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The xkcd chart on dosages of ionizing radiation http://xkcd.com/radiation/ is a good introduction to the orders of magnitude differences in exposures from different kinds of sources.
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As someone now in Hong Kong about to fly back home to SF, I have always tried to schedule my flights so that I minimize my exposure to day time radiation. I guess I'm in the minority, but it's something to consider when taking international flights.
Some claim that wifi and cell phone emissions bouncing around in the cabin are also cause for concern. I've no idea if it's true, but I can imagine that inside an aluminum tube 150 wifi cards trying to connect might have some biological effect.
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Some claim that wifi and cell phone emissions bouncing around in the cabin are also cause for concern. I've no idea if it's true, but I can imagine that inside an aluminum tube 150 wifi cards trying to connect might have some biological effect.
You should understand the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.
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But your body constantly repairs, too, right? So maybe it's able to repair a few errors, but gets quickly overwhelmed during a CT scan?
Your body repairs tissue tears and damaged cells as well as fighting off infections and things but I don't believe it is well-equipped to deal with damaged genes. I could be totally wrong, though.
Wikipedia offers DNA damage rates of 1e3 - 1e6 DNA damage events per cell, per day ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_repair ). Almost all of these get repaired.
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Basically the first two pages I found after Googling for about a minute: The average annual cosmic radiation dose for flight personnel was 2.19 mSv (ie, less than one CT scan) http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/faqs/commercialflig... Flight attendants 2x-5x higher cancer rates http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20031021/flight-crew...
A lot of CT scans are well under 2 mSv. A lot more than you would expect from reading the worst-case estimates, as I mentioned above. The increase in cancer rates is interesting though, although if the main cause was radiation you wouldn't expect a few specific types to increase significantly and not others.
It's not even necessary to posit a 'radiation-associated cancer' category to account for differential cancer increases, as long as there are some cancers somewhere that pop up in response to things other than radiation. Existence proof: Cervical cancer, associated with a virus. We would not expect cervical cancer rates to jump to the same degree as $generic-cancer, because the radiation-caused rate of cervical cancer is only a small chunk of all cervical cancers: double it and you affect the overall rate little.
With that said, airplanes are doused in some other questionable chemicals as well - I've seen concerns expressed specifically about the breakdown of fire retardants.
The article's first sentence annoys me right off the bat: "Despite great strides in prevention and treatment, cancer rates remain stubbornly high and may soon surpass heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States." This seems to be implying that cancer death rates are growing and will soon "surpass" those of heart disease. While the article is technically correct, this is due to the fact that death…
> An American Cancer Society report finds steady declines in cancer death rates for the past two decades add up to a 20 percent drop in the overall risk of dying from cancer over that time period.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140107102634.ht...
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Some claim that wifi and cell phone emissions bouncing around in the cabin are also cause for concern. I've no idea if it's true, but I can imagine that inside an aluminum tube 150 wifi cards trying to connect might have some biological effect.
I don't know why this was down voted; while in an elevator one is not supposed to use a cell phone, because of this effect. At least in the elevator at work there is a sign that says so. http://microwavenews.com/news-center/using-cell-phone-elevat...