Business airflights = occupational exposure?

["Ron L. Kathren" <rkathren@tricity.wsu.edu>]

I have posed this (and other similar questions) many times over the past two
decades; even wrote an editorial that was published in Health Physics in
1980 (Vol 39, p. 149) entitled "What is Occupational Exposure?"  Never have
gotten a satisfactory response, Bjorn, so I hope your results are better
than mine.

Just for the sake of interest, and perhaps to spur a little discussion, I
note that most of my occupationally incurred dose has been from business
related air travel and has been completely un measured and unrecorded.  My
occupationally incurred dose from business related air travel is estimated
as a few 10's of mSv.  Many labs/companies/facilities have a policy of
forbidding their employees to take their dosimeters with them on travel;
some may provide a special travel badge.   Obviously it is important to know
the dose from air travel (as well as medical and other sources that are
unrecorded) if one is to do meaningful occupational radioepidemiology
studies.  Regrettably, the epidemiologists typically ignore such doses, or
assume that every member of the study cohort gets about the same dose, or
that the errors cancel out.  Makes one wonder, sometimes!

Good luck, Bjorn -- I for one will be looking for the responses to your
query.

Ron Kathren
----- Original Message -----
From: Bjorn Cedervall <bcradsafers@hotmail.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2000 5:04 PM
Subject: Business airflights = occupational exposure?


> Radsafers,
>
> I want to hear your points of view: A businessman/woman who does a lot of
> air travel (due to his/her work) gets more of cosmic radiation than
others.
> Should this be classified as occupational exposure or not? Are there any
> clear analogies?
>
> Bjorn Cedervall  bcradsafers@hotmail.com
> http://www.geocities.com/bjorn_cedervall/
>
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