Dr Michael Bagshaw, who had done some work on Concorde, states (full transcript of the symposium at
http://www-hsd.worldbank.org/symposi...-bagshaw.htm):
"The Concorde flies up to 60,000 feet and gets a higher dose of radiation than a subsonic airplane. So for the last 25 years, we've been monitoring cosmic radiation exposure on the Concorde. We also monitor cosmic radiation exposure on our long-haul aircraft. The International Commission on Radiological Protection recommended dose limit for a worker, is 20 milliSieverts per annum?
If you take the radiological protection practice of taking three-tenths of the occupational exposure as being the limit for deciding whether a worker is a controlled worker or not, that works out at six milliSieverts per annum?.
Our work shows that the average Concorde flight crew are getting about four milliSieverts per year. Theoretically, they can go up to six, although we've got no crew members who do reach six. Long-haul crew flying 747s on very long range—over the Poles, over the Northern latitudes— get on average between four to five, with a maximum of five milliSieverts, and short-haul crew operating in Europe are getting about three milliSieverts per annum.
So what we're finding is that cosmic radiation exposure is well below the International Commission on Radiological Protection standard, and our epidemiological studies show that our long-haul crew on average live about five years longer than a matched population. And after the discussion this morning, I won't start talking about matched populations, but we've done intensive epidemiology, and we're part of the pan-European study which is looking at morbidity and mortality in crew.".
However with the full-body scanners coming is use in the US, there may be an increase in the radiation exposure (
Increasing Safety or Risking Lives – Airport Body Scanners | Aviation Medicine :: Aerospace Medicine).
FYI, pl