THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 


PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 


CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 


NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 


convenes the 


WORKING GROUP MEETING 


ADVISORY BOARD ON 


RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 


SEC ISSUES
 

The verbatim transcript of the Working Group 


Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 


Worker Health held at the Marriott Airport, 


Hebron, Kentucky, on January 17, 2007. 

 

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C O N T E N T S
 

January 17, 2007 


WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 


DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO 


AMES REPORT 10 


NTS REPORT 61 


83.14 ISSUE 108 


GENERAL ATOMICS 109 


MONSANTO 119 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 131 

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TRANSCRIPT LEGEND
 

The following transcript contains quoted material. Such 


material is reproduced as read or spoken. 


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


an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 


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


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


word(s) when reading written material. 


-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 


of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 


reported. 


-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 


the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 


available. 


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


"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 


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


without reference available. 


-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 


failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 

 

 

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


(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 


BOARD MEMBERS
 

CHAIR
 

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D. 


Professor Emeritus 


School of Health Sciences 


Purdue University 


Lafayette, Indiana 


EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
 

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D. 


Senior Science Advisor 


National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 


Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 


Washington, DC 


MEMBERSHIP
 

GRIFFON, Mark A. 


President 


Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc. 


Salem, New Hampshire 


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


Director 


New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund 


Albany, New York 


PRESLEY, Robert W. 


Special Projects Engineer 


BWXT Y12 National Security Complex 


Clinton, Tennessee 


ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D. 


Professor Emeritus 


University of Florida 


Elysian, Minnesota 

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ANNOUNCED PARTICIPANTS
 

BEHLING, HANS, SC&A 


BROEHM, JASON, CDC 


CHANG, CHIA-CHIA, NIOSH 


ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH 


HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS 


HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 


KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL 


MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A 


MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 


NETON, JIM, NIOSH 


RUTHERFORD, LAVON, NIOSH 


SCHOFIELD, PHILLIP, ABRWH 

 

 

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P R O C E E D I N G S
 

(10:00 a.m.) 


WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS
 

DR. LEW WADE, DFO


 DR. WADE: This is a work group of the 


Advisory Board. This is the work group on SEC 


issues, including the 250 day issue and the 


preliminary review of 83.14 SEC petitions. 


That work group is ably chaired by Dr. Melius, 


members Ziemer, Roessler and Griffon. We’ll 


introduce ourselves around the table, but Drs. 


Melius, Ziemer and Roessler are here. 


Mark Griffon, are you on the line? 


MR. GRIFFON (by Telephone): Yes. 


 DR. WADE: Good. I know that Robert Presley 


is also on the line. He’s invited because of 


the overlap between his work group related to 


the Nevada Test site and the 250 day issue. 


Are there any other Board members on this call 


other than Mark and Robert? Any other Board 


members on the call? 


 (no response) 


Well, we don’t have a quorum of the 


Board which means we can continue with our 

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business of the work group. 


I would ask if there are any SC&A 


employees on the call that you identify 


yourself. 


DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Yes, John Mauro. 


 DR. WADE: Welcome, John. 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Hans Behling. 


 DR. WADE: Welcome, Hans. 


Anyone else from SC&A on the call? 


 (no response) 


 DR. WADE: Anyone from the NIOSH/ORAU team 


on the call? 


 (no response) 


 DR. WADE: NIOSH/ORAU team? 


MS. CHANG (by Telephone): Chia-Chia Chang 


with the NIOSH Director’s office. 


 DR. WADE: Any other federal employees who 


are on the call by virtue of their federal 


employment? 


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): This is 


Liz Homoki-Titus with Health and Human 


Services. 


 DR. WADE: Welcome, Liz. 


MR. KOTSCH (by Telephone): Jeff Kotsch, 


DOL. 

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 DR. WADE: Jeff, always a pleasure. 


 MR. BROEHM: Jason Broehm, CDC, Washington 


office. 


 DR. WADE: Welcome, Jason. 


Are there any worker reps, 


petitioners, people involved in the process 


who would like to be identified as 


participating? 


 (no response) 


 DR. WADE: Anyone who would like to be 


introduced? 


 (no response) 


 DR. WADE: Okay, Jim, you’ve got it okay 


from here. 


DR. MELIUS: Go around the table? Jim 


Melius, a member of the Advisory Board. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Arjun Makhijani, SC&A. 


MR. ELLIOTT: Larry Elliott, NIOSH. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: LaVon Rutherford, NIOSH. 


 DR. WADE: Lew Wade with NIOSH and the 


Advisory Board. 


MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS. 


DR. ROESSLER: Gen Roessler, Advisory Board. 


DR. NETON: Jim Neton, NIOSH. 


DR. ZIEMER: Paul Ziemer, Advisory Board. 

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 DR. WADE: We’re done, and I would ask you 


all to just remember practice good phone 


courtesy. Mute the phone if you’re 


participating. Use the hand set as opposed to 


the speaker phone. Be mindful of background 


music on your line when you put the phone on 


hold. We’ve experienced all of those things, 


and we’d rather not experience them again. 


Thank you. 


Jim. 


DR. MELIUS: Just to give people a sense of 


the agenda for the day, what I thought we 


would start out with talking about the Ames 


report. Then we would move on to the recent 


report on the Nevada Test Site, and then, 


those are sort of the 250 day portions of this 


meeting. And then the second portion of the 


meeting will deal with the 83.14 issue. And 


in that case we’ll be using as examples for 


discussion the General Atomics and the 


Monsanto reports that we reviewed at the last 


meeting. 


I talked to Larry about a week ago, 


ten days ago, and there were at that time no 


83.14’s and sort of in position to be 

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presented shortly that we would, were sort of 


available for discussion. So I thought we 


could at least be helpful to discuss those 


other two. And Mark Griffon and I have done 


some follow up on those so I think we have a 


sense of some of the issues related to that. 


So that will be sort of the third portion of 


the meeting. 


AMES REPORT
 

And maybe to start out, I’m not sure 


who wants to present the Ames report. This is 


something --


DR. MAKHIJANI: Hans, I think. 


DR. MELIUS: Okay, go ahead, Hans. Do you 


want to just sort of briefly describe the 


report and sort of walk us through and then 


the conclusions? 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Yeah, as you 


know, our original draft report that actually 


looked at the SEC covered some of the issues 


that I covered in the most recent report. And 


in this recent report it just simply amplified 


some of the earlier observations and comments. 


Among the things that are included in this 


report is an interview with who was 

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a former worker at the Ames Laboratory. He 


was a person who apparently worked there for a 


period of years starting either in or 


. He doesn’t know the exact date, but it does 


cover the timeframe during which the thorium 


reduction process was in full swing and 


obviously his comments speak for themselves. 


In addition, I was also able to obtain 


from the ISU, that is the Iowa State 


University archives, a copy of an interview 


with where he, again, personally 


validates the claim that was initially 


identified as a reference in the Dr. Payne’s 


doctoral thesis involving the bombs and 


explosions and fires, the issue of the 


frequency, and of course, the involvement of 


workers who were asked to put out the fires. 


One of the major issues here is the 


duration of exposure involving people who may 


have been party to these explosions and fires. 


I think early on the assumption was that 


people’s good sense would have them running 


out the door immediately and minimizing their 


time period for exposure. That apparently was 


not the case for multiple reasons. 

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One, the people there were expected to 


participate in the putting out of these fires 


because of the classified nature of the work 


which precluded the use of local firemen to 


come in there and control the fires. 


The other thing was the frequency by 


which these fires occurred, or explosions 


occurred, to the point where people became 


extremely insensitive to these things because 


of their frequency. And in my interview with 


it was clear that the frequency numbed these 


people to the sense where they just continued 


working if they weren’t directly involved in 


the fire. 


So we have frequent events that are 


certainly classified as radiological events. 


And we have people who were exposed to these 


events for extended periods of time, meaning 


that it’s likely that their exposures were 


substantial and these exposures happened 


routinely. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: You mean routinely as a 


result, not routinely but rather as a result 


of frequent incidents. 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Yes. I don’t 

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want to say this is a routine radiological 


environment, meaning that these events did 


occur frequently in a sense where virtually 


anybody who was potentially exposed for much 


less than 250 days would have been a 


participant, a passive participant, in these 


events at some point in time. 


Also, let me add that there was an 


appendix in the report, and I added this 


appendix. It comes from one of the documents 


I received from the library that acknowledges 


workers, and the point of that particular 


appendix is to acknowledge the fact that there 


were probably substantial numbers of people 


who may have been employed for periods less 


that 250 days. 


And the appendix you see in the most 


recent draft report involves workers who were 


not production workers but scientists, staff 


members, people who worked during that period 


of time early on uranium period from about ’42 


to ’47 or something like that. And what you 


can extract from that information is that 


among the professional staff there were about, 


I believe, about 22 people who were employed 

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for periods of less than 250 days. Now I 


would consider these people a smaller fraction 


from the total workforce when you include 


production workers. 


What the point of this is is that if 


you were to include production workers, you 


would probably have a substantial number of 


people who were probably employed for less 


than 250 days, and therefore, potentially 


exposed to these events. In fact, the numbers 


of people that you saw identified as people 


who may have been exposed to these events but 


were less than 250 days were people who were 


awarded a bronze pin. 


And there were three levels of awards: 


gold, silver and bronze pins. And of course, 


the bronze pins involved people who had the 


shortest duration of employment. These people 


are not process workers; and therefore, I 


suspect that there are quite a few numbers of 


people. 


And again, we’ve heard from Dr. Neton 


earlier that the number of people who might be 


eligible are few. However, that number does 


not include our potential people who may have 

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realized that their employment period was less 


than 250 days which excludes them from even 


applying. And therefore, we’re not 


necessarily looking at the correct number of 


people who may be affected by this rule. 


DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton. I guess if I 


could chime in. A couple thoughts on Hans’ 


introductory remarks. One is it’s not clear 


to me that the frequency of these events is 


relevant to the evaluation of the 250 day 


exposure period. Frequency in and of itself 


doesn’t speak to exceptionally high exposures 


which is really the litmus test, I think, in 


the regulation. We can have many routine 


frequent exposures and do they rise to the 


level of something equivalent to a criticality 


event. I mean, those are the criteria we 


really have to, I think, evaluate. 


The second issue was those non-


production workers who have had less than 250 


days, it’s not clear in my mind that, you 


know, if you’re going to define a class for 


less than 250 days, you have to put your hands 


around it. And I don’t know that non-


production workers, who were not in the plant 

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itself maybe when these events occurred, were 


actually exposed. That would have to be fully 


fleshed out and investigated. But you 


identified a population of less than 250 days 


but those would have had to be bounced against 


a class that was identified as potentially 


having these exceptionally high exposures. 


DR. MELIUS: But I think the frequency of 


the incidents, I think, doesn’t necessarily 


sort of meet the health endangerment criteria 


itself although what it does point out to is 


that the difficulty of, the fact that many 


different people may have been exposed. We’re 


dealing with a situation where we have almost 


no monitoring data. 


We have no incident reports, and we’re 


going back so far in time I doubt if we have 


very good ability to use personal recollection 


or interviews with claimants in order to be 


able to have them affirm one way or the other 


what kind of incident were they present at and 


so forth. And I agree that I think the crux 


of the, in my mind when I say, you know, I’m 


convinced that some number of people at this 


facility were exposed to a significant amount 

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of radiation in a short period of time. 


We can’t reconstruct the dose for 


those incidents. I think that the crux of the 


issue, the harder part is what you pointed 


out, Jim, is how do you then define a class 


that includes this. I think in the 


circumstance of given how little data there 


is, is it fair to put the burden on the 


claimants to prove that, to prove that they 


were exposed? Because, I mean, there’s just 


no ability, even if they make a claim, even if 


a person’s alive and says, you know, fit the 


criteria less that 250 days, was present and 


so forth. 


We have no ability to really affirm 


that or I should say maybe confirm that from 


records and even the practicality of coworker 


information. I mean, I agree with you, I 


guess one could think of a situation where 


someone would have very incidental exposure 


there from this list of people that worked 


there 250 days. But we have no good way of 


separating out one from the other. 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): And Dr. Melius, 


can I interject something here? 

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DR. MELIUS: Yes. 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Regarding the 


frequency, and I think the point here that 


needs to be made is that if you can reasonably 


assume that these kinds of incidents happened 


throughout the full duration from ’42 to ’53 


or even beyond that, one doesn’t -- let’s 


assume that there was only a single event, 


then of course, the 250 day criteria would 


only apply to those people who were on either 


side of that event in terms of being hired. 


Since the fact that we can reasonably 


conclude that these events happened almost 


routinely over -- or I should stop using the 


word routine, but frequently throughout the 


whole period virtually meaning that every 


person who was there for periods of even from 


a few weeks to a couple months or so, would 


have been potentially affected by these 


events. 


And therefore, the SEC class that 


might include the less than 250 day employment 


period issue would affect virtually everybody 


from the start of the project to the end of 


the project. And I think that’s the point I 

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wanted to make here. 


DR. NETON: I understand that, Hans, but you 


really do have to keep going back and thinking 


about is an individual incident that you 


described sufficiently exceptionally high 


equivocal criticality. I mean, that’s the way 


the regulation reads. 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Well, you can 


come to that conclusion, Jim, when you look at 


the size of these volumes that in some 


instances were many, many kilograms. And the 


area in which these events took place were 


relatively small so that you’re not talking 


about a huge facility, that the air 


concentrations would have been very, very 


high. 


And of course, it would have involved 


everything from very small particles to large 


pieces of particles that a person might have 


been subjected to in the process of putting 


out the fire or dealing with it or just simply 


keeping on working. So at this point we’re 


not in a position to reconstruct the exposures 


other than to say that they were probably very 


high airborne concentrations and the duration 

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of exposure would have been potentially fairly 


extensive. 


DR. MELIUS: Gen. 


DR. ROESSLER: I think you’re hitting on the 


point that I have a question about it. I know 


we don’t have dosimetry or anything, but it 


seems somebody could develop a scenario for 


that situation. How much could have been 


released in that environment over a short 


period of time, and what would be the impact 


then on doses. 


I mean, I have no feeling when you 


said probably high exposures, I have no 


feeling for what that means. I think you have 


to take into consideration the radioactive 


material, the dose I would assume would be to 


the lung, and come up with some number that 


would help us evaluate it. 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Well, we could 


possibly look at a single event. We have some 


understanding of how much of material was in 


one of these particular explosions -- I think 


that information is even included in my report 


-- and come up with some kind of an 


assessment. But again, it would be very 

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crude. 


And I think the point is we really 


don’t know the definitive answers to those 


questions even if we make an attempt to 


reconstruct something. I think that’s the 


essence of an SEC is that you really don’t 


have the data. 


DR. MAURO (by Telephone): This is John 


Mauro. I seem to recall in the earlier report 


where you have some data not necessarily 


associated with the explosions but associated 


with, I guess, just airborne samples collected 


during operations. And even when there 


weren’t -- my recollection, please correct me 


if I’m wrong with that -- even during routine, 


non-explosion time periods the dust loadings 


were fairly high. 


And I recall your citing some airborne 


concentrations and associated dose rates to 


various organs over short periods of time that 


were fairly high. I realize this doesn’t go 


toward the explosions, but the implication 


would be, well, you would expect whatever the 


exposures were during the explosions that they 


may be substantially higher than the ones that 

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they observed, what you would call more or 


less routine operations. 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Yeah, John, 


you’re making reference to the 1963 AEC 


Inspection Survey. And of course, these were 


non-radiological events, and you had very, 


very high airbornes even during routine, which 


during the event of an explosion would have 


even been further amplified due to the 


suspension. 


And so now you have two things, 


contamination that is part of a routine 


environment and then after the explosions that 


would have added to that and also raised the 


airborne by re-suspending contamination levels 


that were part of the normal, natural working 


environment. So it’s very difficult to 


reconstruct everything, but one can certainly 


conclude that the doses would have been 


substantial. 


DR. MAURO (by Telephone): What level of 


exposure? I don’t recall the numbers, but I 


remember them being high. 


DR. NETON: John, this is Jim. I thought 


about that before the meeting, and I recall 

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that when Hans did his calculation for the 


thorium, I think he took the highest air 


concentrations that were observed in the 


inspection at the level of 10,000 dpm or 


something like that. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: No, Jim, they were daily-


weighted averages. 


DR. NETON: Daily-weighted averages, and 


they were high, but SC&A has a practice of 


always couching things in terms of 50 year 


doses which, of course, are not really 


applicable here. It’s really comparing apples 


and oranges. 


So I’ve gone back and generated a 


table. I don’t have it to hand out, but I can 


sort of describe. If one looks at thorium 


exposures and really calculates the annual 


incremental doses that occur from those types 


of exposures, say like a hundred, two hundred 


gram lifetime, 50 year dose to bone surfaces 


which is, you know, SC&A always maximizes 


these things, typed, you know, soluble, 


thorium, 50 year dose, that sort of thing. 


You end up, it turns out that you 


rarely get more than one percent of the total 

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dose in any given year for those exposure 


scenarios, for Type M anyways. I think when 


you get into Type S it might be a couple 


percent, but what I’m saying is if you can 


come up with a 200 rem dose, which sounds 


large, in equivalent to a criticality, that 


would be delivered over 50 years. And the 


first year dose would be somewhere on the 


order of two rem. 


DR. MAURO (by Telephone): That’s helpful 


information. That’s why I brought it out. 


DR. NETON: And I think we need to 


concentrate, focusing on that issue because we 


can’t be comparing 50 year doses. If a cancer 


develops ten years subsequent to the exposure, 


the 50 year dose is irrelevant because the 


extra 40 years of dose doesn’t contribute at 


all to the development of the cancer. 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Well, I agree 


with you, Jim, but you’re also minimizing it 


now by assuming it’s ten years as opposed to 


23 years. 


DR. NETON: Well, I’m not saying it’s that, 


Hans. What I’m saying though is a 50 year 


dose is a protracted dose that’s delivered 

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over a large period of time. The equivalent 


weighting factors that are used for the risk 


models are very different. It’s not 


equivalent. It cannot be directly compared to 


a criticality event that happens 


instantaneously and delivers 200 rem to, 


matter of fact, all organs which contribute 


more compositely to the risk than an 


individual organ is irradiated at 200 rem. 


It’s a very different risk value there. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Just for the record --


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): I won’t 


disagree with you, Jim. We obviously used the 


50 year committed effective dose equivalent 


because it was the convenient tool, and we 


don’t really have a timeframe that might be 


representative. It’s an upper bound value. 


That’s clearly the case. 


But it also has to be recognized that 


this was from everyday working environment at 


certain locations that are credibly done by 


the AEC who was there not to do anything other 


than to assess the conditions as they saw them 


in 1953. And this was an exposure for a 


single eight-hour work, or nine-hour workday. 

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So the doses were substantial for routine 


radiological exposures. 


DR. NETON: All I’m saying, Hans, though, is 


you need to consider. Is this an 


exceptionally high exposure comparable to a 


criticality event? I think we tried to flesh 


that out in the last meeting where we started 


to identify certain scenarios that would reach 


that bar, that level of exposure. 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): And we did not 


include that issue in this report as you know. 


We avoided the issue of routine working 


radiological conditions where this reports 


focus strictly on the radiological incidents 


for that region. 


DR. MELIUS: Hans, Arjun next and then Paul, 


please. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Let me just say something 


for the record and then something from my 


notes in the last meeting. We’ve never used 


Type F thorium in our calculations. 


DR. NETON: There is no Type F thorium, Type 


M. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: You said Type F, I believe. 


DR. NETON: That’s soluble thorium which 

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would be M. There is no Type F thorium. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: We’ve used Type M and Type 


S. Just for the record, we’ve used both. 


From the last meeting the notes I 


compiled and circulated in the Nevada report 


indicate -- and we’ll have to go back to the 


transcript to see who said what. But this is 


my recollection that we had a discussion on 


the very point of internal doses, and the 


qualitative things that were put forward where 


the internal dose or intakes would be regarded 


potentially as comparable to exceptionally 


high exposures in the rule were substantial 


fires like the one at Rocky Flats in ’69 or 


intense thorium fires at Fernald. 


High intake potential, for instance, 


during maintenance or other limited duration 


operations that were not monitored like the 


18,000 MAC at Fernald during a maintenance 


operation if the workers were not monitored. 


And significant failure of radiological 


controls associated with an incident, for 


example, sending people to work in a 


contaminated environment that had not been 


cleaned up or failures of interlock systems 

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resulting in high exposures. 


So those were some of the examples 


that were mentioned that I compiled and 


circulated some time back for internal from 


the last time. Of course, it’s very difficult 


to say whether the blowouts would be 


comparable. There were lost of blowouts at 


Fernald, and I would suggest that the reason 


you were saying there were evacuations at 


Fernald. 


There were evacuations if I remember 


right, and so the dust levels presumably would 


be such that work, in the ‘50s anyway, would 


not be regarded as normal in those 


circumstances. And so I would think that the 


doses without a calculation should be assumed 


to be considerably higher than daily-weighted 


average routine anyway. So, and here the work 


-- I don’t know that that’s the case. 


DR. NETON: When you have a discrete event 


that blows something in the air, and uranium’s 


a fairly heavy metal, that settles out quickly 


in my experience. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, but work was 


continuing --

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DR. NETON: I understand, but if it settles 


out over a period of minutes, an hour or more, 


exposures are down versus a daily-weighted 


average which is a constant process that’s 


continually re-injecting material into the 


air. I don’t think that --


DR. MAKHIJANI: That is really a speculation 


on what fraction of the material is fine 


particles and what fraction of the material is 


heavy particles. And if you’ve got a 60 


kilogram blowup, you know, then you have to go 


to the size of the room and the kind of a 


scenario that Hans has talked about. I mean, 


I’m not opposed to going to those kind of 


scenarios, but at the end of the day if you 


have first, your dose of four rem from such a 


scenario, can you say that it’s not 20 rem? 


Can you bound it within an order of magnitude? 


I don’t know. I mean, this is maybe a 


judgment --


DR. NETON: Correct, but even at that level 


does it get to the, get to that test of the 


exceptionally high level of exposure 


equivalent to a criticality? 


DR. MAKHIJANI: That’s my point; that’s my 

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point. If you get to four rem in such a 


calculation, can you say that I know that it’s 


not 40 rem in the first year? Can you say 


that? And at the end of the day that’s the 


kind of judgment that you have to make if you 


do a calculation. But I think maybe some 


utility of the idea of the calculation, 


there’s no harm in doing it, but I don’t know 


what the utility of it would be. 


DR. MELIUS: Paul, you’ve been patient. 


DR. ZIEMER: Well, there’s two pieces to 


this though. I think we’ve talked a bit about 


them, but I’m going to go back a moment with 


the frequency issue. I do think in a sense 


it’s important if we can establish, for 


example, let’s take the extreme. There was 


one fire or one blowout to it’s happening 


twice a week for five years. It’s somewhere 


in between there. 


I don’t know if we know, do we know 


for sure that it was -- to use Hans’ words --


regular throughout this time period? Or is it 


like the first rainbow trout that I caught 


which is about 18 inches long when I caught 


it, but actually when I tell my kids about it 

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now it’s closer to 50 inches long. It grows 


every year. 


A lot of, and I’ve seen it in my own 


institutions. A lot of events become more and 


more spectacular. I just want to know how 


well do we know sort of this frequency issue, 


if we can get a handle on it. Is it like once 


a month? Was it a weekly thing? 


Hans, maybe you can address that in a 


moment, but I’d like to get a feel for the 


extent to which we can say that this was 


applied to people throughout this time period. 


Then the other part of it, I really am 


interested in the sort of short-term dose. 


Now I’ve seen, in fact I can think of a case 


where I had a worker who had an incident where 


basically his full sample became airborne, and 


he was in breathing that sample and received, 


and we had great dosimetry because we can 


follow. 


We followed urine. We did whole body 


counting. We did nose swabs, and so we could 


pretty well determine his dose in the first 


year. And it was in the range of 20 rem to 


the chest or to the lungs. And that was an 

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incident that occurred in just a matter of 


minutes. So these things can occur, but in 


that particular case, he had to have a curie 


of activity become airborne in a very enclosed 


space. 


It seems to me that if we have some 


source term information and make some 


assumptions, we could sort of at least get an 


order of magnitude idea of whether we’re 


talking about millirems or multiple rems or 


rads if you want to do it in rads or sieverts 


and greys. But it seems to me it would be 


somewhat helpful to at least be able to say 


more than we think the dose was high because 


it actually is pretty hard to deliver real 


high doses by inhalation in short periods of 


time. 


And you can go back and look in the 


literature, and there’s a lot of cases where 


people are exposed, where we know of the 


dosimetry and know the source terms. And it’s 


surprising the small fraction of the total 


source term that it’s possible to ingest in 


even minutes or longer. 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Let me respond 

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33 

 

 

to the issue of frequency. I think there’s no 


better testimony that has greater strength 


than that from himself. And as you saw 


in the first draft report and the second one, 


I quoted directly from interviews so that at 


least one of the hallmarks of his comments 


that is documented in a number of reports was 


the day of six explosions in one day. 


And so when you have six explosions in 


one day, the likelihood that you have other 


explosions, perhaps not as frequently as six 


in one day, but certainly others on a routine 


basis is something that you have to conclude. 


And that is supported by other documents that 


involve interviews with former workers. And I 


believe has also accumulated some 


additional information, and I’m not sure 


whether he went into the library to get some 


archived data that would support that notion. 


So the likelihood of a large number of 


these events is something that I don’t 


question at this point. Whether it’s once a 


week, once every two weeks, I don’t know. And 


it’s possibly correct when you say that with 


time things do get embellished, but even if 

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34 

 

they were to occur once a month, I think that 


that would still be a sufficiently frequent 


event that would affect people with less than 


250 day work employment. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: The interview in your, in 


the appendix, , his recollection from 


the ‘50s is that was on the order of once a 


week. My recollection from earlier, looking 


at the earlier period when we first did the 


Ames evaluation is in the early period 


blowouts were possibly more frequent than 


that. 


DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I would think that they 


would have taken some steps to mitigate that 


and so normally in a facility like this you 


would expect, aside from regulatory things, 


that people would take steps to mitigate that 


kind of event. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, and that’s why the six 


in a day, I think, was during the Manhattan 


Project or very close to it. Yeah, it was. 


DR. MELIUS: Larry, then Gen. 


MR. ELLIOTT: , I don’t know if he’s 


on the line because he told us he had clinic 


today, but he would try to visit us when he 

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35 

 

 

could, sent yesterday or day before yesterday 


some lab notebook pages that refer to just 


what you mentioned there, Paul, that they were 


trying to take steps to mitigate. 


There are actually, I think there’s 


one reference there to putting a steel band 


around the bomb device itself so that, you 


know, it’d try to contain the contents even 


further. But be that as it may, I couldn’t 


decipher from that set of notes in the lab 


book how frequent these occurred. 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Yeah, you’re 


correct obviously in the sense where the early 


period was an experimental period. The use of 


wet lime was one of the major causes for these 


explosions, and I’m sure that with time they 


learned lessons that would reduce the number. 


But the interview involves periods 


of time that were towards the final end, so in 


the early ‘50s. So if he still recalls once a 


week, then it’s possible that explosions 


earlier, in the ‘40s, might have even been at 


a higher frequency. 


DR. MELIUS: Gen. 


DR. ROESSLER: The interview that was 

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36 

 

included in Arjun’s report but didn’t come 


through as a PDF; he has just now sent it to 


us, and I’ve gotten it. And I’ve glanced at 


it. This was the 1961 interview, and I 


haven’t had a chance to look at it in detail. 


But just looking at it and comparing it to the 


interview, I think has at that time 


much more recall of the details of what was 


going on. So I think that’s an important one 


to look at. And again, I haven’t had time to 


look through it and myself evaluate the 


frequency issue, but if you can get it, you 


might want to look at it. 


DR. MELIUS: Can I suggest as a way to go 


forward, I think there, I think we’ve, well, 


one is we need to, it would be helpful 


recognizing though how the uncertainty 


involved with it and the fact that we don’t 


have a sharp cutoff to deal from is to do some 


sort of estimate. What’s the potential 


magnitude of these exposures from an incident? 


And then the second issue is can we 


pin down more what is the frequency of these 


incidents. Again, probably the estimated 


incidents, the nature of these events that 

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occur over time, starting with early on the 


facility up and over the course of the SEC to 


that. And I think we have some more newer 


information that may help with that. 


Again, albeit it’s not going to be, 


you know, we don’t have complete incident 


reports. It’s going to be generally based 


mostly on people’s recollection. Would that 


be helpful? Because I think if we have an 


estimated magnitude, we can talk about that 


issue. Do these qualify? Does an incident 


qualify? And then so to speak, secondly, 


would be over what time period does that 


qualify and would that make sense based on 


what we can, what little information we may 


have on the incidents. 


DR. NETON: Right, and that kind of almost 


could bring you back to square one, which is 


are these incidents reconstructable. If there 


is enough background information on these 


incidents and can put your hands around it, 


then it may be that the people with less than 


250 days have a recourse which is we have an 


approach to reconstructing their doses. 


Because all we said in the original 

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one was for routine exposures, these non-


incident exposures, the current exposures, we 


can’t reconstruct the dose because we didn’t 


have enough monitoring information. But if 


it’s identified, fairly definitively that 


there were x number of incidents and no more, 


and one developed a model, it comes to my mind 


that these explosions happened fairly 


routinely at many uranium facilities where we 


have particularly robust monitoring data for 


urine and such. 


And my recollection remembers seeing 


the types of levels of internal exposure from 


these incidents that can be speculated based 


on worst case scenarios. That doesn’t mean it 


necessarily follows that it applies directly 


to Ames, but there may be some ways of looking 


at that and coming to some conclusions. 


DR. ROESSLER: I think one of the things 


that we have to keep in mind as we look at 


this 250 day topic we’re talking about is 


we’re not talking about one facility. All 


facilities are going to be different. But 


what we have to do, I think, in fairness to 


everybody is to set criteria that can be 

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followed as we look at other facilities. Now 


we have to keep the whole world of facilities 


in mind on this when we do it. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I’m a little bit confused by 


what Jim just said, and you just said, which 


is that if you can somehow put your arms 


around the dose reconstruction for the 


incidents, then the less than 250 days will no 


longer be in the SEC. Now I thought --


DR. NETON: No, no, no, that’s not what I 


said. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: That you could reconstruct 


their doses and then they would not be 


included in the class. 


DR. NETON: They’re not included currently. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: They’re not included 


currently, and they would not be included 


because you could reconstruct their doses. 


DR. NETON: We would reconstruct whatever we 


could for the less than 250 days. Right now 


we say that we cannot reconstruct routine 


exposures because that’s what we identified as 


the exposure pathway for these folks. 


MR. ELLIOTT: If we can put a maximum bound 


on these incident-type exposures, we could use 

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those in our partial dose reconstruction. 


DR. NETON: Partial dose reconstruction. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: So that’s one clarification, 


but I thought we were talking about health 


endangerment which is separate from the dose 


reconstruction piece. 


DR. NETON: Health endangerment only applies 


after you had agreed you can’t reconstruct the 


dose. 


DR. MELIUS: Yeah, but Jim, if you can’t 


reconstruct part of the dose, then you don’t 


meet the accuracy, sufficient accuracy 


criteria because the, again, the --


DR. NETON: Well, we need to talk about 


that. 


DR. MELIUS: Yeah, let’s talk about it right 


now because it’s critical here because --


DR. ZIEMER: Well, no, if they can 


reconstruct part of the dose and it’s 


sufficient for someone with less than 250 days 


to show that they have a POC of 50 percent or 


greater, then that’s sufficient accuracy for 


making a decision. 


DR. MELIUS: Correct, but not sufficient 


accuracy for someone that’s potentially in the 

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41 

SEC. If the increment of dose, and we went 


through this at the first meeting we had was 


this issue of if the incremented dose that you 


can’t reconstruct could put them over the 50 


percent, then that, you know, I guess fails 


the sufficient accuracy test in terms of full 


dose reconstruction for the class. 


DR. NETON: I don’t know about that. We’d 


have to, I have to think about that because 


really what we’re talking about here is 


adding, essentially adding a class of workers 


based on exposures to incidents, discrete 


incidents. And we’re trying to apply that 


litmus test based on our regulation. Now 


these discrete incidents as Hans has talked 


about, they’re there. They’re out there. Now 


we’re saying do we know enough about these 


incidents to say that we could do them or we 


can’t. And we could do them if someone wants 


to propose a class that has --


DR. ZIEMER: If you knew the frequency then 


it would be much less of an issue. My guess 


is this frequency issue is not going to be 


solvable. We’re not going to know that very 


well. 

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DR. NETON: I don’t want to prejudge that. 


All I’m saying is that we have added 


originally a class at Ames based on 250 days 


which is the default criteria because our 


evaluation did not identify any discrete 


incidents that would result in exceptionally 


high levels of exposure equivalent to 


criticality. That’s all we said. 


So now we’re evaluating is there a 


discrete incident out there that would create 


another class which would be eligible for SEC 


based on less than 250 day exposure. And in 


fact, essentially if we say it’s a discrete 


incident, anyone with any presence at that 


incident, one minute, would become eligible in 


that class. But I think that would need to be 


evaluated in the context of can you do these, 


can you do a dose reconstruction. 


DR. MELIUS: But we define the original 


class base that we couldn’t reconstruct their 


quote/unquote routine exposure. So there’s 


still, we still cannot reconstruct an 


individual’s complete dose with sufficient 


accuracy, and they pass that test. 


DR. NETON: The 250 day requirement applies. 

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DR. MELIUS: Two hundred and fifty day, but 


then the question is do they, I mean, it 


doesn’t branch, I mean, the branching is, 


originally it’s sufficient accuracy. And then 


if not sufficient accuracy, then the question 


is, is it 250 days or is it the discrete 


incident, you know, was less than 250 days. 


DR. NETON: That’s what I’m saying. If we 


can identify discrete incidents that are less 


than 250 days that result in exceptionally 


high levels of exposure, then there’s a case 


to be made that they would be added. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, let me ask maybe a 


simpler question because I’m getting a little 


bit confused about the statements that you’ve 


just made. Are we talking about generating a 


whole new class of people? You’ve looked at 


Ames, and you’ve decided that you could not 


reconstruct internal dose. I mean, I don’t 


know exactly what, just opened the petition 


evaluation report to see exactly what it says. 


But I don’t believe you ever made the claim 


that you can construct some piece of the 


internal dose, in the evaluation report. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: I think we said uranium. 

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DR. MAKHIJANI: You said you could not 


reconstruct thorium dose. I don’t believe you 


made any claim that you could reconstruct 


thorium incident dose but nothing else, but 


not the routine dose. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: No. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I think it generally covered 


some piece of the internal dose. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: That’s correct. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Thank you for jogging my 


memory. Let me just ask the question because 


I truly am a little bit at sea now as to what 


just happened. What I thought we were talking 


about is the same category of workers who are 


only differentiated from the rest of the 


workers by the fact that they had less than 


250 days. So we’re past the stage of whether 


we can reconstruct doses for this group of 


workers or not and talking about whether their 


health was in danger. 


Now if that’s not the case, and we’re 


talking about a whole new SEC petition then 


I’m confused about that. 


DR. NETON: No, it’s important to point out, 


Bomber pointed it out in reminding you that if 

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we said that we can reconstruct uranium doses 


for these workers, then this whole discussion 


does evolve, particularly in the area of the 


bombs for the uranium that Hans has just 


provided a write up, evolves on can we 


reconstruct those incident doses or not and 


whether they, you know, if we can, then the 


250-day issue is --


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Well, let me 


add one comment to that. Even if, let’s 


assume, we take a single event and reconstruct 


doses and even bound that dose, the second 


question that you have to answer is how many 


events would a person with let’s say even two 


months of employment would have experienced. 


And that’s a question you cannot 


answer because unless you have the full 


documentation about the incidents and when 


they occurred, you can’t, you can bound maybe 


one incident, but you can’t identify the total 


number of incidents per unit time that a 


person might have been exposed to, and 


therefore, you’re still in a situation where 


you can’t answer the question about the dose 


for persons less than 250 days of employment. 

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DR. NETON: I don’t know that, Hans. I 


mean, that would have to be evaluated, but 


you’ve got some statements from some workers 


talking about frequencies and such. I mean, 


you were very positive about some numbers at 


one point I thought. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, the order of magnitude 


ideas. 


DR. NETON: Yeah, but can that be a bounding 


analysis? I mean, that’s --


DR. MAKHIJANI: How can it be? If somebody 


recollected -- I’m really confused by the 


drift of the discussion. I need some clarity 


here. If you’ve got somebody recollecting 


that it was about once a week and in the ‘50s, 


and then others saying maybe it was more 


frequent in the ‘40s, there’s a lot of element 


of recollection and uncertainty and 


speculation in that generality. And then how 


you would possibly go from that to an 


individual, even in principle, let alone doing 


more interviews and so on, is puzzling me a 


great deal, and still meet the criterion of 42 


CFR 82 which says that under no circumstances 


will an individual be harmed by any level of 

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uncertainty. 


DR. NETON: I’m not sure if it says exactly 


that. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I think it says exactly 


that. 


DR. NETON: I think you’re paraphrasing very 


loosely, Arjun. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, no, I am not. I will 


read it to you. Let me pull it up. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: I would like to add 


something on the class. 


DR. NETON: I think it says something about 


providing reasonable dose reconstruction. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Let’s pull it up. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: Dr. Melius, can I add 


something? 


DR. NETON: Yes. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: I think what’s important on 


the class is recognizing where the blowouts 


occurred. If, you know, we’ve identified 


virtually all of Ames where they were 


potentially exposed to radioactive material. 


The class was defined because a routine or 


potential exposure thorium internal exposures 


from the bombs in a blowout standpoint we can 

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clearly identify which buildings where bombs 


or blowouts would have occurred, and 


therefore, that’s a completely different class 


definition. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Could I just read this for 


the record? 


DR. MELIUS: Yeah, that has potential. And 


actually, when you said if the, only exposures 


from the incidents were things of a nature 


that you can reconstruct, I mean, so 


hypothetically then that would be different. 


I agree with you there. I think the question 


then comes down is the nature of the 


information, does it allow you to reconstruct 


and some of that stuff. 


DR. NETON: I’m not saying that we can’t. 


Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that we 


can do that. I’m just saying that you have to 


follow the steps in the regulation which have 


a very prescribed process. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Could we settle what’s in 


the regulation? Let me just read from it. 


Forty-two CFR 82: “Claimants will in 


no case be harmed by any level of uncertainty 


involved in their claims, comma, since 

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assumptions applied by NIOSH will consistently 


give the benefit of the doubt to claimants, 


period. Hence, comma, the level of 


uncertainty is not an issue whenever there is 


a sufficient factual basis to establish the 


radiation source type and quantity and a basic 


understanding of the process in which the 


employee worked, period.” 


So the --


DR. NETON: That’s the preamble, not the 


regulation. That’s not part of the 


regulation. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: This is the promise to the 


claimants that you’ve made in your final rule, 


that claimants in no case will be harmed by 


any level of uncertainty. And this is the 


commitment, I mean, so in that case I think I 


need to be informed about what is the meaning 


of the commitment that you make to the 


claimants, in the ruling you say that they 


will not be harmed. We’ve been trying to 


interpret it by saying that there’s a 


probabilistic interpretation of the statement. 


DR. NETON: Well, what’s the question about 


harming the claimant now? 

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DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, if you cannot, how can 


you translate a recollection of 50 years ago? 


We can develop a general idea that blowouts 


were very frequent. They may have been daily 


or weekly or monthly, but how could you 


translate that kind of information to an 


individual dose reconstruction in this 


context? 


DR. NETON: Arjun, I said we would have to 


evaluate that. I didn’t say that we could or 


we couldn’t. I said that that’s the first 


step in the evaluation is, can you? If you 


cannot, then you go to the next test which is 


were these exceptionally high levels of 


exposure. There’s a couple little, you know, 


there’s a pathway that needs to be followed. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I’m just looking for clarity 


on the confusion. 


DR. MELIUS: I think to move on with this I 


think we’re back to those two points. We need 


to estimate the magnitude which we talked 


about, and we need to gather more information 


on frequency. So if SC&A can work on both, 


and then, Jim, if you can bring to our next 


meeting your table of whatever you’ve done. I 

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don’t want to, I can’t exactly recall what you 


DR. NETON: Oh, the 50-year dose? 


DR. MELIUS: Yeah, yeah, you said you had 


some of your own calculations. Maybe we can 


just bring that so we can discuss that. And I 


think that, and I guess my next question is 


there other information that would be helpful 


to further the discussion on this? 


DR. ZIEMER: I just want to get a feel for 


this. Are we saying that we’ll take either a 


fire or blowout incident source term 


information? Do we have reasonable source 


term information? 


DR. NETON: The charge in the --


DR. ZIEMER: And let’s suppose that SC&A and 


NIOSH agree on what some reasonable parameters 


are, and we make user friendly, some claimant 


friendly assumptions about percent airborne 


and the particle sizes and related parameters 


and come up with some number. And at that 


point then we’ll have to do something with it. 


Suppose that number is that everybody 


agrees that in a blowout nobody could have 


gotten more than let’s say 100 millirem or 

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maybe it’s 100 rem. I’m just taking some 


extremes. It probably won’t be that clear 


cut, but if everybody agreed that it was a 


small number, then where are we on this? Then 


you would have to say you’ve got to be present 


at x number of these or if it’s a big number 


maybe one will do it. But at some point the 


only thing that’s going to tell us is how 


important is an event. Or is it an event? 


DR. MELIUS: How potentially important is an 

event. 

DR. ZIEMER: And maybe we can’t do it. 

Maybe we can’t do it. 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): I want to make 


a comment here because if there are any real 


data involving blowouts at other facilities, 


you have to be very cautious here. One of the 


things that we’ve learned when we read the 


documents, especially that of Dr. Payne in a 


thesis, is that these buildings were never 


intended to be used for this kind of process. 


So that if you look at Fernald and other 


places where these blowouts may have occurred, 


these facilities, other facilities, were 


probably designed to deal with that in terms 

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of ventilation and other factors. 


This was an old chicken coop or 


whatever it was that started out. And when 


they started the actual process itself, they 


went down to the local hardware store and 


bought huge ventilators in order to keep the 


workers, the production workers, cool. So 


that we’re dealing with a very unique beast 


here in terms of trying to understand what 


potential airborne exposures were because they 


were probably amplified, especially in the 


early years, by the poor construction and 


engineering design of the buildings. 


DR. ZIEMER: Well, and that’s fine. Let’s 


take that into consideration. I’m just, even 


if we ultimately can’t use it, it seems to me 


that it makes more sense to at least have 


looked at some scenarios rather than say, 


well, just intuitively the number is high or 


the number is low. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: Quick question here, 


question, thought, whatever. But doesn’t it 


ultimately come down to what dose per unit 


time we’re going to agree to the critical 


organ is equivalent to the criticality. 

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DR. ZIEMER: What’s hot. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: And if you know that, if 


you can agree to that, then you could back 


calculate the intake if you could agree to 


what that dose is. And then you could say, 


okay, is it plausible? Is it feasible? 


DR. MELIUS: But if we had agreed to that, 


we would have had a different regulation, and 


so that’s why we’re --


MR. RUTHERFORD: I’m just throwing that out. 


DR. MELIUS: Yeah, we’re working from, it’s 


a nice thought, but, okay. And I think the 


second part of it is the frequency over time 


and location of the incidents which would help 


us to define a potential class. 


DR. NETON: I totally agree that fleshing 


out this blowout is a good start because 


otherwise we’re talking from generalities. I 


don’t know where it’s going to come in, and of 


course, we should include all the 


uncertainties. I agree with the uncertainty 


issue there that Arjun has raised. We need to 


be cognizant of that and what could it have 


been, given our lack of knowledge of the 


process. 

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But I also know that we have done a 


lot of uranium analyses in this project so 


far, and there are certain dust loading 


factors that one, I think even SC&A and NIOSH 


would agree, one probably wouldn’t exceed and 


be able to survive the environment. And some 


of those assumptions could come into play and 


the durations that might have occurred and 


knowledge of settling of uranium material is 


blown into the air. There’s some factors that 


can be used to bound these things I think 


fairly well. We’ll see how it comes out. 


DR. MELIUS: Any other words on Iowa? 


 DR. WADE: Who’s doing it? 


DR. MELIUS: SC&A will, yeah, I think it may 


be helpful if there were some sort of 


technical call between Jim and Arjun and Hans 


to sort of work out the parameters so we all 


agree when we come into the next meeting. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Just for clarity I made some 


notes, but let me read out the notes about the 


to-do list so we have some agreement. 


DR. ZIEMER: Maybe some of us could listen 


in on that call, too. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, fine, yes. 

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There’s the question of the number, 


the frequency of incidents so that’s one issue 


to research. And then there’s the question of 


having some kind of dose reconstruction model 


for one incident, taking into account the kind 


of circumstances that Hans has pointed out. 


And what Jim just said in terms of our prior 


agreements about maximum breathable 


environment for a routine. 


DR. ZIEMER: Is there a blowout and a fire? 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, there were fires and 


blowouts. 


Hans? 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Yeah, one of 


the things that I would recommend is to 


perhaps look at Figure 1 on page three of the 


most recent report. That gives you a flow 


plan of Little Ankeny and realize just how 


small these facilities were and the proximity 


to not just the workers who may have been 


directly involved, but also all workers within 


that building. It’s a relatively small 


building and one could make use of that as the 


starting point for modeling such an exposure. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: There’s no scale here, Hans. 

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DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Well, I think 


we can probably get to that scale by looking 


at some of the photographs of Little Ankeny. 


DR. NETON: Yes, we have that. 


DR. MELIUS: Gen. 


DR. ROESSLER: Is it clear which buildings 


were used for uranium and which were used for 


thorium? 


DR. MELIUS: Yeah, so I think it’s frequency 


over time and place and nature of the 


different incidents. 


DR. NETON: My recollection was that we did 


have urine data --


MR. RUTHERFORD: We have uranium urine data. 


DR. NETON: Uranium urine data for these 


workers. I don’t think we --


DR. MAKHIJANI: Some. 


DR. NETON: There’s some. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: It’s actually a detailed 


study that was done, whether it’s accurate or 


not --


DR. NETON: It may or may not be useful to 


incorporate into the analysis because that 


certainly provides some bounding, potentially 


bounding, scenarios. My recollection was that 

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58 

 

we did that at Mallinckrodt. We had a fair 


amount of urine data in the later period, and 


the incidence of the explosions just didn’t 


seem to come to the level of body burden that 


one would, one could speculate on a worst case 


scenario. 


 DR. WADE: One last thought, if there are 


technical calls, I would suggest that we 


invite . 


DR. MELIUS: And I was actually going to say 


for next work group meeting we should try to 


schedule so that we know that he and any of 


the other claimant representatives might be 


available. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, it really would have 


been useful to have him on this. 


DR. MELIUS: Good. 

Yes. 

MS. HOWELL: Can I just interject a friendly 

reminder here? The working group has before 


it documents that have not been fully redacted 


for Privacy Act purposes and as such they may 


include some names of protected individuals. 


So please just remember that when you’re 


speaking on the record and try to limit 

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59 

 

yourself in the names that you say since this 


is a public meeting. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Emily, which, are there 


particular documents that --


MS. HOWELL: The Ames report and the NTS 

report. 

DR. MELIUS: The last two reports. 

DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Can I ask a 


question regarding that? For instance, the 


appendix that I took as part of this where I 


crossed out the name was, in fact, a document 


that is available. It’s in the public domain. 


Nevertheless, I did cross out the names. Now 


are other names like part of that 


Privacy Act? I mean, his name is everywhere 


so --


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): This is 


Liz. I’m sorry. We are not going to have 


this discussion on the record because we’re 


not going to sit here and say names that are 


Privacy Act protected, on the record. We’ll 


be happy to have this discussion with you 


offline. There are names in there that have 


to be protected. The names that you removed 


didn’t necessarily need to be removed, but 

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there were other names that did need to be 


removed. So if you want to have this 


discussion, we can have it offline, and we can 


explain to you what names need to be 


protected. 


DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): All right, I 


certainly --


DR. ZIEMER: Is this document under review 


now by counsel? 


MS. HOWELL: Right, but we’re having some 


timing issues with having enough time to 


actually perform reviews prior to meetings. 


DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 


DR. MELIUS: Do you people need a break or 


should we just move on to Nevada? Ray needs a 


break. Let’s take a five-minute break. 


(Whereupon, a break was taken at 11:06 a.m. 


and the meeting resumed at 11:17 a.m.) 


 DR. WADE: Board members on the line? 


 (no response) 


 DR. WADE: Mark, are you back? 


MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): I’m back. This 


is Bob Presley. I’m back. 


 DR. WADE: Bob and Mark? 


MR. GRIFFON (by Telephone): Yes, I’m back, 

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61 

 

Lew. 


 DR. WADE: Any other Board members on the 


line? 


MR. SCHOFIELD (by Telephone): Phillip 


Schofield, I’m back. 


 DR. WADE: You’re not technically a Board 


member now. 


MR. SCHOFIELD (by Telephone): No, not 


technically. 


 DR. WADE: So you don’t count against a 


quorum. So welcome, please stay and enjoy. 


Any other Board members? 


 (no response) 


 DR. WADE: Okay, we’re back on the record. 


MR. ELLIOTT: Has joined us yet? 


 (no response) 


DR. MELIUS: Then let’s move on to the 


Nevada report. 


NTS REPORT
 

Arjun, do you want to give a brief 


summary? 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Sure. I just want to read 


section, in the first section of the Nevada 


report I just compiled a sort of brain 


storming session from the last working group 

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62 

meeting that we had as to what might 


constitute exceptionally high doses in a set 


of bullet points. I wrote out some of them 


earlier this morning. 


And one of the things that we 


discussed at SC&A in preparing this report is 


that I think we need to recognize that Nevada 


Test Site and Pacific Proving Grounds, the 


test sites are very different than 


manufacturing facilities because the 


atmospheric testing programs and the vents of 


the underground tests are by their nature 


situations where nuclear materials are not 


confined unlike manufacturing facilities where 


you’re trying to confine the material, keep it 


out of the environment. By the nature of the 


operations they’re unconfined material. 


So it seemed in some circumstances 


actually quite difficult to distinguish 


incidents from work-related exposures. And 


the tritium exposures and the re-entry workers 


in the ’58 to ’61 period for the tunnel reentry workers kind of provides some 


illustration of that that I’ll talk about a 


little bit later. 

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There is a definition of an incident 


from Operation NOUGAT that we discussed at the 


last meeting that I put it into the report 


just for convenience here, an accidental or 


unexpected type of overexposure, and not 


situations where minor exposures occurred, so 


excludes minor exposures. 


The second section of the report just 


goes over some data. We did go over the data 


that Jim Neton compiled and put on the O 


drive. Didn’t have a chance to go over it 


much, but I had forgotten that it was there. 


Sorry about that. Also a little bit buried by 


Rocky Flats. 


We looked at incident reports. We 


looked at some of the claimant data, and we 


also looked at the question of incidents from 


the general D and A type of reports that were 


available and reorganized those from the last 


set of data that were presented to you to be 


more useful following on the discussion. And 


there are four tables as attachments to this 


report with certain items highlighted that may 


be relevant because of the involvement of 


civilian employees. 

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DR. ZIEMER: Excuse me, are we still looking 


at the November report or has there been --


DR. MAKHIJANI: No, this is a new report 


that you should have received yesterday 


morning. Should I send it to you? 


DR. ROESSLER: Paul, I’ve got it written and 


on my disk. Do you want this --


DR. ZIEMER: Do you have it on your disk? 


DR. ROESSLER: I have it on my disk. 


DR. ZIEMER: Can you put it on a flash drive 


for me, and I’ll just transfer it. 


Sorry to interrupt. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I looked at the spreadsheets 


that Jim Neton compiled for the ’61 claimants 


who are not, who don’t meet the 250 day 


criterion. Actually, I had a question about 


one of them, whether they do or not, but aside 


from that 26 cases seem to have complete 


external dose data, and 21 cases did not have 


complete external dose data. They may have 


had some. Many had some. And 14 cases seemed 


likely to have complete data. And I think I 


agree with Jim’s compilation in that. They 


were missing maybe the last day or the last 


piece of it, not a significant incompleteness 

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there. 


But so about a third of the claimant 


population has some, more than a small gap in 


external dose data. And the question arises 


how we’re going to deal with external dose 


data gaps in terms of incidents and then 


external doses in some kind of indicator, at 


least qualitative during incidents for 


internal dose even though you can’t put a 


number on it. Then how do we deal with the 


problem of incomplete external dose records? 


There are no internal dose records 


until 1955. And to the best of my knowledge, 


and I stand to be corrected because we haven’t 


done all of the research. From what I could 


gather looking at the reports, it seemed that 


until REECO took over bioassay monitoring in 


1958 that the 1955-1958 interval has a very 


small amount of urinalysis data. Most of it 


seemed like nasal swabs. 


Is that your finding also? Mine is 


very preliminary. 


DR. NETON: I’m not as on top of this as I 


should be either, but I think you’re correct. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Because in Operation 

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Plumbbob, and I’ve given the data from that 


which was in ’57, the nasal swabs were in the 


thousands, and the number of urinalysis kits 


that were handed out were in the dozens. And 


so, and there were a very large number of 


personnel involved. So I think that really 


for practical purposes it doesn’t seem that 


there are internal dose data available for 


most people who were on the site until ’58. 


DR. NETON: I would agree. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Would you agree with that? 


And after ’58 that there are data on tritium, 


and there are data on plutonium, and in ’61 


data on gross fission products were added. 


Now the site profile says that in ’61 when 


high gross fission product was detected above 


the control limit, that they did further 


analyses. 


I looked at the records of tunnel reentry workers where, that were associated with 


some of the high tritium exposures from 


incidents, accidental exposures where people 


did not know that there was a lot of tritium. 


I could not find data, and I’ve only done a 


preliminary screening of the documents and 

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there’s a lot of paper out there. 


I could not find follow-on analyses in 


the case of workers who had more than the 


control amount of gross fission products in 


urine. I found plutonium data. I found 


tritium data. I found gross fission product 


data, but I didn’t find like other volatiles, 


Iodine-131 or any other isotope-specific 


photon or beta emitter data following on that. 


There is gross fission product data in 1951. 


We gave examples of some incidents 


just to give a flavor for what’s out there 


following on the direction that we got at the 


last working group meeting, and there are few 


examples. This doesn’t cover the universe, 


but there are some examples. We didn’t go 


farther because I didn’t, I really wanted 


direction from the working group so as not to 


spend resources in a direction that the 


working group would not find useful. 


There was an exposure, high exposure, 


during Operation Teapot, rather there was a 


failure of radiological controls and an 


incident during the Tesla test where one 


individual went to ground zero and got a very 

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high dose. We don’t know whether this 


individual is a claimant or not. In fact, I 


don’t know who this individual was. The type 


of work could have resulted in resuspension. 


There was a claimant with a type of work that 


could have resulted in resuspension, but I did 


not write the type of work down so as not to 


involve Privacy issues, that also had some 


significant, higher than usual, external dose 


recorded. 


The second example was an incident 


during the 1953 Upshot-Knothole series of 


tests during the Badger shot. There was, 


workers were allowed to enter areas that had 


greater than ten rads per hour to retrieve 


their instruments. 


And according to the Defense Nuclear 


Agency report, an unknown number of 


overexposures resulted from the 


misunderstanding of who was to go where, and 


people entering high radiation areas when they 


weren’t supposed to because of this 


misunderstanding. Of course, ’53, there are 


no internal dose data so we don’t know what 


the associated intakes might have been. 

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Then there was an unplanned 


criticality incident as a third example during 


Project 56. I believe this must have been 


during the test in January because it was the 


last in a series of four tests in that 


project. The external doses from that test 


are known and recorded, and they’re cited. 


They range from 4.3 to 28 rad. And the dose 


rates were quite high, 20 to 30 rads per hour. 


And there are some bioassay data for 


personnel from Project 56. And we did some 


dose calculations of committed dose. And 


we’re using committed doses just as an 


indication, not to say that this is the way 


dose reconstruction was done, just as a 


screening indication of whether things might 


be high or low or worth looking at in more 


detail. And in this case the plutonium 


related committed doses to the bone surface, 


and even the effective dose, are in the tens 


or hundreds of rem. So that’s the third 


example. 


The fourth example relates to the 


tritium exposures that were unintended. And 


these occurred over a series of years, 

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starting in 1958 for tunnel re-entry workers. 


And there were also exposures in 1959 when 


workers went back into the tunnels even though 


there was no testing in 1959. The tritium 


appears to have persisted for quite awhile in 


the crevices and cracks and be out-gassing. 


And then there were more exposures in 


1961. And there’s some discussion of, I 


believe they had one case at least, the 


exposure was on the order of ten rem from the 


tritium in 1959. There’s quite a bit of 


bioassay data. The detection limit I think 


went down from five microcuries to two 


microcuries per liter between ’58 and ’61, at 


least as I read the information, for the five 


microcuries from the site profile. But in ’61 


data the detection limit was two microcuries. 


Well, there were many samples in the 


hundred to 200 microcuries per liter range but 


most were below 100 microcuries per liter and 


many were below the detection limit. I think 


in the earlier years where we don’t, there is 


gross fission product data in 1961, but I 


don’t know how one could extrapolate from that 


into earlier years because the conditions for 

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71 

 

 

 

each of these entries seem to be very, very 


specific. 


And the testimony that was presented 


to the Board by is cited, and I have 


checked that I can say this because it was 


presented to the Board in open session. And 


she’s actually given me permission to use her 


records, but I’ve asked her for some 


clarification on that permission, and I will 


send it in to NIOSH and CDC when I get that. 


But she had said in the context of her 


testimony about to the Board that they 


were asked -- in the context of this tunnel 


re-entry and the accidental exposures -- that 


there were workers with high exposures 


including , were asked to throw away or 


lose their badges, and that the recordkeeping 


people had asked for lost badge forms or cards 


so they could enter a lost badge and issue a 


new one. I did verify two cases of that from 


1962 from log books. And those log books are 


quoted in the report on page 11. 


So they seem to be, it’s not definite 


corroboration, but I think it’s indicative 


corroboration together with what Jay Brady had 

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said, previously presented by SC&A in the site 


profile review, about people not wearing 


badges because they were afraid of losing 


their jobs or losing work in forward areas. 


So this has come up because of 


testimony in the context of incidents because 


of the tunnel re-entry incidents and exposures 


to tritium and obviously to, in come cases, to 


fission products. So that’s the fourth 


example. 


As a memo item from the tables there 


are lots of cases of high radiation rates but 


not documented who was there, whether anybody 


was there in some cases. In some cases the 


high exposure rates are associated with, very 


high exposure rates are associated with 


aircraft-type of surveys and people in 


helicopters over ground zero and so on. We 


don’t have, we have not compiled any exposure 


data on those and don’t know what the internal 


exposure situation might be. Obviously, 


there’d be some potential with the helicopters 


landing and taking off but not much if they 


were over-flying ground zero unless they were 


going through a cloud of course. 

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So that’s sort of the survey we’ve 


done. I tried to list some policy and 


technical issues that arise out of these 


surveys in the sections. And the policy 


issues that arise out of this compilation of 


incidents, at least as we saw them, were one 


of the policy issues that seemed to arise is 


are we going to look at claimants only or are 


we going to look at the universe of people 


with less than 250 days. 


We do agree that it’s useful and very 


important to look at the claimant data. But 


as I’ve read the rule, it applies to the class 


of people who worked there and not, so 


potentially who could apply and may not have 


applied for a variety of reasons including the 


fact that they may now be sick with cancer, 


but they may apply in the future. 


So that’s sort of a policy 


clarification that’s needed because in 


deciding what’s representative for members of 


a class I don’t know of any way that we’ve 


devised yet to relate how the claimant 


population is representative of the people who 


worked there. So that’s kind of an issue. 

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Then we recognize that we need, the 


rule requires demonstration of exceptionally 


high exposures and mentions criticality 


accidents. And then in 83.9 the rule also 


mentions depressed white blood cell count 


associated with radiation exposure. But this 


is, when there’s an SEC petition application 


being made on the basis of an incident -- at 


least as I read the rule, correct me if I’m 


wrong -- and how the requirement for an 


application based on an incident is to be 


related to a context where you already granted 


a class based on more that 250 days and are 


now debating less than 250 days, this was a 


question, at least, that arose in my mind. 


And I’m not clear on how that is to be 


done because 83.13, all it requires is that an 


incident happened. And presence during the 


incident doesn’t require establishment of 


potential, establishment of an actual value 


for the dose other than the criteria for 


exceptionally high exposures. So that seemed 


to be a policy problem. 


Then, as I mentioned, the integrity of 


data in the context of the 250-day issue. And 

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then the final policy question is does the 


individual have to demonstrate presence or is 


the presence of one or more of a group of 


employees, like tunnel re-entry workers or 


something like that, enough. Now that isn’t 


quite clear to me because, anyway, it’s a 


question that arose out of, say, the 


examination of, specifically really of the 


tunnel re-entry workers. 


Then the technical issues, there were 


three technical issues that got highlighted. 


One --I’ve mentioned them in passing I think. 


One is that there are no internal dose data at 


all up to sometime in 1955. And very little, 


as I read it in a preliminary way, until about 


1958. 


Then there are some missing external 


dose data as an indicator of internal dose for 


some of the, for about a third of the 


claimants. So how one might go about, say, 


using DTRA-type approaches presuming that they 


would be suitable to be used in this context 


is sort of unclear to us. And so we haven’t 


yet gone there in any significant way. 


And then the records of incidents and 

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high dose rates and DoD reports don’t often 


provide detail about who all was, were there. 


And sometimes you actually do see Los Alamos, 


Sandia and so on in the DNA reports but not 


always. So the question about how you add 


small groups of people to the class or whether 


you’re going to be broader in approaching the 


question, that seemed to arise as a technical 


problem. 


That’s my little survey. 


DR. MELIUS: Thank you. 


Questions? I realize everyone had 


limited time to review this. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, I’m really sorry about 


that. 


DR. MELIUS: I’ll start off because I’ve 


been sort of wrestling with how do we deal 


with this site, and I guess, again, I’m sort 


of convinced at least there’s potentially some 


claimants that should be in the SEC class who 


had less that 250 days there. I think to me 


the question is what’s the best way of going 


about and trying to identify or, I guess we 


talked about it earlier, come up with a class 


definition for them. 

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Or is the alternative, which I guess I 


had thought about, was, yeah, well, do you 


just do these as a series of 83.14s. I mean, 


is it going to come down to just being able to 


look at the individual record and whether it’s 


going to be possible to deal with, you know, 


as those come along that you evaluate an 


individual and that individual then may define 


another group of workers that, where it’s not 


going to be possible to reconstruct their 


doses and they would fit under these criteria. 


Because I guess what I’m concerned 


about is there going to be any sort of 


systematic way and efficient way of going 


through all these different incidents and 


defining classes of individuals that, you 


know, first criteria for what would be an 


incident that would qualify. And secondly, a 


class of individuals from those incidents 


given how sketchy at least the information 


available so far is. Or is there another 


source of data? 


The only other source of readily 


available data that hasn’t been looked at is 


the condition of those claimants that are less 

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than 250 days. There are a whole bunch of 


other claimants that NIOSH, at least, has some 


information on though how rigorous your dose 


reconstruction was on those I’m not sure 


simply because you weren’t really pressed to 


do that necessarily on these because of the 


greater than 250 day class. 


So it’s a real struggle to sort of 


come up, what is a workable way of dealing 


with this group? 


DR. NETON: It’s a good question. I can 


answer one policy clarification that Arjun 


threw out there. I think the answer is pretty 


easy. His question was do we rely solely on 


claimant data or not to evaluate these 


classes. And clearly the answer is no. 


I mean, claimant data is a very useful 


tool. It gives us some general idea about 


what’s out there. But you’re absolutely 


right. The entire evaluation needs to look at 


the workers who were onsite whether they are 


claimants or not. 


When it comes down to the, you know, 


Arjun has pointed out a number of little 


incidents that pop around all over the site, 

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but my take on this so far, and I haven’t 


studied this in detail. But going through it 


the best I could, I still haven’t seen 


anything in here that puts people in these 


exceptionally high exposure scenarios. 


Any of these incidents so far I 


haven’t seen anything that puts them into a 


criticality event. Again, we get back to the 


question of how high is high, but, you know, 


three rem, four rem here and there are 


mentioned. There’s some exposure scenarios 


which were the 39 rem which I couldn’t tell 


whether that was a measured dose rate --


DR. MAKHIJANI: It was a measured dose, I 


believe, or an estimated dose for that person. 


DR. NETON: But given all these scenarios 


hard to identify, I don’t see any that in my 


mind immediately strike out as passing that 


litmus test. 


DR. MELIUS: But would you agree with me 


there’s the potentials there from this site? 


I guess what I’m struggling with is how do you 


go about, how are we going to go about 


evaluating that other than incident by 


incident, and it may be case by case. Claim 

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by claim I guess is --


DR. NETON: Well, it’s appealing when you 


mention that we could handle these on a case 


by case basis. But then one would wonder can 


we even to do that? I don’t know, so it’s a 


problem. 


DR. MELIUS: Larry, while you were, I think 


you were out of the room, I mentioned that one 


of the options was do we approach this 


individual by individual as a series of 83.14 


petitions? Do you evaluate an individual 


claim, and then that individual claim may have 


been somehow defined, you know, you can’t 


reconstruct that. Then that individual claim 


then defines another group of workers so it’s 


all tunnel re-entry workers at a certain 


incident. 

MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): Jim? 

DR. MELIUS: Yes. 

MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): Bob Presley, 

can I speak? 

DR. MELIUS: You sure can. 

MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): One of the 

things that’s bothering me more than what 


Arjun was talking about is the chronic 

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exposure. We had hundreds of people over the 


years that spent time out there, that lived 


out there, either at Mercury or at Area 200 


where the prevailing winds blew up over the 


mountains. What bothers me more than these 


single incidents in the tunnel shots are the 


people that were out there that got chronic 


exposure. 


I agree that it’s probably low level, 


but I mean, I hate to say it, but a lot of 


these people were getting exposure 24 hours a 


day from the dust that they were living in and 


when we’d have dust storms, you know, it would 


uncover stuff and some things like that. And 


that bothers me more than the single 


incidents. I thought y’all were going to go 


in and look at some of that. 


DR. NETON: Well, Bob, this is Jim Neton. 


Remember that the SEC has already been granted 


for these workers between ’51 and ’62 or if 


they were there 250 days or more. That’s 


already been granted or is in process. 


DR. MELIUS: And our understanding is that 


the Department of Labor takes into account 


residence at the facility. So it’s roughly a 

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third or --


DR. ZIEMER: About 80 days. 


DR. MELIUS: -- eighty days. 


MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): Okay, so that’s 


already taken care of. 


DR. ZIEMER: The Department of Labor has 


assured us that they’d take care of that if a 


person shows they were there 24/7. 


DR. NETON: In fact, I was going to mention 


just tangentially that of the 61 claimants we 


have with less than 250 days I don’t know how 


many of those would fall under this criteria. 


We finally did that analysis. We had realized 


that Labor was going to apply that where some 


of the workers --


DR. MAKHIJANI: One I think actually has 


more than 250 days at PPG and NTS combined. 


DR. NETON: They’re very difficult to 


decipher. I don’t know if you’ve gone 


through. I’ve gone through almost all the 


claims myself. And you can’t really tell 


because there’s a lot of dates there, and 


they’re contractors so they’ll be assigned a 


badge on day one, then they’ll show up 


sporadically, a week, two weeks, a month 

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later, and you can’t tell whether that badge 


represents that entire time period or whether 


they needed to have new badges and that 


actually is those 21 that we just don’t know. 


MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): Hey, Jim? 

DR. NETON: Yes. 

MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): Has anybody 

looked for housing records? That’s something 


that they kept out there religiously. 


DR. NETON: Not from my, well, I don’t know, 


Bob. I would have to get with ORAU who 


developed a lot of this. 


MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): See, we all 


were housed out there, and you had to sign in 


the keys and things like that so those housing 


records were kept religiously. 


 DR. WADE: So the chronic exposure issue has 


been dealt with. The question remaining are 


these individual exposures. 


MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): Okay. 


DR. ZIEMER: In other criticality incidents 


we ought to know who the exposed people were. 


I mean, if you take the SL1 accident or the 


Oak Ridge, and in fact, many of those we know 


the doses fairly well, but if someone were 

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able to establish that they were in that 


location at the time, under the current rule 


they would already be covered, right? 


If someone were able by affidavit to 


say, well, you know, at Oak Ridge we have 


those five individuals, but in fact, I was in 


there with them, and they didn’t do dose 


reconstruction on me or do the mock-ups or 


somehow establish that they were there. And 


what would you do? You would take, what, the 


highest exposed person and say, well, or 


something --


DR. NETON: Where were you? How long were 


you there? 


MR. ELLIOTT: The first attempt would be a 


dose reconstruction attempt based on the data 


and the information at hand. 


DR. ZIEMER: But if they were already part 


of a, or they weren’t part of an SEC, but had 


an SEC cancer and showed that they were in 


there at that time --


DR. NETON: Then we would reconstruct the 


dose. 


DR. ZIEMER: -- we would still try to 


reconstruct the dose. 

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DR. NETON: A criticality event in and of 


itself doesn’t grant you SEC status. 


DR. ZIEMER: I know, so we’d have to try to 


MR. ELLIOTT: I don’t believe the 


criticality event at Y-12 is bounded by the 


current classes that have been established 


there. 


DR. ZIEMER: No, it hasn’t. And I’m trying 


to think of these tunnel ones where we have a 


lot of data on people who did go in and the 


issue is that, yeah, but a lot of times we 


weren’t wearing our badges because we were 


told not to. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: There are a couple of 


different issues with the tunnel workers 


specifically. I think for ’61 that the 


tritium data may not be an issue. I don’t 


know how complete they are, but there are 


quite a lot of tritium data. So that probably 


can be reconstructed in some way, and there 


are quite --


DR. ZIEMER: It’s hard to deliver real high 


exposures. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: But whatever there is, you 

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know, there are high-end data and you could 


put a 95 percentile on. 


DR. NETON: The first case we did at the 


Nevada Test Site was a tunnel worker who was 


compensated based on tritium exposure. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: So what I think for the 


early tritium, ’58 and ’59 workers, there are 


no gross fission product data and so no data 


on exposure to fission products. And then you 


drop this issue of data integrity associated 


with these incidents. So I would say that for 


the tunnel re-entry workers that those are 


probably the big ones that you can say are --


DR. ZIEMER: Conceptually, would they have 


to show that they were a tunnel re-entry 


person? 


DR. NETON: If that were the basis for their 


class, yes. 


DR. ZIEMER: If that were the basis for the 


class then they would have to show that. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Because the incidents, in 


principle, or in hypothesis say that exposure 


to gross fission products, a thyroid dose or 


something, could be quite high or 


exceptionally high, then it would be high for 

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that circumstance. So you would be talking 


about that particular group of workers I would 


imagine and not people who didn’t go into the 


tunnels. 

MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): Hey, Lew, this 

is Bob Presley. 

 DR. WADE: Yes. 

MR. PRESLEY (by Telephone): I’ve got to get 

off here. 

 DR. WADE: Okay, thank you. 

DR. MELIUS: Thanks, Bob. 

DR. NETON: This came out in the first 


discussion we had with Ames. It’s a unique 


situation where we’ve evaluated the class. 


We’ve come up with 250-day defaults of the 


criteria because in our searching through the 


records, we were not able to identify clear-


cut, at least, incidents that rose to the 


level of exceptionally high on the criticality 


(unintelligible). And now we’re sort of 


trying to go backwards and retrofit this and 


say are all these workers now, should they all 


be covered under the less than 250 days? And 


it doesn’t seem like --


DR. ZIEMER: Or should some of them. 

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DR. NETON: Yeah, and you can’t do that. 


You almost have to go back to square one and 


say are there pockets of workers, classes of 


workers at Ames or NTS that fulfill this 


criteria. 


 DR. WADE: What Dr. Paige (ph) was saying. 


DR. MELIUS: Exactly, and I’m trying to 


think what’s the best way of getting at this. 


And it is difficult, very difficult. And I 


think the evaluation in some way starts from 


the beginning. I mean, there may be certainly 


cases where you can reconstruct the doses. I 


mean, I think you already have in some cases, 


some just based on what you can do you can 


qualify. Some you may be able to bound or 


whatever in a way that’s not as appropriate 


for longer than 250 days. So I mean, it’s a 


real --


DR. NETON: It’s problematic for NTS because 


we’ve said I think that we can, we have 


something that we can do with external because 


we have a large amount of external. There are 


gaps. We’re missing data, but we have a 


fairly good monitoring, we think, record for 


that. We have nothing for internal as Arjun 

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has pointed out accurately. 


So (unintelligible) is used to assess 


those internal exposures, you know. DTRA has 


gone down the path of using some ratio of the 


external badge result to the internal. And we 


have decided in our evaluation report that 


that would not be useful for our program until 


we set this point. 


So now we’re sort of in a position 


where we have no metric to use for internal 


exposures other than maybe these 


(unintelligible) where we have some tritium. 


So how do you know how high these internal 


exposures were other than that they were --


DR. MELIUS: I will tell you that Arjun and 


I conversed by, I don’t know whether it was by 


telephone or by e-mail is well do we take the 


DTRA’s effort right now. Because they are, 


they say they can and use that even if we 


don’t accept it for in terms of sufficient 


accuracy, do we accept it as a way of 


estimating the potential magnitude of those 


exposures that would give us sort of a handle 


on the endangerment. Is that going to be a 


useful, would that potentially be a useful 

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approach? And it may be. I mean, I --


MR. ELLIOTT: Well, aren’t we saying in DTRA 


that we haven’t seen the development of their 


validation of data and their approach yet, and 


they’re working on that. 


DR. MELIUS: Exactly, and some of it was a 


question of feasibility. I mean feasibility 


in terms of timing and that sort of 


feasibility. But I think the context in which 


we were discussing that was having evidence of 


being able to reconstruct dose with sufficient 


accuracy. So, and I don’t think that ruled 


out, you know, of the evaluation of what they 


come up with. And I felt very comfortable 


when I was talking to Arjun is that that’s a 


possible way to go, make use of --


DR. ZIEMER: I’d like to ask Arjun as you 


reviewed the material, aside from the tunnel 


workers, were there some other scenarios like 


ventings that you thought might rise to that 


level or as far as exposing workers? The 


ventings were not really in -- come into play 


there, but I’m just, aside from the tunnel 


workers which might be a possible subset, what 


other subsets are there? 

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DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, there seem to be 


pretty high dose rates associated with these 


flights and helicopters and so on, and maybe 


the dust that was kicked up. And RAD-safe 


people who proceeded soldiers into ground zero 


at very short times after the detonations. 


DR. ZIEMER: To retrieve the --


DR. MAKHIJANI: To retrieve instruments and 


so on. There are a couple of other categories 


like that. There seem to have been some cases 


where there were logistical mix-ups like the 


misunderstanding that I quoted where there 


were some number of people who were 


overexposed because they found themselves in a 


high radiation area when they weren’t supposed 


to be there. 


And there is some idea of the external 


dose environment. Presumably there might be 


badge data, but because there was a lot of 


activity there, then you’d be kind of in a 


place where you have to identify the internal 


dose. So there are maybe, I’d say from the 


work we’ve done so far maybe those three kinds 


of examples in addition to the tunnel workers 


I’d say. 

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Would you consider that a reasonable ­

-


DR. NETON: That seems reasonable. I was 


just looking at the tunnel worker data that we 


had collected. Out of those 61 that we had 


the collective external dose for all those 61 


cases were we had badge data was 24 rem, and 


58 percent of that was received by the tunnel 


workers. 


DR. ZIEMER: (Unintelligible) dose was 24? 


DR. NETON: Yeah, combined. The doses are 


not very high for the people that, of the 61 


left. I mean, yes, there’s some gaps, but the 


highest annual dose was 4.7 rem and that was 


by a tunnel worker. You don’t rise to this 


huge level. I mean, yeah, they’re high 


exposures by regulatory maybe standards, but 


as far as --


MR. ELLIOTT: I’m sorry. Those are only on 


the claimants that we have. 


DR. MELIUS: Exactly, and it’s also the 


claimants are less than 250 days, so in some 


ways --


MR. ELLIOTT: I think those are on the total 


claimant population, no? 

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DR. NETON: No. 


MR. ELLIOTT: It was just the --


DR. NETON: We’ve been trying to figure out 


given that this is a subset. It’s going to 


have no recourse. What are the metrics here, 


and they’re pretty low. Now there are 


certainly other populations out there as 


Arjun’s correctly pointed out that we don’t 


know about. 


MR. ELLIOTT: Well, what’s our trouble in 


getting the full dataset from Nevada? 


DR. NETON: We actually do get it. A full, 


comprehensive dataset? 


MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, like we get from other 


sites to develop coworker models, et cetera. 


DR. NETON: There’s tons of data out there. 


I mean, they provide us a very, if you’ve gone 


through their files, they’re very 


comprehensive. They provide us, if a guy who 


participated in a particular shot, you get the 


report. 


You get a highlighted version of who 


was monitored with their name highlighted as 


to what their dose is. They provided us for 


individual cases, at least, very, I think, a 

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robust report. I mean, they’re missing 


internal data and such, but I think they’ve 


done a pretty good job with that. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: The Nevada data are more 


voluminous in terms of individuals, but I, at 


least, have not seen for the atmospheric 


testing period a compiled data --


DR. NETON: I don’t think there is. 


MR. ELLIOTT: And the point I’m trying to 


make is the dataset that we’re dealing with is 


pre-selected by those that are claimants. 


Maybe we’re just not seeing the right people 


come into the door yet. 


DR. MELIUS: And my question that I came up 


with when you were not here, Larry, was would 


it be useful to expand that database out by 


looking at all claimants, not just the less 


than 250 days. At least it would be a 


slightly larger, or to borrow Wanda’s favorite 


term, a slightly more robust dataset. 


DR. NETON: I agree, and I think that’s what 


we would propose to use some coworker 


datasets. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Not just the 61. 


DR. NETON: Really just pull up the 61 to 

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provide evidence that we don’t see the 61 are 


being singled out. 


DR. MELIUS: Yeah, no, that was just --


 DR. NETON: They’re not treated unfairly. 


DR. MELIUS: Since it’s not an obvious 


issue. 


Would there be a way of, I’m thinking 


of, can we focus on three different discrete 


incidents where we think we have some 


significant amount of data that would be 


useful? And then so really examine those in 


more detail and see where that, you know, does 


that get us in terms of being able to get a 


better handle on whether these people and 


those incidents would qualify under the less, 


potentially qualify under the less than 250 


day scenario. And then it may still if we 


come back that that’s not the full class, that 


doesn’t lead us to the full class definition, 


but at least I think it would give a path 


forward to go in terms of how to approach 


this. 


 DR. WADE: Might reach up to four class 


definitions. I mean I think you do need to 


develop, you said the criticality equivalent 

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scenarios, some number of them, and then start 


to take a look at them and see where it takes 


you. 


DR. MELIUS: Yeah, as I say in terms of 


final efficient, an efficient approach may be 


to come down to when people make claims it’s, 


you know, because there’s so many incidents 


and so many different potential scenarios 


there we won’t have complete data on. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: The one question I have, you 


know, earlier people seemed to be a little 


more sanguine about DTRA, but I’ve looked at 


it a little bit. And I can’t say that I 


understand all the ins and outs of it, but we 


do have people who do understand that. 


From what I know of it, it seems that 


it would be not hard to come up with a 


screening mechanism for the routine exposures 


where there may be some correspondence between 


internal and external. But in terms of 


incident-related, I don’t know that I’ve seen 


anything, any coefficients or factors in the 


DTRA analysis where you could apply them to 


incidents. Now maybe you can tweak them to do 


that. 

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DR. NETON: A good point. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: I’m a little bit leery, I 


think in terms of the radiation environment I 


think DTRA could be used, but in terms -- just 


now that I’m thinking of it, before you give 


me this task, and we --


DR. NETON: Yeah, I agree with what you’re 


saying, Arjun. You’re right. The DTRA model 


really is a proximity location model, and if 


you’re near the ground zero or further away 


we’ll come up with some sort of a source term 


based on their parameters. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: And it’s an average kind of 


if you were there. 


DR. NETON: I don’t know enough to comment 


whether they do involve incident analyses --


DR. MAKHIJANI: It’s something we can look 


into obviously. 


DR. NETON: Yeah, one thing that concerns me 


though is there’s a potential clearly when 


they’re blowing off nuclear weapons in the 


atmosphere, there’s clearly the potential for 


high exposure of criticality. But I’m not 


sure that we need to be inventing scenarios 


that could bring people in. You know, it 

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almost has to be some credible evidence that 


it did occur, not could it have happened. The 


mere potential doesn’t --


DR. MELIUS: That’s what I’m saying, 


selecting the incidents. They should be not 


hypothetical but things that are --


DR. ZIEMER: Actual case. 


DR. MELIUS: Yeah, and even then they may 


not be representative of the particular 


exposure scenarios or whatever you want to 


call it for other incidents they may run 


across in the future. 


MR. ELLIOTT: Or representative for the full 


class. 


DR. MELIUS: Right, but if they can help us 


to, one, is this path worth the effort to go 


down for more of these incidents and help us 


in some way define classes or potential 


classes, and be able to answer. May say, look 


it, these exposures, you know, we’re either 


going to be able to reconstruct them 


satisfactorily or they’re just not, the 


magnitude of exposure isn’t sufficient to 


warrant this based on what we’ve found so far. 


That’s not to say you’re not going to find 

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another situation later that from a claim or 


series of claims that would do that, but it 


would --


MR. ELLIOTT: No, I took what you said 


earlier to be situation, circumstance 


dependent like the retrieval of the devices or 


the monitoring tools before the military 


walked in or marched in and tunnelers who have 


to tunnel back after the explosion. 


DR. WADE: Based on SC&A’s research to this 


point I assume that there were a finite number 


of scenarios you could identify. 


DR. NETON: There are about three --


DR. MAKHIJANI: There were four. There were 


four that I identified as examples for this. 


I don’t know that I’ve surveyed the universe, 


but we have identified four different 


potential ones. And I think Jim at least 


agreed that --


DR. ZIEMER: It’s the obvious ones, and we 


should ask that question of those and see 


where it leads. There may be some others that 


would arise. 


 DR. WADE: But you fleshed them out to the 


degree you can, and then you start one foot in 

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front of the other, the SEC tests. 


DR. NETON: It’s not unlike what we’re doing 


DR. MELIUS: Right, exactly, the same thing. 


And then, but I think back to what Jim said 


earlier is we have to then develop some sort 


of consistent approach so we’re being, 


treating everybody fairly, and that would also 


be a way of helping, at least helping to do 


that. Again, it may not cover every specific 


instance but at least would give us a 


framework in which to --


 DR. WADE: But your general procedure is not 


to close the door on anything. 


DR. NETON: Yeah, I didn’t really capture --


DR. ZIEMER: People, retrievers --


DR. MAKHIJANI: Retrievers and the 


misunderstanding winding up in high radiation 


areas by misunderstanding, crossed signals. 


DR. ROESSLER: Logistical mess ups is what I 


wrote down. 


DR. NETON: Can we go through those again 


because I’m not sure --


DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, the tunnel workers, 


the ground zero retrievers, the over-flight 

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people, the people in helicopters flying 


through the mushroom cloud and so forth, and 


the logistical mix up, finding themselves in 


high radiation areas. 


DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, but that one is a little 


hard for me to identify. I mean --


DR. NETON: Arjun has one example in here. 


DR. ZIEMER: So the person would have to 


self identify that that occurred somehow. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, we found them in the 


general report so --


DR. ZIEMER: Oh, somebody actually found 


them there. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: No, this didn’t come from a 


claimant record. This came from a Defense 


nuclear agency report. 


DR. MELIUS: Can we then again as the next 


step would be a technical conference call, 


whatever we want to call it, that would try to 


define which of these we would specifically 


look at and then pursue and then sort of 


figure out who does what to do that? 


 DR. WADE: Stipulate what’s agreed to about 


these events. And once you get that body of 


information, then you start to ask yourself 

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the questions and see where it takes you. 


DR. NETON: It dawns on me that actually 


I’ve been looking through a large number of 


these cases, and it’s not uncommon for people 


to put in their claim application they were 


involved in incidents and some descriptions, 


and I think --


DR. MELIUS: That’s why I was thinking the 


other --


DR. NETON: -- I think some of these were, I 


can actually point one out. I ran across one 


very interesting one. 


MR. ELLIOTT: We actually have one of the 


over-flight claims, too. 


DR. NETON: Yeah, and see I think we have 


reconstructed those exposures to some extent, 


and whether we’ve captured all of the relevant 


parts would be reviewed I’m sure. I like this 


approach. I think it’s based on a technical 


evaluation. 


DR. MELIUS: Right, and we’re not prejudging. I think these are things that let’s 


see where this gets us, and I think --


DR. MAKHIJANI: So for now then the only to-


do item is a technical conference call, and 

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until that we don’t proceed with any analysis. 


Is that the direction? 


DR. NETON: Get started on the Ames --


DR. MAKHIJANI: No, not on the Ames. We’re 


just talking about --


DR. MELIUS: The next step is a technical 


conference call, and then I think as part of 


that we need to figure out who does what, and 


it may be dependent on some other datasets 


involved and so forth, and --


DR. NETON: And I haven’t thought much about 


these. You guys have a little more --


DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, yeah, sure, and you 


have to have time to look at it. Is there any 


preparation for that call or is what you have 


sufficient? 


DR. MELIUS: Only that I think organizing 


what information you have just to say this is 


what you know about these four types of 


incidents, what examples you have. 


 DR. WADE: Collect everything you have and 


then dump it across the fence and then 


everybody’s starting from the same --


DR. NETON: I may need to organize the 


technical (unintelligible) here so that I 

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don’t end up being --


DR. MELIUS: That’s someone from ORAU, I 


don’t know who’s, I never know who’s involved 


in this stuff so --


DR. MAKHIJANI: So we take that information 


and try to reorganize it in these four 


categories. That shouldn’t be too hard. We 


won’t try to be all inclusive. We’ll just 


take what we have and reorganize it. 


DR. NETON: The idea is to try to identify 


these scenarios and determine whether we can 


come up with some dose estimates for these. 


DR. MELIUS: What’s the magnitude of the 


exposure? Is it re-constructible? And how 


would we potentially define a class if it’s --


DR. ZIEMER: And if not, why not? 


DR. MELIUS: Yeah, why not. 


DR. MAURO (by Telephone): This is John 


Mauro, just a quick question related to that 


scope of work. Will any of that, those 


inquiries include exploring this DTRA 


multiplier where you convert external to 


internal using their multipliers, and its 


strengths and limitations? 


Because right now it seems we have the 

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black box, those multipliers that we don’t 


fully understand how they do it for chronic, 


you know, routine exposure but also the degree 


to which it might have applicability to 


incidents. How much of that would you like to 


see us look into as part of this? 


DR. ZIEMER: Has DTRA completed that effort? 


We need to wait for them to sort of complete 


that. 


DR. NETON: Well, I think their computer 


model hasn’t been updated, but there’s been a 


number of documents issued. I think one of 


the main issues we had with their approach was 


the resuspension issue at NTS. And I think 


there’s a paper on that that’s been put out by 


David Kocher, I believe. 


DR. MELIUS: Why don’t you both look into 


what’s available and then do that as part of 


the technical call. I mean, you’re up to 


date, and your side gets --


DR. MAKHIJANI: At least collect the papers 


and --


DR. MELIUS: -- papers and then what’s 


available, and then we can decide is it worth 


examining that in more detail or for what type 

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of incidents would it be most potentially 


applicable or whatever you want to call that. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: We can call David Kocher, 


and are there others that you know are 


involved? 


DR. NETON: Well, we should probably work 


through DTRA themselves, which is Paul --


MR. ELLIOTT: Paul Blake. I don’t know that 


Kocher’s article’s been published yet, has it? 


DR. NETON: I don’t know that it has. I 


know there’s been drafts circulating. 


MR. ELLIOTT: As we are they’re very 


cautious to share their pre-decisional work. 


DR. NETON: I don’t know what the status is. 


There’s a number of documents being worked on 


that are --


MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, I think you should touch 


Paul Blake first. 


DR. MAKHIJANI: Would that be a NIOSH to-do 


then to find out --


DR. NETON: We should probably handle that, 


determine agency contact. 


 DR. WADE: One final thought, I think at the 


upcoming Board meeting -- we don’t need to get 


into the technical details of this, but I 

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think sharing with the Board the general 


approach would be very useful. Because this 


is really sort of ground-breaking stuff. A 


robust discussion of it should be good. 


DR. MELIUS: What is the group’s preference? 


We want to break for lunch or do we want to 


charge on and try to complete the discussions 


of the 83.14s? 


MR. ELLIOTT: How long do you think that 


would take? 


DR. MELIUS: I never know, but I think we 


could probably complete it in 45 minutes, 


about one o’clock. 


 DR. WADE: I’d say push on. 


DR. ROESSLER: You’ve been a good leader so 


far. I think we can do it. 


DR. MELIUS: Mark, are you still on? 


MR. GRIFFON (by Telephone): Yes, I am. 


DR. MELIUS: Okay, good now, because you 


were going to be helpful on this. 


DR. ZIEMER: No eating on the side, Mark. 


DR. MELIUS: And is the silver medal winner 


prepared to move on? 


COURT REPORTER: Yes, sir, always. 


83.14 ISSUE
 
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DR. MELIUS: Just checking. Since I wasn’t 


on the last Board call for longer than about 


five minutes, I’m not sure how much you 


explained about the background and what went 


on. This is for you, Mark, in terms of our 


evaluation of the Monsanto and General 


Atomics. 


MR. GRIFFON (by Telephone): Yeah, we 


discussed a little background and some 


additional documents were posted in that. We 


had a discussion with NIOSH about some of 


their rationale. And then I guess that we had 


the spreadsheets for the conference call. 


I think some people at least on the 


call on the 11th had access to those 


spreadsheets that Stu Hinnefeld sent around 


which gave a little more specifics on, I think 


that was for general comments. I gave a 


little background, Jim. I didn’t go into it 


extensively, but I gave a little background on 


it. 


 DR. WADE: Well, we did stop short of the 


lessons learned and how that would apply to 


upcoming -– 


GENERAL ATOMICS
 
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DR. MELIUS: And why don’t we start with 


General Atomics, and we actually, I think 


Larry and I had some, LaVon had some 


discussions at some point. But I was the one 


that originally had raised the most concerns 


about the information there. 


It grew out of some of the questions 


that I asked, Paul asked and so forth at the 


Board meeting. And it was particularly about 


how it was decided that the class included all 


the different buildings that were involved 


that were listed in the evaluation report. 


And I think that was actually the main 


question. 


What was answered satisfactorily which 


was how well could you locate people within 


buildings and so forth. But there were 


specific questions. I think you, Paul, about 


the reactor building, and then I think we had 


questions about the laboratory in particular. 


And my question was did we have enough 


evidence on the record to justify including 


all of those buildings. 


And then in response to those 


questions and discussions we had with Larry 

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and LaVon and what was available and Mark, 


these additional tables were made available to 


us. And I’m not sure if those were new tables 


or old tables or new tables, what was 


available. And Mark, these additional tables 


were made available to us. I’m not sure if 


those were new tables or old tables or new 


tables –- new information based on data never 


been compiled yet. And I’m not sure again if 


the whole Board got a chance to see those. 


DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 DR. MELIUS: They were circulated? 


DR. ZIEMER: We discussed the tables in 


fact. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, okay. 


DR. ZIEMER: There are a couple which 


were clarified for us. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. But I personally 


thought that part was very useful, and 


then there was another set of tables, 


again, assuming this was discussed, 


which was sort of breaking it down by 


radionuclide and sort forth, which was 


also -– at least to me at the time of 


reading the report, hearing the 

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evaluation, was not clear. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: And during the call we 


committed to adding those tables as a 


supplement to the evaluation report. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Or did I just dream that? 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: I think you just 


dreamed that. 


 DR. MELIUS: Let me clarify, ‘cause it 


was actually as part of the call that 


you and Mark and I were on, sort of the 


technical consultation call. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: I wasn’t. 


DR. MELIUS: You weren’t, yeah, well I 


was. And what we agreed to was that 


these would be given to the Board for 


our next conference call as a supplement 


to the evaluation report, so we would 


get them on the record in some way. And 


again, I just thought those were very 


useful and I guess a lesson learned is 


that I think that type of information is 


useful either in the evaluation report 


or you know, as a supplement to the 


discussion of the evaluation report. 

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Again, you’re in a tough spot, how big 


and voluminous do you make this, this 


report? 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: That’s definitely the 


challenge. The challenge is, you know, 


I mean 83.13 we typically go into that, 


we put all of that information in there, 


83.14’s, and it’s definitely a lesson 


learned, you know, General Atomics 


specifically, because there were many 


radionuclides and many other issues 


besides just the thorium issue that we 


should have been a little more 


descriptive on. We should have brought 


the –- those tables would have 


definitely made the picture clearer. 


agree with you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And the final letter, also, 


to the Secretary has both the buildings 


where things were done and the 


exclusions which I think you had -- 


DR. MELIUS: Yeah, that was in response, 


actually Pete Turcic sent a note and the 


table was clear enough that I thought it 


was useful to add. I wasn’t sure it 


I 
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made it to the final letter ‘cause I 


wasn’t on the call. 


DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, it did. Actually I 


hand delivered those letters to Lew 


today, so they will go to John Howard 


shortly. And as soon as the minutes are 


available from that meeting, the package 


will be complete. And those tables 


become part of the deliberations also. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


MR. ELLIOTT: Part of the lessons that 


we’ve learned in this experience also 


goes to what we have on the open drive 


for Board and SC&A access to understand 


our position. We realized that we need 


to have a specific folder relevant to 


each case so that you can go in there 


and you can see all of the information 


that is used to build our position. 


 DR. MELIUS: Right. 


MR. ELLIOTT: And so we’ve challenged 


ORAU and everybody working on these to 


set aside a folder and if we have to 


duplicate information from other parts 


of the SRP, that’s fine, but put a 

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folder that’s relevant to each 83.14 and 


probably each 83.13. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: We’ve been doing it 


because, the 83.13’s, we put together 


folders for them. 


DR. MELIUS: That would be useful ‘cause 


MR. GRIFFON: And on that I agree, but I 


guess my -- the final tables we got were 


very helpful because they kind of 


bridged the gap between initially what 


was provided on the O drive for General 


Atomics and Monsanto were all the PDF 


documents, all the background health and 


safety reports, et cetera, thousands of 


pages of it. I guess what I was looking 


for is something -- and I don’t think it 


necessarily has to be part of your final 


report to us, but the the analysis 


process that lead up to okay we’ve got 


all these reports, you know in the 


presentation, you know you make a final 


summary statement such as there wasn’t 


enough data for fission products to do 


any kind of dose reconstruction, you 

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know to handle dose reconstructions. 


You know, where, where, where’s your 


analysis document that says, you know, 


we looked through all these health and 


safety reports, this is what we found, 


this is why it’s sufficient, and this 


supports our final position on this, you 


know, something... And I think these 


spreadsheets for you, you know, at the 


end it was very helpful to that end, you 


know, so that’s what I was looking for, 


some kind of analysis of in between the 


final report and the overall data. 


MR. ELLIOTT: Right, right, Mark. I 


think that’s, you know you made a very, 


very great, substantial comment there, 


and what we took away from that is that 


looking at the evaluation report and the 


summary page, page two or three I think 


it is, where it has a section that talks 


about the feasibility, we were not 


explicit in our analytical position that 


we were taking, and you know, we’ve 


taken that to heart and we will, I hope, 


not see that happen again as we produce 

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these documents in the future. 


DR. WADE: I think there are two 


thoughts to keep in mind as to the 


foundation for what we are talking 


about. I think it’s terribly important 


that when the Board takes an action, it 


takes an action upon a record that is 


complete and goes to all aspects of the 


issue. Now you might say why worry 


about 83.14? We’re attempting to be 


generous. But the Board always has to 


be prepared to grapple with the issues 


of fairness and consistent behavior, so 


with that in mind -- It doesn’t, not 


only has to be in the evaluation report, 


but it needs to be put into the record 


when the Board is considering these 


things, so that there is a way to show 


why it was, yes here, and when someone 


comes and says well why didn’t you do it 


for me, we have the basis for giving 


that. 


MR. ELLIOTT: You mentioned another good 


word there, Lew, consistency, and we 


are, we took that part as well, and we 

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don’t want to be inconsistent, and ORAU 


has started to put together a table or 


matrix or something that will start 


speaking to consistency. It will list 


all of those that we have treated thus 


far and show hope, you know, the 


outcomes of those treatments, and make 


sure that we are applying the rule in a 


consistent fashion. 


 DR. MELIUS: Good. 


MR. ELLIOTT: And we’ll be ready to show 


that to you at some point in time; I 


don’t know when. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: We have the initial 


draft already. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Bomber’s seen it. I 


haven’t seen it. It’s forthcoming. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: You know, the other 


thing on the 83.14’s that I think is a, 


you know, a challenge, and I think we 


came up with a pretty good -- well, not 


just the 83.14’s, but even the 83.13’s 


to a certain extent, I think we came up 


with a good path forward with the 


General Atomics and Monsanto and others, 

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is recognizing that you know we’ve 


identified a class here, an issue that 


we can’t reconstruct dose, we can’t 


reconstruct thorium, we can’t 


reconstruct these other doses, you know, 


that we identify in a report. You know, 


it doesn’t make sense to evaluate every 


aspect of a facility to an exhaustive 


process, you know, that’s gonna take, 


you know, a full year to do, when we can 


identify this class of people that are 


affected by our inability to do dose 


reconstruction for a certain –- and then 


move that forward through an 83.14 if at 


some later point through our reviews we 


identify that there are additional 


issues that add to that class, we move 


on with an additional 83.14, and I think 


we came to a pretty good agreement on 


that. 


DR. WADE: As long as you make that very 


clear to the Board as it deliberates. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right. 


DR. MELIUS: And there are going to be ­

– You stated different ways, but you 

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usually say you believe you can 


reconstruct dose or where you, yeah, and 


do that, and if it turns out you can’t, 


that may or may not define or change the 


class definition. In most cases it may 


not, but there, certainly it’s possible, 


some with multiple buildings or types of 


processes where it could, there would be 


additional members that are -- 


MR. ELLIOTT: Certainly with the large 


DOE sites that becomes an issue. On the 


Atomic Weapons Employers’ sites where 


they had a very discrete task, the time 


frame they were doing the task perhaps, 


there’s not a lot of other ancillary 


processes, it makes sense to us to move 


forward quickly with what we can’t 


reconstruct. 


MONSANTO


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. Right. Mark, do you 


want to talk about Monsanto if there are 


any additional... 


 MR. GRIFFON: I think we got our bottom 


line. I’m not sure. I think we’ve got 


a good path forward. 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: Just for the record. 


Monsanto was an 83.13, but yet we, you 


know, we recognize that we couldn’t 


reconstruct a portion of the dose there 


and essentially come forward kind of 


like in a guise of -– 


DR. MELIUS: Right, right. Many of us 


were fooled about that. And again, 


these are ones where there’s not been 


sort of site profiles and so the Board’s 


coming on this site for the first time, 


and isn’t that some of the issue, where 


there’s been a site profile already or 


discussion of site profile, then I think 


that’s a very different situation in 


some ways ‘cause we have discussed some 


of the data issues, some of the dose 


reconstruction issues, so forth. 


DR. WADE: I have a procedural question 


for the work group. Do you imagine that 


the work group will issue general 


guidance on this topic to NIOSH and 


NIOSH will follow it, or will the work 


group want to screen these 83.14’s 


before the full Board sees them? I’m 

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not advocating either way, but what’s 


your sense? 


 DR. MELIUS: I’m not sure how the others 


feel; I’m not sure yet. I think 


potentially it’s helpful to have a 


screening process in place for those 


that are not, again, where there’s not 


background site profile, whatever. 


 DR. ZIEMER: If there’s not already a 


specific work group. 


 DR. MELIUS: Right, right, work group 


involved and so forth. So it’s useful 


‘cause it may identify other issues that 


need to be clarified and given the 


amount of time and given the potential 


numbers of these, that’s the other thing 


that’s, I think Larry pointed out at the 


last meeting. We’re potentially seeing 


a large number and I think in order for 


the Board to deal with it most 


efficiently it may be better to have 


prescreening, so to the extent the work 


group, or this work group or however we 


decide to handle it, a subcommittee or 


whatever, can identify some issues that 

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need clarification before presentation. 


Or say that, you know, somebody that’s 


not part of that brings up an issue, say 


well we discussed that at you know 


meeting, we’re satisfied or whatever. 


 DR. WADE: I assume Liz is going to 


raise a caution here? Liz, are you 


trying to speak? 


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I was. I was just 


going to say that if that’s going to be 


a standing direction, you’re going to 


have to set up a subcommittee for it or 


set up work groups for each individual 


one. 


 DR. MELIUS: Which is why I mentioned 


subcommittee lists ‘cause I knew you 


were about to –-


 DR. WADE: I thought Liz was going to 


mention we need to deal with issues of 


whether or not these are public meetings 


because we’re going to be dealing with 


issues before these reports have been 


made public, and the work group or the 


subcommittee’s going to have to decide 


how it’s going to deal with that 

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information. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Would that be before or 


would it be re-issue the report to the 


Board and petitioners and then the work 


group has a discussion about, or do we 


actually issue it to ‘em as a draft? 


 DR. MELIUS: I would think if you issue 


an evaluation report and then we could 


hopefully time it in a way that this 


subcommittee or work group, however we 


decide to go forward, reviews it, and 


then if the, there was additional 


information it would be supplemented. 


think it’s just better if the Board only 


really has to deal with it once if 


possible ‘cause there’s just so many of 


these, every time we bring it up then 


everybody has to be refreshed and so 


forth. 


DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, you don’t have to 


change your process, I don’t think, and 


recognize that really this is kind of -- 


arose as a mirror image of the original 


cases where you were trying to convince 


I 
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the Board you could reconstruct dose, 


and I know I was saying and Mark was 


saying, convince us that you really 


can’t. Some of these, gee, you ought to 


be able to reconstruct that, it looks 


pretty simple. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Sure. 


MR. ELLIOTT: My only concern about the 


time of intervention here is the 180 day 


mark, but I would prefer that we develop 


our report and finalize it and then send 


it to you guys, or the full Board, and 


you guys take it up, I mean half of the 


full Board, and do whatever you want to 


do with it. I’m a little concerned -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: I don’t think you want to 


get us involved in your 180 day -- 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, 83.14’s, we 


typically would not get into 180 day 


issue because -- well I mean we 


typically keep ourselves on a clock, but 


we’ve never really -– because it’s an 


83.14 we’ve made the decision, you know 


MR. ELLIOTT: I don’t know that I agree 

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with that. Because you touch a claimant 


and you say to the claimant we can’t 


reconstruct your dose, we want to go 


83.14. In my mind the clock starts 


right there. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: Oh, I agree we do. My 


point is is that –-


(Whereupon, multiple speakers spoke 


simultaneously.) 


DR. WADE: But isn’t the process where ­

- just so I understand the process –- so 


NIOSH will come out with an evaluation 


report, then the subcommittee will take 


a look at it. If the subcommittee finds 


something, then NIOSH will have to 


modify their evaluation report. 


DR. ZIEMER: Depending on the situation, 


we may have a work group. 


DR. MELIUS: Yeah, there’s options, but 


I also think there’s this issue, and we 


talked about this before, is that the 


NIOSH evaluation should be independent 


of the, you know, so you’re presenting 


your recommendation to us, then we take 


action from there, and you know... 

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 DR. WADE: And it can all be done 


publicly so that --


DR. MELIUS: Right, and then we also -- 


however this belief that we make some 


effort to invite, you know, claimant 


representatives or whoever to the extent 


that’s appropriate and they’re available 


and interested to participate in this. 


DR. WADE: February’s meeting will 


explore the issue of work group, 


subcommittee, how we want to do this, 


when you make your report. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: Can I ask then, you 


know, we have a Dow Chemical evaluation 


report in-house for final review right 


now that assuming that we don’t have any 


major issues, is going to be out the 


door. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: 83.14. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: It’s an 83.14. It’ll 


be out the door next week. And you know 


I’m just trying to -– with this 


mechanism -– 


DR. MELIUS: Yeah, there’s no mechanism 


right now. What I think is out there, 

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if you can do this O drive procedure for 


this, we’ll let people know that at the 


time –-


MR. ELLIOTT: I think we can send that 


report out to the full Board and the 


petitioners, we set up our O drive as we 


talked about, and then you guys on this 


working group can look at it and say, 


you know, is there something there that 


you don’t understand that we missed the 


mark on, and tell us what you feel. 


DR. MELIUS: And I think we’re assigned 


to do that. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: And you can even talk 


about your process. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, we do that 


individually. If we have an issue we 


may want to convene that working group 


just before the meeting or lunch the 


first day or whatever. 


DR. WADE: We can do that. Excellent. 


And then you guys will heed the lessons 


learned when you make the presentation 


in February. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

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 DR. WADE: We’ll be wiser for it. 


MR. ELLIOTT: I hope this Dow report, I 


hope I’m not speaking out of school 


here, but I’m hoping that this Dow 


evaluation report will also speak to the 


residual contamination period, which 


will be something new that you all have 


not seen before, and that’s why I hope 


we get your commentary and feedback on 


it. We are going to face these more and 


more in our future, and I know there’s 


high expectations among the claimant 


population about the residual period and 


what that brings to them. 


MR. RUTHERFORD: You know, and this is 


actually something that we talk to the 


claimant, or petitioner, about, you 


know. If for example the 83.14 Dow 


identifies just the operational 


(unintelligible) period and it says we 


can do dose reconstruction for the 


residual period, that doesn’t prevent us 


from, you know, we can, the Board can 


approve that class, not agree or 


disagree on residual period, and request 

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further evaluation on that residual 


period. And then it could possibly be 


an additional 83.14 and then, you know, 


I’m just throwing that out. 


DR. MELIUS: It raises the issue which 


is, there’s no easy answer to, which we 


talked about a long time ago, with what 


do you have, you know, somebody that’s, 


you know, 200 days in the 83.14, the 


period, and then has all this other 


additional dose later on. I mean it’s 


just a hard, it’s a conundrum and we 


can’t... I don’t think we’re going to 


solve it here today. 


Good. Any other comments on that? 


If not, we’ll close. I apologize on our 


poor estimate of how long this will 


take, but I have a 7:50 flight tonight, 


so it wasn’t... expecting to get out of 


here any sooner. 


DR. WADE: It was a very productive 


meeting. 


 DR. MELIUS: But appreciate everybody’s 


effort in discussion, and we’ll see you 


back in Cincinnati, or I guess across 

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the river in Cincinnati, wherever we’re 


meeting, in a few weeks. That’s it, 


thank you. 


 DR. WADE: Thank you. 


(Whereupon, the working group concluded at 


12:30 p.m.) 

______________________________ 

131 

1 CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER 


STATE OF GEORGIA 


COUNTY OF FULTON 


 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 


Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 


above and foregoing on the day of January 17, 


2007; and it is a true and accurate transcript 


of the testimony captioned herein. 


 I further certify that I am neither kin 


nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 


have any interest in the cause named herein. 


 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 


24th day of March, 2007. 


STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 


CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 


CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102