Redetermination of the helium abundances in HII regions in blue compact dwarf galaxies

The He/H abundances in HII regions in Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxies are redetermined using the new recombination coefficients of Benjamin et al. The electron number density n^sub e^ in the He^sup +^ region, optical depth τ^sub 3889^ in the HeI λ3889 line, and coefficient of underlying stellar absorption a^sub HeI^ are determined using the self-consistent method of Olive and Skillman. The primordial helium abundance and its enrichment are found using the helium abundances obtained in this paper and heavy-element abundances from our recent paper I: Y^sub p^ = 0.244 ± 0.004 and dY/dZ = 8.8 ± 4.6.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]