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by chrischen 2361 days ago
Do you have a source on that figure, because a cursory google search says that a chest xray is 0.1 mSv, and a 7 hour flight is 0.02 mSv.
1 comments

From the FAA, >.02 mSv per hour measured for LA to Tokyo [1]

From Wikipedia, .02 mSv for chest x-ray [2]

[1] https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oam...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose#/media/...

I'm not sure that banana chart from wikipedia is up-to-date:

https://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?pg=safety-xray https://www.health.harvard.edu/cancer/radiation-risk-from-me...

Most sources seem to put it at 0.1 mSv for a chest x-ray.

The FAA link for a Tokyo to LA 9 hour flight would be about 0.0206 mSv, or approximately 2 chest x-rays for the total flight.

However the FAA research you linked would put a New York to Seattle flight at a total of 0.112 mSv, whereas this CDC link says a trans-continental flight is only at the order of mangnitude of 0.035 mSv...

https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/faqs/commercialflights... - summarizes more sources that contradict the raw FAA numbers.

This FAA calculator also seems to give numbers that agree with the lower radiation levels: http://jag.cami.jccbi.gov/cariresults.asp