FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 13, 2002
FY02-49
ORAU Wins $70 Million NIOSH Dose Reconstruction Contract
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) this week awarded a five-year, $70 million contract to a team headed by Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU). Under the new contract, ORAU and its partners will estimate the occupational radiation doses received by upwards of 40,000 workers. Results of completed dose reconstructions will then be provided by NIOSH to the claimant and the Department of Labor for use in adjudicating claims filed under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act.
Partnering with ORAU are Dade Moeller & Associates, Inc. and MJW Corporation, Inc. Dade Moeller & Associates is a small, employee-owned business specializing in occupational and environmental health sciences. They have offices in Richland, Washington, Augusta, Georgia; Fairfax, Virginia.; and New Bern, North Carolina. MJW, located outside Buffalo, New York, is a premier radiological engineering company and also specializes in health physics information systems.
The contract, which calls for the ORAU team to reconstruct the radiation doses of more than 8,000 individuals per year, will involve personal interviews with the claimants, retrieval and validation of individual monitoring data, and reconstruction of exposure conditions at various Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE contractor facilities.
Leading this new project will be Richard “Dick” Toohey, Ph.D., CHP. Toohey has been director of the Radiation Internal Dose Information Center (RIDIC) since 1994 and serves as senior health physicist with the Radiation Emergency Assistance Center/Training Site. Before joining ORAU, Toohey served as associate director of the U.S. Transuranium and Uranium Registries.
Other key personnel who will be assigned to this project include ORAU's Phil Wallace, who will serve as the Data Management Task Manager; William “Bill” Tankersley, a certified industrial hygienist with ORAU, will serve as the Data Retrieval and Dose Research Task Manager; Kathryn Robertson-DeMers, a certified health physicist (CHP) with Dade Moeller & Associates, will oversee claimant interviews and Cincinnati operations; James Griffin, a CHP with MJW, will serve as the Dose Estimation Task Manager; ORAU’s Priscilla Campbell will manage project administration and subcontracting operations; Elizabeth Brackett, a CHP with MJW, will serve as Principal Internal Dosimetrist; and Steven Merwin, a CHP with Dade Moeller & Associates, will serve as Principal External Dosimetrist.
This program will be under the direction of Dr. Donna Cragle, a nationally respected ORAU epidemiologist who heads the Center for Epidemiologic Research and DOE’s Former Beryllium Workers Medical Surveillance Program. Serving as key project advisors are Dr. Dade Moeller, CHP, founder of Dade Moeller & Associates, and Dr. David Dooley, CHP, President of MJW Corporation Inc. Moeller was a professor at Harvard University for more than 27 years and also served as the U.S. representative on Committee 4 of the International Commission on Radiological Protection. Dooley’s company, MJW Corporation Inc. performs radiological consulting work for the private sector and government clients. He as served as project director of The Mound Pre-1989 Dose Assessment Project and as Radiological Engineering Manager at the West Valley Demonstration Project.
As part of this contract ORAU will establish an office in Cincinnati, Ohio, for more than 20 employees to prepare and maintain databases for dose reconstruction activities.
Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) is a university consortium leveraging the scientific strength of 86 major research institutions to advance science and education by partnering with national laboratories, government agencies, and private industry. ORAU manages the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education for the U.S. Department of Energy.