Resumen de Using Flight-Time to Contextualize Radiological Dose
During every moment of our lives, we are surrounded by radiation from natural and manmade sources. Our bodies contain radionuclides from which we receive radiation. Radionuclides are found in the foods we eat and in the ground we walk on. We receive cosmic radiation from space. Radionuclides are also found in the airborne particles we breathe. The radiological dose from all these sources is termed background dose. Many of us are unaware of the radiation around us. Radiation is as much a part of our daily lives as air and water. In this article, time spent flying in an airplane is used as an analogy to contextualize radiological dose.
For many people, the simple mention of radiation conjures feelings of fear and danger. Mass media coverage of radiation events only intensifies our emotional reactions.1 Adding to this is that the units quantifying radiation—grays, sieverts, rads, and rem—are typically unfamiliar. Thus our feelings often result in an attitude of “no matter how small the value, it is too high.” Adoption of a “zero-tolerance” position is not surprising given the limited knowledge of radiation. Yet, we are surrounded by radiation in our daily lives. Radiation is part of the natural environmental fabric we live in. This makes a zero-tolerance position on radiation unrealistic.
There are many approaches to help people relate to and understand unfamiliar subjects. One approach is to teach by analogy: to provide a suitable comparison that allows us to relate the new topic to something we already understand and accept. Here time, more specifically time spent flying in an airplane, is used as an analogy to contextualize radiological dose and its associated unit, the millisievert (mSv).
