National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) 

Worker Outreach Meeting for Los Alamos National Laboratory 

Meeting Date: Wednesday, May 9, 2007, 9:30 a.m. 

Meeting with: Executive Board of International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) Local 3279, 

Los Alamos County Fire Department, White Rock, New Mexico 

NIOSH/ORAU Team: 

Gregory Macievic, PhD, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Office 

of Compensation Analysis and Support (OCAS), Health Physicist 

Jack Buddenbaum, Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) Team, Site Profile Team Leader 

Don Stewart, ORAU Team, Dose Reconstructor 

Mark Lewis, Advanced Technologies and Laboratories International, Inc. (ATL), Senior 

Outreach Specialist 

Proceedings 

This is the first of three meetings between a team from NIOSH and the ORAU Dose 

Reconstruction Project, and members of IAFF Local 3279 representing the firefighters from Los 

Alamos County Fire Department who serve as first responders to calls at Los Alamos National 

Laboratory (LANL). 

Mark Lewis introduced himself to the members of the Executive Board of IAFF Local 3279. He 

thanked them for inviting NIOSH and its contractors to meet with them. Mr. Lewis stated that he 

is on a leave of absence from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant to serve as a union liaison 

for the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) Dose Reconstruction Project for NIOSH. 

Mr. Lewis introduced the NIOSH/ORAU Team: Health Physicist Greg Macievic, Site Profile 

Team Leader Jack Buddenbaum, and Dose Reconstructor Don Stewart. 

Mr. Lewis stated that the main purpose of the meeting was to get information for the Los Alamos 

National Laboratory (LANL) site profile. He stated that when the team had met with other 

unions representing LANL workers, he had not realized that the fire department had its own 

union until they had contacted him. 

Mr. Lewis asked for permission to record the meeting to document participants’ concerns. He 

circulated a sign-in sheet. Mr. Lewis then turned the program over to Mr. Buddenbaum for the 

presentation. 

Mr. Buddenbaum thanked the Executive Board members for attending. He stated that worker 

input is an important part of site profile development. Mr. Buddenbaum explained that site 

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profiles are “living” documents that are revised when NIOSH gets new information that may 

improve the dose reconstruction process. He said that he is health physicist with the ORAU 

Team, and that his primary responsibility has been to lead the team that developed the technical 

basis documents (TBDs) that make up the site profile for LANL. The site profile is a tool that is 

used in the dose reconstruction for Part B claims for workers from Los Alamos. Dose 

reconstructors use models approved by national and international organizations to estimate the 

radiation doses for these claims. 

Mr. Buddenbaum stated that the most important reason for the meeting was to give the attendees 

the opportunity to share their work experiences and concerns with the team. He encouraged them 

to also submit their concerns, comments, and questions in writing to NIOSH. He said that their 

input may potentially have a real impact on how NIOSH estimates radiation doses because the 

documents from LANL do not necessarily fill in all the pieces of the puzzle. It is important that 

NIOSH hears about the workers’ experiences to fill in the missing pieces. 

Mr. Buddenbaum began his presentation: The Energy Employees Occupational Illness 

Compensation Program Act of 2000 (EEOICPA or “the Act”) was signed by President Clinton 

to provide compensation and medical care for eligible Department of Energy (DOE) and Atomic 

Weapons Employer (AWE) workers who have become ill as a result of their work at a DOE 

nuclear weapons facility. A worker’s survivors may also be compensated, in some cases. 

AWE sites were contracted to DOE or the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to provide 

production, materials testing, and other services for uranium and other radioactive metals used in 

the production of nuclear weapons. Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania is an example of an AWE 

site. They contracted with the AEC in the 1950s to mill, cast, and roll uranium metal because 

they had the production capabilities for that work. 

There are two parts to the Act: Subtitle B and Subtitle E. Subtitle B deals with cancers caused by 

occupational radiation exposure, and Subtitle E deals with illnesses caused by exposure to toxic 

chemicals in the workplace. 

The compensation program is managed and overseen by the Department of Labor (DOL). 

Current or former workers, or certain survivors, submit their claims to DOL. DOL verifies the 

worker’s employment at an eligible facility and the medical diagnosis. DOL sends only Part B 

claims for radiation-induced cancers to NIOSH for dose reconstruction to determine whether the 

claim may be compensated. Part B claims for other illnesses and Part E claims for illnesses 

caused by chemical exposures are handled solely by DOL. 

After NIOSH receives a Part B cancer claim for dose reconstruction, they send a request to DOE 

for the worker’s personnel records – film badge or TLD results, medical X-rays given as a 

condition of employment, bioassay results, and any other information that may be used to 

estimate the worker’s radiation dose. If there are no monitoring data or dosimetry data for a 

worker, NIOSH may use monitoring records or other information for coworkers to determine the 

worker’s dose. A claim may be compensated if the worker’s cancer is “at least as likely as not” 

(50% or greater probability) to have been caused by their work for DOE. Dose reconstructors 

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take a second look at any claim that falls in the mid- to high-40% range to make sure that the 

most claimant-favorable assumptions were applied in the dose reconstruction. 

Worker 1: What are the biggest potential “blots” for the dosimetry program, for example? How 

do you fix that or adjust the calculation? 

Mr. Buddenbaum: There are a number of techniques. Don Stewart is a dose reconstructor on our 

team, so I’ll ask him to address that. 

Mr. Stewart: We have identified systematic problems with different sites and LANL is no 

exception. For example, we noticed when we reviewed the program that the neutron doses that 

were measured in the 1970s were underestimated. So we have implemented provisions to 

calculate the neutron dose in a more accurate and overestimating manner. You will see that 

throughout the sites. The site profile documents have fixes to address those inadequacies so we 

can bring the doses up to what they should have been. Dose monitoring techniques at LANL 

developed over time, but there were certain things that they missed. 

In some cases, NIOSH assigns unmonitored dose because not necessarily all of the radiation 

types were effectively monitored. Sometimes those doses were underestimated. So, for example, 

we might use a projected neutron dose based on a measured photon dose. We know that the 

photon doses were pretty accurate. If we come up with a neutron-to-photon ratio that shows that 

the most highly-exposed neutron workers at LANL would have gotten about 75% of the amount 

of photon dose from neutrons, we add that in. So any fixes for systematic problems that we have 

identified were implemented in the site profile. We have a couple of those fixes for LANL. 

Additionally, each dose reconstructor needs to look at the record – the human record – and 

decide whether it’s accurate. For example, in a case that I did, the employee had described two 

periods of employment but we only had dose monitoring data for one – the later period when the 

worker was a draftsman. He had described responding to an incident during the first period, so 

we needed to go back to the site and look for the data. So we are going to look at all of the 

information in the case. What we need to say here is that the interview with the claimant is a very 

important reference for us. We take all the things that the claimant says during the interview 

seriously. What they say may not change the dose estimate. In fact, it usually does not. But if 

they give us enough information, we can see the flaws in the process or in the records. We have 

gone back and looked at TBDs because of comments we have heard in the interviews. 

Worker 1: One example that I can cite from a firefighter’s perspective – and we spoke about this 

off the record earlier – is that when we respond to incidents at the Lab in certain laboratories that 

possibly contain radiological material, we tuck our TLDs into our structural gear. 

Worker 2: We have our TLDs on a lanyard or on our shirt, and then we put our bunker gear – 

our turn-out gear – over it. 

Mr. Buddenbaum: In that case, the TLD is measuring the radiation that is penetrating your 

bunker gear. Frankly, high-energy protons are not slowed down that much by your bunker gear, 

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so you are getting a pretty accurate measurement. If you are wearing a TLD outside your bunker 

gear, you are probably getting an overestimate of your actual dose. 

Worker 1: But that doesn’t take the contamination into account. 

Mr. Buddenbaum: No, it doesn’t. 

Mr. Stewart: There are a couple of reasons why. The TLD that you get is for your external dose. 

Contamination is something else. Contamination and (unintelligible) controls are two reasons: 

We don’t want to go outside the control area and we don’t want the person to inadvertently take 

it into their body. On the surface of the body, it’s not really that much of a hazard. I can calculate 

a skin dose from beta contamination. What we are looking at is the cancer and the chances of 

that cancer occurring in the exact spot where that contamination was. That would need to be 

looked at and analyzed in detail. But generally, with contamination, you want to get it off you so 

that you don’t take it into your body. And that is particularly true with alpha contamination. I’m 

sure that you have been told that alpha contamination is not hazardous outside the body, but you 

can eat it or breathe it. That’s why you want to hold on to your bunker gear and your SCBA. You 

need to have those things on all the time and I’m sure that is how you are trained. 

Worker 1: That’s true, with the exception of wildland fires or shot activities that go on in the Lab 

sites. We are not wearing that equipment. In that situation, we are not sure exactly what we are 

being exposed to or to what extent. We believe that maybe our doses have not been accurate 

because of that. 

Mr. Stewart: Have you been submitting bioassay samples for urinalyses? 

Worker 1: We did in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, and then they dissolved the program. 

[Redacted] and I started in the DOE days in 1989. Since then, we’ve seen that program go by the 

wayside. 

Mr. Stewart: Generally, we are speaking of the particulars of the modern programs here at 

LANL. 

Worker 1: Didn’t you say those are categorized by site as far as what those exposure levels 

might be? 

Mr. Stewart: Yes. I would go to the LANL site documents and figure out the possible 

environmental contamination levels for what you might have been exposed to in an airborne 

situation. That’s the environmental dose. We calculate both external dose from contamination in 

the environment and the internal dose from what you might be breathing in out there. Those 

numbers for LANL are not yet complete. We have them from 1971 onward. 

Worker 1: Does that take the legacy waste sites into account? 

Mr. Buddenbaum: Yes. 

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Mr. Stewart: For the worst cases, we estimate the dose using the highest measured values. 

Mr. Buddenbaum: Right. And, certainly, those legacy burial sites, for example, there is a lot 

more air monitoring that has gone on at the Lab to see if there is any fugitive dust conditions and 

things like that. From what I have seen in the documents, a lot of that material is covered. Now 

there were workers who covered that debris and such that might have been contaminated. And 

that becomes a question of did they have adequate respiratory protection on and so forth when 

they were operating bulldozers and whatever they were using to cover the material up. But over 

the years, LANL has added more and more air sampling locations around the reservation and 

within the DOE boundary, which covers a pretty big area, as you know. The legacy waste – the 

exposures that might have occurred back then when some of the initial burials took place – back 

in the 1950s and 1960s – the records aren’t particularly great in terms of what went in there 

necessarily, what sort of protection the workers had, particularly respiratory protection 

equipment. Often times, they would be wearing dosimeters – film badges back in those days are 

what they used to use. Today it’s TLDs. But, you know, the records aren’t as good. Today, if you 

are concerned about your exposures, those areas should be fairly well characterized. As you have 

your responsibilities in the areas that you’re supposed to cover at the Lab, I suggest that you talk 

with LANL folks. They should be more knowledgeable than anybody. If you don’t feel like 

you’re getting your questions answered, then perhaps we can look into it as well. In the more 

modern days, there is quite a bit of air sampling data out there. We are using that to calculate 

environmental doses for claimants. 

Worker 1: Well, the problem that I have is the air sampling – using the Cerro Grande fire as an 

example – is that the documented results added filters for some of those air sampling sites so it’s 

debatable that they were actually monitoring at all times during the fire. Secondly, it was 

documented that there weren’t enough air sampling sites. They couldn’t possibly have 

documented all of the sites that the firefighters were at. For example, one of the legacy sites 

actually caught on fire. Right after the fire (interrupted). 

Mr. Buddenbaum: Was the waste actually in the fire? 

Worker 1: It was a subterranean fire. 

Mr. Buddenbaum: Where was that fire? Do you know which one it was? 

Worker 2: I think it was at CMI. It might have been at TA-11. 

Worker 1: They asked us to go and use penetrating nozzles to put it out, but the fire 

department... 

Mr. Buddenbaum: It was one of the legacy burials? 

Worker 1: Yes. Well, we are assuming that it is. They asked the fire department to go put it out 

using penetrating nozzles, which we did not do because we were concerned about the 

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contaminants. So what the Lab wound up doing – to my understanding, I wasn’t there – was that 

they sent out folks in Level A suits to do it. 

One of the things that might be helpful – and I’ve made a note about this... was that... well, it 

was certainly during the Cerro Grande fire, so I know when those dates are. We have asked 

several times to see their incident files for the fire protection as well as the security guard 

protection. They keep a log on every incident that is called out, but a lot of that is classified. 

Worker 2: That’s our biggest problem, too, when it comes to them letting us know about 

potential exposures. A lot of it is classified. 

Mr. Buddenbaum: Last week, I finally got an email from our DOE interface to LANL. They 

have opened the door for us to come in to look at those incident files, but we haven’t made the 

arrangements to do it yet. That’s not to say that the incident that you are referring to is in there, 

but we certainly will look to see if that occurred and if there was air monitoring going on and so 

forth. Maybe there will be some information about the workers who were involved in that 

situation. Again, that’s something for us to look at and we would modify our site profile 

document and repeat that information in dose reconstructions if we think it’s going to help. 

Worker 1: Another thing that you’re going to find out from others who come in here is that we 

were in areas during the fire where we are typically not allowed to go. 

At this point, the recording device stopped. 

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