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 THIRTY-EIGHTH MEETING ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH VOL. II DAY TWO ABRWH BOARD MEETING The verbatim transcript of the Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health held at the Marriott Metro Center, Washington, D.C., on June 15, 2006. 2 C O N T E N T S June 15, 2006 WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 9 DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR DR. LEWIS WADE, DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL AMES SEC PETITION: 10 NIOSH PRESENTATION, DR. JAMES NETON, NIOSH 11 PETITIONER COMMENTS, DR. LARS FUORTES, 38 UNIV. OF IOWA @ AMES WORKING GROUP REPORT, DR. JAMES MELIUS, 45 WORKING GROUP CHAIR BOARD DISCUSSION 68 SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON 100 AMES (CONT’D) 108 NIOSH PRESENTATION ON PARTIAL DOSE RECONSTRUCTIONS 110 FOR NON-PRESUMPTIVE CANCERS, MR. STUART HINNEFELD, NIOSH (CONT’D) 133 CONGRESSMAN TOM UDALL 125 UPDATE ON ISSUES RELATED TO NTS & PPG SEC PETITIONS (250 DAYS), DR. JAMES NETON, NIOSH 148 SENATOR REID’S MESSAGE, SANDI SCHUBERT 163 ROCKY FLATS SEC UPDATE 199 MR. MARK GRIFFON, WORKING GROUP CHAIR COMMENT BY MS. WANDA MUNN 250 Y12 SEC UPDATE: 260 NIOSH PRESENTATION, DR. JAMES NETON, NIOSH 264 WORKING GROUP REPORT 285 MR. MARK GRIFFON, WORKING GROUP CHAIR BOARD DISCUSSION 293 3 SC&A INITIAL PRESENTATION ON 4TH ROUND OF DOSE RECONSTRUCTION CASES, MS. KATHY BEHLING, SC&A 299 PUBLIC COMMENT 325 COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 381 4 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. -- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation of a word which is transcribed in its original form as reported. -- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is available. -- "uh-huh" represents an affirmative response, and "uh-uh" represents a negative response. -- "*" denotes a spelling based on phonetics, without reference available. -- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 5 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 WADE, Lewis, Ph.D. Senior Science Advisor National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Washington, DC MEMBERSHIP 1 CLAWSON, Bradley 2 Senior Operator, Nuclear Fuel Handling 3 Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory DeHART, Roy Lynch, M.D., M.P.H. Director The Vanderbilt Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine Professor of Medicine Nashville, Tennessee GIBSON, Michael H. President Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union Local 5-4200 Miamisburg, Ohio 6 GRIFFON, Mark A. President Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc. Salem, New Hampshire 1 LOCKEY, James, M.D. 2 Professor, Department of Environmental Health 3 College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati 4 MELIUS, James Malcom, M.D., Ph.D. 5 Director 6 New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund 7 Albany, New York MUNN, Wanda I. Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired) Richland, Washington POSTON, John W., Sr., B.S., M.S., Ph.D. Professor, Texas A&M University College Station, Texas 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 LASHAWN SHIELDS, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH STEVEN RAY GREEN, Certified Merit Court Reporter 7 SIGNED-IN AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS AL-NABULSI, ISAF, NCRP BATT, TONY, LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL BEARD, ADRIAN, DOC BEHLING, HANS, SC&A BEHLING, KATHY, SC&A BISTLINE, ROBERT W., SC&A BOWE, DAVID, SPFPA LOCAL 66 PORTS BROEHM, JASON, CDC WASHINGTON OFFICE CHANG, C C, HHS CHANLOW, MICHAEL, WASHINGTON POST COHEN, SANFORD, SC&A COOPER, DEANNA, LANL DEHART, JULIA, OHA INC. ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH/OCAS FITZGERALD, JOSEPH, SC&A FUORTES, LAURENCE, UNIV OF IOWA GRANDE, JAMES, DOL HAUGHLY, MINDI, NIOSH HEARL, FRANK, NIOSH HINNEFELD, STUART, NIOSH HOLMES, CAROLYN HOSS, LARRY, DOL HOWARD, JOHN, NIOSH HOWELL, EMILY, HHS ISHAK, LAURIE, NIOSH JARM, SHERLEY, DOL JOSEPH, TIMOTHY, ORAUT KENOYER, JUDSON, DADE MOELLER & ASSOCS. KIMPAN, KATE, ORAU KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL LEWIS, JOHN, OMBUDSMAN LEWIS, MARK, ATL MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A MAURO, JOHN, SC&A MCCOY, EILEEN, OMBUDSMAN’S OFFICE MCDOUGALL, VERNON, ATL MCKEEL, DANIEL, MD, SO. IL NUCLEAR WORKERS MILLER, RELADE P., NIOSH MILLER, RICHARD, GAP MOSIER, ROBERTA, DOL 8 NESVET, JEFF, DOL PARKER, TREY, OMBUDSMAN PLATNER, JAMES, CPWR POTTER, HERMAN, USW PRESLEY, LOUISE S., WIFE OF ROBERT PRESLEY RAFKY, MICHAEL, CDC RAMSPOTT, JOHN, SO. IL NUCLEAR WORKERS RUTHERFORD, LAVON, NIOSH SAMPSON, BOB, GAO SCHAEFFER, D. MICHAEL, SAIC SCHAUER, DAVID A., NCRP STEPHENS, VICKIE, IAM CREST TENFORDE, THOMAS S., NCRP TURCIC, PETE, DOL TYNER, CHARLOTTE E. ULSH, BRANT, NIOSH WALBURN, JEFF, SPFPA LOCAL 66 PORTS WALKER JOYCE, BSAG WING, JENNY, HARKIN 9 P R O C E E D I N G S (8:30 a.m.) WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 1 DR. ZIEMER: Good morning, everyone. We begin our 2 second day of the 38th meeting of the Advisory 3 Board on Radiation and Worker Health. Again I 4 begin with my usual reminders, to ask you to 5 register your attendance -- oh, that reminds 6 me; I forgot to do that this morning -- 7 register your attendance in the registration 8 book out in the hall. 9 Also, if you're a member of the public and wish 10 to address the assembly during the public 11 comment session later today, please sign up in 12 the book in the hallway, as well. 13 Again I'll remind you that copies of the agenda 14 and other pertinent documents are on the table 15 in the back of the room. 16 Let me stop a moment and ask Dr. Wade if he has 17 any additional comments before we address the 18 agenda items. 19 DR. WADE: Two briefly. One, welcome again, 20 and I always thank the Board for its -- its 10 1 hard work. 2 This morning we're going to start with the Ames 3 SEC petition. What's interesting about that 4 and worthy of note, I think, is this will be 5 the first petition that will come before the 6 Board where SC&A has been aggressively involved 7 in terms of looking into the issues. And 8 again, one of the things we've tried to do -- 9 or this Board has tried to do is make all the 10 processes open and -- and make the debate rich 11 and full and open, so I think it's significant 12 that now we've brought that to the SEC arena 13 and this will really be the first formal one 14 that will play out that way. 15 AMES SEC PETITION: 16 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, and in 17 connection with the Ames petition we're going 18 to begin with the NIOSH presentation, then 19 we'll go to comments from the petitioners. 20 Then there will be a working group report and 21 then we'll have open Board discussion. 22 And let me also ask, before we get into the 23 presentations, in addition to those here in the 24 assembly representing Ames, are there any of 25 the petitioners on the telephone or will there 11 1 be any additional ones on the telephone? 2 UNIDENTIFIED: Not to my knowledge. 3 DR. ZIEMER: Not to your knowledge. Okay. 4 Thank you. 5 NIOSH PRESENTATION, DR. JAMES NETON, NIOSH 6 Then let's begin with the NIOSH presentation. 7 Dr. Neton from NIOSH will give us the NIOSH 8 evaluation report of the Ames SEC petition. 9 DR. NETON: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. Good 10 morning, everyone. I'm pleased to present, as 11 Dr. Ziemer said, our -- NIOSH's evaluation of 12 the petition SEC-00038, which was on behalf of 13 -- a petition on behalf of Ames Laboratory. I 14 might say that in this role that NIOSH has in 15 evaluating sufficient accuracy for the SEC 16 process, oftentimes there's a lot of room for 17 valid scientific debate as to whether we can do 18 a dose reconstruction with sufficient accuracy. 19 And I -- I hope that you mind find out before I 20 finish my presentation that we have a pretty 21 bright line here and a very compelling basis 22 for our -- our decision that we made on this 23 particular petition. 24 Just a little bit about the background and 25 petition-related activities, we received the 12 1 petition on June 29th, 2005. It was qualified 2 for -- as a petition on September 23rd, 2005. 3 That is, it met the requirements that are -- 4 are in the SEC rule, part 82.7 through 82.9. 5 It had to meet certain criteria, like the 6 petitioner had to be an eligible petitioner and 7 there had to be some supporting basis -- 8 supported by affidavits as to why we couldn't 9 do dose reconstructions with sufficient 10 accuracy, and that was met on the 23rd. 11 NIOSH issued our evaluation report on April -- 12 I think the report is dated April 9th, but it 13 was distributed on April 10th, 2006. It was 14 distributed to the Advisory Board and the 15 petitioners, and also posted on our web site, 16 as our normal practice.