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Millirems here, there, everywhere

June 1st, 2008

One of the most surprising facts I learned while studying nuclear power is just how much radiation we absorb in our daily lives and how miniscule the percentage of that total annual absorption you’d get even if you lived next to a nuclear power plant 24 hours a day, grew your food there and drank all your water from a well on your property (this describes “the Fencepost Man” - a theoretical person the EPA limits to 15 millirems annually). Below is a rundown of millirems associated in various aspects of our lives.A millirem “is a measure of the actual biological effects of radiation absorbed in human tissue.” To give you a sense of scale, 100,000 millirems within a short time might kill you, although the short time is a critical part of that lethality.

Associated with energy

Living within 50 miles of a coal-fired plant .03 millirem/year
Living within 50 miles of a nuclear plant .0009 millirem/year
15 millirems - EPA limit for the “Fencepost Man”
21 millirems - Average annual exposure of a uranium miner
180 to 240 millirems - Actual average exposure of nuclear power plant workers
5,000 millirems - Nuclear Regulatory Commission limit for exposure of nuclear plant workers
80,000 to 1.6 million millirems - Inside the reactor building at Chernobyl

240 millirems - Average annual background radiation we receive from sources like the below:

Roundtrip flight from New York to LA - 3 millirems
Natural gas in your home - 9 millirems
Chest x-ray - 10 millirems
Drinking water - 32 millirems
Cosmic radiation - 50 millirems
Xray technician – 500 millirems
Living for a year at Grand Central Station made of granite – 600 millirems
Living in northeastern Washington state - 1,700 millirems
2 packs of cigarettes a day 16,000 to 20,000 millirems/year (even then, the chemical aspect is probably what causes cancer, not the radiation)
Living in a particular city in Iran - 26,000 millirems (no evidence of health risks)

Entry Filed under: Energy & Environment