Air travel exposes you to radiation - how much health risk comes with it?

The major source of radiation exposure from air travel comes from the flight itself

This past April, business traveler Tom Stuker became the world’s most frequent flyer, logging 18,000,000 miles of air travel on United Airlines over the last 14 years.

That’s a lot of time up in the air. If Stuker’s traveling behaviours are typical of other business flyers, he may have eaten 6,500 inflight meals, drunk 5,250 alcoholic beverages, watched thousands of inflight movies and made around 10,000 visits to airplane toilets.

He would also have accumulated a radiation dose equivalent to about 1,000 chest x-rays.