25

DOW Outreach 082206.txt
hurt us, it's marked radiation, danger. And he said

0033

no, you've got to use this for a thousand years, it
won't bother you. So then I worked with it every time
they ran it.

And while he's speaking about the dust,
you just -- you couldn't hardly see. And surprising
I'm 78 years old and | Sived through that whole time
in that casting department in the pot room. And I can
verify that it was so dusty you couldn't touch the man
next to you.

So after | retired in what they did
after that I have no idea. But I know that it was
very hazardous. And we -- our clothing -- | have a
picture of me casting on the slab unit. And I --
evidently we had a -- a hard hat and -- and shield.
But up until the time Dow Chemical was there all we
had was a sailor cap with a shield on it cut from the
back. And evidently when the hard hat and the shield
came in it must have come in under -- under
Consolidated Aluminum because I don't remember them at
that plant.

I can also remember that we never had any
badges. Our clothes were flame treated. They would
just -- it wouldn't flame -- flame up, but they'll --
they'd get burned through. Because all of us got
burned several times in that amount of time we were in

0034

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1}
12
13
14
15
16
17

there. So up until the time Spectrulite came in I
can't never remember wearing badges. And when they
came in we started to wear -- well, up in -- I'ma
little ahead of myself.

Before that we used to carry our clothes
out and take them in the locker room where the
warehouse people that wasn't exposed to it and throw
all of our clothes in the same hamper that they used.
And then later on when Spectrulite came in they
started to give us a separate box in the pot room
where we could throw our clothes in there, and they
kept them separate from the warehouse. Up in that
time they didn’t keep our clothes separated. And we
are wore badges and never told us. At the end of the
day we'd turn our badges in. That was the end of it,
we never heard anything thereafter.

My name's

Page 20


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
thorium that did talk about at one of
our previous meetings on the 11th of August. And you
all will get that video so you can check that out for
yourself, But I think most of the thorium was 232.
The other thing is -- that Larry brought up there's
this very important thing and that is that there were
emissions from the plant of the airborne particulate
some of which had to be thorium.

And in July I visited -- as part of our
investigation to just getting information about the
plant at Dow Madison we visited the Illinois EPA
offices in Springfield and looked at the records they
had for the land division and the air division. And
the box from the air division happened to be what I
looked through first and was interested to find there
a series of inspection reports every other year for
the air pollution permit held by Dow. And in each and
every one of those reports it mentioned that the work

0070

that went on at Dow -- and of course, you got to
realize this was -- most of the time now this was
Conalco and then later on Spectrulite that they were
inspecting -- that the work done there was as a
secondary smelter and refiner of aluminum and
magnesium. And that's a -- that’s a verbatim quote.

There was not a word mentioned in any of
those air permits from 1973 to 2004 of either
beryllium or thorium. But we also saw that day an
application form for the air permit for the state, and
there was a question in there which required the
person filling out the application to identify all of
the particulates that might be released into the air
from that plant. So I would think that the onus to
provide that information were -- was on the companies
that operated the plant; that is Conalco and
Spectrulite.

So you know, I do think that the
information I've received over the years shows that
there has been a lack of aggressive monitoring by
state agencies and certainly the -- the massive amount
of thorium that you've heard about that was used at
that plant should have been monitored in the -- in the
air -- in the air permits.

And I think the Dow site is really a

0071

Page 41


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

10 ‘50s and '60s, the same press that was used to run

1! this thorium in secret back in '80s and the ‘90s, this
12 radioactive equipment we'd think would be very safe,
13. put away, the public would be safe from it and that
14 workers would be safe from it, no. I found it

15 abandoned in Brooklyn exactly 50 feet past the county
16 line which made it St. Clair County's problem.

17 Now, this press before we went on strike

18 was completely overhauled. I mean, thousands and
19 thousands of dollars were spent to rebuild it and
20 refurbish it. They sold the heavy press for a
21 millions dollars and it was leaking like a sieve.
22. This press was worth a quarter million dollars easily.
23 The owner once told me during a meeting this press
24 makes between two to seven million dollars a year
25 depending on a good year or a bad year. Well, that
0063

1 makes perfect sense not to keep us from operating it
2 because he was making millions off of this press.

3 There was no reason for them to puta yellow flag

4 around it and tell us to stay away, it was a hazard.

5 This was being poisoned for profit.

6 We was never told once that this metal we

7 was running for Martin-Marietta was thorium. We was
8 never warned. And this press that was found out in

9 Brooklyn was literally the back half of the press.

10 Now, if you run the metal through the press like this
{i and extrude it out the back end, well, the very back
12 half of the press is going to be farthest away from

13. the process so it's going to be the least radioactive.

14 Where is the front half of this press? Whose back

15 yard has this been dumped in? Where is it at? This
16 has some of the questions that need to be asked.

17 Now, the people here today may not be able
18 to be helped, we may be beyond that. But the people
19 who are still living around this factory, working in
20 this factory are still being abused by these toxins
21 and these hazardous waste. Unless these people are
22 accounted for their actions and this equipment and
23 this tooling it's still going to be a hazard for years
24 tocome. And if this place isn't either condemned or
25 cleaned up which is impossible to believe that it will
0064

1 ever be cleaned up because it's been abused by

2 hazardous waste for 60 years, 75 acres, over a million

Page 37


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

15. head in the sand and pretended that all of these

16 exposures were not taking place for a long period of

17 time.

18 I guess the final thing that said

19 that maybe I ought to add to -- to the narrative for

20. the two sessions is -- without belaboring the point
21. that he and J also think that the Department of Energy
22 cleanup in 1993 and '4 at the GSI plant or -- or what
23 was then owned -- the property then was actually owned
24 by National Steel. So Granite City Steel had sold it
25 and National Stee! owned it. But the comment is that
0158

1 we -- we also believe that that cleanup was very

2. restrictive for the extent of the uranium and the

3 finding that the uranium was only in building -- in
4 the old Betatron building is really almost, after all
5. that we've said, was -- was pretty unbelievable.

6 So we would ask you to cast a

7 scientifically skeptical eye on that report and

8 combine it with all the information that we've tried

9 to provide with you yesterday and this morning at GSI
10 to say that the extent of even the uranium

11 contamination where you've certainly heard -- actually
12 Mark Lewis mentioned something that I -- J think we
13. ought to all think about and that is that besides what
14 we told you at GSI about radioactive contamination and
15 activation effect which we can all debate and discuss,
16 there was actually just contamination by the uranium.
17 The oxides were knocked off and there's abundant

18 evidence now. You saw some wonderful pictures of dust
19 all over the old Betatron floor with truck tracks in

20 it. So that floor was extremely dusty. And when

21 those trucks went back in the plant it just carried

22 that dust in there. And I'm assuming that some of the
23 dust was the oxides from the uranium pellets.

24 So there are many pathways forward. And !
25 know the epidemiologists among us love to talk about
0159

1 pathways and acceptable exposure pathways. And -- and
2 that's legitimate. Well, we're trying to provide

3. those to you. The pathways were the dust that was

4 circulating and spread all over the plant originating

5. in the old Betatron thing.

6 So with that I think I would really like

7 to thank you all for your attention and for giving us

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25 company did not report these reports to the agencies
0078

1 that granted them their license. And as you've seen

2 that was the AEC and the NRC and then the Illinois

3 Environmental Management Agency, those three agencies.
4 Or they in fact did report all of those inventories

5 and those agencies when asked now under Freedom of
6 Information Act requests and direct requests to the

7 director of the Ilinois agency are refusing to

8 provide those inventories. However, they've assured
9 us that they have given us everything they possess.

10 So the only reason I tell you this about

11 dose reconstructions are that even basic facts which
12 I'm sure Stuart and -- and the dose reconstructors and
13 Dave Allen will be extremely interested in at NIOSH is
14 how much material was actually on site. So far I

15. think the only thing -- document we can produce is

16 that Pangea June, 2005 report. And maybe with -- if
17 we all try, you know, even more vigorously to get that
18 data from the company.

19 I can tell you we've initiated contact
20 with Dow Midland. We've asked to see all of their
21 reports. And we've done the same thing with the
22 Madison site with the current owner of Spectrulite.
23 So we need to get to the bottom of this. And I don't
24 mean to hold it up any longer, that's the last I'll
25 say about it. But it’s a -- it's an important thing
0079

1 to know about this site. Yeah.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: We should -- yeah. We

3 need to break real quickly for the videographer.

4 We're going to switch tapes

5 now.

6 (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.)

7 My name is

8 It's Anyway, I was an employee
9 of Dow Chemical from 1953 to

10 and I was in the rolling mill most of my time. And

11 while I rofled thorium on 1 Mill for -- for seven

12. years from 1961 to 1968. But my main comment is I was
13 a finishing mill roller on the mill in 1955 and 'S6.

14 And they brought in five technicians from Dow Rocky

15 Flats. And they -- well, they -- they went and they

16 covered the whole area with paper. And they gave us

17. -+ which at that time we had to furnish -- we had our

Page 46


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
above Illinois state guidelines for decommissioning
radioactivity material license. And the contamination
was found throughout the plant buildings on floors, in
drains, on walls and on rafters, and in soil outside
the buildings. And this study will confirm testimony
from numerous Dow workers that the plant was heavily
contaminated with thorium. The beryllium was not
mentioned in the March, 2005 report.

And then that study was followed by a
decommissioning plan for the Spectrulite Consortium
Madison, Illinois facility that was published June

0023

25

20th, 2005 as you can see prepared by the Pangea Group
in St. Louis for Spectrulite.

I found this the most interesting part of
that report, Table 4.1 has a source material
inventory. So this is basically a contemporary
listing of all the thorium materials in the various
buildings throughout Spectrulite. And you can see
that there are large numbers of them involving
Buildings 1, 4, 5, 6. The Building 6 machine shop you
can see listings of bar stock and various types of
round stock and so forth, many kinds of physical
thorium metal products. Table is continued, and this
table is on Pages 14 and 15 of that 39-page report.
There was a lot of thorium in Building 7, 8, the 9
machine shop, and in Building 10. So you'll hear from
the workers today about why the thorium was there. We
have history of -- of thorium being left around just
in corners and in buildings for years.

Dow workers were harmed. | think we --
you will hear and J hope you'll particularly be
impressed not only with input, which is a
direct evidence of -- of harm from the thorium, that
there were many other evidences that the workers were
harmed at this site.

There was basically an absent radiation

0024

1

2
3
4
5
6
7

safety program. Geiger counters were used however in
the plant but primarily to segregate radioactive from
other sludge and in an attempt to reclaim the metals
from that sludge. Also, another use for the Geiger
counter was certain special projects where the
contractor that was interested in the product was also
interested in cleaning up the sludge and taking it

Page 14


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

11 different alloys on it. And you know, I had -- I had

12 acopy of that sheet actually, but my basement had

13 flooded, and I -- | lost all my paperwork but a few

14 pieces that I had left.

15 Second question. I will give
16 you back the mike. We're interested in who at the

17 plant, if anybody, actually wore radiation film

18 exposure badges. Did you wear a badge like that?

19 No. [did not because I
20 didn't even know there was radiation in anything I was
21 working with.
22 And from -- from the
23 prospective of a person who worked in the lab most of
24 the time was there any radiation safety officer that
25 ever came and talked to you?
0127

1 No. There wasn't at all.

2 We were never told any safety precautions in any way.
3 We just had safety glasses and a lab coat. And

4 mean, I don't know if it makes any difference, but

5 with what have found that happened with this is a

6 Jot of breathing problems. And I'm a nonsmoker. I

7 have never smoked in my life, and I have all the kinds
8 of breathing problems. And I'm on a lot of different

9 breathers.

10 And as a follow up to that

11 about breathing problems in the plant -- now, we've

12 heard of some people who were injured and went to a
13 local hospital. But was there any kind of medical

14. person there in the hospital, nurse, any kind of

15. industrial health person, anything like that? If

16 let's say you had breathing problems -- let's just

17 talk about in general was there anybody in the plant
18 you could go to?

19 The time that I worked there
20 there was not. What they did is they basically called
21. the guard in and if there was some kind of a issue

22 that you needed help and the guard would come in and
23 check it out. But I mean, they're not -- I don't

24 think they were -- had any kind of degree in any way
25. for that.

0128

1 Thank you. And then -- then
2 [had one more question for is it

3 Yes.

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7 that you talk about that was on your cars, But your
8 cars left town, but my kids was still there. And this
9 bothers me. This bothers me. And I hope to God that

10
11
12
13

1 live long enough to see something done about this
situation. I may not get nothing, but God knows I
hope that whoever lives there gets something. Thank
you.

again. What
Mr. was talking about about the dust overhead on
the beams and the crane I have documentation obtained
through the Freedom of Information Act from the
Department of Nuclear Safety, Illinois IDS that state
that that maximum limit amount for safety for these
employees before the cleanup in 2000 was between two
to four hours a year. That was the most time they
could spend up in these cranes, up in these beams
according to the documents that I've obtained. I'll
be more than glad to give you a copy of them later.

Hi. My name is

0096

I started in 1952 and retired
in I worked in the laboratory for the
technical department in all the years, - of
the lab under Dow. | was for
Consolidated and for SCI.
The main reason being here | have some
information I gave to and to would see if I
could clarify some of the other things that came up.
A couple items is there on beryllium usage when we
talked about beryllium. The only alloy that I can
ever remember with beryllium being in was the A -- was
a die casting alloy. J think it was AZ 92 which was
very, very small amounts of beryllium, like a tenth of
a percent. Other than that there was no other mag
alloys that used beryllium.
The thorium alloys HM and HKs we used in
the laboratory. We sawed them, we machined them ,
milled them, heated them, bent them, did everything to
them because we tested every product that went out the
door. Dig a lot of it. Took inventories. The
inventories were -- would always be listed as a alloy
not as -- not as thorium, but it'd be HM 21, HK 31, et
cetera. We never inventoried as a thorium or
anything.

In 1996 I was called back there to do a

Page 56


21
22
23
24
25

DOW Outreach 082206.txt
It was a special job, and they brought their own
billets in and took all the scrap and all the metal
back out with them.
I'm :
T hired in in 1965 and retired in

0092

I worked in all the departments but mainly in
the rolling mill and the extrusion. I sanded the
plates in the rolling mill, and I ran 7 Press in -- in
the extrusion department. And I don't think there's
anything else I can add to it.

My name's I worked
from 1988 until And I just want to
talk about when we melted radioactive chips in the pot
room. And it's kind of ironic how the company thought
that these meltings could proceed. One half of our
crew would work on one unit, and one crew would work
on the other half. And the only thing that divided us
between the units of the chips being melted and the
unit being ran was they ran a flag line down between
the units.
And when they melted the chips all the
smoke and -- just mainly the smoke and fumes would go
in the air. And these -- this smoke and fumes they --
it didn't know not to cross that flag line. So f
thought that was kind of pretty bad on the company
thinking that a -- a flag line was going to stop chips
and fumes from coming over and get the other workers.
That's about all I have to say.
My name is
and | started out with Dow in 1966. And I

0093

SCwmru DAnewn

11
12
13

worked there until when I retired. I worked in
all departments. First of all, | started out in the
rolling mill, and I served as everything except a
roller on one of the mills over in the rolling mill
from one time to another. | also worked in extrusion
as a -- a finisher helper. And I also worked in
casting in the pot room. In later years I got into an
apprenticeship program. When I became a millwright,
we called them MTs. And at that time I worked all
over the plant.

And one of the things that bothered me was
when they decided to do the cleanup they said that the
dust wasn't harmful. But when I looked at saw what

Page 54


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

5 Who -- who was that that was
6 talking?

7 .

8 _ Yeah. That --
9 that was “and you said you agreed with
10 everything that was just said?

11 Yes.

12 ~ Okay.

13 For some degree.

14 Thank you. Okay. Anybody
15 else who feels a burning issue to be discussed?

16 (Inaudible) beryllium was

17. produced in all of the metals there. It's put out by

18 Dow Chemical.

19 You need to --
20 This is This
21 book here's put out by Dow, and it shows beryllium is
22. used in all the castings there, a certain percent. It
23 tells how much they use on every one there. And it's
24 got put out -- the book and everything their self.
25 read from the front of
0103

1 the book what you're reading from.

2 Dow, the Metallurgency
3 (phonetic) of Magnesium.

4 And when -- when was that
5 published?

6 1945.

7 So -- so --

8 So it -- it -- it shows that
9 apercent is used in everything and it has been used

10 in everything. So --

WW Let's see. Homer, I don't --

12 I don't see beryllium. Why don't you show me what

13 you're talking about. I see the table. I'm sorry.

14 What -- show me where you're talking. Where do you
15. see it?

16 Right there.

17 Where? Just to clarify,

18 there's a table that has American Society for Testing

19 Materials. Table 1, Magnesium Alloys in Common Use,
20 and it shows a number of them, all Dow metal products
21 with aluminum and zinc in many -- aluminum in all --
22 all but one, zinc, magnesium. And then over under

23 alloys on the next page, 7 it's talking about

Page 60


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
welcome to stay and continue this conversation. But I
suspect there will be some additional peopte who
couldn't make it at one --
Right.
MR. HINNEFELD: -- who will be coming at
4:30. So everybody's on their own in terms of whether
they want to stay or not. But it will -- it's just
going to be the same format at 4:30.
Allright. That would be
terrific. Thank you very much for listening to us.
(Whereupon, the afternoon session of the

14 Dow worker outreach meeting concluded.)

15

16

17

18

19
20

21

22

23

24

25

0110

1

2 EVENING SESSION OF THE DOW OUTREACH MEETING
3

4 Okay. This is

5 This is the continuation of the afternoon -- late --

6 the evening session of the Dow outreach meeting for

7 NIOSH on August the 22nd. We've got a few more people
8 that have arrived, and I'm just going to start and

9 turn the microscope (sic). where -- oh, yeah.

10 is here. Why don't we let him start and

11 then we'll take it on down. And maybe you
12 can --

13 Hello.

14 why don't you give your
15 name and spell it for them and tell them when you

worked there and what you -- what you did when you
were there.
Okay. Let's see. I worked

there from 1989 to My name's
as in Thired in in the
leaching process. Approximately worked in there

Page 64


9

DOW Outreach 082206.txt
you could look out in casting, you could tell the
difference from the ground from the smoke coming out
of the ground.

And he helped me fill out the forms, and
he offered to help any way he could to the Department
of Labor, but they turned him down as far as any help.
At least they never asked him for anything. And he
went and had a heart attack and died.

And -- and 7 Press was the one the uranium
was gone. And everything surrounding it was where
people worked. And all these presses that ran these
dies, these dies had to be cleaned. So they were
cleaned in caustic acid, and all that acid had to run
some place. And like where she's talking about
between the buildings and that it ran out through
there and had to go in the ground some place. And the
waste from the dies that had uranium on them, that had

0089

25

to be washed off there too. It couldn't just go away.

And the guys working in the crane they had
to breathe all that stuff. And the fans and exhaust
was a very poor system. So they got to breathe all
the caustic and everything up there. And just about
all the time the fans were broke, they didn’t work
good. Caustic would drift from one end of the
department to the other. And everybody can -- knows
what it smells like. And that's all I got to say
about it there.

i would like to make --
I just -- Stuart, I just want to note for you all
I think there are maybe a few people who

had earlier claims submitted from the Dow site. But
along the same lines what I mentioned at GSI, that
there are only two claims so far that have been paid
from the Dow site. I think there've only been a
couple dose reconstructions.

And not, oh, this month I reviewed

denial under Part E of the EEOICPA Act.

And [ understand that that denial came from DOL, not
yourselves. But it's kind of interesting that he
submitted his -- he submitted a Part D and a Part B
claim in August of 2001. And they are now getting
around to saying that he's denied under Part E because

0090

1

of course our site, number one, is not a DOE site. So

Page 52


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

23. years that went on. Finally I went into the extrusion
24 department. Worked in the shipping department,

25 finishing department, pickler, crane operator, scuffer
0040

1 operator, billet cutter. About every -- about once a

2 month, why, I was bumped. But -- so that's why I'm no
3. -- I was no longer an employee of -- of Dow Chemical.
4 Pretty much everything that these people

5 have said is pretty common. We -- when they would

6 bring in the materials from the outside sources from

7 -- we were told that it was Mallinckrodt they would

8 rope off the Number 7 extrusion press. And of course,
9 this was all top secret. We didn't know what --

10 whether it was beryllium or what they were extruding.
11 They would bring in their own operators. They'd bring
{2 in their -- their own handlers. And they would -- our
13 people would be there, but they would out -- they

14 would run these extrusions and pretty much clean up
15 their mess after they were finished.

16 In general there was very little safety

17 throughout the entire plant. Regardless of whatever

18 you used, whatever materials you used there was hardly
19 any protection whatsoever. Pretty much what I have to
20 say. Thank you.
21 This is
22 again. | forgot to mention that I have prostate
23 cancer and I have a chronic sinus problem.
24 Well, to join you in that 1
25 think we all have -- have the problems. I'm being
0041

1 treated for prostate problems also.

2 This is again.

3 J haven't heard anybody mention near the back of the

4 pot room on very far end there was a storage facility

5 back there for years. It was thorium chips in barrels

6 and thorium metal that had been pumped out of the

7 bottom of the pots after a run. And it was stored

8 back there for years. We used to have to go back in

9 there twice a year and inventory that. They had to

10 pull it all out and inventory. The pellets were

11 broke. Metal was coming out on the floor. And there
12 must have been dust and dirt on the floor a foot deep.
13 J don't know when they moved it out, but I think

14. sooner or later they moved it out. But I know it was

15. back there over 20 years. Thank you.

Page 24


Caernnauaune

DOW Outreach 082206.txt
little bit different even from General Steel although
it was close by. But -~ but the houses and the
schools and the residences that were clustered -- that
are clustered right around that plant really make it a
different site. And so stack emissions really were a
significant source of environmental contamination
around that plant. And that really hasn't been
addressed adequately at all. Let's see. Where --
where -- there we go. All right.
My name is and I

started at the Dow facility in early '65. AndI
worked in the extrusion department and some time in
the rotling mill until ‘72. And then from 1972 until

worked in the cast house. Most of the time my
job was as a magnesium melter, then the other time was
spent basically as a service crew leader. I can
certainly attest to the fact that these guys are --
what they're saying when they speak about the alloy
and using thorium and beryllium. And I've done both.
I've also had to break beryllium into smaller pieces
to be alloyed into specific alloys.

Then there was an area in our department
that was in the annex where radioactive material was
kept for years and was kind of fenced off in a little
area. It then disappeared from there. And] do

0072

believe that it was moved down across the track well
on the dock area. Now, from there I don't know where
it went. But I knew for years we worked around that.
Through inventory, as indicated, we had to
inventory that -- that area every year to make sure
that the poundage was still there.

Wearing of the badges, yes, I've done
that. Did we get any specific reading? We got no
readings according to the report from management. So
that's where I am to this point. And this makes my
job easy because I'm following such a expert from the
advice of the guys ahead of me. So thank you very
much.

] -- Edo want to make one
comment about that because Mr. just made a very
cogent observation, and I didn't want it to just pass.
And that was that he -- he -- in noting that there was
thorium stored on site and that he had to make an
inventory every year. That's extremely important

Page 42


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

18 Iwasa lab tech.
19 1 Okay.
20 -- when I left. I spent the
21 majority of the time in the lab.
22 * Okay.
23 ~ At the very first of the
24 month I had to go into the rolling mill (inaudible).
25 Did you wear a badge?
0125
MR. HINNEFELD: You've got to speak up.
No. I did not.
I'm sorry.
What type of badge?

Let -- let me tell you what I
want you to -- I've got two questions. Maybe we'll --
this -- so this is - The first question is
you mentioned that you tested for magnesium and
aluminum. And what that interests me is, you know,

magnesium we've heard from many people was not really
-- not used in the pure form, it was usually alloyed
with something. So would you actually -- and let's

say you are doing spectroscopy. Would you detect
thorium and beryllium, I mean, or is that just
something that you heard was around? In other words,
would you write reports that had aluminum such and
such, magnesium such and such, beryllium such and
such, thorium such and such?

First of all, they would

send back through the -- the chute they'd send back a
--asample. They would pull the magnesium with like
glass tubes because when it came back in it was all

the pieces of glass and -- and you'd have your little
sample. And we would run the lathe and clean it off
and then test it. It was in the -- they called it the
0126

1 old gray mare or something, the spectrometer.

But what we would test for is we would --

we would mark all that down for them on a sheet, what
it showed and what they needed to add, They did have
a formula there that we were supposed to look at to
tell them, you know, what was there and -- and to help
them, give them a guideline on what to add. And yes,
it was set up where it showed thorium, beryllium, you
know, magnesium, everything that was in that product
10. that they were making for that alloy. It had all the

VNYVNNNeE Hee eee eee
DEGBVNSPSSOIAARBBHASOSCIAVHRWNA

CHOIHAARWN

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0007

OeOAKDUAWN—

comments about the possible effects of beryllium and
thorium and the dangers they expose to workers. So I
think he's on the phone. I'm going to see if the
speaker phone -- let's see how we do -- can you
hear me?

Yes. Perfectly. Can you
hear me?

. Yes. It's perfect. I'm
going to turn off my microphone. You're -- the phone
is right near the speaker. So you could just talk,
and I think we'll be able to hear you and record you
very well. And thank you for coming.

Thank you guys very much.
I'm sorry 1 couldn't be there and I -- | don't have
much to offer. I've been really at the sidelines of
this -- this issue with trying to assist workers and
their families as regards evaluating the possibility
for occupational lung diseases at the -- at these two
facilities in Hlinois.

I've been working recently with a group of
workers in Ames, Iowa who had been also processing
thorium in the 1940s and 'SOs and had seen a pattern
of some of these workers of pneumoconiosis that did
not look typical of beryllium lung disease which
certainly appears to be occurring in that Ames work

0008

force at an increased rate that I thought might be
attributable to thorium and/or in fact thoron based on
-- on some of the medical literature.

Working with one of the union
representatives from the Dow site we were able to
identify ten living workers with symptomatic lung
disease and two survivors of men who recently died
with the diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis
from the site. I have to tell you I have not
completely evaluated the medical histories of -- of
each of these workers as yet. I'm in the process of
doing this, But what I can tell you is that -- that
we have seen three nonsmokers with pulmonary fibrosis
from Dow that does not look typical of beryllium lung
disease.

And taking the histories of these workers
one of the things that -- that strikes me is the --
the mass of thorium to which they were exposed and the

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23 onovertime. Then the second week well, they worked a
24 little bit of overtime to get caught up. The third

25 and the fourth week -- well, the third week it was

0130

1 anyone that would work over they worked over. And
2. then the fourth was they shipped everything out they

3 could to get it -- you know, so they'd get their

4 profit out I guess that month. So there was a -- a

5 lot of overtime.

6 And to say, you know, were you just one

7 job, we have like maybe 20 jobs in the department.

8 And if one was a little bit stack, they'd send them

9 over to work with the other ones. So each department
10 -- the only time you got into a -- like one job was

11 whenever you were like in maintenance, you were a
12. electrician, you were a millwright, or a pipe fitter

13 or something like that.

14 And they -- as } said earlier, you

15 know, that no one went up in the steel over maybe 20
16 hours a year if it was that much. And in extrusion I
17 was a -- I started out as a instrument man then they

18 combined the instrument and the electricians together.
19 But we still kind of kept our same, you know,
20 instrument or electrician. And we used to have to go
21 up in the steel just to clean the fire checks. There
22 was three fire checks up there. We had to clean them
23 once a week, and that took about two hours for each
24 one to clean it. And then there's -- there was two on
25 the 7 Press and two on the 6 Press that you had to
0131

U clean.

2 And then you'd go up and you had to work

3. on the -- they had push button controls for the

4 windows. You had to work on the motors on the windows
5 and that so you were up in the steel all the time.

6 Then you had the revamping on it. And everyone over
7 all the areas that was contaminated pretty well the

8 people more or less ate their lunch right there. And

9 we were up in the crane and you'd take a -- a beam

10. that's about 12 inches and it's filled up with dust
11 and that, it might have five or six inches of dust.

12 And when you're walking across it your dumping that
13. dust down on top of the people that's sitting down

14 there below. And in the extrusion department our shop
15 was right -- let see -- it'd be north of the 7 Press.

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eah. So it --] think you

said -- and I wanted it expand a little bit. So you
were a basically, right? And -- but what's
important is -- but what was your contact with the
other parts of the plant? In other words, did you go
to different places or were you -- when Stuart and
Dave Allen and the health physicists try to
reconstruct doses sometimes they make the assumption,
which is reasonable, that if you were a ora

for instance you might not ever visit the rest
of the plant. And -- and J think we need to put on
the record whether that's a true perception or not in
-- in your case. So why don't you elaborate on that
just a little bit. And maybe you could talk not only
about yourself because they're not -- we haven't had
many here. But maybe you could talk about
that in general whether ~ folks like you visited
the rest of the plant.

Well, we had offices in the
plant. My office was in extrusion, and I had to walk
all the way through maintenance, halfway through
extrusion, and into the offices. And yes, I walked

0129

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all the bulletin boards. And the last several years I
was there I was the only in the plant. And
so I had to go to casting and the rolling mill because
I did all the manning schedules. And I was out and
about all the time.
Well, let's just take a
specific example. Like let's say people were
extruding Mallinckrodt uranium on the extrusion
presses. Did you ever come in close contact with the
-- you know, the presses? In other words, were you
walking around the machinery or in the castings? Like
would you go to the casting room at all or -- in other
words, I -- I know it was all in the plant. But would
you have to pass through those areas? That's really
what I'm getting at.
Yes. Yes. I did.
Okay. Okay.
I'd like to go
back to what said earlier about what jobs, you
know, did you do. Like in the rolling mill the first
week of the month there was no overtime. You know,
they shut all overtime down, they didn't work nothing

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9 several times and the possibility of resuspension.

10 Now, I can guarantee that working under

11 this press for all those years coming back from a

12 Monday after, say, it rained on a Saturday or a Sunday
13 I would have to wipe dust off of every desk, all our

14 equipment, the tooling to read the numbers and a

15. situation like it. So dust was always falling from

16 these beams. The windows would always be open in the
17 summer and that wind would always blow it in. The

18 crane driving back and forth continuously would always
19 shake it off. The heavy press occasionally would
20 break and shatter a giant ramp which would vibrate the
21 whole building. And we nicknamed this red rain
22 because the rust would fall off the beams and there
23 would be splotches all over the place that we'd have
24 to blow off with a air hose or wipe off with our
25 hands. So this dust like he said was prevalent

0134

1 everywhere. And it wasn't the thick type pancake that

2. he was expecting, but a loose fluffy dust.

3 And like Talso have a

4 respiratory problem that started when I was working

5. there. [ actually had to go to a pulmonologist while

6 still employed. So I haven't been able to go since

7 because my financial and medical condition.

8 But this dust was of the most concern when

9 [seen it was between two to four hours per year,

10. that's if you're up there in it. What if it falls?

11 No one ever took gravity into account. You know, they
12 always thought you had to go up there to be with it.

13 But like he said, we didn't have breaks,

14 we was on production. Everybody went to break at two
15. o'clock, then a lunch break, then another break at,

16 you know, ten o'clock. We never got that. We worked
17. straight through and only had one break a day, and

18 that was lunch. We had to eat most of our meals, our
19 snacks, everything on the press under this dust. So

20 this made a large difference.

21 I wanted to ask a
22 question because I think it's important and we haven't
23 really talked about it. He and I share a common

24 belief that the FUSRAP Army Corps of Engineer cleanup
25 in Building 6 was not particularly exhaustive when
0135

1 that -- when that actually occurred. And my question

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24 press that ran this secret metal in 1987. So it's a
25 good chance that they picked up the contaminants in
0059

1 the 1989 radiological survey.

Now, his two helpers he had on that job
that day was (phonetic) and
(phonetic). They were the actual people on

other side of the press that handled this material,
loaded it, caught it coming out and unloaded it. Now,
they -- and coincidentally they died about four years
later about six months apart of relatively the same
illness, a brain tumor. And this was very concerning
10 tome, so I had to dug deep -- dig deeper into it to
11 find out more information.

12 Well, also Martin-Marietta came in in

13. 1992, and they also ran a work cycle basis just like

14. it was described by Mallinckrodt and they also used a
15. carbon follower block because I loaded it on there.

16 So again, not for one day but for a whole week we ran
17. this special alloy which I asked repeatedly what it

18 was and was just told it was special.

19 It was a hard, heavy, dense metal nothing
20 like anything we ever ran before. It was at a heating
21 temperature of 1,150 degrees. Now why do I remember
22 that number? Because nothing was ever heated over a
23. thousand degrees in those heaters because aluminum
24 would melt and magnesium would burn. And when this
25 reached over a thousand degrees | was really alert. |
0060

1 was waiting to turn that heater off. | was expecting

2 a fire, and it didn't happen. This billet came out

3 glowing orange, and I've never seen any metal glowing
4 orange before. So when they loaded it up they would
5 run them -- and they would run about six to seven a

6 day. They would lease this whole press -- this press

7 for a week so it was basically their equipment.

8 Now, they came back I'd say about a month

9 anda half later and did it again, another work cycle.

10 But this was a much shorter work cycle, about a

11 three-day process.

12 Now, this was the only time in that whole

13 12 years I was there that we ever ran an alloy or a

14 metal without knowing what it was. I mean, we --

15 there was -- everything was written down, everything
16 was detailed. Whenever we did a job it was all laid

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18 T worked from 1960 to mainly in the
19 casting department for and a half years. And them
20 and a half years it was mostly in the pot room and
21 the aluminum unit. And we did handle thorium.
22. Beryllium almost every day. And the beryllium would
23 be spread all -- all through the department. And then
24 the power sweeper would come around and sweep the
25 floor, and the dust would just fly. And like in the
0035

1 pot room it would be so dusty in there, And then that
2. power sweeper would pick up the dust from the thorium
3 and beryllium and just more or less spread it around.

4 I was burnt in 1965 or '66 with thorium

5 metal. And in one week it went from a blister to

6 almost a quarter of an inch to a half inch it ate into

7 my foot. So | had surgery and that done on it. And

8 then J also had cancer of the colon.

9 But the other comment I have is a dump

10 that they had outside where they dumped the thorium.
11 Every year through the '60s and '70s they would send
12 people out there to try to recoup the metal. And we'd
13 dig in it, throw it around. And that stuff would be

14 wet and you'd have that stuff all over your clothes.

15 And it was thorium because they had radiation signs
16 posted around it. And that's about all I got to say.

17 My name's -- my name's

18 1 worked in the cast house for
19 years in the casting department on the pot room

20 melt floor and the aluminum unit. A lot of -- a lot

21. of things been talked about, but worse thing I can

22 remember is alloying that thorium. We'd lower a

23 stirrer down into the molten metal, stir it around,

24 around. And then we had a basket we'd lower it in, it
25 had holes in it. And this is when the metal got to
0036

1 the right temperature. I think it was after 1,300

2 degrees. When that basket got full of metal we had

3. them small barrels of thorium that we had weighed up,
4 and we had to stand over that basket, pick up that

5 small basket and dump right in. It had to be put in

6 that way, otherwise it would have all burned up. So

7 they made us throw it in that way. And when you threw
8 it in it just flashed up, smoke, fire, and everything

9 come out of it. That's about the worst thing I

10 remember. Everything else is being talked about.

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government work. They had the government people
standing there watching me while I was cutting it.
And they had to clean the machine, take a air hose and
clean ~~

We can't hear.

~- take a air hose and clean
the machine with a air hose every time you cut a piece
of it. And that metal was so hard -- I cut it on a
band saw -- that you used three of four blades before
we ever figured out how to really slow it down to cut
it because it was so hard. And when we got through
cutting it they -- we had to sweep it all up and put
itin boxes. And they stood right there with us while
all of its kept together.

And then another special metal was on the
Lindbergh oven on the heavy press there that -- they
had rented the oven for a certain length of time for
us to run this metal through through the oven. We had
to run it through the quench and take it and then put
it in an ice cream freezer truck. They wanted to
freeze it as quick as they could because -- then
they'd take it back and stretch it again.

And I worked all over the rolling mill and
all over the plant really. And with General Steel in

0046

there I had 44 years in there. And I've got scars all
over my lungs. I don't have any air. I ain't had for
the last 20 years where I can hardly breathe from
working in that stuff. That's all.
My name's .

I went to work for Dow Chemical in ‘68. | retired
from the plant in I worked all aspects of
production work. I cut it, I sanded it, I worked
around the mills. 1 went into the apprenticeship
program in '89. Sorry. And I became an MT. I've
worked on all these machines from the basement to the
roof in the entire plant. And the only thing we were
ever told down there was this stuff won't hurt you

it's so low grade and that. And we raised all kinds

of cane with them, and that's the only answer we ever
got, the thorium wouldn't hurt you, you could sit on
jt and it wouldn't bother you. And that’s all [ have

to say.

My name is
I worked from 1953 to

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to give you the mask. They give us a paper mask.

Well, you couldn't wear the paper mask because of your
safety glasses. You sweated when you couldn't see

what you doing anyhow. So that didn't pan out too
good.

But I went to the maintenance in 1970, and

I worked all over the plant. | mean, I done various

jobs down there. But especially the extrusion
department, I done a lot of welding over there. And

so the area they claimed they cleaned up over the 7
Press was -- we found out was very highly contaminated
with radiation. We spent hours down there welding on

a press, never told that it would hurt us. That's all

1 have to say.

I'd

I'd like to comment on what brought up about the
melting of the thorium into the basket. 1 have a

picture of the basket and the condition of the pot

room that we worked in. And what said, when you
put that into that basket you'd breathe all of those

hot fumes. We didn't have respirators or anything.

So that's -- that's my comment.

0039

1
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1S
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My name is

I started at -- at Dow in 1954 asa
melter cast -- as a melter. And when we first started
doing that we -- they never told us anything about how
to alloy, they just told us what to do. When the
thorium metal came in they still told us nothing.
They never gave us badges. They never told us it
would be harmful or anything. And then when we'd
sludge the pots into barrels or boxes a lot of time
it'd splash out on the floor. A lot of times it'd
splash out on the floor and -- and the fumes would
come up in your face and everything. You could hardly
breathe. And -- and as far as the beryllium and stuff
we had that all through the casting department. I was

there for years. And that's about all I have
to say.

I worked
at Dow from 1953 to ] started out in the

central shops where we gathered up trash and such
throughout the plant. We would pick up the chips from
the alloy department and take it out to this back 40

you taiked about and burn it. I don't know how many

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17 out in front of us. This was the only time we ran

18 this process and never told what the metal was.

19 Now, this isn't the end of it. In the

20 2000 cleanup they laid the whole factory off because
21. they told us, you know, there was radioactive uranium
22 dust over our heads. Now, remember this is the very
23 first time me and any of my other coworkers on this
24 press ever heard of the word radiation of any type,

25 specifically radioactive dust. And they didn't clean
0061

1 up the whole factory. They didn't even clean up the

2 whole building. It was just cleaned over our heads.

3 So that week of the shutdown, the plant

4 shutdown I volunteered as a janitor just so I could

5 stay there and watch what they was doing because this
6 was of great concern to me and my coworkers. And it
7 wasa very elaborate cleanup, dozens of Geiger

8 counters on a table, plastic wrapped everywhere. It

9 was done professionally. And whenever | would ask
10. officials who was there with white hats on or hard

I] hats exactly how dangerous it was they would always
12. give me the comment oh, it ain't that bad, it's okay,

13. it's not so bad. And only one response I got once was
14 you'd have to climb up there and eat it for it to hurt

15 you. And my reaction was well, I work underneath it,
16 what if it falls in my food. They quit talking to me

17 and wouldn't answer my questions from that time on.
18 That was it. Okay.

19 So I started getting sick around July --

20 January, 2000. And about six months later the company
21 decided to put everybody out of work by giving us a
22 contract that nobody would sign. They wanted to get
23 rid of me, everybody in the department, everybody in
24 the factory, out of sight, out of mind. I mean, it

25 was a contract that nobody in their right mind would
0062
sign. It was definitely to get rid of us. Still no
flags, no warnings went up.

After my health deteriorated and it took

me a year to get healthy again -- I had to actually
lear to walk again, which is difficult to explain but

it was -- I started digging in deeper to find out this
information. And one of the things I found absolutely
was amazing was that this press that was used for
years to run this uranium, this hot uranium in the

CHOADUEWN—

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13 places. I've got a -- some write-up here I'd like to
14 hand out to yous and let you -- you know, you can look
15 at it later on so you'll know what -- my writing isn't
16 too good, so bear with me there.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.
18 Start here and pass it around.
19 That'd be good. Why don't we

20 do that. That'd be good. And -- and I'll ask anybody
21 -- NIOSH would be particularly interested in your
22 interaction with the uranium extrusion work and the
23 rod straightening as well as the thorium and the

24 beryllium.
25 My name is
0030
That's spelled You people thought you got rid of

1
2 me this morning, didn't you? Like a bad penny, I keep
3. showing up. 1 want to talk a little bit about 1992 or
4 '3 Martin-Marietta came into our plant and awarded us
5 with a prime contractor award, prime supplier award
6 for the work we were doing with an aluminum alloy,
7 aluminum thorium alloy that were -- that was being
8 made into the skeletal structure of the outboard fuel
9 tank on the space shuttle. Their group included a

10 female astronaut who was slated to go into space in

11 the spring -- the next spring. She did. I have her

12 autograph and a picture at home and I failed to bring

13. it along with me. I should have. But this was a

14. speciat alloy that we -- that we made. And -- and I'm

15 sure it contained thorium -- aluminum and thorium. |

16 just wanted to put that into the record right now and

17 I'll pass the mike.

18 Before we -- there is --

19 there is a worker who's not feeling well. And John is
20 going to pass the microphone to him so we can hear and
21 then let him go home.
22 My name is It's
23 I worked at the plant from '93 to
24 Two months ago I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma,
25 and basically the only thing I really wanted to say
0031

1 was | didn't even realize that the place was

2 contaminated. I knew that they worked on these

3 projects earlier, but my understanding was that all of

4 that was cleaned up at that time, the time period that

5 I was working there anyway. So that's pretty much all

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they checked the air samples down there. But I know
every once in a while they'd tell them hey, just shut
the unit down for a while because the fumes are too
bad going up through there. So -- but I do know on
the aluminum unit they had a instrument taking
readings 24 hours a day because we had to calibrate
the instrument all the time.

I'm -- I apologize if I
didn't hear it. I was talking to The samples
that you're talking about, what were they sampling?

7 They were taking samples out
of the exhaust flue. might know more on that, ~
but --

We had the -- we had
chlorine tanks set up down on the aluminum unit and
that's what we'd do gas furnaces with and -- and run
chlorine in there all the time. And they were
monitoring the -- the air quality for the chlorine.

In the event that a chlorine leak existed, chlorine is
heavy and it will sink. And the casting pit was six
feet lower than the floor. Is that about right,

) And that's the first place the chlorine gas
would head would be into the casting pit and capture

0155

the people that were working down there. So they were
monitoring the chlorine. And that meter -- and if the
chlorine got too high, the alarm would go off and that
would -- that would alert the guys to shut down and
evacuate and get the chlorine problem solved.
Okay. Well, I think I'd like

to summarize then for the Dow part of the session, and
then and I have a final comment. | think what
you've heard this afternoon, preponderance of the
testimony is that there -- we certainly can confirm

the uranium work for Mallinckrodt. But in addition
the -- then major radioactive contaminate at this site
obviously was thorium for many years.

I believe that we ought to go back when we
are ranking in importance all the things. We've heard
this really massive testimony of how much thorium was
used, for how long, in how many ways, and it was
spread all throughout the building, stored throughout
the building.

And also I -- I think it's really
outstanding about this site that there was with many

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And that's where you worked and repaired stuff. And
you ate your lunch right in there. And you were right
in the midst of it all the time.

And go back to the -- like the hand
salvage in the rolling mill they'd go through a
hundred sheets of emery cloth per shift sanding out
the metal and that. And you have a lot of dust. And
like, I don't remember -- | think the
one that said that you just take and blow the dust off
to the side. You'd try to blow it up against the wall

0132

so you can pick it up. And you're -- you're in the
dust and everything else.

And to say one job -- you just couldn't
say, you know, you were on -- a crate builder, you
know, loading trucks or if you were a roller. The
rollers were -- more or less that was their job. But
all the rest of them did everyone else's job. And you
had the cranemen, they -- they were kind -- that was a
qualified job. You had to be qualified to be a
craneman. But other than that wherever you -- unless
they needed you. If they needed you, you were
qualified for any job. But you were all the over the
place and all over the departments.

And as far as having radiation in any
certain building, they had it from one building all
the way through all the -- every building out there
had radiation in it. And they had it stored in --
quite a bit of it in each department. So I don't know
if that will help you or not, but that's where I'm at.

. again. Just
what said was that the Illinois Department
of Nuclear Safety memo stated that the only -- the
safe work condition was between two to four hours per
year. When I read this document | thought that was.
very strange because if you could only spend two to

0133

1

SAKDARWN

four hours a year up in these beams where this dust
was located, well, that tells me it had to be pretty
strong dust, radioactive dust. And that memo also
went on to state that they was hoping it was hard,
pancake type dust. Now, farther along during this
investigation, this scoping they realized that this
wasn't this hard, pancake type dust but a loose fluffy
type dust. And they mentioned the word suspension

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17 late 90s they just started shipping it kind of like
18 in plastic and cardboard on pallets. But 99 percent
19 of the time it came in barrels that was sealed, and
20 they had danger on the tag. But we used a lot of it
21 because like on the aluminum unit they would have a
22 50-gallon barrel sitting up there all the time, and it
23 would only last maybe two or three weeks.

24 Okay. Thank you very much.
25 Anybody else who wants to speak tonight? Yes.
0106

1 has some material to tell you all about the
2. alloys as well and -- and the contractors that Dow
3 had.
4 Some of these I'm
5 going to -- I'm just going to skip because 1 can't say
6 it. But they -- the one that gave us
7 these alloys that -- he was the head of casting for
8 Dow. One was cobalt and the other one, the symbol of
9 itis SR/Y. Then it's thallium, T -- the symbol is
10 TI; Jead, PB; thorium, TH; uranium U, curium, CM;
11 beryllium. And that was used in all forms, solid,
12 liquid, and gas. It come in in solid form. They'd
13 melt it down and then the fumes would come out as --
14 in the gas forms of it. Can you say them?
15 Yes. So under cobalt are
16 Strontium and yttrium, then thallium, lead, thorium.
17 They got four alloys of thorium, HK 31, HK 61, HM 21,
18 and HM 31. And very fascinating are uranium, two
19 types, natural and enriched. So maybe you ought to
20 tell us again who -- who Mr. was. I mean,
21 enriched uranium is not something that's in the
22 FUSRAP, US Army Corps of Engineers reports. And so
23 what -- what would his credentials be?
24 i was the head of
25 the casting department. And he was also head of
0107
1 casting for all of Dow at one time. So --

2 . For the -- for the whole

3 company?

4 For the whole company.

5 Yeah.

6 And I don't -- I can't tell

7 you exactly where all of that has been used or

8 anything. But that's -- that's some of the stuff that
9 he issued to us before he passed away.

Page 62


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

We know that from the quit claim -- claim deed
document, which we got by a detailed title search,
that from 1951 to 1959 this site was on the National
Industrial Reserve under the National Security Clause.

And we're not sure exactly what the
ramifications of that are except that what it meant
was that the government had a 90-day hold or a
reserve, if you would, that -- that on 90 days notice
they could come in, basically take over the use of

0016

certain equipment to do certain government related
work, The Dow work for private companies was supposed
to cease during that time. And then when that job was
through the government would release it back to Dow.
And that's basically what we know about that
relationship right now. We're interested in knowing
more.
We know that as early as 1962 Dow

developed LocAlloy and used that alloy which was a
beryllium aluminum alloy to make the SR-71 spy plane.
We know that the Air Force and NASA were major
contractors, and the Air Force in particular owned a

lot of the equipment at the -- at the plant. And --

and that was in the 1970s. We also know and as you

all probably know Dow Chemical was the prime
contractor at the Rocky Flats AEC Federal Center from
1962 when it was found up until -- up through 1975
when Rockwell International took over.

And you will hear a lot of information

today that the Dow Madison plant and Rocky Flats had a
very intimate relationship during the ‘60s and ‘70s
where -- where numerous batches of thorium were sent
from Rocky Flats to be -- undergo metallurgic
operations and then were returned to Rocky Flats and
often went through several iterative cycles until

0017

1

WCaoOIANVAWY

things were gotten right.

We also know that personnel came from
Rocky Flats to Dow and vice versa; that people at Dow
worked at Rocky Flats and actually considered
themselves part of the same company. And these may
have been people who worked for Dow who were
contractors at Rocky Flats. We don't know about all
those relationships, but it certainly sounds like
there was an intimate relationship at that level

Page 10


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
12 I started in '53 -- of '53,
13 retired in And I worked all over the plant. And
14 I'm the one that drove that sweeper in alloy. And
15 sometimes that when I would cough wasn't nothing but
16 black phlegm come out of your throat.
17 And some time I would come through there
18 with the sweeper and if they had put something wet in
19 that metal, the flames come up and I'd be caught on
20. the sweeper on fire. And so I have problem skin --
21. skin disease and prostate, breathing problems. And I
22 just wanted to say that it was a hard place to work.

23 My name is

24 I started to work at -- in 1961 and

25. retired in -- in ¢ Mostly everything has
0056

1 been stated that -- | worked in the pot room and on
2 the aluminum unit. And you've heard about as much as
3. I could tell you from these guys that have spoke

4 before me. Thank you.

5 My name's 1

6 got my mug shot. There you go. Okay. I was employed
7 by Spectrulite in of '89, and I worked there

8 until And at the very beginning of this

9 meeting mentioned how Spectrulite denied
10 ever processing or running thorium. Well, that's a

11 lie. Well, not the company. That was a
12. -- that has to be a lie.

13 Thank you,

14 Okay. I'm sorry, .

15 Oh, I'm sorry. When I first started there I started

16 out in that -- in casting like a lot of people did.

17 And [ didn't spend much time there. A lot of these

18 people have more knowledge. Then I was transferred
19 the second year over to rolling mill, This was
20 another place where they cut and sanded sheets of
21 thorium which J had no knowledge of back then. So I'm
22 two for two for safety. Then I spent the last 12
23 years directly on 7 Press which was in extrusion.
24 Now, this is really important because this
25 is where i have the most knowledge of everything I've
0057

1 found in the last couple years of this investigation.

2 And everything I'd found started from 2003 backwards.
3 So I'm going to go the other direction from the 1960s

4 onup.

Page 33


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
Yeah. So -- and then you
described about wearing the special clothes and the
badge. And other people have said that particularly
the badges started to be worn pretty commonly after
Spectrulite bought it. Is that accurate as far as
what you know?

0118

2
3
4
5
6
7
8

R)

10
i
12
13
14

That's correct.

Okay. But not so common in
Phelps-Dodge and Conalco era; is that correct?

That's right.

Okay. Uh-huh. Okay. Good.
Allright. That's pretty good.

that's what I was

concerned about, when you started wearing the badge
and clothing. What kind of clothing was that you
said? My name's

They were regular -- regular
clothes that I remember.

The -- the regular clothes
that we wore in the pot room?

That was our regular uniform.

That -- that consisted of a --
a bib overall with a blue denim shirt.

(Inaudible.)

] And I think I stated before
that they were fire -- flame treated. They weren't
fire -- they wouldn't burn, they'd just flare up. But
I don't -- I'd retired in
The

procedure used up to the time that Milam retired was
we sent the clothing down to a handicapped workshop on

0119

COINAUARWN=—

10
11
12

the other side of town, and they washed that clothing
in baking soda which treated the clothing so that a
flame would not -- if you got a -- a hot chunk of
metal on you, it wouldn't flame. It would -- it would
smolder and burn through. I've got a scar here on my
chest to prove it.

And then we went to a new and improved
clothing material, and | think it was Mylar. Does
that make sense to you, Mylar? I think that was the
clothing M-I-L-A-R (sic), Mylar. And it was supposed
to be an improved cloth. And we tested it all the
time when we sent them out to be washed and they came

Page 69


6

DOW Outreach 082206.txt
who was my boss that told me -- that it

7 was Allied Signal. It was hush hush, we weren't to

8
9
10

talk about it. And I was told that the people who ran
those billets ran it on a voluntary basis. But I
don't know if that's true.

Well, I would say this. In
the medical world if you volunteer to do something but
you're not informed what you're doing, then that's
really not okay, that's not informed consent. So they
may well have been volunteers, but they -- it didn't
-- from -- do you think the people who were actually
doing the extruding -- do you have any reason to think
that they were actually informed? :

I do not think -- I do not
think they knew what they were working with. And I
was told it was thorium.

Okay. Good. That's great.
Thank you. Anybody else? Yeah.

Hi. My name |

and I worked there from ears from 1974 to 19 --1

0122

think it was And it's
And | worked as -- the first year I just had came into
the rolling mill I worked as a clerk in there. I was
18 at that time. Went and picked up paperwork all
through the rolling mill area from one end to the
other. And there was always billets and all the
rolled aluminum were out there.

Then I went to extrusion. [ worked there
for a short time. There was always billets and
everything out there also. We used to walk around all
the time, went into maintenance. Into there and then
went in to the storeroom area.

And then from there I went and worked the
last of the time over in the lab. I worked in the
spec lab, the chem lab, and also -- and the -- oh,
what -- the other lab where they -- the testing lab.
And most of the time I worked shift work, and I had a
crew. I had was on with B crew testing all the
samples, magnesium and aluminum. And we used to use
lathes, shave them off, basically tell them what they
needed to add and spark them. You know, tell them
what -- what product they needed to add into their
molten metal to bring out what other alloy, whatever
alloy they needed.

Page 71


25

DOW Outreach 082206.txt
And then basically we just wore lab coats.

0123

And we were told to take them home and wash them. And
1 mean, that was pretty much it. I mean, there was
not any rules about eating in the lab or anything like
that. You know, you're there by yourself pretty much
on the midnight and evening shift.
But we tested all those samples out there
and just sent out the information to them. We would
go out there into the pot room or aluminum unit and
check and see what -- what was going on out there
periodically. And -- but there was quite a few
different alloys that we ran. And there was the
thorium and berytlium. But I'll be real honest, | was
young and naive and no one ever told me anything about
it, if there was something to be informed about that
would be any kind of a danger in any way to my health.
Also, we used to -- when I worked in the

chem lab I used to go down and I used to take oil
samples from the trucks that came in and then water
samples all over the plant all the way from the
outside area back behind the rolling mill, behind
extrusion. Because I used to ride a little bicycle,
bring them all back, and they'd test them there in the
chem lab. And then we used to test, you know, a lot
of the samples there too over in the testing lab.

tell -- tell us what

0124

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15

16
17

you tested for in the water samples.

You know, I actually did not
do those tests, the chemist did. So I could not tell
you that. was one of them.

But why I

think your story is really particularly interesting
and relevant to what our job is all about here is for
our special exposure cohort application we're going to
have to classify people by jobs. And we've heard a
lot of testimony tonight that most of the people
who've spoken with some exceptions worked in many
departments and many jobs. A few worked in the same
area. You worked in lots of different areas. So when
-- when you list for instance what you did at -- at
the company, I mean, where would you class it? What
job would you say you had? You know, you've told us
many. Were you a lab tech or --

Page 72


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
7 from World War II. And I thought man, what do I got
8 myself into, But anyway, that -- that was the
9. beginning of the knowledge that I had that we might be
10 running radiation -- radiated products.
11 I just wanted to clarify what
12 Mr. said about Weldon Spring, that -- and the
13. reference to World War II. As you all probably know
14 the first government facility at Weldon Spring was
15 actually the Weldon Spring Army Ordnance Works. And
16 that -- that was built and operated during World War
17 II then closed. And subsequent to that the -- the
18 Army deeded some of that land over to the Atomic
19 Energy Commission which built the Weldon Spring
20 uranium feed materials plant in 1955. It started
21 operation in 1957, closed in 1966. So -- so that was
22 the reference to Weldon Spring and World War II.
23 Okay.
24 Thank you. Well, the first
25 real dealings I had -- but J didn't know at the time
0051
1 that that was radioactive -- but that was running
2 pellets. I'm sure a lot of guys in here that were
3. press helpers remembers pellets. Anyway, | didn't
4 realize that they were radioactive. And when they
5 brought them up there to put them in the container I
6 asked one of the fellows -- I didn't know either one
7 of them. I said well, why -- why these little
8 pellets, you know. And he says well, this is -- we're
9 experimenting. | said well, what kind of alloy is
10 this. Well, he says it really don't have a number.
11 So you know, we went through things like that all down
12 through the years. And so it's something that as you
13 get older even after you leave the place you get to
14 thinking, my goodness, how could they have done that
15 tous.
16 I never seen a badge. I've -- I've seen
17. several instances of where -- [ remember one instance
18 real well. They runa -- the Number 8 press was 1,800
19 ton and they decided to run a -- one billet. They
20 didn't tell us what it was. But it came down the
21 conveyer out of the heater and it looked like it was
22 going to fall apart. It hit the loader still holding
23 together. So they told the operator go ahead and push
24 it. Well, they had put a box on the exit end. It was
25 either -- okay. It was either lined with lead or

Page 30


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
7 that may be product. You did say they were billets or
8 something? That might be another product coming from
9 another supplier other than Mallinckrodt. And it rang
10 abell for me because I definitely saw something I
11 wasn't comfortable with with Allied Signal. So}
12 guess I'd just like to do a little homework on that.
13 1 thought maybe you guys might be familiar with it.

15 - Back in the '90s -- I'm not

16 for sure, it's the first part of '90s they got about

17. six million pounds of ingots in from Russia. And come
18 to find out it all was radioactive. That's when they

19 had that Shimogal (phonetic) --

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Chernoby].

21 -- explosion and all this got

22 contaminated. When they ran it it was all the way

23. across the 4 Building and all the way in casting where
24 they stacked all this metal. And they couldn't figure
25 out why it was spiking the spec lab out there. Well,
0141

1 they finally found out that it was radioactive so they

2. sent it back. Russia sent it back to -- or sold it to

3 Mexico. Mexico sent it back in, and we got it right

4 back, the same material. And we've had a couple of

5  foremen that had to go out there and pull all the tags

6 offofit. And so no one knew what it was.

7 And to go back -- you know, they were

8 talking about the burning in chips and that. Well,

9 whenever they'd burn and melt chips in I'd say

10 seven-cighths of it would burn up. And from the

11 casting over to the rolling mill is probably about --

12 oh, about 1,200 foot away. And them chips, the smoke
13 and that would be all the way over. It'd go at least

14 1,200 foot, and it'd be bad over in the mill. So

16 Thank you, T'd like to
17 add to that because what he said is exactly true what
18 everybody heard out there at the time about these

19 ingots from Russia. They were stacked on pallets, and
20 they were stacked just one stack on top of the other

21 just two high, And there was enough of them to fill
22 this room. That's how much was sitting out there

23 right next to 7 Press believe it or not for up to six

24 months. Now, this was supposedly the second time it
25 came back, And of course, it was a rumor at the time.

Page 82


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
information to our visitors that amplifies what you
said, that there was a June, 2005 survey of the
residual thorium materials, not just dust, but
materials throughout the Dow plant. I'm going to show
that data in just a minute. So thank you very much
for joining us, and I'll see you soon down the road.

Thank you guys very much.

Allright. Bye-bye. Thank

you. Allright. Okay. So welcome to all our
visitors. We have a spectacular turnout this
afternoon, and I'm sure we're going to hear some very
good input about the Dow site. The first thing I just
wanted to point out to our visitors again -- you saw
this slide yesterday, but I've drawn an arrow to where

0011

the Dow Chemical Company is located in relation to the
three other steel companies that were right in that
same region. And you can see the Dow plant is
basically right across -- the railroad tracks is all
that separates it from General Steel right below it.
Then at this bottom is the American Steel plant and
off to the left is the Granite City Steel plant.

There has been a -- two studies in 2005,
one in March, one in June by the Pangea Group located
in St. Louis. The one in March had to do with a
radiological survey of the entire Dow plant. Anda
decommissioning plan study was published in June of
2005. And this is their site facility map which is
actually extremely useful because it shows the layout
of the plant buildings and also the main areas that
you will hear testimony about this afternoon which are
extrusion in Building 6. 1 -- 1 apologize. I still
don't have a pointer today. It’s not that I'm cheap,
I'm just not very well organized.

But you can see the extrusion plant is in
the middle to the left up there, Building 6. The
castings area, Building 7 is up at the top sort of in
the center. You can see that. | will note that
outside of the Building Number 7 there was a 40-acre
site which we believe may actually still be owned by

0012

1

2
3
4

Dow Chemical rather than the -- the successor agencies

where very large amounts of magnesium thorium sludge
were stored both underground and on top of the ground.
And so -- so that's sometimes called the castings area

Page 7


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

19 potential exposures. They described on a regular
20 basis handling hundred pound barrels of thorium which
21 they would smelt, alloy, and be exposed to in what
22 appear to be massive concentrations during periods of
23 episodic fire so that it was described to us that that
24 -- the combination -- possibly the combination of
25 magnesium and thorium. I'm not sure. But the
0009
1 combination of these metals at some times generated
2 extremely dusty smokey environments and that there
3 were 11, four-foot fans mounted in the -- in the
4 facility to try to improve ventilation. But they
5 stated that that smoke was so thick that often you
6 couldn't see from one side of the plant to other.
7 So that -- that strikes me as a potential
8 fora very high exposure to fumes of thorium and very
9 possibly -- and | -- I don't have the health physics
10. data to -- to back this up -- but very possibly from
11 what we've seen at Ames fairly high concentration of
12. thoron gas.
13 And [ have nothing further to say in terms
14 of, you know, how the -- the x-ray equipment which we
1S know was -- was another potential source, how that may
16 have affected radiation exposures nor the quantities
17 of uranium. So all I can try to suggest at this time
18 is that there does appear to be a pattern of another
19 source, thorium and thoron for which there may be some
20 -- some clinical suspicion or epidemiologic suspicion
21 based on nonsmokers with fibrotic lung disease. And
22 that it does not look like asbestos or beryllium in
23. this group.
24 1 -- 1 hope that that's just adds to the
25 -- you know, the sense of something going on in this
0010
facility. Certainly the worker history suggests a
fairly -- a fairly dirty workplace, one in which fires
occurred, smoke was -- was a significant issue and
respiratory hazards were certainly present. And were
these respiratory hazards to ionizing radiation
sources as I believe they were, that that may be a
consideration for you in your -- your reviews.

thank you very much for
joining us. | think that testimony and input from
10 yourself as an occupational physician will be
11 extremely valuable. And I will present soon some

CeOIAHAAWN—

Page 6


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
6 Ihave to say about it. | worked in the pot room, |
7 was a -- I was a mag melter when I was hired. [
8 worked in extrusion for a short time as a light press
9 --orahelper. And in the end of -- end of my time
10. there I was a casting foreman in the aluminum unit of
11 the mag floor. And during that time I was involved in
12. -- in the middle of two explosions. I think that's
13 been pointed out about the dust being knocked off the
14 rafters and anything. And I -- that's pretty | much
15 all I -- all | know. Thank you.

16 Thank you. Appreciate your
17 comments. Go from the front back.

18 My name -- my name is

19 I worked down at the plant

20 from '53 -- February of '53 until January, I
21 worked in the casting department about 99 percent of
22. my time. And I worked in the pot room, worked on the
23 aluminum unit and drove a lift truck. And -- and we
24 -- we worked with thorium in the pot room melting it
25 in on different alloys. And on some of them days when
0032,

1 it's kind of rainy and cloudy and damp outside that

2 smoke would get so bad it really covered up the whole
3 place when they were charging the metal there, covered
4 up the pot room and covered up -- it came out into the
5 warehouse where the people was working.

6 Also, one of my jobs was to load this

7 dross and sludge into boxcars. And we -- I don't know
8 how many boxcars we loaded, but we did that for quite
9 some time. And then for a while there when they was
10 loading trucks outside on the aluminum unit and --

11 with the dross and that.

12 1 also got -- have prostate surgery and

13 removed my prostate, has carcinoid tumors. He took
14 three foot of my small intestines out and part of my

15 colon out. That's some of my sickness. Thank you.

17 I started in 1954 and -- and retired in

18 And I spent all and a half years in the

19 casting department in the pot room as a metal caster,
20 crew leader, and -- and melter. And I was -- I was

21 there when they first ran the thorium. And I can

22 remember thorium coming in, it was made in England.
23. And it -- opened the barrel and fumes came out of the
24 barrel. And | asked the foreman -- I said won't this

Page 19


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

24 extrude aluminum. And then they also sent some bars
25 that needed to be heated and straightened. And the
0014

1 period of time that's officially covered is 1957 to

2 '60. You'll hear some testimony from the workers

3 today that indicates that possibly the uranium was

4 processed later, as -- as late as 1963, better data

5 for '61, and some for '62.

6 We also know that thorium was licensed

7 with a succession of licenses from the NRC and the

8 Illinois Environmental Management Agency from 1956 to
9 the present time. I'll -- I'll show you a little bit

10 more data about that. And we also know that this was
ll asite with large amounts of beryllium processed from
12 the 1950s to the present used in multiple alloys. And
13 we believe that this was very extensive and cannot

14. understand why the Department of Energy missed this as
15 aberyllium vendor site. And we are -- are making

16 efforts to have that oversight addressed.

17 Now, at this site as at the General Steel

18 site there was -- we believe there were even less high
19 percentage of workers who wore film badges at all.
20 There were a few only up until 1986. And it sounds
21 like the -- the badges were worn very intermittently
22. during that period and not as a regular thing. After
23. the -- and anyway, we -- we think that after 1986 a
24 higher percentage of workers actually carried the
25 badges. But there is -- according to NIOSH, Landauer,
0015

1 and the Department of Energy at the Health and Safety
2. Lab there is no available personal monitoring data for

3 anybody at this site any time.

4 The workers here will tell you -- and I

5 hope they will amplify this -- that they have severe

6 doubts that the badges they wore were actually read

7 and analyzed. I don't believe anybody has come

8 forward has told us that they have received any sort

9 of individual dosimetry reports from the Atomic Energy
10 Commission or anybody. And some of the workers will
11 tell you that they saw badges put into buckets that

12 were discarded.

13 Dow was a major Defense Department

14 contractor and had the AEC contract with Mallinckrodt
15 and perhaps also with Rocky Flats. So this slide

16 simply goes through those associations of this site.

Page 9


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

22 different successive owners even though we've heard
23. that-badges were added to the program in 1986; that
24 when you look at the whole picture there was very
25 little what we would call modern radiation safety
0156

1 practices in that plant. There was a concerted effort

2 by management to not tell the employees what was going
3 on including people at the supervisory level who had

4 to manage and advise these folks. I think there is a

5 striking disparity between modern industrial hygiene

6 and regulatory oversight of what was going on in the

7 thorium licensing and in the IIlinois EPA's oversight

8 of the air emissions at this plant.

9 And I'd like to end by telling you and

10 reminding you of the importance of what was
11 saying today, that -- I think he's suggesting a path

12 forward on analyzing the exposures that these workers
13 got. And he -- he would recommend that -- certainly
14 not exactly comparable but at least with respect to

15. the thorium and thoron gas that maybe the Ames

16 Laboratory not too far north might be a good place to
17 start. And that if you extrapolate between Dow and
18 its thorium operations in the pot room and the smoke
19 and the fumes and you couple that with his pretty

20 large experience with workers at the Ames Lab, that
21. it's his assessment that just in a qualitative sense

22 that these workers probably got tremendously high

23. doses of thorium, in particular thoron gas and that

24 that has to be factored into the equation.

25 And then I would just conclude that the

0157

1 beryllium use I think has been now pretty well

2 documented, that it was regularly used. And really

3 the beryllium was there. There's no evidence that

4 anybody -- | mean, that the safety aspects of

5. beryllium which is one of the most toxic metals known
6 was ever mentioned at all. And there's certainly no

7 evidence at all that there has been any attempt, any

8 acknowledgement that I'm aware of at all by any

9 regulatory agency that beryllium is a problem at the

10 plant. And it certainly has not been remediated

11 specifically itself.

12 So you know, I -- I think this -- this is

13 a--areally good example of sort of the ostrich

14 complex being demonstrated, that everybody hid their

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19 Now, the other rumor which of course now
20 seems to more make more sense is that there was a
21 oven, sort of like a pizza oven over in the rolling

22 mill. Now, there was four ingots about nine inches in
23 diameter and about oh, I'd just say 20 inches long
24 because that's how long the oven was. And these four
25 ingots were also a dull dirty gray. They looked like
0144

1 they'd been in there, they had cobwebs, it looked like

2 dust accumulated on them. Now, when I was in the

3 rolling mill working I never noticed these. And it

4 was out to the corner, maybe it was put off to the

5 side for a reason.

6 But right before the 2000 cleanup around

7 January, about four or six months I noticed this pizza
8 oven with these four billets in it still -- you could

9 see the butts of them sticking out -- was relocated.

10 It was picked up and moved and parked in that paint
11 shop that's -- that's over by the storage department.

12 Well, the reason I noticed it then was because every
13 day I would have to walk past it to go out the door,

14 and on the way into work I'd have to walk past it.

15 And anything new, you know, you'd notice. And

16 noticed this pizza oven with ingots in it. Well, that
17 seemed very peculiar but it was none of my business so
18 I didn't ask questions. And surprisingly they

19 disappeared right after the 2000 cleanup in July. So
20 maybe these were also contaminated thorium or uranium
21 ingots -- or billets I should say. But that was also

22. just another rumor that could be true.

23 One of the people who has
24 been helping our effort in a really magnificent way
25. here is . who's a discovery specialist at
0145
SimmonsCooper. And one of the many interesting bits
of research that she supplied to “and I
for our attention was a -- a lawsuit brought by Aetna,
the big insurance company versus Spectrulite
Consortium in about 1993. We don't have that record
with us, but I remember looking over it. And this was
a case, and the issue was who was responsible for a
thorium cleanup. And I think the amount of the
lawsuit was around $17.4 million. The case was
10 settled out of court. Aetna was the -- I -- I think
11 they had brought the complaint.

WoOIAUVRWN—

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24 all in there because it's always mixed in with the
25 rest of the scrap. The only thing that comes from the
0149

1 mill, they take a marking pen and mark on there HK 31
2 orHM2I1. And I said -- well, that's the last thing I

3 know what happened. And I -- that was right after

4 Spectrulite took over.

5 And I'm sorry. I -- that was
6 right after Spectrulite took over. Is that what

7 you're saying?

8 Right.

9 Allright. So just for the
10 record then what” is trying to -- is telling
11 us is that the father, the man who actually was the

12 chief operating officer, owner of Spectrulite, «
13 when he bought Spectrulite in -- which
14 was in 1986. So somewhere around then, ‘86, '87.

15 Tt was

16 was the son.

17 All right. So --

18 It was

20 Okay. was
21. the son.

22 who's the

23 current president, his father?

25 And he was
0150
1 looking through the piles. Now, this is the same pile
that we were talking about outside of the castings

department?
It's a separate storage area

3
4
5 beyond the pot room --

6 Okay.
7 -- where they kept all the

8 scrap metal.

9 Allright. And he's

10 interested in the thorium waste there. And then

11 beginning about then you're saying there was some kind

12 of a cleanup that took place for two years.
13 I don't know whether it was a

14 cleanup or he was getting it ready to -- to be charged

15 or what have you. I'm not quite sure.
16 But they were -- did they

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16 Ym

17 Hired in in 1960, retired in A
18 lot of what I got to say is going to mimic perhaps

19 what these fellows have said. It be easier for me to
20 tell you where J didn't work than where I did work.

21 Worked everywhere, production and maintenance.

22 I remember cutting grass out in this area

23. where they -- they called the dump that was

24 radioactive, getting the tractor stuck back in there,

25 fighting to get it out and everything. In the pot

0042

1 room I was a sawyer, also an inspector. And we did

2 nondestructive testing of billets including the HK, HM
3 billets. I did it with direct contact sonic

4 inspection. I worked in extrusion. My biggest

5 contact with the radioactive material was in the hand
6 salvage area in extrusion. Everything had to be

7 straight within 12 and a half thousandths per foot,

8 very little twists allowed. And the surface always

9 needed salvage. A lot of sanding, a lot of scraping.

10 In the rolling mill I worked on the mills

11 as roller, assistant roller, helper. And the big one

12 as far as thorium is concerned was 7 Mill -- 4 Mill

13 where it was a -- just a matter of repetition. You'd

14 throw it over the mill, throw it into the mill and

15 they'd throw it back to us and we'd put it back

16 through again each sheet probably taking 30 or 40

17 passes each to being perhaps 50-thousandths reduction.

18 I guess that's about it forme. My health
19 seems to be pretty good.
20 . I -- I'd like you to comment

21 forme. I've heard the story that I didn't understand
22. before. I thought that in a rolling mill you just
23 roll the metal through and then you'd roll it again.
24 But my understanding is there was some sort of sanding
25 devices that went on as you were rolting it and that
0043
1 that itself created dust. Can you elaborate on that

for us a little bit.

Would this be on the mill
itself you're talking about?

Yeah. From -- from the metal

itself.

1 don't remember any
sanding other than the wire brush on I Mill.

CIAKDAAWKWN

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0001

VIDEOTAPED
DOW WORKER OUTREACH MEETING

August 22, 2006

Collinsville Holiday Inn
1000 Eastport Plaza Drive
10 Collinsville, [Ilinois 62234

25 Court Reporter

2 PARTICIPANTS

S

Page 1



DOW Outreach 082206.txt
17° move it or --

18 I don't know what he did with
19 it. I have no idea.

20 Well, I don't -- but when --
21 Because it was still there

22 when we took inventory, some of that.

23 Okay. You inventoried it.

24 And then I guess I don't understand. What happened
25 over those two years? Why -- why do you think it --
Qs

1 that something occurred over the two years?
2 Two years after '86?
3 I'm -- I'm trying to get at
4 how -- are you saying that they did this cleanup over
5 aperiod of two years?
6 I don't know if it was a
7 cleanup or he just looked through that alloy to see if
8 he was going get rid of it. I don't know it was
9

(inaudible),
10 Okay. So -- so you
11 encountered him looking through that material; is that
12 right?
13 Yes,
14 Okay. All right. Weil, just

15 also for the record the first cleanup that I know

16 that's been recorded by anybody was by this

17. Environment Restoration Group which could have been
18 the resulting work. But that was not until, you know,
19 1992. And that's the one where a thousand railroad

20 cars of -- of magnesium thorium sludge were hauled off
21. site in railroad cars. Okay. All right.

22 This area you was just

23 speaking of, this where the thousand boxcars removed
24 this thorium studge, this lot that was next door to

25 SCI -- now, I've been wondering for a long time when
0152

SCI bought this factory they didn't buy that lot.

They just bought the factory, but they did -- wasn't
purchasing the lot. Now, when they bought this
factory they bought this factory from Conalco. How
come Dow owns this lot if Conalco owned it? And this
was one of the big questions I never got an answer
from or found in all my paperwork. If Dow still owns
this lot, did Conalco also not buy it, or did they

also purchase it and give it back? Because

DeIAnaAwn-

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11 got sun burnt, inside a building. Well, about -- he
12. kept getting sicker, he'd feel like he had the flu.
13. So finally he said well, I got to go to the doctor.
14 So he went to the doctor, they took blood
15 work. His blood work was really bad. So he went to
16 an oncologist. He had myoprivitis (phonetic) disease.
17 That's when the bone marrow starts shutting down.
18 About a year or year and a half later he came down
19 with AML, acute myelogenal (phonetic) leukemia. He
20 lived for two years battling leukemia.
21 The doctor'd keep asking him was you
22. exposed to radiation. He says no, not as I know of,
23 either did I. And when he came down with leukemia
24 again they'd keep asking are you sure you didn't get
25 close to radiation or exposed to it. He says not as |
0082
1 know of.
2 So out there next door to Dow Chemical out
3 in that field it's there. He -- that's where he got
4 itat. So that stuff what they had buried has seeped
5 down in that water and he got down in that hole. And
6 that's how he -- he's not living today. So that whole
7 area is bad.
8 Let's just -- we have a map
9 that we think we can show you.
10 We're going to take a quick
11 look here.
12 Yeah. Let's get the map up
13. and we'll try to show you where that Fox Brothers is.
14 It's very close to the Dow plant.
15 Okay. You guys might have
16 help mea little bit, but is that Fox Brothers over --
17 right over in here?
18 Yeah. That's Fox Brothers.
19 Yeah.
20 So the Dow property if I
21 understand correctly comes down and over. This is the
22 dump area, and that's probably the building that we're
23. talking about. And so that might be a real
24 interesting question with the water tables. That
25 would I would think really be of interest.
0083
] Yeah. What -- what we know
2. -- so the real question at issue is has that massive
3 amount of thorium sludge that's been sitting out in

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DOW Outreach 082206.txt
board. All the companies that owned the place have
had a -- had continuous licenses that have been
renewed. And Dow Chemical had their first license,
2782 in 1958. And that was for thorium compounds
without any limitations. Dow Chemical then got
another site wide license that applied to all of their
plants in Michigan, Texas, and Illinois. That was AEC
STB 527, and that took -- took in effect in 1962.
Then the successor to Dow at the Madison site, Conalco
had Nuclear Regulatory Commission license STB 1097
which was issued August, 1982,
Spectrulite got its first license, STB
1488 in October of 1986. And finally that license was
then again renewed by Spectrulite, this time now under
the [Ilinois Division of Nuclear Safety or Department
of Nuclear Safety in those days, in the first days
which Illinois is an agreement state with the NRC so
they could issue such licenses. And that number
Ilinois-01750-01 was issued 9/9/93.
We also know that in 2002 Spectrulite
filed its intention to terminate that thorium license.
That's still ongoing. Spectrulite has been through a
bankruptcy set of proceedings. And we know that today

0020

in 2006 there is currently at the plant a -- a cleanup
operation that in -- involves pouring concrete in the

pot room where a lot of the thorium contamination is
located.

I called this environmental -- you know,
the Dow remediation history. We're talking about
environmental remediation now. And we know that a
company named Environmental Restoration Group based in
Albuquerque, New Mexico removed a thousand railroad
cars of magnesium thorium sludge to an off-site
location from this 40-acre site near Building 7 which
I've shown you near the castings department in 1993.
At the same time they removed I think another 30
railroad cars full of PCB laden soil and debris.
We also will hear from the workers about I

call them private subcontractor cleanups by

Spectrulite which apparently were not part of the

state regulatory framework that's reported by workers
in 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006. And these are important
because they were done under practices and conditions
that at least in my experience are not standard best

Page 12


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
10 between some of the thorium and the AEC and AEC '
11 nuclear weapons facilities. So -- so we're highly
12. interested in those contracts.

13 You will also hear about some special runs
14 that Dow did of Martin-Marietta thorium in the [990s.
15 And we have a document that we will

16 forward to you that is quite interesting actually

17 where McDonnell-Douglas had thorium plates that they
18 stored at a facility called the Tyson Valley Storage

19 Center which was an ammunition depot during World War
20 Il and they built a number of concrete bunkers. And
21 we know that in one of those bunkers, Number 35 to be
22. specific that McDonnell-Douglas encouraged or -- or
23 negotiated a deal where Washington University where I
24 taught for 31 years actually agreed to store thorium
25 plates in the Tyson Valley bunker Number 35.
0018

I After they had done that for about 25

2 years the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was interested
3. in reviewing lots of their old licenses to see that --

4. that the license terms were being complied with. And

5 they found that whereas Washington University was

6 doing a great job on most their licenses, the thorium

7 license was actually sort of expired and -- and really

8 didn't cover -- or their present licenses didn't cover

9 the thorium storage.

10 So they wrote a letter which we have to
11 the Chancellor at Washington University, Chancellor
12 who was the brother of a former senator from

13 Missouri -- who is the brother of the former senator
14 from Missouri and told the Chancellor that he needed
15. to remove the thorium and do something with it.
16 McDonnell-Douglas then took it back. And what

17 fascinates me is what they did with it, which was they
18 gave it to the Spectrulite Corporation in 1993.

19 As you will see as this story unfolds
20 today the current owner at Spectrulite claims that
21 there was no processing of thorium done during the
22 '90s or in the -- and in the ensuing decade that we're
23 inright now. So you know, but we certainly know that
24 Spectrulite accepted that -- ] mean, that thorium at
25 that period.
0019

1 We do know a pretty detailed history of

2 the thorium licenses, and you can see that on the

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DOW Outreach 082206.txt

24 magnesium like most other metals does not possess
25 sufficient strength in its pure state for many

0104

1 structural uses. In order to produce the strong

2 engineering alloys with which the world is familiar,

3 magnesium must be combined with other metals.

4 Alloying -- alloying ingredients are added to gain

5 improvement in strength, workability, hardness,

6 toughness, and other properties. It says aluminum,

7 zinc, and manganese are the most common alloying

8 ingredients used with magnesium. Other components
9 such as beryllium, cerium, zirconium, silicon, and tin
10 are sometimes added for the purpose of producing

IL alloys with special properties. And then Table 1

12. lists the magnesium alloys in common use in the US.
13 So well -- and by the way, the Story of

14 Magnesium is by the American Society for Metals and
15. its produced by WH Gross. So I guess I'd say in

16 summary that, you know, there's some conflicting

17. information about beryllium. But the preponderance is
18 that it was used frequently for a long time and in

19 reasonably large amounts in aggregate.

20 Yes, again. And
21. it wasn't always a situation where they just needed

22. someone to go down and to do this process of getting
23 this beryllium ready for the guys to use on the mag

24 floor. And by me being a they
25. said well, how about having one of your
0105

1 laborers go down there and get some beryllium ready

2 for the guys who are alloying on the mag floor. And
3 that seems like to me it was on a much regular basis
4 because it was always, you know, get who you could get
§ todo it. So I know it was being done because even I
6 did it myself.

7 [ -- I can't remember

8 whether it was you, but I know that in the past

9 meeting somebody has given us testimony about

10 beryllium being in some kind of recognizable

11 containers. I mean, it -- you know, it's not just

12 hearsay that it was beryllium. And I don't -- is

13. anybody in the room that can talk about that? Yeah.

14 We handled that
15 beryllium. It came in -- some time in 25-gallon

16 barrels and 50-gallon barrels. And then towards the

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DOW Outreach 082206.txt
13. records may be up in Midland, Michigan. Right. But
14 -

15 We had to do that twice a
16 year.
17 But -- but again, in spite of

18 that being the truth then -- then what that would have
19 to mean is if the company gave them to the regulatory
20 agencies for which they really are supposed to be

21 submitted, we can't get them.

22 I wanted to verify some of the
23 members that Dow Chemical did come in.
24 That's fine.
25 (Inaudible.)
0075
1 Yeah. So we're -- we're now

2 giving you all testimony that at least the company did
3. those inventories and collected that data.

4 . On response to

5 on where that -- some of that metal went
6 it was thorium, and they would cut it up in small

7 pieces. And we would use it throughout other metals

8 because it would never show up in the spec lab on

9 samples and that. It'd be like a thousand pounds in

10 the 60,000 pounds it was lost in there. And that's

11 the way they got rid of a lot of that metal.

12 In about 1996, '7, '8,

13 somewhere along in -- in that line we resurrected

14 about fifty, 55-gallon drums of thorium sludge out of
15 the room across the track well down on the shipping

16 dock that was kept under lock and key. At the same

17. time over in the rolling mill we had probably another
18 70 or 80 barrels of thorium scrap. And across the

19 aisle from that was a Sunbeam oven that had 10 to 12
20. slabs, 6,500 pound slabs. We had to inventory that
21 every year. So I think there are probably inventory
22. records up to '96 or '97.
23 At that time they sent the crews from the
24 lab down to monitor what was going to go on. They
25 gave us all badges, and that's the first time that I
0076

1 saw a badge from 1988. We melted the scrap. We used
2 the same barrels that the scrap came out of to put the

3. sludge in it. And we gathered the sludge out of the

4 room down on the dock and we shipped it all out. And
5 I don't know where we shipped it out to. We could

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12 We were quite interested in getting the

13 exhibits to the case because we were looking again for
14 -- this was prior now of course to the time when we

15 got the nice Pangea report from last year. But we

16 thought it would be quite interesting to see the

17 extent of the thorium in the early ‘90s.

18 Unfortunately the exhibits to that case are sealed.

19 And we think that there's a possibility still that the

20 judge in that case may be convinced to unseal those
21 exhibits.

22 But it's just something to —- to enter for
23 the record. And | think it adds to the general story

24 that there was a problem with the way thorium was
25 handled, accounted for over the years. And this is
0146

1 just one more example that at least somebody else

2. beside ourselves thought that that was the situation.

3 So guess that's it for that particular item.

4 My name's I'm
5 very concerned about most -- I was here this afternoon
6 -- about the employees in the pot room and the casting
7 department. And I know you're going to determine --
8 try to determine the dosage. And I handled that every
9 time we ran it between 1954 and And I'm -- what
10 I'm concerned about if we were exposed to more

11 radiation than an individual at other plant after it

12 became a solid product. And that is my concern for
13. the fellows in the casting department. Because we

14 took the raw thorium right out of the barrel which was
15 about a five notch piece of it and they weighed about
16 five or six pounds. And then we'd add so much of it
17 -- whatever the lab called for how many addition we
18 put in, we'd take that and put in the pots. And then

19 later on we -- [ think the thorium was in pellet

20 forms. But my concern is if we had more dosage in
21 what a -- what they would have gotten after it was a
22. solid form.

23 And also, like | was here this afternoon.

24 Iwas concerned about the sludge that we took to the
25 dump over the years I was there. When
0147

1 it first was taken out to the dump there was no

2 designated area for -- between thorium and AZ 31B or
3 ZK 60 or whatever. It was all in one pile. Finally

4 somewhere along the line after years somebody kept

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19 It wasn't very big, maybe 250 pounds approximate. And
20 when they put it on the oven car we were told not to

21 get around it. .

22 We can't hear you.

23 We were told not to get

24 around it. You know, I don't know why, too expensive
25 I guess. But the guard stayed there all -- all the

0054

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12
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14
1s
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

time that it was in the oven. That's about all I can
tell you.

And how long was it in the
oven?

{really couldn't tell you
because, you know, different shifts, you know. And
probably a full day anyway.

Any time frame? Any year?
Give us a time frame.
That I couldn't tell you.
I'd just like -- I'm
again. I'd just -- just like to mention one

more thing that hasn't been brought up, that we used
to run lithium metal. I don't know what it is or what
it consists of. But I know that when it got your skin
you could not put it out with water. It would burn --
it would burn worser when you put water on it. And
that was one of the things that I -- 1 deal with, |
worked with and it was powerful.

T- | J worked
on that -- that metal when we first ran it. And they
-- you had to turn water off on two other units
besides that because that lithium couldn't have any
water around it at all. And I had a -- a melter
working for me had a basket in a pot. And one of the

0055

1

Cen dAuAwYy

10
Il

pots -- 6,000 pound pots, he dropped a -- a beryllium
-- a beryllium bar in it and it come down in the pot
and come back up and knocked his shield off. If his
head had been a little farther over it, it would have
blew his head off.

And another fellow was working -- one of
my casters there. He -- a piece of metal hit on his
arm, and the moisture in his arm caused that to -- to
blow. And it had a nasty burn on his arm. That was
on the lithium.

My name is «

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DOW Outreach 082206.txt
the 40-acre plot next to castings leached down into
the ground water. What -- what we know further about
that incident -- and I think if we could get some
clarification, but I think the date was Thanksgiving
in about 1994. So there is -- there is apparently a
water line that goes between Dow and Fox Brothers,
that's one thing I've heard. I don't know that. But
you know, it seems certainly likely that in those 30
or 40 years that thorium waste could well have

matriculated down into the ground water and -- but I
have -- I really haven't been able to find a good
report about that. And so -- but that's -- that's the
issue.
She said the date's about

92.

1992 was what we heard was
the date for that incident. So Thanksgiving Day. I
don't know what to say about that particular incident.
Like I say, we -- we've tried actually to get a report
that -- but -- but the Army Corps of Engineers didn't
address ground water in their report. And so we're
going to have to get that some other way if -- I'm not

0084

even sure ground water has ever been tested in that
area. It should be, but I'm not sure it has been.
Okay.

And you might note too that
there are a lot of residences over there right across
the street from that site. You can see those very
clearly too. Is that the area you were talking about
earlier?

Yes.

And they definitely say
that's it. So --

Oh, yeah.
There's -- there's railroad tracks running from Fox
Brothers Industrial over there from -- into Dow
Chemical at the back. And evidently there has been
connection between Dow Chemical and Fox -- well, I
don't think Fox Brother owned that at that time. But
that building was -- I guess you call it a warehouse
for them because the train tracks run over there --
over there back. So this is a lot bigger than we
getting into really. It's a lot. It's big. Thank
you. Here.

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0052

1 graphite and I don't know which but it was one or the

2 other, I couldn't tell. And when the guys throwed the

3 lever forward to push it, three seconds it was gone

4 through there in that box, just kerplunk. And the

5 smoke boiled out of that thing, went up in those

6 overhead beams.
7 And | thought right then if -- if they
8 don't clean this, we're going to be in trouble. And I
9 never did see them clean it. | heard that they did
10 clean it, but J never did. In all the years I never
11 seen them clean it. Well, I've talked enough. I'll
12. pass this on.

13 Thank you.

14 I just wanted to drop back to

15. this bomb bodies that they were talking about a while

16 ago. The -- those were incendiary bomb bodies, and

17 they were split I guess through the government agency
18 or somewhere. And when we charged them evidently all
19 the -- the fuses or the powder wasn't out of them.
20 And as they melted under you always kept one eye on
21 that pot of bomb bodies and the other out on the door
22 because you didn't know when you were going to have to
23 run until they were completely melted in. That's
24 that.
25 I'm sorry we couldn't get them
0053

1 all.
2 This is Stanton again. At
3. one time they run some plutonium through the plant too
4 through the homogenating ovens. Nobody could get
5 around it, just the guards.
6 Let me -- Mr. that's
7 of immense importance. That's a whole new element not
8 supposed to officially have been at Dow at all ever.
9 So any elaboration that you could supply us with about
10 plutonium at Dow with guards would be much
11 appreciated.

12 All I can tell you is I seen
13. them -- the guards with it and they put them on the
14 oven cars.

15 Well, why don't you describe
16 what you saw in a little more detail. That would be
17 good.

18 It came in a billet form.

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DOW Outreach 082206.txt
know. And you know, they would just burn, you know,
and it'd be, you know, pretty rough, you know. But
they never would say anything about the radiation or
anything like that there, you know.

But then when I was out on the floor as a
general stockman or either fork truck driver I used to
drive and used to load up the -- what you called it --
the sludge, you know, like” was talking
about. I did the same procedure he did too. You

10 know, when we sludge we sludge out the sludge and put

11 them in barrels and let them cool off. And they set

12 them on the side the wall, you know.

13 Then later on when they cool off when it's

14 time to load them up the fork truck driver go in there

15 and take them back down on the dock. And then we

16 would load them on the freight trains, you know, to
"17 carry out, you know. But like I say, you know, as far

18 as this radiation thing, you know, we never was told

19 anything about, you know, training or anything or

20 preparation or anything like that there. You know, I

21 wasn't, you know.

22 Did anybody mention the word

23 thorium to you? Did you know that there was thorium

24 in the pot room?

COIDAARWN—

25 Yes, sir.
O117
Okay. Okay.
Uh-huh.

1

2

3 . All right.

4 And we knew thorium, you

5 know, and the beryllium too, you know.

6 Okay. Okay. So -- so just

7 one more question about -- you're kind of unique

8 because you worked for all the companies, right? Did
9 you actually work for Dow itself?

10 No, sir.

iW Okay. So you started at
12 Phelps-Dodge?

13 Phelps-Dodge.

14 So you're from there.

15 1972 to

16 Right. Well, that's pretty

17 interesting. So all of the companies that bought the
18 place after -- after Dow?
19 Yes.

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near Building 7.
And then the other very important part of
the plant was the rolling mill which you can see down
at the bottom in Building Number 5. Also noted in the
Pangea reports were the nondestructive testing room
which was kind of interesting because we've gotten
some sort of conflicting testimony about what sort of
industrial radiography was done at Dow. We know there
was I think a sonics units and possibly a small
Betatron unit. Maybe ' can tell us about
what he knows about that. We're -- we're not sure
about all of the equipment that was in the
nondestructive testing room, but Pangea noted it was
there and whatever was in there there was some
contamination -- radioactive contamination above the
illinois permitted limits.
And then there was a dross room inside
where some of the sludge was stored in addition to
that that was just stored outside. And that -- that
dross room was fairly heavily contaminated.
| just wanted to mention the main sources

0013

of exposure at -- at this site. And at the top there
-- there have been a succession of owners of this
site. We -- we know that it was owned by Standard
Spring Steel in -- during World War II. At the end of
the war that property which was mainly geared up to
produce magnesium reverted to the government. And in
1951 the government gave a quit -- quit claim deed,
and the property then was acquired by Dow Chemical who
operated it until 1973 when Consolidated Aluminum
Company or Conalco did a lease purchase agreement and
finally bought the property from Dow. And then in

1986 the Spectrulite Consortium, Inc., or SCI bought

the plant and has owned it since then. And that's the
succession.

So the main sources that we know over this
long period of time from 1951 to the present include
uranium 238 from Mallinckrodt under an AEC contract.
And officially -- and you'll have to compare this to
what you hear from the workers -- Dow did
experimental, you know, kind of research and
development work in the extrusion presses, They had a
number of extrusion presses, a very large operation
there, But several of those presses were used to

Page 8


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DOW Outreach 082206.txt
1 lost part of my lung, my right lung.

That was before I retired. And I got shortness of
breath I'm living with now. That's about all I got to
say. Everybody else is talking about everything.
Thank you.

Tm I don't have
anything to say really to add to what I -- the meeting
in Alton. I worked over in -- in maintenance, and we
had the -- these radiation, uranium badges, whatever
they called. When we went into the pot room we had to
put one on. And then when we came out we threw them
ina -- ina big basket. So every time we came in we
just picked one up, and when we go out we threw them
away, threw them in the basket. And at the end of the
day as far as I know they were thrown away because

0037

23
24
25

there was always another new basket there the next
day. I don't know what year it was. I don't have any
idea, That's about all I have.

~ I'm
last name. | worked in the pot room about anda
half years. We melted thorium chips in oil on the
weekends so nobody knew we was melting it. Then we'd
put in barrels, and they stored it. But I remember
handling thorium with my bare hands and breathing the
smoke. Now I'm being treated with skin cancer. But
they -- they told us at a time when we wore these
badges there was nothing to worry about, don't worry
about the badges, they don't register, they're okay.
Just when you get through throw them in the can when
you get -- when your clothes changed. Put your
clothes in a hammer in a plastic bag, put your badge
in a bucket, it's okay, you don't have to worry it,
there's nothing to worry about. So we -- we was under
the assumption nothing to worry about for all those
years. That's about all I've got to say now.

I'm.

I went to work at Dow plant in 1961.
I retired in I worked in the rolling mill up
until the '70s. [ had various jabs. I -- as some
mentioned that hand salvage. Yes. I done hand

0038

1
2
3

salvage. We'd take that metal and we'd sand it. We
had no kind of protection whatsoever until the last
year or so I before J retired they said yeah, we got

Page 22


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

5 complaining about how the thorium was stored out -- or
6 the sludge was stored out in the dump.

7 Weil, then they -- they came in. Dow

8 Chemical built us a separate lab outside of the

9 casting department, and they brought I don't know how
10 many men in here. And they went out there with Geiger
11 counters, and they worked for almost two years I

12. think. I don't know what they did, but they -- they

13 separated it all in a pile and I think they hauled it

14 away in trucks, didn't they or railcars after that?

15 They worked two years doing that like I say. And

16 still in that time we were never informed this thorium
17 would hurt us. I handled it many a times without

18 gloves. We only had a cloth -- cloth gloves is all we

19 used in there. And like we told before our -- our
20 clothes were just a bib overalls and a denim shirt.
21 So I'm -- still my concern is about the dosage that
22. the men in there inhaled. So --
23 I'm going -- ['m
24 going to try to pin you down to -- I know you said
25 somewhere between '54 and 1990. But can you give us
0148

1 as close a date as you can for that?

2 You mean, when we started
3. separating the sludge?
4 No. When they did the

5 cleanup. You said they -- they cleaned -- they
6 separated it and they cleaned it up for two years.

7 It'd have to been under
8 Consolidated Aluminum I would imagine.
9 Okay. I'm sorry.
10 It had to be under

11 Consolidated Aluminum I would imagine. I -- I retired
12 under Spectrulite. But see, Spectrulite -- | remember
13. when Spectrulite came in I had to also get all the

14 scrap material and keep -- because as a-

15 and keep the men supplied with what to charge. And I
16 was back in the area where all this scrap is stored

17 and had it mixed in with the thorium alloy and other
18 -- other alloys. And there was a man back in there

19 digging around in there. And I said what are you

20 looking for. He said I'm looking for that thorium. 1
21. said what's your name. He said and I
22. think that was And I said well,
23 if you're going to find it, you'll have to root around

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12 to 15 pounds in it on every cast. And we'd cast 80,

13 90,000 pounds a day. So we did use beryllium in

14 mainly the pot room and the aluminum unit.

15 And to clarify something else on your

16 water. When they cast in the pot room and the

17 aluminum on thorium metal and that it was cooled by

18 water. That water ran outside into a -- a water

19 tower. And there was always a mist coming off of

20 that. And that would be the same water that was

21 hitting the magnesium that had this thorium in that.
22. Now, whether it would stay in the water or something,

23 but they had a -- like a sump out there. It's the
24 size of a swimming pool. And that water stayed there,

25 and it would be kind of like a mist all the time over

0101

1 the top of it.

2 Yeah. I'm sorry. Is that

3 the last person?

4 Yeah. That's all of us.

5 Okay.

6 got something I'd like to

7 say about that.

8 yes.

9 Dow aluminum unit, when we
10 processed the holder to tap out for casting they

11 pulled the last sample after they dross it and

12 chlorinated. After they pulled that last sample the

13 last thing that was done 15 pounds of beryllium was
14. spread out over the top of the furnace. Then we went
15 around and casted it. And all the smoke and stuff

16 come right out of it when we did that. And on the mag
17 floor it was always washed in in a long ladle

18 underneath the pump pipe going into the holding pot.
19 And then it was melted. That's the way it was melted
20 in in the pot room. And we used it all the time.
21 That's right. | agree with
22. that.
23 UNKNOWN SPEAKER: It never happened.
24 Whoever said he agreed, why
25

don't you --
0102
i UNKNOWN SPEAKER:
2 . Here you go, sir.
3 I agree with everything he
4 said.

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0142

So you know, a rumor is just a rumor, you just take it
for what it is. But now with seeing everything that's
happened and unfolding in front of us this gives it
more credence. And what even gives it more
significance is these ingots that he was talking about
that were shipped over from Russia these was
magnesium, right? Now, all the ingots that we usually
acquired are Canadian, Texas, they're usually local or
from the States. Now, not always, but mostly.

10 And these metals were always silver and --

11 like a coin, a new coin, not shiny like a mirror but

12. very silver metal. Now, these metal ingots from

13 Russia, these magnesium ingots, they were tarnished.
14 They were a dull gray. Now, this would give a good
15. credit to coming from overseas because salt water and
16. salt air does this to magnesium. It does corrode it,

17 it does taint it, it does discolor it. And if it was

18 sent up across the ocean, it would make sense why they
19 were not shiny at all, none of them. You know, it was
20 -- they were wrapped in plastic, shrink wrapped, but
21. still they were dull gray, not shiny like normal
22. ingots.

23 And the supervisor who was told to go out

24 there the second time after they came back -- now,

25 remember he bought this metal twice. If it wasn't no
0143

1 good to run the first time, why was it shipped back to
2. the owner. And then the second time it was returned
3 he done bought the same metal twice. It was slowly

4 alloyed with the rest of the metal. I've spoke to

5 several other employees who worked in the pot room,
6

7

8

9

CeEIANARWN—

and they would say they'd go throw one gray ingot in
with ten shiny ingots. Now, they was slowly
distributing this because it took six, seven months
before this pile the size of this room finally
10 diminished down to small enough size.
11 And like I said, the foreman that took
12. these little red tags off in a foreign language off of
13. each pallet also noticed Mexican writing on them with
14 chalk. So that was where the suspicion that they was
15. -- also came from Mexico. Now, after all these ingots
16 were all gone and the floor as all empty of course
17. there was dust everywhere. | had to clean it up with
18 a sweeper, it was my job again.

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10 Spectrulite, according to the records, does not own
lL this property where all this sludge, the PCBs, and all
12. this other contaminated waste was buried.

13 I think I can --

14 I think I can answer that. The area, the
15 40 acres across the street adjacent to the casting
16 area was a known dump. And Conalco or Spectrulite or
17 any of the other companies didn't want any part of

18 that over there. It remained with Dow Chemical. That
19 was Dow's headache so to speak, and the other
20 companies that came in didn't want -- didn't want to
21 dea with that. 1 mean, you really can't blame them.
22 I want to clarify that about that mag
23 prime that came in that referred to and
24 referred to the six million pounds. That did not
25 belong to Spectrulite. We were warehousing that for
0153

1 another company. And we were supposed to use it and
2 melt it in and make an alloy for this company. And

3 that never came to fruition. We felt cheated because

4 we thought they were using us for a warehousing

5. facility and they weren't paying rent on it. We

6 filled up the loading dock with it and we ran out of

7 room. We moved over in the 4 Building adjacent to 7
8 Press and stored it there. We bought mag prime from
9 Canada; Freeport, Texas. Dow Chemical shipped a lot
10 of it in. And in the later years we were buying mag

11 prime wherever we could buy it because we didn't have
12 any money. And we bought a lot of it, brokered it

13 through the port of New York from Russia, from

14 Kazakhstan on the Red Sea. And I don't know where
15. that's at in relation to Chernobyl, but I don't think

16 any of that mag prime was radioactive. I really find
17 that strange to believe that it would be.

18 . . Okay. Well, we have gotten
19 some certainly interesting and different testimony

20 this afternoon. Anybody else who wants to say

21 anything?

22 On the air -- air samples and

23. that we used to have to have an instrument down there
24 on the aluminum unit taking air samples 24 hours a
25 day. And if it gota little bit high, they'd start

0154

1 shutting the unit down so it wouldn't go over it. And

2. the pot room, I'm -- I'm not for sure what they -- how

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15 Supposedly all the radiation or -- and I know the dirt

16 goes to the bottom of a magnesium pot. It's called

17 sludge. We would sludge out the dirt, the bad stuff

18 and we would put it in barrels. Then the welder would

19 take and weld it up.
20 Yeah.
21 I can't remember the amount of
22 barrels, but it seems like seven or 12. I'm not for
23 sure. And one incident I had in there --
24 Tell me what they did with
25. the barrels. You know?

0113

1 Yeah. I knew of the barrels.

2. Well, there was -- we worked around the clock doing
3. this, and [ actually don't know how long it was. It

4 didn't seem too long. It seemed like a couple weeks
5 ora week or something like that. I'm -- I'm not for

6 sure on that. But I know the barrels went to the

7 outside of casting department in a out type building,

8 but you could enter it from the inside. Because | was
9 told by my supervision to take these people that was
10 going to take the barrels out later on. Now, this was
11 probably a few -- quite a few years later. I was to

12 take a ladder and put it up on the outside window so
13. they could look in there and see what they was dealing
14 with. That's exactly what I did.

15 Okay. Go ahead.

16 One thing that was kind of odd
17 about the whole deal was the spec lab lady was in

18 there -- and we was kind of curious about this. Like
19 we don't know nothing about that, we was young guys.
20 And I was -- we was talking about radiation quite
21 often. And some people would -- wasn't worried about
22. it and some people was, you know. But I asked the
23 spec lab lady -- | go is this stuff going to hurt us,
24 simple as that. I don't know. And she goes there's
25 more radiation -- I remember it plane as day --
0114

1. there's more radiation that comes out of a microwave
2 than what you guys are messing with. So I said all

3 right, let's try it. So we took a Geiger counter to

4. the -- the microwave, and the needle moved. Then

5 right after that we walked right straight to the

6 sludge barrels. We took it to there, and it pegged

7 out, simple as that.

* Page 66


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
22 then we'll take the badges and put them in a box. And
23 they never gave us the results or nothing from that
24 because we asked them a couple times, and they oh,
25. everything's okay. But they never did tell us
0066
1 nothing. And basically everything that's been said
2 has been true.
3 And about cancerous around here, | got a
4 lot of the people that's in the neighborhood that done
5 had cancer just in that area around that plant, a
6 whole bunch. I -- I had a daughter that had cancer
7 and died from it, you know. So it got to be -- and I
8 stayed in that neighborhood all my life, you know, and
9 wasn't too far from the plant. And so it got to be
10 something going on around there because there's
11 numerous peoples that stays right around that area
12. that do have cancer. And I've been trying to get
13 names and stuff, you know, get people together to file
14 a petition or something for somebody, but I'm working
15 on that. Thank you.
16 again. |
17 understand what Mr. talking about because a
18 lot of us -- almost all of us have been working a
19 midnight shift have come out the next morning and
20 noticed a fine film of dust on our car. Now, this
21 dust we are talking about isn't just from trucks
22. driving up and down the road. This is stuff that was
23 emitted from the smoke stacks while they was melting
24 this thorium and beryllium alloys.
25 And none of this was ever addressed when
0067
1. they did the cleanup, it was strictly the uranium.
2 And in this cleanup I have these documents here that
3 mention over and over from the Department of Energy,
4 from the EPA, from the Environmental Cleanup that they
5 was only going to clean up the uranium, not the
6 thorium in extrusion. That was that thorium 232.
7 Now, this doesn't make any sense. Why would they
8 spend all this time, money, and effort to clean up
9 radiation but only address the uranium and leave
10 something that's just as hazardous if not worse, 232
11 thorium? That's because Martin-Marietta brought this
12. in and left the mess. And these people were not going
13 to clean up another company’s mess.
14 And all this was speculation at

Page 39


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

2. was -- he worked on the 7 Press, but we've also had

3 testimony at our other meetings that some of the other
4 presses were used. We're not sure. I think most of

5 the uranium and the thorium work, the special jobs

6 were done on the 7 Press.

7 Almost, yes.

8 But | think there is some

9 evidence that maybe the 9 Press and some of the other
10 presses were also used. What my question is is when
11 the Army Corps came in to clean up I know the report
12 describes drapes and plastic sheets and you -- you saw
13. that. But I think there's a discrepancy about -- did

14. -- did you see them doing swipe tests for instance on
15 the presses themselves? In other words, to get -- get
16 a reading on surface contamination on the presses,

17 around the presses, on the floor, and so forth? Was

18 that parts of the testing process?

19 Now, if this was done, it was
20 done without me being able to see them or watch them
21 because it was enclosed from four stories up all the
22. way to the floor with plastic, the whole work area, my
23 work area specifically. Now, I never did see any
24 swiping, but I did see a large table about like you're
25 sitting at now with at least a dozen Geiger counters
0136

1 onit. And like I said, whenever I would ask

2. questions they would just turn their back to me or

3 just say no, no big deal. They would just give me a

4 flippid (phonetic) answer because I was not of any

5 importance to them.

6 Yeah. Well, I guess that's

7 the final thing I'd like to put on the record about

8 that cleanup. It -- it sounds to me like there were

9 not only not very good communication between the

10 people doing the cleanup and the workers around the
II site. In fact, the plant had really shut down, right,

12. and -- and people were laid off and -- and -- and so

13. forth. So I just think this is a good example. And I
14 think if you all will do a careful look at those

15 cleanup reports, the thing that I thought there was

16 really aposti (phonetic) of was data on the presses

17 that were actually doing the work. And obviously that
18 -- to me that would be one of the first places you'd

19 start to look. So --
20 again. Not only on

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15 Martin-Marietta because we never knew what this alloy
16 was until a few weeks ago when a gentleman named 1
17 -- he was the head of the laboratory
18 department out there at the factory. His job was to
19 record everything, soil samples, dirt samples, air
20 samples, even radiation samples. His job in the
21 military prior to this was monitoring nuclear weapons
22. and nuclear reactors, And he measured everything from
23 cesium to cobalt. So he knew what he was doing.
24 But when they handed him the Geiger
25 counter to check this -- check this alloy to check the
0068
i departments he kept them repeatedly this is the wrong
2 Geiger counter, this is a Geiger counter for beta
3 gamma rays like for x-rays or a nuclear bomb or
4 uranium. They never would give him a thorium particle
5 detector which was exactly what he needed to get the
6 correct readings because thorium particles are
7 different than beta rays and gamma rays. And I've
8 been learning a lot about this unfortunately. And it
9 was his testimony because he had to record this that
10 he knew for a fact that that was billets of thorium
11 that Martin-Marietta brought in that we actually ran
12 onapress. This was the first positive link of what
13. the alloy was over us and how it got there.
14 Remember this whole time all these years
15 they only alloyed thorium 230 in the casting. They
16 only rolled thorium 230 in the rolling mill. They
17 found thorium 232 in concentrations exceeding
18 guidelines above our head. This is a separate alloy,
19 a separate process, a separate poison. And with his
20 testimony and with his knowledge we now know for a
21 fact that Martin-Marietta brought this metal in, We
22 ran it without any knowledge whatsoever of any hazard,
23. any protection of any type and then went and sent us
24 on home to talk to our families, infect them, and
25. spread it throughout the family, transfer it to others
0069
1 and never even gave us a warning.
Yeah. I want to -- | want
clarify a couple of things that has talked
about. One is that the information that | know about
natural thorium metal is thorium 232. And I really
don't know -- I -- obviously J don't know what the
metal that Martin-Marietta brought in, that type of

AAUBWY

Page 40


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
they were doing I worked from the top of the crane
almost -- well, | worked from the top of the building
all the way down to the lowest part of the cellar, and
we did maintenance. We did crane maintenance. And
there they were up there in white suits and masks
collecting dust. And somebody mentioned the fact that
all you had to do was eat it. You eat a lot of dust
inspecting cranes and doing maintenance on those
cranes up there. And believe me, it was dusty.

As far as where the thorium and this --
these products were stored, we were in and out of
those areas all the time. As far as the presses in

0094

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Il
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

extrusions was concerned we were from the top of those
presses to the bottom because any time any maintenance
had to be done we had to tear it down and do it. And
a lot of times we worked in the cellars like ] was
saying.

And someone mentioned that the press was
rebuilt. Well, I don't think there's any press in
there that we didn't rebuild starting from the big
press down to the smallest one. We'd tear it apart,
rebuild it, put it back together, and get it back on
line. So whatever's there -- I thank God that I don't
feel bad. But if there's anything to be caught, | was
there to catch it.

And [ have a lot of -- a lot of friends of
mine that were in maintenance that are suffering some
type of repercussions. But you know, the bad thing
about it is you're not sure of where this thing came
from. Like the lady over there said her husband went
down in to the -- to fix a leak. Well, we were down
under the ground fixing leaks all the time. And
fortunately enough that I didn't fall in the same
stream that he fell in. [ hope I didn't. We have
what they called artesian wells there on that
property. And of course, ground water feeds into
those wells, And I'm sure that there should have been

0095

1

2
3
4
5
6

some contamination there somewhere.

I -I can lay in my -- in my bedroom and
I can look out my bedroom window and see SCI. For
something this dangerous to be so close to where I
live it kind of tears me up. To know that no one has
said this is dangerous. My kids played in the dust

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21 And my recollection of working in the pot room
22 handling thorium metal when we first started that we
23 didn't -- we didn't use masks. It was just all -- had
24 ashield on. Then later on we started using masks.
25 But during that time as it's already been stated that
0047
1 we were handing that thorium that the metal has to be
2 up to 1,350 or to 1,400 degree before you could even
3. melt it. Then when it melted that -- the fumes would
4 come off of it. We was told that it wouldn't hurt
5 you. And I'm certainly in agreement with what every
6 -- everyone else has said. Now, everyone is talking
7 about that. I never heard nobody say a thing about
8 the SO2 that we used to breathe in the pot room. And
9 that was very, very powerful. That's all I really
10 have to say about it. I think it was bad. It was
11 really bad. Thank you.
12 My name's
13 [hired in in 1953. 1
14 retired With the exception of
15 about two months when I first hired in all my time was
16 spent in the extrusion department. Incidentally, the
17 first two months it was pretty tough. We had to stack
18 the ingots these boys made. And we had to unload
19 boxcar loads of World War II bomb bodies. And these
20 guys may remember it because they had some little
21 round dudes in there that could really blow them pots.
22 We were supposed to get them all out. Weil, they
23 didn't get them out when they sent them to us and we
24 sure didn't get them all out. But anyway, I thought
25 I'd bring that up.
0048
y
MR. DENNY: Yes.
* | --T want you to explain
your phrase blew the pots.
Beg your pardon?
I want you to explain what --
what you meant by that.
They were caps in the --
‘ No. No. I want you to
10 explain what that means to everybody and particularly
1 the folks at NIOSH. Blowing the pots, what -- what do
12 you mean by that?
13 Well, I'm telling -- the boys

OCOIANRWN—

Page 28


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19 And this would have been about
20 in I'd say in 1967 or so.
21 Okay. And I guess the other

22 thing is about the inventories. Are you aware of

23 whether those inventories were submitted to the

24 licensing agencies?

25 Oh, no idea. This was just
0099

1 internal for the amount of metal in the place.

2 Internal?

3 Yeah.

4 : Okay. Allright. Thank you
5 very much. Let's see if we got someone else.

6 The name is

7 I started at Dow in 1953 and retired in
8 I spent a year in the alloy department as a

9 metal caster and we called them then pot men. I think
10 it's a melter now. Then I bid on a job as rolling

11 mill inspection, and I spent the rest of my time in

12. that job inspecting metal in process and in the final
13 inspection meeting the specs and the gauges, and so
14 on, tolerances.

15 And I was diagnosed with prostate cancer
16 in 1999 and had surgery. And that's about it.
17 1

18 started in 1962. I started in the rolling mill,

19 worked there for about 12 years | think, then went

20 onto being an electrician. Worked all over the plant
21 after that. But while I was in the mill I can

22 remember working on hand salvage. We used an air
23 sander to sand HM and HK that would have dings and
24 scratches in it. We had to sand all that stuff out.

25 And other than that I'll go along with whatever these
0100

1 rest of these guys said. It's all basically the same.

° On the
beryllium process that we had in the casting and the
aluminum unit mostly, but on the magnesium there's at
least three or four different alloys, AZ 61, PE, AZ
21, and --

31.
-- 31 probably had beryllium
in it too, But on the aluminum unit -- I retired in
10 1999, We was using beryllium in almost everything on
11 the aluminum unit in all alloys, at least five to ten

COUIAAAWN

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8 Then a little while after that I got laid
9 off work. That's the only time I've been -- ever been
10 laid off there in my whole -- well, years. And I

11 was off for exactly weeks, And I came back to

12 work and I came back on a midnight shift. And I asked
13 in the safety meeting how'd the badges turn out

14 because I was curious, you know. And they said

15 everybody was all right. A couple of the guys made
16 fun of me for asking, say you ain't going to glow in

17. the dark or something like that, you know. And I just
18 left it at that, you know.

19 Then I asked again later on about them at
20 another safety meeting. I was told they was posted,
21 everybody's fine, but I never did see nothing or hear
22. nothing about it.
23 Is this the episode you told
24 us before one of the ladies maybe who showed you
25. through with the Geiger counter didn't return to work?
0115

1 I've never seen her since

2. then

3 All right.

4 I never seen her again. Yeah.

5 Okay. Thank you very much.
6 Okay.

7 Hello. My name is”

8 . and I worked for

9 Spectrulite. I started at Spectrulite. When I

10. started there I started under Phillips Dodge

11 (phonetic), then it was Conalco, and I think it was

12 Consolidated, then it went to Spectrulite. But

13. through the years I -- ] did general stockman,

14 aluminum melter, and mag melter, and laborer. And I
15 worked in all the departments, extrusion and the

16 rolling mill.

17 But getting back to the pot room for the

18 radiation we wore special clothes and we wore a name
19 tag with a badge, you know, with our name on it. And
20 after each shift they would collect all these clothes

21 and put them in a plastic bag after each shift. And

22 where they went I don't know after that, you know.

23 And when we was melting -- melting the chips -- you
24 know, we melted a lot of chips and everything, a lot
25. of five pound chips, serious chips and everything, you
0116

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quickly, Dave Allen to my immediate right is a -- is
the dose reconstruction team leader in our office of
Compensation Analysis and Support. Dave and I have
the same occupational background, We're both health
physicists, which means we work in radiation
protection and radiation dosimetry and things like
that.

Laurie Ishak on other side of Dave is a
special exposure cohort petition counselor. Her job
is to assist people who want to submit a petition for
special exposure cohort status and to make sure that
they can prepare petition available and it has the
best chance of success that it can have.

And on my left is Mark Lewis who works for
ATL International. He is a contractor who works for
us. You know, we've hired this company. And Mark is
-- has been very instrumental around the country in
setting up worker outreach meetings like this. He's
here today to try to increase his network of -- of

0006

friends and associates and contacts around the --
around the system so that -- in order to stay plugged
into this as we try to make sure we obtain as much
information we can from worker groups like yourselves
around the country.

And I want to say again thank you all for
coming and joining us today. We're interested in
hearing what you can tell us about the work at Dow.
And | know that I think has some
introductory remarks he'd like to make as well.

So thank you very much,
Stuart, and we again appreciate you all being willing
to hear our story today. The first presentation for
this Dow meeting is I'm very pleased that

from the : has -- is joining
us by telephone. He was unable to make the meeting
today, but his special relationship to this -- to this
group is that -- that has examined some of the
workers at Dow who have some sort of lung disease,
chronic lung disease who are nonsmokers and -- with
the possibility of their exposure to thorium and/or

beryllium at the plant.

I've asked him to please call in and tell
us his thoughts about what his examinations have shown
so far, lab tests and so forth and his general

Page 4


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

own street clothes. But they did furnish hair nets
and -- for our shoes and coveralls.

And weil then we were instructed to go
ahead and make reductions on this metal. And while I
inquired what is this metal and they -- they wouldn't
-- he said well, it's just an experiment, don't you
know. And! said no. And well, they had a Geiger
counter with them, but they never gave us any badges

0080

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

or anything. And I said well, isn't this dangerous.
And they said no, it's probably no worse than getting
a chest x-ray,

So anyway, during this process we -- | was
instruct -- I did what | was instructed to do. And on
one of these reductions the metal, it popped and broke
and it injured one of our employees, a
(phonetic). And they took him to the hospital that
day. And then | went to visit him at night, and he
was in quarantine and the only way you could see him
was through a window.

So well, when they finished this
experiment they went and they rolled up all the paper.
They had us wash the whole mill down. And then they

kept going over the billie (phonetic) roll which the
metal kept rolling over. And we just had to
continually wash it until it was finally clear. So
when they got done they took all the clothes, they
took our hair nets and everything. They rolled it up,
they rolled up all the paper and that was it. So --
but I never did know what the metal was. It was in
1955 or 1956. Thank you.
I'm the widow of

He worked next door at Fox

Brothers Industries. My husband dug down in the

0081

1

OKADUNAWNY

building next door to Dow Chemical. He ran in -- it
was a leak in there, a water leak. He dug down
through about six or eight inches of concrete with a
backhoe. He got down there with a shovel and shoveled
some of it out so he can find the leak.

All at once water or stuff came in there.
He got up out of there with a ladder. It was knee
deep water. When he come home that afternoon he was
red all over. This was on Thanksgiving Day. | asked

10 him what happened. He says I -- I don't know, maybe I

Page 47


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
have shipped it to Oxnard, California where we shipped
all of our other sludge.

And that was another process. We'd pick
up the sludge from the mag melting pots and put it in
railcars and ship it out to California. A man out in
California had a unique way of recovering the metal
from that sludge. He had pens built out into the
ocean, and he dumped all the sludge out in the ocean.
The tide would come in and out and wash the -- wash
the fluxes and the dirts and that out of the sludge.
And what was remaining was the heavier metal that sunk
to the bottom of his pens. He'd pick that up, melted
it, poured in into ingot, alloyed it with aluminum tin
cans, and it came back to us in the form of 90/10
magnesium or 90 percent magnesium, ten percent
aluminum. We used that to alloy with also.

I don't know if the thorium sludge went to
California to that same outfit or not. I -- I'm just
unaware of where it went to. But I know that there
were thorium scrap and slabs in the rolling mill as

0077

late as 1996 or'7.

Now, I just can't let that
description go without commenting on my own experience
at Washington University where we dealt with a
thousand laboratories that used tracer amounts of
radioactivity. I heard once that the total
radioactivity process at Wash U labs, those thousand
labs was about two curies per year, so very teeny,
tiny quantities.

But I can promise you at that institution
-- and I think this is representative of what every
single NRC licensee is supposed to do in the United
States -- is they had to keep not only extremely
detailed inventories of all -- of all inputs, all
outtakes, microcurie by microcurie with a person's
name. They had to account for every bit of that. And
if they couldn't and if they didn't, the agency would
come in and basically suspend their license, that was
it. There were no ifs, and, buts, appeals, it just
happened that way.

So you know, | think there are many ways
-- I have no doubt after this testimony that things
were inventoried. But again, the only conclusion that
I would have to reach at this point is either the

Page 45


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
13 back we -- we tried to burn them up. We'd -- we'd
14 take a piece and actually put a flame to it to make
15. sure that it wouldn't -- that it wouldn't flame. And
16. it did do a pretty good job that way except if you got
17 hit with a large amount of magnesium, there's no way.
18 I mean, it wouldn't -- it wouldn't protect you. It --
19 it would just burn right -- right through to your
20. skin.

21 Allright. Let's see.

22 Anybody else who's come that wants to comment tonight?
23 1 didn't comment when

24 made the statement on running the odd looking

25 thing on the Lindbergh. That was -- I followed him on
0120

1 that shift and -- my name's And it was
2. for the stealth bomber and it was for Allied Metals.

3. That's the one that went in the refrigerator car

4 there. And they banded it on skids and ran it through

5 and in and out and they put it in the refrigerator

6 car. That was about in the 1900s (sic). That's all 1

7 got to say about it.

8
9

1 1990s was that, or --
I Yeah. 1990s.
10 Okay. Allright. Okay.
11 Anybody else who wants to make any comments?
12
13 Yeah.
14 T think -- I think the

15 name of that company was Allied Signal that sent those
16 billets over to run them on 7 Press or 12. Allied

17 Signal was the name of the company. can you
18 verify that?
19 Yes. I -- 1 was told that

20 they shipped their billets in and ran it on 7 Press
21 and then took everything out. And I was told that was
22 Allied Signal.

23 Can I ask you to please say
24 that so -- because -- so the court reporter can tell
25 every --
0121

1 Okay. I'm

2 Iwasa in extrusion at the

3 time. And in the '90s there was stacks of billets
4 sent in and stacked up across from the canteen there
5 by 7 Press. And I was told -- and I think it was

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25

DOW Outreach 082206.txt
back to their home base with them. And the Geiger
counter was used in those situations too; for

instance, to separate the radioactive material that
came off the extrusion presses.

As far as I'm aware no workers were
adequately informed of the uranium or the thorium risk
or the beryllium risk. They -- they simply weren't
told about them.

We have no evidence that the beryllium has
ever been cleaned up from the -- any of those sites at
any time in its history. And so we therefore assume
that there's probably heavy beryllium contamination
throughout the Spectrulite site.

I've termed the badges that were worn up
until 1986, the film badges as cosmetic. And I've
said that possibly there were ceremonial badges after
that. And I don't mean that facetiously, but there
are stories where when inspectors would come into the

0025

plant badges would be issued a few days before and
discontinued wearing soon there after the inspectors
left. And again, there's no dosimetry data for this
site.
There's a rich history of accidents,
injuries, deaths not necessarily related to radiation
but just by the machinery in the factory. There were
impromptu -- by impromptu I mean week and two-week
episodes where contractors such a Martin-Marietta
would bring in special thorium, take over the use of
the extrusion press, take all the product and the
waste away with them, and return to their home base.
As said you will hear a -- a
rich history today and tomorrow -- or today and this
evening about massive fumes, smoke, a lot of it
emanating from the pot room and castings and so severe
in the other buildings that often the -- the pot room
would have to be shut down for a period it was so bad.
And then you will hear other testimony
that records and we -- we think important records at
the plant were shredded, missing, classified, or I
underline withheld because we do think there are
records in Midland, Michigan at Dow headquarters and
also at Spectrulite that we are attempting to get
access to but so far have been denied access to.

0026

Page 15


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
0097
1 special project. And at that time I surveyed all the
2 lab files which were still complete. Dow records were
3. still all there, Conalco records were there, SCI
4 records were there. And there was -- in that time
5 thorium was not being produced anywhere in the United
6 States or no alloys -- no magnesium alloys were being
7 produced from thorium. And that's about it.
8
9

Hey, when was -- when
was the last time you recall mag being --
10 What?
11 Do you recall the last time
12. thorium being processed?
13 let's do that on the
14 record.
15 Hey,
16 This is a question for He was out in the lab.

17 And when was the last -- about the last year that you
18 recall thorium being processed there? You got any
19 idea?

20 I don't remember.

21 Okay. I -- I'm just curious

22 because I know we -- we ran it while J was there.

23 Oh, a lot of it. Yeah.

24 Beau coup of it.

25 I have a question
0098

for you. 1 have a newspaper article that .

gave me from one of the local newspapers that
heralds the beginning use of LocAlloy alloy at Dow and
they were quite proud of that and that was a beryllium
aluminum alloy. Do you remember processing that?
LocAlloy -- my understanding
LocAlloy was a alloy developed by Lockheed Aircraft.
It was beryllium and mag or beryllium and aluminum,
don't know which.

Allright. Beryllium and

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11 aluminum.
12 We never did it at Madison,

13 never was there. I was consulted one time about what
14 would happen if we had to do it there, and it had to

15 have a complete white suited and everything else you
16 touched iteven. And | don't think it was ever

17 produced there at Madison.

18 Well, that article --

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DOW Outreach 082206.txt

10 Wow. Well, let's see. The
11 other -- the other elements that are mentioned by
12 then or curium and beryllium. And has

13. here that when the company was asked about radioactive
14 materials to bring out a radiation detector and say

15. they didn't see any reading but they knew it was the

16 wrong detector. It mentions that and

17 head of production
18 control for the plant are the ones who told us about

19. the detectors, but (phonetic) --
20: also told : that
21 the detector was the wrong type. told. °
22. to keep his mouth shut. From the '50s on the company
23 knew what they were doing.
24 So you know, I think there's been
25 conflicting testimony. But again, the preponderance
0108

1 is there was regular use of beryllium, lots of it, 25,

2. 50-gatlon drums, 50 gallons would last two or three

3 weeks in one department. So I'm -- I think it's

4 pretty clear from -- from all of this that that was a

5 --a regular part of the scene at Dow Chemical and all
6 its successors.

7 When I was in the rolling mill

8 some of the customers was Boeing, Lockheed. We

9 shipped to LocAlloyed (phonetic), FMC, Rocky Flats,
10 Martin-Marietta, Hughes Aircraft, and Rockwell
11 International. And as said most of that
12 we used to have to put on warnings, you know, it was
13. radioactive. So that lasted for quite a while.

14 1 Okay. So Stuart, we could
15. keep on talking here and just take a break.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: All right.

7 How do you feet is the best
18 way to go?

19 MR. HINNEFELD: I think that it seems like

20 if everybody's had a chance to have their say, there's
21 another meeting scheduled at 4:30 which is about 20
22. minutes from now.
23 Okay.
24 MR. HINNEFELD: So | think it may serve
25 well to break now. And again, at 4:30 it will the
0109

1 same format. So it's not like there's new information
2 at 4:30. It will be the same format. Anybody's

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20 what we called plate. It was heavy metal, you know,
21. like one inch and above. That would get cut up. And
22 then they would a Roto Clone there that would -- we'd
23 run it through there and they'd brush it to get the

24 dirt and that off of it.

25 And then on the sheet part of it is thin

0028

1 metal I'd say from a quarter inch on down, thinner.

2 And then they had a -- on the Roto Clone they had a

3 coil section where they ran the coils through there

4 and get the dirt off of it. And then they did that

5 until the explosion of it. Then they would take and

6 cut the sheets up to -- most of it was like 48-by-144

7 or whatever size they needed. And when it came off of
8 2M ill they would send it -- from there they'd send it

9 either from 4 Mill or 7 Mill which was the hand sheets
10 like. And they'd -- they'd make somewhere around

11 maybe 80 to 125 passes. And about every time they'd
12. take three or four passes they'd have to send it to

13 hand salvage to either sand out the gouges that was in
14. there or sand out what dirt got in from the coolant

15 and that. And the dust would be, you know, a quarter
16 inch all the way around the hand salvage area. And
17. they'd sand -- sand it down, then they'd send it back
18 and repeat the process over and over. And they had --

19 : Tell about -- now, this

20 description would apply to thorium; is that correct --
21 It --

22 -- and -- and other metals?
23 Mag part. All mag metals.

24 Not -- not all mag metals, just thorium metal because
25 AZ 31 and PE wouldn't go through the hand salvage as
0029

much. It was just the thorium HK and HM. And then
they'd repeat that process all over again.

And then when they got it down to gauge
some of it would go all the way down to
eight-thousandths. And when they got finished there
they'd send it to the stencil line which would put the
fot numbers on it, the alloy, the government specs and
that. And then they'd oil it, ship it -- you know,
pack it for shipping, and ship it out.

10 And I guess I was in crate builder which
11 I'd block the trucks and that for about nine years.
12 And I'd see a lot of it go out through different

CHIDAMABWNHK

Page 17


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24
25

DOW Outreach 082206.txt

IT IS STIPULATED AND AGREED by and between
SimmonsCooper, LLC and PohIman Reporting Company that
the August 22, 2006 Dow Worker Outreach Meeting
Testimony will be transcribed to the best of their
ability by a Court Reporter.

0-0-0

MR. HINNEFELD: Good afternoon, everybody.
Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us
today. My name is Stu Hinnefeld. 1 work for the
National Institution for Occupational Safety and
Health, the Office of Compensation Analysis and
Support. Our office within NIOSH was created in order
to fulfill the responsibilities that NIOSH has under
this -- this law, the Energy Employees Occupational
Illness Compensation Program. And we're here today to
try to obtain as much information as we can from you
the workers. I think we're focusing on the Dow
facility this afternoon, workers who there who can
help describe to you the work that you did, the
conditions that you worked under, and particularly
with respect to radioactive materials that were
brought there we know from the Mallinckrodt site and

0005

Auaon

whatever else may have been brought there so that we
can understand the nature of the work and help us to
-- in our -- in our -- fulfill our responsibility of
attempting to reconstruct radiation doses received
there.

I want to introduce my colleagues very

Page 3


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
3 anda half feet of square feet of floor space. It
4 seems impossible that this will be cleaned up. So
5 condemning it is almost the only option there could
6 be. Because if you don't, you'll be back here again
7 inten or 15 years listening to a whole new group of
8 people who are actually the employees working there
9 today, and we got to stop this.
10 There's a elementary school and school
11 ground 20 feet from the property. When they'd melt
12 thorium it just doesn't melt like an ice cube. It
13. makes smoke. It goes straight up and comes right back
14 down on these children, the school ground, and in
15 houses around them, has been doing it for years and
16 years and years. This has to be stopped because there
17 is too many people sick, too many people dying. And
18 it's been the status quo all -- ever since these
19 companies been there. Well, the company before me did
20 it,solcan. The company before them did it, so I
21 can. Stop it so nobody else has to show up in these
22 meetings ten, 15, 20 years from now and describe the
23 same thing over again. It's just going to be another
24 nightmare. Thank you.
25 Yes. My name is
0065
1 I worked in the pot room and
2 all over like everybody else did. What -- what they
3 didn't bring up that I think, you know, when they ate
4 lunch -- we used to eat lunch inside the pot room up
5 -- and they didn't have no shelves or nothing like
6 that at first. And see, and all that was exposed and
7 --and stuff, you know, because we worked with the
8 thurman (phonetic) --
9 Thorium.
10 -- thoron -- excuse me --
11 and all that different stuff. You know, everybody
12 did. And -- and they always said that it wasn't
13 dangerous, you know. And I -- J road the sweeper. I
14 swept up a lot of that dust and stuff too. And we
15 dumped it in the piles and on boxes, then they'd take
16 it ina truck sometimes and dump it out on the waste
17 field they called it.
18 And we had -- well, it was just nobody
19 never told us nothing. We wore badges on -- on
20 sometimes, you know, in the pot room and they would
21 take our clothes and put them in a plastic bag. And

Page 38


25

DOW Outreach 082206.txt
cleanup. They only walked down through -- up to 9
Press. They never went any farther to see if there
was any radiation any farther. They ran radiation
material on 8 Press, 10 Press, and that's on down.
And the heavy press also pushed I know thorium. In

0137

25

‘79 they were on tempcon where they were running
around the clock, and they pushed it for two months.
They were for missiles material. So they never
checked anywhere else. The little -- they never
checked the rolling mill or the casting department
neither. They just checked right around 7 Press, and
that's where they got the readings from.

1 guess I'm going to make my
final comment and I promise I'll stop. But I need --
I need to say this. I think that when you all get to
constructing doses for the workers at Dow one of the
few documents that you will have besides the
information that, you know, you turn up on your own
and what -- what we provide is going to be those
cleanup reports. And I think we want to go on record
as saying that if you use those cleanup reports by the
Army as the full extent of contamination at that site,
that we feel that's very inadequate.

We -- we really feel that that whole

cleanup operation was not done very completely. We --
we challenge the idea that the thorium was not related
to AEC activities, and we believe that it was an
absolute mistake from what we've heard that the extent
of the scoping and the survey and of the buildings was
so minimal.

0138

COIANAWN

10

And J think the other evidence that we've
presented to you today is that when finally a really
good comprehensive radiologic survey was done of the
building in 2003 and -- and -- but even later than
that that was a qualitative survey in 2003. In 2005
in March the Pangea Group came in and finally after
all these years, decades did a really comprehensive
survey particularly for thorium.

Now, they did do some measurements while

they did that for -- for uranium. But you got to

11 understand that by 2005 when that was done and today
12. the entire extrusion area is completely cleaned out.
13 There are no presses there anymore. They've all been

Pagé 80


DOW Outreach 082206.txt
9 Well, yeah, tell us about
10. that.
i As far as I know the only
12. sanding that was ever done -- I can be corrected on
13 this by a lot of fellows. But all I remember is the
14. wire brush on f Mill. And I think its main purpose
15 was to keep the rolls clean. I don't think it
16 actually came in contact with the strip itself.
17 Okay.
18 And if there was any dust,
19 it would be just smothered by the coolant. So I don't
20 think there was ever any airborne dust from that
21. particular operation.

22 Okay.
23 I'm and I
24 started at Dow in 1954 and retired in My

25. primary contact with thorium alloy was in the rolling
0044

1 mill in'58 through 1960 where we involved in high end
2. rolling on the plate -- plate and sheet mill -- sheet

3. mills. And after we'd make a pass and the metal was
4 inthe oven we would sand it. After every pass we

5 would sand this stuff, hand salvage.

6 And I pretty much worked all over the

7 plant and pretty much a carbon copy of what

8 Mr. said. And at the present time | don't

9 have any health problems to speak of. But that's

10 about all I had to say. So thank you.

11 I'm
12 And | worked in maintenance from
13. 1961 to’ when I retired. And I was in

14 through the whole plant all the time. 1 worked in all
15 the nonskills and maintenance, and we had to go

16 through the whole plant. And in 1991 | had a cardiac
17 arrest, and I don't know if that probably could have
18 been caused from some of that stuff too. So 1 was
19 probably exposed to all of it because I had to go

20 through the whole plant all the time.

21 I'm .

22 and I went to work at Dow in 1973 to
23 when|I retired. And I worked all over the rolling

24 mill. I worked in the casting, extrusion, and on the
25 -- onthe presses, And I even cut some special metal

0045
1 that they run in 7 -- on 7 Press. It was for a

Page 26


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

21
APPEARING TELEPHONICALLY:
22
23
24
25
0003
1
NIOSH Panel Members
2
Mr. Stuart L. Hinnefeld, CHP, Technical Program
3. Manager, Office of Compensation Analysis
and Support :
4
Mr. David E. Allen, CHP, Dose Reconstruction Team
5 Leader, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support
6 Ms. Laurie Ishak, SEC Petition Counselor
7 Mr. Mark Lewis, Senior Outreach Specialist,
Advanced Technologies and Laboratories
8 International, {Incorporated

Dow/Phelps-Dodge/Conalco/Spectrulite Employees

10
ul

Page 2


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24
25

DOW Outreach 082206.txt
My name is
I worked at Dow from '53 and retired in The
first I heard of badges was at your last meeting. And

0085

24
25

they -- when I started there every piece of equipment
in that plant had an Air Force number on it. And I
worked there during a shutdown between '69 when it
wasn't Conalco, it was Phelps-Dodge took over. And I
worked there during that shutdown, and we took all
kinds of stuff out to burn and to dump, And they had
a company man go with us and make sure we set it on
fire. That's about all.
My name's
I was employed there from 1961 to
Jheld various jobs through the plant out in
the extrusion, worked in the rolling mill on up in
fitting and maintenance. And in the summertime they
had me going out and cutting the grass. And the area
she was talking about, to get back there to cut the
grass alongside the fence they make a area so that,
you know, make it clear they had to go get the guard.
They had a gate there, it was under lock and key. And
they had to let -- go get a guard to open the gate so
I could go back there and cut the grass. And as soon
as I got done I had to go get the guard and lock the
gate back up.
So -- and then my experiences as of right
now I've come down with Parkinson's. So I don't know
if anything -- that has anything to do with it or not,

0086

but right now I'm down with Parkinson's. Thank you.
Tm
I don't have a lot to add to these guys. I was in
supervision, both extrusion and the rolling mill for
30 years. The only thing I'll add is we processed the
thorium in extrusion -- light press extrusion. And
during this process it was heat treated or hot
stretched we called it so -- because’magnesium was
very tough to stretch. A lot of it had to be heated
before you could stretch it. And then it was sawed.
Now, when you saw anything you're going to
get a lot of dust, you're going to get a lot of chips.
These chips flew, and you could look in the sunlight
and you'll see all kinds of sparkles. The way these
chips were cleaned up was mostly with an air hose,

Page 50


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6
7
8
9
10
N
2
13
14
15
16
7
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

DOW Outreach 082206.txt

Now, the thorium that we found in the
extrusion department was thorium 232. Now, this is
very important to remember now because the only alloys
they ever alloyed in casting and the rolling mill was
thorium 230. So how did thorium 232 get into an
extrusion department, a department that never extruded
thorium? So this was really a mystery for me that I
wanted to solve because I worked like I said directly
underneath that red spot for 12 years ina row. Got
that? And because of this I had to find out where
this thorium was processed or how.

Now, I was reading through the records I
got through the Freedom of Information Act on how they
processed and ran uranium back in the '60s. Now,
after watching -- or reading the process of how they
did this on a work cycle basis with carbon follower
blocks and reading all this information it just came
to me out of the blue like well, we did that for one
customer in this factory at one time, the exact same
process they did for the uranium. And that was the
red flag that went off right there.

0058

So I started doing backtracking. And I'm
going to start from when I -- you know, from when this
first started. So they got their license for thorium,
Spectrulite did in October of 1986. Then Mr.

here who testified a few months ago that in
'87 he ran a special alloy which they didn't tell him
what it was for a special company for one day. I
believe this was about six or seven billets. And this
is very important to remember because they just got
their thorium license six months before this and then
a special company with a special alloy came in and ran
this metal for a day.

Now, through these documents I have
obtained through Emergency Management from the
Department of Energy they did a walkover survey in
1989. And in this memo it states that in 1989 they
already found the uranium 238 and thorium 232 as
contaminants detected and exceeding guidelines. So we
know how the uranium got there in the ‘50s and '60s
from Mallinckrodt.

But how did the thorium 232 get there?
Well, like I said, they got their license in '86, and
six months later Mr. was the operator of the

Page 34


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

20 because any licensee of the Nuclear Regulatory
21 Commission or of the Illinois Department or Division
22 of Nuclear Safety is required under that license term
23 to conduct a yearly inventory. And I showed you for
24 example a inventory of thorium at this same site that
25 we're talking about that was done in June of 2005 by
0073

1 Pangea Corporation. And you could see that it was

2. very extensive, there's still a lot of thorium there.

3 What's interesting to me is we also --

4 both and ourselves through Congressman
5 Shimkus' office sent a FOIA request to Illinois

6 Environmental Management Agency asking for all of the
7 information pertinent to licensing and cleanup of

8 radioactive materials at that site. We've recently

9 been assured by the director of that agency that they

10. supplied us with all the information they had. And I

11 looked through and inventoried all the information

12. they sent. And I can promise’ you that the only yearly
13. inventory that we found was that in the Pangea

14 Corporation.

15 Now, every single year actually since

16 NR -- well, the predecessor agency of NRC was the AEC.
17 So there should be many annual inventories submitted
18 to those agencies, and we did not see any. So once

19 again there's a disconnect between what was apparently
20 done at the plant and not only what is -- what -- what
21 records have survived. Maybe they still reside at

22 Spectrulite. Maybe they reside at -- at Midland,

23 Michigan. But where they don't apparently reside is
24 at the agency which is supposed to be the agency for
25 which these yearly inventories are -- are performed.
0074

1 And so I'm -- | just need to note that for
the record that I -- I think here's one more evidence
that this situation that we're hearing about today at
this plant has really gone unchecked by even the state
agencies now for -- for decades basically. So --

Yeah.
Most of the inventories even
when Consolidated had it they always had a Dow
10 Chemical man come there when we had the inventories

11 whatever that means.
12 Yeah. Well, so the -- so the

CHIANARWHN

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DOW Outreach 082206.txt
8 so much time, for being here, for allowing us the
9 opportunity to express our knowledge that we have of
10 these two sites.
11 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we'd like to thank
12 you and who've done such a good
13. job organizing out here and everyone who came and
14 spent time with us and shared your information with
15. us. It's -- it should be very helpful to us as we --
16 as we go forward. So thank you very much.
17 Thank you.
18 (Whereupon, the Dow worker outreach
19 meeting was concluded.)

i] CERTIFICATE PAGE

I, Court Reporter, do
3 hereby certify that this Dow Worker Outreach Meeting
was transcribed by me to the best of my ability.
4
I further certify that I 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 nota 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 September, 2006.

[Court Reporter]

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14 from -- from casting can explain that better than 1
15 can. You'd -- you'd -- you'd see guys running out of
16 there scared to death. And some of them would
17 actually have some flame on their clothes. Of course,
18 I had fire retardant clothing I believe then.

19 So you're talking about an
20 explosion with fire?
21 It -- it's an explosion when

22 you put cold or wet material in that hot pot. It
23 would cause it to explode or blow.
24 This foreign matter
25 (inaudible).
0049

1 The extrusion department

2. didn't -- didn't open for about a couple months after

3 I started there. And a few weeks before they opened
4 it they put up the bids. Of course, all of us guys

5 were trying it get the best job, you know. Well, I

6 didn't have enough seniority to get anything but a

7 helper job. So I started out as a press helper.

8 After a few years I got to be an operator. And after

9 about ten years | got to be a crew leader. And that's
10 what I was doing all the rest of those years.

11 As -- as a crew leader we had -- we had

12 five smaller presses and we had one large press.

13 Okay. Two of these smaller presses was 1,800 ton
14 capacity. Two of the presses was 3,000 tons capacity.
15 And we had one press of 5,500 ton capacity. And of
16 course, we had what we called a heavy press that was
17 brought over from Germany after the war. When it was
18 brought in it was eleven-five, and they increased it
19 to 13,500 ton.

20 And it was my job to see that they had the

21 right metals on each press, had metals waiting for the
22 next job, relieve anybody that needed to be relieved
23 and especially lunch relief.

24 Well, getting back to this radiation

25 thing, the first time J ever realized that there might
0050

1 be radiation in that plant we had some guys that came
2 outand said we're going to run a special job today,

3 and that was it. So a little later we were -- I'm

4 standing around there waiting for them to get their

5 stuff done and | heard the word Weldon Spring. Well
6 dang, you know, that really brings up some memories

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22. practices and certainly exposed the workers to high
23 levels of radioactivity from the thorium they were
24 working with. They were forced to -- to shovel this
25 sludge onto open bed trucks not protected in any way.
0021

1 And throughout all of these cleanups even today you

2. will hear a lot of evidence that the workers were not

3. properly informed at all about the risk that they were

4 being exposed to.

5 We also know that there was an official
6 cleanup by the Army Corps of Engineers in 2000 under
7 the FUSRAP Program but that was restricted to uranium
8 dust in Building Number 6. Thorium was found at that
9 time and documented, some of it co-located with the
10 uranium. And the claim by the Army Corps of Engineers
11 at that time was that the thorium had nothing to do
12. with AEC activities and therefore it was not
13 remediated.
14 Now, I've told you in the previous slide

15. of the very intimate relationship of the thorium --

16 some of the thorium at Dow to the Rocky Flats nuclear
17 weapons site. So we -- we believe that that statement
18 that the thorium at -- at Dow had nothing to do with

19 AEC operations needs to be clarified.
20 I will also comment that there is a
21 current ongoing cleanup. We've contacted Spectrulite.
22 We've contacted -- we've contacted the IHinois
23 Environmental Management Association, and basically
24 they -- they have not been forthcoming with any
25 information other than that cleanup is taking place.
0022

I And that's -- that's an active area of ongoing

2. investigation.

3 In March of 2005, as I've said, the Pangea

4 Group issued a comprehensive radiological survey

5 report on the Spectrulite site. There had been a

6 previous 2003 radiologic scoping report, and both of

7 those were necessitated by the fact that they -- that

8 Spectrulite was trying to terminate their thorium

9 license, and -- and decommissioning was part of that
10 process where the site has to be cleaned up to

11 unrestricted use conditions in order to terminate the

12 license.

13 The radiologic survey found elevated

14 thorium 230 and 232 activity above background and

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DOW Outreach 082206.tat

22 around a month. I signed a bid in casting, and I
23 worked in casting, oh, five or six years. I went to
24 the aluminum unit and worked there a few years. Then
25 1 went into the maintenance and worked there the rest
oil

1 until I got -- we went on strike.

2 Leaching process, I remember that. There

3 was bunch of old barrels back there. We busted them
4. up and took whatever was in it and put it in tanks and

5 processed it, took the good from the bad. We didn't

6 know exactly what we was doing. We was just trying to
7 get the good metal out of it. Pretty nasty place back

8 there,
9 In casting department we did a radiation
10 cleanup. We wore badges. We wore badges, suits, like
11 an asbestos type suit, and a dust mask. It was on the
12. slab unit. All we did -- we melted on the unit only.

13. We didn't cast during the cleanup. I -- I believe the

14. billet unit was casting while we was doing it. Matter
15. of fact, I know they was.

16 Can you tell us what year
17 that was roughly?
18 Well, I remember I got laid

19 off right after that. And for some reason | went down
20 and bought a brand new car. | was laid off and people
21 don't normally do that. But that's what I did. It

22 ~was 1992.

23 So what year was it?

24 So that's true. 1992. Yes.
25 Okay. So can you tell us --
0112

you mentioned the radiation cleanup. I'm not -- I'm
not aware of a radiation cleanup in 1992.

It's the first time I ever
done it in my life. You know, I don't --

Well, tell me -- tell us

about -- so this is what you all did at the plant?
Right.

Well, just tell us what you
did exactly.

We took chips and we melted
them on the unit with a stirrer and fork truck
rollover. I believe we dumped them in tubs or
probably actually dumped them in tubs and actually
dumped the barrels into the pots. We melted it.

BODHE Se wewrauswn—

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DOW Outreach 082206.txt

cut up, sold. They're gone. So you know, as
extensive as that survey was -- and I'm assuming also
that as the presses were taken out probably there was
some cleanup done as well. So I'm -- I'm not sure
even that that -- even though it was comprehensive
that it was a very good comprehensive test of what was
there when these workers were there.

And so we -- we really would not like you
to use that -- that cleanup data and say this is
representative of the working conditions there at the

time. So that -- that's what I want to say.
. Justa

0139

quick question. I heard the name Allied Signal. Was

that correct?
I think that was the name of

the company. I could be wrong, but I believe
(inaudible).
t If she's wrong, I'm wrong
because I got that information from her.
Okay. The reason I'm
asking Allied Signal --
We ran it on the 7 Press.
Are you familiar with
Allied Signal? Are you guys familiar with Allied
Signal?
MR. HINNEFELD: Not -- not very much.
Could you tell me who that
is? I -- I know I heard the name. It's another
classified site. So that might be a product coming
from someone other than Mallinckrodt if I'm not
mistaken. Who is Allied Signal?
MR. HINNEFELD: I think -- I think Allied
Signal is a -- a aeronautics company, isn't it?
Now, is that Hematite?
MR. HINNEFELD: No. No. It's not

Hematite.
Okay. I'd like to just do

a little homework on Allied Signal because that is
definitely another site that's been mentioned.
MR. ALLEN: I'm about with you. I've

heard the name and I can't recall.
Yeah. It'd be worth taking
a look because -- it'd be worth taking a look because

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DOW Outreach 082206.txt
16 blowing with an air hose and then put in a pile and
17 thrown in there. And there's no way in the world you
18 could have separated all the chips of thorium from --
19 from the -- from the regular magnesium.
20 I also worked down at shipping for a
21 number of years, and we shipped thorium. And believe
22. it or not we put radiation tags on each of the boxes
23 we shipped out. But again, we were all told the same
24 thing as you have heard a hundred times before, you
25 know, you could sleep on the box, you're -- you'd be
0087
1 under more danger getting an x-ray. We all heard the
2. same story over and over and over. So you know, it's
3 just like Hitler said, you say it often enough, people
4 will believe it.

“Yeah.
Can you tell us where you
shipped the thorium?

Really no. I don’t remember.

I remember a lot of this stuff went into military
applications. The -- and it was -- went for further
processing, you know. So we just -- we shipped it and
then it was machined and -- and done whatever they
needed.

: Do you remember any
interactions with people from Rocky Flats?

No. I don't remember
anything, but you know, that -- just because | don't
remember doesn't mean a thing.

That's fine. Thank you.
21 My name is
22 My claim for cancer was filed on
23 2001. It was small cell lyphomia
24 (phonetic). J don't smoke, and I never smoked. And 1
25 started at ‘61 until My
0088
brother worked in the casting department. He died of
cancer at 46.

wee eee ee eee
SORIDAARBONH~SOSAAY

1
2
3 was the head of all the Dow

4 casting departments in the United States, and he

5. offered help to the Department of Labor if they needed
6 anything for this here. He was in charge when they

7 run the straight uranium on 7 Press years ago when

8 they made it from scratch. And he said on a rainy day

Page 51


DOW Outreach 082206.txt

-- 50 the -- you know, the -- his claim was sent
automatically from Part D to Part E when the agency
changed from the Department of Energy to the
Department of Labor. But I do think it's an
interesting -- and, oh -- and in that same letter it
noted that his Part B claim was still open.

And you know I think this -- this is an
example of somebody now -- August, 2001 to August,
2006 is a full five years, and nothing has been done
about his dose and -- oh, I shouldn't say that. It
hasn't been reconstructed.

And so I guess I would say this is a
pretty glaring example. I don't believe anybody on
earth could possibly defend the fact that that’s
acting in any kind of timely manner. And you know, I
would say on the basis of -- of alone
given the facts that we are hopefully establishing
today, | mean if one were looking for a person to give
a self identified Section 8314 SEC to on the basis of
his record, if you haven't been able to reconstruct
his dose in five years, what possible way is there
going to be for it to be done this year by Battelle or
in the next few years. So anyway, | think -- I think
we must put him on the record that way. Okay. Yeah.

0091

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

In 2003 we went
over and talked to and she called
someone up in -- I think it was Cleveland. And

was supposed to be number one to be paid with
our group. [ was supposed to be number nine to be
paid. was supposed to be number 19.
Then they changed all the rules and all that over. So
that's where we're at. So it's been all changed and
everything else on us.
Let's see. Where are we in
the thing? + you want to say something?
No. No. (Inaudible.)
Okay. My name is
and I hired in in 1965,
extrusion. And I worked on most all the presses. On
6 Press and 8 Press we ran thorium helicopter parts.
And on 8 Press one time J ran 16 hours of titanium.
And on 7 Press in -- in the '90s we ran two weeks of a
special metal, and they didn't tell us what the metal
was composed of or if it was hazardous or anything.

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CONAURWNH

DOW Outreach 082206.txt
I'm sorry. And I think that may be --
yeah. l apologize. Yeah. I think that's it. So
if you will -- would you do the honors and just
-- ] think now we'll open it up to the workers and let
people talk and --

You want to have everyone say
who they are or --

Yes. It's very important for
the court reporter if you all would say your name, and
the first time you introduce yourself please spell it
so she can get it down. And -- but please identify
yourself each time you come to the microphone. And
you're welcome to speak many times. So that's all
right.

Well, I'll start it off.
1 worked down there from 1961 to
in -- mainly in the rolling mill and in
maintenance.

At our previous affidavit
meetings we introduced ourselves and -- first and then
said what we had to say. Today we're going to have a
little bit different format. I'm not going to be
asking the questions today. and I will be
passing the microphone around. So what we want you

0027

]
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
7
18
19

all to do is to take the mike and just tell your
story, the things that you think are most important
for Stuart and Dave and Laurie and Mark to hear from
you directly about what you know from your own
experience at the plant or things that you've heard.
As long as you identify that they were things that you
had overheard from others, that would be perfect.
So do you want to start us off and
just make your first comments. And like I say, you
can come back later on if you -- if you miss something
you wanted to say.
Well, I started in casting for
a couple weeks, but then I went to the rolling mill.
And I worked almost all the jobs except for the
rollers in the rolling mill. And then most of the
time I was in the shipping part of the mill. When I
got bumped out of there I'd go on the shear crew which
would cut up the mag and that. And all the slabs that
went in the mill would -- would run through 1 Mill in

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