Re: Uranium Hair Analysis

[BLHamrick@aol.com]

In a message dated 10/10/2000 2:00:56 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
prstein@gyral.com writes:

<< 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... >>

I agree that the analysis in theory is not necessarily meaningless, but the 
data I reviewed was meaningless.  It is my recollection that virtually all 
the samples taken from Californians and somewhere on the east coast were 
"high," and that the bulk of samples from the rest of the country were 
effectively "zero," thus for all the Californians, they were reporting that 
they were "outside the norm."

Barbara
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