Re: Uranium Hair Analysis

["Paul R. Steinmeyer" <prstein@gyral.com>]

Barbara;

I shared your opinion regarding hair analysis for uranium.  I figured it
was just another tactic used to scare people into spending money on some
magical fix, and sometimes wondered if those labs even performed the
testing they claimed...

However, our laboratory was contacted (quite recently) by a person who
had gotten a high value for uranium in her hair.  We performed alpha
spectroscopy on a hair sample and water sample.  I don't have the hair
analysis results in front of me, but recall there was a decent agreement
(I'll find and post them tomorrow).  I do have the water results, which
were:

U-234	506.373 ±27.116 pCi/l
U-238 	260.625 ±14.177 pCi/l
U-235 	12.717 ±1.036 pCi/l

I guess my only point is that hair analysis is not *necessarily*
meaningless...

Respectfully,

Paul
-- 
Paul R. Steinmeyer
Health Physicist
Radiation Safety Associates, Inc.
RSA Laboratories, Inc.
voice: 860/228-0487
fax: 860 228-4402
mailto:prstein@radpro.com


BLHamrick@aol.com wrote:

> I would tend to agree that the hair analysis is meaningless.  Several years
> ago I spoke to a lab in Illinois performing this analysis.  Initially, I was
> told there were "thousands" of samples analyzed, but when I spoke to the
> actual technician, it turned out there had been about 220 analyzed.  The lab
> technician did not know what the standard deviation was for the sample set,
> and, in fact, was not clear on the concept of standard deviation at all.
> There was virtually no information correlated to the results except
> geographic location - no water samples in those areas, no information on diet
> or shampoo type.  The results were, in my opinion, meaningless.
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