Re: Q: dose from airport x-ray?

[Ccja@aol.com]

A one-way flight between London and New York (JFK) gives about 5 mrem, on an o
rdinary day. There was a large solar flare in 1956, for which it's now
estimated that  the DE rate at standard cruising altitudes could have,
briefly, been as high as 1500 mrem/h. Note that 50-75% of the dose equivalent
is due to neutrons. I suppose that some of the neutrons would be thermalized,
so there'd be some (obviously, minuscule) activation of components of the
food (not to mention the passenger's corpus), no? The latter would not occur
in an airport x-ray machine. I refer y'all to the very interesting and useful
article by Barish RJ in Health Physics Vol 59 No 2 (August) pp 199-204, 1990:
Health Phycsics Concerns in Commercial Aviation. I cite it all the time to
try to help "laypeople", i.e., anyone not an hp, put radiation exposure in
perspective, with generally good results. Tip: a little game can be played
(this works especially well with women, e.g., nurses) in which people tell
you where their vacation dreamspot is, and you tell them how much radiation
they'd be exposed to, getting there and back. As with any such game, it's
crucially important to have the best rapport achievable, at the outset,
otherwise they won't play.

Chris Alston