrow, but it could have its origin anywhere 

8 within the lymphatic system. And that, in and 

9 of itself, creates a very difficult problem 

10 for calculating the dose, which I will talk a 

11 little bit about later.

12 Well, we have done a number of 

13 studies on these three topics. The first one 

14 is we have issued -- had some peer reviews put 

15 out for people, for subject matter experts in 

16 the area to evaluate the radiogenicity 

17 question. I talked about this some time ago 

18 at a Board meeting. And the majority or the 

19 consensus of opinion among the reviewers at 

20 that time was that it was probably not 

21 appropriate to continue to consider CLL as a 

22 non-radiogenic cancer.
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1 In the quantitative risk modeling 

2 area, we also developed, a model was put forth 

3 by our contractor, SENES Oak Ridge, a draft 

4 model that was also evaluated by peer 

5 reviewers. And we took those comments to 

6 heart, went through and answered all the 

7 comments of the peer reviewers, and arrived at 

8 a model that if CLL were to be added, could be 

9 used to quantify the risk.

10 And the end result was that the 

11 model is similar to a lymphoma model with an 

12 extended latency period. CLL is really more 

13 akin to a lymphoma than leukemia, the name 

14 notwithstanding.

15 And finally in the dose 

16 reconstruction methodology area, I mentioned 

17 that the target organ could be either bone 

18 marrow or lymph nodes. In this particular 

19 situation, if you recall how we do lymphoma 

20 dose calculations, we would automatically 

21 assume that the dose was delivered entirely to 

22 the tracheobronchial lymph nodes. It was a 
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1 inhalation exposure. And that results in 

2 extremely large doses to the tracheobronchial 

3 lymph nodes, which would then result in 

4 extremely high Probability of Causation 

5 calculation.

6 It didn't seem to be to us the 

7 best scientific approach to use in this 

8 particular case. So we investigated 

9 additional models to see how we might be able 

10 to reconstruct the dose from CLL. And we have 

11 a potential model that has been developed. It 

12 is based on the external review of the current 

13 literature, and it is a probabilistic model. 

14 It is the first model of this type that we 

15 have developed for dose reconstruction 

16 purposes. And it uses an inventory-weighted 

17 average of potential to the CLL precursor 

18 cells, that is the B lymphocytes that are 

19 circulating within the body.

20 Because it is a probabilistic 

21 model, it allows us to incorporate the 

22 uncertainty in our knowledge of the 
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1 distribution. That is, you don't have to use 

2 a fixed point dose estimate to come up with a 

3 probability distribution of doses that could 

4 be used in the IREP program.

5 So in a nutshell where we are with 

6 CLL is we have evaluated the science, the 

7 three science issues I talked about. I have 

8 had peer review done on them. We believe that 

9 the science issue is complete and that at this 

10 point in time, the Agency is considering the 

11 possibility of rulemaking for CLL.

12 One slide I forgot to mention 

13 here, I just added this because I think it is 

14 kind of a neat slide and it shows the latency 

15 adjustment factor for chronic lymphocytic 

16 leukemia. You can see that for different 

17 times after exposures, the y-axis is a unit18 less axis where it would be an adjustment 

19 anywhere from zero to one, depending on how 

20 long after exposure you develop chronic 

21 lymphocytic leukemia. 

22 So for example, if you develop 
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1 chronic lymphocytic leukemia ten years after 

2 exposure, you would get about half the credit 

3 for the full risk model, as opposed to if you 

4 went out to a full 15 years, you would get the 

5 full credit for the full risk model. And the 

6 dotted lines, dashed lines on each side just 

7 represent the uncertainty distribution that 

8 the model would contain.

9 Okay, moving on the second topic, 

10 which is incorporation of nuclear worker 

11 studies. We have been in collaboration with 

12 the NIOSH Division of Surveillance --

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Excuse me a 

14 second, Jim.

15 DR. NETON: Yes.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I hate to 

17 interrupt you, but it would be easier if we 

18 could take any questions on this --

19 DR. NETON: Oh, sure.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- CLL issue now 

21 and then we will move on to the others.

22 DR. NETON: Absolutely.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Gen.

2 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay, Jim, you 

3 mentioned I think in slide three that you are 

4 trying to determine whether to add this to the 

5 list of cancers covered under EEOICPA. And I 

6 can see that you have talked about dose 

7 reconstruction, in the list where you do dose 

8 reconstruction. What about the others in the 

9 SEC list?

10 DR. NETON: I guess I am not sure 

11 of the question.

12 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay. There are 

13 two different lists of cancers, the ones that 

14 qualify when you do dose reconstruction --

15 DR. NETON: Right.

16 MEMBER ROESSLER: -- and I am not 

17 using probably the right terminology here, and 

18 then the other list which is shorter, for 

19 those covered under the SEC.

20 DR. NETON: Yes, you are talking 

21 about the presumptive versus the non22 presumptive cancer list.
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1 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes. 

2 DR. NETON: Right.

3 MEMBER ROESSLER: Are you 

4 considering both?

5 DR. NETON: No, no. This would 

6 just be to allow for CLL to be considered as a 

7 cancer that is covered. It would not be part 

8 of the presumptive cancer lists.

9 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay, that was 

10 my question. Yes, okay.

11 DR. NETON: At least that is the 

12 way I envision it.

13 MEMBER ROESSLER: It would take 

14 rulemaking for both of them, but I didn't know 

15 if you planned to do both --

16 DR. NETON: Yes, right. Adding 

17 cancers --

18 MEMBER ROESSLER: -- rulemaking 

19 changes.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, the 

21 presumptive cancers, that is a legislative 

22 change.
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1 DR. NETON: You raise a very good 

2 point. I think a lot of folks tend to be 

3 confused about the difference between adding 

4 CLL as a covered cancer versus adding CLL as a 

5 presumptive cancer. That is not what we are 

6 talking about here. We are talking about 

7 adding it just to be covered in general.

8 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay, good.

9 DR. NETON: Right now we receive 

10 zero cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia 

11 from the Department of Labor. If you have CLL 

12 in this program currently, you just have no 

13 recourse at all.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any of the Board 

15 Members on the phone have --

16 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes, this is Dr. 

17 Lemen. I have one question, Jim, and that was 

18 if you are considering --

19 MR. KATZ: Wait, Dr. Lemen. Dick, 

20 could you just hold on a second? First thing 

21 I would just ask, there is a lot of back noise 

22 with the phone. I suspect there are a lot of 
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1 people on the phone who haven't muted their 

2 phone. If you don't have a mute button, *6 

3 will mute your phone and then *6 again would 

4 un-mute it, if you need to speak. Thank you.

5 MEMBER LEMEN: Do you want me to 

6 start over again? Hello? Ted?

7 MR. KATZ: Go ahead, doctor. Go 

8 ahead.

9 MEMBER LEMEN: My question was, 

10 you indicated, Jim, that you were to the point 

11 of deciding whether or not to go forward with 

12 rulemaking. I wondered if you had a time 

13 frame on what the next step would be and if 

14 you plan to present that as an option to the 

15 Board to go forward with that.

16 DR. NETON: Right. I can only 

17 comment on the science behind what we have 

18 done. And as I said, the scientific 

19 evaluation is complete. I can't speak for the 

20 Agency on whether or not rulemaking is moving 

21 forward and the time frame.

22 There was another piece to that 
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1 question, and I forgot what that was.

2 MR. KATZ: I can address it, if 

3 you want.

4 DR. NETON: Okay, maybe Ted can.

5 MR. KATZ: So, Dr. Lemen, the 

6 rulemaking, as Jim said, that is a decision of 

7 the Department. So that is in process, but 

8 the Board doesn't come into it. The Board 

9 doesn't have a say about rulemaking until the 

10 Department decides to do rulemaking and then 

11 issues up a proposal.

12 And then at that point, once a 

13 proposal is issued and a notice of proposed 

14 rulemaking, which is issued in the Federal 

15 Register then at that point, then the Board 

16 would have an opportunity to comment on the 

17 rule.

18 MEMBER LEMEN: My question was, 

19 where do we stand on the rulemaking? Has 

20 NIOSH sent it to the Department for 

21 consideration at this point in time?

22 MR. KATZ: I am not sure, Dick. 
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1 I'm not sure where it is in the process, but 

2 NIOSH has developed a proposal. Whether it 

3 has gone forward to the Department or not, I 

4 couldn't tell you.

5 MEMBER LEMEN: Is that possible to 

6 find out to report to the Board?

7 MR. KATZ: Yes, it is possible to 

8 report to the Board.

9 MEMBER LEMEN: That's all.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Bill or Mike, do 

11 you have questions?

12 MEMBER FIELD: Yes, this is Bill. 

13 I have just a comment. I really have to, I 

14 think, thank NIOSH, thank Jim and thank the 

15 NIOSH staff for being very proactive, I think, 

16 on this issue. As Stu and others know, most 

17 of what we know about our cancer risk 

18 programs, radiation sources comes from the 

19 Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. From a 

20 paper I read a few years back, it looks like 

21 the incidence in Japan is four to five times 

22 below what we see in the United States. I 
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1 think this is one cancer we really can't look 

2 to the Japanese data to give us the answers 

3 for.

4 But I think Jim and the staff have 

5 been very proactive with reviewing the 

6 literature, getting the information we need, 

7 what they need to make an informed decision. 

8 I am going to urge to proceed as 

9 fast as possible with rulemaking, given what 

10 is known. I think what we know now certainly 

11 supports that it should be a compensable 

12 cancer.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thanks. Okay, 

14 Jim, you can move on. Dave, you are welcome 

15 to rejoin us now.

16 DR. NETON: Phil Schofield may 

17 have a question.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, I'm sorry.

19 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry. Phil, could 

20 you repeat your question into the mic, please?

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: My question is, 

22 who are you going to use for this particular 
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1 risk model? Is it going to be only people who 

2 are badged?

3 DR. NETON: Well, the risk model 

4 itself would be based on a modification of a 

5 lymphoma model that is already existing within 

6 IREP that was based, essentially, on the 

7 Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. But we 

8 would apply it to anyone who presents with CLL 

9 and has to have a dose reconstructed for that 

10 cancer. So it would be anyone who applies for 

11 the program.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Now, okay, no 

13 more questions on CLL allowed.

14 DR. NETON: Okay, good.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I would like to 

16 thank Dr. Field for that nice comment, though.

17 DR. NETON: The second risk model 

18 related issue was our intent to look at 

19 nuclear worker studies because ideally, that 

20 would be the best population from which to 

21 develop risk models because that is the people 

22 that we are trying to reconstruct the doses 
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1 for and estimate their risk.

2 Unfortunately, at the time that we 

3 put this together, there weren't many 

4 definitive studies out there to develop 

5 quantitative models, but we have been looking 

6 into this. And part of this is a 

7 collaboration of DCAS. I am not a co8 investigator but a small part investigator on 

9 this study with the Division of Surveillance, 

10 Hazard, Evaluation and Field Studies under a 

11 NIOSH Occupational Research Agenda Award to 

12 look at the adequacy of risk models in first 

13 setting radiation protection standards. But 

14 the logical offset is if you are doing that, 

15 you may as well look at it to see if the 

16 models that we are using within IREP are also 

17 adequate.

18 And the first trial balloon that 

19 we are doing here is to look at two large 

20 worker epi studies. One is a NIOSH leukemia 

21 study, a case controlled leukemia study that 

22 has been ongoing for quite some time. And the 
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1 second thing that struck us at the time was to 

2 look at the data for the solid tumors from the 

3 International Agency for Research on Cancer, 

4 the famous fifteen country study.

5 The NIOSH leukemia study is based 

6 on a nested case control of about 160,000 

7 workers. There is a lot of sites that NIOSH 

8 has been evaluating for leukemia over time. 

9 And this starts to get into some large numbers 

10 in the cohort where some quantitative risk 

11 models from an occupationally exposed cohort 

12 might be sufficiently robust to inform us, 

13 from a worker cohort, as opposed to the 

14 Hiroshima Nagasaki cohort. And the research 

15 for that is currently underway. I think the 

16 completion of the study is targeted for 

17 sometime in 2011. On the IARC piece, we have 

18 not moved too far on that thus far.

19 And the third thing I want to talk 

20 about on the risk modeling is the evaluation 

21 of the so-called Dose and Dose Rate 

22 Effectiveness Factor, DDREF. For those of you 
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1 who don't follow this real closely, the DDREF 

2 reduces the risk values for low dose and low 

3 dose rates. That is, it is assumed that when 

4 you are very exposed to high amounts of 

5 radiation, which is what the models are 

6 primarily based, you incur a certain risk.

7 If you receive a much lower level 

8 of exposure or a lower dose rate, then it is 

9 presumed that the cancer is less harmful to 

10 you, that the risk model actually would over 

11 predict, based on those low exposures.

12 This only applied to solid 

13 cancers, lymphoma and multiple myeloma. And 

14 like many things in IREP, it is assigned a 

15 full uncertainty distribution. It is also 

16 only applicable to low Linear Energy Transfer 

17 radiation. That is primarily photons, as well 

18 as beta particles. It would not be applicable 

19 to alpha radiation and neutrons, for example. 

20 And as I mentioned earlier, it comes with 

21 possible curvature in the dose response at 

22 lower doses.
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1 This is a picture, a histogram of 

2 the actual risk model or the DDREF model that 

3 is in IREP currently. And you see it is sort 

4 of a sparsely-populated histogram which is 

5 based on a literature review. The unique 

6 feature of this is that when NCI actually 

7 redid this DDREF model, they allowed for the 

8 value of one to be more prominent. You see it 

9 is about 20 percent chance of it being one, 

10 which means there is no Dose Rate 

11 Effectiveness Factor. It is equivalent 

12 whether you have acute high-level exposure or 

13 low-level exposure. But then again, you can 

14 also see that the model allows for values much 

15 greater than one and much less than one. And 

16 not too much less than one but if you get down 

17 to 0.5, that would imply that actually it is 

18 more radiogenic or more harmful than exposure 

19 to acute doses.

20 So this is what is in IREP. I 

21 think the central estimate of this is 1.8. 

22 And SENES, our contractor for this, is 
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1 reevaluating this, prompted mostly by the BEIR 

2 VII estimates that came out that gave a 

3 central estimate of 1.5, with a fairly tight 

4 95 percent confidence level of 0.8 to 2.7. 

5 Frankly looking at that, we felt it was a 

6 little bit too tight, given the data that was 

7 available. 

8 So our contractor engaged in a 

9 comprehensive review of the current 

10 literature, looked at hundreds of references, 

11 I think 300, and looked at a lot of different 

12 studies involving radiobiology, 

13 microdosimetry, and epidemiology with the 

14 preference, of course, given to human 

15 epidemiology studies that are out there over 

16 animal-type models.

17 That report has been done for 

18 quite some time. We are still in the review 

19 process. We have actually provided to an 

20 expert panel who is looking into this for 

21 modifying some models on a consensus 

22 committee. We hope to get some feedback from 
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1 those folks shortly and move forward with the 

2 final product.

3 Okay, moving on to the dose 

4 reconstruction issues, again, these are the 

5 so-called overarching issues. They are issues 

6 that have arisen that are applicable to most 

7 if not all of the sites, versus an individual 

8 issue that was identified at a specific site. 

9 And I have them listed here. There are eight 

10 on the table here, but some of these I am not 

11 going to talk about because frankly, after we 

12 reviewed these things, they actually became 

13 more site specific than was thought at first.

14 For example, exposure from hot 

15 particles almost has to be addressed on a 

16 case-by-case basis. You know, are they hot 

17 particles from ingestion of large flakes or 

18 are they hot particles around the skin, which 

19 we run into at Hanford?

20 So these things tend to be taken 

21 up on a case-by-case basis on an individual 

22 site, very much like the next bullet under 
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1 that, non-standard external exposures. The 

2 idea was while this is an overarching issue, 

3 there are certainly non-standard exposures out 

4 there but how standard or non-standard 

5 exposures. I mean, we are evaluating these on 

6 a case-by-case basis as well.

7 For example, the glove box 

8 exposure which we have modeled so far allows 

9 for correcting for the difference between a 

10 badge worn on the upper chest versus the 

11 exposure to a worker who may be standing in a 

12 glove box that is shielded in certain parts 

13 and not in others, so maybe his thyroid dose 

14 or extremity doses are very different than 

15 what his badge reads.

16 We have done models for that. We 

17 have modeled non-standard exposures for planar 

18 contamination. But those, again, tend to be 

19 site-specific.

20 The other one is interpretation of 

21 unworn badges. Again, we have gone through 

22 this very deliberately at places like the 
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1 Nevada Test Site, and, again, there is no 

2 standard approach that one can prescribe for 

3 that.

4 Likewise, material tracking, I 

5 believe that was a Brad Clawson issue that he 

6 brought that up. And I think it is still very 

7 important, but, again, we are aware of it, and 

8 we need to make sure the very time we find 

9 some exotic radionuclide at some facility, we 

10 need to find out. It didn't usually just stay 

11 there. It was manufactured and went somewhere 

12 else. So we need to be very mindful of that 

13 and account for these as they arise.

14 And the last one on the right 

15 there, the internal dose from Super S 

16 plutonium. That is an issue that we have 

17 already resolved. There are certain forms of 

18 plutonium out there in the DOE complex that 

19 are much, much more insoluble than even the 

20 ICRP models would allow for. And we spent a 

21 lot of time with the Board and their 

22 contractor resolving this issue, and I believe 
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1 we have a valid path forward there.

2 So the ones that I want to talk 

3 about today, which I think are the ones that 

4 still remain on the overarching issue list, 

5 are oro-nasal breathing, workplace ingestion 

6 and thoriated welding rods. So I want to 

7 spend a few minutes talking about each of 

8 those.

9 This ingestion, oro-nasal 

10 breathing actually arose at the Bethlehem 

11 Steel; well Bethlehem Steel is one of the 

12 first sites we evaluated in detail and that 

13 issue arose there. But it certainly became 

14 obvious that it could be applicable at a lot 

15 of different sites.

16 And the ingestion is just what you 

17 would think. How much radioactive material 

18 does a person ingest in the workplace if they 

19 are in there all day doing things? There is a 

20 certain amount of material that is going to 

21 stick to a person's hands. A lot of people 

22 lick their fingers and such. So the idea is, 
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1 can we really quantify and how well can we 

2 quantify the amount that is ingested in the 

3 workplace.

4 The oro-nasal breathing issue has 

5 to do with the ICRP lung model and that is how 

6 much does a person actually breathe through 

7 their mouth versus how much they breath 

8 through their nose. It turns out there is 

9 about 25 percent of the population that is a 

10 chronic mouth breather. They don't breathe 

11 through their nose, even at resting breathing 

12 rates. That, when you look at it from a 

13 technical perspective, makes some difference 

14 in the amount of radioactive material a person 

15 takes in in the subsequent dose. So that 

16 issue needs to be addressed.

17 I will say that these two issues 

18 only affect cases that are reconstructed using 

19 air concentration data. If you have bioassay 

20 data, the urinalysis will tell you how much 

21 they took in and you can correct it. It is 

22 automatically self-correcting. We have done 
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1 some calculations that demonstrate that even 

2 mouth breathing, you deposit more but because 

3 you deposit more, more comes out in the urine. 

4 So again, it really only affects 

5 cases reconstructed using air concentration 

6 data, which with a recent addition of a number 

7 of cohorts to the SEC, including Bethlehem 

8 Steel, has really brought down the number of 

9 cases in our program that are affected by this 

10 issue. It is almost exclusively a problem or 

11 an issue at Atomic Weapons Employer facilities 

12 that handled uranium. That is because these 

13 small, what I call small mom and pop type 

14 facilities that processed uranium for the AEC 

15 didn't either do it in large enough quantities 

16 or a long enough time to establish routine 

17 bioassay programs. So if you don't have 

18 bioassay, you have to rely on air sampling 

19 data.

20 We have resolved these issues, at 

21 least in our mind, and are going to document 

22 the ingestion approach in an OCAS Technical 
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1 Information Bulletin, TIB-9 and the oro-nasal 

2 position is going to be incorporated into the 

3 OCAS-IG-001.

4 Just briefly what our position is 

5 for these, it is going to go into these 

6 documents. We feel that we can evaluate 

7 ingestion doses using process specific surface 

8 contamination levels. That is there is, we 

9 believe, a very well established correlation 

10 between how much was in the air versus how 

11 much gets deposited on the ground. That will 

12 give you how much is available for ingestion 

13 and then we can use standard models to account 

14 for how much of that material that is on the 

15 ground actually becomes ingested in the 

16 workplace.

17 Surface contamination levels are 

18 sparse at AWE facilities, especially these mom 

19 and pop ones, and that is why we need to 

20 establish a relationship between the air 

21 concentration and the surface contamination. 

22 We have done some comparison runs on this, and 
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1 the values that we are going to provide in 

2 TIB-9 compared very favorably to those derived 

3 from some standard models, such as the RESRAD4 BUILD calculations.

5 Oro-nasal breathing, I alluded to 

6 this a little bit earlier. Default ICRP 66 

7 lung model actually sort of self-corrects for 

8 this. Well the ICRP 66 lung model does not 

9 allow for mouth breathing until you get above 

10 a certain respiratory rate.

11 We actually account for, I think, 

12 a moderate level of breathing in our cases. 

13 So it does allow for some mouth breathing but 

14 not as much as this full-time. But we have 

15 looked at some of the ways we have done these 

16 calculations using air sample data. And 

17 typically, we will take the air sample data at 

18 the facility, select the 95th percentile of 

19 the air concentration value, and use that to 

20 estimate the intake. In doing so, we believe 

21 that the value is sufficiently claimant 

22 favorable to minimize any effect that mouth 
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1 breathing would have. For example, there is a 

2 very large geometric standard deviation 

3 associated with that distribution. That 95th 

4 percentile distribution GSD is much larger 

5 than the difference you would have by allowing 

6 for oro-nasal breathing. Okay and as I 

7 mentioned earlier from the bioassay data, the 

8 increased urinary output compensates for the 

9 increase in dose. It is sort of self10 correcting.

11 And finally, on the position of 

12 thoriated welding rods, the annual doses, we 

13 have looked at this in some detail. The NRC 

14 actually has evaluated this a lot as well. In 

15 fact, thoriated welding rods which contain one 

16 to two percent thorium, I think, by weight are 

17 exempt from licensing for the NRC, based on 

18 their own analysis. There was a NUREG put out 

19 on this, NUREG 1717 that summarized some 

20 studies that had been done with exposures from 

21 thoriated welding rods. And the exposures are 

22 fairly low. They are not zero, but they are 
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1 fairly low. For chronic exposures, the dose 

2 is less than ten milligrams for any given 

3 year.

4 Just going over my slides, I am 

5 not sure what I meant by annual doses 

6 approximately equal to C -- committed dose --

7 that makes not sense. Just interpret that 

8 second bullet as meaning that the doses are 

9 around ten millirem or less on an annual basis 

10 from exposures to these welding rods. I think 

11 I conflated a couple of facts here in one 

12 bullet.

13 So in cases where we do these 

14 overestimating dose estimates, the increase in 

15 dose is fairly trivial. For best estimates, 

16 the dose is small but again, it is not zero. 

17 So our opinion is we have to address these 

18 exposures under very specifically defined 

19 circumstances.

20 And that concludes my whirlwind 

21 tour of the overarching science and dose 

22 reconstruction issues.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you, 

2 Jim. Questions? John Poston. You just need 

3 a microphone.

4 MEMBER POSTON: Jim, I am just 

5 checking to make sure I understood what you 

6 said. You have dismissed or you have settled 

7 the hot particle issue?

8 DR. NETON: Well we have decided 

9 that that needs to be evaluated on a case-by10 case basis. For example, if you are ingesting 

11 hot particles, there was some concern about as 

12 the hot particle traverses through the GI 

13 tract, what the difference might be in the 

14 risk or -- well, the dosimetry and the 

15 localized dosimetry as it travels through, I 

16 have done some research into this and it was 

17 actually considered in the GI tract lung model 

18 and I don't think there is much difference for 

19 ingestion of hot particles. For external hot 

20 particles, of course, there is all kinds of 

21 ways to calculate that based on VARSKIN codes 

22 and things like that.
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1 MEMBER POSTON: You know, there is 

2 also extensive literature on hot particles on 

3 the skin with doses exceeding four gray and 

4 show there is no effect. So I didn't want you 

5 spending a lot of time on things that have 

6 been demonstrated in the scientific literature 

7 to be a no, never mind.

8 DR. NETON: What was actually a 

9 harder concept for me was that the risk model 

10 for exposure to the skin is -- it is okay to 

11 use the skin risk model, even though the hot 

12 particle is deposited on a very small square 

13 area of skin. All the skin is not exposed, 

14 but it comes out because it is excess relative 

15 risk is the reason it works.

16 MEMBER POSTON: And every 15 

17 years, the hot particle inhalation comes up, 

18 and the ICRP studies it extensively, writes a 

19 report, and it goes away for 15 more years. 

20 So I think it would be good to take a look at 

21 what the ICRP says about the hot particle in 

22 the lung. I think you could make some 
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1 reasonably good models for hot particles in 

2 the gastrointestinal tract. I would expect 

3 the doses to be low because the transit time 

4 is fairly large. And there is even, in the 

5 literature, there is even some cases of some 

6 of the female workers who assemble the smoke 

7 alarms swallowing the americium-241 sources. 

8 And so there is a fair amount of 

9 literature that would lead you pretty quickly 

10 to a conclusion. It may be a model, or it may 

11 be a no never mind.

12 DR. NETON: Our main concern, 

13 thank you for the comment, is to get the dose 

14 right and apply the risk model that we have 

15 with IREP. Thank you for the comment.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other Board 

17 Members here with questions?

18 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I had two 

19 questions that might be related. One dealt 

20 with incorporating information from nuclear 

21 worker studies, and you laid out two studies 

22 that you were considering as informative. My 
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1 question was are there other studies out there 

2 that you would plan to include on that list. 

3 I am thinking particularly about the UK 

4 National Registry of Radiation Workers, which 

5 is about 180,000 workers and has been followed 

6 up now for cancer incidence.

7 And then you didn't really give us 

8 any hint about how you are thinking about that 

9 information being drawn into IREP. Maybe I 

10 will ask that question first. 

11 DR. NETON: Which information? 

12 You mean leukemia case control? If we can get 

13 a quantitative risk model that we believe is 

14 sufficiently accurate, and we can use it, we 

15 would consider incorporating it and replacing 

16 the leukemia model that is in IREP as it 

17 exists.

18 We would like to use worker data 

19 whenever possible. We have not yet. I am 

20 aware of the UK study. That is a good one. 

21 These two are sort of pilot studies that we 

22 have. You know, we had some internal funding 
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1 to work on.

2 We also maintained a sort of 

3 registry, if you will, of all the worker 

4 studies that have been done, as far as we can 

5 determine, and have them on a list. We are 

6 not working on any of them yet, but certainly 

7 any study would be welcomed to be considered. 

8 And we thought about meta analyses with a lot 

9 of these studies and such.

10 But it comes down to horsepower as 

11 well. We have been without an epi for a 

12 while. Now we have one. We like to 

13 collaborate as much as we can with the folks 

14 in DSHEFS because they have a much longer 

15 track record doing these type of things.

16 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And the other 

17 question was about Dose and Dose Rate 

18 Effectiveness Factor. And you sort of laid 

19 out that currently there is a distribution of 

20 values for the DDREF that are being used. The 

21 BEIR VII Committee issued a report that had a 

22 distribution that was shifted in a direction 
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1 which would be more worker or more claimant 

2 friendly. It chops off, I think takes a lot 

3 of the mass away from values that are like we 

4 are going to divide the risk coefficients by a 

5 factor of three or four or five and shifts it 

6 back to saying we are going to divide it by a 

7 value of 1.5 or one or perhaps two.

8 You had said that you had 

9 commissioned a report which skews farther in 

10 the direction of being less claimant friendly. 

11 I mean, it is sort of surprising to me --

12 DR. NETON: No, no, no. I didn't 

13 mean to say that.

14 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Well, you said 

15 it had essential tendency maybe closer to 

16 1.8.

17 DR. NETON: No, the current model, 

18 that histogram that I displayed, if you ran 

19 it, it would give you a 50th percentile of 

20 around 1.8.

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay, maybe I 

22 misunderstood.
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1 DR. NETON: Yes, that is what I 

2 meant. The current histogram and it really 

3 is, it is one of the few functions in IREP 

4 that is really just a histogram. It samples 

5 the frequency distribution of that histogram. 

6 And if you run that 10,000 times, you will 

7 get a central value of somewhere around 1.8.

8 The BEIR number, I think you are 

9 right, is 1.5 is what they sort of recommend, 

10 and with a very tight standard deviation, 

11 which was somewhat surprising to us at least. 

12 And so we embarked on our own review of the 

13 literature, and I am sure you know Owen 

14 Hoffman and SENES, they have done that for us. 

15 And we now have a very comprehensive review 

16 of everything, and we have yet to put down on 

17 the bottom line though, based on that, what we 

18 are going to go with.

19 Part of the issue is once you 

20 change it, this changes all 30,000 cases, 

21 potentially.

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Right.
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1 DR. NETON: So we want to make 

2 sure if we are going to do something, that it 

3 really is grounded in superior science 

4 because, you know, if you are going to change 

5 30,000 cases, it can be problematic -- not 

6 problematic, it can be very difficult to do. 

7 So we are treading very carefully in that 

8 area.

9 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, I think 

10 it has been an interesting discussion for me 

11 even since the BEIR report. I mean, I 

12 wouldn't say at all that there is consensus 

13 but the literature has continued to come out 

14 since then with studies like the UK study, the 

15 Techa River cohort studies, which have risk 

16 estimates which are derived from large, large 

17 populations exposed to protracted radiation 

18 exposures and are having point estimates that 

19 are close to the life span study point 

20 estimates, without incorporating any 

21 conversion factor to allow for the fact that 

22 the dose was protracted.
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1 DR. NETON: You are quite right.

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So it has been 

3 an interesting discussion among kind of the 

4 radiation epidemiologists. And I think there 

5 is a move -- there is discussion about 

6 thinking this is an unnecessary complication 

7 to kind of risk estimation.

8 DR. NETON: Exactly. Typically, 

9 the animal models, the animal studies are the 

10 ones that drive the higher DDREF values. I 

11 think the life span study it's fairly close to 

12 one, if you really look at it. We are working 

13 on it.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other Board 

15 -- Board Members on the phone, do you have 

16 questions?

17 MEMBER GIBSON: Jim, this is Mike. 

18 I don't have anything.

19 MEMBER LEMEN: This is Dick Lemen. 

20 I don't have anything.

21 MEMBER FIELD: Bill, no questions.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. 
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1 Thank you. Just this is not a question, so 

2 you can go ahead and sit down, but just a 

3 comment, particularly for the newer Board 

4 Members.

5 This list of scientific issues is, 

6 at least for the most part, quite old. And I 

7 don't know whether out of the procedure 

8 reviews and Site Profile and SEC evaluation 

9 reviews, whether other issues may be emerging 

10 but it may be worthwhile at some point on our 

11 agenda to think about that and talk about that 

12 as are there other issues that we think would 

13 be helpful relative to the program and given 

14 the time involved in dealing with these issues 

15 and complexity and so forth, it may be worth 

16 trying to identify some now so that down the 

17 road DCAS and NIOSH can work on them. So 

18 let's sort of think about that for agenda.

19 I noticed you were -- struck me 

20 with a number of issues that were no longer 

21 issues, so to speak, that had been addressed. 

22 So I mean, that is good. And the ones that 
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1 haven't are obviously difficult and major 

2 issues.

3 We now have scheduled some Board 

4 working time on some issues. The agenda here 

5 we are going to have an update on INL. We are 

6 going to try and put that closer to our public 

7 comment period.

8 I also would mention, why don't we 

9 talk about it now so people have a sense of 

10 scheduling and so forth. I don't know what it 

11 is referred to, the Ombudsman/DOE/NIOSH/DOL 

12 Joint Outreach meeting reconvenes tonight at 

13 6:00. We are invited. We have to be, as 

14 Board Members, I think we have to be careful 

15 of a quorum. So, again, no obligation. It is 

16 not our public comment period, but if you are 

17 interested, you are welcome to attend. I 

18 guess Ted or somebody stands by the door and 

19 counts. So if you want to make other plans, 

20 too, that is fine also. But just so everybody 

21 is aware of that, including the complication 

22 of the quorum and so forth. I guess that's 
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1 why we all can't go out to dinner together or 

2 we get in trouble.

3 No particular order for the Board 

4 working time. Mark Griffon should be getting 

5 here later, as I said. So we should wait on 

6 the DR case selection until he arrives. So we 

7 will put that off until probably sometime 

8 tomorrow during our working time.

9 I thought the best thing to do 

10 would be to start going through some of the 

11 Work Group reports. I will mention, I think 

12 we mentioned it briefly on the last conference 

13 call, this actually came out of discussions 

14 with Phil and others about trying to plan Work 

15 Group meetings. We are trying to get together 

16 a better schedule for when reports and so 

17 forth or responses from DCAS and when reports 

18 from SC&A might be expected so it would help 

19 us all with our scheduling for Work Group 

20 meetings. Because you know, it is 

21 frustrating, you plan one ahead and then you 

22 go to the schedule and you discover, well, 
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1 this report is not ready yet or we really 

2 don't have enough information and so forth.

3 I think there was circulated to 

4 everybody an initial draft of that. I think 

5 it didn't hit quite what we wanted it to or 

6 that would really be useful in terms of Work 

7 Group scheduling. So we are going to try 

8 again. We may have that, I don't know when. 

9 Do we have a schedule?

10 MR. KATZ: I mean we may have that 

11 tomorrow. I think Grady is trying to work on 

12 it.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So I apologize 

14 we don't have that, but hopefully in the 

15 future we will and make some of these easier.

16 Why don't we start with our other 

17 Subcommittee, if that is okay, with Wanda on 

18 the Procedures Subcommittee because I know she 

19 did circulate an update for us

20 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, and I hope all 

21 the Board Members have read the material that 

22 was sent out because I will be asking for your 
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1 approval for it later.

2 This Procedures Subcommittee 

3 continues to meet regularly between six and 

4 eight weeks apart. We have been working, as 

5 all of you know, for well over a year on the 

6 revision to the software that is -- well, we 

7 haven't been working on it. Behind the 

8 scenes, NIOSH has been working on the 

9 changeover from the type of programming that 

10 we set up originally for our electronic 

11 database into the new database, which is now 

12 up and operating. We used it with 

13 considerable difficulty at our last meeting, 

14 which was the 28th of last month. It still 

15 has a few holes in it that is being worked, 

16 the most important of which I think from our 

17 point of view is its ability to link the data 

18 on the database to other reports and to 

19 procedures that already exist elsewhere, 

20 rather than loading the database up with the 

21 repetition. 

22 We want to be able -- to be able 
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1 to refer the user to other items that already 

2 exist. The database looks entirely different 

3 than it did and functions entirely different 

4 than it did. So all of the Subcommittees are 

5 in the process of getting up to speed on it.

6 We are hoping that ultimately when 

7 it is completed and operates the way we want 

8 it to that it will be a good tool not only for 

9 our Procedures Subcommittee but also that it 

10 will be a very useful thing for any Work Group 

11 that has a significant matrix to deal with 

12 which gets very cumbersome after you add more 

13 than 15 or 20 findings to a matrix. We have 

14 every expectation that this will end up being 

15 helpful to all of you. For the time being, we 

16 are almost there, and we are using it.

17 The closure documents that I 

18 circulated to you last week are documents that 

19 are a result of a straw man that our 

20 contractor provided to us. We had asked that 

21 they give us a concept of how to put together 

22 an easy to read, clear, concise, very brief 
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1 document that we could put on our DCAS website 

2 which anyone could then look at and get a feel 

3 for exactly what had transpired through the 

4 operation of findings that had been made and 

5 the work that had been done by NIOSH and by 

6 SC&A in resolving those issues.

7 We began from a point which you 

8 would almost expect, a paper that was too 

9 technical. It covered the area but was done 

10 in the kind of vernacular that we are 

11 accustomed to using and used the usual 

12 terminology, the usual acronyms, and the usual 

13 identifying numbers of documents that are 

14 meaningful to us but are not meaningful to 

15 someone outside the group that works with our 

16 program.

17 With the help of several of the 

18 Members of the Subcommittee, we massaged that 

19 greatly to the point where we now believe that 

20 what we have sent out to you is in simple 

21 language but accurate and tells the very clear 

22 story of what has transpired with that 
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1 particular document. In the process of 

2 getting there, we came to the conclusion that 

3 rather than repeating the same boilerplate up 

4 front telling folks what this was and why we 

5 put it together, we thought we would have that 

6 one document that was given to you as an 

7 introductory document as the first thing that 

8 comes up when a person would go to the website 

9 to identify what they wanted to see about the 

10 procedure that had been now closed and 

11 archived.

12 And then the second item that you 

13 had was what we are calling the two-pager, 

14 the final report that will go in the archive 

15 as a permanent record for any member of the 

16 public to be able to read at any time. The 

17 one that you have before you is the one that 

18 was done on PER-3, our thought being that that 

19 was a fairly simple, straightforward PER, with 

20 a minimum of convoluted discussion that had 

21 been necessary for it. We hope that you found 

22 it to be so and would ask for your approval of 
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1 those two items with the expectation that 

2 NIOSH is going to establish a website where 

3 that can be reached by all and sundry, 

4 including us.

5 If anyone has any questions with 

6 respect to those two items that were provided 

7 to you, I would be more than happy to try to 

8 answer them now. If not, I would bring to you 

9 the recommendation of the Subcommittee that 

10 those two documents be accepted as the 

11 appropriate form and format for the website 

12 which will be made operable and available to 

13 the public.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Does anybody 

15 have questions or comments? I guess I have 

16 one, which I am trying to juggle back and 

17 forth between the two documents, and I may be 

18 confused. Sort of, it is an attribution 

19 question. If this is the sort of the format, 

20 we are in some sense attributing this as a 

21 work product of SC&A. That is what it --

22 MEMBER MUNN: It came to you with 
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1 a face page on it --

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

3 MEMBER MUNN: -- as an attribution 

4 for SC&A. We probably would be only fair in 

5 doing that for the time being because, as our 

6 current process is moving forward, SC&A is the 

7 group that is charged with the responsibility 

8 for putting these together. They are, in 

9 fact, going to be providing us with two or 

10 three more drafts, now that they -- after the 

11 Board has approved this as the format and the 

12 type of language that they are looking for.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Because it sort 

14 of ignores the Subcommittee's role. From the 

15 way the attribution is, it is as if SC&A had a 

16 process without the Subcommittee's 

17 involvement.

18 MEMBER MUNN: I think we can 

19 simply -- my first reaction to that concern is 

20 that it is a valid one, but it appears to me 

21 we could overcome it easily by a simple 

22 notation that this material has been approved 
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1 by the Subcommittee and by the Advisory Board.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Paul.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: If I might add to 

4 that, since I was involved in this process, 

5 the document, the first round was developed by 

6 SC&A under tasking by the Work Group to give 

7 us an idea of what this might look like.

8 I would say you are quite right, 

9 Dr. Melius, in the fact that other than the 

10 skeleton to which this meat is attached, the 

11 only part of the main body that looks very 

12 much like the original work product of SC&A 

13 are the three findings, which are summarized 

14 because this product does summarize the 

15 findings of the contractor and talks about how 

16 they are resolved.

17 So the three findings, I think, 

18 are probably verbatim from the SC&A original 

19 document. But you are quite right, the Work 

20 Group essentially rewrote the main content. 

21 This is of the second document. The first 

22 document is just a boilerplate that would 
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1 appear on everything, and it is not 

2 necessarily obvious to me how we would take 

3 care of that, other than -- what you have 

4 before you is not what was developed by SC&A, 

5 and that is what your concern is. That is, 

6 particularly on the second document, which is 

7 the overview of the Savannah River tritium 

8 dose assessment procedure, the main part of 

9 that.

10 I don't want to diminish what SC&A 

11 did because they gave us a straw man to chew 

12 on to start with. So that is always a good 

13 starting point when you are trying to do 

14 something.

15 MEMBER MUNN: And of course, they 

16 are going to be the authors of those --

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Of the future 

18 ones.

19 MEMBER MUNN: -- of future ones. 

20 But it is our expectation that the 

21 Subcommittee will approve each of them and 

22 bring each of them to the Board for their 
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1 final approval.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: But part of what 

3 they are reflecting is the process that went 

4 on in the Subcommittee also.

5 MEMBER MUNN: Correct.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And so I think 

7 that is what needs to get captured somehow. I 

8 don't think it is a major change. I just 

9 think we need to be -- address that. And 

10 there is probably some standard language. It 

11 may vary, depending on what happened with the 

12 review of a particular procedure because there 

13 can be back and forth and so forth. And we 

14 don't want to make it too detailed and 

15 complicated. We just want a summary, but I 

16 just would think we would want it to more 

17 reflect at least part of that process.

18 MEMBER MUNN: For this initial 

19 stage, at the point where we are now, would it 

20 suffice if I made an effort to compose a 

21 sentence which would be added to the original 

22 boilerplate which might better explain what 
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1 has transpired?

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. I mean, my 

3 comment would be, I mean, I like the summary, 

4 the document on the one procedure that was 

5 reviewed, the straw procedure or whatever we 

6 are calling it. I mean, I like that part of 

7 it. It was just trying to -- that is the only 

8 major -- I shouldn't say it is the only major. 

9 It is the only issue.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: I might add that 

11 we do have in the record, I think somewhere, 

12 the original work product that was delivered 

13 by SC&A. That is certainly in the record. 

14 And we should possibly proceed 

15 along the lines that Wanda suggested that 

16 indicate even in our deliberations here, that 

17 the Work Group has modified that original 

18 delivered document and that the Work Group and 

19 perhaps the Board, if we approve this, believe 

20 that this is the form that future documents 

21 should take, as opposed to the original 

22 document that was, granted, brought to us 
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1 simply as a trial to see what it should look 

2 like.

3 So I think Wanda's suggestion is a 

4 good one. Maybe we can just do it in terms of 

5 the record of how we handle this. I don't 

6 know.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I have a second 

8 comment, which is more as to where this 

9 information goes and so forth. But and I know 

10 you have talked about this before, Wanda, in 

11 your reports to the Board meetings, but there 

12 are a number of procedures like this one that 

13 are site-specific. And in some cases, those 

14 are reviewed by your Work Group, some cases 

15 the Work Group on that site or that Site 

16 Profile, sometimes both, and so forth. But I 

17 just think however we make these available, it 

18 is important that they at least be cross19 referenced to the site. Because people that 

20 are interested in the site are going to want 

21 to -- they are going to see some reference to 

22 this procedure as an important procedure or 
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1 something, and they ought to be able to look 

2 at it in one place.

3 Now for the more general 

4 procedures that apply across several sites or 

5 all sites, then those should be listed more 

6 generally. But some way of just making sure 

7 people know how to access this information and 

8 so forth.

9 MEMBER MUNN: This is one of the 

10 reasons why we had hoped that the first page 

11 that you saw, the introductory page, would 

12 have the names of the procedures that were 

13 being reviewed written clearly in English, 

14 indexed alphabetically, so that people can 

15 find them more easily.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Anybody else? 

17 Any Board Members on the phone with comments?

18 MEMBER GIBSON: This is Mike. 

19 None from me, Jim.

20 MEMBER LEMEN: None from Dick 

21 Lemen.

22 MEMBER FIELD: And none for Bill.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Back to the room 

2 here, Paul has another comment, I believe.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: I believe that the 

4 intent would be that any procedure that is 

5 referred to a site-specific Work Group, and 

6 some of our procedures are, that is the 

7 Procedures Review Committee already has 

8 referred procedures to other groups, where it 

9 is very site-specific. I think in those 

10 cases, then, it would end up, I believe, 

11 Wanda, with that group looking at what this 

12 particular kind of document would be. Isn't 

13 that correct?

14 MEMBER MUNN: We could either do 

15 that, or actually my intent from the outset 

16 had been that it would come directly from our 

17 Subcommittee to the Board, at which time if 

18 there was a problem, it could go back to the 

19 Work Group.

20 But I was not under the impression 

21 that the Work Groups would be expecting or be 

22 prepared to be the primary contact point for 
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1 what transpired with these documents.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Let me restate. 

3 Maybe I didn't state this very well. But if 

4 for example there were, let's say, an Idaho 

5 Falls procedure that is being reviewed by the 

6 Idaho Falls Work Group and it came back to 

7 that Work Group for review. Right? I believe 

8 this document goes with that as sort of the 

9 public information page about that review. 

10 Right? Is that correct or not?

11 Once a Work Group has finished 

12 reviewing procedures for a given site and the 

13 matrix and so on, doesn't this get generated?

14 MEMBER MUNN: It gets generated. 

15 I had anticipated that it would be in a 

16 separate place. But we shouldn't have any 

17 problem working out a logistical method for 

18 relating the two electronically so that anyone 

19 who reads one would automatically be directed 

20 to the other, if they chose.

21 It seems we could do that in our 

22 listing that we have. For example, our site 
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1 currently lists the ER and any TBDs that have 

2 occurred. It seems that the archived document 

3 could just simply be listed there so that it 

4 could be hot linked, listed as one of the 

5 official documents.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So --

7 MEMBER MUNN: We'll talk about 

8 that at the next meeting.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. So what 

10 are your next planned steps?

11 MEMBER MUNN: Our next planned 

12 steps are to take a look at what SC&A is going 

13 to bring us from three additional procedures 

14 that they have already been -- was it four? 

15 Five? Sorry, I was relying on memory. They 

16 are looking at five additional documents which 

17 they are going to provide this type of 

18 material for us. And we will work it over in 

19 the same way that we have done the preceding 

20 ones. And when we have worked out all of the 

21 kinks, we will bring it to this Board again 

22 for a closure.
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1 We have also spent a bit of time 

2 at our last meeting discussing how to proceed 

3 with the priorities of the outstanding items 

4 that we have. The vast majority of the 

5 findings that we have that are still open, 

6 that is to say have not been directly 

7 addressed, are open simply because they were 

8 findings that were made early on on documents 

9 which -- on procedures which either have been 

10 -- in most cases have been revised and are no 

11 longer being used. The content of the 

12 procedure has been taken over by something 

13 else.

14 And we know that to be the case 

15 but it requires a significant amount of Agency

16 time for people to address these issues 

17 individually because they are individual 

18 issues and identify in which procedures or 

19 what overriding new procedures have now caused 

20 these to be ineffectual. And it is our intent 

21 at our upcoming meeting on the 13th of October 

22 to try to bring that particular discussion to 
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1 more satisfactory closure so that we have a 

2 direct agreement how we should proceed with 

3 our open cases.

4 We don't have any significant 

5 number of outstanding findings that have not 

6 either been referred to a site-specific Work 

7 Group or are not currently under revision of 

8 some procedure already. So the criteria that 

9 we have had for listing items as open items 

10 has been very simply that we haven't addressed 

11 them yet. We haven't addressed most of them 

12 because they are not salient at this point. 

13 We will bring you a better feeling for what 

14 the Subcommittee's intent is in addressing 

15 those at our next meeting.

16 MR. KATZ: Wanda, if I may, can I 

17 just add something to this for all the Board 

18 to understand about these summaries of the 

19 procedures?

20 MEMBER MUNN: Oh, please do. 

21 MR. KATZ: The five sort of 

22 additional prototypes that SC&A is producing 
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1 is really to do a range of different kinds of 

2 procedures to sort of get it down pat. And 

3 then there will be -- there is some --

4 ballpark, I think, of 50 procedures, maybe, 53 

5 so that is ballpark.

6 MEMBER MUNN: That's a good 

7 ballpark.

8 MR. KATZ: And so we didn't want 

9 to really go forward with all of those until 

10 we really had sort of routinized this process 

11 of developing summary documents. But then 

12 those will all be done, and then from there 

13 forward they will be done in real time as 

14 procedures get closed out.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Thank you, Ted.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think from the 

17 comments, I think everyone thinks that this is 

18 a good approach. And I think just go ahead 

19 with the five, and then let's bring it back 

20 for discussion when the Work Group is 

21 satisfied, and then we can go from there.

22 MEMBER MUNN: And SC&A is so 
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1 instructed.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, good. 

3 Thank you.

4 MEMBER MUNN: And I will bring you 

5 a sentence tomorrow.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay or it can 

7 wait.

8 MEMBER MUNN: Or something.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It can wait, 

10 yes.

11 MEMBER MUNN: All right.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think we would 

13 now like to do our INL update, and I don't 

14 know if we have lost our presenter. We have a 

15 change of plans. We are going to take our 

16 break now, and we will come back in at ten 

17 after 3:00, and we will then do the INL and 

18 then go directly into public comment period.

19 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

20 matter when off the record at 2:45 p.m. and 

21 resumed at 3:12 p.m.)

22 MR. KATZ: So we are about to have 
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1 a presentation, an update, on INL. And let 

2 me, before we get started, can I just check to 

3 see that we have our Board members on the 

4 phone, Dr. Field, Dr. Lemen, and Mr. Gibson?

5 MEMBER FIELD: Dr. Field is on.

6 MEMBER LEMEN: Dr. Lemen is on.

7 MEMBER GIBSON: I'm here, Ted. 

8 It's Mike.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay and as we 

10 said before the break, we will now do our INL 

11 update. Pete Darnell.

12 MR. DARNELL: Thank you. I 

13 appreciate the opportunity to address the 

14 Board and provide an update on the Idaho 

15 National Laboratory.

16 To start off with, our main 

17 activities have been merging the Argonne 

18 National Laboratory-West and Idaho National 

19 Engineering Laboratory Technical Basis 

20 Documents. What we are attempting to do or 

21 actually what we are continuing to do is merge 

22 the documents so that there is one complete 
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1 Site Profile for both the previous national 

2 laboratories. Our progress to date includes 

3 completion of the merge between INL and ANL 

4 for the occupational and medical Technical 

5 Basis Document.

6 Just as a quick aside to let you 

7 know what this includes, the consolidation 

8 document basically was merging the two 

9 together. It includes a long review and 

10 vetting process. To do the merge between 

11 these two documents for the medical, we had to 

12 separate the PA and LET doses for medical 

13 exposures. This was quite research-intensive 

14 because some of the claimants had both, some 

15 of the claimants did not have both, and we had 

16 to re-research how to do the calculations on 

17 those doses to be able to perform calculations 

18 for both sets of claimants. We also had to 

19 clarify procedures, types, and frequency 

20 tables. So the process for doing this type of 

21 merge was rather long.

22 The internal TBD that was 
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1 completed in January of 2010 is also a merge. 

2 This was more of a total rewrite of the two 

3 previous Technical Basis Documents. The INL 

4 bioassay data, the associated nuclide list for 

5 that data, was all updated. It is included in 

6 TIB-54. The original source-term data did not 

7 include iodine exposures. So this was added 

8 back in. A new approach for looking at 

9 actinides was developed, and each of the 

10 actinides are represented. We also provided 

11 guidance now for assigning iodine doses for 

12 thyroid cancers. We added potential lead13 absorbent types for several radionuclides. It 

14 included the Super S classification. The 

15 whole document was reorganized.

16 Along in this process for both the 

17 medical and internal TBDs, we also addressed 

18 comments from the issues matrix that was 

19 completed by Sanford Cohen and Associates. 

20 The environmental TBD was completed in March 

21 of 2010. It included and updated the intake 

22 and external dose tables and added data that 
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1 was retrieved from the years 2006 to 2008. It 

2 also added iodine-129.

3 In March of 2010, we completed the 

4 site introduction, and the site description is 

5 currently under review. Both of those 

6 documents were just basically merged to have 

7 complete information for ANL and INL together.

8 The one TBD that is currently in 

9 progress is the external dose TBD. And 

10 basically we are at a point now to where we 

11 need a technical meeting with Sanford Cohen 

12 and Associates to come to some resolution on 

13 some of the issues that are outstanding in the 

14 matrix. To do this, we can either do it in a 

15 Working Group or a technical meeting, but 

16 before doing any more to get the entire 

17 profile done, the external needs to be 

18 completed.

19 As far as the issues resolution 

20 matrix, NIOSH is working on combining the two 

21 between ANL-West and INL. What we have 

22 basically come up with is a combined matrix 
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1 that has a bunch of the ANL matrix left over 

2 at the end. We need to work with ANL to make 

3 sure that we understand that those comments 

4 are truly not included in other INL comments.

5 Our suggested path forward is to 

6 work with SC&A reviewing the current issues 

7 matrix in TBD revisions. What has gone on 

8 with INL, which is different than many of the 

9 other sites, is that we are on revision two of 

10 the Technical Basis Documents. This issues 

11 resolution matrix was done on Rev 0.

12 In speaking with SC&A, we both 

13 agreed that the next meeting needs to be 

14 technical in nature; whether we want to do it 

15 in the Work Group setting or just as a 

16 technical meeting outside the Work Group is 

17 something I have to figure out. A second Work 

18 Group meeting after this technical meeting 

19 would be needed to complete the work on the 

20 INL Site Profile.

21 There is an INL SEC Petition in 

22 place. We have gone through the qualification 
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1 process, and we have completed the 

2 consultation call. And we are right now 

3 awaiting work with the petitioner for 

4 deficiencies that were done in the initial 

5 forms.

6 The proposed Class would be all 

7 employees who worked in all facilities or 

8 areas that have been owned or operated by DOE 

9 at the Idaho National Laboratory, Scoville, 

10 Idaho, from January 1, 1950 to December 31, 

11 2005.

12 So that really is all there is to 

13 the INL update. I will take any questions.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Board Members 

15 with questions? Yes, Bob.

16 MEMBER PRESLEY: Are we saying we 

17 cannot do dose reconstruction?

18 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry, Bob. Could 

19 you please speak into the mic? Thanks.

20 MEMBER PRESLEY: Are we saying 

21 that going up to December the 31st of 2005 

22 that we don't have enough records to do dose
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1 reconstruction?

2 MR. DARNELL: No. I don't 

3 understand where you got that from.

4 MEMBER PRESLEY: Well, I just 

5 killed my computer, but I saw that there. The 

6 last statement under proposed Class. It goes 

7 all the way up to 2005.

8 MR. DARNELL: That is the proposed 

9 Class. It was petitioner's proposed Class.

10 MEMBER PRESLEY: Okay. So that is 

11 something else we need to work on then.

12 MR. DARNELL: Right now it has got 

13 to finish the qualification process to get 

14 through the -- I'm sorry, Bomber. Go ahead.

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: This is LaVon 

16 Rutherford. I was just going to add this is 

17 just the initial petition that we got from the 

18 petitioner. We haven't qualified the petition 

19 for evaluation yet. So it hasn't even moved 

20 through that process. We are just working on, 

21 at this time, qualification.

22 MEMBER PRESLEY: Thank you.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other --

2 Board Members on the phone, do you have 

3 questions?

4 MEMBER LEMEN: None for Dr. Lemen.

5 MEMBER GIBSON: None for Mike.

6 MEMBER FIELD: This is Bill Field. 

7 Just a quick question. I am not sure the 

8 background of this site, but can you just 

9 briefly explain why these were combined?

10 MR. DARNELL: I didn't catch the 

11 question.

12 MEMBER FIELD: Why are the sites 

13 combined?

14 MR. DARNELL: Much of the data 

15 that was used for one site was used in the 

16 other site, and it was just easier to look at 

17 both sites as one. They are co-located. 

18 Workers from INL worked at ANL and vice-versa. 

19 MEMBER FIELD: Two sites.

20 MR. DARNELL: It is one physical 

21 location but two different national 

22 laboratories.
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1 MEMBER FIELD: Were the processes 

2 similar between the two? Is that what you 

3 answered?

4 MR. DARNELL: Processes that were 

5 similar were for some workers, that is true, 

6 but processes that were different are being 

7 handled as different sections in the Site 

8 Profile.

9 MEMBER FIELD: Thank you.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Phil?

11 MR. KATZ: I am sorry, Phil. I 

12 don't know if you are speaking into the mic, 

13 but it is not coming through.

14 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: A number of 

15 people worked for both national labs without 

16 ever leaving the site. So a lot of the, even 

17 as well as going into buildings that belonged 

18 to the other national lab, people have said 

19 they have gone back and forth. So this is the 

20 reason we wanted to merge them. Because it is

21 hard to separate to say well Argonne National 

22 Lab you only went into these buildings when 
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1 according to a number of the workers, they 

2 said, no. I may have worked for ANL, but I 

3 also went into these buildings. The same 

4 thing with some of the crafts and stuff. They 

5 said, we were all over the site.

6 So it is hard to distinguish 

7 between different parts of the site, different 

8 buildings when they were used by both parties 

9 and also the fact that so many number of 

10 people worked for both national labs at one 

11 point or the other.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

13 questions? Okay, thank you.

14 MR. KATZ: So we are about to 

15 start the public comment session. And let me, 

16 at the front end of this, just explain for all 

17 of you who would comment, there is a verbatim 

18 transcript being taken of this Board meeting, 

19 including the public comment session. So 

20 everything you say in your comment will be 

21 transcribed and will end up in a transcript of 

22 the meeting that is posted on the NIOSH 
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1 website for the Board. The only exception is 

2 that if you discuss third parties, anything 

3 you talk about, you say about a third party, 

4 be it a relative or other, generally speaking 

5 that will be redacted. Their name and any 

6 identifying information about that third party 

7 will be redacted.

8 Anything you might say personally 

9 about yourself, though, about your medical 

10 conditions, what have you, that will all be 

11 retained in the transcript and, in effect, be 

12 published as the transcript goes on our public 

13 website. And if you would like to see sort of 

14 the full explanation of our redaction policy, 

15 what I just explained to you, it is available 

16 on the back table here in the room and it is 

17 available on the NIOSH website as well on the 

18 Board's section, I believe.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. First, 

20 how we will do this, we will first take 

21 comments from people that signed up here. 

22 Then we will then ask anybody else present 
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1 here that has any comments. And then we will 

2 move to people on the phone that might have 

3 public comments.

4 So we have the first person signed 

5 up here is Robert Jones. Mr. Jones? Yes. 

6 Hi, there.

7 MR. KATZ: There is a microphone, 

8 but I think someone can bring it to you. It's 

9 okay. It's okay. Thank you, sir.

10 MR. JONES: Ladies and gentlemen, 

11 I wish to thank each and every one of you for 

12 this opportunity to speak to you. I have got 

13 several comments that I would like to make, 

14 and I wish to personally thank each Member of 

15 this Board, especially ladies and gentlemen 

16 that worked for me and that worked for my 

17 fellow craftsmen that I was associated with at 

18 the INL.

19 I would like to make a comment on 

20 what was made just a minute or two ago. I was 

21 one of the craftsman that worked at all the 

22 different facilities at the INL. I worked at 
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1 Argonne. I worked at the different sites. In 

2 fact, I worked in every building, every 

3 facility. I even delivered propane to the 

4 outlying areas where they did checks on 

5 radiation that they received. So I worked 

6 everywhere at the site.

7 I started there in 1956, worked 

8 until I became disabled in 1991. I was 

9 disabled from sugar diabetes. Presently, I 

10 have urinary bladder cancer. I have received 

11 compensation for asbestosis, which I have, 

12 which I thank these ladies and gentlemen for 

13 helping with that. And I have a lot of 

14 questions that I would like maybe some answers 

15 from you folks, if possible.

16 In 2008, I entered -- from my 

17 cancer, urinary cancer, I entered to have my 

18 radiation dose accomplished. And that was 

19 done in 2008, and I received a 57.05 percent 

20 rating. When I received the final disposition 

21 of that 4600 or the answers that NIOSH gave 

22 me, it really presented more questions to me 
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1 than it did in the comments.

2 It seems that, number one, one of 

3 the things that they said in the NIOSH report 

4 was that I was exposed to strontium-90 on 

5 1/31/1968. And that was very confusing to me 

6 because NIOSH did not recognize 43,281 

7 strontium-90. They simply overlooked it, 

8 evidently in my -- or in their procedure. So 

9 I started asking questions. I read everything 

10 I could about strontium-90, and it seemed 

11 totally impossible that NIOSH would refuse me 

12 when I had 43,981.

13 So I talked to my doctor, urinary 

14 doctor, and he recommended that I talk to a 

15 radiation oncologist in Idaho Falls. The 

16 radiation oncologist, and I wish to thank him 

17 publicly, stated that he didn't understand why 

18 they refused the 43,981. He wrote in his 

19 comments on December the 3rd, 1968, that it 

20 seemed to him that there was a mistake made in 

21 my NIOSH.

22 So I started to research this as 
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1 an individual. I called a lot of the old HPs 

2 that I worked with to get some feeling for why 

3 NIOSH wouldn't recommend it or wouldn't accept 

4 that. And lo and behold, in all of the people 

5 that I called, I talked to one individual and 

6 here is what the individual said. And I won't 

7 repeat his name but he said, Mr. Jones, in the 

8 NIOSH report, did they say anything about 

9 strontium-90? And I said, yes, they did, they 

10 said that I received 43,981 on 1/31/1968. He 

11 said, Mr. Jones, you need a document from the 

12 INL from a [Identifying information redacted]. 

13 In 1968, there was a big investigation of 

14 strontium-90 at the INL.

15 So I endeavored from different 

16 people to find out what this stated. And I 

17 want to thank my Congressman's secretary here 

18 and she helped me. Anyway, this individual --

19 so I followed what this individual said. I 

20 contacted different people and asked about 

21 strontium-90, 1/31/1968. And I had to rely on 

22 my Congressman to get me the information 
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1 because no one else seemed to have this 

2 information.

3 So the Congressman sent for this 

4 information from the INL or from whoever, I 

5 don't know who she got it from. But lo and 

6 behold, in two weeks she called me and I had 

7 the complete record of the strontium-90 

8 incident on 1/31/1968 that NIOSH didn't 

9 accept. This particular, I think there is 31 

10 or 32 pages involved in this 1/31/1968, and it 

11 seems like on 1/31/1968 tin craftsmen at the 

12 INL was discharged because they didn't no 

13 longer need them and most of these were 

14 welders. Lo and behold, on February the 22nd, 

15 1968 -- I have lost my train of thought now. 

16 I must apologize. But anyway, it was in the 

17 record of the incident.

18 Further in the record of the 

19 incident, it talks about what they decided to 

20 do at the INL. They decided to keep it 

21 secret, not tell anyone because of the all the 

22 repercussions it might give to the union 
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1 personnel and other people. And so this was 

2 kept secret for a period of time. And the 

3 fact is, I didn't even know that my name 

4 existed on an exposure in 1968.

5 In the official document, it 

6 states that I, in the document by [Identifying 

7 information redacted], 1968, it states that I 

8 gave a urine sample in regard to my strontium9 90 on 3/1/1968 but the information was lost.

10 So here we are. We have got lost 

11 records that were lost, and then I read in 

12 this official document that there is over 50 

13 employees that was involved in this strontium14 90 incident. All of these people were 

15 welders, some HP technicians, some of them 

16 were instrument people, different crafts. And 

17 according to what I read on the radiation 

18 charts, all of them were irradiated.

19 But it seems like, I am sure I am 

20 not the only one, but I don't have any of the 

21 other names because they excluded those, but I 

22 think someone ought to take an effort to look 
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1 at those 50 people involved in 1968 ought to 

2 be considered and ought to be looked at for 

3 strontium-90. And I believe -- let me tell 

4 you what happened. I had a doctor here in 

5 Idaho Falls, a radiation oncologist wrote me a 

6 complete letter to send to NIOSH about 

7 radiation exposure. And he stated that the 

8 proper items hadn't been used in my 

9 documentation, that I ought to be given that 

10 43,981. They ought to have considered it.

11 Well, three months after the 

12 letter went to NIOSH and to the Department of 

13 Labor, I received a telephone call from the 

14 people that did my radiation evaluation. The 

15 man was an HP or something who worked for 

16 NIOSH, and he was the most rude man that I 

17 have ever encountered. He told me that the 

18 radiation oncologist knows absolutely nothing 

19 about the way NIOSH does their business. You 

20 know, I was going to report that, but the more 

21 I think about it, he was absolutely right. 

22 NIOSH doesn't give a darn about other doctors' 
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1 opinions or anybody else. They are only 

2 concerned with their own information.

3 I would like to make another 

4 comment that says they lost my urine samples 

5 in 1968. And I think that is probably the 

6 reason that they didn't use them is they 

7 really didn't have anything to base it on. 

8 But in May, this May, I asked for all my 

9 records at the INL. And guess what is in 

10 those records? The urine samples, the urine 

11 data and everything from 1/31/1968 to 

12 4/4/1968, and it still shows that I got 

13 strontium-90 in my system. Now tell me, 

14 gentlemen, what is fair about that? So I just 

15 wanted to bring this to your attention, but I 

16 wish to make one other comment.

17 As I said before, I left the site 

18 in April of 1991 because of illness caused by 

19 diabetes. But thanks to the work of -- I 

20 believe it was the University of New York or 

21 whatever, they sent me all of the data and 

22 that is how they were able to establish me a 
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1 15 percent rating for my asbestosis. The 

2 thing that in 2007, excuse me, I put in a 

3 request to the Department of Labor because I 

4 had received the evidence and everything. So 

5 I put in for this loss of wages, which I was 

6 denied. And the reason I was denied was I 

7 couldn't come up with anything that supported 

8 my claim that I was exposed or that I received 

9 a loss of wages because I left the site 

10 because of diabetes.

11 Lo and behold, when I received all 

12 of my records from the site, guess what is in 

13 my site records? Three weeks after I was 

14 discharged from the INL, they requested that I 

15 come back to the INL and have a lung x-ray, 

16 which I did. The INL doctors gave that to a 

17 radiation or not a radiation man but a man 

18 here at the Idaho Falls Hospital to read the 

19 x-ray of my chest x-rays.

20 And I want to take the opportunity 

21 now to read to you what this said. In 1991 

22 here it is, 2010, I have asked the Department 
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1 of Labor to reconsider that request because of 

2 this letter.

3 The lady from the Department of 

4 Labor --

5 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry, sir. Sir, 

6 if you could -- it's okay, I know you are 

7 putting your glasses on, but we can't 

8 transcribe it except when you are speaking in 

9 the mike. So once you get the glasses on. 

10 No, it's all right. I just want to capture 

11 what you say.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Brad, can you 

13 just sit down and hold the mic? Yes.

14 MR. JONES: This is dated 

15 4/2/1991, and it is a request from the INL 

16 doctors to a doctor here at Idaho Falls by the 

17 name of [Identifying information redacted], 

18 who is a radiologist, M.D.

19 It says, "No previous comparison 

20 films are presently available. If such are 

21 available, they would be necessary for 

22 comparison. Presently, there is some evidence 
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1 of thickening of the pleura bilaterally in the 

2 mid-thorax, a little more prominent on the 

3 right. This is present in addition to some 

4 horizontal fibrotic changes at the left lung 

5 base. All of the above is nonspecific. 

6 However, if this employee was exposed to 

7 asbestos, the probability exists that this 

8 individual represents occupational disease."

9 There is the information at the 

10 INL that they failed to give to me for over 

11 ten years, 1991. In fact, it is almost 20, 

12 isn't it?

13 So this is my comments to this 

14 Board and I wish to thank you. But I 

15 certainly hope that the same thing doesn't 

16 happen because I have been informed that my 

17 radiation is being reworked. But what I am 

18 afraid of, that has happened to other people, 

19 is they are going to say, Mr. Jones, you 

20 didn't have near the amount of radiation that 

21 we first gave to you.

22 And that is the end of my 
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1 comments.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you. 

3 So you have talked to someone from NIOSH 

4 about following up.

5 MR. JONES: I have reported 

6 countless things to the Department of Labor --

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

8 MR. JONES: -- and they say they 

9 have transmitted it to NIOSH. However, I 

10 don't know that that is true.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

12 MR. JONES: And I have with me the 

13 three urine samples that was taken in 1966 

14 that I plan on sending to NIOSH, but maybe 

15 there is somebody here in this group that 

16 could take those to NIOSH and ask them please 

17 to fix this correctly.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Stu 

19 Hinnefeld was here. Yes, he is here. And he 

20 is in charge of the program. Make sure you 

21 talk to him and make sure the information --

22 MR. JONES: I will.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And also I'll 

2 tell you, as we were talking earlier, the 

3 Board is in the process, through our 

4 contractor, reviewing all the information that 

5 is used as the basis for all the dose 

6 reconstructions and so forth for INL and 

7 Argonne-West. So we will be reviewing and 

8 making sure that the kind of information that 

9 you have talked about today in the records is 

10 complete and is utilized.

11 MR. JONES: Thank you so much.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: But we 

13 appreciate you coming forward.

14 MR. JONES: I appreciate it.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, anybody 

16 else here in the audience who would like to 

17 make public comments? Yes. We will get the 

18 microphone re-setup. Thank you.

19 If you could identify yourself 

20 first, please.

21 MR. NELSON: My name is Mark H. 

22 Nelson. I have worked at the site since 1977. 
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1 I am still presently employed.

2 The dose reconstruction is mighty 

3 slim. I started work the week before 

4 Thanksgiving in 1977 in November. I was 

5 working for a subcontract at then-called the 

6 ICPP, removing sludge from the 603 basin. The 

7 orientation was Monday and Tuesday. I went to 

8 work on Wednesday. And on December 13th, I 

9 had exceeded my 2700 mR for the year and 

10 couldn't enter a radiation area.

11 I then was hired in January and 

12 went to work for Allied Chemical as a real 

13 employee. By October, I had exceeded my 2700. 

14 That repeated itself over the next 

15 four to five years, in addition to all the 

16 other radiation I received. There were two 

17 incidences where I received over 400 mR in 

18 less than 15 minutes.

19 As I recount this, this was the 

20 normal pattern for everybody that I worked 

21 with. You would get to the point where you 

22 couldn't enter a radiation area. They would 
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1 transfer you to another area, and bring 

2 someone else in who could go in and do the hot 

3 work.

4 I, myself, was turned down. I 

5 submitted a claim. I got prostate cancer. 

6 Fortunately, they got it all and it is not a 

7 real problem for me. But there are, I feel, a 

8 bunch of employees who were shorted because of 

9 what they went through.

10 One thing I would like an answer 

11 on is why in my training that cadmium is a 

12 carcinogenic but if you make a claim, it is 

13 not.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think you are 

15 referring to the subtitle E, which is the 

16 Department of Labor --

17 MR. NELSON: Yes. But I am sure 

18 -- that is interesting when I go into training 

19 now and I say, oh, don't tell me that it is 

20 not a carcinogenic. I don't need to listen to 

21 this.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, I don't 
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1 have an explanation for that either. I don't 

2 think anybody here can --

3 MR. NELSON: I don't know that the 

4 Board and the Department of Labor understand 

5 the chemical exposures we received along with 

6 the radiation. Not only hydrochloric acid and 

7 nitric acid, aluminum nitrate, those basic 

8 chemicals that we use but the gadolinium and 

9 the cadmium and mercuric nitrate that we used, 

10 which really in the beginning there weren't 

11 many controls on how we used them. I mean, we 

12 used to -- when we first started using 

13 cadmium, we just poured it out of a carboy 

14 into a bucket, poured it into a funnel into 

15 the vessel. No respirator, no face shield, no 

16 gloves, nothing.

17 Those things, I guess I am here 

18 not for myself because I survived, I still 

19 have a job. I have a good lifestyle. But I 

20 look around, and there are a bunch of people 

21 who don't, and they were exposed to the same 

22 risks I was. And that is my primary purpose 
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1 for being here, not that I wouldn't spend the 

2 money if I got it.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We understand 

4 that.

5 MR. NELSON: I think there are 

6 some huge loopholes in the radiation 

7 accountability at the INL. Thank you.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Yes, as I 

9 said earlier, all of the work and all of the 

10 Site Profile -- what we refer to as the Site 

11 Profile about how this sort of guides dose 

12 reconstruction -- that is all under review now 

13 and will be followed up. And there is a Work

14 Group, Phil Schofield down at the end, the 

15 worker from, he used to work at Los Alamos, is 

16 in charge of our internal Work Group with our 

17 counters. So we will be reviewing that 

18 information that you just provided and, 

19 hopefully, we can contact you and get further 

20 information in the future from you also as we 

21 are reviewing this site. So we thank you.

22 MR. NELSON: Did I turn me off or 
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1 did you turn me off?

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think he may 

3 have.

4 MR. NELSON: Brad's fault? Okay.

5 The interesting thing for me is my 

6 lifetime dose is around ten mR. Not ten mR 

7 but 10,000 mR.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

9 MR. NELSON: And by my 

10 calculations, I had exceeded that in the first 

11 four years I worked there.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. 

13 Anyone else in the audience that would like to 

14 make comments?

15 Okay, if not, then we will move to 

16 the phone. So anybody who is on the 

17 telephone, on the conference call, who would 

18 like to make comments?

19 MS. RAY: I am Sarah Ray from 

20 Amarillo. May I comment?

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: You certainly 

22 may.
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1 MR. KATZ: Sarah, go ahead and 

2 comment.

3 MS. RAY: Okay, I will just 

4 basically introduce myself. I am Sarah Ray, 

5 and I am one of the petitioners for the Pantex 

6 SEC. My co-petitioners aren't able to comment 

7 today, so I am representing our group.

8 Basically, we want to go on record 

9 as stating that we are concerned about what we 

10 perceive to be delays by NIOSH in 

11 consideration of the Pantex SEC petition, and 

12 we would like to request that NIOSH, the 

13 senior staff and chair, tell us why the Pantex 

14 SEC continues to be delayed. We will 

15 appreciate as much detail as possible and 

16 would also like a response in writing, a 

17 response to our question. And of course, as 

18 someone had already pointed out, there will be 

19 documentation in the transcript of this 

20 meeting, that I had made these comments.

21 And I am sorry I can't stay on the 

22 phone today because I am teaching some young 
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1 girls how to sew this afternoon. But I would 

2 like to also congratulate Mr. Robert Jones and 

3 also Mr. Nelson on the excellence of their 

4 presentations. Thank you for trying to help 

5 workers. And that is all that I have to say.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you. 

7 Anybody else on the phone that would like to 

8 make comments?

9 MS. HAND: Yes. This is Donna 

10 Hand.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, go ahead.

12 MS. HAND: I am Donna Hand. I am 

13 a worker advocate, as well as authorized 

14 representative for several of the workers at 

15 Pinellas Plant. My issues are as far as 

16 general concerns throughout for all the sites.

17 Specifically, how come the 

18 radioisotopes that are found at these 

19 different sites, that only one will be listed 

20 and the rest of them are not considered? 

21 Particularly at Pinellas Plant, the DOE and 

22 also the Lockheed Martin confirmed in the 
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1 baseline report over 28 radionuclides and 

2 about six of those were over the curie limit 

3 for that site. But yet, OCAS refuses to 

4 accept that. And in fact, Grady Calhoun said 

5 there is no such thing as 28 radionuclides, as 

6 well as David Sundin, and they refuse to 

7 acknowledge it.

8 According to Bryan Gleckler right 

9 now, he said that they can do the metal 

10 tritides. And that sure is strange when at 

11 the last meeting of the Working Group for 

12 Pinellas Plant, as well as even with the Mound 

13 that you are still working on, the Advisory 

14 Board hasn't even been able to do the metal 

15 tritides. But yet Bryan Gleckler is now 

16 issuing this -- saying that they can do the 

17 metal tritides and giving these workers only 

18 nine millirems of exposure to a metal tritide.

19 You also have -- where the lung 

20 dose from uranium in uranium tritide much 

21 larger than the lung dose from the tritium in 

22 uranium tritide, but yet the lung dose is 
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1 never considered from the uranium. You will 

2 not add uranium dose to any of the metal 

3 tritides. You only consider the tritium.

4 Even the ICREP has tract 

5 calculations and they also use all three 

6 tracts. They use your gastrointestinal, they 

7 use your respiratory, and then they also use 

8 the lymphatic or the blood. Everything. You 

9 have to use all three with metal tritides.

10 The DOE handbook also says, even 

11 if a worker does not have a bioassay, you are 

12 to assume a standard man respiration to 

13 calculate because they know that they were 

14 exposed.

15 This is another issue that I have 

16 with regard to the close-out interview. If a 

17 claimant does not sign that OCAS-1 form, after 

18 60 days, it is closed. However, it is 

19 administratively closed. Now the Department 

20 of Labor is also administratively closing and 

21 will not do a Probability of Causation. 

22 Now the statute requires the 
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1 Department of Labor to do a Probability of 

2 Causation. And it wasn't because the dose 

3 reconstruction was not done. The only issue 

4 was they did not sign the OCAS-1 form. And 

5 then whenever they do sign the OCAS-1 form and 

6 they write on it that I disagree that you did 

7 not use all the information that we know of 

8 into the dose reconstruction and it was not 

9 considered, NIOSH will not send it. They will 

10 send you another form and say you must not 

11 write on the OCAS-1 form.

12 Now when it goes over to the 

13 Department of Labor, they then at their 

14 hearings will say, well you told them all this 

15 stuff that you said you were exposed to and 

16 they considered it, which was not the case. 

17 You have an issue also to where 

18 there is a difference between a rework and a 

19 review. As a worker advocate, on several of 

20 my claims I have asked for a review. And a 

21 review, according to your federal regulations, 

22 is totally different from a rework.
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1 A review would go up to Jeff 

2 Kotsch's office. He would then send it to 

3 NIOSH. NIOSH would then have an individual 

4 that had never done that dose reconstruction 

5 to that person or that site before and verify 

6 that it was valid, and then send it back to 

7 Jeff Kotsch, and Jeff Kotsch would send it 

8 back down to the District Office or to the 

9 FAB. This is not being done. It is being 

10 stopped right at Department of Labor.

11 You also have the issue to where 

12 the claimants will have an occupational 

13 history with Department of Labor, tell them 

14 their performance of duties, explain to them 

15 their duties, and processes that they were 

16 exposed to, and also incidents. Well these 

17 incidents then are not being given to NIOSH, 

18 and NIOSH relies on their interview, but their 

19 interview is back in 2003 and 2004. Since 

20 then, even the claimant has been made aware of 

21 certain issues that they didn't have before.

22 So we are now in the process of 
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1 trying to update the CATI interview for 

2 several of the claimants. This is an issue 

3 that -- if you are taking the interview from 

4 the claimant, but yet you are not using that 

5 information that the claimant gives you, 

6 aren't you wasting a lot of time and money? 

7 And that is exactly what is happening because 

8 in those claimant interviews, even the close9 out interviews and we tell you what about 

10 this, what about that, oh, it was 

11 insignificant. We are not going to consider 

12 it. Then why did you do the interview, if you 

13 are not going to use the information that the 

14 claimants give you?

15 You also have a situation to where 

16 whenever these dose reconstructions are sent 

17 back for a rework, they automatically use the 

18 50 percent instead of the 95 percent. And it 

19 doesn't matter if they are just adding a year 

20 or if they are adding another cancer. They 

21 will automatically deduct it to make sure that 

22 it is under the 50 percent Probability of 
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1 Causation.

2 For example, in one dose 

3 reconstruction, the method of applying a 

4 maximum of 550 rems per year dose for coworker 

5 data at the Pinellas Plant is what we use. 

6 Then the next year, whenever she just added 

7 another cancer, which was a skin cancer, the 

8 coworker data turned out to be 100 millirems 

9 per year. Both as a 95 percentile. So how 

10 can you use the upper 95th percentile and one 

11 year be 550 and the next year be 100?

12 So you have got some issues here 

13 as far as consistency across the site. They 

14 are not applying the same Technical Basis 

15 Documents for every site. The internal dose, 

16 your coworker data, to my understanding, the 

17 unmonitored dose is the coworker dosimetry 

18 dose. But yet the bulletin says the coworker 

19 dose is dosimetry dose plus missed dose, and 

20 that is not being used at all, specifically at 

21 several of the sites. 

22 I am not only a representative for 
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1 Pinellas Plant, but I have seen it at Oak 

2 Ridge. I have seen it at Los Alamos, and I 

3 have seen it at Savannah River. There is a 

4 lot more, but I will be following it up with a 

5 letter to the Board.

6 And I would also request that how 

7 come the Working Group Committee for Pinellas 

8 Plant hasn't met in over a year?

9 Thank you for your time.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you for 

11 your comments.

12 Would anybody else on the phone 

13 like to make comments now?

14 (No response.)

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. One last, 

16 just to make sure our technology is working. 

17 Anybody else on the phone who would like to 

18 make public comments now? Anyone?

19 (No response.)

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So this will 

21 close the public comment session. We will 

22 have another one tomorrow afternoon at 4:30. 
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1 Yes?

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Could I ask a 

3 question before we finish for the day?

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: We have 

6 discussed a procedure for documenting comments 

7 from the public and tracking the response to 

8 them. Today we have heard from two workers 

9 about issues regarding the validity of the 

10 dosimetry information, how it corresponds to 

11 information either that they recollect or that 

12 they have been able to document. I would like

13 to be clear that there is a mechanism in place 

14 for following up on those because I see those 

15 as extremely important.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I agree, and 

17 there is a mechanism. And we will -- is this 

18 on the agenda? The next meeting, the 

19 conference call meeting. Some of the time 

20 constraints in terms of getting this 

21 information collected and tabulated and back 

22 to the Board. So we'll be following up. 
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1 There is some delay.

2 Yes?

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I recognize 

4 the discretion. One of the things for a 

5 specific case, is there a -- I am a new Board 

6 Member so it would be useful for me to 

7 understand. 

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, absolutely.

9 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Is there a 

10 mechanism, do we have point of contact 

11 information, for example, for each of these 

12 individuals? 

13 I would be interested in detailed 

14 work history information and, for example, 

15 quarterly dosimetry information and comparing 

16 that against the dose that was used. Does the 

17 Board go to that level of audit?

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The Board does 

19 not review individual cases.

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Can NIOSH do 

21 that and provide us with a --

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: NIOSH can. And 
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1 part of the reason to track comments is to get 

2 follow-up like that. I think in the past we 

3 have found that most comments were followed 

4 up. Some sort of got lost, and we didn't have 

5 good feedback on how that information was 

6 being used and making sure that it was.

7 What we try to do with people who 

8 have concerns about their individual case is -

9 - what we are trying to do now is make sure 

10 they are in touch with somebody from NIOSH at 

11 this meeting --

12 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- so that they 

14 know.

15 And then if they have individual 

16 comments that are relevant to our looking at, 

17 for example, Idaho National Lab and the Site 

18 Profile review and possibly for the SEC 

19 Petition Evaluation, that we then also have 

20 that information captured in a way that it is 

21 usable. And so we are trying to improve that 

22 process, which is part of the tracking.
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1 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Thank you. 

2 That makes sense.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The question was 

4 is there a mechanism for the feedback to get 

5 back to you. There will be more outreach and 

6 follow-up on this through the Work Group and 

7 through our contractor. But I mean, one of 

8 the things that we want to make sure is that 

9 we have also captured the contact information 

10 for anybody commenting on INL here, obviously. 

11 This is one reason we hold these meetings in 

12 the different sites around the country, to 

13 make sure that we can follow up with you, both 

14 of you, and do that.

15 Okay, no further public comments. 

16 We will adjourn until tomorrow. I am never 

17 going to remember the name of this. The 

18 outreach session that is being held by DOE and 

19 DOL and NIOSH is convening at 6:00 tonight 

20 here. And we will reconvene tomorrow morning 

21 at 8:15.

22 (Whereupon at 4:05 p.m., the 
271

. 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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

1 above-entitled matter went off the record.)