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Last flight I was on, I took my friend's mini-geiger-counter, and the radiation level at 35,000 feet (over Oregon, not the Arctic or anything) was fifty times t
by 13of40 10y ago
Last flight I was on, I took my friend's mini-geiger-counter, and the radiation level at 35,000 feet (over Oregon, not the Arctic or anything) was fifty times the background radiation at the airport. Obviously it's not acutely dangerous, but you have to wonder how many, say, cigarettes that's equivalent to as far as cancer risk.
- dotBen 10y agoIf the laptop ban comes into force, I doubt you will be able to bring that Geiger counter on board either...
- tyingq 10y agoDoesn't include cigarettes, but shows a NY to LA flight as equivalent to 2 chest x-rays: https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
- ekianjo 10y agoIndeed flight crews have an elevated cancer risk: http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20031021/flight-crews-have-higher-cancer-risk http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20031021/flight-crew... But the risk is 50% more than normal, which is not extremely high compared to how much more radiation exposure they get. EDIT: Flight crews working on intercontinental flights have higher yearly exposure than nuclear workers apparently (https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/11/27/radiation-exposure_final_2_custom-a69d480c330b8d77a7c99574c076d65770521032-s800-c15.jpg https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/11/27/radiation-exposu...)
- draugadrotten 10y agoAnswer: For each flight, you get 2.3 cigarettes worth of radioactivity. You would need to fly 4572 East-West coast flights per year to reach same dose as from smoking 1.5 packs of cigarettes per day. --- Data points: Smoking 1.5 packs of cigarettes per day is equivalent to between 60 and 160 milliSievert per year http://mathscinotes.com/2014/01/radiation-exposure-from-cigarette-smoking/ http://mathscinotes.com/2014/01/radiation-exposure-from-ciga... With 20 cigarettes this means 10958 cigarettes. At about 160 milliSievert, we get 0,014601205 milliSivert per cigarette. You would be exposed to about 0.035 mSv (3.5 mrem) of cosmic radiation if you were to fly within the United States from the east coast to the west coast. https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/air_travel.html https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/air_travel.html
- moioci 10y agoI think that's 345 banana equivalents. (Since you can't smoke on the plane.)