[techmind]

One of my university professors used to work with X-rays, and so, along with several people in the department, wore a "film badge" (for anyone who doesn't know, this is a plastic badge, about 35x25x8mm, containing a piece of photographic X-ray film and various small metal blocks, used to detect cumulative personal exposure over a week or two). The professor said that the only time his badge ever came back darkened was when he'd inadvertently taken the badge on a transatlantic flight. (I don't know for sure whether the badge would have gone through X-ray security screening or not, in this case.)

[Bored chemist]

It's interesting to note that this sort of story always compares radiation doses to chest Xrays. You might wonder why.
Here are some data on the radiation doses from various procedures.
http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/safety/index.cfm?pg=sfty_xray&bhcp=1
As you can see, chest xrays are about the lowest dose on the list. They correspond to the normal background radiation that you would pick up in about 10 days anyway.
The highest exposure listed in AKF's post above (Newark - Hong Kong) is less than that, it's roughly equivalent to 6 days exposure to normal background.

So, unles you are flying something like half way round the world every week you are not even dounbling your normal background exposure.

The only people who might be at risk are the crew of the aircraft and some really determined high mileage travelers.

For the rest of us, it's just not an issue.

 The people who came up with that stuff can't even do arithmetic.
Here's what they said
"Just about a year old, this flight was one of a handful that U.S. airlines started steering over the North Pole, taking advantage of newly opened airspace over Russia. But that put us almost directly in the path of the strongest field of radiation above the earth. We fully expected our biggest dose on this 15½-hour polar flight.

And that's just what happened: About eight hours into our flight, as our Boeing 777 jet nosed away from the Arctic Circle and passed over Siberia, our gamma reading reached its peak, about 3.1 microsieverts per hour. By the time we had touched down in Hong Kong, we had measured a dose of radiation equivalent to three chest X-rays."
OK 3.1 µSv/Hr (and that's a peak, not an average) for 15.5Hrs would give 48 µSv in total
The data on the webite I posted above gives a single chest Xray as about 100µSv.
 There's a bit of variation on the dose from an Xray, but I doubt its a factor of a little over 6

This looks like scaremongering to me.

[lyner]

Attention seeking.

[Bored chemist]

If that had a noun you could turn it into a sentence.

[lyner]

What's wrong with a clause between friends? Or it may just be a phrase; the verb being in participle form.

[Bored chemist]

Is it a Santa Clause?

[lyner]

Or a sanity clause (Groucho Marx?)

[lurker]

It's interesting to note that this sort of story always compares radiation doses to chest Xrays. You might wonder why.
Here are some data on the radiation doses from various procedures.
newbielink:http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/safety/index.cfm?pg=sfty_xray&bhcp=1 [nonactive]
As you can see, chest xrays are about the lowest dose on the list. They correspond to the normal background radiation that you would pick up in about 10 days anyway.
The highest exposure listed in AKF's post above (Newark - Hong Kong) is less than that, it's roughly equivalent to 6 days exposure to normal background.

Possibly, though the FDA appears to believe a chest x ray is .02 mSv rather than .1 mSv:
newbielink:http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/CT/risks.html [nonactive]

[Andrew K Fletcher (OP)]

NASA first investigated the issue in the 1960s and 1970s when it was studying the feasibility of high-altitude supersonic commercial aviation transport, Mertens said. At the time radiation exposure during flight was deemed a negligible health concern for commercial aircraft at cruising altitudes given what was known about radiation and the number and types of flights common at that time.

Concerns have grown for three primary reasons. Pilots log twice as many flight hours now as then, while flight attendants typically log more hours than pilots. Epidemiological studies have shown this type of exposure to be more damaging than previously thought. And, the number of polar flights is increasing, Mertens said.

Airlines prefer polar routes – for instance, for certain U.S.-to-northern Europe or U.S.-to-Asia routes – because it's a shorter route with reduced head winds, creating fuel savings of tens of thousands of dollars per flight.

Preliminary research indicates that passengers and crews are being exposed to more radiation than previously thought, especially during significant solar events. Mertens analyzed data from a strong solar storm around Halloween 2003 and found that passengers on polar flights – for example from Chicago to Beijing – were exposed to radiation higher than the limit recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection. In addition, not including new features in the model such as magnetic storm effects on Earth's magnetic field underestimated the exposure during that storm by a factor of four.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/AGU-NAIRAS.html

[Bored chemist]

Assuming that factor of 4 applies to all flights (which it doesn't) would mean that, rather than having to fly halfway round the world every week to double your exposure compared to normal background, you would only have to make the flight every month. Of course, it would be difficult to shcedule all your flights during major solar storms.
Still hardly worth panicing about for most of us.