THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

convenes the 

TWENTY-SECOND MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

TELECONFERENCE 

The verbatim transcript of the Meeting of the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health held 

telephonically on March 11, 2004. 

C O N T E N T S 

March 11, 2004 
 

 

2 

ROLL CALL 

Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 

REVIEW OF THE DRAFT SITE PROFILE REVIEW PROCEDURES 

SUBMITTED TO THE BOARD BY THE CONTRACTOR, SC&A. . . . . 10 

PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 

ADJOURN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 

COURT REPORTER'S CERTIFICATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 

 TRANSCRIPT LEGEND 

The following transcript contains quoted material. 

Such material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

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

unintentional or purposeful interruption of a sentence. An 

ellipsis (. . .) indicates halting speech or an unfinished 

sentence in dialogue or omission(s) of word(s) when reading 

written material. 

In the following transcript (sic) denotes an incorrect 

usage or pronunciation of a word which is transcribed in its 

original form as reported. 

In the following transcript (phonetically) indicates a 

phonetic spelling of the word if no confirmation of the 

correct spelling is available. 

In the following transcript "uh-huh" represents an 

affirmative response, and "uh-uh" represents a negative 

response. 

In the following transcript "*" denotes a spelling 

based on phonetics, without reference available. 

In the following transcript (inaudible) signifies 

speaker failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 
 

 

 

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

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

 BOARD MEMBERS 

CHAIR 

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

School of Health Sciences 

Purdue University

Lafayette, Indiana 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 

ELLIOTT, Larry J.

Director, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Cincinnati, Ohio 

MEMBERSHIP 

ANDERSON, Henry A., M.D.

Chief Medical Officer 

Occupational and Environmental Health

Wisconsin Division of Public Health 

Madison, Wisconsin 

ANDRADE, Antonio, Ph.D.

Group Leader

Radiation Protection Services Group

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos, New Mexico 

GIBSON, Michael H.

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union

Local 5-4200 

Miamisburg, Ohio 

GRIFFON, Mark A.

President 

Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc.

Salem, New Hampshire 
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MELIUS, James Malcom, M.D., Ph.D.

Director 

New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund

Albany, New York 

MUNN, Wanda I.

Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired)

Richland, Washington 

OWENS, Charles Leon

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union

Local 5-550 

Paducah, Kentucky 

PRESLEY, Robert W.

Special Projects Engineer

BWXT Y12 National Security Complex

Clinton, Tennessee 

ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

University of Florida

Elysian, Minnesota 

STAFF/VENDORS 

CORI HOMER, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH

STEVEN RAY GREEN, Certified Merit Court Reporter 

PUBLIC PARTICIPANTS/FEDERAL EMPLOYEES/CONTRACTORS 

BEILING, HANS

BERRY, TERRY

DIMUZIO, MARTHA

DOMINGUEZ, SYLVIA

FITZGERALD, JOE

HENSHAW, RUSS

JOSEPH, DR. TIMOTHY

KATZ, TED

KOTSCH, JEFF

LAWSON, HOWARD

MAURO, DR. JOHN

MILLER, RICHARD

NAIMON, DAVID

NETON, DR. JIM 
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TOOHEY, DICK 

P R O C E E D I N G S 

1:00 p.m. 

 ROLL CALL 

DR. ZIEMER: Let's go ahead and what we'll do is we'll 

take an official roll call of the Board, then I'd like 

to have Federal agency officials formally identify 

themselves for the reporter, then any contractor 

employees identify themselves, and then other members 

of the public. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: So let's begin with an official roster 

call of the Board members again. Ziemer's here. 

MS. HOMER: Yes, Dr. Ziemer. Dr. Anderson? 

 (No response) 

DR. ZIEMER: Not here, okay. 

MS. HOMER: Dr. Andrade? 

DR. ANDRADE: Here. 

MS. HOMER: Rich Espinosa? 

 (No response) 

MS. HOMER: Michael Gibson? 

MR. GIBSON: Here. 
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MS. HOMER: Mark Griffon? 

MR. GRIFFON: Here. 

MS. HOMER: Dr. Melius? 

DR. MELIUS: Here. 

MS. HOMER: Wanda Munn? 

MS. MUNN: Here. 

MS. HOMER: Leon Owens? 

MR. OWENS: Here. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Leon's aboard now. Thanks. 

MS. HOMER: Okay, good. Robert Presley? 

MR. PRESLEY: Here. 

MS. HOMER: And Genevieve Roessler? 

DR. ROESSLER: Here. 

MS. HOMER: We do have a quorum. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we have a quorum. The only ones 

missing at the moment are Rich Espinosa --

MS. HOMER: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- and Henry Anderson. 

MS. HOMER: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: Now let's have identifica-- and of course 

Larry Elliott, the Executive Secretary, is aboard. 

Other Federal agency staff people on the call? 

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DR. JOSEPH: This is Dr. Timothy Joseph, Oak Ridge, 

DOE. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MR. KOTSCH: Jeff Kotsch here for the Department of 

Labor. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Jeff. 

MR. KATZ: Ted Katz here for NIOSH. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MR. NAIMON: David Naimon from HHS. 

DR. ZIEMER: David. 

MS. HOMER: Okay, Cori Homer from NIOSH. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. And Jim Neton has identified 

himself. Jim, who else is there with you? 

MS. DOMINGUEZ: I'm Sylvia Dominguez from the Office of 

the Solicitor, DOL. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton again. We've got Russ 

Henshaw with me and Martha DiMuzio, both of NIOSH. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Any other Federals aboard? 

 (No response) 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Any contractor people from ORAU or 

SC&A? 

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DR. MAURO: Yes, this is John Mauro. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay John, welcome. 

MR. BEILING: Hans Beiling, SC&A. 

MR. FITZGERALD: Joe Fitzgerald, SC&A. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Joe. Any others from the other 

contractors? 

DR. TOOHEY: Dick Toohey, ORAU. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Dick Toohey. Anyone else from ORAU, 

Dick, aboard? 

DR. TOOHEY: I don't think so. 

DR. ZIEMER: Apparently not, okay. Let's ask for 

members of the public to identify themselves then. 

MS. ROSA: This is Johnnie Rosa. 

DR. ZIEMER: And if the Court Reporter needs to have 

you spell the name, well, so indicate. 

 Anyone else? 

MS. BERRY: This is Terry Berry. 

DR. ZIEMER: Terry Berry, thank you. Any others? 

MR. MILLER: Richard Miller. 

DR. ZIEMER: Richard Miller. Thank you. 

MR. LAWSON: Howard Lawson, Atomic Trades & Labor 

Council, health and safety representative at Oak Ridge 

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Y-12 plant. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Others? 

 (No responses) 

REVIEW OF THE DRAFT SITE PROFILE REVIEW PROCEDURES 

SUBMITTED TO THE BOARD BY THE CONTRACTOR, SC&A 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. If others come aboard we should 

hear a signal and we can have folks identify themselves 

at that point. So let me officially call to order this 

telephone conference call of the Advisory Board on 

Radiation and Worker Health. The agenda was 

distributed and is on the web site. And we have just 

one item on the agenda today and that item is the 

review of the draft site profile review procedures that 

have been submitted to the Board by the contractor, 

SC&A. 

Let me make a couple of preliminary remarks, in terms 

of the task before us today, and then we will proceed 

from that point. Let me remind the Board that the 

deliverable for task one -- and I'm using the current 

task numbers. Task one originally was called task two. 

This confuses things, but it was the first one 

awarded, so the deliverable for task one was a draft 

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site profile review procedure. That deliverable was 

due 30 days after the awarding of that task order, and 

that is the item that has been received from SC&A and 

which was distributed several days ago to the Board 

members for their review. 

So SC&A has provided us with the draft of their 

procedures for conducting site profile reviews. You 

recall the Board asked for this deliverable in order 

to, in a sense, establish some sort of agreed-upon 

approach for conducting the reviews of the site 

profiles. And as I see it, in terms of our task today, 

we need to provide feedback to our contractor, SC&A, as 

to the acceptability of these review procedures. 

And there can be one of several outcomes that can 

result today. One would be to accept this draft 

procedure document as provided and instruct the 

contractor to proceed with the reviews. We could 

accept this document with minor modifications and 

instruct the contractor to proceed. Or another 

alternative, I suppose you might call it, is that there 

could be major modifications needed, in which case we 

might instruct the contractor to make such revisions 

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and then return to the Board with an amended procedure. 

So that seems to me to be what our options are today, 

to establish some sort of position on the acceptability 

of these procedures in order that the contractor might 

proceed. 

What I'm going to propose in terms of process is the 

following. We have in the document on page 2 a sort of 

summary of the objectives of the review and like to ask 

-- I'd like to ask the Board members to look at those 

overall objectives as stated by the contractor and 

determine acceptability. 

Then on page 3 you'll see procedural approaches, which 

is kind of an overall approach. Again I'd like to have 

us look at that and make a determination of general 

acceptability of the approach. 

You will see on page 5, which is section 4.1 to 4.3, a 

very brief statement of the roles, responsibilities and 

deliverables. I think those are straightforward. We 

may want to officially confirm those. 

And then beginning with section 4.4 we have a very 

detailed specification of actual procedures. These are 

very detailed. It's clear that not all the items or 

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questions apply to all sites, but this appears to be an 

all-encompassing effort to -- by the contractor to make 

sure they covered all the bases. And I would hope that 

we would be willing to offer the contractor some level 

of flexibility on this. That is, if issues or 

questions arise that have not been covered or 

anticipated here, we certainly might specify that the 

contractor should not be precluded from asking other 

things that he hasn't thought of at this point. 

Likewise, if experience shows that some of the 

questions aren't really useful or that the information 

is already covered by other portions of the review, 

that perhaps he should have the freedom to drop some of 

those questions. So I think experience may dictate the 

extent to which this is a complete set of questions. 

So I think that, if it's agreeable, we would proceed on 

the basis that I've just described. And when we get 

into the procedures themselves, I certainly take them 

as an indication of how the contractor is approaching 

various issues and we need to ask, basically, are there 

major issues or considerations that the contractor has 

failed to include in this review process. That seems 

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to me to be the key question that we need to ask. 

Now let me ask for sort of reactions. I've described a 

method of proceeding and if you wish to react to that 

or propose some alternative approaches to how we handle 

the document, that will be fine. Any comments or 

suggestions? 

DR. NETON: Dr. Ziemer, this is Jim Neton. I just 

wondered, was it your intention not to go over anything 

on page 1? I mean you sort of suggested we start with 

the objectives, but the introduction --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, no, it's certainly not my intent to 

omit anything, and actually there is an introduction 

and if there's issues there -- the objectives also 

start on page 1, but we can certainly include anything 

in the introduction that appears -- if there's any 

flags that appear there, why, that's fine. Yeah, we 

certainly will begin there. 

DR. NETON: Okay, thanks. 

DR. ZIEMER: Other comments? 

MS. MUNN: This is Wanda Munn. I am pleased that Dr. 

Ziemer mentioned the flexibility that may be necessary 

for the contractor. I noted that in several instances 

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great care was taken to cover the potential for needing 

to expand this particular, painfully thorough set of 

questions, but did not indicate any text where the 

potential for reducing the scope process might have 

been included. It's my personal feeling that as 

experience is expanded in this process, it may very 

possibly be reasonable for the scope to be reduced 

considerably. And my personal feeling is that 

flexibility needs to be one of the attributes that we 

would expect from the contractor. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Wanda. And -- and this is 

Ziemer again. My point there was that I hope we do not 

feel that these would necessarily be the only questions 

asked -- these and these only, number one. Number two, 

that these must be asked in every case, 'cause in some 

cases they may not even be appropriate. So there has 

to be some level of flexibility, I would think. 

DR. ANDERSON: This is Andy, just to let you know I 

just got on. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Andy. We had just talked about 

how we would proceed to review the document. 

DR. ANDERSON: Okay. 

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DR. ZIEMER: And we haven't actually gotten into the 

meat of it yet. 

DR. ANDERSON: Great, thanks. 

DR. ZIEMER: Other comments on how we proceed? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: What I'm hoping we end up with is either 

an acceptance, an accept with minor modifications -- or 

if we think that major changes are needed, that we so 

indicate those areas that need changing and so instruct 

the contractor. 

If that's agreeable then, let us proceed. If you would 

turn to page 1 of the document which -- let's start 

with section 1, which is the introduction, and let me 

ask if there are any issues or questions regarding that 

introductory paragraph? 

DR. NETON: Yes, Dr. Ziemer. This is Jim Neton. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

DR. NETON: I just had a couple of points of 

clarification and maybe some suggestions for improving 

the accuracy in the introduction. 

In the first paragraph, about the middle, where it 

talks about source term characterization, chemical and 

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physical forms of the radionuclides -- it talks about 

things that are in the site profiles. 

DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

DR. NETON: It specifically mentions that incidents and 

accidents are included in these documents, and they are 

not. They're not specifically targeted for inclusion 

in the site profiles, so -- I don't know that that 

should be in there. I'm not trying to set a value 

judgment whether they should or should not, but it's 

stating that we have put them in there, and they are 

not. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Well, I'll simply ask John Monroe 

(sic) to make a note of that and recognize that that 

information is not in the profile itself. Is that 

correct? 

DR. NETON: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: But what is being done with such 

information -- let's take the criticality accident at 

Y-12. Where does that appear in the record? 

DR. NETON: Right, that would be in the individual dose 

reconstruction itself as a full, comprehensive report 

on that. And so those are -- those are covered 

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separately under separate documents when there are --

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, but a description of the incident, 

where does that show up then? As a separate document? 

DR. NETON: As a separate document that would be 

included in the -- in the analysis record for the 

individual cases. 

DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. So the Board may, as part of the 

site profile review, nonetheless want the contractor to 

review associated documents which may bear on things. 

DR. NETON: Correct, but they are not formally 

considered part of the site profile. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, understood. 

DR. NETON: And then in the second paragraph, just a 

point of clarification, it's -- the first sentence says 

that Sanford Cohen will evaluate the approach taken by 

NIOSH to gauge the adequacy, completeness and validity 

of the information used to determine individual 

eligibility for compensation. We don't do that, of 

course. We actually perform dose reconstructions the 

Department of Labor could use to determine eligibility 

for compensation. So I think --

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, the technical difference there, and 

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probably just for accuracy -- John Monroe (sic) make a 

note of that, that NIOSH doesn't determine the 

eligibility for the compensation, but they do the dose 

reconstruction. 

DR. NETON: That's all I had, Dr. Ziemer. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Well, with those 

clarifications, if we could go on to the objectives, 

and basically there are five of them. They are on page 

2. They are: completeness of data sources, technical 

accuracy, adequacy of data, consistency among site 

profiles, and regulatory compliance. And again, these 

are intended I think to be sort of over-arching. They 

are not spelled out in detail here, but are at this 

point of the document sort of conceptual objectives. 

Are there -- let me ask if there's any concerns about 

those objectives? Are there other objectives that 

should be included? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: I hear no response. Do I take that as 

passive agreement that the objectives are suitable? 

UNIDENTIFIED: Does that allow a lay person to 

interject here? 

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DR. ZIEMER: Actually we will permit later a chance for 

members of the public. The deliberations here are 

restricted to the Board --

UNIDENTIFIED: Okay. Okay, that's fine. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- and its immediate consultants. 

UNIDENTIFIED: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

MS. MUNN: This is Wanda Munn. I had only one mild 

concern when I was reading these objectives. And I'm 

not sure how I would suggest any change that might be 

in order, if there even is one. But objective four, 

consistency among site profiles, bothered me just a 

little bit as I was reading it because I understand the 

intent here, but because of the wide variation among 

activities that occurred at varying sites, there was 

some question in my mind whether the concept of 

consistency of the site profiles themselves was really 

the goal. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me respond to that in part and then we 

can perhaps get some other comments on that. One of 

the important things here is insofar as there are 

common elements to be looked at at the sites, I think 

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they were talking about consistency from site to site 

where there are commonalities. Those might be -- and 

maybe John Monroe (sic), if you could clarify what the 

thinking of SC&A was in terms of that wording, but this 

had to do with -- for example, whether or not if there 

were inconsistencies in the way that say a urine 

analysis is done from site to site or something like 

that. Is that what we're talking about? 

DR. MAURO: Yes, this is John. Our inten-- intention 

was -- as you may recall from our contract, that is we 

are operating on two levels. One is the individual 

site profiles, but at the end there is this aggregate. 

If you recall, part of scope of the review process is 

a more over-arching review to see if there -- our 

expectation is there might be differing groups of 

people preparing site profiles, different technical 

groups working with NIOSH, and we were concerned and 

the reason for these words is that there is parity --

parity on one level that is -- that is the level of 

detail. If we're talking about bioassay, the level of 

detail, the kinds of information provided and the 

degree to which that information is addressed, whether 

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it's internal dosimetry, information regarding the type 

of dosimetry or bioassay, that there is a suitable 

level playing field that is -- so that each dose 

reconstructor, as he utilizes the site profile record -

- site profile information, that whether it's being 

done for someone that worked at Hanford versus someone 

that worked at Savannah River, the same kinds of level 

of detail are present if -- where -- where they should 

be. Certainly we recognize that different -- if such 

information is available. Certainly we realize that 

there may be large differences in the nature of the 

operations that of course cannot be captured and be 

equivalencies. But there are the areas where there 

should be equivalencies, and I think that was our 

intention. 

DR. ZIEMER: So this has to do with consistency with 

the type and level and depth of information gathered by 

one team versus another that does the dose 

reconstructions. 

MS. MUNN: I thought that was the intent and was 

somewhat reassured by the final phrase in that 

paragraph, but just wanted to touch on that as being an 

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issue. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Any other comments on that -- on 

the objectives? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Can we take it by consent then that 

there's agreement that the objectives are suitable and 

appropriate? Any objection, without a formal vote? 

MS. MUNN: None here. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Unless I hear objections, we will 

proceed. 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Next, the procedural approach, which is 

outlined mainly on page 3 and the top of page 4, which 

-- and there's a threefold approach described, which is 

the so-called horizontal review, the vertical probe in 

depth on certain items, and then the review of worst 

case estimates. Let me ask if there are any -- and 

again, this is a general description of procedures. 

These are not the procedures, but a description of an 

approach. Let me ask if there are any concerns or 

comments on this section? 

DR. ROESSLER: This is Gen. I have one question, I 

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guess, and it has to do with the first bullet thing on 

page 3, the interviews with NIOSH, ORAU and so on. 

This also comes up on page 7 where they talk about 

interviewing site profile authors. I think this is 

valid, but I'm wondering to what extent that they plan 

to do this. I'm thinking about the time that might be 

involved and the -- I'm just -- just wondering how 

extensive that the plan is to do these interviews. 

DR. ZIEMER: Let me ask -- we had some discussions on 

these before. The process would require a request from 

the contractor to NIOSH. And that, incidentally, would 

come through me now, the way we've set it up. I would 

pass the request along. But they would request to 

interview certain people relative to certain profiles. 

John, I don't -- John Monroe (sic), I don't know if 

you've established the extent to which this sampling of 

-- in terms of numbers of people and so on. You 

haven't gotten that far, I don't think, have you? 

DR. MAURO: No, not at all. The intent here was that -

-

DR. ZIEMER: You're not suggesting that you're going to 

interview every person who worked on a site profile. 

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DR. MAURO: As indicated right in the opening -- right 

on that page where it starts, procedural approach, 

you'll notice the italicized "as deemed appropriate" in 

that first sentence. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

DR. MAURO: What we're saying here is our expectation 

is that certain of the site profiles may very well have 

drawn upon information gathered from interviews, so 

when that has been done and when it becomes an 

important factor in filling out the story that's being 

told regarding a given site, we will certainly -- that 

will be part of our review. And the depth to which we 

make our review of that particular issue will very much 

be a judgmental call, that will be documented, as to 

the need to go into depth because if it becomes a 

critical factor in terms of understanding the nature of 

the setting of exposure and affects possibly the 

outcome eventually of a dose reconstruction, then we 

will be going into quite a bit of depth. So this is 

going to be very much a living process, and what we --

and as the review unfolds before us and we move into 

these realms, we certainly expect to be interacting 

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very closely with the Board regarding such observations 

and where they're taking us. We're going to let the 

site profile review process unfold before us as a 

living process and an interactive, iterative process 

where we probe as appropriate. And if something does 

expand, whether we're talking about something related 

to internal dosimetry or information obtained related 

to interviews that make up part of the site profile, we 

will probe as we deem appropriate, but in collaboration 

with the Board. 

DR. ROESSLER: Paul, I think one thing I had forgotten 

on this is that the decision was made for their request 

to go through you, and I think with that provision in 

it, I would not have any reservations about it. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. I just might mention just as a 

sidelight operationally because John's group already, 

as they got underway on these first two tasks, had need 

for some information. And so I had a -- Larry and I 

talked about this and decided that it would be best if 

we insulated our contractor from direct interaction 

with Jim Neton and the staff at NIOSH or from ORAU. 

And the insulation would be that if John needs 

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something, he lets me know; I go back and pass that 

along to Larry and Jim and request that such 

information -- data, whatever it may be -- be 

transmitted back to our contractor. 

DR. ROESSLER: Okay. I -- yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: That provides a level of insulation so 

that John Monroe (sic), for example, and Jim Neton 

aren't going -- interacting directly without anybody's 

knowledge, either in the NIOSH side or in the Board's 

side. 

DR. ROESSLER: Okay. I remembered now. I think it 

didn't hurt, though, to reconfirm that because I think 

that is an important issue. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. So that's how we will operate I 

think on an ongoing basis, unless need changes in some 

way and we need to re-evaluate it. 

DR. ROESSLER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other questions on the procedure --

procedural approach? 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, Paul, this is Mark Griffon. 

DR. ZIEMER: Mark. 

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, just one thing. In looking at the 

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-- under 3.0, the third bullet, review of worst-case 

dose estimates. I think in the overall look at the 

site profiles I think we also want them to review --

I've got a phrase here, review the outline guidance for 

general dose estimates. I think that --

DR. ZIEMER: Not just worst-case? 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, not just worst-case 'cause I think 

part of what NIOSH is doing in these site profiles is 

they're building a sort of -- in some cases, anyway --

building -- as applicable, I guess we would say, 'cause 

in some cases they are building a sort of a template or 

guidance for doing individual reconstructions, and 

they're not -- it's not just worst-cases. 

DR. ZIEMER: And this is easily remedied, if it's 

agreeable to both the Board and to John, by saying 

review of worst-case and other dose estimates that 

result from the site profiles. That's a kind of a --

an easy way to solve that. Would that be agreeable, do 

you think, Mark? 

MR. GRIFFON: I think that's a -- yeah, I think it's a 

-- a -- a friendly change, yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: It's more inclusive than just that -- the 

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worst-case estimates. 

MR. GRIFFON: Right, but it looks at those same kind of 

things that are under that in that paragraph. Right, 

right. 

DR. ZIEMER: John Monroe (sic) okay on that? 

DR. MAURO: Absolutely. 

DR. ZIEMER: Board members, any other on that or other 

items on procedural approach? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Can I then again take it by consent 

that we're in agreement that the procedural approach, 

with that slight modification, is acceptable? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: And let's look at roles, responsibilities 

and deliverables -- 4.1 is the role of the Board. This 

-- this is -- I think our contractor here is 

reiterating what we said we're going to do. I don't 

see any problem there. We're going to select the site 

profiles and we're going to select the -- well, in this 

case only the site profiles are being discussed, so we 

select them and review progress. 

SCA is telling what they'll do and what the 

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deliverables are, which are spelled out in the task 

order, in any event. 

The role of NIOSH -- I believe John is describing what 

he thinks NIOSH is supposed to do and not what he's 

mandating that they do. 

DR. MAURO: Of course. 

DR. ZIEMER: Larry and Jim, are those statements okay 

for 4.3? 

DR. NETON: They're okay with me. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, we're okay with them. 

DR. ZIEMER: Any questions on roles, responsibilities 

and deliverables? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: If not, we'll again take it by consent 

that those are appropriate and acceptable. 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Now we come to the heart of the document, 

the procedures. 

First of all, there's a schematic on page 5 which gives 

the overall sort of flow of the review process. You 

will note that each of the boxes there has a 

designation, A, B, C1, C2 and 3 and the D's and E's and 

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up through H. Those different blocks are spelled out 

in the following text in great detail in each case. 

And I was pondering exactly how to go through all this. 

What I sort of finally came up with is the following, 

and see how this works. 

Number one, I don't want us to get into wordsmithing 

any of these procedures, per se. What I'd like to do 

is see if there are red flags. Are there items that 

are of concern, items that you think are missing. 

Let's overall view these as how the contractor plans to 

approach the various issues, whether it be the worker 

categories, the types of dosimeters, the missed dose, 

the medical exposures, bioassay. And I think what we 

should ask are are there major issues or considerations 

that our contractor has failed to include in the review 

process. And so that's -- at least in my mind, that's 

what we have to ask, and then say okay, where are the 

red flags in here. Again, I don't want to be 

wordsmithing things, but -- so much as identifying 

issues, items, red flags. And if that's agreeable, 

we'll proceed on that basis. And not necessarily even 

go through it section by section, but just take things 

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as people raise issues. Is that agreeable? Any 

objection? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, there don't appear to be any 

objections. Let me just start it off and maybe sort of 

-- this'll give us some ideas to -- how to proceed. As 

an example, on page 23 under bioassay data, there's a 

statement here under -- the first procedure under 

bioassay data evaluation. It says: Are there bioassay 

data available for periods of potential inhalation; if 

so, do they look valid. Now --

And there's a similar statement on the next page in 

item 19, do they look valid. Now there's a case --

again, I don't want to wordsmith, but I don't know what 

that means in terms of evaluation, does something look 

valid. I might even ask John what that means. But I 

think in cases like that, I would rather see statements 

where the contractor says something like has NIOSH 

established the validity of -- of this data, or 

something like that. Or how have they established it, 

as opposed to a very subjective statement of does it 

look valid. Those kind of things -- and again, one 

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could argue that that's wordsmithing, but that's the 

kind -- that -- that jumps out at me when we have 

statements like that. 

On the other hand, it appeared to me that the 

document's very comprehensive in covering a vast 

variety of aspects of all of the issues that one might 

think about. In fact, I thought, you know, if you're 

getting a team to sit down and ask what are all the 

possible questions you could ask about a site, they 

seem to have come up with an awfully big inventory 

there. 

MR. GRIFFON: Paul, Mark Griffon. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, Mark. 

MR. GRIFFON: I still don't know -- I agree with the 

point you just brought up and -- and the spirit of not 

wordsmithing. Mine's kind of similar. I -- there is a 

section on missed dose and --

DR. ZIEMER: Give the page so --

MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, and I think within it John also --

or whoever developed this also sort of covers an area 

which we'd been sort of referring to as unmonitored 

dose, and --

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DR. ZIEMER: Are you on page --

MR. GRIFFON: -- I don't know if it's worth -- yeah, 

page 14 into 15. Actually number 12 on page 15 --

DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- really is, you know, who were not 

monitored. This is unmoni-- what we've been terming 

unmonitored dose. And actually this one looks like 

internal dose to me, but anyway, that's another aside. 

I don't know if it's worth, you know, breaking that --

I think as long as they maybe headed that section as 

missed dose or unmonitored dose, I think that would 

sort of address that, but I think those are two 

different things, the way NIOSH has been presenting 

them and the way we've been discussing them, so I think 

it's important to make sure we distinguish between 

those. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Again, this is something -- John, 

you can just make note of that. 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, we're marking up a copy as you folks 

speak. 

DR. ZIEMER: While Mark is talking about that, if you 

look at 11, 12, 13 there on page 15, those items, for 

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example, as they appear right now -- and they -- I just 

picked these out as examples; there's a few places 

where this occurs elsewhere, as well -- these questions 

are asked, but there's no indication of what you're 

going to do with the answers. In other words, once you 

get the answer, then -- and I think intuitively we sort 

of know what you'll do with it, but you haven't 

indicated that some sort of judgment -- once you get 

that answer on what assumptions are used for missed 

dose and so on, then are these assumptions valid or how 

did NIOSH justify them. There's got to be a next 

question on many of these that doesn't show up. I 

think intuitively that's what you plan to do with them, 

but in many cases those don't appear. 

While we're in the missed dose section, let me raise 

another question. One needs to distinguish between 

what the site did and what the site profilers did. For 

example, did -- on page 14, item 6, it says did the 

site use a lognormal distribution to determine missed 

dose. Well, maybe more critical is did the profilers 

do that. It's not -- in some cases you talk about what 

the profilers do and what the site does, and it's not 

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always clear to me which of those things you are 

evaluating. Do you mean -- always mean site when you 

say "site", or do you in some cases mean site 

profilers? Because I think in many cases the missed 

dose is the missed dose and it's the profilers who are 

having to sort of fill in the blanks and do these 

things that you're asking whether the site did them. 

You follow what I'm saying? 

DR. MAURO: Yes. Are you directing this to me? This 

is John Mauro. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, I'm laying it out to the Board, but 

I think it comes back to SC&A. And if you understand 

the distinction, John, that -- there seems to be a lot 

of cases where you talk about the site and others where 

it's the site reviewer or site profiler. Now I think 

ultimately it's always going to come down eventually to 

the final site profile, so I'm not -- I'm not overly 

concerned -- and again, I don't want to necessarily 

wordsmith this again. But in some cases where it looks 

like you're asking did the site use a normal 

distribution when they've already missed the dose, they 

didn't use any distribution. You know what I'm saying? 

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DR. MAURO: I understand exactly what you're saying and 

there is a need for editing some of these questions so 

that they're placed in the proper context, and I agree 

with you. 

DR. ZIEMER: And again, I don't regard that as a major 

issue right here. I think it's a clarification thing 

that is a minor issue. In my mind, it's minor. In 

fact -- and so it's an issue of when is it -- when is 

it the site and when is it the profiler or the NIOSH or 

ORAU person that's -- who's done that. 

Okay. Well, we've jumped around here -- I've kind of 

dominated this, I -- again. Let me shut up and get 

some other input here. Other -- red flag issues, any -

- any major omissions or outright concerns about things 

that should be changed? 

DR. ANDRADE: Paul, this is Tony. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, Tony. 

DR. ANDRADE: Let me take you all the way back to page 

6. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, that's good. 

DR. ANDRADE: And if you look at the paragraph B called 

the assignment of site profile reviewers, I guess that 

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was the first uncertainty that struck me in this 

procedures document. About the middle of the paragraph 

it says "Typical teams" -- and I'm not sure what 

"typical" means -- "will consist of two to three health 

physicists and operational experts" -- well, who are 

the operational experts that are the personnel listed 

in the contract -- "led by a designated team leader" --

is that team leader one of the two or three health 

physicists? This was just -- just a question that came 

to my mind. 

DR. ZIEMER: John Monroe (sic), could you clarify that 

for us? 

DR. MAURO: I'm going to pass this over to Joe 

Fitzgerald. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Joe? 

MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, let me answer that. Yeah, team 

leader's one of the two -- more than likely two health 

physicists, but possibly three if the site's large 

enough. And the reference to experts just simply --

there may be some specialized dosimetric issues that 

are particular to a site profile that we may have to 

draw upon somebody in the SC&A team who may have, you 

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know, the expertise. It wouldn't be a member of the 

team. It would be a very intermittent involvement, but 

one that would be valuable to make sure we could 

evaluate that particular, you know, issue. 

DR. ANDRADE: But again, those people are those --

among those that are specified in the contract? 

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. 

DR. ANDRADE: Okay. I just needed that clarification. 

DR. ZIEMER: So Tony -- that answers your question, 

Tony? 

DR. ANDRADE: Yes, it does. 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Any other items? 

MS. MUNN: This is Wanda. 

DR. ZIEMER: Wanda. 

MS. MUNN: Since we have an awful lot of pages here, I 

don't know how far into this we want to go where we're 

asking questions here, but when -- Paul, you mentioned 

earlier what's going to happen with some of this 

information, and I had some of the same questions. For 

example, on page 13, item 5 under types of dosimeters, 

when the question is asked: Was the absolutely 

uncertainty at the 95 percent confidence less than the 

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lower detection of limit and -- lower limit of 

detection, and I wrote after it "And if it is, then 

what? If it's not, then what?" I'm not sure --

DR. ZIEMER: And again, I think, in a sense -- and 

again, I'll direct this to John and Joe. I think we, 

in a sense, understand that these questions don't stand 

by themselves and that it's not a matter of having a 

list of answers to a list of questions. You're going 

to take that information and develop it into an 

evaluation of the site, so we understand that. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: It's just that in some cases you've told 

us more specifically what you do with the information. 

Other cases you just said we're going to ask this 

question, but you haven't really said what you do with 

the answer. Again, I understand you're going to 

evaluate what that means in terms of the overall 

context. 

MS. MUNN: Yes, and I'm just commenting --

DR. ZIEMER: But it's not necessarily spelled out, item 

by item, and I'm not even sure at this point that we 

would be asking you to -- to come back with all that 

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detail for us. We're -- again, we're only trying to 

establish, Board members, today whether or not the 

contractor now has a procedure by which they can go 

forward with site review -- with the review of the --

of the site profiles. So --

MS. MUNN: I understand that, and really I'm not asking 

for --

DR. ZIEMER: So again, we're --

MS. MUNN: -- an answer to that question because --

DR. ZIEMER: -- I think we're just telling John and Joe 

that, even for your own purposes, you may just want to 

sharpen those things up. I don't think that -- my 

opinion at this point is that doesn't have to be 

changed in order for us to make a decision here today. 

We're just pointing out that there's some fuzziness 

here, but also we understand that as you get underway, 

you will in fact, out of necessity, be modifying both 

how you ask the questions and what you ask, probably, 

once you gain experience with actual site profiles. 

MS. MUNN: I also had a comment with respect to what 

may be simply a clerical miss, or on the other hand, it 

could be a deliberate repetition of the question with 

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the intent to verify the preceding answer; I didn't 

know which it was --

DR. ZIEMER: Where is this one? 

MS. MUNN: -- but they're on page 24 and 25 under 

bioassay data. The same question is asked in item 14 

as in item 23, I believe. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I think those are the same and it's 

probably just an editing issue, John, right? 

DR. MAURO: Yeah, I'm looking at that right now. 

They're identical; that's an editing problem. 

MR. GRIFFON: Good catch. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, any other issues? Again, I want to 

-- red flag, any major concerns? Most of these things 

we've talked about are a little more into the sort of 

details, as opposed to red flags. 

MR. PRESLEY: Hey, Paul? 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

MR. PRESLEY: Bob Presley. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, Bob. 

MR. PRESLEY: On page 7, C.1, interviewing site profile 

authors, second line. It's got authors and 

contributors responsible for their development. Does 

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this mean that they have the go-ahead to interview 

people that have filed? 

DR. ZIEMER: People that have what? 

MR. PRESLEY: People that have filed. 

MR. GRIFFON: No, not claimants. I don't think it's --

DR. ZIEMER: No, not claimants. 

MR. PRESLEY: Okay. 

MR. GRIFFON: -- that's contributed to a report. 

MR. PRESLEY: I wanted to make sure of that. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

MR. PRESLEY: Thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: Any others? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: The silence suggests to me that, in 

general, the Board has found the procedural document to 

be acceptable to the level that we could instruct the 

contractor to proceed with the review process. If that 

is the case, the Chair would entertain a motion to 

accept the procedure as submitted, with the 

understanding that those minor items that we discussed 

would be taken into consideration by the contractor as 

they proceed with the process. Does someone wish to 

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make such a motion? 

MS. MUNN: I'd be glad to make that motion. This is 

Wanda. 

DR. ZIEMER: Wanda has made that motion. I don't know 

what the motion was. Is there a second? 

MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. I'll second it. 

DR. ZIEMER: The motion basically is to accept the 

procedure as provided by the contractor, with the 

understanding that the contractor would take into 

consideration those minor points that we discussed in 

our deliberations here. I probably didn't work that 

exactly the same the second time, but that's the 

intent, certainly. 

And now let's discuss that further. Any concerns --

MS. MUNN: This is Wanda --

DR. ZIEMER: -- about the motion to -- basically to 

approve or to accept the draft procedure and instruct 

the contractor to proceed with their review process? 

MS. MUNN: This is Wanda again. There was one other 

item that I had marked, which again is one of those 

philosophical things. I'm not sure how one approaches 

it one way or the other, but on page 32, when we were 

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talking about occupational medical exposure, under item 

4, the question is asked: How reliable is the 

information obtained on photofluorographic use as to 

when, where and how any such items -- exams were 

performed. And there was a question in my mind as to 

how in the world anyone was going to judge --

DR. ZIEMER: The reliability? 

MS. MUNN: -- the answer to that question, yes. And 

since -- when there's a question in my mind as to how 

you do that, I guess the next question was is it 

appropriate to even identify that item, unless there --

the authors and the experts may have a better format 

for determining that --

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, again, I think -- I think we can 

probably allow that to proceed for them to use as they 

see fit. For example, if they -- I can think of cases 

where they go back and they say okay, how many X-rays 

were received every year, and if there's not a welldocumented issue -- or record, they may be relying on 

people's memory, but -- you know, I can't remember 

whether there was two or three a year or something. Is 

that what we're talking about here, John, where --

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DR. MAURO: Yes, we are --

DR. ZIEMER: So that the information is somewhat 

questionable, which then affects error bars and so on. 

MS. MUNN: Okay, the question really --

DR. ZIEMER: Understood, yeah. It's -- it may not be 

an easy question to answer. 

I want to raise one final thing here before us. And 

this -- this probably is my only red flag item -- real 

red flag item, and that is item -- on page 36, the 

issue on chemical data. In fact, I may need help from 

NIOSH people. 

The contractor is proposing as part of this to examine 

chemical exposure issues --

MS. MUNN: Uh-huh. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- which sounds fine on the surface, but -

- and to do this because of the potential eventually of 

including cancer risk. The legislation certainly 

allows that. But it's not being done. We don't have 

risk models to combine cancer and radiological risk, 

and it's not likely we will have in the short future. 

So I'm wondering if that section's not beyond the scope 

here and I'd like some input both from the Board and 

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from perhaps NIOSH. 

MR. ELLIOTT: John -- or Paul, this is Larry Elliott. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I would speak to this and say that it is 

beyond the scope of the task and the contract that's 

been awarded. 

MS. MUNN: This is Wanda. I was a little concerned --

I marked it with an "oops" out by the margin to try to 

deal with that a little more thoroughly myself. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, and I think eventually if we reach 

the point where those issues can be considered, we 

could task it. It's clear that it would be more 

efficient to be able to gather the data now for use 

later, but since we have no guarantee we'll be using it 

later, we probably can't justify expenditure of funds 

under this task to do that. So I think that, if it's 

agreeable, that we should probably include in the 

motion that that paragraph is beyond the scope of the 

review process. Is that agreeable to the mover and 

seconder? 

MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. That's agreeable to 

me. 

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DR. ZIEMER: Wanda, to you? 

MS. MUNN: The only reason I'm hesitating, I agree that 

I believe it's outside the scope. I don't have any 

real problem personally with including the first 

sentence of that statement, but it appears reasonable 

to me to then follow it with the statement, such review 

is outside the scope of this document. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, the part that would be the concern 

is making an evaluation as to whether the site profile 

includes sufficient information about the scope of 

chemical carcinogens present. 

MS. MUNN: Right. 

DR. ZIEMER: It's my understanding that NIOSH is not 

necessarily even collecting that information, are they? 

DR. NETON: That's correct. This is Jim Neton. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Paul, this is Larry Elliott. The first 

sentence here really comes from our regulation. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, that part's not the issue. 

MR. ELLIOTT: It's really -- the problem is in the 

following two sentences, I guess, or one sentence -- I 

don't know if that's one or --

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MS. MUNN: I think it's one, yeah. 

MR. ELLIOTT: No, we -- our site profiles do not have 

chemical data in them at this time, so this is outside 

the scope of work for this task. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

MS. MUNN: And I guess because this is a question which 

rises from time to time, it seemed to me that it may be 

reasonable to leave the first sentence, but to simply 

state that this is outside the scope of this task. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, again, I don't think we need to 

rewrite anything. Of course, SCA is saying they 

wouldn't do this without the Board's concurrence, in 

any event. But I think in fairness we should just 

state up front that this isn't going to be part of this 

task. 

MS. MUNN: It isn't going to happen, yeah. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay? Okay, last chance. Any other 

comments? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: Is the Board ready to vote then on 

accepting the procedures in section 4.4? And these 

are, in a sense, accepted with the understanding that 

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the contractor will take into consideration those 

issues that we raised. So all in favor -- well, Cori, 

let's take a roll call here. We're on the phone. Just 

go down through the list, starting with Andrade. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: Or let's see, Henry came on board, didn't 

he? 

MS. HOMER: Henry came in, yes. Henry Anderson? 

 (No response) 

MS. HOMER: We may have lost Henry. Tony Andrade? 

DR. ANDRADE: Accept. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. Rich Espinosa? 

 (No response) 

MS. HOMER: Okay. Michael Gibson? 

MR. GIBSON: Yes. 

MS. HOMER: Mark Griffon? 

MR. GRIFFON: Accept. 

MS. HOMER: Jim Melius? 

DR. MELIUS: Accept. 

MS. HOMER: Wanda Munn? 

MS. MUNN: Accept. 

MS. HOMER: I take that as a yes. Okay. Leon Owens? 

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MR. OWENS: Accept. 

MS. HOMER: Bob Presley? 

MR. PRESLEY: Accept. 

MS. HOMER: Gen Roessler? 

DR. ROESSLER: Accept. 

DR. ZIEMER: And the Chair votes yes, also. 

MS. HOMER: Okay. 

DR. ZIEMER: There are no abstentions. Then the motion 

passes and we're pleased to instruct SCA folks to 

proceed. 

Let me just mention that we don't have on the agenda, 

but Board members did receive in their packet task two. 

Task two simply is provided as a deliverable and you 

have it. Okay? It doesn't require any action at this 

time. 

 PUBLIC COMMENT 

Now I indicated at the beginning -- was asked whether 

anyone -- if members of the public could comment, and 

we can open the floor for comments. It's not on the 

agenda, but since we have members -- at least some 

members of the public requested that, is that lady 

still on the line and --

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 UNIDENTIFIED: Yes, I am still here. 

DR. ZIEMER: Identify yourself, please, and --

MS. ROSA: I am Ms. Johnnie Rosa. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- then provide your comments. Uh-huh. 

MS. ROSA: I want to address to --

DR. ZIEMER: Did you get the -- the recorder get the 

name? 

MS. HOMER: Yes, we got it. 

DR. ZIEMER: Could you state your name just once again? 

MS. ROSA: Johnnie, J-o-h-n-n-i-e, last name is Rosa, 

R-o-s-a. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MS. ROSA: Okay. I want to address on the first 

section that you were discussion -- discussing 

concerning the dosimeters and the levels, the missed 

dose. 

DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

MS. ROSA: Okay? 

DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

MS. ROSA: The unmonitored dose. 

DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

MS. ROSA: Under that, NIOSH has a piece of software 

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called IMBA. I have requested, through their 

scientist, David Allen, to be able to get into that 

IMBA software. This is a privatized piece of software 

that a lay person cannot get ahold of. It was 

announced to me maybe through a union that we could get 

this piece of software, or through an attorney we could 

get this piece of software. In the worst case 

scenario, and I'm going to go back to the code of 82 --

hold on one minute here -- that NIOSH has -- under 

worst case scenario is my concern because many people 

are being denied. They are being denied their 

compensation due to the fact of this dose level, dose 

reconstruction, missed dose and worst case scenario and 

we don't have access, and I thought under freedom of 

the Information Act we would be able to get ahold of 

IMBA, which I am pursuing, so that we could have this 

piece of our information that was supposed to be open 

to all the public, anything that was established in any 

criteria was supposed to be passed down to the public 

in meetings -- public meetings and/or documents that we 

could get our hands onto, which we have not been able 

to on the IMBA software. 

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In your discussion here, these are not minor items, 

these are major items and a clarification of an 

awardment (sic) to a widow whose husband may have 

worked 40 years in a nuclear plant, exposed to 

plutonium, every form of plutonium -- gamma, alpha --

on exposure rate of the mortality rate, which I have, 

this person was exposed 297 times and this person was 

denied. But under the cohort recommendation of 

illnesses allowed, this person also was in a denial, 

which we're in appeals right now. 

DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

MS. ROSA: But these are not minor items that you're 

discussing here. These site profilers are determining. 

These are lives of people that have worked for years 

and years and given 40 years to a nuclear site, come up 

with a latent cancer that is produced by a daughter --

a daughter element and then 20 years down the road they 

come up with these cancers and then they're being 

denied because of a dose level recommendation, because 

of a worst case scenario that you say you give the 

highest levels there on every area. Well, if that is 

so, then many of these people would not be denied. 

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Under the exposures of this one individual who worked 

at Savannah River Site for almost -- I think it was 

approximately from the opening of it to 1982. This 

person died. The widow applied in the compensation 

package and of course she received her package the 

other day, you are denied. And he was exposed 297 

times, acute, to plutonium, to uranium. He was chronic 

all the way through on gamma, which is ionizing 

radiation which is the tissues, the lungs especially, 

which produces cancer. The epidemiology which I have 

done has gone all the way back to where it produces 

squamous cell. So there is things here that y'all need 

to be made aware of that have to be opened up to a 

layman's terms. These people can grasp what you are 

sending to their doorsteps. When they get this piece 

of information they have no knowledge how to read a 

chart. They have no knowledge of any understanding of 

your codes, anything at all. And it's unfair. Even if 

they get on the web site and they go in and some of 

these old widows don't have computers. They wouldn't 

even know how to run one if they had one. Okay? 

DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 

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MS. ROSA: And most of these women are widows of 

nuclear workers and they are approaching age 80. I 

have one lady who is age 80 and she was denied. She 

called me crying. I said just -- it's -- this is 

unconceivable (sic) that a man was exposed this many 

times, and by the charts he was well above on every --

on every contaminated -- from -- from whatever area 

that he was in, and he was in the whole site and every 

different area and he was exposed to every probably 

known element that could -- he could have been exposed 

to, acute and chronic, and he was denied. So there's 

definitely not minor things here in this procedural 

report that the site profile is for doing. They are 

major. Especially the missed dose conception and how 

it is come up with. Okay? And the reason I'm very 

adamant about this is because these are widows. These 

are also minor children at the time of their father's 

death. These were minor children who are now not going 

to receive an awardment (sic). They're not going to 

receive an awardment. The minor children are not going 

to receive an awardment. At the time they were minor, 

but now it has been re-recommended that it is a minor 

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child now that will receive the awardment, not the time 

of their father's death. And so there's got to be some 

type of understanding that these dose recommendations, 

missed dose, the IMBA software which we need to get 

into as individuals, we need to see that software. 

Things that go back in a scenario 40 years ago when the 

elements that you're saying is the highest dose level, 

using the highest level in that piece of software, 

apparently however that is being set up, it is causing 

many people to lose their awardment, missed dose, the 

dose levels. Now if a man was exposed 297 times of 

acute to uranium, to plutonium, and I've got every one 

of his plutoniums (sic) that he was exposed to. I've 

got his epidemiology. There is no way this man should 

have been denied his -- his widow should have been 

denied her awardment (sic). Now that's what I want to 

come in on. These are not minor issues. These are 

major issues. These profilers need to go back in --

maybe your -- your calculations that I have talked to a 

scientist, Dr. David Allen at NIOSH, and I have asked 

him to get into that IMBA, and he has explained to me 

that is privatized. If I get a group from a union, 

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they can open it up. If I send an attorney, it can be 

opened. And so this is where I'm coming from and the 

epidemiology is there in this case concerning this 

person, that they were well in the level of where this 

cancer was not a probability of causation, which you 

are using to deny people, or at least as likely to have 

caused -- believe me, these are human beings out here, 

and these widows have been denied a husband, a child's 

father has been taken away due to a cancer caused by 

the ionizing radiation and beryllium, and here they are 

sitting in their house crying because they cannot 

believe they've been denied. This comes down to the 

human level. This doesn't come down to scientific 

protocols. This comes down to the human compassionate 

level of how can you deny a person, knowing her husband 

was exposed 297 times, acute and chronic, to every 

ionizing radiation there was and the daughters that it 

breaks down to in latent cancers. So that's my comment 

for today. 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, we thank you for your comments. But 

I know the issue on that software is still being looked 

at. NIOSH itself --

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MS. ROSA: Well, under your 82.30 --

DR. ZIEMER: -- does not control the availability of 

that, but -- and I'm not sure what the status of that 

is now. Is there some --

MS. ROSA: Well, let's go to your status of what was 

put in by NIOSH, which was under 82 --

DR. ZIEMER: No. Well, our Board will have --

MS. ROSA: Okay, 82-2 --

DR. ZIEMER: Well, our Board will have accessibility to 

that in terms of our contractor when we go back --

MS. ROSA: I would appreciate it --

DR. ZIEMER: -- and review the NIOSH findings so we'll 

certainly make use of that. I don't know where it 

stands with respect to being made available to members 

of the public --

MS. ROSA: Well, I think under the Freedom of 

Information Act it should be made aware to the public. 

We should be able to get in that software to see how 

they are doing a dose reconstruction of individuals. 

DR. ZIEMER: I suspect if it was a government software 

program, that would work. I don't know if any of the 

staff knows --

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MS. ROSA: Under the Freedom --

DR. ZIEMER: -- the status of that --

MS. ROSA: -- of Information Act --

MR. ELLIOTT: Paul --

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Paul, this is Larry Elliott. 

DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, Larry. 

MR. ELLIOTT: If I might speak to this just a moment. 

Yes, ma'am, Ms. Rosa, we -- this is Larry Elliott, I'm 

the --

MS. ROSA: I know on your -- I'm on your profile. I 

have your sheet in front of me. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Okay. 

MS. ROSA: I'm very efficient down here. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Okay. We are looking into how we can 

make IMBA available by -- either through a help desk or 

by look-up tables -- a help desk which would serve an 

individual to understand how IMBA works, look-up tables 

for, you know, if a person had a health physicist 

working with them might be able to use the -- if they 

couldn't get their hands on the software, could use the 

look-up tables and work with the individual, as well. 

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MS. ROSA: Okay. 

MR. ELLIOTT: So we're working on that. But let me --

let me also say to you that these models that appear in 

this IMBA software --

MS. ROSA: Uh-huh. 

MR. ELLIOTT: -- are international consensus models. 

MS. ROSA: I understand that. 

MR. ELLIOTT: They have been published. 

MS. ROSA: I'm very well aware of that. 

MR. ELLIOTT: And so they are accessible. 

MS. ROSA: I'm very well aware of that. 

MR. ELLIOTT: They are of public domain. 

MS. ROSA: There is still, though, some discrepancy 

among scientists concerning the different variables 

there. There are some discrepancies and what is 

allowable. As I am saying, you're dealing with human 

beings who have lost fathers and husbands. You are 

dealing here with widows, many widows of nuclear 

workers who worked in the very cold war years and being 

denied with layman terms. They don't understand any of 

this stuff. They couldn't read it if they wanted to. 

They couldn't understand what you mailed to their front 

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doorstep no more than a man in the moon. Okay? And 

it's unfair, to me, that when they receive this, they 

look at it and they give up and they sign that waiver 

on the back page and they literally lose what is 

obviously -- obviously this is a very fair -- obviously 

should be deserving. And as I said, these guidelines 

were set, and every time we turn around there's 

amendments, there's amendments, there's changes, 

there's dose levels. It's either stay one way and 

leave it, the dose levels that I have on every element 

that go all the way from inhalation to ground to water 

to tissues, all the way down to mortality, the rates of 

levels that this person would receive that would cause 

a cancer that would be a death-causing cancer. I have 

all those rates and they are not the same. And these 

are the most current ones that are available. This is 

what's concerning me. Leave it, if you're going to, to 

keep changing or you're not going to let us get in to 

see this information and then we're denied, that is a 

very unfair practice. And I believe, like I said --

and thank God I'm hearing you say that IMBA's going to 

be opened up partially so a layman can get into it and 

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be able to maybe understand some of it. Okay? 

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. We hope that that will happen 

before very long --

MS. ROSA: Okay, and I hope so, too --

DR. ZIEMER: -- for you and others, and we appreciate 

your comment --

MS. ROSA: -- and I hope that you will not look at 

these as minor in your procedure --

DR. ZIEMER: No, we understand that. 

MS. ROSA: -- with contractors today, it's not minor. 

Bioassay is not minor. 

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

MS. ROSA: None of those things are minor. Okay? They 

are major. When you talk of a man's life or a woman's 

life when they have lost a concerning -- their life 

giving to the nation during the cold war and then they 

get no recompense for this, none whatsoever, and 

knowing these dose levels. Okay? We know those dose 

levels. I know them. Laymens (sic) don't, but I know 

those dose levels and it is unfair to these people. 

It's very unfair, and I'm going to address this all the 

way up. I'm going to address this all the way up back 

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and again to say this is not fair and this is going all 

the way to the President again. This is unfair that a 

individual for these cold war or families is unfair. 

Okay? 

DR. ZIEMER: And that's fine. That's the route that 

probably is most effective for you anyway at this 

point, so thank you very much for --

MS. ROSA: Thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: -- those comments. Let me ask if there 

are other members of the public on the call that wish 

to make any comment today? 

 (No responses) 

DR. ZIEMER: If there are not, then I will declare the 

meeting adjourned and thank everyone for their 

participation. Thank you very much. 

MS. HOMER: Thank you. 

DR. ZIEMER: This meeting is adjourned. 

(Meeting adjourned at 2:20 p.m.) 

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C E R T I F I C 

A T E 

STATE OF GEORGIA )

)

COUNTY OF FULTON ) 

I, STEVEN RAY GREEN, being a Certified Merit Court 

Reporter in and for the State of Georgia, do hereby certify 

that the foregoing transcript was reduced to typewriting by 

me personally or under my direct supervision, and is a true, 

complete, and correct transcript of the aforesaid 

proceedings reported by me. 

I further certify that I am not related to, employed 

by, counsel to, or attorney for any parties, attorneys, or 

counsel involved herein; nor am I financially interested in 

this matter. 

WITNESS MY HAND AND OFFICIAL SEAL this _____ day of 

April, 2004. 

___________________________

 STEVEN RAY GREEN, CVR-CM 

 GA CCR No. A-2102 

NANCY LEE & ASSOCIATES 
 

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