Cosmic radiation
 

Hi,

I am interested to know if there are any airlines out there who actually measure the dosages per flight and aircraft out there?
If so, please feel free to PM me if you elect to keep it private. I work for an airline and we would be glad to get in touch with other operators who utilizes this approach.

Just retired, but my airline did. No actual measuring but a massive data base which attributed radiation based on time of day and route flown. Was available on company crewing/rostering website both for individual trips or periods of time and an annual review of personal doses received. I don't know how you could actually measure incoming radiation - I guess there must be some sort of sensors?

hth

We have a calculated dose available through a company website, but nothing directly measured. I believe Concorde had a dosimeter installed.

Open to correction but I think historically there’s been no easy/cheap way to equip aircraft with a device that can detect the full “spectrum”, so to speak of radiation that is of interest…not sure of the capability of modern detectors,

Hence the fashion for companies to comply with the requirements of for example the EASA regs by producing calculated doses based on rosters and using software such as one of the CARI programs.

CARI

I wish I had paid more attention to this whilst flying longhaul. My current medical problem is thought to be related to over exposure to cosmic radiation at high altitudes and latitudes. A study by SAS in the late '90s seemed to back this up but, like aerotoxic syndrome there is a reluctance by industry to acknowledge this. After retirement I belatedly tried to get my records but was stonewalled...

Didn’t they measure it on Concorde due to the higher altitude it flew at?

These are the types devices used to measure the different types of ionizing radiation:

https://www.ehs.ufl.edu/departments/...oring-devices/

I would assume all types apart from beta radiation would be relevant, as this would be absorbed by the aircraft structure, but happy to be corrected. CAA website has more information.

https://www.caa.co.uk/our-work/about...0and%20protons

I'm a pilot and I've been dosed with unprovable cosmic radiation. Will someone please give me some money?

Fixed that for you :(

In the 80s my last airline did but then stopped the semi secret program although one captain bought a meter and had his own program. IIRC Lufthansa had one or their union did.
Like aerotoxic, malaria and other illnesses associated with flying especially to africa it wasn’t in the companies interest to disperse the knowledge amongst the ranks.
Although we had a limit for cabin crew with the number of North Atlantic flights - my daughter later worked for virgin and often flew double our limit.

My airline monitors (calculated) dosage and will limit polar flying if your numbers get too high. Pregnant crew are kept off polar routes as a rule.

We have somewhere you can look up the theoretical dose from the flights you have done. Although it is certainly something to take an interest in, I would be much more concerned about UV exposure as it is something you can mitigate with shades, sunblock, etc. Where you live and the amount of radon in your house is probably more pertinent as well, as it is again able to be reduced/eliminated by physical means.

Skin and lung cancer from the above is definitely a thing, as the stats show. Averaged radiation dose worldwide at 35,000’ I think is ~3μSv/h and that is roughly equivalent to about an 0.00001% increase in the chance of illness per hour, so a 30,000hr career would be 0.3% above baseline which is below the noise floor for general living. Yes it has an effect but probably undetectable.

Vague memory that they did some testing about the time the Concorde entered service that basically said it was no worse than other long haul aircraft.
Went something like this - the dose per hour was higher, but the exposure time was shorter due to the higher speed - so the total exposure was about the same or slightly less than conventional aircraft.