20
21
2
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it sounds. I mean, we just heard the description of

somebody who worked as much overtime as regular time.
So anyway, there is very -- | mean, it may

-- | want you to all to believe that the things we're

asking are highly relevant to getting this claim, you

know, decided in -- in your favor as it should be.

And so that's really -- that's great testimony.

2 Yeah.
I seem to
remember that they had to give you the 14th day off.
If you worked 13 days in a row, come 14 the state of

Illinois was going get vicious and your wife was going

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to put you out the door if you didn’t come home,
believe me.
: Yeah.
+ There was -- there was some
fellows there with some marital problems.

: The --

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7 : Okay,

8 “: So that was the only -- only

9 sure way that you was sure that the pill was back into

10 the case --

1! : Right.

12 «+ is be able to --

13 *: Because if that cable was

14 still out there --

15 : You couldn't --

16 j : -- it wouldn't lock all the
17 way down, it wouldn't close that door all the way
18 down. It was just --

19 So there was a key lock.

20 » How often would you say --
21 let's just say percentages of times you'd crank the
22 pill back in, you thought it was all in, but -- but

23 you wouldn't be able to actually turn the key?

24 : Well, I -- I was only --

25 : I mean, was that a rare thing

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10 i. Twas never ever

II told anything. I knew -- I just figured it was a good

12 job, good paying job and I wasn't scared of it.

13 + That's fair. ¢ vhasa
14 comment.
15 +: On this here adequately

16 informing you, you were never adequately informed. A
17 few of us got to read the -- that Federal Register.

18 : Okay.

19 : And what was in the Federal

20 Register we knew which was not sufficient. You know,
21 the Federal Register is a broad scope.

22 2 Right.

23 : All the Federal Registers are.

24 And -- but any good DOE handbooks or anything else,

25 where are they?

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1 : But nobody told you for
2 instance --
3 : No.

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22 floor where they measured the castings, you know, set

23 them on face plates and if they bent or whatever it
24 was, that was it south end of the building.

25 *: Okay. Thank you. You've

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1 been very helpful. 1 know you need to leave for a
2 medical appointment.
3 : Okay. That's -- that's --

4 that's great. Okay. So we're --

5 COURT REPORTER: What kind of plate?
6 I “I: Face plate, F-A-C-E.
7 « Face plate. Okay. Yeah. I

8 didn't hear that one well either. All right. Sof

9 think we did a great job on Building 6. And I think

10 just for the record Affidavit No. 8 topic was workers

11 who saw and can describe the 80 Curie Cobalt 60 x-ray
{2 source used in the betatron buildings. And it seems

13 to me that we probably have a pretty good description
14 of those. They were round, they had a door, they had

15 a crank that they were opened, the pill came out. Is

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12 got an opportunity to see the paperwork. But the only
13 thing they told us was to shoot them.
14 And -- and also one other
15 question that seems to stick in the back of my mind
16 were they shot in an oblique manner, kind of not
17 head-on but across the angle, or am I dreaming that?
18 We kind of shot them kind of
19 head-on. But we had three different films, and I
20 think we used double A, M, and C film. We tried to

21 catch the different exposures.

22 Well, the M film would be
23 the --

24 Right.

25 -- the slower film it

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1 seems to me.
2 It would be the slower film.
3 Right.
4 And they -- they kind of

5. blew off to the side. Am J correct?

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7 the mag room overhead. Now, it was big enough -- it

8 was big enough to shake the dust off of -- off the

9 whole ceiling. Preset procedure -- preset procedure

10 was to immediately shut the machine down, climb the
11 steps up to the mag room, shut the mags down, call

12 supervision and electricians which was done

13 immediately. | don't remember -- my crew was working,
14 and this occurred during the latter part of my

15 employment at General Steel. But I remember

16 distinctly that the electrician called was

17 He's a neighbor of mine and was called for a lot of

18 duties at -- in the betatrons, a very fine

19 electrician. Still is a neighbor of mine. I

20 understand this gentleman changed a number of donut
21 tubes on these betatrons. But he was called up --

22 : Explain for us what a donut
23 tube is just for the record.

24 : Well, I'm not a physicist,

25 , But to my explanation it's a vacuum tube --

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9 official record for NIOSH. And in all the time I've
10 been dealing with this program for four years I have
11 never heard a single incident that NIOSH considered to
12 be an example of acute radiation exposure that would
13 affect your dose reconstruction. I mean, it's
14 incredible to me. It's often obviously very hard to
15 reconstruct how much overexposure you actually got.
16 You know you got a hundred millirems in a hurry, but

17 the total amount, you know, so maybe over two

18 minutes --
19 : Yeah,
20 : Well, it depends on how fast

21 you got it. You know, if you were exposed to enough

22 --
23 * Yeah,
24 ++ radiation from an atomic

25 bomb, you could get a -- a lethal exposure in a few

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1 seconds. So -- but anyway, it's important to get
2 these incidents on the record in as much detail as you

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General Steel Industries Employees:

20
21
22
23

24

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18 operating the ladle was hurt some, but not killed.
19 *: Okay. Thank you.
20 : Twas the one that helped
21 poured that heat. And that was a ring that blowed up.
22 What happened it sucked the moisture in from the
23 outside. They had a big snow on the ground. And when
24 it -- that heat hit it it sucked that moisture inside

25 of it, and it exploded. And it -- a lot of people got

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1 burnt, but nobody real serious, you know.

2 : Okay.

3 +: But it burnt two cranes up.

4 : But it shook the dust off
5 of every --

6 « Yeah.

7 : -- building in that plant

8 I'll tell you that much. It busted a lot of windows

9 too.
10 7 ; But I was --
Mt | Did they have to call the

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10 : This is a good time to bring

11 up then a related topic which is was -- did anybody
12 see or was there a betatron operating manual? In
13 other words, I -- I think I've heard before that that
14 -- the answer is no.

15 ® No.

16 «: But that's a rather

17 astounding fact to me. This gigantic particle

18 accelerator and there were no manuals around that
19 would tell anybody --

20 : It was word of mouth training
21 from the older, you know, operator --

22 + Tunderstand.

23 : ++ to the assistant. And

24 that's where you got your training. And like I said,

25 1 think we should have had time to take the MacBeth

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1 survey meter each time and check the area before we
2 put up another x-ray, but they disagreed.

3 : Well, expand on that a little

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12 : Didn't the roentgen counter

13 only go up to 5,000, _, and then we had to shoot the

14 10,000 --

15 : Six thousand.

16 : -- in two shots? Is that
17 right?

18 : I can't -- [can't

19 remember that. I think you could probably know more
20 about that than I would. But --
21 « Just so I'm -- just so I'm
22 clear though, the 10,000 roentgens or the 11,000, that
23 would be for the total number of exposures; is that
24 right?
25 3 One shot.
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1 : That's one shot.

2 : Just one shot?
3 = Yeah.

4 . : One shot,
5 : One shot,

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19 Right. Right.

20 x: Yeah. Oh, yeah, But you

21 don't find it out --

22 : No. I know.
23 : -- when you get hit.
24 : That's a real valid point

25 because it's all afterwards a little too late.

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1 : Yeah. Ten years later.
2 ‘> Well, I appreciate -- just

3 bringing that back has to be an unpleasant memory, and
4 we appreciate you sharing it because it tells a real

5 story.

6 . : That's all right. I'm just

7 thankful that I'm here you to share it.

8 : Thank you.

9 ‘, do -- do you want to

10 put into the record the thing about the explosion

11 event? Now, I know you've written that up pretty

{2 well, so we have that captured in writing from you.

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I just -- this is a chance if anybody had anything in

2 addition to add to that, this would be the time to do

3 it] guess.

4 : Anything more about the
5 shot records?

6 ° : The only thing I'd have

7 to add to that is that the --

8 2 This is

9 I'm sorry.

10

i ~ : That's okay.

12 The film and the shot

13 records were usually packaged in -- in one of the

14 boxes that the film came in, they were the right size.

15 And after they were used we put the film and the shot
16 record back in there and usually wrote on the outside
17 of it who it belonged to, Mallinckrodt, the casting

18 number. And there was an identification somewhere on
19 that, there had to be. We did that with Westinghouse.
20 We did that with GE, all the customers we had except
21 the Navy film we kept because General Dynamics --
22 electrical division of General Dynamics would come in
23 and read the film after we were finished with it to

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knows that.
: Eworked with
over there. was a senior operator, I was an
assistant. And as I recall I think it was a one
million volt linear I think. It's been again 40 years
ago. But we worked over there on -- on specific
castings from GSI that was subcontracted at -- at
American Steel. But: was the -- one of the main
operators there.
, : Well, that's good. _, tell
us what -- what --
: Yes. It was a 1 MEV.
.: But what was your impression
of why -- why were you doing it when you had 24 or 25
at--
: Well, you had --
: -- at GSI, why -- why go to

American Steel?

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24

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now that you mentioned it I kind of suspect that
that's what it was.
*, may I ask you
were there any markings? 1 know you all dealt with a
lot of different kinds of ingots and metals and so
forth. But were there any special markings on there
that indicated it was Mallinckrodt or --
They didn't have any kind of
special markings on it.
Did they have any markings,

and writing at all?

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No writing at all.
Okay.

But we had to identify the

4 date and the shift and so forth, put our ID on it.

5

. Second question is would you

6 -- could you put a time frame on when you worked with

7 those ingots.

8

I started in '63. So it was

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1 « You want to put that in for

8 the record?

9 « Please.

10 2 Yeah. Okay.

11

12 a Okay.

13 . The other thing is in -- when

14 you worked overtime you may be working in the

15 betatron. And in my case I could have been working in
16 -- in layout or Magnaflux.

17 a Okay.

18 : So you're -- you basically

19 were not away from the dust and the radiated dust.
20 : Right.

21 : So there was other factors

22 that you could include in this radiation dose.

23 Right. We definitely will

24 include all of those, every one that you can document

25 for us.

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6 believe, wasn't it?

7 : Well, we -- we need to do

8 that systematically, . I need you to do one of

9 your master documents here, We need a document. And
10 then within those buildings which -- you know, if

11 every job was represented in every building, well

12 that’s probably not going to help. But -- but we need
13 a list of the job descriptions because we want to

14 include all the people in this -- in this class who

15 were exposed. And basically what we were saying
16 anybody who was -- who in any way interacted with
17 those castings or the uranium ingots, the inspectors,
18 the guards, the electricians, all those folks I think

19 we've got abundant, rich testimony that they were all

20 at -- at risk for being exposed. So --

21
22 + Yeah.
23 . 1: In 9 Building and 10 Building

24 alone -- 9 Building was mostly Navy, Westinghouse. 10

25 Building was a lot of Army tank hull, turrets.

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all the time. . is her father.
: Yes.
; Me and him was good buddies.
: Okay.
a: Me and him would go over
there and there'd be two or three other foremans.

+ Okay. Got you.
: We'd go over there and look
at the castings.
a Allright.
| That was about every two
weeks or so.

2 So -- so wouldn't it be fair

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1 to say that potentially anybody who had a casting --

2 : We was all over the plant,
3 all over.
4 : -- in any part of the plant

5 would -- might on occasion go into the betatron

6 building? So --

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6 took him there.
7 « Correct. Okay.
8 +; 1 do remember that we were not
9 given regular blood tests. 1 remember when I first
10 started in the betatron they might have given us a
11 blood test every three months or so --
12 : Okay.
13 : » -- or right around there. And
14 then it seemed toward the latter end of my employment
15 they just dropped it all together. I -- I don't
16 remember taking blood tests in the latter part of my

17 employment. I left there November, '66.

18 a Okay.

19 : But I don't think it was on

20 any -- any regular basis as . . said.

21 . « Okay. But that's why we need

22 input from multiple people because people's
23 experiences may have been different. That's fine.
24 Okay.

25 Affidavit 20, we have heard that certain

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21 unit, and they usually rented it from -- or leased it
22 from St. Louis Testing to --
23 .: Okay.
24 : -- or Pittsburgh testing to

25 the best of my knowledge. We have used it, and --

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1 How large would you say it
2 was, just like a, | mean, basketball or --

3 * 150 curie.

4 2 No. No. No. I -- yeah.

5 150 curie in intensity. But how -- physically how

6 large was it?

7: : It was not that large.

8 Iridium didn't require a big pig --

9 « Bigger than a basketball?

10 +: -- on wheels like cobalt did.

on 2 Okay,

12 COURT REPORTER: A big pig? Did you say
13 pig?

14 : Yeah. Yeah. We called it a

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13 « Double A. Okay. Very good.

14 Excellent, All right.

15

16 + This is again,

17 Iridium was used because it gave a very definite x-ray
18 film. You could see many things you could not see

19 otherwise. But using iridium would really bring it

20 out. Thank you.

21 . 1: That -- that's also what I've

22 heard, and that's why wells were -- I saw a historical
23 documentary that it was used also even on the Alaskan

24 pipeline when they built that. And in fact, when they

25 -- when they used the iridium source they had to scrap
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1 large amounts, I think five or six miles of that

2 extremely expensive project, because they could see
3 these fine cracks and they couldn't have any -- any
4 flaws at all. So okay. That's -- that's great.

5 Affidavit 10 addresses workers who could

6 testify that there was a -- cither a 195 or a 250 --

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18 statement. The same way when -- when we worked on the
19 Westinghouse channel heads, the nuclear submarine
20 torpedo tubes it was just another casting, another

2

piece of metal.

22 : Right. Okay. That's useful.
23 Well, maybe we could just go around and have people
24 say that they either agree or if you need to add

25 something to it. But I think it would be useful to

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have as many people are here affirm that that's --

2 that's a fair summary of the situation.

3 .: The reason were when I found
4 out that the lethal dose on the cobalt 80 or 60 source
5 was three minutes that's when I really became

6 concerned.

7 . Now, was that told to you

8 while you were employed there?

9 : Yes.
10 : Okay. That's -- that's good.
li : That, you know, there were --

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25 and put me in Magnaflux because I failed my white

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1 blood cell test.

2 .: And did they tell you what

3 that meant? In other words, why you failed it?

4 : My understanding what it was

5 was my white count was too low.

6 2 Uh-huh. And did they say

7 why?

8 : No explanation whatsoever.
9 : And how about -- how about

10 you, how did you feel about it?

ia} +: | thought nothing of it. In
12 fact, it upset me because --

13 : Yeah,

14 *, -- Magnaflux was a much

15 harder, dirtier job.

16 + Right.
17 : And I was upset over that.
18 : Now, did they say how low

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6 cobalt source. That was -- you know, that was

7 extremely dangerous to do that, and -- and there

8 should have been severe sanctions for having done

9 that. I mean, so you know, that’s guess -- that's

10
It
12

13

2

22
23
4

25

second guessing a lot of things. But I guess the

answer is, , that that's why we are building this
record,
: I'd like to say this, not
to interrupt.
: No.

« But all these fellows I worked

with for a number of years I knew to be real fine

operators --

: Absolutely.

: -- very qualified people. And
I'll tell you what, safety was their utmost first

thought.
« Don't get me wrong. I --1
think that, you know, throughout the nuclear weapons

and nuclear weapon contractor sites we've heard this

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3. many occasions when --
4 + Right.
5 : -- when you would shoot on an
6 excessively long shot --
q “2 Correct,
8 = - that the -- and you worked
9 up close to the magnetic field that it'd make your
10 hair stand up on your arms or your face or wherever.
at « Uh-huh. Well, there is a
12 strong magnetic field in there too. So it really can
13 be both. It can be an electrical current; i.e.,
14 ionization and it can also be the magnetic piece.
15 Yeah.
16 : That's what -- | wanted to
17 make this comment mostly I don't know what -- it's a
18 plus or a minus in -- in the argument of what we were

19 doing, are our bodies accumulating or these --

20 2 Right.
21 : -+ this magnetic field.
22 _ : Right. But as far as current

23 theory goes probably the magnetic field itself didn't

24 do anything. But the -- the electrons, the gamma

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22 one man out there who was a chipper or a grinder, and

23 every time the red light would go on he would tum
24 tail and run from the 10 Building. And I used to kid

25 him. I'd said where you going. And he'd say I'm

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1 getting out of the way. And I said that's down there
2 in the betatron, you don't have to worry about that.

3 He said no, no. He said that stuff leaks through the
4 walls, it can get through that door, it can come right
5 out here. He said that light goes on I'm going down
6 to the other end of the building. 1 can't remember

7 his name. I think it was _ something. But!

8 used to tease him all the time, you know,

9 : Now, you should have made
10 _ your radiation safety operator.

aT . . Absolutely, He was the
12 only one that knew what was going on.

13 : He was looking for a job

14 there. Yeah.

15 .: To add -- to add one comment

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1 up with the film.
2 : The film matched up with
3 the --
4 ": Right.
5 2 -- what was existing on

6 the ingot and we didn't stamp them?

7 ’: No. We didn't stamp them.
8 , t: Okay.

9 ‘: They already had that ID on
10 them or --

ll t: Thank you.

12 "; -- whatever, etching like

13 you.

14

15 ne Question is

16 when you put the markings on the ingots did you put a
17 mark on there with yellow paint or chalk?

18 *: Well, we marked it -- we
19 marked it with that -- that paint that we had.

20 «: Okay.

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15 “~~: But did come in?
16 ‘> Yeah. came in when
17 got kicked out. Yeah.

18 = Allright,

19 ~ « Okay. Well, that -- that --

20 that's excellent. That's good. This one -- this is

21 one think I can get some response for. NIOSH always
22 assumes that everybody worked eight-hour shifts. So
23 Affidavit 22, workers who can certify that betatron

24 people often worked longer that eight-hour shifts. Is

25 there anybody who could comment about that?
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1 » Allofus I'm sure.

2 « Why don't we have two

3 representatives to represent the group on this.

4 Eight-hour shifts were the norm, were they?

5 : Eight-hour shifts were --
6 were not the norm.

7 . Not the norm?

8 : Not the norm. Very often

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85
1 : There could be --
2 4 -- going out the top and
3 bouncing down?
4 > There could be 60 or 70

5 people working inside that building when it's, you

6 know --

7 : That's very important. While
8 this was going on?

9 ‘: While it was going on.

10 , the building was right

II next to the main foundry pathway also.

12 “a Okay.

13 : All them guys was out there
14 in the foundry.

15 ‘: So the Number 6 Building

16 with this radiation testing area --

17 :: Was next to the foundry.
18 ?: + was right next to the --
19 _— . The foundry.

20 : The foundry.

21 ‘) ++ the Number 1 or main

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13 : And did not

14 have a badge.

15 *: And you definitely were in
16 those buildings?

17 : Sir, I think it's safe to say

18 the only people that had radiation badges were

19 employees of the nondestructive testing department.
20 The betatron department, Mag, layout, and sonics, we
21 were the only people. If we were -- our duties took
22 us to those buildings, we wore badges.

23 : Okay. So that's

24 talking.

25 ‘ ' ‘you're another

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1 individual had no badge?
2 + No badge.
3 2: Okay.
4 2 Okay. Now, how about -- so

5 where -- where do we want to start about where the

6 badges -- who -- you know, who analyzed them? What

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1 information I was after. That's great.

2 : Uh-huh. Thank you.

3 « Now, this is one that I think
4 we just need a few people. Actually, acknowledgement
5 around the room would be helpful here. So Affidavit
6 25 says testimony workers were never adequately

7 informed about the risks from alpha, beta, gamma,

8 neutrons, or x-rays from the betatrons, the cobalt 60

9 sources, the -- what I think now is the 195 KVP x-ray
10 units, or the iridium 192 gamma sources. And I think
11 as many people who would want to acknowledge that
12 would be very useful at this point. So I'll just open
13 up the floor about that and just were not told about

14 the risk.

15 . . The -- I don't
16 think we were really adequately told what the hazards
17 really were. The one thing I do remember distinctly
18 was on the cobalt unit, the 80 curie source cobalt

19 unit a lethal dose was three minutes. You did not die
20 tomorrow, you died six months later after you suffered
21 a little bit. But all in all 1 don't think any of us

22 really realized the danger we worked in. It was a

23 good paying job and we appreciated our job.

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25 you were under the license of the company.

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1 « Correct, I -- 1 understand
2 that.
3 « And it's not only a practice

4 at General Steel, other companies.

5 : Everywhere.
6 Yeah,
7 . But -- but isn't it true that

8 -- like at Washington U there are thousands -- a

9 thousand laboratories that use some kind of trace

10 amounts of radioactive isotopes. But each individual
11 investigator who uses that material also has to have
12 some training. Now --

13 + Oh, yes.

14 u: ++ yeah -- and film badges
15 and all that kind of stuff.

16 : Sure.

17 «| Okay. So I guess what I'm

18 getting at is who would be the people -- is it the

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4 : Okay.

5 « There was a Westinghouse

6 casting set up in the normal shooting position.

7 2 Uh-huh.

8 : And there was probably other

9 castings in the room, and it was the easiest place to

10 set it.

11 : And am I correct that the --

12 the Westinghouse castings -- now, this is Westinghouse
13 nuclear plant, like a part of the containment building

14 that the reactor can -- or was it actually to -- to --

15 : There was a Westinghouse
16 casting.

17 : Uh-huh.

18 . Halfa turbine, let's put it

19 that way.

20 : A turbine casting. Okay.
21 x: A turbine casting that was
22 actually --

23 : Got you. All right.

24 . They were set up on -- on

25 timber or metal sawhorses where you could get

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6 ‘: That's correct.
7 « Yeah. Okay.
8 ‘: And oftentimes we had

9 that casting already in there. We -- we -- we had --

10 wt Okay.

i : ++ it the way we want.
12 : Okay.

13 « But -- and -- and

14 routinely when the betatron shut down the operators

15 would -- would move immediately out to set up another

16 shot.
7 ~ a Okay.
18 *, Was that the normal time

19 frame from a shot when a camera shut off to get a
20 casting out in the 10 Building, about 15 minutes? Is

21 that pretty --

22 ‘s If-- if it was ona --
23 if it was ona crisis basis, on a hurry-up basis.

24 *, Okay.

25 : Some -- some castings of

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19 we had authority, the -- the people like ourselves in

20 the betatrons and Magnaflux had authority over that

21 type of work.
22 2 Okay.
23 : If it was spillover or special

24 work, I couldn't say, sir. But I saw these people out

25 in the open air with -- with sources performing actual

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY = (314) 421-0099

214
1 work,
2 : Okay. Good. Thank you.
3 again.
4 , [think if you understand about union

.5 contracts and so forth we -- we contracted with St.
6 Louis Testing to come over and do work that we not --
7 not couldn't perform but didn't have the time to
8 perform.
9 2 That's what I meant by spill
10 over work.
Mt « The only time that we

12 could outsource any job like that is if we had full

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164

1 getting a very clear picture about is were the survey
2 meters actually used. In other words, were they on
3 and clicking in the control room at all times so that
4 you --

5 2 No, sir. Not ever to my

6 knowledge. No. What was done --

7 « In other words --
8 3; -- they might --
9 +) ++ why -- why would he be in

10 there surveying for contamination, or do you think
11 maybe there was some specific reason?

12 +. Sir, the only thing I know he
13 went out of the control room into the office into the
14 cabinet where that was stored --

15 a Okay,

16 : -- got a Geiger counter out of
17 there and came back in the control room.

18 2 Okay.

19 . : On rare occasion they would
20 come to one of us operators and have us take readings

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16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24

25

I

“2

MeetingGSI070706non.txt
get involved?
_ No. Maybe next day they did.

: We got to be fair now.

: Yeah,
2 Yeah, So next day?
: Yeah. Possibly.

« Did anybody from the plant
come and try and get details of what had happened or
anything?

:: No. My own doctors had to do

it at the -- at the small hospital in Staunton.

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121

« Okay. All right.

: And they were -- they'd just

3 be -- they were young doctors, highly intelligent and

4 they knew more than I thought.

5

2 Okay. Well, I'd like to just

6 put on the record that, you know, here we've heard of

7 arather dramatic incident. I've heard of many

8

incidents at other places that have been put into the

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9 . : As -- as ” testified
10 mostly on night shifts or weekends.
1 : ‘ : Okay. : +, is that

12. -- is that your recollection too?

13 Yes.
14 : Both buildings.
15 ": It was-- the only time that

16 T ever did it was on -- on the midnight shift or
17 weekends.
18 : How about the buildings.

19 though? Did you operate --

20 : : The old betatron -- |

21 operated back and forth.

22 a Okay.

23 : But mostly mine was shot in

24 the old betatron.

25 > Okay.

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

32

1 : And the other guys were

2 shooting stuff in the new betatron.

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16 around the casting and between the betatron and the --

17 where you had to set up the film in the casting.

18 : Even though the machine
19 itself had cut off?

20 +. That is -- books tell you.

21 They wouldn't tell you, but the books did.

22 « Uh-huh.

23 +, And -- or they wouldn't agree
24 with you.

25 2 No. That's fine. But the --

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY = (314) 421-0099

57

| the important point is you realized it and you brought

2 it up then.

3 ‘+ That is correct.

4 : « Allright.

5 . ‘: And they said -- but they says

6 you better get moving the minute the betatron -- in
7 order to get the production or we -- or they were
8 falling behind on production, we were losing

9 contracts.

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19 your white cell count went?

20 No. They didn't tell you
21 nothing.

22 + Okay.

23 « All they did is said you

24 failed the white count test. I think there was at

25 that particular day one of these guys if I can

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154

1 remember his name -- he's dead now. + was his
2 name.

3 COURT REPORTER:

4 He also failed

5 the white count.

6

7

8 + Uh-huh, Okay.

9 : He also failed a white count
10 test because | remember him going out to the betatron
11 with me. Me and him worked together quite a bit.

12 : Okay. Well, what I want

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12 cumulative dose per year was below the acceptable or
13 permissible limits that year. So if there were people
14 who were getting higher than permissible exposures and
15 -- and you still were not really told that directly,
16 you were just told that you had a low blood count,
17 then that -- that's additional rather damning
18 evidence, I mean, that -- that something was going on

19 and you all really were not being informed.

20
21 « Yeah,
22 . 1 Ido
23 remember that worked in the -- in the lab
24 --
25 + Yeah.
POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099
159
1 : -- predominantly the biggest

2 part of the time. He probably wasn't around x-ray or
3 betatron too much --

4 . « Yeah.

5 : -- other than what his duties

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22 foundry?

23 : Yes, sir.

24 : Yeah. Right to the right.
25 *: Any doors?

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

86
1 : No doors.
2 : Okay. Thank you.
3 : And the final thing on

4 Building 6 and that source, what would you all say --

5 I mean, was that facility in use almost all the time

6 or--

7 : Yeah,

8 : -- once ina while?

9 «: The biggest part of the

10 time. That was used more than any -- any time that I
11 know of.

12 if 2 This is saying
13 that it's in use -- I'm sorry -- most of the time,

14 would you say?

15 : Most of the time. Uh-huh.

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15 « Lunderstand. Okay. Good.
16 Allright.
17 «: [have a question. How could

18 you get a railroad car -- if you had a casting -- a

19 Westinghouse casting on the betatron car, how could
20 you get a railroad car in there too?

21 : No. The castings were
22 brought in on the railcar and picked off.

23 4: That they -- they also -- you
24 also had a -- a car that you put the casting on too,

25 didn't you?

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136

1 . That was a transfer car.
2 We're not talking about the railcar. We're talking

3 about a transfer car that moved from --

4 i: Did you have more than one

5 transfer car?

6 = Yeah,
7 « There was one transfer car for
8 each.

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4

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. It wasn't permanently stored

5 in the betatron -- new betatron building.

6

+ So it was stored both

7 places possibly?

8

9

10

ll

20

2

22
23
24
25

: Yes. And it was --

: I'm sorry, But
when you say the lab, are you talking about the
metallurgy lab?

: Or the chemistry lab?
« Yes, The metallurgy lab.
*: The metallurgy lab.
: Okay.
could verify that
fact.

T . Okay. Good. Now, the next
topic is the one -- this may be something we know the
least about of any of the sources, but it could be
real important because it was used all over the plant.
And that's workers who can document and describe there
was a iridium, I-R-I-D-I-U-M, 192 source and where and
how often it was used. So my -- my question is 1 have

not heard a single individual who actually saw the

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24

25

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: Sure.

: And we tried to do a good job

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

202

1 as best, you know, each individual could.

2

3

: Right.

: So the -- so when -- when this

4 organization finally came together is when we're

5 really starting to find out what dangers we really

6 lived in.

7

: That's useful. And then one

8 of the things I did not put on there, but I -- 1

9 really should. The other main thing that, you know,

10 NIOSH and The Department of Laborer are concerned

11 about is the uranium ingots. And I gather from what

12 everybody's told that -- that really not any specific

13 instructions were given to you all about the uranium

14 dangers specifically. Is that a fair statement --

15

16

17

« Yes, P--
.! -- from your point of view?
: Yes. It would be a fair

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19

20

2

22

23

24

25

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+ That may be. But -- but you
never saw any reports?

: I never saw a report.
Okay. *, how about
you? Any -- any comment about that.

: The - a ST don't
know if I spelled my name before or not, but it's
. The -- on the -- on the film badges there
are pictures that were taken while we were operating
on different castings where the -- you can see the
film badges when we had them on our shirts.
: Right. We have pictures of
that.
: So there is -- there's no
doubt that they weren't used or worn and so on. And
it would be very interesting to me to see those
reports.
i : Okay. We're trying to get a
lot more reports. But -- but at least we -- we know

that some existed for one man at least.

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10 five minutes.

11 (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.)

12 1 Okay. Because ” $
13 has to go to a doctors appointment I want to read in

14 Affidavits No. 7, 13, and 15 and then give him a

15 chance to comment. Affidavit 7 asks for workers who
16 saw and can describe the cobalt 60 -- I said x-ray

17 source -- but it's really a gamma source in Plant 6

18 and also workers who can describe the physical aspects
19 of the shooting area in Building 6. In particular

20 what kind of materials were tested there, what were

2

the safety precautions, what were the warning signs?
22 Affidavit No. 13 asks for workers who know

2

oO

about ingots and castings that were put on company
24 railroad cars. This is cars now not from outside but

2:

a

that the company owned that went through at the plant

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73

1 buildings. And we're interested in any details about
2 those cars and the rail details, you know, where the

3 cars were stored between moving the castings, where

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10

1 for -- and I went to work there in March of 1953 until

2 7 And I worked all over the
3 foundry.
4 : My name is I

5 basically worked in Magnaflux, layout, ultrasonics,

6 and mostly radiographer. I worked in both betatrons,
7 8,9, and 10 Building and 6 Building. The major

8 portion of my work was x-ray and layout, marking up
9 defects, follow up on repairs in Magnaflux and

10 ultrasonics.

i ' : Okay. Thank you.

12 . My name is

13 I worked at General Steel from November of
14 1963 to in the betatron Magnaflux

15 department. I operated in the new betatron and the

16 old betatron operating and as a crew member in both

17 betatron buildings. [ also worked as an isotope

18 assistant at times. I also worked as a Magnaflux

19 operator in 8, 9 and 10 Building. I also worked with

20 - on occasion at American Steel Castings

21 in Granite City as an assistant to who was

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20

2

22

2.

oO

2

a=

2

nr

we

wn

MeetingGSI070706non.txt
the last chance.

We are most pleased to have -- both our
court reporters and the videographers here because we
feel that this information that you'll talk about this
morning is extremely important to get down accurately
so that we can share it with NIOSH and with the
Department of Labor.

So with that as -- that as a preamble !
also want to mention that . is -- will be handing
out or has handed out to you two pieces of paper. At
the top it's called draft sample letter, and it's a
letter template to send to the Paducah Resource Center

to request copies of your claims records. In

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

particular what we're interested in you all doing if

you feel this is a good idea -- and I -- I strongly
recommend you do it -- is we've learned in Washington
at the advisory board meeting on radiation worker
health that you all have a right to all of your

information about your radiation dose reconstruction.

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3 make a comment on -- on just what you said. My next
4 older brother died of cancer at John Hopkins
5 University Hospital I guess it's been 35 years ago. I
6 was in the hospital outside his room when he died.
7 One of the doctors at John Hopkins, after he was
8 pronounced dead, he was standing in the hall crying
9 and all he could say is we lost another one. I'm
10 about in tears now. But it, as you said, radiation is
11 auseful tool in its own categories.
12 : Right.
13 + And I'll never forget that day
14 when you see a doctor cry, we lost another one.
15 : Yeah. Well, I think the
16 intentions are good but the implementation, taking
17 care of the people who are usinge the technology is --
18 the record is -- I'll admit it's better. But if you
19 look back over the last 75 years it's a pretty sad
20 story.
21 So all right. Well, tet's see, Let me
22 wake -- wake up Betsy here and see what we can do.
23 Okay. We've just got a few more. We've mentioned

24 today and I think we've covered this pretty well that

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3 just gave. And it -- what I think it shows is sort of
4 the company's attitude about these kind of things.
5 And so anyway I appreciate that -- that sharing a lot.
6 + This is - this is
7 again. The thing is you don't find out the
8 effects of it until ten years down the line.
9 2: That's correct.
10 «You're already working for
11 another firm in different industry and so forth like I
12 was. J worked for -- in the aircraft industry. And I
13 come home one night, and I -- for a couple days my
14 doctor thought I was getting walking pneumonia or flu.
15 And then I come home and got real -- | come home
16 early. I never take off early just -- you just don't
17 do that. And so I come home early, right, and then my
18 family took me to the local hospital. The next
19 morning they took biopsies, and they gave me -- gave
20 me the news, they found it. They sent me immediately

2

to Barnard Cancer Center at that time which is now
22 Siteman. And they made all the tests there, and they
23 says well, you have cancer of the pancreas and liver.

24 So immediately they decided to give me

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19 go in and help pour the heats.

20 2 Allright. Affidavit 29 gets

2

at which classes of people -- and we're thinking about
22 custodial people, electricians, inspectors -- who were
23 not betatron operators or assistants but who regularly
24 came in and out of the betatron buildings. And I

25 guess, you know, so there's some of the categories.

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY = (314) 421-0099

229

1 But like . for instance was an
2 inspector, and I understand the inspectors were

3 certainly in and out of the betatron building. The
4 electricians another group for sure. Are there any
5 other groups that we're missing because --

6 : [worked -- I worked -- I

x

worked in 12 Building. That's where we made them big

oo

industrial castings. And they -- they would pour

9 them, and sometimes we'd have to go over in the

10 betatron and look at them when they was x-raying them
11 for cracks. Then they would have to inspect them and

12 all that. Me and -- I called him

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24 me stimulate the group by saying this that we -- we --

25 we know now for sure, we saw them. We have the

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

37

I records from And shad his own
2 personal radiation monitoring records. And I'm trying
3 to think of the years we had them, but it -- I think

4 it was 1963 and ‘4. Well, at least the year '60 --

5 '62,'3, and '4 1 think. And they were written out,

6 and it looked like it was a yearly summary of your

7 personal cumulative radiation exposure record for

8 those three years. And then he had some additional

9 sheets for later years '66 through '69 which did not

10 have any accrued radiation. So we're -- we're

1] wondering if there was anybody else who ever got such
12 areport back. | think . who can't be here

13. this morning said he had also seen some records like

14 that. But any of the betatron people or anybody that

15 had badges, did you ever get a record like that?

16 : No, sir. No, sir. Not to my

17 recollection during the period of time I worked there

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22 potentially expose more people to radiation.

23 . have you or anybody?
24 . Well, the one comment that I
25 would like to make -- The comment I

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

131

1 would like to make is the -- the night 1 worked with
2 we shot the weld prep on a channel head
3 that was sitting on the railroad tracks in the

4 betatron -- in the new betatron with the cobalt 60

5 unit.
6 + Okay.
7 :: When that was -- the way it

8 was set up there was -- the radiation went straight

9 down the railroad track into 10 Building. And the --
10 that was the night that ‘didn't lock the
11 case after the shot, and I crawled on him about

12 locking the case. And he did lock it then after [ --

13. because of the safety factor. Anybody that was in the
14 control room that would have turned the crank the

15 source would have been out. The --

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23
24

25

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i: What was the real reason for
that hair to stand up on your arm? I would like to
know,
I : Well, the -- the betatrons,
you know, that's -- it's just tremendous intensity
that it actually -- it ionizes the air, but it also --
that word charging. It actually activates the air
particles. So any molecule in the path of that beam
would be activated. And what that means is it
disturbs the electrons in the air. So you certainly
have circulating oxygen, some nitrogen, all of that is
charged and it creates a secondary electric field.
And -- and that's -- that's what you're feeling when
you're -- when you're doing that. Some people in
other places that I know who have used betatrons or
linear accelerators said that you can even smell the

effect of activation in the air. Now, | don't know if

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

62

1 that's true or not. But --

2

x: But this I -- I noticed on

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12. that you don't remember making a copy --

13 “No.

14 : -- that would be saved by the

15 company?

16 «No. J --I don't think

17 we did.

18 2 Okay.

19 2: We -- we had blank copies

20 and they were filled out by the layout man --

21 ~ : Okay.

22 <-> specifying what shot
23 to be taken, how many Rs to shoot it at, what distance
24 to shoot it at, and -- and so forth, And the operator

25 would check that -- check that off when he got

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

69
1 finished shooting it.
2 « But now even --
3 ‘, May I -- can J just say
4 one thing?
5 i Sure. No. This is

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GS] AFFIDAVIT TESTIMONY

July 7, 2006

SimmonsCooper, LLC
707 Berkshire Boulevard
East Alton Illinois 62024

‘Court Reporter

PARTICIPANTS

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89

1 : Everybody else was cold

2 turkey.
3 i : Yeah,
4 ro « We asked -- one of the

5 questions in the affidavit was do you all have a sense
6 of what type of materials were being x-rayed in that
7 -- in that 6 Building. I mean, were -- were they

8 truck castings? Were there --

9 = Yeah.
10 . + Mostly truck castings.
11 I : Okay. So we were looking for

12. structural flaws again?
13 I % [don't know if they put

14 anything else in there or not.

15 C : Okay.

16 : Generally they did --

17 : They'd put an underframe in
18 there.

19 : Okay.

20 «, It was big enough to --

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10 particular, I mean, . . ,even
11
12
13 « Yep. That -- that as far as

14 your betatron people were concerned they didn't come
15 in and act in the capacity of radiation safety

16 officers. Is that a fair statement? Allright. And

17 | -- just for the record I'm seeing nodding assent

18 from . 7 . Sol--
19 I -- 1 think we can establish that point this morning.

20 . [just want to make one

21 comment. When I go to a hospital now
22 into the x-ray room and witness hospital employees,
23 x-ray technicians without their badges on I chew ass

24 because from what I've learned here I'm passing along.

25 2 Yeah.

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148

1 : And it's surprising how many
2 x-rays technicians in hospitals do not wear their

3 dosimeter badges.

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2 : -- have been used a lot.
4 + Uh-huh,

5 : [just saw a --

6 : Sof got to use ita few

7 times.

8 « Okay. All right.

9 +. Thank you.

10 : Good, That's perfect.

11 That's -- that's what we needed to know. And can
12 [ask you just one follow up on that?

13 > Yes.

14 : Again, I'm trying to get some
15 sense for NIOSH --

16 +) Uh-huh,

17 «++ of whether that was a very
18 occasional thing or a routine thing or how often would
19 you say you and used that source?

20 : A few times. It was not a

21 scheduled thing I don't think.

22 : Twelve times a year?
23 s: No.
24 2 Six times a year?

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6 : We were -- we did have a set

7 procedure to take the machine down.

8 : Thear you. Okay.

9 : This sort of thing never

10 happened.

1] : All right,

12 : And we followed that procedure

13 as exactly as we could.

14 « Okay. How about any of the
15 other folks that worked in the betatron building? Did
16 you all see any similar? That was it as far as you

17 were --

18 : That was my experience with

19 the explosion,

20 *: What time was that was,
21
22 + | would say it was toward the

23 latter end of my employment as a radiographer with
24 General Steel.

25 « What year?

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19 with us this morning.

20 So the first thing I wanted to mention is

21 that each of you should have a handout which has the
22 basic topics that we're going to talk about this

23 morning, the affidavit topics. You will notice in

24 your handout that there are 30 topics. And -- and

25 under each topic there are some names that ind

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

I filled in of people that they thought might have
2 some information about each of these points.

3 Now, that doesn't mean that they're the

4 only ones that can talk. So if you happen to know

5 more about this information as said, please get
6 up to the microphone and talk to us now or at the end
7 of the session you can write -- and during the session
8 you can write your thoughts down on the back of your
9 handouts. And at the end of the session we'll have
10 some additional handouts that if you want to sign up
!1 ona particular topic, then we will get in touch with

12 you and record your further thoughts. So today is not

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13 everybody to think about -- yes. I've heard that

14 story, and that's extremely important because unless

15 they were doing it for some other reason that I'm not

16 aware of, the most direct relationship of course is

17 between acute radiation poisoning. And you know, one
18 of the primary manifestations of that is a rapidly

19 dropping white cell count. Now, what that implies to
20 me if that was being done and that was the reason, you
21 know, that ordinarily you would have expected there
22 would have been a -- an explanation to you all that

23 that's why they were doing blood sampling. So anyway,
24 that's extremely important to get on the record.

25 I think somebody told me however that
POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099
155

1 maybe that was like in the early -- or during the ‘50s
2 and the early ‘60s. I don't know, but -- but it

3 stopped at some point. Is that --

4 No. Because I worked there
5 from '63 to '70.

6 : Okay. You weren't even

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7 maybe?

8 “> Well, I'm not for sure. I

9 -- I saw very little calibration.

10 , « You should -- you should say
11 what you're aware of personally.

12 *: They ran it at full speed.
13 I mean, top notch all the time.

14 : So--

15 : If they'd walk in and catch
16 you running it down kind of low or down medium, you
17 were in trouble. You had to have it cranked up.

18 You were expected to run it

19 wide open ail the time?

20 : Yeah. Right.

21 : Wide open all the time,

22 « I'm with you.

23 "; It was --

24 : Why was it wide open all
25 the time?

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21 : you were in
22 the foundry I thought.
23 : Yeah.
24 : Can you tell us something

25 about that?

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90

l : [believe --
2 I believe this is where they x-rayed that magnesium,

3 rock crushings, the metal of that too in the 6

4 Building.
5 : Uh-huh,
6 : Are you talking about

7 manganese?

8 : Manganese,

9 — «: Yeah, manganese. And it's
10 the small -- a lot of the small castings went there to
11 be x-rayed.

12 : : Okay.

13 : That's where this beryllium
14 steel, it was like a tube they made for a submarine

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10 inches round and I would say about three foot long.

11 And they were stacked on a pallet. And they had a

12 stamp, a red tag on the end of them, but I can't

13 remember what the tag said. And they had some writing
14 stamped on them, but I don't know what it was. They
15 were setting on the furnace floor.

16 : What called your attention
17 to that particular pallet?

18 ;] just happened to walk by

19 them and see them. They had a red sticker on the end
20 of them, and that's more or less what I just noticed.

21 *; So it was something

22 different than the --

23 : Yeah. It wasn't --
24 : ‘| -- what you normally saw?
25 Yeah, it was different from

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I scrap steel, what the normal --
2 : Okay.
3 ' : -- that's sitting on the

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24

25

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« Okay.

.. ~~ end of story. Affidavit

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1 21,1 think Westinghouse came in like once a year and

2 so -- and did check the machine if it was running

3 properly.

4 . Westinghouse?

5 : Yes.

6 » Okay. Good.

7 2 Which wouldn't take very long

8 because they would just point the machine at the wall

9 and crank her up and see if everything was functioning

10 correctly.

11

12

a Okay.

- Other than that when the

13 machine would get too hot, say we were shooting long

14 shots all day long, there was a switch on -- on the

15 control panel where you switched banks. When it got

16 too hot for both switches or both banks then they

17 would come in and -- the electricians would come in

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1 3; Even when we went in to the
2 old betatron with them. And the same car that went

3 into the old betatron went in every building too.

4 And --

5 « Were the cars -- were they

6 dusty?

7 :: What, them cars?

8 Tr « Yeah,

9 : : They had sand, dirt, rocks,

10 whatever's loaded on there, that'd fall on them they

11 just -- they was on them.

12 : Were they ever cleaned?

13 : They cleaned them about once
14 or twice a year, And -- and behind the betatron we

15 dumped sand up on top. And we was higher than the

16 betatron when we was dumping this sand. And that

17 would -- they was always kept down by the sand system,
18 the dump cars were.

19 = And why -- why were you --

20 what was the sand doing?

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22 and new betatron buildings were actually shielded and

23 in particular, you know, if they used lead and what --
24 what was the thickness of the lead. So in other

25 words, were -- were the -- were the control rooms that

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1 you all were inside and -- and assumed were fully

2 protected from the betatron and from the gamma

3 sources, the cobalt 60, were you really fully

4 protected? So anybody who has intimate knowledge of

5 that, that would be extremely useful.

6 h

7 2 Yeah.

8 :: We had an episode.

9 was a safety man, he was also an isotope

10 operator was ordered to come into the new betatron for
11 a shooting session of cobalt, the big source shooting

12 acasting. I assisted him in setting up the shot,

13 vacated the area when he was ready. The betatron was
14 locked out of course. fired off his shot. We

15 were in the control room, The outside entrance door

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1 comment on that please?
2 : Yeah. We had to check off.
3 + [-- let me just preface it

4 by saying it's still exceedingly odd to me that a

5 company would not want a -- some record of a gigantic,
6 major job. I know you did a lot of work, but how

7 would they keep track of it to cost account the

8 contract for example?

9 : : I don't know how they kept
10 track of the film.

WH 2 Okay. All right.

12 *: Every shot we made we had --
13 they had -- as you say they had a sheet we had to mark
14 off each shot.

15 : I understand that. Right.

16 That's clear.

17 ! *: Right. That's the only

18 record that we kept.

19 : But -- well, is it your

20 recollection as well that those -- those shot records

21 were put back with the film and sent off to the

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4 COURT REPORTER: You got to speak up for
5 me, okay?
6 And I

7 worked in the betatron -- both betatrons, the

8 Magnaflux. I was a film reader and foreman in the

9 betatron.

10 COURT REPORTER: Film reader and what else

11 did you say? I'm sorry.

12 : Film reader in the betatron.

13 COURT REPORTER: You have to keep your
14 voice up.

15 : Twas foreman.

16 COURT REPORTER: Pardon me?

17 J: I was foreman.

18 : Is that it,

19 : Yes, sir.

20 Okay. So why don't we get

21 started then with our -- little lag here. So what I'm
22 going to do is go through each of the -- let's -- here
23 we go. Let's do it this way. Okay, good. Okay. So
24 the first -- the first affidavit topic that I'd like

25 you all to address is as follows: We're -- we're

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15 « Yes.

16 again.

17 2 Allright.

18 : [think rhad

19 a job, he was in -- a safety man for the department.

20 By that I mean he acted as a go-between. He didn't

2

work for the company at that time. He worked for the
22 department I guess as a safety man, And as some of
23 his duties he went around and made various checks.
24 And I think he used to come in about perhaps once a

25 month, check with a Geiger counter to find out if

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there was any radiation exposure out there and make a

2 report.

3 : So--so Ido need to

4 understand that. When you say he did not work for the
5 department -- I mean, he didn't work for the company,

6 he worked for the department, which department?

7 : : The nondestructive

oo

testing department.

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9 reading you said oops, I forgot to reel it back in,
10 you know.
11 : So okay. Maybe you ought to
12 talk about that a little bit farther. Why -- why
13 would you be -- you -- the source was out there being
14 used. You were in the control room?
15 : Right.
16 » Why would you go out there

17 when the window was open at all?

18 “; Well, that could easily
19 happen.

20 7 : Tell me about that.

21 *: You -- a lot of times the

22 shots were quite long.
23 I a Yes.
24 : And if you didn't have that

25 --a lot of times it might have gotten stuck --

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1 « Yes, Uh-huh.
2 : -- halfway, you know.

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19 : It was a transfer -- a

20 transfer car.

21 :| Transfer car, . Well,

22 they went around. They were taken out on -- on

23 normal, routine rounds. Just as? said they
24 were taken out probably all through the -- all through

25 the plant, different buildings --

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1 *: Okay.
2 : -- for -- for normal usage.
3 ‘> So were they inside for the

4 shooting, the work and then went out back into the

5 plant?

6 : This is

7 again. We're confusing the railcars that took the

8 castings via rail to the old betatron and transfer

9 cars that took them in to the new betatron. Okay.

10 These were not the same type of cars. The transfer
11 cars in the new betatron, the castings were loaded in

12 either 8, 9, and 10 Building depending upon what work

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1 did -- it sounds like it was a fair -- somewhat dusty

2 environment or --

3 : They-- they -- they used them
4 mostly when they poured these big heats for the smoke,
5 to get the smoke out of there.

6 2 The smoke.

7 +: Because they had a stuff they
8 called high heat that they would put on these -- in

9 this after it was poured to hold the heat in there so

10 that metal would settle down, wouldn't be cracks in
AL it.

12 2 Uh-huh,

13 | And then they'd, like I said,
14 take these asbestos cloths to cover that up and hold
15 the heat in there.

16 . T've seen that today. 1

17 mean, we saw some of those trains going down the
18 tracks in Granite City and they had asbestos blankets

19 around the top.

20 Yes.
21 : Okay.
22 : This sand system, all this

23 sand that come from all different building was

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13 hear what he said. | didn't hear the last thing you

14 said.

15 : Me and was
16 the last two left in the plant.

17 : The last of the regular

18 employees at General Steel left at the plant?

19 + Yeah.

20 : Okay. So who told you to --

21 to destroy the records?

22 nb

23 2 Oh,7 >” did. You --

24 you, —.. , YOu -- you were it?

25 s: Uh-huh.

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i 2 All right.
2 *; And was the

3 plant superintendent at the time?

4 : Yeah. Uh-huh.
5 > Okay.
6 * Plant manager.

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2

radioactive to some degree after that point. And so
22 maybe that -- that will focus on why the Magnaflux
23 really was sort of important as a vehicle to carry

24 activated radiation products throughout the plant.

25 Affidavit 15 we've talked about -- a

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little bit about the getting rid of the records, the

2 records that were burned or discarded and to what

3 extent this was done. And then we have a series of

4 affidavits that relate to things that we don't believe

5 were really in operation at the plant to any

6 significant degree.

7 So Affidavit No. 16 testimony there was no

8 regular radiation safety training except for the

9 metallurgists. I think we've talked about that again.

10 Testimony that there were no bioassay samples such as
11 urine or feces, we haven't talked with that. But in

12 general bioassay samples are used to assess the amount
13 of uranium that's -- or thorium, but more particularly
14 uranium that accumulates in the body.

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205
1 that we had of what actually was going to happen to
2 you we didn't really have. I was told when I went to
3 working there that you don't want to get in front of
4 that camera, that radiation out of there is like
5 shooting darts through your body. You know, it will
6 destroy the tissues and your white blood cells, your
7 teeth will fall out, your hair will fall out, and
8 things of that nature, you get fat like lam. But we
9 weren't told.
10 : When was I exposed that’s
11 what I want to know.
12 .: We weren't told the
13 effects of radiation.
14 : Right.
15 . We just weren't told. We
16 -- we were told it's dangerous, don't get -- don't get
17 in front of it. We were told as soon as the camera
18 was off -- as soon as the controls went off it was
19 okay to walk out there, there was nothing floating
20 around. I remember being in 10 Building a lot because

21 I took care of the Magnaflux out there. And there was

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15 : -- specifically because we're
16 not accurately informed of the dangers in what we were
17 handling.
18 .: Well, I'm going to answer it
19 ina personal way as a physician. | mean, my -- my

20 job was to heal people. And my profession -- you

iS)

know, we -- we discovered early on that radiation

22 could help cure cancer. But at the same time what we
23 also learned is that radiation has a lot of side

24 effects and complications. And -- and I am quite sad

25 that my profession in general as the years have gone

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by would -- would like the public to believe that

2 radiation therapy and diagnostic radiology has no risk

3 at all which is simply not true.

4 And so the facts, the actual facts, you

5 know, if you can read in the literature are extremely

6 well documented, have been documented since the early
7 ‘50s. So it's a parallel situation. You guys weren't

8 being picked on selectively if that means anything. I

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25 : We didn't like it at all.
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1 : If | could just clarify one
2 thing or ask you guys to clarify it. is

3 talking about a betatron procedure and

4 talking about a cobalt procedure.

5

6

2 Right.

*: So there's two procedures,

7 different radioactive material or sources aimed

8 towards 10 Building and the door on the track; is that

9 correct? So there's two different topics?

10

11

‘| That -- that's very correct.

« Right. And so -- so -- so

12 just -- just for the record then the betatrons are

13 sending x-rays that way, high -- very high energy, and
14 the cobalt sources are sending very high energy gamma
15 -- gamma rays in that same direction. So good point.
16 : Quick question. What

17 happened to that railroad car that all this is sitting

18 on? Did it leave the building? Did it --

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1 . But -- but each -- each

2 exposure of that could be 10,000 Rs is what you're

3 saying. So the total --

4 . No, No. Only about four
5 or five. Only four or five of those shots would be

6 that -- that fength.

7 2 Well, let -- no. Here's what

8 I'm trying to -- what I'm trying to do is some mental

9 calculation if you did -- ['m not pinning it down to

10 -- I mean, let's say that the average exposure for the

11 thinner parts was 3,000 R. But you -- you'd still --

12 would it be even less than that? One thousand R.

13 Okay. So -- but I mean, to get a total dose delivered
14 to that piece of metal you'd have to sum of all of

15 those individual exposures. That's what I'm --

16 : Master shooting log, is
17 the only thing that could tell you complete exposure.
18 . And then somebody at the end
19 would add that up. Okay.

20 «Well, I think if -- if

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25 rays, the neutrons which you didn't have any way to

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1 measure | don't think, all those things could have

2 done something. So yeah, that's important. And --

3 and the secondary activation of other molecules in the
4 targets, in the air, in the building components, all

5 that is very -- is important. Yeah. Okay. Thank you

6 very much,

7 ‘> Thanks.

8 _ you had a comment?

9 *: This is We

10 used to go over there and inspect them Westinghouse
11 castings, me and . And you could feel the
12 hair on your arms stand up when you were walking

13 around inspecting them castings.

14 : After the machine was off; is
15 that right?

16 : L don't know whether the

17 machine was off or on. I didn't even -- I didn't work

18 there.

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22 : On the inside of the casting

23 when you -- when you put the turbine inside the
24 machine, inside the casting when it was in the power

25 plant you had to have bearings for this turbine to be

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1 able to run and rotate without wobbling or -- or

2 whatever.
3 : Right.
4 &: Okay. Your -- your bearings

5 then on the inside of the casting were -- like _ said
6 were your thick portions. They would be -- may only

7 be six inches wide, but they may be 12, 14 inches

8 thick.
9 : I got you. All right.
10 : Okay. You had to shoot those

11 separate from the shell, let's put it that way. The

12 shell would probably be two, three, four inches thick.
13 So that's where you got your variation in your shots.
14 Well, naturally everybody shot the thick shots first.

15 Right.

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22 That's fine.

23 :: Nobody ever showed me
24 nothing.

25 «| No. No. That's fine. But

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1 well, could it -- maybe we need to ask it this way.
2 Could it have been Westinghouse that was doing those

3 inspections?

4 : [would see no reason for
5 them to.

6 + Okay.

7 : They cared less.

8 « Well, I mean one of the

9 things that --

10 : Lassumed it was something
11 to do with safety.

12 « Okay. The betatrons were

13 built by Allis Chalmers, and Allis Chalmers was a very
14 interesting company.

15 : There was too much took

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3 : That's great. So -- so and I
4 think that's pretty well answered. And then I think
5 we heard details about how the film was attached and
6 -- and who saw them and the transport in and out and
7 back to Mallinckrodt. So again, we can revisit this,
8 but let's move on to another topic.
9 Affidavit Topic No. 3, General Steel
10 workers who can testify that film badge dosimeters
11 were worn and in particular that they were from the
12 Landauer Corporation. That's L-A-N-D-A-U-E-R and/or
13 from the Atomic Energy Commission. And we have one
14 date -- set of data sheets from who --
15 where at the top of the sheets it's marked Atomic
16 Energy Commission. And at the bottom of one of those
17 sheets the people who apparently did the film badge
18 readings was a group called the Nuclear Consulting
19 Corporation. And interestingly I have looked that up,
20 and it turns out that Nuclear Consulting Corp was
21 absorbed is what the excerpt said by Mallinckrodt
22 itself which I find an interesting thing. So I'm
23 wondering, you know, the -- whether your claim is

24 awarded, whether the special exposure cohort is

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16 anybody who was a safety -- a safety person in the

17 plant at all.

18 : Let me just make a follow-up
19 comment to that because I think -- I think

20 » | think maybe ~ one of the
21 two said that they did give some kind of -- , you

22 can help me on this.

23 : Health physics --
24 i: A health physics --
25 *) -- three day class. But it

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1 was strictly for -- the ones we've seen recognized

2 were for isotope specialists, period. I don't think

3 they did it for the betatron workers.

4 + Right.

5 : I mean, I know they didn't
6 do it for the betatron workers.

7 : But just for -- just for the

8 record then I think we -- we -- this would be good to

9 get on the record then, that -- that those people in

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10 : Allright. Yes,

i ; The calibrating, 1 do

12 periodically remember them coming in and the

13 electricians | think doing the calibrating.

14 : Yeah. Let me get your

15 microphone hooked up. Okay. Go ahead.

16 : But I do remember the

17 electricians coming in and shutting -- and calibrating
18 them. That's what I thought they were doing.

19 : Calibrating the output of the

20 machine or the --

2 : Right. The output of the
22 machine.
23 : See, the whole problem is

24 none of us knew what they were doing.

25 : We were never told what was

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1 going on.
2 : Let me ask -- ask

3 while he's there how frequently would you --

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16 | I remember --

17 it I'm not talking about

18 particular individuals but just what section of the --

19 of the plant would do that?

20 We were told if we had an

21 exposure with a pocket dosimeter to log it immediately
22 on the log and report it to -- at the end of the shift

23 to our -- our shift foreman, sir.

24 .: But who -- who told you that,

25 the shift foreman?

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1 * Yeah.
2 a Okay.
3 : The next day -- the next day

4 the shift foreman -- now, I don't specifically

5 remember who that person was. That's been 40 years.
6 « No. That's fine. I just

7 want to know.

8 + But he simply told me that it

9 was dismissed as improper zeroing of the dosimeter,

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1 Building and took out into I Building.

2 sem *: Okay.

3 7 3: That's where they set the

4 cores and made the -- poured the metal.

5 i

6 : Yes, sir.

7 id » When they
8 poured the heat in the foundry these gases, steam

9 would billow in through all these buildings.

10 _ : Okay.

11 : Anything that joined the

12 foundry, that smoke would carry into all these areas.

13 *: The Number 6 was right --
14 + Right in the middle.

15 *: It was just right --

16 t « Right there.

7 *; -- right in the middle of

18 the Number | foundry if I looked at the map correctly?
19 ! ’: Right by the open -- and the
20 electric furnace.

21 + Asa matter of fact, at

22 one time they had --

23 « This is ” that's

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15 + Right,
16 « -- with a little window on

17 the front and a crank and --

18 : Kind of like a -- a plumb
19 bob, a little --

20 : Some -- some kind of a --
21 yeah --

22 : Right. It ran out.

23 : -- that would open that

24 window and expose the radiation?

25 : Right.

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| «| Open the radiation window?

2 *: Right.
3 : Okay.
4 1 : And a lot of times it was

5 left open so you needed that dosimeter to go out

6 there,
7 : Yeah,
8 » . And once you got that high

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21 outside the betatrons, either the old or the new as
22 shots were taking place --
23 a Okay.
24 4: -- to help monitor. That's

25 the only either a survey meter or Geiger counter use I
POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099
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1 saw at that time of any kind of readings taken.

2 ; : Okay.

3 «+ T don't know of any kind of
4 special air readings or whatever taken or --

5 .: But -- but -- but just to be
6 clear there were no routine survey meter readings
7 taken within the control room?

8 : This was on -- this was at

9 random, sir.

10 wt Okay.
ll : Atrandom best explanation.
12 ~~ : Okay. That's fine. That's

13 great. All right.
14

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18 going to -- he had taken a shot, and for some reason
19 there was no safety switch or nothing. And somehow he

20 walked out there and set up another shot while the

21 machine was still going. That was

22 i : was that? was

23 that’

24 : That was!

25 , yeah.

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1

2 «Yeah.

3 : Yes. That was

4 that was exposed on that. The 195 KVP machine was
5_ used for thicknesses of like one inch or less.

6 Usually a weld prep on the -- on these castings that

7 -- that something else had to be welded to it and they
8 prepped it and used a -- probably used a -- I don't

9 know if they used an M film on that or a double A

10 film. I'm -- I'm -- can't quite --

11 : They -- _ They

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11 “: Okay.

12 : I sincerely questioned that,

13 but what more could I do?

14 - | Now, were there other people
15 in the betatron building that had those pocket

16 dosimeters?

17 : Yes, sir. On occasion they
18 were used. used them. I know ?
19 used them, probably anybody that ever

20 did any kind of operating at either betatron would --
21 would use them on occasion in needed. They were an
22 instant reference.

22 : Well, modern -- the modern
24 recommendation is that you should have a film badge

25 and some kind of an -- a realtime rate meter that

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1 would --

2

3 : -- indicate an accumulating

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12 from the shooting room to the -- it would be the south
13 side, then towards the railroad tracks, but all within

14 the limits of where it was supposed to be.

15 « Okay.

16 : And they would go around the
17 building.

18 v Uh-huh.

19 : Then shortly thereafter I

20 remember them putting more lead in the shooting room
21 where the electric was upstairs. And I know I

22 remember that.

23 : That's in the wall in the

24 mechanical equipment room over the shooting room.

25 x Right.

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1 : Just what I was talking about
2 with that source.
3 : Upstairs?
4 : Upstairs.
5 «: Upstairs. Up above our

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19 very -- that that's very useful. Affidavit 21 has to

20 do with something that we -- we need to pin down and
21 that is | know has said in the past and many
22 people I've talk to have said that in general the

23 betatrons -- both betatrons ran at full maximum power.
24 But the other thing is I want to pin down -- I -- [

25 don't get a sense that the betatrons were calibrated

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1 either at afl or regularly, And I -- { want -- I want

2 to hear from you folks is that accurate or -- or not.

3 And then -- and then let me sort of counter that by

4 saying that on the other hand I've heard in the past

5 that there were occasional inspections of the betatron
6 facilities. And I'm not talking about what we just

7 described by , but perhaps by the Atomic
8 Energy Commission. But they were done no more

9 frequently than once or twice a year. So is there

10 anybody who could speak to that right now? How about
11 the betatron calibration? were -- were

12 those machine calibrated? In other words --

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6 heads.
7 : The wall of the mechanical
8 equipment room.
9 +: It's where all the
10 electricity was.
11 : All right.
12 !: The shooting room was just a

13 panel, like a computer desk.

14 « Uh-huh,

15 : Okay. It was a little

16 larger.

17 2 Uh-huh.

18 1: But upstairs was where all

19 the power was.
20 « Okay. Well, that's
21 interesting. So do you remember was the contro] room

22 itself kind of encased in lead, or was it just the --

23 : See, I --
24 : -- concrete and sand?
25 : -- just assumed it was okay.

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7 : eens
8 a Okay.
9 wees = On the old betatron before

10 they built the new one I have went in there to pull

1

the casting whenever they was shooting and they --
12 we'd go in there and we'd pull the flatcar out and put
13 another casting in there. They had two castings in

14 there at the same time.

15 « Okay. Good. All right.

16 Let's see. I think we've covered Affidavit No. 6.

17 But if | may I'll just read it into the record,

18 That's about workers who can testify that shot records
19 -- and I'm think we're talking about the betatron shot
20 records in particular -- the x-ray results, check

2

lists, and the x-rays existed and were sent back to
22 Mallinckrodt. And I think we've had testimony today,

23 would you agree, , that that --
24 > Yes.

25 _ : -- that all happened? Sol

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4 the rails were placed and so forth. And the reason of

5 course is that -- that because they carried castings

6 and ingots and materials that could have been made

7 radioactive and were radioactive this was a way to

8 spread radioactive contaminations throughout Building
9 6 through 10.

10 And then Affidavit No. 15 asks for General

11 Steel records that were burned or discarded and how
12 and to what extent was this done. Was there an order
13 given by the company to get rid of all of the GST

14 records and can we specify what company official or
15 officials gave this order and an approximate date.

16 And so ‘, would you comment on
17 any of those things that you think might be

18 appropriate.

19 «My name is

20 First of all the railroad cars, they went all the over

21 the plant. They wasn't stored no place. They just

22 went in and out of the buildings, taking all the

23 buildings and they'd put company castings on them and
24 take them to different buildings,

25 ‘1 Okay.

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18 did I have ever see a report on any of our film badge

19 records, blood tests, anything.

20 : Okay.
21 : No, sir.
22 « So this would be

23 How about you, 4? 7
24 » : Let me qualify this by

2

n

saying that prior to becoming a foreman and a film

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reader I was a -- a in the betatron. And as

2 such I had duties of collecting the records and seeing
3 that they got to their proper place. And to my

4 recollection I picked up the film badges on a Monday,
5 reissued the new film badges. I think we had a rack
6 in the hallway that they were put in, and people

7 picked them up on their way in. And 1 don't think

8 they returned them to the rack every day. I believe

9 they kept them in their lunchbox or whatever.

10 : They were returned -- they

11 were returned after their shift. They had to be

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15 pig. It's a container.

16 . A pig was a lid container --
17 : Large.
18 : ++ that -- that shielded the

19 source and also contained it.

20 : Like a vault.
21 : Yeah.

22 : Uh-huh.

23 a“ Okay.

24 : And like I says,

25 and myself were usually the ones. Yeah. And in fact,

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1 there was a small iridium source St. Louis Testing

2 used to use on what we called the sand pile outdoors.
3 : Okay. All right.

4 : And of course, that was our

5 terminology of it. And they used to shoot outdoors
6 certain times.

7 : Well, maybe we -- that will
8 come up. But why don't you just keep on with that

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2

3

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North Venice.

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: Who found it?
: The police.

: Okay. So the source

4 disappeared, went home with somebody?

5 : Yeah.

6 *: Yeah.

7 : It stayed there for about

8 two days.

9 : Yeah, Then they put a door
10 up there with that radiation sign. And that was the

only place that they had a radiation sign was on the
-- on the door.

: Okay. So that kind of
verifies the fact that you said the radiation source
wasn't necessarily real secure in that building.

*: Oh, no. It was not secure.

: Okay. So it --

» : The crane operators was told

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18 : Okay. All right. Well, that
19 clarifies that. We're almost there, guys.
20 Affidavit No. 28, workers who can describe
21 procedures if flaws were found in products after
22 radiography exams, how and where were corrections
23 made, how were products transported from testing
24 sites, what personnel were involved, was there

25 retesting after corrections were made. Let me just

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1 comment. I think we've -- we've -- you've certainly
2 clarified for me that castings had to be done, if

3 flaws were found they had to be repaired, then they
4 had to be reshot in the betatrons or with the gamma
5 sources, they went back out to the plants, and so

6 forth. So I think I understand all of that.

7 What | -- what I need us to all work on

8 for -- for after this meeting is -- what we're really

9 looking for here is we certainly believe now for

10 certainty that activation was a real phenomenon. So
11 what I've asked to do and -- and maybe we could

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100
I *S i, one more
2 question on that. If the crane -- or the crane
3 operator was told to stay back at the other end of the
4 plant, what about the regular workers?
5 : Huh?
6 : What about the chippers,
7 the welders, did they leave that end of the plant?
8 . ~: Well, they was all down at
9 the end. They didn't --
10 ‘: They were down there.
ia) : They were protected by the
12 wall, you see.
13 ‘; So the crane -- the crane
14 operator was told to get back, but the other gentlemen

15. stayed and kept working?

16 : ": Oh, yeah.

17 ‘*: Okay.

18 =: : Okay.

19 : And between the 6 Building

20 and 7 Building and wall at the end of this brick

21 building there was face plates, steel plates in the

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13 *: I don't -- I don't think so.
14 « Okay.
15 ’: I don't they were

16 calibrated.

17 « Allright.

18 J: [think they just -- the

19 only time that I think that they were calibrated is

20 when they worked on them when something went wrong.
21 2 Well, were -- I mean, were

22 you all aware --

23 I ‘calibrated

24 them J know that. Didn't he? Did

25 i: The electricians came in

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1 periodically and calibrated them.

2 : Did they?
3 : Yeah,
4 : So I -- I'm not -- I'm not

5 sure we captured that correctly. So are we saying

6 that there -- that there were periodic calibrations

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{ iridium source, and it would be extremely useful if we
2 could get a description of what it looked like. Is

3 there anybody that could address that for us?

4n », the iridium source?

5 : Okay. I'm 1, and I

6 have used the iridium source.

7 2 Good,

8 : We used to wrap the outside of
9 large -- on a steam generating plant or the -- or even

10 the nuclear channel heads we used to wrap the film

11 around it.
12 : Okay.
13 ! : And we'd put the source in the

14 center on a tripod.

15 : Okay.

16 : And we'd put the source in the
17 center. And then we would crank it out, and it'd

18 x-ray the tapered areas where the huge fittings would
19 be mounted onto when it got to its destination. And
20 like I says, it was not on a cart. It was a portable

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18 them liked to do was shoot that at the end of the --
19 and the end of the shift and then forget to put it on
20 their charts so the next guy coming in could get to

2

shoot it again, you know, because that was four and a

22 half hours they could --

23 2 Okay.
24 : + sit there and watch.
25 Atany rate I think -- I think it took two, maybe two

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1 and a half hours to run off 5,000 roentgens if I'm not

2 mistaken.

3 : Yeah, That sounds about

4 right.

5 . And 40 years ago -- man,

6 I haven't thought about that in 40 years.

7 i: [haven't either.

8 : But I'm certain -- I certain

9 that a 10,000 roentgens shot would take about four and
10 ahalf hours. And we had -- we had some 11,000

11 roentgens.

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1 = -- milliseconds or

2 whatever. And ifa thousand roentgen shot supposedly
3 took an hour and a half to do it, if it took and hour

4 and 45 minutes and it was running at full power like

5 it should have been, then this thing needed

6 calibrated --

7 : That makes sense.

8 : -- calibrating. And we
9 would call in the electricians and say calibrate that.

10 Or on Saturday morning it's going to be down for

11 maintenance, it needs to be calibrated. And

12 was one of the main -- the main people who did
13 this, And he did a lot of the calibrating on that

14 machine.

15 : Okay.

16 . But I remember that
17 would call him and say get down here and
18 calibrate that machine. was from Pennsylvania
19 and had a distinct accent, and we al] made fun of him.
20 But he calibrated that machine quite a bit.

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25 experimental chemo. So for six months I took

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1 experimental chemo, and I -- I beat it. I'ma

2 survivor. So that's it. And you don't find out. And

3 then down the line also if you ever have surgery --

4 like for example you have a heart attack or something,
5 they take blood tests and they find out they got to

6 change your blood. So I went to the doctor for a

7 checkup, a cardiologist. And I went to the bathroom
8 and I filled the stool. So immediately they sent me

9 to ICU and they started blood changing. And it took
10 how many days?

lI ; : I don't know, but it was like

12 eight.
13 « Like eight.
14 a , this was -- this was

15 when you developed cancer though? This was not --

16 : That's once it's already in
17 you.
18 a -- at the time this -- right.

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] : Okay.

2 : -- that's faster than the

3 speed of light. The electrons whirled around --

4 : It's the electron source.

5 : -- and released --

6 2 Right.

7 : -- through the cone creating
8 x-rays --

9 : Right.

10 : -- as a brief description.

11 : Right. It's a source of the

12 electrons.

13 : This man physically --

14 : Okay.

15 : -- changed these tubes.

16 2 Okay.

17 +: But the incident was dismissed

18 simply as -- after inspection a dust explosion. It

19 took a little while to examine the machine by the

20 electricians. And they declared the operating status
21 was okay, and we brought the machine back on line.
22 But it was an incident I -- I will never forget.

23 , okay. Well, let me --

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25
POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY = (314) 421-0099
3
1
2 IT IS STIPULATED AND AGREED by and between

3 SimmonsCooper, LLC and PohIman Reporting Company that
4 the July 7, 2006 GSI Affidavit Testimony will be

5 transcribed to the best of their ability by a Court

6 Reporter.

7

8 0-0-0

10 .: Good morning, everybody. I'm
Wt , and as you know

12 are here helping this morning. And the purpose of

13 their meeting today is to gather information from you
14 site experts on information that will help our special

15 exposure cohort effort to NIOSH. I just wanted to

16 mention that we're here at SimmonsCooper. It's July
17 the 7th, 2006. It's about ten o'clock in the morning.

18 And I really appreciate all of you all coming to be

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7 : He's the one that --

8 a Okay.

9 : And also there was another

10 one, , but --

1] : Okay. I know he -- his name

12 is kind of charged. But okay. So -- so there were

13 people who were authorized by the company to give that
14 kind of training --

15 : That's right.

16 «:_-+ to the new people that

17 handled the isotopes.

18 : That's right.

19 : Okay. Well, that --

20 : You personally did not hold a
21 license.

22 « No. I understand that.

23 That's -- that's right.
24 «: The operator --

25 « That's exactly the

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12 « [mean, it's not a good fact,
13 but it's good that you were told.
14 «Well, the thing is it -- you
15 know, it's -- it's like a hearsay thing that passed

16 among the guys that --

17 : Okay. Well, let me --
18 _: -- it made you think.
19 : Well, let's -- let's pin that

20 down though. That's what I'm really getting at. Did

21 -- was that word of mouth, or did somebody explicitly
22 come to you with a piece of paper and said +, you
23 need to understand this, that what you're handling

24 there is lethal within three minutes?

25 It was strictly word of mouth,

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1 nothing was on paper.
2 a Okay.
3 : The same way ~

4 (phonetic) did a lot of the work in 6 Building.
5 2 Okay.

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4 : -» that tall --
5 . Yeah. Okay.
6 si + and that thick, And

7 they were machined so that they would turn.

8 « That's fine. That's
9 terrific.
10 «8 -- 8 Building also was an

11 inspection building, face plate.

12 = Yeah.

3 : Down on the west end.

14 « Right.

15 : Down on the west end also you

16 had the foundry. You also had the -- the heat treat.

17 The heat treat was off of 10 Building between the

18 betatron and the foundry where all your castings were
19 heat treated, where they'd --

20 + How about rotoblast charger?
21 : Well, okay. And you had the
22 -- the rotoblast which would clean -- clean the scale
23 off of the -- off of the equipment so it could be

24 Magnafluxed or -- or x-rayed. [ mean, you got to --

25 you got to get that scale off so you can get down to

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4 : [-- [think it was six -- no,

5 It was a hundred millirem.

6 ; A hundred millirem?
7 : Yeah.
8 : Okay. So presumably you got

9 that --that amount in --

10 : Uh-huh.

11 «| ++ a very short time?

12 :: So as soon as they -- the film

13 badge information came back -- that's why | thought it
14 was sent to Landauer, you know -- they informed me
15 that I didn't receive that much. I was -- so they

16 kept me out of the betatron for a week or two then I
17 could go back into it.

18 , tell me this because I

19 think this is important. When you say they told you,
20 again, I'm trying to get at how the process worked in
21 the plant. Who would have informed you of that, your

22 foreman?

23 : Yes.
24 : Okay.
25 : My -- the department head.

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10 talking about the Number 6 Building.

11 : There was none.
12 : There was none there.

13 : The only person that was

14 kind of in control was the guy that was in there doing

15 the shooting, the operator.

16 : The operator.

17 *: Nobody else was around

18 except for the people working.

19 : That -- that operator --

20 ‘; The operator was the only
21 one that had a film badge.

22 : Oh, he had a badge. Okay.
23 : Well, he had a film badge.

24 Well, you wore your film badge at all times and your

25 -- your dosimeter.

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1 2 Right. But I mean, he was
2 one of the people who had a badge, had a dosimeter.

3 : Right.

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6 + I'd like to mention people
7 likel _ from the maintenance department
8 that would come in, change oil on the betatrons, both
9 betatrons, also all fluids on the crane, betatron
10 crane. All fluids would be changed by these people
11 and handled. We'd find out there's quite a question
12 to contamination to these fluids and grease.
13 i" « Good point. Well folks, J --
14 I want to personally say that I think this has been
15 just fantastic beyond what I certainly imagined. And
16 I want to thank you all for hanging in there. And to
17 the court reporters and to the videographers, this was
18 more than you bargained for. Just remember this, it
19 all gets easier after today. But we really appreciate
20 your staying, and we really thank you for staying with
21 us. And for -- for everybody here this will help a
22 lot of people at Dow and GSI because these general
23 conditions I'm sure pertain over there as well as.
24 And it will probably help a lot of people who have

25 claims in on this program. So I -- I couldn't

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‘: That's what I said. We'd go

8 in there to inspect them castings and the --

20

21

22

23

24

25

2 Yeah.

«| ++ hair on your arm you could
feel it, the radiation and we would laugh about it.

: So would -- would it be fair
for us to say then that there was a traffic in -- in
and out of those buildings by various people and it --
it could -- well, it certainly would include guards.
Anyway, if you all have more, I think I can write that
up pretty well. I -- I don't know that we need a -- a
long -- a much longer detailed list than making that
general statement.

: They had these big overall
exhaust fans that would run in there a lot, so they
was sucking the air from -- dust from everywhere.

: Well, since -- since you
brought that up let me ask you what -- what would you

say were the -- were they great exhaust fans? I mean,

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22 we've heard from other meetings that that was a -- the

23 general -- that everybody agrees with that pretty

24 much. So -- but more to add?

25 ,
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1 = Yes. What I objected to after

2 each shot in the shooting room -- | read up on what is
3 referred to as a residual radiation. Yet, the

4 department head at that time insisted that the minute
5 the betatron would kick off you better have the film
6 cassette in your hand all -- to go out there, and you

7 had to go into the residual radiation. And I objected
8 to that greatly, but he says he'd be responsible for

9 that. So --

10 : Well, I want to ask a

11 follow-up question. That -- what you just said is

12 extraordinarily important. So when -- when -- when
13 the word residual radiation was used, what -- what did
14 that mean to you?

15 : That there was radiation still

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21 _ . That makes sense. Can
22 anybody else --
23 *: Yeah. We had to do that
24 because we had to make sure that that --

25 at
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45

1 : -- that that pill was reeled
2 back into the holder. They had it in a steel -- a

3 steel holder that you had to crank the pill out.

4 : «| We had more than that. Yeah.
5 : And a lot of times --
6 : Let's make sure the court

7 reporter's hearing --

8 : A lot of times it was reeled
9 out and it was left out, you forget to reel it back in

10 into the enclosure. And you had to have that

11 dosimeter go out and once you got high readings

12 huh-uh, | forgot to -- to reel it back in.

13 « So just so that I understand
14 now, you're talking about a cobalt source --

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10 ring.

11 2 Oh.

12 ~~ :: They were --

13 * They were 30 foot in diameter.
14 2 ++ big around as this

15 room was, Yeah.

16 a Okay.

17 : And they'd -- I think

18 they used them -- some were in the roundhouses to turn
19 locomotives around.

20 : .: Well, I know the -- I know

21 the round -- is that what we're talking about? Yeah.

22 The -- the platform that would rotate --

23 : Right.

24 i: == 80 it could get it going

25 the right direction. Yeah. Okay.

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1 : These rings were probably
2-
3 : Well, they were gigantic.

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7 way they were powered?

8

: That's electric car.

9 Yeah. There's a difference between that and the

19

20

2

22
23
24

25

railcars that took the castings over to --

:: I'm sorry. I said I'm glad
that cleared that up. It was very important to
distinguish between both of them I think.

: Okay.

: The -- the other -- the other
clarification is this transfer car that went into the
betatron -- in the instance where the channel head was
shot it was unloaded, set on the floor on top of the
railroad tracks, The transfer car was taken back out
of the building, out of the betatron. So you're --
okay. Say this -- this sheets of paper here is your
transfer track. The channel head was unloaded here on
the railroad track in this corner of the betatron, and
the betatron sat over here. The cobalt unit sat on

the outside of the casting. The controls went down
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12 : Ididn't see them.
13 *: Didn't see them? Anybody
14 else see them?
15 . “: Yeah. They had -- we had
16 radiation -- those little radiation signs.
17 *: There was a sign on that
18 building?
19 , /: Yeah. There was a sign.
20 ‘+ How close would workers get

21 to that building?

22 “; Oh, right up to the walls.

23 : Okay.

24 i: I'd like to make a comment
25 on that.

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1 I ‘: Yeah. Right --
2
3 i: Yeah. I'd like to make a

4 comment to clarify a concept. It appears that you
5 have in your mind that this is a building out by

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4 « Let's -- let's -- what --

5 what would be good standard practice these days would
6 be, in addition to the fact that certainly you

7 shouldn't get in front of a camera beam directly, you

8 know, people would say that according to modern

9 science any dose of radiation increases your risk for

10 developing cancer --

11 . : Uh-huh.

12 , : -- that radiation induced

13 cancers generally have a long latent period which can
14 be anywhere from a couple of years to 30 or 40 years
15 so that your risk extends over your lifetime. It

16 sounds like that sort of information was not conveyed
17 to anybody in any way at all.

18 -

19 , when they told -- when

20 they said the betatron was off there was no residuals,

21 I don't know if activation was a term in those days.
22 : [t was. It was known,
23 We were -- we were told there

24 was no such thing as activation or residual.

25 : Activation was known as -- as

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Right.

And I don't think they

8 were shot exactly head-on, but that -- that's 40 years

9 ago. I can't remember.

10

11

20

21

22

23

24

25

‘: Yeah. A long time. But the
plates we shot straight down.
Right.
_ think you
-- in a previous time we talked you mentioned that
actually you had looked at or you read the films from
that.
That's right.

Do you remember anything more
that you could share with us today about what the film
actually looked like? I mean, ostensibly they were
looking for fractures, voids, you know, poor casting
of those ingots. Can you just tell us a little bit
about that and also about you mentioned in the past I
think that you filled out some kind of a checklist

report that was sent with the films back to

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19 make a comment for the record then. Why this is

20 important is that you know when you calculate

21 radiation dose it's the intensity basically times the

22 time. So the number of roentgens or rems you get per
23 hour times the time of that exposure equals your --

24 times the time equals your exposure. So NIOSH says

25 that in doing your dose reconstructions they make

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1 routinely what they cail claimant favorable

2 assumptions.

3 So a claimant favorable assumption

4 specifically for handling uranium is that a worker is

5 exposed to it eight hours a day which is where this

6 what they assume is the normal workday comes in, you
7 know, eight hours a day one meter away from the

8 surface and so forth. And they say that's very

9 claimant favorable. Well, it is if -- except that as

10 you're saying now many people worked way more than 40
11 hours a week. So that could underestimate your dose

12 by, you know, maybe a factor of two. That's the way

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190
1 x: Ifyou -- if you look an
2 English walnut and broke it evenly in half and looked
3 on the inside of that and you saw the little leaders
4 and -- and the holes in --
5 . Sure. No, T understand.
6° .: A steam turbine for
7 Westinghouse reminded me of an English walnut.
8 a Okay.
9 . It was -- it was shaped
10 like it and it looked like it.
11 : So you adjusted the exposure

12 for the thickness of the steam --

13 : For the thickness of the
14 casting.

15 : Allright. All right.

16 : Okay. On -- on the --

17 : That's fine.

18 : On the inside of a casting you

19 also had the --
20 : Get your mike on,

21 please before you start.

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i .! So are any of the people that

2 --1 guess I'd also like to know for instance in that

3 particular instant you mentioned is there anybody here
4 that could talk to us about that? I mean, do you

5 remember who brought them there or --

6 I think they were first

7 brought to the plant by a truck.

8 Okay.
9 Trailer tractor truck.
10 All right.

11 And then they were moved in on
12 the railroad car --

13 All right. Okay.

14 -- out of the Number 10

15 Building. And -- and we usually left before they were

16 reloaded.

17 Uh-huh. The word charged --

18 was the word activation ever used?

19 No.

20 7 . Okay.

21 Not that I remember.
22 « That's fine.

23 It's been years ago.

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16 i : Okay. Other -- other

17 comments about Building 6 while we're on that topic?
18 : As -- as you were saying --

19 . . As you were saying, » work was
20 going on in -- around the whole perimeter of that

2

building. It was on the -- that building was on the

22 west end of 6 Building. Right directly outside of

23 that building would be side trucks under frames, all

24 types of work by clippers, burners, welders, crane men

25 knocking off I guess they would call them --

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1 a Risers.
2 +: + risers off of these

3 castings. This was going on constantly while shooting
4 was taking place,

5 : Okay. So let me ask just the
6 final question of that that occurs to me. So by even

7 the rules at General Steel shouldn't there have been

8 an isotope person supervising that work or in that

9 area? | -- I'm not hearing anything about that. I'm

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16 : Now, were there people

17 working in the 10 Building that night?

18 : Yes.

19 Okay.

20 .: It was a normal working day.
21 : Okay. Got you. All right.
22 . So the -- so the cobalt

23 radiation went straight down the railroad track
24 through the 10 door and up into the building.

25 + Now, how fong did that

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1 situation exist would you say before it was, you know,

2 kind of recognized and fixed? I mean --

3 Well, we -- we --
4 2 ~ did you complete the shot?
5 i: We completed the shot, and

6 then the -- it was like an hour long shot or something
7 like this. And you -- but it was -- you know, it --
8 it's one of those things that you don't forget --

9 : No.

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1 underneath them without crawling on your hands and

2 knees and --

3 « Okay.

4 : And it was --

5 « So now, were those turbine

6 castings -- 1 know you all did some huge castings. |
7 mean, was it so big that it couldn't be handled in the
8 normal way?

9 : Yes. It could have been

10 handled in the normal way.

{1 2 Okay. [think — hasa

12 comment to make.

13 : The --

16 : : I think one of -- this is
17 probably one of these incidents that -- incidents that
18 I was talking about a while ago that this castings

19 probably had to be brought in because there was

20 remaining shot on it, had to see what the -- what that

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3 bea transfer made between those. But they were just
4 transfer cars. had something to add to that
5 also.
6 oy
7 unfortunately too many of us operators were given
8 direct orders to invert that camera completely.
9 Before you invert that camera that -- that betatron
10 camera has definite limits not allowing you to shoot
11 toward the control room or the ribbon door. Upon
12 orders of inverting that camera, turning it all the
13. way over these limits would change allowing you to
14 accomplish that. Supervision knew of this, they would
15 give us direct orders to do so, Now, it was either
16 our jobs or we inverted it.
17 « Lunderstand.
18 : And that's -- too many of us

19 experienced that. And when we experienced it we

20 didn't like it.
21 : Right.
22 * | want to tell you we had bad

23 feelings about it.

24 . Right.

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15 going to read it for the record, but I think we've
16 covered that already, So I -- I just want to get if
17 on the record that Affidavit Topic 2 is about workers
18 who could testify that the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works
19 uranium ingots were x-rayed in the GSI betatron
20 buildings. I think we've talked about most of it was

2

done in the -- in the new building. I guess that is

22 one thing I would like to hear a comment about. Were
23 they x-rayed in both buildings or just the new

24 building.

25 s: They were x-rayed in both

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

31
1 building,
2 a Okay. a
3 ‘ says both buildings,
4 ; They were x-rayed in both

5 buildings, both the new betatron, the 25 MEV and the
6 old building the 24 MEV betatron. They were used and
7 x-rayed at both buildings.

8 : And --

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24 when you're shooting the betatron it's over in this

25 area around the corner.

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1 1 Let me just wind up with this
2 final thing about the -- the betatron. I'm back now
3 to that putting the head in different positions that

4 -- that would lead to more exposure. How often was

5 that done? _, 1 mean you mentioned that it --
6 6 , I could not --
7 >. Excuse me. I cannot give -- I don't think

8 anybody here could give you a specific number. |
9 could say this honestly with -- with all the sincerity
10 it was done too many times in my estimation.

11 : I'm just trying to get a

12 rough ballpark. Would you say it happened once a

13 month --

14 : Itall depends.

15 “ -- on average?

16 i: Itall depends. I would say

17 maybe once every two to three months,

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: Well, see that -- and I think

if we take that framework and add in the contract
books for a couple of years to just name the job
categories, we're going to pretty much have that
pinned down. . ', do you have some more to add to it?
Just to follow up what
was talking about. At the end of -- of 10
Building on the east end of 10 Building they did the
painting of the underframes | think, on that whole --

that whole end of that room was painting or

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY = (314) 421-0099

222

undercoating and whatever they put on it, And down in
8 Building on the east end of it is where they
machined those railroad rings down there in that pit
where they -- the ring went around, the tool went
around and machined that big ring.
> Yeah,

« You all have mentioned it.

What is a railroad ring? I don't know.

+ Tron -- [ron -- iron crusher

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20

2

22

23

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: So the --
.| We'll include those.
; -- the overtime was so
sporadic that infact _. put in -- put outa
notice one time if -- if you thought you weren't

getting enough overtime, come see me.

+ Okay. Good. Well, 1 --1
think that's -- that's -- that's great. 1 -- ] wish
-- for Affidavit 23 we need some testimony as to the
very long x-ray exposures of some huge castings. And
can you all put some kind of definition on that? I
mean, I know some of the big castings had 400 shots
and so forth. But give us an idea of some of those
great big castings, how long the total exposure; in
other words, the aggregate of all the shots would be.
Anybody that could tell us about that?

I seem to remember anything 18
to 20 inches thick would -- would run at least two
hours or roughly around two hours. That would be a
10,000 roentgen shot, We had numerous 10,000
roentgen shots depending on the casting we were
shooting.

a Okay.

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13 steel.

14 ’: Would that have been for

15 the whole plant?

16 : For the whole plant.

17 ': Castings, molds, moldings.

18 *, For everything?

19 : Everything.

20 : Yeah.

21 : So everything that was made

22 at GSI in that foundry -- or was made in that foundry

23 --
24 a : Yeah.
25 : -- and then taken out, and

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95

] that foundry was attached to 6 Building?

2 : All the buildings were
3 attached to that foundry.

4 : All the buildings were
5 attached to the foundry?

6 *: If you look -- if you look

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25 some of the work done in nondestructive testing at GSI

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213

1 was -- was done through St. Louis Testing Corporation.
2 And we've learned that some of that was done outside.
3 And so if anybody has any more comments about St.

4 Louis Testing and what their relationship was with GSI
5 -- in other words, I guess what -- what I think would

6 be useful is were they doing work, kind of spill over

7 work that GSI was just too busy to -- I mean, I know

8 machines operated all day long and all night long. So
9 were they doing spill over work, or were they doing

10 something special in that outside testing that was

11 different from the normal work that was being done

12 there? Is there anybody who could talk about that

13 or--

14 ; Ido

15 remember seeing St. Louis Testing working on castings
16 sitting in the field between the new betatron and the

17 old betatron with sources out in the open. Now, |

18 couldn't say whether it was spill over work. Normally

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24 our foremans (phonetic).

25 ut Okay. All right.

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157

1 it We had no relationship with
2 anybody other than our shift foreman --

3 - a Okay.

4 i, -- unless there was a

5 problem with you, then the big wigs took over.

6 « Well, the blood cell counts

7 -- and you know, after we get through if someone wants
8 tocomment more. But I think that's -- that's very

9 important because what it indicates to me is that they
10 were perfectly aware that there was a danger. And
11 specifically, you know, white cell count depression
12 really comes after a large cumulative dose of
13 radiation and generally quite -- rather quickly. So

14 that -- that's of utmost importance.

15
16 yeah,
17 - *: Yeah. I think the only

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9 mean, we -- the people -- you know, nondestructive

21
22
2.

o

24

25

testing is very useful and absolutely essential in
steel making, no question about that.

Radiation therapy is absolutely essential
in modern medicine. There's no question about that.
But in general the people who are invested in -- in
doing that do not tell the people who are using the
technology the true risks. And that's another reason
why I'm sitting in this room today. You know, that's
-- it's my little way of making up for something that
I feel quite badly about from my own profession which
is supposed to be healing people.

You all were supposed to be taking x-rays
of things and making good products, and you were. But
it's all part of the same story. And it's -- I really
don't know what to say about it other than that. But

anyway, I think this -- this testimony is quite

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

212

important. Yes,
. | would like to

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16 to that. One of the ironworkers, if he knew he was

17 going to work in the betatron the next day, he was

18 scheduled to work in the betatron the next day, he

19 would call off. He would not come to work. That's
20 how afraid he was of that building.

21 Okay. That's interesting.

22 That's very useful, very useful.

23 . [can say with
24 a hundred percent honesty if the actual -- actual

25 hazards we just simply weren't told. If they did

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

207

know, they simply did not tell us. Forty years later

2 people, we're reading your Los Alamos handbooks, your
3 DOE handbooks and we're seeing these very things we
4 should have known 40 years ago. And that's when we

5 started asking question. But I can say with all

6 honesty we knew too little in those days and were told

7 as little as possible. That's -- that's a pretty

& fair, honest statement. Thank you.

9 « That's great.

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12 all work together to get this done. What I would like
13 to have is a list of the buildings, you know 6, 7, 8,
14 9, 10, and the betatron buildings, we know that. But
15 a list of basically what was done in those buildings
16 and what jobs were -- were concentrated in those
17 buildings.
18 Now, I understand that there's going to be
19 a lot of overlap. But when we define the special
20 exposure cohort what I want to do is to include

2

comprehensively all the people and all the job
22 descriptions that came into contact with those
23 castings. So what! would envision is a list,

24 Building 6, Building 7, 8, 9, 10 and within cach

25 building what kind of work was done there. Like in

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

219

1 Building 6 the railroad trucks, you know, four and

2 six-wheeled trucks. And 7, 8, 9, and 10 you all can
3 fill that in better than me. I -- I'm not sure where

4 the --

5 +: Seven -- 7 was sand reclaim I

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9 people would work 16 hours. You went by seniority, by
10 a overtime list. And the person on the -- on the
1] shift with the least number of overtime hours was
12 asked first for overtime for the next shift. One time
13. we passed on down through four shifts, and a man was
14 asked to work overtime. And he worked -- he worked
15 days, he worked afternoons, he worked midnights, then

16 he worked his day shift again. And the -- and then --

17 « Wow. That's worse than

18 doctors.

19 : And the health people got
20 so --

21 : Who was that?

22 (phonetic),

23

24

25 : [think he worked 32 hours

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182

1 straight.
2 : That's what | -- 1 worked 32

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1 we had key safeties, we had door interlock safeties.

2 We had none of this on the KVP other than a key on

3 machine itself.

4 : Okay.

ss) : And what would happen any time
6 we used a KVP and it was used for small metal --
7 Uh-huh.

8 + -- we would have to be in the

9 same shooting room as the betatron of course to set

10 this up.

1 « Uh-huh.

12 *: And on occasion if we were

13 using the betatron, there was an incident one time of
14 St. Louis Testing coming over, actually triggered the
15 KVP while workmen were out in the betatron shooting
16 room doing work. This person was authorized from St.
17 Louis Testing of course to do that, but why in the

18 world this person never checked with the operators.

19 He just came in the door, walked over to the machine,
20 triggered the machine while we had people in the

21 shooting room. It was a bad setup. Now, the KVP

22 machine was used only on rare occasions for specific
23 small metal uses.

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23
24

25

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release that isotope? What are we talking about
limits there? How about safety over our heads where
the concrete ends part of the ribbon door.

: Right.

: That's something we're

going to ask the experts to help us figure out.
' : [would like an answer there,
sir.
: Well, I'll give you an
answer. | mean, I don't have to ask any experts. I
-- | would say that, you know, what we're doing this
morning is building a record which is saying in very
strong terms that the company safety procedures were

not adequate and that, you know, some of the things

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

144

that were done for example what you're talking about
right now three times a year, four times a year should
have never been done at all from a safety point of
view. We've heard numerous violations of standard
practices, not locking a source, for instance the

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24 recycled. It all come right back out from all over

25 the plant.

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232

1 Well -- well, Jet -- well,

2 now you actually did a great segue into Affidavit No.
3 30 which is this talking about radioactive sand. And
4 I'm not -- you all have mentioned sand and I

5 understand how that's used in the casting process.

6 But was there --

7 + They took these molds after

8 they got the casting out of them --

9 : Right.

10 “+ out of what they call a
11 shake out.

12 2 Okay.

13 « But you'd put them in there

14 and they'd bounce it and shake all that sand back out

15 of it.
16 2 Okay.
17 : Then it went back to the sand

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13 : And why would it shut --
14 *: Cool it down.

15 3: Why -- oh,

16 “: It was overheating.

17 : It was overheating?

18 : Right.

19 2 Okay.

20 *: The betatron unit itself?
21 ' Yeah. It would overheat.
22 : Okay. h_. ; you had a
23 comment.

24 i: The -- the comment on -- on

25 the cobalt unit -- the comment on the cobalt unit,

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

50

| when you cranked it back in to make sure it -- the
2 pill was back in the case there was a key lock.

3 “: Right.

4 : If it wasn't in, the key

5 wouldn't lock.

6 : Right.

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3 and stole the pill. He thought it was plumb bob.

4 COURT REPORTER: Thought it was a plumb
5 bob?
6 7: One of the workers, yeah, he

7 -- and finally they put out that it was a real
8 dangerous thing, you know, and he brought it back.
9 : So you're saying the cobalt

10 source was taken?

iW *: Tt was taken.
12 i ‘, Was it returned?
13 : Yeah. He returned it after

14 the -- the word got around that, you know, he might
15 die or whatever. But he thought -- he thought it was

16 a plumb bob. They didn't even have a radiation sign

17 there.

18 » We found it on Logan Street

19 in--

20 ° \you know where

21 they found it?
22 *: Yeah. On Logan Street in
23 North Venice.

24 COURT REPORTER: In North Venice?

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19 ~-- | When you were walking --
20 : I was a supervisor.

21 2 Right.

22 1 And! ..- was the

23 inspector.
24 : Lunderstand.

25 r 1: We'd go over there and look

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64
1 at these castings.
2 . After they had been in the
3 betatron, is that what --
4 ‘: After the betatron. Yeah.
5 -- *, That was in the betatron
6 building?
7 Yeah.
8 : .: Okay. So there was some kind

9 ofa field around those castings after the machines
10 were shut -- you wouldn't be there if the machines
11 were on?

12 -- : No.

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22 weren't cast. They were -- they were poured from a --

23 a powder --
24 . Okay.

25 : -- believe. It was --

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

26

it was a different ball game all together.

2 : Let me ask the whole group

3 one last question, and that is I'm still trying to get

4 at identification. So I understand that there may

5 have been paperwork saying that they were ingots from
6 Mallinckrodt. But there must have been some kind of
7 identifying mark on those ingots that -- that -- so

8 that you could match a particular film and a

9 particular report with a particular ingot. Do you --

10 do you all remember seeing any kind of -- you know,
11 anything that was engraved or stamped?

12 *: There was on -- it was kind
13 ofa -- I don't know if it was stamped or not. I

14 don't know if it was stamped, but it was kind of a --

15 like you said kind of an engraving on some of them.

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25 : Okay. Got you. Okay.

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78

1 : See, they moved from -- from
2 Commonwealth to -- and the main office there they had

3 on Commonwealth, they moved to St. Louis out in

4 Clayton.
5 « Got you. Okay.
6 : So he was -- it was the

7 office over the pipe company and all and -- and the

8 car company down there in South St. Louis, St. Louis
9 Car Company.

10 « So -- so just if I can

11 summarize then. So what I hear you saying is records
12 that had to do with medical treatment and things like
13. that, they were saved and sent back to the --

14 : Main office, Yeah.

15 : -- the main office. But

16 other records --

17 > Other records all was there.

18 I don't know what was all them, but --

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22 operating a -- an x-ray machine there. Thank you.

23 : My name is
240 I was a lead switchman at the General
25 Steel Castings from 1953 to And I was in and

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

il

1 out of the betatron building, all -- all the buildings

2 in the whole plant. We transferred castings from

3 betatron into 9, 10 and 8 Building from the betatron

4 building.

5 . My name is

6

7 1 worked at General Steel Castings from 1951 to

8 I was a timekeeper and worked basically in 10 Building
9 but made trips sometimes to the betatron to determine
10 the location of castings. My job was to keep the time
11 records of people who worked there and what they did
12 and -- and what their function was and what -- on what
13 castings they worked on. And basically I guess that's
14 as much as I can say. I -- 1 can honestly say that I

15 never saw anybody wearing any kind of a badge.

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13 2 And you -- you could feel

14 that with the hairs on your arms.

15 s: You could feel it when you
16 was walking around them castings,

17 2 Okay.

18 *: Were you wearing any kind
19 of radiation monitoring equipment?

20 No.

21 « Did you -- did you -- well,
22 I'm sorry. Just one second. Did you ever bring that
23 up to a -- your supervisor, foreman, coworkers and --
24 3: Sometimes --

25 «) -- get any kind of answer?

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

65

1 : Sometimes the supervisor was

2 with us, and they'd just laugh about it.

3 , « Oh, they laughed. Okay. All
4 right.

5 »; On the old betatron --

6 : Name we need.

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6 important.
7 : Was it --
8 : This is now.

9 Let me -- let me put this.

10 ‘: Was it possible that those
11 were self-copying copies, like were they double

12 sheeted?

13 ‘1 No. No. These were --
14 these were just white paper copies, rather heavy paper
15 too, They weren't like the copies that you see today.
16 The layout man would grab a blank sheet and fill it

17 out, and that would stay on the -- on the console I

18 believe. It would stay right there until the casting

19 was completed. Is that not correct?

20 *: Right.

21 wea : Because of the following
22 shifts had to know which shots were shot and which
23 shots they had to shoot and so forth. And they were
24 checked off.

25 : “, would you

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25 of fact, I still got the check.

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183

1 : And I was making a whole
2 lot of money at that time. 1 was making $635 a month
3 as a--asa foreman in the department. That is --

4 that comes up to about three dollars and 80 cents an

5 hour or something.

6 : Working every Saturday and
7 Sunday.

8 « Okay. 1 yeah,

9 . Inormally

10 worked three eight-hour shifts overtime each week --
YW « Wow.

12 -- plus Saturday or Sunday if
13 it came up.

14 a Okay.

15 . But overtime was just a normal
16 thing. I mean, you could work -- you could work as
17 much as you wanted to work.

18 « Well, let -- let me -- let me

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18 the concrete walls of the shooting room on to us in
19 the control rooms.
20 The second item that reports is

2

there was an incident where a pallet of new x-ray film
22 was left just inside the railroad exit door. When the

23 pallet of new x-ray film was discovered after shooting
24 was completed - after examination of the

2

a

film saw that the film was exposed around the outer

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

edges. This incident proved that radiation was

2 exiting down the long leg of the shooting room and

3 through the metal railroad exit door into Building

4 Number 10.

5 So I think you can understand from those

6 two excerpts this is information that certainly will

7 not be in any of the cleanup reports from the

8 Department of Energy, probably won't be in any of the
9 company records. They are things that you and only
10 you guys know, and we need to get them recorded

11 because they directly affect how much radiation dose

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9 American Steel. They had a one million volt KVP over
10 there, and we leased that for that kind of work that
II he's talking about now.
12 : These parts were for
13 nuclear submarines?
14 : Right. And they're -- then

15 we started shooting them over there at American Steel.

16 Me and used to go there all the time and shoot
17 those.

18 q : Yes. We did.

19 *: And back to the 6 Building,

20 that -- that pill was not even secured. The door was

21 not -- they didn't have a door there for a long time.

22 : Door on the building?

23 *: On the little block

24 building.

25 *: Yeah. No door?

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099
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1 : Well, they had to put a door

2 up there because somebody -- some guy went in there

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18 similar. We -- we shot the same castings or their --
19 their mates over and over again. And we had a -- we
20 had a map drawn with where the shots belonged and we
21 had a standard shot record we pulled from the file.
22 Yeah. We had filing cabinets. Sure, we did. We had
23 filing cabinets with those shot records in them.
24 : | Do you remember though -- I

25 -- I mean, I really -- I have no idea. 1 mean, were

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68

1 there copy machines that you could make copies?

2 : No.
3 1 2 Okay.
4 : No. There were copy

5 machines up in the -- up in the front in the offices,

6 and we had -- we had blank copies.

7 « But you don't remember

8 sending -- routinely sending your reports --

9 : No.

10 : ~- whatever they -- the ones
11 that you put back in the film boxes, before you did

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3 : That was a white blood cell.
4 And I personally failed a white count one time. And
5 they pulled us off the job until we could pass our

6 white blood count. This happened to numerous people

7 there.

8 : Do you remember --

9 : I don't know of any --

10 : Do you remember about over

11 what period of time they tested your blood?

12 : How often they tested?

13 « No. Just what years that

14 testing went on.

15 ? i: Oh, God. I -- I'm going to
16 say I failed my test probably 1966, maybe '67.

17 ., Okay. So the --

18 : IT remember I was in the new
19 betatron when they told me. I was getting ready to go
20 onto the second shift as an x-ray technician crew

21 leader because that's what I did my -- mainly, just

22 mainly betatron. And they come in there and they

23 pulled me off the job and put me in Magnaflux. And

24 they told me what they -- they'd pay me betatron rates

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4 . Okay.

5 : The operator and his

6 assistant.

7 : And the operator would have

8 been a betatron person that we've been talking about?

9 . + Right.

10 : Okay. I'm with you.

11 *

12 ': The -- the -- the one comment

13 I would like to make is outside of that concrete block
14 room you had all of your -- your -- I worked down

15 there a lot of times with the Magnaflux on the transit
16 authority underframes. And the -- like the gentleman
17 said there was -- there was people working all over in
18 that Number 6 Building outside the concrete blocks,
19 had no idea what was going on in the inside.

20 » Right.

21 « The only person that had any
22 -- and -- the operator on the inside doing with the

23 cobalt unit was the only guy that had a dosimeter or
24 -- and his badge that could detect any radiation.

25 : Right.

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9 So that was down in the basement of the main office.
10 And I burned them. And then we went into the --
IL « Did -- did you know -- can
12 you tell us anything about the types of records? I

13 mean, were they financial records?

14 «: No. I-- I didn't read any
15 of them.

16 - a Okay.

17 ': [looked at some of them.

18 There was some old checks from way back in '42 when I

19 --

20 « Okay.

21 *: -- worked there the first
22 time.

23 : Okay. Got you.

24 They was all the way back

25 there, and he said don't save none of it.

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

77

1 : Okay.
2 «: He said you burn them checks

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22 know I -- I think we need to move ahead.

23 +, Okay.
24 ~ : But my -- my -- no. My

25 comment is that that's the very reason why I'm doing

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146

what we're doing this morning. And I know that

2 getting this on the record is -- is the best way to

3 help you guys. So I'd say let -- let's move ahead and

4 keep on doing that.

5 ‘4 you got a quick

6 comment?

7 = Yeah. ]
8 -- I just wanted to clarify something that was asked a
9 while ago. I don't think we had a radiation exposure
10 safety man at the plant at all. I don't think there

11 was anybody with that designation. If there was, I

12 never heard of him. I just don't think that there was
13 anybody in that capacity * was in charge of
14 the NDT lab, the nondestructive testing lab, and J --

15 and he may have been. But if so, we never heard of

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4 : Point well taken.

5 « Yes. Yes indeed. Okay. Oh,
6 good. Well, it's definitely time to stop and have

7 lunch then. That -- that's great. Yes. We can quit.

8 So it's about one. That's perfect.

9 (Whereupon, a short lunch recess was

10 taken.)

Il : Okay. We are reconvening
12 after lunch. And I just wanted to say for our record
13 that all of us here want to express our really sincere
14 thank you and gratitude for SimmonsCooper and all that
15 they've done for us. And I just think we all feel

16 that it's above and beyond what we could have ever
17 expected. So thank you very much.

18 T want to do something different. So

19 we've got a bunch of things to go over. And what I
20 want to do is to put the affidavit topics on the

21 record and then open up the floor and kind of go

22 around the table. And -- and if you all will sort of
23 pay attention to topics that you might comment on,
24 then this last part we're going to have is a much more

25 free association kind of thing where you can -- you

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1 or--

2 t : Evidently it -- it was -- it

3 was rather rare.

4 a Okay.
5 ; But I was only an assistant --
6 a Okay.
7  -- in the shooting of whatever

8 cobalt operators. When they were shooting the cobalt
9 unit I was only as an assistant.

10 « Okay.

a « [-- Twas not authorized to

12 use the cobalt.

13 : Okay.

14 . But that -- the one gentleman
15 I did work with would not lock the case after a shot.
16 i « Okay.

\7 t: And I finally called him down
18 on it because of I -- I knew what the danger was.

19 « Sure.

20 ‘: And it was sheer stupidity not
21 to lock the case after a shot --

22 ; Sounds like it. Yes,

23 + -- as a safety practice.

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25 it.

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48

1 : That would do it.

2 : And then you'd stay back?

3 *: Right.

4 = Okay.

5 . _» was there no

6 safety device or anything on that container for the
7 cobalt like there were --
8 : No. The only -- the holder,

9 the -- the little holder that it'd reel back into.

10 + Okay. So that was all

11 manual?

12 *: Right.

13 '; There was no automatic --
14 *: No.

15 *; -- door closer or whatever?
16 *, No. Like -- it was not like

17 the -- when you were using the betatron if you

18 accidentally opened the door to go out there, the

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25 later saw pictures of these things and identified

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these ingots -- the ingots and slices through

2 pictures. We saw these pieces throughout --

3 throughout various locations in the plant at times. I

4 know I saw some in 6 Building on occasion possibly

5 stored down there. I don't know. But I saw them

6 there. But I worked there from 1963 to I

7 cannot specify how many times we shot these particular
8 pieces. But they were there, and we worked on them.

9 Thank you.

12 : Could you share your

13 thoughts on same ingot situation?

14 : Yes. [remember the uranium
15 billets. We'd -- another operator and myself would be
16 called -- be scheduled for Sunday work which was

17 double time. And we had families, of course, and we

18 were never told what the product was. Having the

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6 «And that would be for
7 castings that were 20 -- some of them ran as thick as
8 24 inches on the -- on the large sizes.
9 « But you know, I've seen --
10 I've seen pictures of the big castings and they'd have
11 a grid on there and each grid would be the size of a
12. piece of x-ray film,
13 : Right.
14 +: So I -- what I'm trying to

15 get at is would each of those exposures be 10,000 R?

16 : No.
17 : The cumulative?
18 7 : No. Probably two, maybe

19 three or four of those shots on that entire casting

20 would be that thick, and the rest of them would be

21 somewhat smaller.

22 » [see what you mean.

23 « Depended on the thickness
24 of the steel.

25 : Sure. That makes sense.

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22 used a pocket dosimeter in -- in both betatrons. I

23 remember distinctly one day 1 was wearing a pocket
24 dosimeter at the old betatron. At the start of that

25 shift I zeroed and charged that pocket dosimeter --

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1 zeroed and charged it, and at the end of the shift

2 recorded a ten roentgen -- a ten roentgen exposure on
3 the pocket dosimeter and logged it in a dosimeter log
4 book in the old betatron. The next day I was told

5 that -- after reporting it that they dismissed it as

6 zeroing -- improper zeroing of the pocket dosimeter.
7 And we all very well knew -- know how to zero a

8 dosimeter. Thank you, sir.

9 « Well, go ahead. Let me

10 follow -- keep the microphone and let me -- let me
11 follow up on that. One of the things that would be
12 helpful at this point is number one, who would you
13 report to and who would give you the advice that that
14 wasn't -- that it was an erroneous reading? Do you

15 remember?

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1 : You have -- it was the

2 overflow of work.
3 « Good, Okay.
4 : They had 6 Building, they

5 were working in there x-raying.

6 a Okay.

7 *: And they had both betatrons
8 going.

9 « Again, you just needed extra
10 --

lt > Right.

12 ) == capacity and they were

13 there?

14 ": And just needed extra

15 capacity and they just didn't have it.
16 « And remind us again how --

17 about how frequently would you use that service?

18 : Every day.

19 : Every day?

20 ~~"; Every day, you know, yeah.
21 - « Wow. For -- can --

22 : We used it --

23 : Can you put a time period on

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1 in particular, right?
2 : If we had anything --
3 _ «: Or the iridium source maybe
4 or not?
5 : Both, sir.
6 . Both.
7 : Well, any type of isotope. If
8 we --
9 : That -- that would make
10 sense.
11 « Yeah.
12 : Okay.
13 : We would specifically use a
14 dosimeter.
15 : A high energy gamma source.
16 : On normal use or firing of the

17 betatrons we normally just used our film badge.

18 : That's fine. Okay.
19 : But any time we used the
20 isotopes --

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21 students. And so it's a powerful effect.
22 And it -- and the reason | tell that story
23 is it affects basically every element. I think it
24 probably affects every element. So -- every atomic

25 species. And so all this was -- you know, it's --

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1 it's better understood now. But it was certainly

2 understood as a physical principle actually before the
3 1950s. But by the -- by the early 1950s well

4 established scientific fact.

5 ., how do you think some of
6 us feel? And I know everything you say -- you are

7 saying is fact.

8 2 Yeah,

9 -, Forty years later some of us
10 have come down with cancer or we've got so many
11 ailments we don't feel like talking about it. And not
12 only that, there's a possibility we might have hurt

13 other workers out there in the plant --

14 +: Right.

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24 see if it was acceptable or if we had to do further

25 repair work on it. Those films were kept at the plant

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1 if f'm not mistaken down in -- in the basement of the

2 6 Building --
3 : That's important.
4 ! : ++ for the electric

5 division, They weren't sent back with the -- with the

6 castings.

7 “can Task you this. I -~

8 | think that's extraordinarily important. Do you know

9 -- not the films themselves but the -- the reports,

10 were copies made and kept at General Steel, or was the
1] -- was the original just an original and it was sent

12 back with the records? I mean, it would seem like the
13 company would need some sort of internal recordkeeping
14 just to prove what they had done. I -- 1] guess to me

15 I would think they would have kept a copy. But --

16 : I~ I'm not sure. We
17 used -- we used -- some of these castings were

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22 shot, after the exposure. And we thought we had it

23 retracted. The crank even slipped, you know, turned a
24 little bit. And then so I grabbed the survey meter

25 and I went out to check. And all of a sudden when I

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1 got around the comer in the main shooting room the

2 MacBeth survey meter pegged. | got out of there ina
3 hurry. And so [ tried to work the crank back and

4 forth. And by working the crank back and forth I was
5 able to break loose where it was hung up out into the
6 -- it was still putting out radiation. And so I

7 backed it out. And so I then went and we secured the
8 source. In fact, I think we took it for the rest of

9 the night out of commission although it was retracting
10 again and so forth. This was in approximately 1970,
11 and that equipment it was getting a little worn by

12 that time. And so they did call in the Budd people.
13 And they sent in Budd people, and they --

14 2 Let me stop you. Is that

15 Budd -- is that Budd Corporation, B-U-D-D?

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7 I'm sorry -- 195 or 250 kilovolt or KV x-ray unit and

8 describe how it looked and where and how often it was
9 used. And I understand this was a portable unit. So
10 can ==
11 can you all fill us in on the small portable source?

12 «: Doe, the 250 KV was what I
13 remembered it was in the old betatron. The control
14 unit was on the desk on the side wall. And what I

15 distinctly hated about this unit was there was no

16 safeties on it, . It -- it was something we were

17 very fearful of and had the incidents involved with

18 people being exposed because there was no safeties on

19 it.

20 « Tell me about that now. I'm
21 an amateur. What -- when you say --

22 , Any time we would --

23 . --no safety, what -- what

24 kind of safety could it have been?

25 +; For instance on the betatrons

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14

interested in hearing from any workers who can
identify known Mallinckrodt uranium ingots being at
General Steel Industries.

And when we say ingots we're also
interested we -- and believe that at General Steel
Mallinckrodt sent over what were called betatron
slices, ingots, slabs, and billets. And we're
interested in knowing where those various types of
uranium metal, where they were stored, how they were
shipped both to and from General Steel, and what was
their movement in the plant. And so we've identified

as possible

people who know about those things. And I'm going to
let -- on each of these I'm going to let". just
hand the microphone to whoever he thinks is
appropriate to start out with, and then we can take it
from there.

I need to mention for the -- for the
record the reason that the uranium is so important is
because officially that's the reason that you al}

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21 : So you're sucking in more
22 particles and breathing it, eating?
23 : So-- so
24 question was were you eating in these dusty areas.

25 And there was -- everybody was nodding assent that in

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225
1 fact yes, they were.
2 = Yes. When they -- when you --
3 .» You couldn't get away from it

4 probably, could you? 1 mean, there wasn't -- there

5 wasn'ta clean place to go probably.

6 : The --

7 : Ona day-to-day basis.
8 2 Yeah.

9 : When it came lunch time you

10 sat down on your casting or you found a -- a welder's
11 stool or whatever and you ate lunch right there on the
12 job.

13 : How about a bundle of

14 asbestos?

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24 2 And was it used just in the

25. betatron building?

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112
1 . : Yes, sir, as to my knowledge.
2 : To both -- both buildings or
3-
4 + The old building, sir.
5 The old betatron building?
6 + Tt was -- it was in the old
7 building.
8 « Allright. That's very

9 important. Anybody else remember that unit ever being
10 used anywhere else in the plant besides -- okay.

om : That's the only place I can

12 remember it.

13 2 Allright. That's good.

14 said that was the only place he could remember
15 it being used.

16 : Yeah, That was the one

17 where one of the workers walked out while it was still

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3 x Right.
4 ': But I don't think anybody
5 ever went out there with it. But just in case it got
6 stuck in the -- in the tube you would --
7 « And we had heard that there
8 were -- there were --
9 : There was malfunctions.
10 : : But were there not incidences
11 where the window -- where the crank would get stuck?
12 *; Tcan remember one case
13 where the crank did get stuck.
14 : We'll talk about those a
15 little bit later.
16 : Right.
17 . But ~- but there was really
18 no other way to close it, right? I mean, somebody had
19 to go and do it manually.
20 : Well, they did it -- they'd

21 jiggle the --

22 2 Okay.
23 “, -- the control thing.
24 : And some times that would do

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7 And so we think it's very important that you all ask

8 for that information, the complete set of

9 documentation.

10 So anyway, you can -- you can read this

11 letter. And in the areas that are in yellow, in

12 highlight you just fill in you are own information.

13 Now, you're perfectly -- and you know, I encourage you
14 if you need to write other information, that's fine.

15 But this basic letter will get the job done. And in

16 particular I tried to cover all the kinds of

17 information that you might want to obtain from them
18 including your telephone interview transcript and in
19 particular your claim status notification letters.

20 1 know that many of you have had your

2

claims in for several years. And it's very important

22 that in your own records you have the information that
23 NIOSH has fed back to you on the status your dose

24 reconstruction. So I encourage you to think about

25 submitting this letter. We'll be happy to help you if

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I the track through the wall where you cranked the unit

2 -- the pill in and out. Okay. When that casting is

3 sitting in this corner in the betatron on the railroad

4 tracks, transfer track -- the transfer tracks and

5 right here is the door --

6 « Right.

7 : -- that is between the

8 shooting room in 10 Building. There was absolutely no
9 protection whatsoever.

10 «It's an open space, is that

11 what you're saying?

12 : Yeah. And this -- this --

13 this door between the x-ray room and Number 10

14 Building is nothing more than an overhead metal door.
15 2 Yeah, Okay. Got you.

16 ‘’: Thanks for clarifying that.

17 That's very important.

18 « So this -- this 80 curie

19 source is no play toy.

20 : No. No. We -- we are aware
21 of that.
22 : So this is -- this is -- this

23 is, you know, some of the important factors when --

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160

1 people were aware in -- in Plant 10 for instance that
2 -- that x-rays came through the betatron building.
3 Well, let's just say through the new betatron building
4 either through the ribbon door or through the railroad
5 track opening and so forth. So anybody who has
6 knowledge of that. And now we're particularly
7 focusing on people outside of the betatron building
8 who were aware that there was an x-ray problem within
9 the inner plant. Now, we've already talked about the
10 operation down in Building 6.
ll But specifically there were people who
12 said that -- that worked in Building 10 and that were
13 aware when the betatron was on. There were some
14 people who said there was a red light that came on.
15 But anyway, that they would leave their place of
16 employment and go to other parts of the building. And
17 | -- 1 -- I think we need some testimony on that if
18 you know anything about that.
19 And kind of related to that is one of the
20 facts that we -- that's really quite crucial that we

21 don't know about is how the control rooms in the old

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4 I couldn't honestly say. I

5 just remember them coming in sometimes and doing them.
6 « Some time. Okay. Good.

7 That's -- that's useful.

8 again. We
9 could tell -- we could tell if the machine was getting

10 out of calibration or slowing down so to speak. If --

11 ifthe amount of roentgens didn't click off in the --

12 in the prescribed time that it should have been, there

13 was a meter on the control panel that you set your

14 roentgens. If you were going to shoot a thousand

15 roentgens, you set it to a thousand.

16 . : Right.

17 2: It clicked off each 10,

18 15,20. I can't even remember. But it would click

19 off, and at the end of that shooting time the shot was

20 over.

21 : Okay,

22 : There was no time

23 allotted to it other than the fact that we knew it

24 should click every so many seconds or --

25 + Right.

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10 .: ++ because of -- of the

11 excessive danger. And the -- the thing with the
12 people in -- who worked in betatron a lot of us, you

13 know, it became so routine that, you know, no big

14 deal.
15 « Lunderstand.
16 = So but like -- like you said

17 40 years later you find out how much you were really
18 in danger and we was just doing a job.

19 x: So let me ask you this, I --
20 I can understand the geometry of a great big casting

2

and being a problem about lifting it and putting it in
22 the correct or the safest position. But what's your
23 opinion of the particular event? Was it absolutely
24 necessary to shoot it on the railroad car, or was it

25 saving time, was it -- what's -- what's the --

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1 : It was basically saving time.
2 It was actually sitting on the floor. It was taken

3 off the car and sat on the floor.

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15 i « Okay,
16 «: There was absolutely no cool

17 down time granted, sir.

18 a Okay, .....- you had a
19 comment.
20 a ‘, The comment

21 that -- especially on Westinghouse castings where you
22 would shoot a lot of shots for 45 minutes to an hour
23 or longer they were shot at either six foot or nine

24 foot. To measure the distance we had a string from

25 the -- from the cone on the -- on the -- on the

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

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1 accelerator that you used to measure to the casting.

2 « Okay.

3 ? \: Many times when I would be
4 shooting six-foot shots J would be right up against

5 the machine. If you got your arm next to the cone

6 where the radiation emitted it'd make the hair on your
7 arms stand up.

8 « Yes, Uh-huh.

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25
1 Mallinckrodt.
2 The checklist report
3 would have been the shot record I think.
4 Okay.
5 The listing, the number
6 of the shot, and -- and the amount of roentgens that
7 were -- that they were shot with.
8 Okay.
9 x: The film and -- and those
10 shot records were packaged in the -- in a package and
11 sent along back with the ingot. I don't think we -- I
12 don't think we really read those films. I think all
13 we did was shoot them and send them back to
14 Mallinckrodt.
15 Okay.
16 Probably looked at them
17 to see if they were okay or not blown out. But -- but
18 as far as reading them for defects and sand
19 inclusions, and gas blows, and things like that you
20 would normally see on a casting, I don't think there

21 were any of that because to my knowledge those ingots

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59

1 would there be a level of concern that would make this

2 areportable incident where you'd actually write it

3 down or --
4 ‘> You'd write it down.
5 2 -- where you'd tell it to

6 your foreman?

7 : But it was never that great --
8 - 1 Okay.
9 % -- where they consider it

10 damaging.

Il : Okay.

12

13 2 Yeah,

14 »: I specifically remember --
15 a s yeah.

16 ): Pardon me. I specifically

17 remember of no training that | was ever given on the

18 betatrons other than training handed down by preceding
19 operators as on-the-job training. The fellows that

20 operated the isotopes had AEC licenses and were

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9

1 = The department head?
2 1 « Yeah.
3 « Okay. Okay. But you never

4 got a -- any documentation of it?

5 + No.
6 | You never got a report?
7 | No. [had a -- they did send

8 a paper to my home. Wasn't it to our home?
9 J: I think that you brought that
10 from the hospital that night because they just brought
11 you.
12 «+ Oh, the hospital. And they --
13 it did say I picked up so much, But -- and they also
14 said I was only -- it was only equal to two minutes of
15 radiation. So about ten years down the line cancer
16 hit me, and we found out what from.
17 « Let me ask you one other
18 question. So I believe there was a -- is it
19 (phonetic), was he the -- the dispensary person?
20 « Yes.

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23
4

25

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film and set up a new shot. Oftentimes we were
waiting for that last picture to see if the casting
had cleared. Oftentimes I was spurring the operators
on to get me that film as quickly as they could. I
accompanied them to the castings many times. On some
occasions they took it down and handed it to me and I
-- and I carried it back into the -- to the processor.
Sometimes, depending on how they felt, being a union
shop they said that wasn't my job and they'd carry it
in. But nonetheless, a lot of times there was a hurry
to get that film. It took 11 to 13 minutes to process
the film, another few minutes to read it. Within 15
minutes many times we were already running that --

that casting back out in the 10 Building to either be

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

54

cleared or further repair done to it. A lot of times
they were on a tight schedule to get that casting in
and out.

: And then the -- the next
casting would be ready to come in to start work on it?

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13 radiation.

14 : Right.

15 . Yeah. And but --

16 : What -- what's your

17 recollection of the time of an exposure for let's say

18 a uranium ingot for instance?

19 : I don't recall --

20 : Okay.

21 : ++ any more.

22 . That's fine.

23 | ; However I did notice that one

24 time -- one Sunday we for several hours did not use

25 film, we were just shooting them, And we -- we

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

20

1 laughed about it because people says we were charging

2 them. And of course that was a joke, you know.

3 : But you're sure there was no
4 film used?
5 That's right in that case for

6 about two or three hours --

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25 granted is entirely dependent, completely dependent on

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1 whether NIOSH has sufficient radiation monitoring data
2 for you men. So it's of extraordinary interest to us

3 to find out where those badges were actually read and

4 where that radiation monitoring data may be today and
5 can it be -- can we get access to it, can NIOSH get

6 access to it. And so I would like to invite anybody

7 who could speak, and as I say

8 . 5 _  vho can't be with us

9 today, > 3 here, and also couldn't
10 be here today. But if anybody can address that topic

11 of the badges and where they went and -- and who they
12 were from, that would be extraordinarily useful.

13 : You know, while we're

14 thinking that over too I'm also going to ask are there

15 any workers here today that were in either the new,

16 old 10 Building areas where you expressed there may
17 have been the radiation from the uranium who were not

18 issued badges? Was there anyone that would like to

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18 were overhead.
19 : I've got you. And -- and so
20 what do you -- what actually exploded?
21 :: They -- they said on their --
22 on their opinion -- and opinion might be a strong word
23 to use -- that as this capacitor change was being
24 made --

25 : Right.

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i : -- changing over to another
2 capacitor bank, that a dust -- a dust explosion --

3 excuse me -- occurred.

4 2 Oh. Oh, soa -- an

a

electrical discharge from the capacitor set off an
6 explosion. And that happens in a lot of industries

with a lot different kinds of dusts. So it ignited or

_

8 it exploded?

9 +: [would say it exploded.

10 : heard a documentary

11 recently on -- on fireworks and they were saying that

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9 ‘: T remember looking at --
10 again -- looking at that film and they
11 would -- it would be in there just a little bit
12 crooked and the camera wouldn't be set up head on and
13 it would blow it, blow the image off. Maybe you could
14 see it and maybe you could pick out the defect and
15 maybe you couldn't. And more than often you'd have to
16 say retake this one, move your camera over here to get
17 -- geta head-on. And there are some angles on there
18 that we just couldn't shoot if you remember on some of

19 those castings. You couldn't get them. You couldn't

20 get it.

21 : Okay. Good. And just --

22 : And just one more remark,

23 « Yeah. Go ahead.

24 + We had -- we had two betatrons

25 going 24/7.

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1 : That's important.
2 : Two betatrons going 24/7,

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19 betatron would shut down automatically.

20 *: Okay.

21 : But that pill -- if you were
22 using one of those pills, if would shut down. You had
23 to bring that in manually.

24 *, Okay.

25 : May I ask you a follow-up
POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

49

question on the betatron. That -- that's interesting.

2 I--I really didn't know that fact. How often would

3 you say the betatron would shut down in the middle of
4 a -- was that extremely rare, every day, every week,

5 every month?

6 ’; Depended upon what you

7 shooting. If you were shooting extremely thick metal

8 --
9 : Right.
10 : -- especially the old

11 betatron, it would shut down and you had to go out and

12 trip it.

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15 to several million --
16 : Before it was all over
17 with, absolutely.
18 ,i ++ total roentgens delivered

19 to that casting.

20 : Does that give NIOSH a better
21 idea?
22 : Itshould. It should. It'll

23 -- it'll give Mr. -- if you think you could make that
24 calculation in a few seconds, we give Mr. Neaton

25 (phonetic) something to work on for about a year. I

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1 don't think they'll be able to make those
2 calculations, but we'll see.
3 i: Some of those long shots never
4 turned and we had to reshoot them too.
5 + Right. I understand. No. I
6 think this -- that's -- that's rich.
7 : They were very happy to --
8 2 Exactly.

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24 : . That's fine. Well, that's

25 very helpful. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

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22

1 » when you said
2 that was moved out of 10 Building would the work have

3 been done -- which betatron building, new or old?

4 The new building. Sure.
5 Okay. Thank you.
6 * Okay. My machine keeps on

7 going to sleep here. It'll wake up. Is there anybody
8 else who has anything that they would like to comment
9 about Affidavit No. 1 topic and the uranium ingots?

10 Okay. Shall we move on.

12 Yes, This is
13 now that's talking.
14 The only thing I remember

15 about those -- and these guys can correct me if I'm
16 wrong. Most of that shooting was done on the weekends
17 and nights. Is that not correct?

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10 antibiotics or something. And so I didn't work in the

11 betatron area for a few days.

12 -: Let me ask you a question

13 because I want to make sure we get this straight for

14 the record. So you mentioned that the MacBeth survey
15 meter was pegged.

16 -: Yes.

17 .: And so am I correct what that

18 means is the -- the meter on it --

19 : That's right.

20 : + went all the way over to
21 the --

22 : Yeah,

23 + + right and --

24 : Correct.

25 . And that's a maximum

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1 exposure. And do you -- do you remember what the
2 range on that meter was? In other words, what kind of

3 exposure are we talking about?

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21 >: [t was the sand that they
22 shook out of -- of the molds and that, you know.
23 ~ 2 Okay. Uh-huh.
24 &: Core sand I think it

25 probably was,

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1 >: And they stored, just

2 storage.

3 be & Core sand?

4 + Yeah,

5 *: Yeah,

6 « Core sand, C-O-R-E sand?

7 . They made the cores out

8 of sand. Then they --

9 : Got you.

10 } i: -- poured the casting and
11 some of it would hang on.

12 : Right.

13 : Some of it would get

14 inside the casting.

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3 Group. Sol --
4 : Granite City Steel had guards
5 out there that had it blocked where nobody could get
6 in there.
7 : Okay. I'm trying to get that
8 report from those folks. So okay. So we got -- we

9 got two more. Let's see if we can get through these.

10 = T want to make one comment.
1] : Go ahead.
12 « On 8, 9, and 10 Building in

13 the summer time they would also have these four-foot
14 square roll around fans going to keep cool or whatever
15 you would call it. So think about how much dust they
16 were blowing around.

17 : They were blowing it. Yeah.

18 . And the -- some of the

19 chippers and grinders would wrap themselves in bags

20 and cloth to keep their clothes dirty -- I mean clean.

2

Talking about asbestos, 1 worked the hot floor a lot.
22 You had asbestos -- rolled asbestos thrown over these
23 castings to help maintain heat.

24 « Yeah,

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20

2

2
23
24

25

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was done on them.

: Okay.
: They were loaded on the

transfer cars, and they had a lead with a control
panel on it. And you walked alongside of it and moved
that to the next building. Or in this case you had to
make a transfer. It wouldn't go all the way from 8
Building to the betatron. You had to transfer it to
from 8 to 9 Building onto the other car and then lead
it into the betatron. It stayed on those cars, and
sometimes were shot on the cars.

: So those were company owned

cars that stayed there at that plant all the time?

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: They were just transfer

2 dollies, flatbeds.

3

- : And were the-- were

4 --were they electric cars?

5

6

: Yes.

. That -- so that -- that's the

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12 returned to their shift. Yeah. They were returned to
13 the rack.
14 : The badges were then
15 collected and put in an envelope and sent to the -- to
16 the lab. What happened to them after that I don't
17 know. But I think in my capacity if there would have
18 been any -- any kind of confusion or overexposure, I
19 probably would have gotten that report. I never saw a

20 report ona film badge --

21 : Okay.

22 . ++ the time that I was
23 there.

24 . : That's important, That's

25 very important.

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! 3: [never saw anything come
2 back. And people -- on occasion we'd be sitting there

3 talking about them and they said they felt like well,

4 ifno report came back, then everything was fine,

5 there was no exposure.

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22 company, to the client let's say?

23 } [really don't know.
24 : Okay.
25 : The operator didn't have

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1 anything to do with the shipping of it.

2 a Okay.

3 : All we did was mark it off
4 and give to the clerk or the supervisor maybe.

5 . . Got you. Okay. So that was
6 handled somewhere else --

7 : Right.

8 : -- up in the office. Okay.

9 Got you. Well, that's great. Thanks.

10 : So there's absolutely no
11 doubt that there were shot records and x-rays for

12 every casting?

13 «. Any time we shot each and
14 every casting there was a master shot record used for

15 each and every casting. What happened to these

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6 + And he -- what I always

7 remember he always carried that Geiger counter with

8 him --
9 : Uh-huh.
10 : ++ which tells you if you

11 think about it there is -- there's a reason why you

12 carry this little tool.

13 2 Yes. There is. Right.

14 : So you know, people might not

15 tell you why he's carrying it --

16 : Okay. That's --

17 : He knows why.

18 : Absolutely. Okay.

19 =: So you have to put two and two

20 together and find out it's four.

21 « That's excellent.
22
23 : And then we'll get --

24 we'll get you next then.

25 : As far as any knowledge

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25 : And people throwed them around

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1 like they was cloth.
2 : Right.
3 : And you got to shaking it, and

4 it naturally fell apart right in your hands, And you

5 know, unbelievable conditions that we hear about or

6 think about today --

7 + Yeah,

8 “1 += that we worked in and

9 thought nothing of it.

10 « Yeah. No. That paints a

11 very rich picture for sure.

12 : When they -- when they poured
13 these Westinghouse most of the time it would be at
14 night. And there would be so much smoke in them
15. buildings that you could put your hand in front of you
16 and couldn't even see it. And we'd pour them at night
17 so the people in the city didn't know what was going

18 on, two or three o'clock in the mornings. I'd have to

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18 a Okay.

19 : And then that was too often.
20 : Okay. Right.

21 . ‘: Any time -- any time they had

22 to speed up a casting change or a move --
23 «Uh-huh,
24 ‘, -- to save time that's when

25 these orders were given to us.

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1 « Okay. Well, that's very

2 helpful though. That puts some kind of limits on it.
3 : 1 have one question -- one

4 question, sir.

5 2 Okay.

6 +> Why -- why at all was the

7 isotopes used in a betatron -- betatron shooting room
8 when in fact we had no concrete ceiling in that

9 shooting room of either betatrons? The concrete walls
10 only go up so high. In the case of a betatron you've
11 got set supposedly limits. What happens when you

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I _ “: It was faster, you'd get it

2 done faster.

3 2 Right. Okay. And can

4 anybody speak about those periodic inspections? Now,
5 I guess the way I've heard it described is somebody

6 came in once or twice a year, they put the betatron

7 heads in particular positions, they made some

8 measurements. It sounded like there was very little

9 feedback. Can anybody confirm that or speak?

10 why don't you and then . why

11 don't you all --

12 . From my --

13 i 1 Now, have you got your mike
14 on, © because I think this is a real important

15 point?

16 . I'd like to make one little

17 comment on Affidavit 20.

18 : Okay.

19 : In my opinion is
20 not a competent person.

21 2 Okay.

22 : You don't know when he's

23 telling you the truth and when he's not --

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4 equipment room with a concrete floor. That radiation

5 had to go over our heads through that steel siding

6 down through the floor and into the control room.

7 That's the only thing I can figure out. They called

8 it ground -- ground shine, sky shine. We -- we called
9 it scatter in those days.

10 - « Right.

11 : But it was reported by

12 to. and myself this -- this
13 incident taking place at that time. I was present in

14 the control room with * + at that time but had no
15 idea at that -- that possible time there was

16 contamination there. But he stated to us that he left
17 the control room, took his film badge off because of
18 the contamination in the control room. I don't

19 understand his reasoning, but that's what was said.

20 « Allright. Well, let me --

21 let me ask you a related question then which is what
22 we've touch on before about routine monitoring. |

23 mean, so he was inside with a Geiger counter. Were --
24 was there other -- were survey -- and you all said

25 that there were with survey meters. But what I'm not

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18 “": Okay. Let's see -- let's go
19 -- now you've gotten through most -- a lot of hard
20 things. Now we're going to give you some easy ones.

2

Affidavit No. 5, General Steel workers who can testify
22 that between the betatron x-ray sessions there was no
23 cool down period that was a routine thing. And |}

24 guess my question that's added there is was there time

2:

a

to change -- in other words, during the time that it

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33

took to change a casting from one to the next one was
2 that sufficient time to allow the -- the machines to

3 cool down? And I'll just preface it by saying that in

4 the Los Alamos safety manual it was quite clear and

5 very explicit that there needed to be a cool down

6 period after each major exposure of the betatron that
7 they had. So I'm just wondering if that rule was

8 observed at General Steel. .

9 *: No. No. We had no cool
10 down time. When the betatron shut off the operators
IL went to the shooting room, removed the old -- the old

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22 : This was constantly taking

23 place in both 9 and 10. 8 Building if 1 remember
24 right was mostly a machine building.

25 : Okay.

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1 . 7 Building was sand reclaim.
2 ~ a Okay.
3 « Ifyou opened the door, «

4 of Number 7 Building when sand reclaiming was going

5 on, you couldn't see the other side of it.

6 = That's terrific.

7 + It was that bad.

8 : That's great. So --

9 + 6 Building was railroad

10 underframe --

i - «Right,

12 : + -- side trucks, various

13 railroad work as such. Magnaflux went on there on
14 occasion and -- and isotope work in -- in that Number

15 6 Building, block building.

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16 records after we marked off each individual shot and

17 the casting was completed we don't know, sir.

18 : Okay.

19 : It was turned over to the
20 front office and they did whatever.

21 *: That would definitely

22 include the Mallinckrodt products?

23 : I would say so, sir. Yes,
24 sir. Uh-huh.
25 *: Okay. Thank you.

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72

1 « Okay. Let's move on. We --
2 I think we're doing great. I think we've been at

3 it -- I think we ought to take a five-minute break and

4 give everybody and chance -- do you all need a break

5 to go to the bathroom or --

6 : I take water pills, I--

7 : Me too, . Sol mean, J

8 know we can all go -- you can go any time you want to.

9 Let's have a short break and we'll come back in about

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18 system and they recycled it and they'd come back again
19 to reuse again.
20 4: So] understand that all that
21 sand possibly could have gotten activated. But was
22 there any kind of sand that people talked about that
23 was radioactive per se when it came into the plant?
24 : No. I don't know anything.

25 : Has anybody heard --

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1 where did that term come from?

2 Actually, it was

3

4 Okay.

5 *: And I thought it was a

6 zirconium or something sand that was slightly

7 radioactive. And when he was relaying the story about

8 the source being taken home by a laborer in 6 Building

9 there was actually concern that it was ground up

10 because when they went around with the survey meters

11 they were actually finding radiation everywhere in the

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6 : Well, it runs all the way
7 from one end of 6 Building to the other.
8 - : But they're not supposed to

9 go all the way down to the west end of the building

10 where the --

11 «: Right.

12 4 -- where the source was used

13 in the block building?

14 t: When they're -- when they're

15 -- well, when they were shooting it. When they were
16 to supposed to be --
17 : Tunderstand. But you're

18 saying that sometimes they did?

19 : Yeah,
20 So -- so the implication of
21 that is that the crane operator may have been exposed

22 to that source as he was up above the source and the
23 -- the radiation was going upwards?

24 * Yeah.

25 - « Okay.

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18 reason they gave certain people a -- the white blood
19 count test was because when they read the film badge

20 it was a little bit high, the dosage was a little

21 high.

22 a Okay.

23 ’: Everybody didn't get it.
24 : That could be true.

25 ’; Because I never had one.

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1 - : You never had a blood test?

2 : Never had one.
3 2 That's interesting.
4 - *: [think it's the ones that

5 the people that when they read the film badges they

6 had a little high radiation.

7 | Well, while you're thinking

8 after this meeting -- let me just say this. You know,
9 that -- that's also -- J mean, what you just said is

10 also extremely important because for instance the --

11 the readings on test, his radiation

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16 there anybody -- is there anything else we need to add

17 about the -- the -- what we'd call the big cobalt 60

18 x-ray source that we haven't talked about this

19 morning? 7, have you got any comment on
20 that?
2 N ’: That -- + . They

22 were strict -- they was strict that the big source was
23 strictly used in the big -- in the new betatron.
24 . : Okay.

25 : That was the only place that

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102
} they used that.
2 «: That's important.
3 *: Right.
4 » *: So the big source was in
5 the new betatron?
6 ? *: Right.
7 -. : And -- and according to what

8 we've heard today -- so it was -- was it also stored

9 there in between?

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4 furnace floor.

5 *) Thank you, f
6 : [want to ask
77 another question because he worked with those

8 things. I'm not putting you on the spot.

9 ’: Oh, good,

10 :: When you shot them did
11 you identify the shot? Did you stamp the ingot with

12 the Xs -- normal Xs and then the shot number?

13 t *, We put the Xs on each

14 corner.

15 . With the lead?

16 : Right.

17 2: And did you stamp the

18 ingot like we did on all the rest?

19 *: No. No. We did not stamp
20 them. There was -- I can't remember everything, but I
21 think there was -- there was some type of

22 identification that we wrote from that ingot onto the
23 shot sheet --

24 u Okay, So --

2 ‘; -- to identify and to match

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24 now you're talking again to an amateur.

25 + Uh-huh. I don't think you're

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1 hardly an amateur,

2 « No. No, No. I'm not really

3 using it that way. But -- so when you're talking

4 about the mag room, are we talking about a Magnaflux

5 room? I'm not sure.

6 : Magneto.
7 2 The magneto room.
8 x It was a generator --

9 generators or mag head?

10 2 They were mag head.

1] .: So the power source, the

12 betatron.

13 :: | remember the power source or
14 the betatron was overhead.

15 : And so that's -- that's where

16 the capacitors would be up in there?

17 : Yes, sir. The capacitor banks

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145

1 over and over and over that well-intentioned,
2 well-meaning people, great big companies with even
3 greater resources than General Steel which had
4 considerable resources -- that this kind of thing went
5 onall over the place. And so you know, | really
6 don't have an ultimate answer for you. I think my own
7 opinion is that it's got to do with regulations and
8 enforcement of regulations and licensing and
9 inspections and -- and requirements and severe
10 penalties honestly if people don't adhere to them. So
I] --
12 , 40 years after the
13 fact, 40 years guys like us are sitting here reading

14 manuals we never saw 40 years ago and scratching our

15 heads.

16 2 Absolutely.

17 +: Scratching our heads --

18 - 2 And I'm certain --

19 : -- wondering how long we're
20 going live.

21 : I know. Well, just so you'll

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6 : My basic job was radiography
7 and ultrasonics. And I became employed in -- November
8 of 1962 was my first application, and I stayed there
9 until . And J done radiography work
10 with the cobalt 60 both 80 curie and the 100 curies
11 that they got from other companies.
12 : Okay.
13 And also we used a 150 curie
14 iridium source that they brought in for pipe flanges.
15 And then of course the main job was with the
16 betatrons.
17 a Okay.
18 : The -- both, 24 MEV and 25 MEV
19 in the old betatron and new betatron.
20 : Okay. Thank you. We'll --
21 we'll go back and get more information about those as
22 -- as the day progresses. So:
23
24 I worked in the foundries of the Number

25 1 Building, Number 2 Building, and Number 12 Building

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9 : Lunderstand that. But was

10 that -- that not part of GSI?

lt = Well, yeah.

12 2 Okay.

13 ": Tmean -- I mean, he was
14 not a company --

15 .: He was not -- he was not a

16 betatron --

\7 .: He was a betatron

18 operator, He was not a salaried company individual.

19 : Oh.

20 « Okay.

21 : He was on the seniority list.

22 «: He was on the seniority
23 list.

24 2 Okay. Got you.

25 : And he was designated

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1 inner department safety manager.
2 : Okay. Now, you -- you made a
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12 used M film mostly.
13 « The letter designations
14 indicate the speed of the film just like you would use
15 a -- a 40 speed film in your camera right now or
16 something like that. The A film was used for very

17 small shots though, was it not?

18 : The A film, that was thick
19 shots.

20 . : I'm backwards then.
21 if “: Tt was real, real quick, you
22 know.

23 : Yeah, quick shots.

24 : The double A was the one

25 that was kind of -- the C film was kind of in between

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1 the A and the -- well, the double A and -- and the M.

2 : And the M film was used
3 for the -- for the longer thicker shots?

4 “; Well, the thinner shots.

5 The M, it was slower, and you could more resolution

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235

appreciate it more. And we -- we will then be in

2 touch with you. Again, if you have any comments to
3 send us -- now do you know are they set up --

4 are we going to try to collect the handouts and copy

5 them or give them back or how are we --

6 : | don't know if you made
7 any particular notes on these handouts that you wanted
8 to share with us as we went along. That was the

9 purpose for that. I know did the sign up so we
10 could talk to you later,

I «: 1 guess all I'm saying is

12 maybe the easiest thing would be if you'll -- we've --
13 we've pretty much talked ourselves out. But if you
14 all want to convey any more information to us, you
15 know, we -- we will come to you is what I'm trying to
16 say either by phone. We'd like to record what -- what
17 you have to say. | think we've gotten an awful lot

18 today, but -- but certainly get back in touch and we
19 will be happy to -- to get more recorded if -- if you
20 think of other things.

21 *» Absolutely,

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21 Now, would -- would
22 or somebody from the dispensary come? I mean, you
23 were injured on the job?
24 : Yes.

25 _ 1 It was a medical problem.
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1 : And the nurse send you -- send

2 you with a guard to take you home.

3 } : Okay. So --
4 a : Yeah.
5 : So = s0 somebody from the

6 dispensary did come down and at least was aware of
7 that?

8 : Yes. And in fact, I was

9 brought home in the company station wagon.

10 : Now, was there a radiation

11 safety person that was also concerned about that?

12 : Not too much. Not that [ knew
13 of.
14 } « No. No. Butl mean did they

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3 « That's important absolutely.
4 Affidavit 24 has to do -- I'm not sure we have --
5 might comment on this. But the -- the isotope
6 -- testimony about the radioactive isotope used by the
7 metallurgical lab, and we're trying to get now about
8 AEC licensing. And what I -- what -- what this is
9 really getting at is who was licensed by the Atomic
10 Energy Commission. And I'm presuming it was the
11 people who were licensed to use cobalt 60 and iridium
12 192. So anybody who can address that kind of thing.
13 But the betatrons weren't really licensed by AEC,
14 right? So does anybody know about AEC licenses there
15 at GSI? 9, yeah.
16 : It is customary that the
17 company has the license under CF 21, isn't it, or

18 191021 or something like that.

19 : T'll look at that up, but I'm
20 not --

21 + Yeah, But I --

22 .« Code of federal regulation is

23 what he's talking about.

24 »: It's been too many years. And

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2

2

2

2

2

0

2

3

4

a

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But do you want to say a word about --

: -- just as an example?

: Yes. I would, An
explosion if you've ever -- ever been around one of
this size is something you never forget. I was a crew
leader at the new betatron 25 MEV machine. The 25 MEV
at the new betatron was unlike the old betatron. It
had a selector switch on the capacitors. As

explained as these machines especially in

the case of firing extreme long shots would heat up.
And it was common procedure to power the machine down,

make a capacitor change. The heat would -- the heat

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and the efficiency of the machine would increase with
this capacitor change. We'd power the machine back up
to running status again, and the machine would be
running much more efficient. During the change, a
capacitor change I was making during the duration of

one of these long shots a loud explosion took place in

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40

1 u The film badges actually were
2 -- were required to be worn whenever you were in any
3 shooting room.
4 : Uh-huh.
5 . : So there should be -- there
6 should be some reports somewhere someplace.
7 . I think you're correct.
8 We're trying to find them very hard. Anybody else who
9 would want to comment on Affidavit Topic No. 4 and the
10 -- the other -- well, let me -- this is really related
11 to Affidavit No. 3. So let me just introduce No. 4
12 which is a continuation, We have heard that there
13 were some other monitoring devices used other than
14 film badges. In particular some people have mentioned
15 a survey meter by MacBeth, pocket dosimeters. [ think
16 - mentioned having one of those. We know that
17 there were some Geiger counters used. So does anybody
18 else want to comment about those other types of
19 radiation monitoring devices other than film badges?
20}

21 : Sir, I on occasion

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19 people that we call the isotope people that would be

20 -- be trained to handle those isotopic sources? You
21 all have mentioned them several --

22 « The AEC. We were trained by
23 the Atomic Energy Commission.

24 : Okay. All right.

25 : Yes. And they --

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i « And did it -- did that occur
2 at the beginning of your employment, or was it

3 something they did every --

4 : At the --
5 2 == every year?
6 : After I was -- first they have

7 you working with the betatron.

8 : Okay.

9 : Or you first get hired in at

10 the lab, then you come into the betatron. And after
11 you're comfortable on -- in the betatron, Magnaflux,

12 and everything well, they put you -- they have a

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25 2 ++ aS part of it -- as

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1 part of his duties he did take Geiger counter readings

2-
3 2 Okay.

4 .! -- in and around the

5. betatron.

6 2 Yeah, A -- a monitoring

7 function is what said.

8 t: Right. Exactly.

9 -': Did he look at other things

10 besides radiation safety? Because you had a safety
11 committee at the plant. Did he look at other safety

12 issues like the -- is the electrical stuff safety or

13 safe for --

14 : No.

15 . I'm -- I'm not sure.
16 I "; -- safety issues? Just
17 curious.

18 .: Okay. Well, I think that's

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3 hours one time.
4 . I saw a contract book
5 last week that showed in 1972 the radiographers signed
6 acontract for three dollars and 84 cents an hour
7 beginning in 1972. If you look back into 1966, we
8 were probably making somewhere around three dollars an
9 hour. General Steel plant in Granite City, they
10 couldn't issue a payroll check for more than $500.
11 : Yeah, I remember that.
12 . If it went over $500,
13 they had to give you a second check. Got paid over
14 two weeks. At three dollars an hour, two weeks was
15 $240. The aim of all the guys in the department was
16 to work enough overtime to make that guy issue him two
17 checks. So $240 and make $260 in overtime to get $500
18 plus.
19 : Yeah.
20 : Even if it was 24 cents
21 they had to give you $500 and -- and another check for
22 $24, whatever.
23 : I got for one check for $500,

24 and then | got another check for three cents. Matter

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12 you exposed, where you got it, and where -- where in
13 the betatron building for example.
14 So with that as a -- as a preamble let me
15 please ask that we go around the room. And I'm going
16 to ask each person as we do so to give your name and
17 actually to please spel! your last name. And please
18 be considerate of our court reporter. We have to
19 speak slowly and clearly. And I am assured that you
20 will hear from her if -- if -- if she can't

2

understand. But we need to get this down. So maybe

22 we could just start around the room.

23 : Okay, My name is
24 And --
25 a , maybe you could talk

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

1 about -- just the other information maybe that

2 everybody could give is the years that you worked at
3 General Steel Industries and -- and what your basic
4 job was. [ know you all did many things, but just

5 those two things.

Page 10


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4 reshot. Okay.

5

6 2 Wow.

7 . With -- with

8 Navy work, atomic submarine work on Magnaflux, on
9 outside surface work everything one-eighth of an inch
10 or above had to be taken out. One-eighth of an inch
11 was Navy specifications. I'm not even talking about
12 subsurface, that had to come out too. To give you an
13 idea everything that went into nuclear sub

14 preparation.

15 « Yeah, Yeah. That's great.
16 again.
17: 1, I just did some rapid figuring here and a

18 casting that had 500 areas or 500 shots on it -- and |

19 took an average of 20 shots a shift, would that be

20 fair?
21 : Yeah,
22 2} Twenty shots a shift

23 would take 45 shifts, three shifts a day, 15 days. So
24 some of them were two and -- two weeks and longer

25 inside.

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7 badges were they, who were they from?

8 hy ), any comments on
9 the badges?

10 : Yes. We were issued them

11 weekly. And at the end of the -- on Monday morning

12 they'd be collected by and they would

13 then be mailed off to the front office. Front office

14 would send them to we thought Landauer and the other
15 if there was another firm that would -- many firms

16 could do it. And you kind of wonder whatever happened

17 after that. We weren't -- yeah -- notified. So --

18 ‘’: [might add to that. They
19 had two --

20 ~ yes, sir.

21 : *: They had two films in each

22 badge. One was a weekly reading, and the other one
23 was monthly, They changed one every week, and then
24 they change the -- the second one every month.

25 . 2 Can[just-- (I didn't

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

36

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12 fire department or anyone that we know of?

13 ': No.

14 1 No.

15 : Not that I know of.
16 7: No?

17 : I was -- I was standing ona

18 truck that had four rubber wheels on it, and it burned
19 the wheels off from it and me standing on it. But it
20 was -- it was pretty bad.

21 ~: Okay.

22 : Can I pick up on one final

23 point? I'm sorry. Somebody mentioned and I need to
24 have this -- I think this is important for the

25 record -- that the crane operator in Building 6 --

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99
1 Wimp, was this from you?
2 Yeah,
3 : And let's -- | want to make

4 sure | understand what you said. So the crane

5 operator normally goes down a certain -- traverses --

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18 and add or subtract electricity in the control -- the

19 control panel upstairs.

20 a Okay.

21 . But everything was run at full
22 strength.

23 | Okay. Fair enough.

24 If it was a short shot, long

25 shot, whatever, it was full strength.

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173
1 « And kind of along these lines
2 now --
3
4 » Yeah, I'm sorry.
5 . « Ido

6 remember -- | do remember, and I'm sure it was the

7 Atomic Energy coming in there on the day shift when I
8 was an operator in the new betatron they had us -- me
9 and my assistant guy -- not doing any exposures other
10 than rotating the betatron head in different

11 directions, aim it towards the shooting room, away

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19 knowledge of a lab technician for the previous ten

20 years I suspected it was something out of the ordinary
21 because they did not look anywhere near the appearance
22 of steel and other metals we were accustomed to deal
23 with. So all I can say is that yes, we did. There

24 were several Sundays we picked up doing this in the --

25 from -- in the period of 1964 to about 1972.

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

19

1 », would you go into
2 it for usa little bit more? You said the metal did

3 not look like steel and your other alloys.

4 7 : Of course.

5 : Describe for us a little more

6 why it was different.

7 + It-- it was a little darker.
8 : Okay.
9 : [would have thought it was

10 more dense.
11 | Uh-huh.

12 : And it took a whole lot more

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21 would get compensated under the Energy Employees
22 Illness -- Occupational !IIness and Program Act,
23 EEOICPA. And so the official record says that that
24 was used at General Steel from 1953 to 1966.

25 : Could we start with

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

15
I please.
2 : Well, my partner and I,
3 -- they sent some slices with a waxy

4 coating on it for us to x-ray on the midnight shift.

5 It came in on -- they came in on flatcars like

6 everything else did that came into the old betatron.

7 And acouple of nights later they sent looks like some
8 small ingots, and we had to use like three different

9 films to shoot this because of the exposure, the

10 thinner and the thicker levels, the variation of the

11 thickness. And we divided it up into the four shots,
12 the slices. We backed it up with lead, pointed the

{3 betatron straight down, and made four shots each.

14 Now, we didn't know -- really know what it was. But

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1_ you have problems on how to do it further.

2 The second page is simply the contact

3 information for the Paducah Resource Center which is
4 the place that has offered to get this information for
5 you. So that's a -- an outreach station. Many of you
6 all have already interacted with Paducah, It's run by
7 the Department of Labor, and Katherine Fuller is the
8 current office manager. And I gave you their phone
9 numbers, their fax numbers, you know, toll free

10 telephone numbers. So if you need to talk to them,
11 that’s also -- might be helpful. But I think it's

12 important to send this letter as your official request
13 for your own records.

14 Now, the -- the other thing |] want to do

15. before we actually start the real presentation I would
16 like to read into the record two incidents that '

17 wrote up and shared with me. And I'm doing this
18 for several purposes. One, I want to get this into

19 the official record because I think these things are
20 important. But also for you, for the workers J think
21 I want to give you a flavor of the kind of detail that
22 we're interested in capturing today on videotape and
23 on audio and in our transcripts.

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25 x Yeah. Possibly.

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108
1 2 Okay.
2 « Yeah,
3 : That's great. All right.
4 , 1 think
5 Brawley had a comment.
6 « I'm sorry.
7 *: Now that —_ mentioned it we

8 -- I've also used it too because we used to wrap film

9 all the way around that -- that fitting.

10 « Right. Correct.

ll *: We'd have like -- we used to
12 use the soft holders for that. Remember, they

13 were green.

14 : Flexiwrapped.

15 *: Yeah. We put it in the

16 center, and that way we can get maybe 20 shots instead
17 of using the betatron to get one shot at a time.

18 : And the reason you'd use the

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22 « So thanks to all.
23
24 (Whereupon, the affidavit testimony was

25 concluded.)
POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY = (314) 421-0099
236

1 CERTIFICATE PAGE

2
1 , Court Reporter, do
3 hereby certify that this GSI Affidavit Testimony was
transcribed by me to the best of my ability.
4
I further certify that | am neither attorney
5 nor counsel for nor related nor employed by any of the
parties to the action in which this is taken; further,
6 that I am not a relative or employee of any attorney
or counsel employed by the parties hereto or
7 financially interested in this action.

8 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my
hand and seal this 18th day of July, 2006.

(Court Reporter]

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15 that's supposed to have 35,000 pound of steam
16 pressure, and that's where it went for x-raying.
17 *: What kind of steel?
18 : It's supposed to been the
19 kind that had that beryllium, that's what I heard them
20 talking about.
21 « He - he's talking -- are you
22 talking about beryllium?
23 : Yeah, beryllium, Yeah.
24 « Okay. So that would be

25 B-E-R-Y-L-L-I-U-M.

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91

1 i : But there was this -- it was

2 around tank and it was made like a Y out of -- up

3 here on the end it had little pipes, and it's supposed

4 to went for a nuclear submarine. And they said it had
5 to have 35,000 pounds of pressure, steam pressure in
6 it.

7 : They did that
8 for a while down there, then they moved it over to the

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4 bit. So -- so the MacBeth survey meter was present,

5 right?

6 + Yes.

7 : It was just a matter of

8 deploying it --

9 * That's right.

10 | ++ to make measurements?

ll : We were supposed to check the

12 shooting rooms and the -- and the area every hour --

13 3 Okay.

14 > -- which we did and maybe

15. oftener (phonetic) especially when we used sources.

16 But like I said --

17 : Well, that's good. Now --

18 now, when you used a source or what was the procedure
19 if you found a high reading or a reading that you

20 thought was too high?

21 +: You find out what the trouble
22 was.

23 = Good. Okay.

24 : Yeah,

25 : Would you -- would -- and

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3 distinction earlier. We said that -- I can't remember
4 who made this comment, but that it was fair to say
5 that there was no radiation safety officer. Now, when
6 you say a safety officer, that sounds like you're
7 describing a radiation safety function.
8 . That's true. There was a
9 radiation safety function.
10 : « Okay. But -- but you don't
11 want to -- I mean, I'm -- I'm not trying to put words
12 in your mouth. I'm just trying to figure out that --
13. why wasn't for example just the
14 radiation safety person at GSI?
15 .. [suppose you could call
16 him that. I -- | don't know who he reported to even
17 at that particular time.
18 : Oh, | understand. Did he

19 give you all any training per se?

20 : No.
21 : Okay.
22 « No. He -- he ran around

23 looking at things to make sure things were safe and --

24 : Okay.

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18 *: Yeah. On the weekends and
19 mostly on the midnight shift.
20 : Yeah. Because I don't
21 remember anything about those other than the fact that
22 on the schedule they were classified I think as
23 Mallinckrodt ingots. And that was about the only
24 thing that we knew about them. And they were done

25 mostly on weekends because I didn't really --

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

23
1 : Yeah. Well, you were the
2 supervisor.
3 -- see that much.
4 You got a chance to see

5 that. The only thing they told us was to shoot them,
6 you know.
7 COURT REPORTER: I'm sorry, sir. I didn't

8 hear the end.

9 *, could you
10 repeat --
11 He was the supervisor. He

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16 : Yes.

17 « Okay.

18 : The same corporation.

19 : Okay.

20 : And so they did -- rebuilt,

21 you know, so it wouldn't occur again. So that evening
22 -- what they did, nobody knew -- knew what to do with
23 you if you got exposed or nobody was sure. So my film
24 badge was sent some place immediately. And you -- and

25 that happened to be on a Thursday or Friday. And so

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY = (314) 421-0099

117

1 the guard was going to take me to Granite City

2 Hospital, St. Elizabeth's but they didn't know what to
3 do. So they took -- brought me home. And { come in
4 and I went to Staunton Hospital. And we had doctors
5 there, they were young and I think advanced. And

6 although it may be a small hospital, they had an idea
7 of what to do. And so they took a blood test and did
8 all that. But nobody knew what to do. So I took a

9 day off from work, and I think the doctor gave me

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10 total casting up to two weeks, Is that a fair

11 statement? That's amazing. Okay.

12 . And then -- then you need to
13 realize that --

14 : Wow.

15 .! -- whenever or whatever

16 defects were in that casting from the first shot had
17 to be -- come back in and reshot.

18 : Right. I understand.

19 : Okay. And then it was

20 continually reshot every time there was a repair made.
21 : Right.

22 : And so some castings may --
23 may have went in four, or five, six times --

24 2 Wow. Okay.

25 : -- until they were clear.

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

193

1 So -- so the activation
2 process that we think is real would have just been

3 enhanced each time it was shot, reshot, reshot,

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16 My name is
17 . I started to work at General Steel in
18 1955 until I was in the maintenance department,

19 oiler, and pipe fitter. And there's no place in that

20 plant that I haven't been including tunnels, ladders,

21 roof, everywhere,

22 : My name's

23 I worked in General Steel from spring
24 of '63 to I was a x-ray technician,

25 Magnaflux operator, anything to do with the

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

12

nondestructive testing department that's what I worked

2 with.

3 COURT REPORTER: Nondestructive?

4 Nondestructive testing.

5 : My name is

6 1 worked at General Steel from --

7 \et's see. I think it was September of 1963 to
8 I was -- my basic job was mostly

9 x-ray and ultrasonics. And J operated the -- both the

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115
1 the ones that had remembered.
2 remembered an explosion. ! y had to be taken to
3 the hospital -- I didn't know about this

4 one -- replaced a donut tube in the betatron.

5 * was ordered to get out of a radioactive area.

6 And. | -- that's" 4 was exposed to
7 the KVP source we were just talking about. And

8 recounts an incident with in the
9 betatron. So I'd like to open it up if anybody wants

10 to comment about any of those incidents or accidents
11 that could have let to overexposure or injuries.

12 And I think we -- we ought to talk -- I

13. know there were other kind of accidents in the steel
14 plant. But] think we ought to talk about the ones

15. that involved the radiation sources in particular.

16 , you want to start -- start us off?

17 +, [doubled over from day shift
18 into second shift, and we were using the cobalt 60/80
19 curie. And we were doing fine. About -- it was into
20 the evening, around six, seven o'clock in the evening

21 we tried to retract the source, you know, after the

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POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

149

1 can speak to a particular topic that -- that you have

2 particular input about.

3 So Affidavit 13 was related to the

4 transport of the ingots and the castings on railroad

5 cars throughout the different building. And | think

6 we've been over that -- that one pretty well.

7 Affidavit 14 we have not talked about yet.

8 That's very important, and that has to do with people

9 who either operated or can describe the Magnaflux

10 operations and the plant locations where the Magnaflux
11 was used. And I should mention that wrote
12 up a very nice overall description of the process of

13 the Magnaflux operation. And just to sort of peak you
14 all's interest in this a little bit more one of the

15 things we realized in understanding that process is

16 that that powder, the Magnaflux powder that was on the
17 castings that went into the betatron that was then

18 radiated and taken back out into the plant, that
19 probably that powder, that fine dust like material was
20 also activated by the betatron and itself was -- was

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16 i Okay.

17 *; That's the only ID, you
18 know.

19 : But I mean, did somebody

20 write that down.

21 . We wrote it down on the shot
22 sheet.

23 « Okay. On the shot sheet?

24 : ¢: Right.

25 Allright. That -- that

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

27

1 sounds good. has a comment I think,
2 This is very good by the way. This is exactly what

3 I'm hoping to hear this morning. I -- it's really

4 good.
5 i: My name is ~
6 and | was on the furnace floor when there

7 was some ingots brought in on a railroad car. And
8 they unloaded them with a forklift and sat them on the

9 furnace floor, And they was round, probably eight

Page 33


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21 shot looked like to finish that casting out. It was
22 probably brought in, and in lieu of moving the other
23 steam turbine out, bringing that one in and setting it
24 up the one that we were working on remained in place,

25 that one was brought in on the railcar, and the -- and

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

135

1 the rail car stayed right there, set up the shot and

2 got it back out again.

3 « Okay. It wasn't really just
4 --just convenience. It was to get a job done so we

5 could get on with other work?

6 .: I'm assuming that.
7 a Yeah, Okay.
8 .: This particular shot or shots

9 was the entire weld prep on a channel head which was
10 the nuclear top of a nuclear power plant.

il 1 Right. Right.

12 .. It was the final shot of the

13. well prep that had to be clear before it was sent to

14 Westinghouse to be put into operation.

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220

] « Right. I've heard that.
2 : Both these buildings, welding,
3 welders, burners, chippers, grinders, inspectors.
4 7 : Okay.
5 + All these people were directly
6 involved. If you could imagine while Magnaflux alone
7 was taking place on any -- any one or -- one or a

8 number of castings as far as you can see in these

9 buildings.
10 2 Tunderstand.
11 : If] could visualize hot

12 sparks flying every direction, burning into your neck,
13 burning into your arms.

14 : Ido.

15 : A burner gets ona -- ona

16 casting and washes defects out of a hot casting,

17 sparks flying every direction, molten metal.

18 Chippers, a lot -- noise so loud when it hit a casting
19 with a chipping hammer, debris flying from the

20 chipping hammer everywhere.

21 vz Right.

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15 So uranium enters through the -- through
16 the airway, gets into the lungs, then is transported
17 through the blood and binds to bone in particular.
18 It's slowly released from bone and eventually gets in
19 the urine or in the fecal stream, the insoluble
20 uranium. So in particular urine uranium measurements
21 area pretty good measure of total body uranium
22 burden. And NIOSH pays attention to that. I don't
23 think there's any evidence from what I've heard that
24 that was done at GSI.

25 Affidavit No. 18 has to do with testimony

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151

1 that there was no regular breath zone or area sampling
2 for radioactivity. And again, breath zone and area

3 sampling is done in places where there's a lot of

4 radioactivity, where there's a lot of dust, and where

5 ++ so -- so the -- the dusty -- there's a dusty

6 environment. And -- and that is a -- is a separate

7 source of radioactivity. Now, I really believe from

8 what I've heard about the plant operations that that

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24 that?

25 ‘; Well, we used every evening.

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY = (314) 421-0099

217

1 We started or we used it on the evening shift --

2 a Okay.

3 “; -- and the midnight shift

4 because they used it on the day -- they only used it

5 on the day shift.

6 1 Oh, okay. And -- and can you
7 give us some idea of the years for that?

8 *, Oh, I'd say -- I'd say --

9 say from about '64. Was it about '64, —_, that we

10 started going over there?

W : Probably about that time.
12 : Yeah. '64 through '69 I

13 know.

14 That's terrific. That's

15 great.

16 : Probably '64 to about

17 that time.

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13 employment in our plant. Okay. If we got down to the

14 point where our workers didn't have anything to do,
15 St. Louis Testing would not have been in -- inside
16 those gates.

17 « That's what I meant by my
18 term which was poorly used. But that -- that's what

19 I'm getting at.

20 : I would -- I would think
21 it was --

22 : This was extra work that you
23 couldn't handle in a timely manner?

24 .: It was extra. I would
25 almost be certain of that.

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

215

1 2 Okay. Very good. All right.

2 That's probably sufficient. Let's see.

3 mentioned about some work done with American Steel,
4 nondestructive testing American Steel with a linear

5 accelerator. And I think somebody mentioned that it

6 was a 1 MEV device. Can you fill us in on that,

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1 all called the small source?

2 *: I don't know what they
3 called it.
4 “: Yeah. That was the small

5 source, the 6 Building.

6 i Okay. And how -- and -- and
7 was the iridium source used in there, or was that used
8 elsewhere in the plant?

9 %: It was used absolutely all
10 over the plant.

11 « Okay. All right.

12 : They'd take x-ray -- cobalt
13 treatments outside the old betatron.

14 2 Right.

15 + And castings outside of the

16 old betatron.

17 COURT REPORTER: What's he saying?
18 :: Betatron.
19 : He said outside the old

20 betatron building.

21 s; They shot them on the

22 outside of it.

23 *; Were there other workers

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6 with the M film.

7 : Okay.
8 = Okay.
9 . I know often we had three

10 types of films in one --
1 *; Right.
12 : -- in one shot to show

13 the different aspects of the --

14 : Right.
15 «>> of the shot.
16 « Well, that's excellent.

17 That's a lot of information we didn't -- I didn't know
18 about at all before that. Which -- we've kind of

19 touched on Affidavit No. 11. 1 think this is very

20 important to just give NIOSH the -- the sense that

21 there were incidents, accidents that occurred. So

22 anybody who saw radiation overexposure accidents or
23 incidents. And we've mentioned one involving

24 and so forth.

25 So I have listed down here just some of

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY = (314) 421-0099

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12 plant.
13 : Yeah. Yeah. That's what
14 happened.
15 : : And it was because of a low
16 radioactive sand --
\7 : Yeah. That's --
18 : -- that was used at a plant
19 for a particular reason.
20 - 2 Okay.
21 : So that's another source of
22 radiation that was there before it ever got activated.
23 .: That's that's true.
24 : Itcame in radioactive

25 apparently.

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

234

1 : Okay.

2 was a

3 metallurgist so he's probably pretty accurate on that.
4

5 : Yes, sir.

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i5 « And it was stored in the

16 betatron building for convenience? I guess that was

17 ~

18 > No.

19 : No.

20 1: We dumped it behind the

21 betatron, all up behind it.

22 .« Dumped it behind. Okay.

23 : And we was higher than the
24 betatron when we dumped it. And then about the

25. burning of the records ;, the plant

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY = (314) 421-0099

16
1 superintendent I guess he was --
2 : So , would that be
3 like 2
4 : Yes.
5 a Okay.
6 +: He -- he was there, and he

7 gave me the orders to burn. He said any papers that
8 -- that comes out of these here vaults you burn them.

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16 place. Before these guys came in they would shut the

17 place down and sweep and clean.

18 _: Oh, okay. Okay.

19 : Everything had to look just
20 so.

21 : Okay.

22 3: Okay?

23 : Yeah.

24 : So you knew somebody

25 important was coming in there.

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

177
1 Okay.
2 : But other than that they
3 didn't care.
4 2 Okay. Got you.
5 *: And then when these guys

6 come in they're wearing suits and ties and the big
7 wigs are kissing their butts and --
8 : Okay. It was a big deal?

9 ‘: It was a big deal.

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1 « Okay. And just for the

2 record when you had your low count did you get a --

3 any kind of report that said how low it was or --

4 «: Nothing. All] know is what
5 was my foreman.
6 ~o « Say that name again so that

7 we can have it.

8 ho

9

10

li i: Well anyway,

12 was my foreman --

13 a Okay.
14 i: -- and he was a real nice
15 guy. And he told me -- he says , you can't go

16 back on the job, you failed your white count.

17 « Let me -- let me ask you if

18 this is a fair statement. It sounds to me in all of

19 these interactions that you had with people from the
20 dispensary and the isotope people that primarily it

21 wasn't a direct interaction, it was really through

22 your foreman and supervisors. Is that basically true?
23 - i: Everything was done through

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10 24 and 25 MEV betatrons old and new. I operated the

11 --] used the cobalt pills, uranium pills, And I also

12 used the leased x-ray machine from American Steel that
13 the company leased from American Steel so we could
14 shoot thinner metal.

15 _ could you please

16 introduce yourself and then basically share with us

17 what you did at General Steel Industries and the time

18 frame you worked.

19 My name's

20 1 was a foreman, film interpreter in the betatron,

21 in the Magnaflux area in the years of 1963 to
22 1967.
23 a for the court reporter

24 could you spell your last name please.

25
POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099
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1
2 : Thank you.
3 Okay. My name's

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7 , *; Plant manager.

8 | Yeah. Thanks very much then.
9 Is there anything else that -- that's good.

10 : Building 6, we were

11 interested in Building 6 and the nondestructive

12 testing.

13 : On the Building 6 and the
14 cobalt treatments was made out of concrete blocks. It
15 was -- made about over half the building at the --

16 let's see -- west end of the building. And it didn't

17 have no roof, and it was about eight foot tall. And

18 they picked up the castings out off of the 6 Building
19 floor and picked them up, went over the top, no roof
20 on it and set the castings down in there when they

21 shot them.

22 : And this was with one of the
23 cobalt sources, right?

24 *: Yeah.

25 : Okay. Is that the source you

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9 should have been done. But we need some testimony
10 about whether you all are aware if it actually was
11 done or it was not done.
12 We certainly believe from pictures and
13 everything that you all have told us that in general
14 except for gloves occasionally and so forth that there
15 was no radiation protective gear that you wore. So
16 anybody who could make a statement about that would be
17 useful. So there are certain things that -- like this
18 that we need to have evidence even if it was negative

19 that there -- there was -- none of this was done. We

20 -- Affidavit --

21 , you got a minute?
22 - 2 Yeah,

23 > My name's

24 : Yeah.

25 *: Testing, they did do one

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1 type of testing on all of us.
2 3 Okay.

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6 itself. This was just an area inside -- inside the 6
7 Building. Yes.
8 wu: Inside the building, I'm
9 sorry. No. I'm aware of that.
10 i: Okay.
1 : And -- and but -- so there's
12 work -- there's this concrete block area, enclosed
13 area without a roof inside the -- the Number 6
14 Building and there was all sorts of work going on?
15 + Around it.
16 “Yeah. And -- and that was
17 the -- like the - -the truck car -- the trucks for the

18 railroad cars --

19 {: Yes.
20 _— « -- and things like that,
21 right? Okay. No. I understand that. So it was a

22 busy area? It was --

23 {: Well, it was --
24 : Ifradiation was coming
25 through the walls or bouncing --

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21 : Okay.
22 COURT REPORTER: Those two names you said?
23 was one of

24 the names.

25 : He was an electrician.

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1 : The other name >
2 foreman, betatron foreman.
3
4
5 . : Yeah.
6 *; You said he was from

7 Pennsylvania. Was he from the sister plant?

8 : Eddystone.
9 : Eddystone.
10 - « He came in from the

11 Eddystone plant. He was a superintendent following --

12 following or was (phonetic)?
13 : He was under x
14 ~: He was under

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1

x

18
19

20

22
23
24

25

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and I had dinner with . who told us --

and I about fell through the floor. J hate to relate

this, I don't like relating this. But he said he took

his film badge off when he saw that there was

contamination in the control room and walked outside

the control room. Now, that was the first time I

heard of this in 40 years, At that time I don't

specifically think | knew there was contamination at

that time. But this was -- this incident was related

over dinner to. _ and myself, sir.
Okay.

«+: Now, I think it's
self-explanatory I sure didn't like to hear that. But
the only way I can figure out that possibly isotope
radiation could enter the control room through all

that concrete and sand was the concrete only went up

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approximately halfway. Over the top of that was steel
siding. The roof was nothing more than a steel roof.

Over our heads in the control room was the mechanical

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7 there.

8 i: So I -- I'm sure --

9 a: It was later then.

10 : I'm sure it was in the mid

Il '60s.

12 2 Okay. All right.

13 + And I know of all these guys

14 here every one of them took that test.

15 a Okay.
16 ; Blood -- blood tests,
17 i: They would come in and --

18 unannounced, say that you had to go to the lab, to the
19 dispensary --

20 2 Okay.

21 : -- and they would make you
22 take a white count test.

23 : Allright.

24 _ And that's all you did.

25 They took a blood sample, then you went back to work.

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24 talking.

25 : They had an incident where

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1 -- you have to understand these molds that are either

2 dry or green, When they're green that means they have
3 moisture in them. They can't pour hot steel into

4 anything that has moisture in there. One time they

5 did accidentally pour hot steel into a green casting,

6 and it shook the dust off the rafters of every

7 building in that plant.

8 *: So there was an explosion?
9 : Yeah, It was an

10 explosion.

Ul : What year would that have
12 been?

13 : About '55 or '6.

14 ’: Okay.

15 : [mean it --

16 *: Anybody injured?

17 : A guy -- a guy that was

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55

1 course we had four or five hundred shots on. So they
2 -- they stayed in there for days. But --
3 : Ub-huh.
4 : When they were done being
5 shot, the time frame to get back out for other workers
6 or moving them out of the room was about 15 minutes?
7 : That would be the minimum
8 amount of time,
9 . : Okay.
10 «| What -- what would be sort of
11 aaverage time would you say? Let's say it was normal
12 operations which I understand were steady throughput.
13 But what would be a --
14 = Oh, I would say within a
15 half an hour's time after the last shot was made they
16 were being moved.
17 : Fifteen minutes to a half an
18 hour then?
19 : Uh-huh.
20 «| Okay. Very good, Is there

21 anybody who has anything new to add to that? | think

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21 you had 500 shots and the average was 1,000, that's --
22 that's a half a million Rs right there.
23 : There you go. Okay.
24 : Plus your -- plus your

25 tens and 11s and --

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1 : That's terrific. That --

2 that's what I'm trying to get.

3 : That was the first

4 go-round.

5 . wt Okay.

6 : Then went out and had to

7 be repaired, they come back in to get shot again.
8 If the shots didn't turn out,

9 you had to reshot them again.

10 . Oh, yeah. And -- and the
11 reshot.

12 : A lot of the long shots were

13 reshot.

14 : So we're talk about 500,000

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21 trained in such a manner. But I was always told

22 involved with the betatrons there was not a license

23 required.
24 » That's right.
25 : Okay.

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

60

1 : %: I specifically remember on
2 these occasions all of us fellows fired many 10,000

3 roentgen shots and over.

4 COURT REPORTER: 10,000 what?

5 ‘; And when we did so --

6 COURT REPORTER: 10,000 what shots?

7 : Roentgens, ma'am.

8 : R-O-E-N-T-G-E-N. It's an old

Y -- it's really an obsolete but old term for radiation

10 exposure. Yeah, Thank you. That's fine.

1 7 *: When we did fire these shots
12 we were given specific orders. As soon as a machine
13 quit and that red safety light quick blinking on the

14 door we were so set up the next one immediately.

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16 to the contro! room is locked. I, the assistant -- my

17 assistant anc was in the control room.
18 At that time . came in
19 with a Geiger counter, was taking Geiger counter

20 readings and stated at that time -- stated at that

21 time that he was picking up contamination. Now, the
22 only way that could happen --

23 2: Now, , let me stop you.
24 Inside the control room you're -- we're talking about?

25 . :: Inside of the control room,

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162
1.
2 « Okay,
3 : Very clearly inside the
4 control room.
5 « Okay,
6 | We were -- we were inside the

7 control room as the shot was taking place.
8 2 Okay.

9 2, Probably six months ago

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9 like probably I would say about '65.

10 : Okay.

] : Probably.

12 : That's when it started?

13 : Right. That's when we would
14 have --

15 « Allright. Okay. Good

16 enough. Let me ask you this. The -- there's always
17 been some question about whether the -- the x-ray --
18 the x-rays even from the betatrons would actually

19 penetrate uranium. Did you all have problems getting

20 a good picture?

21 *: The picture was not very
22 good.

23 a Okay.

24 But it took longer than --
25 Right.

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY = (314) 421-0099

17

1 : -+ a normal -- than a normal
2 piece of metal that you were shooting. It took a lot

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130

] *, 1 left there November of '66.

2 Some time close to that period. It was 40 years ago,

3

4 : Okay.

5 + I'm getting old.

6 « No. No. That's fantastic.

7 : Anything within good memory

8 is good for me.

9 , [hate to tell you but
10 we all are. | think we all are. So let -- let's go

11 to Affidavit No. 12 which is sort of related to

12 accidents, but now we're talking about workers who saw
13 betatron shortcuts. And you know, I'm just using

14 terms that people have described to me about rotating
15 the -- the head of the betatron to odd positions, you
16 know, for castings on the railroad car. Some people
17 have talked about flipping the betatron head 180

18 degrees or at an angle that would send radiation

19 possibly into Building 10. So I'd -- I'd be very

20 interested at this point if anybody wanted to expand

21 on that sort of occurrence that would -- that would

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24 : If that's a help I don't know.

25 ‘you --

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187
1 : Am I wrong on that,
2 e+ put in your two --
3 . [think he -- I think he
4 was a little bit low on that.
5 * Could be.
6 : I think a 10 R shot

7 probably took four and a half hours to shoot.

8 : Was it that long,

9 : Yeah. Yeah.

10 : Could be.

11 : Four and a half hours.

12 } : It took that long?

13 : « Four and a half hours to

14 shoot -- to shoot a 10,000 roentgen shot --

15 : We'd save that for the night
16 shift.
17 : Yeah. What some of the

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24 working in Building 6 when this was going on?

25 1: Yeah, They was running

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

82

1 Building 6, out on the floor chipping and everything
2 else. The crane was up, the crane.
3 ’, Did any of those people

4 have radiation badges?

5 + No. None that I know of.
6 And --
7 : And just for the record,

8 So here -- here we have a cobalt source that's used in
9 a building without any roof, right?

10 if x: Uh-huh.

11 « And so the idea is that that
12 -- once that window is open and the little pill is out

13 there it's basically radiating in all sorts of

14 directions.
15 N » Yeah.
16 But did anybody -- I mean, I

17 guess this is a good time to put on the record was

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7 : Allright.

8 -- on certain ones like if

9 they were something special and --

10 “;: Did that word charging -- did
11 that have any special meaning to you?

12 : Not really.

13 : You had been doing it a long

14 time. Does that seem Jike an odd thing to say?

15 : Yes. But you don't question,
16 you know,

17 - : Okay.

18 After all, they got high class

19 metallurgists over you --

20 Okay. Right.
21 + why should we question it.
22 No. I'm not -- no, I'm not

23 trying to second guess you. I'm just trying to
24 understand what happened.

25 Uh-huh,

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4 dose right now.

5 : -- on all -- on all occasions

6 we had the film badge.

7 - “1 Right.

8 _— +: On some occasions -- on some
9 occasions we picked up a dosimeter and used a

10 dosimeter varying on what type of work we were doing.
11 2 Okay. So I want you to

12 expand on that. Did -- do you remember was it a

13 particular type of casting, a particular long

14 exposure, or what -- what would trigger that --

15 : [think --

16 1 + for you to be givena

17 dosimeter?

18 : I think if we -- specifically

19 if we assisted an isotope operator using isotopes in a
20 betatron we would want to grab a dosimeter along with

21 our film badge.

22 : Good. So we --
23 ; Charge it and use it, sir.
24 : So now we're talking about a

25 gamma source, the cobalt source -- the cobalt sources

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19 : But they were destroyed?
20 +: Destroyed.
21 : Okay. And this was about the

22 same time? Saving and destroying was going on at --
23 at what year would you say that was?
24 : That was in ‘73.

25 : So that was when the company

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

79

1 was winding down, going out of business?

2 : Yeah.

3 : You were basically the last
4--

5 + I was the only one left.

6 : ++ person around, right?

7 ‘> I was the only one in there
8 besides

9 - « Okay. All right.

10 : Me and { was

11 the only two left.

12 COURT REPORTER: I'm sorry, sir. 1 didn't

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16 : And when the machine got too

17 hot you -- you switched the capacitors. And when they
18 got too hot you called the electrician to add or

19 subtract capacitors.

20 : So let's say -- let's say

21 your biggest, thickest casting and you had to shoot

22 multiple shots, how long would a total casting take to
23 -- to shoot J mean start to end?

24 : Sometimes a week.

25 : Okay.

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192

1 ae .: Two -- sometimes two

2 weeks.

3 2 Okay.

4 COURT REPORTER: I didn't anybody.
5 : He said up to two weeks.
6 . a I'm sorry.

7 : So one --

8 : Yeah.

9 : One big casting, one big

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21 : So there was an existing
22 mark on there when the ingot went back?
23 *: No. We laid it out.
24 | _[mean, there wasn't a

25 mark on there when the ingot was shipped back?

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

30
1 Oh, no. No. No.
2 ; : You didn't put the --
3 the -- the yellow paint on it?
4 ’; No. No. The paint wasn't
5 there. We removed the paint.
6 a Okay.
7 ‘; That was just for our own

8 information for shooting purposes.

9 *, Okay.

10 : Are you able to hear

1 okay?

12 COURT REPORTER: Yées, sir.

13 : Allright. Very good. All

14 right. I'm going to -- Affidavit Topic No. 2, I'm
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9 : Okay. You said -- he said
10 that they left the one in place.
11 : No. The one casting was
12 left in place. The casting was brought in, picked
13 off, set up on sawhorses in the shooting area.
14 : Oh, I knew you couldn't get
15 two cars in there without leaving the door --
16 . As you all are talking

17 remember that we're trying to get who's talking

18 recorded.

19 . Okay. I'm sorry. This
20 is. . These transfer cars --

21 « You're being shy so I'm not

22 going. You're getting it okay? All right.
23 : These transfer -- these
24 transfer cars were brought in from -- from 8, 9, and

25 10 Buildings, and there were two of them. One went

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137

1 from 8 in to 9, and the other one picked up in 9 and
2 went through 10 in to the betatron. So there had to

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19 iridium was because it was smaller and it was easier

20 to get inside and --

21 : It was smaller. It was
22 smaller, and the metal was really too thick for
23 betatron -- too thin for the betatron.

24 : Okay. Got you.

25 : Because they -- if they shot

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109

1 it with the betatron, they had to use a more expensive

2 film which is M film.

3 : Okay.

4 : But you could use --

5 : .. I'm sorry, Say --

6 COURT REPORTER: What kind of film?
7 "> M.

8 .: Like the letter M?

9 : Right.

10 : Okay.

11 ‘ *: But with -- with the iridium

12 we could use double A which was a cheaper film.

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3 longer to shoot.
4 : How long would you say one of
5 -- you said there were four exposures. How long would
6 you say each exposure was?
7 : It took us probably about a

8 couple hours.

9 A couple hours?

10 A couple hours for each

11 exposure.

12 « Okay. Allright. Thank you.
13 who's next?

14 mo , could you -- I know

15 youand _—_-vorked together quite a bit. Could you

16 share your experiences?

17 My name is

18 I worked as an assistance crewman with

19 on numerous occasions. He was a very fine operator in
20 my opinion. I worked under his direction on ingots --
21 the ingots, slices. I verify they were there. At

22 that time none of us knew exactly what they were. We
23 weren't told -- we were told absolutely to ask no

24 questions, it was a -- of a classified nature. We

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16

7

18

20
2
2
23
24

25

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+ Just common sense.

> Yes.

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

1
2
3 manual?
4
5

6 i

52

~: Yeah. Okay.

5 that locking was

: Yes. It was a manual lock.
*; Okay.

: Yeah. You had to lock that

7 case because if you're out there working, somebody

8 could come by and just -- just toying around and crank

9 that pill out on you.

10

: That's very correct. That was

11 the only safety device on that unit was the key. You

12 locked it back in and pulled the key out.

13
14 manually?
15
16

17 Thank you.

*, That had to be done

‘: By the -- by the operator.

: That's very important.

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175
1 Okay.
2 : All I could see was cement
3 blocks --
4 ‘ « Okay.
5 + -- in the ceiling.
6 : Got you.
7 : Just like I'm in this room
8 right now --
9 3 2 Okay.
10 : ++ T assumed it was okay.

11 The doorway was a steel door, the same thing I got at

12 my house --

13 : Okay.

14 i: -- that we went in and out
15 of.

16 * So -- no. That's very

17 helpful then. So -- so we've got Westinghouse making

18 some inspections, the Atomic Energy Commission.

19 : I'm not sure.
20 + But maybe.
21 : I think.

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9 because we've heard about St. Louis Testing. Now,

10 what kind of things would they shoot outside? I mean

11 what kind of --

12 : Some pipe welds.

13 : Okay.

14 +: Yeah. They'd -- I don't know

15 if outside vendor or our own welders would do it.
16 But they added pipes onto turbines and they'd get --
17 : In the -- in the literature

18 that I've read about iridium sources they're still

19 widely used.

20 : Yes.

21 : And the modern ones can be
22 very small, and they can be sort of --

23 : Oh, yes.

24 «: -- molded so you can wrap

25 them around. But -- but pipe welds are the things

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1 that I've heard --
2 : Yes.

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19 when -- when they was shooting down there only to go

20 halfway down the building, but they went farther than

21 half way.
22 L : Okay.
23 : Now, you said that Number 6

24 Building was attached to the foundry; is that correct?

25 + Yeah.

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94

1 : All -- all the buildings

2 were --

3 : There was no wall though.
4 It was just a --

5 ': No wall? What products

6 were made from Number | foundry?

7 What?

8 : What type of products were
9 made in Number | foundry?

10 : That's where you poured the
II steel.

12 : That's where you poured the

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POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

209

1 early as the early 1950s when some of you all began

2 working at GSI. So that was an established

3 physical well -- actually a very well-known principle.

4 But I was quite surprised -- and J have done a

5 lot of reading and a lot of research. And you know,

6 the betatron was invented in 1939 by Donald Karst, and
7 he -- he became real interested in that in his

8 graduate students right away.

9 And so in the early '50s there were people

10 -- I read one study of a chemistry professor who

11 wanted to demonstrate to his students how -- how the
12 elements in the periodic table were different. And so
13 he got a sample of many, many of the elements on the
14 periodic table, and he irradiated them in a betatron

15 machine and induced activation. And then what you can
16 do is you can put those activated compounds in a

17 spectrometer and read the -- the irradiation spectrum.
18 And you can infer from the peaks what the element

19 really is. So he actually had -- he used betatron
20 activation to reconstruct a periodic table by his

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15 = Okay. I worked the hot floor
16 a lot.

17 : Asbestos is another day.

18 . : This is

19 , are you listening?

20 has got something.
21 : Yeah,

22 - 3, yeah,

23 . When they was cleaning

24 General Steel up in '93 getting that all trash and

25 everything cleaned up out of there I was working at

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

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1 SCI. Well, right out from the pits where -- where

2. they was digging that scrap metal with that

3 contaminated metal they had to go out there in that

4 dump and dig that scrap metal out of there. Well, we
5 was sitting right on the other side of that fence

6 eating our lunch.

7 2 Okay.

8 : General Steel or --

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7 at that map we have of the buildings --

8 a : Yeah,
9 ‘: -- the foundry is a long
10 building like this, and all the other buildings are

11 like this coming off of it.

12 ‘; Were there big doors on all
13 those?

14 : No.

15 ’: No. It was just open,

16 You just -- when you walked through --
17 j: That Building Number | was a
18 quarter of a mile long, the one building. The other

19 buildings had --

20 : Everything attached to that
21 foundry?

22 « Yeah, There'd be mold --

23 _ » And that foundry attached

24 to Number 6 Building?

25 .: The molds was made in 2

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224

1 the metal. So there's --

2 « No. That's an excellent

3 picture. Now, I think we can take that and weld that

4 into just the kind of description that | was talking

5 about.

6 «| Then -- then you figure in all

7 the crane operators --

8 : Yeah. Got to remember them.
9 : -- that were -- were in each

10 one of them buildings riding up and down, going from
11 one end to the other. Back then I -- I smoked and if
12 you dropped a cigarette on the floor, you didn't bend

13 over to even pick it up. It was that filthy dirty.

14 : All right. Okay.

15 has a question.
16 This is

17 Were -- were you guys eating

18 and smoking out there around radioactive particles?
19 Just take it from there.
20 s Regularly.

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14

19
20
21
22
23
24
25

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class --
: Okay.
*: -- on the Federal Register.
: Uh-huh.
: And it's a lengthy -- it's a
couple days of lengthy class. And then you are then

-- if you passed, you were under -- the company would
be licensed to --
« Lunderstand.
| -- allow you to run the
isotopes.
: Now, would

or somebody like that administer that training?

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“was?
: Yeah,

« Okay. Good.

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24 So has helped a Jot on writing up

25 for example the Magnaflux procedures and with

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

1 providing names of people and many things, but this is
2 just an example. I'm not sure where these fit into a

3 particular affidavit topic, but I think it will be

4 interesting to you all to hear the level of -- of --

5 of detail that we're trying to capture this morning.

6 Item number 1], it says ] was present as a

7 betatron operator when isotope operators used shooting
8 rooms with cobalt 60, 60 to -- cobalt 60, an 80 curie

9 source for applications, I assisted these operators

10 in setup and made sure the betatron was inactive. The
11 betatron aiming limits were supposed to not include
12 the directions of the control rooms or the exit

13 railroad door. I was later informed by the cobalt

14 operator of contamination being picked up by the

15 Geiger counter in the control room as the isotope was
16 being used. And he has in parenthesis possibly

17 radiation from the isotope was going over the top of

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20

2

22

23

24

MeetingGS!I070706non.txt
too. I wanted to keep my checks, all them checks I
had. He wouldn't let me.
: There you go. Okay.

1: And then we went into the
employment office and everything that was in there was
in files, all but the -- the little cards they made up
when you went to the dispensary when you got hurt or
anything like that was -- it was on this little card.
They kept them file cabinets, and the guys from the

St. Louis office out in Clayton came and picked them
up. There's -- there's five -- it's -- well, the
cabinet was pretty -- bigger than a regular file
cabinet.

« Uh-huh.

: But -- and they picked up
that and five other file cabinets. That's all the
records that were left.

: And that just -- I really am
-- 1 don't understand. So the Clayton office -- this
was another General Steel main office?

*: That -- that was their main

office.

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MeetingGSI070706non.txt
19 comment to that? In your job were you ever in these

20 buildings without any radiation badges?

21 : Well ;, if it -- let me

22 combine both those questions.

23 : Okay.

24 - « So among the people who are

25 here if you had a badge can you raise your hand. All

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

34

1 right. And so let's see. Everybody except

2 2

3 : Me. I didn't have no badge.

4 « You did not have a badge.

5 t No. No badge.

6 a Okay.

7 *: \ didn't --

8 [ 2 Okay, +

9 *: Andt i did not.
10 ’ 2 And* ... did not have
11 a badge.

12 : And I didn’t.

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12 there was a -- quite a difference between a fast burn
13 and an explosion, a detonation. This was detonation?
14 *. This was -- this was a loud
15 detonation.
16 : Okay.
17 + It was not a -- it was nota
18 slow burn or anything. It -- it was a loud detonation
19 to the extent dust blew off the ceiling.
20 2 Well, let me ask you this
21 because, you know, you guys worked around it a lot.
22 How -- was that a once in a lifetime thing that you
23 all observed, or did that happen --
24 + For me, ’ that's the only

25 time I ever saw it happen.

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

129

1 : And you're glad that's true,
2 right?
3 - We were -- we were schooled in
4 this sort of thing.
5 : Okay.
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10 H /; It was stored there in
11 between.
12 : And it should have been

13 locked. And do you think it was locked most of the

14 time?

15 : It was locked until --

16 ur Okay.

17 ‘; == you got ready to use it.
18 : Until it was ready to be

19 used.

20 *; Uh-huh.

21 : Okay. All right. I think

22 that should take care of that. I'm sorry,
23 i . To -- to the
24 best of my knowledge -- to the best of my knowledge

25 the 60 or the -- the big curie source was also stored

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

103

1 in the lab basement; is this correct, .
2 iy « Correct. We didn't use it

3 every day.

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9 « Good point.
10 i: -- Granite City Steel had to
11 -- blocked where nobody could get in there while they

12 was digging that metal out.

13 ft: What year?
14 : ‘93.
15 +, you're saying you

16 were at Dow while they were cleaning up GSI during the
17 -- the actual cleanup?

18 > Yeah. It was actually SCI at

19 that time. Yeah. They was digging that dump out out
20 there, digging that metal -- that contaminated metal

21 out of the dump out there.

22 : Now what year -- what year

23 was that?

24 2 193.

25 : That's right. That's

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

227

1 correct. I just came across that report. I actually

2 wrote that company, ERG, Environmental Restoration

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MeetingGS!070706non.tat
18 there a safe -- a radiation safety person who was in
19 that area looking at that, monitoring that, making
20 sure that people were not being overexposed?
21 *: Idon't know. I wasn't -- I
22 didn't work in the building. I just went in through
23 it, in and out of it all the time.
24 + Well, I mean did you see

25 anybody there that was --

POHLMAN REPORTING COMPANY (314) 421-0099

83
1 : No.
2 2. ~- performing that kind of
3 job?
4 : No. And I didn't see no

5 signs on the -- on the concrete block building either.
6 : Okay. We -- we've heard --
7 we've heard two different stories. Some people --
8 many people say no signs at all, and then J think
9 we've had one or two reports, did we not, that
10 somebody said they -- the building did have radiation
11 symbol signs?
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1 understand. I heard you say there were two films.

2 - ": Right.
3 4 One weekly, one --
4 ‘: One for a weekly reading and

5 one for the monthly reading.

6 : Okay.

7 I ‘; They changed one every week
8 and then the other one they changed it every month.

9 : Okay. So somebody came and
10 collected your badge --

aT : Right.

2 2 --then made that switch?

13 Obviously they took out the weekly one and put in a

14 new weekly one --

15 * Right.

16 : --and then gave it back to
17 you.

18 : Right.

19 : Okay. Did you -- did you

20 personally ever see any of your own personal readings.

21 : No. We never saw any
22 readings.
23 « Allright. Well, let -- let

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