Phil Druker/Department of English/ University of Idaho

 

Analysis - Good Example

Good example taken from the middle of a technical EPA report.

Note how this too follows the introduce, give data, analyze pattern. Transitions words indicating analysis are highlighted.    

The age of the urea-formaldehyde bearing resins in a mobile home, and hence the age of the mobile home, strongly influences the airborne levels of formaldehyde. The influence of mobile home age is clearly impacting the data in Table 1(20-20b). The dependence of formaldehyde levels on the age of mobile homes is shown in Fig. 1. These data reported by Pruess et al. (21) indicate an exponential decrease in the emission of formaldehyde into the indoor air and a half life of about 4 to 5 years. Aging in itself is thus a form of remedial action. Recently reported, week-long integrated measurements of formaldehyde in about 200 older mobile homes bear this out; measurement made in February to March 1985 inside mobile homes built before 1981 produced an arithmetic median of 0.077 ppb and a maximum single value of 0.3 ppm (20). This result indicates that after aging for 5 years or more, the formaldehyde levels in the older stock of mobile homes can, on average, meet the ASHREA guideline of 0.1 PP (19).

Figure 1. Dependency of formaldehyde levels in the ages of mobile homes; actual data points; --, power curve fit; -- exponential curve

Source: R. G. Gammage and  C. C. Travis. 1994. Formaldehyde Exposure and Risk in Mobile Homes.