200 vs 230 vs 130?

["Thurman Wenzl" <wenztb@email.msn.com>]

Paul Frame explains in part:

"PS I believe the calculations work like this:

0.2 WLM per year is the average exposure. This is multiplied by 600 mrad/WLM
to give 120 mrad per year to the bronchial epithelium. This converts into
2400 mrem per year to the bronchial epithelium (quality factor of 20). This
is then multiplied by an assumed weighting factor of 0.08 to give an
effective dose equivalent of 192 mrem which is rounded up to 200."

But do we really want "average" exposure in this case, when I believe that
we are trying to describe a typical exposure - which in the case of a very
right skewed distribution, would be better represented by the median.

The EPA authors (Marcinowski et al) report an approx geometric std dev of
2.9, which would make the median somewhere around 60% of the average -
resulting in a somewhat lower typical lung dose.

Thurman Wenzl,  ScD
wenztb@msn.com
...usual disclaimers...