What's this array? Numeric or String?

Hi guys I have been going nuts trying to retrieve a numeric array from php using sendAndLoad. While the values retrived from a database are numeric, the values loaded into flash are strings.
So when i load the values into flash and use an operation like addition I get one long concatenated string of Numerics instead of their sum.

e.g an array say arr[23,24,25,26,27] displays the result as 23242526272 instead of adding them & giving 125 on the following operation arr[0]+arr[1]+arr[2]+arr[3]+arr[4].

Please can someone say how can i rectify this miserable situation.

Thanks in advance.