Thanks everyone, glad to be of use (finally)
I've dug out my conference notes from last year and found the japanese flight dose calculator website. It was developed by the Japanese Institute for Radiological Sciences (NIRS) and is call JISCARD - Japanese Internet System for Calculation of Aviation Route Doses
The Home page is here
(JISCARD)
I can follow through to the
JISCARD Options, which seems to include a few versions include a mobile version
The downloadable english personal version is here. I got stumped by the japanese, and I might have downloaded the Personal version but got distracted.
JISCARD EX Personal Edition
I found
this one quite useful.
Interesting that 5 return trips from Tokyo-New York gets you your maximum of 1 mSv of radiation for the year!
I also saw a paper from the conference about measuring the radiation on this route. One thing to note is the route is a polar route. Cosmic radiation is higher closer to the poles due to the arrangement of the earth's magnetic fields. This would be a maximum more than an average type of dose.
Good pick up awilcockson. I have never really considered radiation while flying (but have heard it once or twice and merely brushed it off). Maybe some "very frequent flyers" could be getting above average dosage of radiation without even knowing it?
There has been a bit of debate about this. Yes frequent flyers could get high doses. However, this is considered to be a natural exposure. Not so for flight crew for whom this is considered to be occupational exposure and hence have dose limits. Much of the debate of how to classify flight crew focused the discrepancy between protecting flight crew and not protecting frequent flyers. Plus also the need to protect unborn children of flight crew.
I wonder how altitude effects the dosage? What about a U2 Spy Plane pilot or the SR71 Blackbird pilots? They are up at 80,000 feet for hours at a time...
Yep, higher up means more exposure. I'm not sure how much. But this is the same for astronauts. One of the issues about going to Mars.
We had Helen Caldicott as the guest speaker at a college formal dinner when I was at Uni (UNSW), sometime around 1990 (probably 1989 actually).
She is an interesting speaker though, and obviously very passionate.
That was definitely my conclusion, very passionate. Something to respect no matter how misguided I think she is. I would recommend seeing her speak at least once, it can be entertaining. She even threw her glasses off to emphasis a point during our talk.
Hmm - interesting table. Seems I have had 17 years worth of radiation in the past 3.5 years and that doesn't include the radiotherapy :shock:. If that is worthwhile in a treatment context (benefit vs risk of creating future cancers) then clearly there is no need to panic at present with the radiation levels in Japan.
Kim
Hi Kim
I'm sorry to hear that you had to have therapy. I hope things are ok now.
You make a fine point about radiotherapy. But to some extend it is a different thing. With radiotherapy, we're getting into a different region of justification (one of the principles of radiation protection). In an occupational setting having a job is a benefit at a level that only justifies a low level of risk. For the emergency workers at the reactor in Japan the benefit of dealing with the situation are great enough that they can justify a higher level of radiation exposure. In radiotherapy, there is a major level of benefit, someone isn't going to die in X months, so yes really big radiation exposure can be justified.
I could go on with some examples of justification, but that could be boring.
