Recently I have been hearing this and decided to do my own research: When you fly you are exposing yourself to radiation. A quick google search led me to this article
Nearly everyone forgets that when you fly, there is also ionizing
radiation exposure. In fact, on a typical transcontinental flight at
30,000 feet you will be exposed to 20 μSv (microsieverts) of radiation
= .02mSv[i]. That is 1,000 times the dose you receive from the scanner.[ii] More information here[iii]
Now I did not understand the difference between mSv and μSv so after I figured that out I wondered if there has been any evidence of how much μSv (microsieverts) we are exposed to when we fly. This led me to this quora question [iv] in which the answer gives an excellent breakdown and comes down to a result of flying is equivalent roughly to 4.4 µSv per hour so the claim above is true for a 5hr flight we do get about to 20 μSv. Unless you fly at night avoiding the exposure by 99% I didn’t find many sources so let’s hope that’s true! However the article goes on to say A typical chest x-ray produces about 0.1 milliSievert (100 µSv) which is way more and I wonder how many people know about this exposure. The source for the data is HPS [v] So 22 hours of flight is roughly equivalent to a chest x-ray using these numbers. Further checking the source[vi] we see that it checks out and a chest x-ray is indeed 0.1 mSv or 100 µSv and also a dental x-ray is 0.005 mSv or 5μSv.
So according to above each hour in the air is like getting a dental x-ray. But the average American each year gets about
3 mSv (millisieverts) of “background natural radiation” produced by
the sun, cosmic rays and even radon in the home. Some diagnostic
imaging tests expose patients to additional radiation.
So taking 3mSv / 365 days gives us the approximate exposure per day which is about 8.49 μSv per day ( about 1.7 times more than a dental x-ray which is 5μSv)
One conclusion is that I was worrying about dental x-rays for nothing and there are radiation sources way more potent like Mammograms for women which is .7mSv or 700 μSv! [vii] 82 times more than the daily dose we get on average CT scans of the abdomen expose us from 3 to 10mSv which is 3,000μSv to 10,000 μSv
So flying in the air will give us roughly to 4.4 µSv of radiation — which isn’t ideal but if it means going and relaxing for a week then that can surely offset the cost you are paying.
If you are worrying about other sources of radiation like screening at an airport X-ray scanner here is a list I found as of 2017
Daily dose in USA: 8.49 μSv per day
Flying : 4.4 µSv per hour unless you fly at night ( 90% less μSv )
Airport x-ray : 0.02 μSv everytime you go through security ~ .002/daily dose
CT scans of the abdomen : 3,000μSv to 10,000 μSv~ 353–1176/daily dose
Mammogram : 700 μSv ~ 82/daily dose
Chest x-ray : 100 µSv ~ 11.8/daily dose
Dental x-ray : 5μSv~ .59/daily dose
To find out the numbers yourself just figure out the μSv of exposure which I did by using the calculator[i] and divide by the daily dose of 8.5μSv
Note: There are lots of various sources stating different numbers for exposure during the day and perhaps the numbers I used are not current so just follow the logic above and just redo the math to come up with the μSv exposure based on what you find. Good luck and happy flying!
There is a nice graphic that visualizes the exposures but again the μSv exposure numbers are slightly different. Check it out!
Tags: Chernobyl Radiation Flying X-Rays Airlines
Sievert - Wikipedia ( deals with the definition of the sievert as an SI unit…)
References
[ii] http://empoweredsustenance.com/combat-in-flight-radiation/
[iii] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/airport-scanners-how-much-radiation-_b_793071.html
[iv] https://www.quora.com/How-much-radiation-are-you-exposed-to-when-flying
[v] https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/faqs/commercialflights.html
[vi] https://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?pg=safety-xray
[vii] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-06-14-radiation-scans_N.htm