[ RadSafe ] Fwd: Pilots UV-A radiation exposure

[jjshonka at shonka.com]

Hans


I am quite interested in your badge results, and what would be a significant radiation exposure.  You have an unusually high number of frequent flyer miles.  If we assume total neutron plus gamma of 500 mrem  (5 mSv) per 100,000 frequent flyer miles or per year, and 15 rem over a  3 million mile or 30 year career, I have the following questions:  (1) were your badges neutron sensitive (80% of GCR dose is due to neutrons)?; (2) how often were they read out (quarterly, monthly?); (3) were many of your miles extra credits rather than actual miles flown (e.g. first class gets 2X miles)?; (4) were your miles collected evenly or did you travel more extensively during some fraction of your career?; (5) what would you say the reporting limit or detection limit of the badges was (e.g any reading less than 10 mrem (0.1 mSv) reported as 0)?; (6) were your badges used for work and did they have measureable exposure from sources other than background plus your flight time?


Ed Bramlitt and I have a note in the January, 2015 issue of Health Physics that discusses intermittent sources of exposure to aircrew, including solar proton, neutron and gamma events and terrestrial gamma flashes.  About 1% of the 1200 Terrestrial gamma flashes that are large enough to be detected by satellites that occur each day (world-wide) approach estimated doses in aircraft of up to 30 to 100 mSv, for example.  Although rare, these likely would have been observed on your badge.  The more numerous dose of 10 mSv or greater (my estimate of the lower limit of detection for the GBM detectors on board FERMI) might also be detectable, however, presumably even more numerous but undetectable lower dose TGFs (below 10 mSv) might not be detected.  I am interested in how large one of those events could have been without your noticing an unusual reading.   


I assume the background control badges were at your place of employment.  Finally, (7) For example, if you typically had 12 flights per quarter, and one of those flights encountered a source that provided 1,000 mrem (10 mSv) 80 % of which was neutron and only 200 mrem (2 mSv) was gamma, would you have noticed it as an unusual badge reading? 


Joe Shonka 






Sent from Windows Mail





From: Hans J Wiegert
Sent: ‎Saturday‎, ‎December‎ ‎20‎, ‎2014 ‎7‎:‎18‎ ‎PM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List





For what it's worth.

I am not so sure about this. During my career I traveled almost 3 million
miles on various airlines with my seating preference being a window seat.
Never noticed anything like this. As a side note, on almost all of those
trips I carried a film badge on me and in recent years the Landauer Luxel
OSL badge.  The badges never showed any significant radiation exposure.

Best Regards,

Hans

*Retirement is, when the only day you have to set your alarm clock is
Sunday - so you are not late for church!*

On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 2:19 PM, Chris Alston <achris1999 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is easy to believe.  I, as a passenger, have gotten a pretty good
> tan, mostly on one side of my face, on just one trip from Seattle to
> San Diego.  Fortunately, I had a window seat on the other side of the
> aircraft (DC-9 family, for whatever it is worth) on the northward
> return flight, to "touch up" the other side of my face, else I would
> have looked like that arch-criminal in the Batman comics.
>
> Cheers
> cja
>
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 8:36 PM, ROY HERREN <royherren2005 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > Hopefully the following isn't too "off topic", given that the article is
> dealing with UV-A radiation.
> >
> http://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/airline-pilots-can-be-exposed-to-cockpit-radiation-similar-to-tanning-beds/
> > Airline Pilots Can Be Exposed to Cockpit Radiation Similar to Tanning
> Beds
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