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DWM SEC WORK GROUP COMMENTS 11/12/10 

Dan McKeel Dow SEC-00079 Co-petitioner Comments 

to the SEC Issues work group, November 12, 2010 

1.	 RE: the Oct. 8, 2010 tasking date mentioned in the Thurber SC&A white paper, 

what were the circumstances for tasking SC&A to review the white paper on DR 

and use of surrogate data at Dow Madison site? I believe Dr. Melius was absent 

from the Oct. 7, 2010, Board teleconference meeting, so how was tasking done 

the next day, please? 

2.	 I need to state the co-petitioner’s objections to Mr. Thurber’s overall conclusions 

that all uses of surrogate at the Dow Madison site fulfilled the Board’s surrogate 

data criteria. Part of my general objections were aired in a recent e-mail 

exchange between Dr. Melius and myself. He argued that the Board uses its SD 

criteria, which may differ from OCAS-IG-004, the surrogate data criteria that 

NIOSH uses. He told me the two sets of criteria do not need to be “reconciled.” I 

strongly disagree with this approach. I feel that both the Board and their 

contractor SC&A, and NIOSH, need to use the same uniform criteria to assess 

use of SD across the AWE and DOE covered site spectrum. 

3.	 NIOSH has not formally used either OCAS-IG-004 or the Board’s SD criteria to 

justify the overwhelming use of SD to make recommendations for extending 

SEC-00079. NIOSH’s position is the 83.14 SEC extension to cover the residual 

contamination period should be denied. I hope to persuade the full Board to 

approve SEC-00079 extension to cover 1961 through 2007 at the Dow Madison, 

IL, site at the full Board meeting on November 17. 

4.	 This morning I e-mailed you PDF files of my May 4, 2010 presentation to the 

Board on NIOSH’s initial presentation of its SEC-00079 evaluation report (ER). 

The text of my remarks is one file and the Powerpoint presentation is the other 

PDF. I also submitted these two files, again, to Dow Docket 113. 

5.	 I want to give two examples today why I believe the Board SD criteria were 

misapplied in Bill Thurber’s, October, 2010, SC&A white paper under 

consideration by the SEC Issues work group today. My contention all along has 

been to challenge the assignment of quoted “Dow Madison” site monitoring data 

to the Madison, IL, Dow plant. I believe that most, or perhaps all, of this “direct 

data” may have been collected at other Dow Chemical Company plants that are 

located at Bay City and Midland, Michigan and at Freeport, Texas. 

Example #1: (Filename: Bldgs_NotAt_DowIL.txt) 

SEC-00079 Addendum-1 08-06-07 Dow Madison
 

p. 4 of 6
 

4.4 Site Locations Associated with Radiological Operations.
 

Additional areas where thorium materials were handled were
 

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DWM SEC WORK GROUP COMMENTS 11/12/10 

identified in the newly provided documents. Besides Bldg. 6,
 

other buildings with Th activities included: thorium fluoride
 

storage in Bldg. 376 and hardener casting in Bldg. 152.
 

MCKEEL STATEMENT: (1) There were no such buildings as 376 and
 

152 at Dow Madison in Illinois. Dan McKeel showed a detailed
 

building plan of Dow Madison at his 5/04/2007 Board presentation
 

that favored approval of SEC-00079 from 1957 through 1998, the
 

known end of the residual period at that time. The PodonskyHSS/DOE Jan 8, 2008, letter declaring Dow Madison was a thorium
 

AWE site had not been issued at that point. This discrepancy in
 

Bldg. numbers at various Dow sites illustrates a point I made at
 

the SC&A workers meeting held in 2006 in East Alton and at
 

subsequent presentations on SEC-00079 to the Board.
 

(2) To my knowledge, thorium fluoride was not stored at Dow
 

Madison IL site. The ORNL survey of 1989 or the Pangea Group
 

2003 through 2007 cleanup reports did not mention this form of
 

thorium being used at Dow Madison, IL site.
 

CONCLUSION: Other Dow sites—Bay City and Midland, MI,
 

and/or Freeport, TX—were being mixed up with Dow Madison site by
 

BOTH NIOSH/ORAU (Mr. Mahathy) and SC&A (Bill Thurber).
 

Example #2: (Filename: Dow_ERadd1_BayCityFB.txt) 

From document TDCC 362 concerning the film badge readings used 

to bound uranium and thorium external doses at Dow Madison 

during the respective residual radiation contamination periods 

(uranium 1961-2008; thorium 1961-2007, source: DOE facilities 

Database entries. 

=================== 

6/26/57 

L. Silverstein 

(Dow Midland) 

Document type: 

Letter to H. Price 

(AEC) 

Q: Content: 

Request for exemption from 

posting and labeling 

requirements of 10CFR20 for 

areas and containers in which 

Mg alloys containing up to 4% 

Th are stored and fabricated; 

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DWM SEC WORK GROUP COMMENTS 11/12/10 

includes film badge data from 

HK-31 casting jobs 

Q: New or Differing 

Information from ER? 

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Personnel film badge data for | FB = 27 readings from 20 jobs 

13 day period for 27 people | 27/3000 workers = 0.9% of workforce 

(20 specific jobs) (Note: this | at Dow Bay City 

list is from Bay City – it is | 13/13505 days = 0.1% residual days 

the same as the list in TDCC 

000055) 

==========================end of TDCC 362 Dow ER add1=============== 

The Board surrogate data criterion that was most egregiously misapplied in my 

opinion was the need for stringent justification for surrogate site data in instances 

where, as pertained to Dow Madison, zero personal film badge or bioassay existed for 

workers from 1957 to 2007, including the 1986 to 2007 era when Spectrulite 

Consortium, Inc., owned the Madison site. Workers from that time period gave affidavits 

that film badges were worn by some workers, yet none of this FB data had surfaced at 

Landauer or elsewhere. The workers suspect these film badges may not have been 

analyzed. No FB reports were shown to them by plant management or their direct 

supervisors (see Ed Holzhouser affidavits, for example). 

As shown above and in Dow ER-appendix 1, the Bay City, MI surrogate film 

badge data was for 13 days, with 27 badge readings from 20 job descriptions. Those 13 

days represent <0.01% of days in the 37 year thorium residual period (1961-2007), or 

37/1465 = 0.9% of days in the operational period (1957-60). Assuming that Bay City had 

3,000 workers and FB readings from 20 of them, then only 0.7% of the peak annual 

workforce was monitored and even less when job turnover is considered. Bay City is not 

otherwise justified by NIOSH. In fact, here is what NIOSH concluded about the Bay City 

FB data: “SEC-00079 Addendum 08-06-07 Dow Madison 

p. 5 of 6 

...heat treat, Wheelabrator, touchup, X-ray, fixture, shipping, metal reclamation) 

associated with HK-31 casting production at Bay City, which was another facility 

operated by Dow (TDCC 000362). The list of jobs is fairly descriptive and specific, 

and probably similar to those which would have been performed during thorium 

operations at the Madison site, but it is not known how complete or how 

representative of the Madison site this list is, and therefore it is still not possible 

to use job descriptions to define the proposed class. Yet, in spite of any justification 

of Bay City other than that no evidence had surfaced that Bay City was not similar to 

Dow Madison, Bill Thurber concluded the “stringent justification” criterion for sites such 

as Dow that lacked any personnel monitoring data was satisfied. 

I contend that no professional statistician would accept such limited time period 

(operational <0.01%; residual 0.9%) and number of workers (<0.7%) film badge data 

from Dow Bay City, MI, as being (a) in any way representative of the time periods or the 

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DWM SEC WORK GROUP COMMENTS 11/12/10 

workforce, or (b) as satisfying the Board’s stringent justification criterion. I hope the work 

group and full Board will agree with me. 

6.	 An overriding issue that is evident from the wealth of Dow and successor owner 

worker affidavits is the poor enforcement of safety regulations at Dow Madison. 

This was a very unsafe workplace. For example, I have evidence that Madison 

site owners underreported to Illinois EPA inspectors its regular furnace stack 

emissions of both thorium and beryllium for a twenty year period ending in 2004. 

Dow Madison site in 1963 began producing an aluminum-beryllium alloy called 

“LOCK-ALLOYTM” that was licensed from Lockheed-Martin. On October 5 of this 

year current owner Magnesium-Elektron experienced a tremendous explosion 

and fire that blew out windows of the castings building. The adjacent elemnetary 

school was closed, and IL EPA is instituting a lawsuit against MagnesiumElectron as a result of the mishap. There are at least 5 pages of Google news 

reports about this dramatic event that highlight the unsafe conditions that 

characterize the Madison site for the past 60 years. 

Respectfully submitted, 

Daniel W. McKeel, Jr., M.D. 

SEC-00079 co-petitioner 

Phone: 573-323-8897 

Fax: 573-323-0043 

US Mail: P.O. Box 15, Van Buren, MO 63965 

E-mail: danmckeel2@aol.com 

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