Radiation During Airplane Flight

[Darnok]

So according to chart posted by @PakledHostage 100mSv can increase cancer risk, but 99mSv or 98mSv doesn't increase cancer risk at all?

Well I am looking at those limits in different way

Phones produce 0 radiation interesting... Brotoro could you please check that one?

[WestAir]

Do you know at what point in the flight they started dispensing chemtrails in the exhaust? And when they stopped? I'd be interested in seeing if there's any correlation with peaks and troughs on that graph.

Chemtrails are not a thing, and conspiracies are not allowed in this forum. Please stop.

So according to chart posted by @PakledHostage 100mSv can increase cancer risk, but 99mSv or 98mSv doesn't increase cancer risk at all?

Well I am looking at those limits in different way

Phones produce 0 radiation interesting... Brotoro could you please check that one?

Radio waves are non-ionizing radiation. They will not knock electrons out of your cells and damage them. People who argue the contrary (I.E All radiation is bad) are not educated on what radiation is.

-------

All that said, this graph is amazing. I'm going to print this out and show this to some people in the industry. Do you think season (winter) significantly affects the dosage?

[Jouni]

With some trepidation, I'll post this relevant XKCD:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/radiation.png

There's a major error in the chart. The dose at Chernobyl (upper right corner) should be 6 µSv/h, not 6 mSv/h. This is the original source for the claim.

[Sirrobert]

So according to chart posted by @PakledHostage 100mSv can increase cancer risk, but 99mSv or 98mSv doesn't increase cancer risk at all?

Well I am looking at those limits in different way

Phones produce 0 radiation interesting... Brotoro could you please check that one?

It's obviously a scale, with cutoff vallues based on statistical annalasys.

Aparently, 100mS is the cutoff in the studies used. So lower than that, while it would probably still increase the risk, does not do enough to be statisticly significant.

And no phones don't produce ionizing radiation (which is the kind of radiation discribed in the graphs). There are different kinds of radiation.

Ionizing radiation is only produced by radioactive material. Or are you going to argue that they might have put some plutonium in in our phones?

All that said, this graph is amazing. I'm going to print this out and show this to some people in the industry. Do you think season (winter) significantly affects the dosage?

Well, water is an amazing radioactive shield. So a big layer of snow would probably block some background radiation coming out of the ground.

No doubt clouds also block something extra. But I doubt it's all very significant

[Frozen_Heart]

Chemtrails are not a thing, and conspiracies are not allowed in this forum. Please stop.

*Whoosh

[Darnok]

It's obviously a scale, with cutoff vallues based on statistical annalasys.

Aparently, 100mS is the cutoff in the studies used. So lower than that, while it would probably still increase the risk, does not do enough to be statisticly significant.

So if only you get cancer after reciving 80mSv doesn't matter, because 1 person on 1000 test subjects is not important or acceptable loss?

And no phones don't produce ionizing radiation (which is the kind of radiation discribed in the graphs). There are different kinds of radiation.

Ionizing radiation is only produced by radioactive material. Or are you going to argue that they might have put some plutonium in in our phones?

No, I won't ague about two different radiation types, but I will argue if anyone would want to deny that using phone and being in range of its radiation is not increasing cancer risk.

[N_las]

So if only you get cancer after reciving 80mSv doesn't matter, because 1 person on 1000 test subjects is not important or acceptable loss?

That would be not important, because it would be indistinguishable from natural cancer occurences. The "noise" of people getting cancer randomly at that level is greater than the "signal" of cancer caused by that radiation.

It is like a slippery road. The slippines does increase your risk of losing balance and falling. If you decrease the slippiness slowly, the amount of people that lose balance will also decrease. At a certain level you will see that the randomness of people losing balance (on all sorts of roads, even non-slippy ones) is greater than the few people that actually fall because of the slippiness. At that point it becomes irrational to fear the road.

No, I won't ague about two different radiation types, but I will argue if anyone would want to deny that using phone and being in range of its radiation is not increasing cancer risk.

Using a phone and being in range of its radiation does not increase cancer risk.

Edited February 25, 2015 by N_las

[PB666]

That would be not important, because it would be indistinguishable from natural cancer occurences. The "noise" of people getting cancer randomly at that level is greater than the "signal" of cancer caused by that radiation.

It is like a slippery road. The slippines does increase your risk of losing balance and falling. If you decrease the slippiness slowly, the amount of people that lose balance will also decrease. At a certain level you will see that the randomness of people losing balance (on all sorts of roads, even non-slippy ones) is greater than the few people that actually fall because of the slippiness. At that point it becomes irrational to fear the road.

Using a phone and being in range of its radiation does not increase cancer risk.

If you want to go by that logic the risk of economy class syndrome is much-much greater than the risk of cancer, and also a sizable portion of the population has been advised not to fly because health related risks and so the risk of radiation damage to those people is negligible relative to their other risk.

The risk of cancer is much greater in the second generation and also includes schizophrenia, autism, etc. in the children of males who are pilots, flight attendents or frequent travelers and primarily prior to child birth since males are the primary source of transmitted nascent single nucleotide polymorphisms in the human population.

We should also consider the increased risk of ozone damage and lung cancer in individuals who frequently fly above 40,000 feet in latitudes below 75'

Edited February 25, 2015 by PB666

[N_las]

If you want to go by that logic the risk of economy class syndrome is much-much greater than the risk of cancer, and also a sizable portion of the population has been advised not to fly because health related risks and so the risk of radiation damage to those people is negligible relative to their other risk.

The risk of cancer is much greater in the second generation and also includes schizophrenia, autism, etc. in the children of males who are pilots, flight attendents or frequent travelers and primarily prior to child birth since males are the primary source of transmitted nascent single nucleotide polymorphisms in the human population.

We should also consider the increased risk of ozone damage and lung cancer in individuals who frequently fly above 40,000 feet in latitudes below 75'

Yes, I want to go by that logic, and I agree more or less with everything you said. Of course all those risks (regarding severity or frequency) pale in comparison to the risk of a car crash on the way to and from the airport.

[Darnok]

That would be not important, because it would be indistinguishable from natural cancer occurences. The "noise" of people getting cancer randomly at that level is greater than the "signal" of cancer caused by that radiation.

So if you can't distinguish cause of cancer you accept it as natural occurence?

It's very disturbing for someone who valuates life not statistics.

It is like a slippery road. The slippines does increase your risk of losing balance and falling. If you decrease the slippiness slowly, the amount of people that lose balance will also decrease. At a certain level you will see that the randomness of people losing balance (on all sorts of roads, even non-slippy ones) is greater than the few people that actually fall because of the slippiness. At that point it becomes irrational to fear the road.

If you think about car as only way to travel that is true, you have no other choice than use road. But if you consinder other ways/vehicles you may travel without roads, then slipperiness wouldn't be issue.

Same thing is with radiation, right now most corparations is using "some technology" because they have access to that "technology" and not to other. Those corporations invented cell phones because there was demand for that kind of device on market and cell phones are generating some radiation and right now I am sure there will be many scientists saying it is ok and it won't harm people because radiation levels are too low... sadly people are forgetting about history.

About 50-60 years ago huge oil corporations were selling fuel for cars with led, you had led in toys and in paint.

Right now nobody dares to deny it was harming not only us humans, but also environment, but back then some scientists said "it is ok, you don't have to worry about that, we checked led levels and they are not causing any health issues". What changed this? Simple bussines, today oil corporation have new technology that allows them to refine fuel without led

Using a phone and being in range of its radiation does not increase cancer risk.

Because you said so? How do you know that?

As long as science have no idea how to create life starting with just bunch of atoms, we can't say for sure what kind of radiation can harm life and what won't.

It maybe very difficult to measure how cell phone is affecting your body cells, because there are many types of cells in our bodies. Some effects after reciving too much harmful radiation may occur in future generations, maybe on your children or even later.

[Kryten]

As long as science have no idea how to create life starting with just bunch of atoms, we can't say for sure what kind of radiation can harm life and what won't.

This is one of the stupidest thing I've ever read.

[Darnok]

This is one of the stupidest thing I've ever read.

I can say same thing

One more thing... how science checked cell phones? Did they put working cell phone near living cell and were waiting for 10 or 20 years to see what will happen?

[Kryten]

There's no mechanism for radiation in that wavelength to damage cells except heating, and the heating effects have been shown to be negligible. You might want to look up the photoelectric effect, one of the basic foundations of physics; radiation below certain wavelengths cannot cause ionisation no matter the exposure time or intensity.

[N_las]

So if you can't distinguish cause of cancer you accept it as natural occurence?

It's very disturbing for someone who DOESN'T UNDERSTAND HOW STATISTICS WORK.

I fixed that sentence for you.

If you think about car as only way to travel that is true, you have no other choice than use road. But if you consinder other ways/vehicles you may travel without roads, then slipperiness wouldn't be issue.

It was an analogy. You can't escape the natrual background radiation and other natrual sources of cancer. So the road is the only option.

If cellphones would increase cancer risk, we would see an increase in cancer cases over the last 20 years (age corrected). We don't.

Also, I propose that bouncing castles cause cancer. You disagree, they don't cause cancer? Why? "Because you said so? How do you know that?" (Quote from you)

As long as science have no idea how to create life starting with just bunch of atoms, we can't say for sure what kind of castle can harm life and what won't.

One more thing... how science checked bouncing castles? Did they put bouncing castle near living cell and were waiting for 10 or 20 years to see what will happen?

Edited February 25, 2015 by N_las

[PB666]

So if you can't distinguish cause of cancer you accept it as natural occurence?

It's very disturbing for someone who valuates life not statistics.

If you think about car as only way to travel that is true, you have no other choice than use road. But if you consinder other ways/vehicles you may travel without roads, then slipperiness wouldn't be issue.

Same thing is with radiation, right now most corparations is using "some technology" because they have access to that "technology" and not to other. Those corporations invented cell phones because there was demand for that kind of device on market and cell phones are generating some radiation and right now I am sure there will be many scientists saying it is ok and it won't harm people because radiation levels are too low... sadly people are forgetting about history.

About 50-60 years ago huge oil corporations were selling fuel for cars with led, you had led in toys and in paint.

Right now nobody dares to deny it was harming not only us humans, but also environment, but back then some scientists said "it is ok, you don't have to worry about that, we checked led levels and they are not causing any health issues". What changed this? Simple bussines, today oil corporation have new technology that allows them to refine fuel without led

Because you said so? How do you know that?

As long as science have no idea how to create life starting with just bunch of atoms, we can't say for sure what kind of radiation can harm life and what won't.

It maybe very difficult to measure how cell phone is affecting your body cells, because there are many types of cells in our bodies. Some effects after reciving too much harmful radiation may occur in future generations, maybe on your children or even later.

Risk is determined by controlled studies, for example you take 1000 frequent fliers from different demographics and you can compare it with cancer risks in blood relative that don't fly

10, 20, 30, 40 year later. What often happens is you come up with something that increases risk by 10 or 20%. Then each sort of risk either adds or multiplies. There can also be negative risks.

For example Colorectal cancer risk might be 60% transfats, 10% flight exposure, 20% other environmental exposures, 30% nascent mutations from a parent, etc.

Here's an example.

Rheumatoid Arthritis

No shared epitope, never smoked, never lived near highway or rail station, never lived in an air polluted area, male. Risk = 1

Female with no other risk. Risk = 3

Shared Epitope (genetic). Risk = 5

Smokes or lives in an area with particulate pollution. Risk = 5

Female, smoker with gene shared epitope. Risk 40 to 80

Negative risk - Certain tribe (~20,000) living in Africa. Risk = 0 to 0.1 (using FET to establish a confidence range)

The risk of defects in children is less than easy to determine. Currently the best way would be transmission genome-wide association studies (for nascent mutations requires millions of markers) or whole genome sequence of parent child trios. Nascent mutations are hard to detect, but the have a handful of schizo and autism loci that can be sequenced for nascent SNPs generated (largely from father offspring transmission). (IOW the fathers white blood cells have one mutation, the maternal SNP is present and the other chromosome does not have an SNP present in the father).

Its all about risk, for example

If you have red-hair (MCRA gene variant) and freckle (also albinism) easily your risk for cancer caused by radiation is higher. This risk increases the global risk. In the case of radiation, this gene lowers the threshold for radiation damage (the point in which DNA damage repair can no longer keep up with damage before the next DNA replication is complete), thus if we remove all such individuals and other DNA damage repair defects from consideration we can increase the tolerance threshold for radiation quite markedly.

If you consider for example why a village in Iran can have no increased risk of cancer despite magnitude higher radiation, you might consider that genes that increase risk may have been negatively selected and under-went purifying selection many generations ago, so now all the villagers that remain have very high threshold tolerances for radiation. If you then trained all your pilots and astronauts from this pool of individuals, you may never see evidence of radiation induced damage.

Its all about risk, there are visible and knowable risks, and there are invisible risk creeping around in your DNA, just waiting for a prime opportunity to reveal themselves. This is, in fact, the whole idea behind individualized treatment therapies for cancer....identify the risk, the defects, and then target the defect with specific drugs that weaken those cells and not other cells.

- - - Updated - - -

There's no mechanism for radiation in that wavelength to damage cells except heating, and the heating effects have been shown to be negligible. You might want to look up the photoelectric effect, one of the basic foundations of physics; radiation below certain wavelengths cannot cause ionisation no matter the exposure time or intensity.

Risk again. There are people who carry a genetic trait for burn-induced cancers. Heat is a risk for those people.

[Kryten]

#Risk again. There are people who carry a genetic trait for burn-induced cancers. Heat is a risk for those people.

Burns will increase cancer risk in all people, temperatures high enough to cause them will damage various proteins needed to protect and repair DNA. The effect is negligible in that it doesn't cause significant hotspots inside the body, and certainly not burns.

[N_las]

Risk again. There are people who carry a genetic trait for burn-induced cancers. Heat is a risk for those people.

If the heating effect of cellphone radiation would be any factor, then a hot summer day or a fever or a simple hot beverage would be much more devestating.

[andrewas]

I can say same thing

One more thing... how science checked cell phones? Did they put working cell phone near living cell and were waiting for 10 or 20 years to see what will happen?

At a guess, they exposed smaller organisms, which would be more susceptible to any effect, to a much more intense radiation source than a mobile phone, and drew conclusions from that data. There have also been studies done looking for correlations between cancer and mobile phone use, and no definite link has been found. Which means that, if there is a link, its weak enough that it cannot be distinguished from natural occurence of cancer in studies involving thousands of people.

As for your earlier point about the risk posed by low radiation doses, consider that it becomes very expensive to detect a tiny increase of cancer. You have to study many people to reduce the effect of background cancer, and at extremely low doses you have to monitor the natural radiation exposure of your sample population, because someone who travels a lot or receives a couple of x-rays has enough incident radiation exposure to skew your results. This all makes such studies prohibitively expensive - particularly since the data isn't particularly valuable. We know the cancer risk associated with 100mSv doses of radiation. We know it gets smaller as the dose drops. We don't know whether it drops to zero at some level, or if the linear no-threshold model is correct and any radiation exposure has some risk of cancer. More data won't change anything - if someone gets cancer following a 50mSv exposure, knowing the exact risk he was taking would not have changed his behavior, and the odds are that the cancer actually has nothing to do with the radiation.

The funds that would be needed to measure these risks are better allocated to cancer research. That will actually save lives, where determining the precise risks of very low doses will just provide a useless number. Knowing you are adding a one in a million chance of getting cancer on top of the existing, much larger, risk of getting cancer doesn't change much.

[Darnok]

There's no mechanism for radiation in that wavelength to damage cells except heating, and the heating effects have been shown to be negligible. You might want to look up the photoelectric effect, one of the basic foundations of physics; radiation below certain wavelengths cannot cause ionisation no matter the exposure time or intensity.

You have very strong FAITH in science... that is irony

Science is extensible, I don't have faith in science but in progression of science and sometimes to make step forward you have to first make few steps back.

So putting your life on current science is naive for me.

Simplest way to explain it... look at speed v = d/t it is simple and everyone know this. It is correct for bikes, cars and even planes.

Does that means it solves every movement we can observe? Is it also correct for planets, stars and satellites in high orbit?

Well I am pretty sure, if at the time when this equation was first wrote there would be a Nobel prize then guy who wrote this equation would get it but since then people extended this equation a bit.

Same way I am thinking about every aspect of science... I don't have faith in current discoveries and equations, because in near future they will be extended or even replaced.

It is very naive to say FOR SURE what kind of radiation does and what doesn't harm life since we have no idea how to create life, we are missing something then.

When we learn it, when we gather all puzzles and answer all questions starting with "how..." and "why..." then saying it is stupid to doubt it, will be reasonable for me.

I fixed that sentence for you.

It was an analogy. You can't escape the natrual background radiation and other natrual sources of cancer. So the road is the only option.

You didn't fixed it, you refused to think other way. I know how statistics works, that is why I doubt it so much... I don't doubt in equations but in human interpretations.

And your post just proves my point, most people using statistics are making mistakes.

If you can't distinguish cause of cancer you are accepting it as natural, that is mistake, because there is chance it is not natural and you are responsible for this one person getting cancer.

As for your castles, can you check on lab rat how cell phone is going to affect for him if he is using it for 40+ years?

You can't because 40 years ago there was no cell phones with touch screens, with batteries build like today and there was no satellites or poles sending waves to cell phones.

Companies can't check every new piece of their smartphones or tablets for few years in laboratory it would be obsolete if they would do that

so they are using statistics and us as test subjects.

Risk is determined by controlled studies, for example you take 1000 frequent fliers from different demographics and you can compare it with cancer risks in blood relative that don't fly

10, 20, 30, 40 year later. What often happens is you come up with something that increases risk by 10 or 20%. Then each sort of risk either adds or multiplies. There can also be negative risks.

For example Colorectal cancer risk might be 60% transfats, 10% flight exposure, 20% other environmental exposures, 30% nascent mutations from a parent, etc.

Here's an example.

Rheumatoid Arthritis

No shared epitope, never smoked, never lived near highway or rail station, never lived in an air polluted area, male. Risk = 1

Female with no other risk. Risk = 3

Shared Epitope (genetic). Risk = 5

Smokes or lives in an area with particulate pollution. Risk = 5

Female, smoker with gene shared epitope. Risk 40 to 80

Negative risk - Certain tribe (~20,000) living in Africa. Risk = 0 to 0.1 (using FET to establish a confidence range)

The risk of defects in children is less than easy to determine. Currently the best way would be transmission genome-wide association studies (for nascent mutations requires millions of markers) or whole genome sequence of parent child trios. Nascent mutations are hard to detect, but the have a handful of schizo and autism loci that can be sequenced for nascent SNPs generated (largely from father offspring transmission). (IOW the fathers white blood cells have one mutation, the maternal SNP is present and the other chromosome does not have an SNP present in the father).

That is my point, we are all test subjects of experiments for large corporations.

There is no way to check how cell phones or flying planes is affecting humans in laboratory, you have to sell it and use statistics to decide... are we investing to make this technology less harmful or it is acceptable or indistinguishable from natural causes.

Edited February 25, 2015 by Darnok

[Kryten]

Biology isn't magic, it's chemistry. It's trivial to demonstrate that signals of these wavelengths and intensity do not have effects on chemical systems.

[Val]

Even though it's a bit off-topic, I'll again refer to Veritasitum, regarding the Cell Phone Radiation studies.

No bananas for scale

[Jouni]

So if only you get cancer after reciving 80mSv doesn't matter, because 1 person on 1000 test subjects is not important or acceptable loss?

Correlation does not imply causation.

If someone gets cancer, we almost never know for certain what caused the cancer. We know various effects that increase the risk of getting cancer, but the evidence is almost always statistical. If someone receives a 100 mSv dose of radiation, they have a statistically increased risk of getting cancer. Still, if they do get cancer, it was most likely caused by something other than the radiation dose. The increased risk from a 100 mSv dose is much smaller than the background risk of getting cancer.

If the dose was 80 mSv instead of 100 mSv, we still have reasons to believe that the dose may increase the risk of getting cancer. The reasons are mostly speculative, however, as we don't have enough empirical evidence on the health effects of radiation. Most of what we know comes from observing the effects of various radiation accidents and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Because such accidents are rare, because observational data is worse than data from carefully designed experiments, and because we no longer like killing/harming people for science, we're not going learn much more in the foreseeable future.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

You have very strong FAITH in science... that is irony

Science is extensible, I don't have faith in science but in progression of science and sometimes to make step forward you have to first make few steps back.

So putting your life on current science is naive for me.

Simplest way to explain it... look at speed v = d/t it is simple and everyone know this. It is correct for bikes, cars and even planes.

Does that means it solves every movement we can observe? Is it also correct for planets, stars and satellites in high orbit?

Well I am pretty sure, if at the time when this equation was first wrote there would be a Nobel prize then guy who wrote this equation would get it but since then people extended this equation a bit.

Same way I am thinking about every aspect of science... I don't have faith in current discoveries and equations, because in near future they will be extended or even replaced.

It is very naive to say FOR SURE what kind of radiation does and what doesn't harm life since we have no idea how to create life, we are missing something then.

When we learn it, when we gather all puzzles and answer all questions starting with "how..." and "why..." then saying it is stupid to doubt it, will be reasonable for me.

You didn't fixed it, you refused to think other way. I know how statistics works, that is why I doubt it so much... I don't doubt in equations but in human interpretations.

And your post just proves my point, most people using statistics are making mistakes.

If you can't distinguish cause of cancer you are accepting it as natural, that is mistake, because there is chance it is not natural and you are responsible for this one person getting cancer.

As for your castles, can you check on lab rat how cell phone is going to affect for him if he is using it for 40+ years?

You can't because 40 years ago there was no cell phones with touch screens, with batteries build like today and there was no satellites or poles sending waves to cell phones.

Companies can't check every new piece of their smartphones or tablets for few years in laboratory it would be obsolete if they would do that

so they are using statistics and us as test subjects.

That is my point, we are all test subjects of experiments for large corporations.

There is no way to check how cell phones or flying planes is affecting humans in laboratory, you have to sell it and use statistics to decide... are we investing to make this technology less harmful or it is acceptable or indistinguishable from natural causes.

Are you saying we shouldn't use cell phones because we haven't used them for 40+ years yet? My brain hurts.

[Darnok]

Are you saying we shouldn't use cell phones because we haven't used them for 40+ years yet? My brain hurts.

I am saying we shouldn't say we are absolutely sure that cell phones are 100% safe and they won't harm our bodies.

[andrewas]

Wouldn't it be enough to know that the limit on the cancer deaths they can cause without the link showing up in the studies that have been done, is lower than the number of people who would die for lack of the ability to call for help if mobile phones were banned? The ability for a bystander to call an ambulance immediately rather than after dashing to a phone box can make the difference, the ability for lost people to call for directions can make the difference, call for help performing first aid or let rescuers triangulate your position using the cell phone network.