Re: News on BNL Deer

[AndrewsJP@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 2/20/2002 2:58:44 AM Eastern Standard Time, bill-field@UIOWA.EDU writes:



> The mean deer tongue 137Cs levels found in Pennsylvania white-tailed
>
> deer were lower than 137Cs levels found in deer from other parts of the U.S.
>
> sampled shortly after culmination of major atmospheric nuclear testing.


I don't want to get into a contest about this, but in many years of environmental testing I have found that environmental levels generally are log-normally distributed, not normally distributed. This has significant importance in predicting the occurance of higher levels than are normally found.  Also, the median is often a better value than the mean for describing this kind of information, especially if the values are detectable as Cs-137 generally is.


John Andrews

Knoxville, Tennessee