January 22-23, 1997

Joseph Fitzgerald: Opening remarks.

Ron Edmond: Ground rules.

Margaret Morrow: Deputy Vice President for Defense and Manufacturing for LMES: In my time at Y-12, about 30 years, we have dealt with beryllium (Be) and Be compounds. We have tried to make sure that we had standards in place and met those standards. Those standards have changed, and we have found that those standards are not adequate to protect workers. At LMES, we have taken the ALARA approach so that we can do everything we can to ensure that employees do not receive exposures while the standards are being evaluated. We welcome the chance to look at the standards and discuss what is appropriate. We will support the work in looking at the health studies, dealing with persons who have worked with or around Be. We will provide you with any technical information that is required. We will submit a separate written document with a number of details about the technical aspects of Be exposure at the Y-12 Plant Site. We embrace the opportunity to go into an open forum and to look for answers about what we need to do to make sure that persons who work around Be can do so ensured that their health is not in jeopardy. We have set up a number of initiatives for those persons on our site who have been diagnosed with CBD. We will continue to support those persons with CBD.

David Weitzman: The ALARA approach--will your documentation describe in a practical way what that means?

Fitzgerald: Has it been difficult to identify the Be worker population?

Kevin Sikora: What would you recommend for a new exposure limit?

Fitzgerald: Are there any current operational issues, any active work involving Be where you’ve been applying ALARA?

Fitzgerald: Have you outlined D&D areas?

Fitzgerald: What would be the ALARA approach to releasing an area for D&D?

Weitzman: Please provide cost information associated with the various control measures.

Jackie Rogers: You mentioned initiatives you’ve set up for individuals with CBD. Please provide details in your written comments.

Fitzgerald: Medical removal--it would be useful to get a perspective on current Y-12 policy.

Lou Nadeau: The "reasonable" in ALARA points to economic costs. Can you discuss the method for determining what is reasonable?

Sikora: Please give details on the effectiveness of engineering controls.

Gary Foster: (SEE WRITTEN STATEMENT)

Fitzgerald: Given your considerable research and personal experience, what is your opinion on an appropriate exposure limit?

Weitzman: Are you also going to recommend other suggested controls? (Tape ran out)

Rusty Stiles, CIH at Rocky Flats: Provided information about what’s happening at RF. They have two efforts: the first is a site Be characterization. We have 70 cases of CBD and 127 people who are sensitized. Of those with CBD, 19 are machinists, 6 are secretarial/clerical, 5 are engineers, etc. We know that, within 2 to 5 years, sensitized people have been developing CBD. He showed a map of Be locations at RF: the 400 area, machining; the 800 area, analytical work; and the 700 areas, specialized processing. In some of these areas, we don’t know why people have contracted CBD, because we thought the buildings were clean. The second effort is an applied industrial hygiene survey (Kaiser Hill and Radian Corporation). These are some of the considerations in justifying the characterizations:

* CBD cases are rapidly increasing.

* Want to continue medical surveillance program.

* Want to appropriately characterize facilities.

* Want to manage D&D to deal with Be contamination in the smartest way.

* Want to design effective controls.

* Want to sample all Be facilities, but can’t afford everything, so we’re developing a sampling strategy.

We have five project phases: (1) work planning and management, (2) sampling, (3) Be management plan, (4) Be characterization report, (5) database development.

We have a lot of information about the facilities where there’s a high probability of Be contamination, and we have some information about moderate probability facilities. But, we don’t have much information about facilities where the probability of Be contamination is low, yet we’re finding people in those facilities who are becoming sensitized.

We are using personal, area, surface, and particle size characterization monitoring. At RF, we have an HSP, which mainly says to keep Be levels as low as possible; the number we use is 25 mg/ft2. That’s not cutting it because people are still becoming sensitized. So, we’re going to take some bulk samples and do particle size characterization. The analytical method we’ll use is ICP mass spectrometry, which we feel gives us the lowest limit of detection. An interesting question involves the size of the particles and how that relates to inhalation and deposition in the lung.

We currently use 0.5 mg/m3 at RF as an action level. We’ve been doing that since 1989. It’s an administrative standard that we’ve come up with. But even with lowering it to 0.5, we’re still having people develop CBD.

We’ll be characterizing 35 buildings. Then, a site management plan, site characterization report, and computer database will follow. We should have final product by September. We’re hoping for new or improved protection criteria, new or improved release criteria, stratification of relative risk by facility, streamlined safety costs for D&D, and an information link to medical surveillance.

We thought about putting warning labels on equipment. But when you look at toxic tort and liability, warning labels don’t buy you any exemption from litigation. So, the label has to say the right things.

Fitzgerald: Would you characterize this as RF’s version of ALARA? You mentioned cost as being a restraint. I’m just curious about how you make the judgment about how far to go; what is reasonable?

Fitzgerald: Is it really feasible to rule areas as low probability vs. high probability when you’re getting into selective dismantlement?

Fitzgerald: How does training fit into your operations and practices (particularly with the subcontractors on site)?

Fitzgerald: Will you be doing real-time operational monitoring?

Fitzgerald: Are you reconsidering your action limit?

Fitzgerald: Asked for more information about medical monitoring in submittal.

Weitzman: What are you using as the level of detectability?

Sikora: You indicated that 25 mg/ft2 was not good enough because people are being sensitized. Do you have wipe sampling data for low-probability facilities?

Kevin: What type of activities will get personal monitoring?

Kevin: Is this site characterization effort something you would consider reasonable to require for any D&D operation?

Fitzgerald: What guidance would you see as being of value for the Department?

Fitzgerald: You mentioned affordability. What are the cost comparisons for 9 mg/ft2 as opposed to the limit of detectability? (Tape ran out)

Allen: Talked about the extra risks to the worker from the stress of additional PPE (exertion, overheating).

Weitzman: There’s clearly a point of view that the CBD cases resulted from overexposures that just weren’t measured. Is that your conclusion, or is your analysis that people are getting disease from lower exposures?

Dwayne H______, RF: In any future Be operations, from our experience at RF, I would suggest limiting the number of individuals working in that operation. You should have separate ventilation systems. You should limit the number of areas where Be is handled. The fact that we have Be sensitization in a reporter who was allowed to go through a Be area is ludicrous. With regard to David’s question, I want to talk about two individuals working at RF. One was a secretary working in Building 91, a very low probability risk area. She was hired in 1952, worked there for a year, and never went into a Be shop. We know that Be billets were stored in the hallway covered in plastic. She left the plant site in 1953 and 10-12 years later started to suffer from a chronic respiratory condition. In 1995, we found her in Florida, and she was diagnosed with CBD. In her case, exposure was probably extraordinarily minimal. We have another secretary, hired in 1988 and left in 1994, who is now sensitized. During her last 2 years of employment, her job was to pull charts and building plans out of old files. It’s hard to believe she came anywhere close to 2 mg/m3.

Donna Cragle, ORISE: ORISE has been conducting a study in Oak Ridge since 1991. The primary objective is to determine the prevalence of CBD in former Be workers at Y-12. At the beginning, we thought there might not be any cases at Y-12. But, by the time we started our study, we knew of one case that had been diagnosed by an outside physician. We also wanted to look at the usefulness of LPT in detecting the disease. We also wanted to look at the level of sensitization in the population and the various factors (form of the Be, specific job tasks, etc.).

The estimate of 4121 Be workers was compiled from a number of sources.

(REMAINDER OF THE PRESENTATION CLOSELY FOLLOWED HER VIEWGRAPHS)

The information about individuals’ exposure frequency and the number of hours they worked with Be was collected via the questionnaire (self-reported). They want to streamline the medical examination process; it has been taking an entire day per worker. But, in the future, it won’t involve going off-site. They also want to expand the study to include ONRL, K-25, and Mound workers (70 to 80 people at Mound have worked with Be).

Fitzgerald: Asked about the varieties of Be used and the effect on results.

Fitzgerald: Will the study be expanded to include non-Be workers?

Weitzman: How were high, medium, and low defined for the people filling out the questionnaire?

Weitzman: Asked about the validity of the small numbers.

Weitzman: Asked about the efficacy of the LPT.

Nadeau: Asked for cost estimates for the screening process.

Mark Kolanz, ES&H Director for Brush Wellman: (SEE WRITTEN STATEMENT)

DOE priorities should be:

1. Provide resources for the development of a Be Manual.

2. Provide resources for the development of site-specific procedures and training at LANL.

3. Support research into:

-- Animal model for Be research

-- Improved treatment of CBD

-- Effects of particle size and chemical form on potency

4. Define Be use within the DOE (he had never heard of Be use at Pinellas until this meeting).

5. Extend comment period by 2 months (to allow for more economic analysis, etc.).

6. Focus limited resources on solving the problem rather than issuing a rule.

Sikora: Mentioned particle size determination. Does Brush Wellman do anything now?

Weitzman: Has Brush Wellman published data on health surveillance activities?

Sikora: What would you see as the critical elements of a DOE Manual?

Weitzman: We’re particularly interested in how you approach ALARA—the more examples the better.

Fitzgerald: Asked about the use of mass spectrometry for determining low levels.

Bob Narvess, with Bechtel: Asked about remediation aspects at former DOE sites where workers are working in rapidly changing environments. Looking at contaminants on the Paynesville (?) site leads me to be concerned about toxicity levels and particle size distributions. That type of information should be disseminated among DOE contractors. We have information on the soil levels, and I am trying to gather information about whether any other subcontractors have this type of data. You’ve been talking about manufacturers working with pure Be, and we’re cleaning up what those manufacturers have left behind. I can give you the data we have.

Gary Foster: I’d like to say that there are two things in the Federal Register questions that I take exception with. They seem to be heavily weighted to smear sampling and the costs involved. The costs involved are externalities. DOE should remediate without complaining too much about the costs. I can’t find any literature that correlates smear sampling with air contamination. With the D&D work going on, you’re going to get into situations similar to the "neighborhood cases." You’ve got the population of Oak Ridge very near these buildings that are going to undergo D&D at Y-12. Air sampling is going to have to be done in the immediate area and at a radius out from the D&D.

David Kirby, IH, ORNL: Layton Cooke, IH at Y-12, has submitted information about the wipe sample technique that needs to be given some consideration. Most industrial hygienists agree that wipe sampling isn’t a good methodology for making these cut-point decisions. There’s wide variability with that technique. In this overall process of trying to decide what needs to be done, what’s really problematic is that there doesn’t seem to be a well-defined analytical process. No one seems to know which technique offers the best methodology. If we’re looking at putting this thing in a box, we have to come up with a standardized process for sampling and analysis. Without that, you’re putting the industrial hygienist and management in the position of making decisions without the proper tools. Maybe, we should put out a call to the technical folks about how best to do this. Other methods might give an idea of what is airborne; one of the methods we’ve used with asbestos in the past is micro-vacuum, which might equivocate what’s in the air. Another thing being used a lot in lead is X-ray diffraction; it could be used to give you some sort of surface determination.

Weitzman: Will you be recommending any methods?

Rusty Stiles: As for X-ray fluorescence, we thought about that too. But, where its a Conduct of Operations situation, that would be pretty hard to sell. I would love to bring X-ray fluorescence into our facility, but it would be difficult.

Kirby: All of these have pluses and minuses, but you may be able to lower your detection limit and turn-around time with a higher confidence level. There’s a tradeoff.

Kolanz: Comment on sampling strategy—don’t get caught up in trying to find the absolute perfect method. Choose the method that does the best for the process you’re trying to evaluate. I’ve used all different types (vacuum, wet swipe, etc.). If I’m stuck with one sampling method and can’t use it to improve the method, then I’m not doing my job. Leave it up to the professional IH at the site; they know best. If you have 25 sampling methods, just try to see that they are applied in a standardized way throughout the Department.

Fitzgerald: We’ll get back to you quickly about the determination of extending the comment period.

Thursday Morning

Dr. David Deubner, Corporate Medical Director, Brush Wellman: Addressed three issues: Medical Surveillance for CBD, CBD Experience and Be Exposures, and Beryllium Lung Exposures and Cancers.

Medical Surveillance: BW has conducted Be medical surveillance for decades, using quarterly symptom reviews, quarterly pulmonary function tests (forced vital capacity, forced expiratory volume, and CO diffusion capacity), and chest X-rays. Since 1992, BW has been conducting systematic epidemiological surveys (Analytic Medical Surveillance) with blood LPT and follow-up bronchoscopy (lavage and biopsy) to identify individuals with subclinical stages of CBD (i.e., no related symptoms). BLPT has a high variability in applications in terms of high inter-laboratory variability and high test-to-test variability. BW has used dual laboratory testing (split samples sent to two labs) to improve sensitivity with excellent results. Dual-lab testing significantly improves the detection rate of subclinical CBD. The exact sensitivity using single or dual lab testing is unknown. Since positive individuals may test positive on a given day, they may be missed by a survey. Some individuals who demonstrate clinical CBD on lavage may consistently test negative on the blood test. This is an example of immunologic compartmentalization. These individuals are also missed by a BLPT survey. The positive predictive value of a single positive LPT test is approximately 35% in a population with a 4% prevalence of CBD. The positive predictive value increases to over 50% when there are two positive LPT tests before sending someone to bronchoscopy. Our best estimate of the rate of positivity on BLPT in the general population using the traditional conservative cutpoints may be in the range of 1%.

The process of doing BLPT and then using bronchoscopy to make a diagnosis of subclinical CBD has value in identifying work processes associated with higher risk. Those results can be used to guide investment in prevention measures. To achieve that benefit, you have to enter the process with the determination to test people, gather information on work histories, and gather information on levels of exposures associated with job tasks. If you don’t do that going in, you won’t be able to use the results to identify high-risk processes.

The value to the individual employee participating in these surveys is mixed. The process of testing and bronchoscopy is frustrating due to the variability in the BLPT and the lack of clarity in the results (false positives, false negatives, etc.). People transition from perceiving themselves as healthy to perceiving themselves as ill. Job changes may be accompanied by perceived or real loss of security. Early treatment, the value of which has not been established, is accompanied by the medicalization of life and the potential occurrence of real or perceived disfiguring, morbid, or fatal treatment effects. Adoption of a dependent, victim-oriented psychological state is not infrequent and may be accompanied by severe psychological distress. One outcome of our planning is the preservation of freedom of choice for the individual and also detailed written and oral disclosure of the issues involved.

The epidemiologic value diminishes substantially and the opportunity for misinterpretation of survey results increases substantially as the population diminishes. Negative results may be incorrectly interpreted as absence of risk. Even if cases of subclinical CBD are detected, small numbers will not allow confident delineation of process-specific risk and therefore will not offer guidance for preventive intervention. When the population being surveyed is small, there’s a strong temptation to add to the numerator by adding in undiagnosed persons to the case category. This further adds to the difficulty in interpretation.

CBD Experience and Be Exposures. Since the beginning of efforts to understand Be lung disease, almost all observations of Be exposure have been made in terms of total airborne Be. We have evidence in hand to suggest that total airborne Be may not be the key to understanding Be exposures. The fact that duration of work with Be does not predict risk argues against simple models of accumulated total dose. At the Elmore plant, the higher-risk area identified in a major survey did not have the highest dose rate or the highest total airborne Be exposures. In fact, this area emerged as a high-rate area after BW and DOE spent a large amount of money to successfully reduce total airborne Be exposures in this area. In fact, the high rate of subclinical CBD shows up only in workers who were employed by Brush in this area after the exposure levels were markedly reduced. In recent years, estimated exposures of persons with newly identified subclinical CBD in terms of total airborne Be are not significantly greater than those of other workers.

This leads to the question: What is the key exposure characteristic that we should be measuring? BW has a study under way to identify particle size characteristics and chemical composition of airborne Be. This work will better delineate what fraction of Be in the air may be a better predictor of risk. We encourage other employers to do similar work. If we can better delineate what fraction of airborne Be is responsible, this would give us a much enhanced ability to create a more effective Be exposure standard.

Be and lung cancer: All who have looked at available evidence agree that, at current occupational exposure levels, Be does not constitute a significant lung cancer hazard. Debate continues about whether the small excess of lung cancer in workers employed in the Be industry (mainly in the 1940s) is attributable to Be. The confounding effect of tobacco smoke can only be crudely estimated. Other confounders include sulfuric acid and hydrofluoric acid; none of the existing epidemiologic studies have accounted for these confounders. Finally, Be is not the only material whose sole evidence for lung carcinogenicity in humans rests on observations of an excess of risk in short-term workers employed in the 1940s. Another prominent example is fiberglass, which has this same pattern. It is extremely problematic to base an entire theory of disease on observation of these war-time short-term transient workers. Nothing is known of their smoking experience and other industrial and non-industrial exposures. The repetitive finding of high lung cancer risk and other diseases in this group should lead to a very conservative view of acceptance of disease theories based on these people.

Rogers: Please include details of your quarterly surveys in your written information. Also, I was a little confused about immunological compartmentalization.

Sikora: You mentioned that, in one of your processes, BW lowered the total airborne mass of Be and the incidence of disease increased. Do you have any idea why?

Sikora: Was it more due to chemical composition or particle size?

Nadeau: Please provide cost data for your medical surveillance program; just mention the hidden costs that are difficult to get at.

Glenn Bell, Y-12 machinist since 1968: I worked with Be during several periods. I was diagnosed with CBD in 1993 after a dozen years of increasing breathing problems, which were treated as asthma. I share the views of Mr. Foster and will submit my written comments to the committee. I would like to address what may be learned from personal experience. I and several other CBD victims have had difficulty in dealing with both the disease and upper management that often minimizes our concern. Communication is the key to solving present and future differences. We as workers and management must come to understand each other better. I have a letter I wrote a year and a half ago addressed to Sec. O’Leary, answered by Dr. Paul Seligman. (SEE LETTER) "I have had little difficulty in dealing with coworkers and supervision below middle management. Industrial hygiene data workers have been cooperative in collecting years of old data from a blotched system (gaps in the records, missing samples, etc.). The first Be project at Y-12 in 1950 was conducted under extremely strict controls. No records of confirmed cases of CBD have been unearthed from this project. However, a decade later when the Be production shop was set up, controls went out the window. Full-scale production would have been impossible under the 1950 restrictions. In 1968, the area was as wide open as any nontoxic shop. Engineers, secretaries, and security personnel came and went at will; construction workers by the dozen. How many of these incidental workers may have been sensitive but were not categorized as Be workers and thus not included in the Be study? We were encouraged to take snack, coffee, and smoke breaks on the machines. Substandard local exhaust ventilation. Neither respirators nor breathing zone monitors were used. In-depth background checks of employees’ pulmonary histories were apparently not done. The Be patch test, developed in the 1950s, was not offered; it had a slight risk of sensitizing employees. Training in the potential hazards associated with Be was supposed to have been in place, but no one remembers the implementation. My attempts to locate training records prior to 1988 have been fruitless. As my asthma symptoms increased, I asked medical management about my suitability to work in Be areas. Had action been taken then, I could have had an 8-year head start on treatment. Donna Cragle has been helpful. The negativism from upper management is probably the most frustrating issue in the CBD ordeal other than the physical symptoms themselves. Questions are ignored or explained away. In my own case, no occurrence report was even generated despite persistent requests on my part. We’re finding similar happenings at other DOE sites. Apathy, personality, and fear of reprisal have kept all but a few of us from publicly expressing ourselves. Adverse national publicity is not my goal; I don’t want to see Y-12 padlocked. Too little was done in the past, and not enough is being done now. I want to again emphasize my appreciation for those who have helped."

I think progress has been made since that letter was written. Up-to-date information and training needs to be given that stresses how easily this disease can be contracted and how serious it can be. We seem to be doing 1990s technology with a 1940s and 1950s mindset. I have a few suggestions: (1) CBD victims should be involved in the decision making. (2) More stress should be given to sensitized individuals for continued monitoring. (3) Of prime importance, invite management, technical, and other individuals to our support group at Y-12. The bottom line is: Get away from the "us vs. them" attitudes of the past and just communicate.

Rogers: Asked about the type of training he received.

Mark Kolanz: Talked about background levels of Be and detectable levels of Be. (SEE HANDOUT)

Sikora question: I would be interested in seeing data supporting the incidental exposures (handling paperwork, etc.) Also, are there known health hazards related to ingestion of minute quantities of Be?

Nadeau: Asked for copies of the viewgraphs and supporting data.

Jim Phelps: My envisionment of things is not just from the Oak Ridge level but how government agencies work together. I’ll give you a little history of my experience. My dad worked at Y-12 for 29 years, and I know a lot of the behind-the-scenes issues through history and through time. I came to work at X-10 during the Reagan years on the Star Wars project.

These days I’m out in the private world with an environmentalist outlook, trying to figure out how to make things better for the public good, trying to fix government. So, I would ask you a question: How would you deal with specialness in enforcing this work? Historically, Oak Ridge had a Be problem with many affected workers.

Specialness is a term that higher-up government agencies use to reflect national security interests and how those operations tend to dismiss and not address, deviate from dealing with things properly. This applies to Be and other H&S issues here in Oak Ridge. National security worked a little bit like Carnegie ran his industries back in the old days. Carnegie was a wealthy industrialist-type person. He wanted to make a profit. He had his own spies planted throughout the industries; they headed off problems. That’s kind of how national security works. There are little formal and informal networks that report problems ahead of time, and things disappear if they look like they will cause a national security problem. Everything at Y-12 historically has been thought of as a national security problem, so you’ll see records disappearing. They’re being denied or lost from a national security point of view. We need to get past "specialness." You can find that term used by the DNFSB and all over Washington to involve these special happenings that make the system not work. In the old days, these national security boys that supplanted everything were called "the crooks" because they altered reality and affected people’s health. In some cases, they covered up people that actually died from exposures and unsafe practices at the plant.

A little mention of how conflicts of interest might go here: History here and power here is extreme. This was the beginning of the Manhattan Project. It involved issues like importing scientists out of Europe; many of them came here to interact with stuff. It was part of the Altos (?) project, managed by Leslie Groves, who later became the person that managed the Manhattan Project. Due to that, we’ve got a lot of Jewish scientists because they were trying to avoid Hitler’s hatred and the Jews. They came here; they came to New York City, which was the port of entry . Then, they got dispatched and monitored by the National Security boys, who kept track of them because technically they were U.S. aliens. Because of that, Oak Ridge became a place where religious issues and national security issues and good of the public and transliteration errors caused problems. These old scientists actually named the plant sites. It’s popularly told here to the public in Oak Ridge that X-10 and Y-12 are grid coordinates. They’re actually historical grid coordinates. Y-12 was named for Yahweh 12, which in Jewish is like the 12 disciples kind of issue. X-10 was named because X stood for "God" in Greek and the 10 commandments kind of issues. A lot of these old religious histories directly relate to nuclear energy, nuclear release kind of issues. There’s a huge conflict of interest between how these things are presented on the religious side as well as the U.S. policy side.

But, after we dropped the bomb and all that good stuff, a furor went up across the world, and the United States Atomic Energy Commission and World Court said this is a terrible weapon. So, we formed in 1946 the AEC and stuff like that, directly followed in 1947 by the CIA. The CIA’s primary study was what’s called population control theory. It’s how transliterations of religious histories go to form our religious policy. There’s a little issue with separation of church and state issues with the government at very high places. It came right out of here in Oak Ridge. So the problem is, through those methods of tilting the balance, not reporting things, the scales have tipped. We’ve got managers who don’t want people learning about cover-ups, looking for problems; the managers are all trying to dismiss problems, trying to dodge bullets. We have, right here in Oak Ridge, is the university that DOE owns, which is kind of a conflict of interest. I mean, why not places like public universities. I think we get a fair balance of things without the money interest of being employed by DOE. They have to pull the statistics toward their best possible interest. I’ve seen that done consistently here. I think the citizens get a better value for their dollar if you use the private sector because they provide a more balanced viewpoint of things.

Part of the problem here is that they use this way of swaying the writing. It’s called "crypto" by the National Security folks. They write things using an alternative language. In the early days, it was necessary. People that worked on enriched uranium machining, they called that work "working in the hot shop" because they weren’t allowed to say enriched uranium. There were other things that got renamed. Characteristically, the managers here, in environmental reports, have used this less visible language to the general public. So things have not been addressed in a nice, open report. In these reports, if it involves a national security issue, they rewrite it in a special language so it doesn’t appear to be a serious problem.

Other specialness issues: if an employee brings up a problem and pushes it, during layoffs, they are sometimes the first to be laid off. That tends to not follow Hazel O’Leary’s policy of openness. OR has a large population of whistleblowers because management didn’t like doing its job right. It still fits the Carnegie model. This is the biggest industry in this part of the country and through these behind the channels . . .

Roosevelt brought us into the industrial age. The industrial age meant increased toxins would be released through chemical operations. The AMA came along and doctors changed from holistic views to treatment with toxic medicines that would temporarily wipe out viruses (magic bullet point cures). They came up with antibiotics and things like that, which are stressors to the immune system. We had to put Oak Ridge here in a remote site because it was a huge toxic site. They chose a remote site where there was already malnutrition kind of impact, and they could conceal any health problem. The AMA’s approach was to deal with the toxic outlaws. Characteristically, we’ve gone on until most medicines are based on some sort of toxic effects. It works well until the population gets pre-loaded with toxic influence. After 50 years of dealing with this kind of thing, as you load a person’s immune systems, they are less able to ward off toxicity. This applies to Be. So, you’ve got different kinds of toxic effects, different kinds of mildew organisms, insecticides.

One of the biggest coverups is the nuclear industry here in Oak Ridge. It’s because they are strategically positioned, through this long history, to having been involved with the CIA, the American medicine issue, Roosevelt, etc. This has accumulated to such an extent that most people’s immune systems can’t afford much additional toxicity. So, what you see is a lot of people turning away from the AMA-style approach.

The reason Oak Ridge doesn’t like people looking into these issues is because the immune system burden is an essential part of the Star Wars project, as well as some very special weapons systems like Stealth bombers and MHD pallets (?), as well as some special alternative flight systems for Area 51.

So, the central problem is the immune system. (Tape ran out as he was saying something about Strontium-90)

As immune system loads change, the toxic level exposure to Be and other materials is also changing. You’ll get more cancers. It’s changing the medical statistics. If a person that was highly affected by a toxin was given anesthesia in a surgery thing, the more toxically burdened couldn’t afford a whole lot of anesthesia. That’s important.

Since you are the regulators, you need to know these conflicts of interest between the doctors and the AMA. Y-12’s got its own shrink to look at the toxic effects of people who work with highly enriched uranium because you don’t want the person that’s mad or stressed out playing around with explosives of the nuclear category because it causes messes. Y-12 has always had a shrink; the plants have medical staff. Who do they work for? They work for the DOE. One of their major incentives is to go out and help the people, but, if there is a problem, to change the wording a little bit to protect the specialness.

We need to do what’s good for the people. We need to do what’s good for the environment. And we need to address these failings of the system.

Howard Friedman, the Y-12 and K-25 Plant psychologist: We did recognize that we owed it to the employees who had the disease to form a support group. We have been meeting every other week for a year or two. The thrust is to share information and communicate. That really is crucial. These folks in the group deserve the information, and they are also sitting on top of a lot of information to share. Speakers for the support group have included physicians, research scientists, a social scientist from the Ramazinni Institute. Our doors are open to anyone who has tested positive on the LPT. We’d like them to come to the support group.

Sikora: Is your effort part of the medical surveillance program?

Rogers: Asked for written comments from Friedman.

MEETING ADJOURNED