Summary: Advisory Board Meeting April 27-28, 2022

The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health held a two-day virtual meeting April 27-28, 2022. All presentations and background documents can be found on the Board’s meeting page.

NIOSH provided an update on their dose reconstruction statistics. The approval rate is still hovering around 30%. They have reached their goal in receiving and returning cases from the Department of Labor (DOL) after the moratorium was initiated. The Site Research Database (SRDB) is still not operational. The IT group is now looking at the app to determine whether it contains any vulnerabilities. Board members and their contractor, Sanford Cohen and Associates (SC&A) can request documents and NIOSH will provide them.

DOL announced that in-person joint town hall meetings will resume in June with the first being held in Aiken, SC. Other planned meetings are:

• June 28, 2022 – Farmington, NM to discuss the developments to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
• June 29, 2022 – Shiprock, NM and Kayenta, AZ also to discuss the RECA program and legislation.
• August 30-31, 2022 – Oak Ridge, TN. Authorized Representative Workshop
• September 1, 2022 – Oak Ridge, TN. Town hall.

Greg Lewis from the Department of Energy (DOE) introduced Kevin Dressman as the new Director of DOE’s Health and Safety. Mr. Dressman has 15 years of health and safety experience and replaced Dr. Patricia Worthington who retired a few months ago.

The Board accepted NIOSH’s recommendation that they can reconstruct dose for the Huntington Pilot Plant. The Board tabled the decision on the Sandia-Albuquerque site for the years 1997-2011. One Board member did not receive the supporting documents enough in advance to make a decision. NIOSH decided to use a new approach and base their methodology on the 100 millirem criteria instead of bioassays. The Work Group agreed that this method was acceptable.

There has been no word on the appointment of new Board members.

The next Board’s teleconference will be held on June 15, 2022.  They plan to meet in-person August 17-18, 2022 in Idaho Falls, ID and then in Pinellas, FL December 7-8, 2022.