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transformed normal distribution. If greater than 15 percent but less than 50 percent of the <br /> background data set consist of non-detect values, the mean and standard deviation of the <br /> data set are adjusted using the Cohen's Method. The tolerance limit is then calculated using <br /> the adjusted values. <br /> Nonparametric Tolerance Limit <br /> When the background data set contains greater than 50 percent but less than 100.percent <br /> nondetect values and/or its distribution is not normal (or transformed normal), Sanitas <br /> applies the nonparametric tolerance limit method. However, this method requires a large <br /> number of samples to achieve a false positive rate of 1 percent or less, which is required by <br /> CCR Title 23, Chapter 15,Article 5 guidelines. Thus, when the alpha level was higher than <br /> 1 percent, the concentration limit was not established and footnoted as to why. <br /> Nonstatistical Approach <br /> When the background data set contains 100 percent nondetect values, Sanitas applies the <br /> nonstatistical approach. This approach takes into consideration that if historically a <br /> constituent has not been detected, any detection of that constituent would be considered an <br /> exceedence. Thus, in these situations (100 percent nondetected values), the tolerance limit <br /> is set at "detect", meaning that if a value is detected above its method detection limit, this <br /> value is an exceedence of the concentration limit. <br /> Intrawell Rank Sum <br /> When Intrawell Tolerance Limit analysis is unable to normalize the data and thus a <br /> nonparametric analysis is performed, the false positive rate becomes greater than five <br /> percent. When this happens a Intrawell Rank Sum analysis is performed. This is a <br /> nonparametric procedure where the sums of ranked data sets are compared. Subsequent <br /> sample data are compared with sampling data from the initial monitoring period of the same <br /> well. It is assumed that during the initial monitoring period the well has shown no evidence <br /> of contamination nor an increasing trend. This test procedure is used to evaluate whether <br /> the historical (background data) and the compliance data have the same median constituent <br /> concentration. <br /> TREND ANALYSIS <br /> Sen's Slope measures the change in constituent concentrations per unit time. Sen's method <br /> is not greatly affected by outliers, and the slope can be computed when data are missing. <br /> Sen's estimator is closely related to the Mann-Kendall test, which is a nonparametric rank <br /> correlation test for trend. The test uses only the relative magnitudes of the data rather than <br /> their actual values; therefore,missing values are allowed, and constituents that are reported <br /> as less than the detection limit can be used by assigning them values equal to half the <br /> detection limit. Sen's Slope and the Mann-Kendall tests are described in "Statistical <br /> Methods for Environmental Pollution Monitoring," Richard O. Gilbert, Van Nostrand <br /> Reinhold,New York, 1987. Mann-Kendall test is recommended in"An Evaluation of Trend <br />