6 replies to this topic

[Pablo M]

I posed this question on the LEF forum as well, but this one tends to be more active. My question is this: do x-rays, like those from airport baggage screening, damage supplements? I would ask them to be hand-inspected but it seems as if this right is being curtailed like so many others. I had a screener tell me, "It's just an x-ray, it doesn't do anything" when I didn't want to put my sandwich through. Uh, then why do I have to wear a lead apron when I get them at the dentist?

Thanks

[bgwowk]

Relax. Airport x-rays won't do a thing to your supplements.

I remember a scandal many years ago back in my hometown. Somehow a sleeping baby covered in a carrier was accidentally put through an airport x-ray machine. There was such great upset over the incident that the baby was flown to a large city a thousand miles away "to be examined by experts to make sure no harm was done". (As if the purely stochastic effects of a low-dose x-ray could ever be medically detected, which they can't.) Then some physicist sat down and calculated that the cosmic radiation dose received by the child during the roundtrip high altitude trip EXCEEDED the radiation dose from the original x-ray incident. Go figure.

---BrianW

P.S. You wear an apron at the dentist because of ALARA ("as low as reasonably achievable") practice, not because the harm from a single medical or dental x-rays is statistically significant.

[Pablo M]

Isn't it conceivable that the X-rays could oxidize even 1 molecule of my supplements? X-rays do affect humans, do they not? Or have I been lied to by comic books?

My chemistry teacher, a fairly learned man, also told me about the cosmic rays from flying. He says the cockpit is shielded but not the cabin. Too bad for the stewardesses.

[bgwowk]

My chemistry teacher, a fairly learned man, also told me about the cosmic rays from flying. He says the cockpit is shielded but not the cabin. Too bad for the stewardesses.

And your supplements. A few molecules, that is. [sfty]

---BrianW

[brooklynjuice]

your supplement will get more radiation during the flight than a single xray, by far

[John Schloendorn]

I was also concerned about DNA samples. No matter where the radiation comes from, does anyone have quantitative information at hand about the dose dealt by typical airport machines and the flights respectively?

[scottl]

Brooklyn is correct. The amount of radiation from a coast to caost flight is the same as a chest x-ray which is to say negligible radiation.