Air travel exposes you to radiation – how much health risk comes with it?

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Timothy J. Jorgensen, Georgetown University

(THE CONVERSATION) In 2017, business traveler Tom Stuker was hailed as the world’s most frequent flyer, logging 18,000,000 miles of air travel on United Airlines over 14 years.

That’s a lot of time up in the air. If Stuker’s traveling behaviors are typical of other business flyers, he may have eaten 6,500 inflight meals, drunk 5,250 alcoholic beverages, watched thousands of inflight movies and made around 10,000 visits to airplane toilets.

He would also have accumulated a radiation dose equivalent to about 1,000 chest x-rays. But what kind of health risk does all that radiation actually pose?

Cosmic rays coming at you

You might guess that a frequent flyer’s radiation dose is coming from the airport security checkpoints, with their whole-body scanners and baggage x-ray machines, but you’d be wrong. The radiation doses to passengers from these security procedures are trivial.

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