Q: dose from airport x-ray?

["M. Woo" <melissa@zelda.ehs.uiuc.edu>]

I have a question from someone who is concerned about putting food
through a typical airport x-ray security scanner and would like to give
her a "real life" frame of reference.  As I have no idea of the typical
operating parameters of such a unit, I can't do the calcs for
exposure/dose/whatever to an item going through the scanner.

As numbers tend to be meaningless in a case like this, what would be
ideal is some sort of comparison relative to say, what dose her food
would receive from a trans-Atlantic flight or something similar. 
Anyone have a rough estimate?

Thanks in advance!

--
Melissa Woo, Health Physicist                    |m-woo@uiuc.edu
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign       |ofc 1.217.244.7233
DEHS, MC225, 101 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL 61801|fax 1.217.244.6594
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/m-woo                 |