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Comment by bbrazil | Hacker News Reader

I find that https://xkcd.com/radiation/ always helps put things in perspective.

Working with the chart, to reach the lowest dose clearly linked to cancer (100mSv) minus background radiation for a year (4 mSv, so to get 96 mSv), you can find some silly permutations of that to get to 100mSv:

Spend a year in the Fukushima Exclusion zone (26mSv) plus 10 Chest CT scans

Spend a year in the Fukushima Exclusion zone, then take the max dose for a US radiation worker and two chest CT scans.

The whole green area of the chart (75 mSv) plus taking a dose at the northwest edge of the Fukushima exclusion zone puts you 19 mSv over the limit. So lay off a couple of CT scans and visits to Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima and you'd be beneath the limit clearly linked to cancer.

Get 5000 chest X-Rays

250 mammograms

Eat a million bananas

This silly exercise at least convinces me to worry less about X-rays, plane flights, and eating bananas. It would be nice if XKCD had the dose that takes your cancer risk above certain thresholds like 1/million, 1/1000, 1/100, etc. It would also be nice if the public calmed down about radiation.

For the Chernobyl quote, it is nowhere near as high as that. That is standing at the plant, but the closest you can get is a 1/4 mile away. And you only stay there for about 15 minutes. Most of the time in the tour is exploring the surrounding area and Pripyat.

When Ukraine stabilizes more, I would highly recommend a trip to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, it is a really cool experience.

This is very helpful.. I think the problem most people have is the complete lack of any sense of scale when it comes to radiation.. I mean, without looking at something like this, how is anyone expected to know anything about what safe levels are?

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