They need to talk to NASA

hawt azn stewardess pix plz

/ obligatory

It makes sense.

In other news, the sun's rays can indeed cause harm!

You'd think they'd foil line the damned cockpit.

Article is all about "cosmic" rays too. Yeah. um. no.

You know, I went on a transpolar flight while 7 months pregnant. I'm glad I hadn't heard about this back then. There are enough things for pregnant women to worry about.

I wonder how season affects the radiation level.

Never heard of cosmic radiation, buzzvert? A widely known physical phenomenon. Google before you retort.

However, unions are concerned no such limits have been put on passenger flights.

Now we just wait for the "_______ Airlines gave me CANCER!" lawsuits to roll on in...

Sounds about right, 24 flights a year would work out to about 1 Rad, the same limit used for US nuclear workers.

etherelithic:
Never heard of cosmic radiation, buzzvert? A widely known physical phenomenon. Google before you retort.

You mean the extrasolar cosmic rays that are completely harmless unless, say, Alpha Centauri decides to nova? "Cosmic" rays refer to, in circles of people that know their ass from a hole in the ground, the radiation which comes in from outside the solar system... i.e. the cosmos. Solar radiation is different.

Neither are phenomena.

Take your google and stick it up your ass.

"What the hell are you doing? You're getting a huge dose of radiation!"
"And great lift!"
"Ugh, do you know how long it's going to take me to recalibrate these engines?"
"Hey! When you look this good, you don't have to know anything."

Is it just me, or is that page not rendering very well, Firefox or EI.

buzzvert..ftw.

buzzvert

Cosmic radiation is, while hardly a huge contributor to the typical amount of radiation absorbed by your average human, nonetheless a non-trivial factor, slightly exacerbated by the higher than normal altitudes that pilots work in. And your statement about cosmic radiation being "harmless" is completely false. While obviously not associated with the context of commercial jet pilots, cosmic radiation is a serious threat to the health of astronauts aboard the ISS , and is certainly not treated as a trifling matter.

Plus, you're being a bit of a prick with your responses and your holier-than-thou attitude, so stick it up your own.

God damn cr7pilot!

I'd park my plane in her hanger and grease my bearings!

/Also drain my fluids

Wow! It's like 2005 all over again!

buzzvert needs to change his tampon

/lighten up francine

@ cr7pilot she aint that hot.
/I run a sports group in Germany and have about 10 better ones.
//Well, mine don't take off their clothes on camera though so...
///you recieve +1 from me for seeing a co-workers boobies!

When I first read the headline I thought, New York gives you cancer?

/may still be true. who knows?

And because not all Cathay stewardesses are young and lovely, the quoted Becky Kwan herself:

Cosmic Radiation? It's not cancer, it's superhuman powers they're gaining!


/yes knows what cosmic radiation is, so don't berate me

cosmic radiation doesn't cause cancer. It causes superpowers. apparently.

.. -- --..
.. -.
..- .-.
- .... .-. . .- -.. ,
.... .- ...- .. -. --.
.-
-. . .-. -..
..-. .. --. .... -

Wow....I literally just got home from flying the Cathay Pacific's Hong Kong to L.A. flight....


.....loooong ass flight....


I can see how some people would be worried that a flight like that would cause health problems.

Good for them.

oh and holy crap I love Hong Kong!!

I'm seriously gonna move there

DJanomaly
try Toronto/ Hong Kong with the fuel stop and crew change in Anchorage, 20 hours...that's a long flight. Hong Kong is brilliant though, and great airline.

Why don't they just declare that EVERYTHING causes cancer and be done with it? Why do it one thing at a time?

Well, since no one else has done it yet, allow me to don the tinfoil hat and say...:

How come no astronauts got cancer by going to the moon then? Because they didn't! It's Capricorn One man!

/pass the joint
//Kennedy was actually killed by Fred Rogers who was a sniper in the Navy Seals.
///or maybe it was Jim Henson
////pass the joint I said

theblackader

Actually, as soon as I clicked send on my post I realized that I neglected to mention that as long as my flight was, it was nothing compared to some of the other US flights to Hong Kong.

....and yeah, amazing place.......I fell in love

oh and holy crap I love Hong Kong!!

I'm seriously gonna move there

QFT - I loved the times I was able to visit Hong Kong - unfortunately my longest stay was 2 days at a time heading in and out of Guangzhou. But I really enjoyed that city/state - I was there both before and after the handover. Of course the reason I think I WAS able to enjoy it was I was on an expense account and could actually afford to stay and eat there :)

Lovely place tho!

cr7pilot, at least she looks better than 90% of the FAs out there now. Someone said you guys had one that was in playboy.

There's a problem here:

The radiation risk is pretty much based on how much time you spend at altitude and not your route. Limiting this one flight won't really help much.

Besides, the bigger issue is that the cancers aren't showing up. Enough people (flight crews) have spent enough time up there that we should see an effect but we don't. Another data point suggesting that low level exposure doesn't post the risk we thought it did. (Our risk numbers are based on what's seen from high level exposure, mostly from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)

As for the people who are objecting to the term "cosmic" radiation--it's a perfectly legitimate term. It's referring to very high energy particles coming from outside the solar system. It's far too energetic to shield a flying craft against--in fact, poor shielding is worse than none at all. To truly stop it you need 6 feet of dirt or it's equivalent.

I'm assuming this has something to do with the fact that the Van Allen belts are weakest over the poles?

I remember reading 10+ years ago about concerns over flight crews being exposed to higher levels of radiation than the rest of us who have a few thousand extra feet of atmosphere above us.

check on this later.

lostcat
You're right about the extra atmosphere but not about the Van Allen belts. The Van Allen belts consist primarily of high-energy radiation and can pose a danger to astronauts and orbiting satellites, but don't provide any protection to people on Earth from cosmic radiation (I suppose they could collide, but the interaction cross-sections of high energy particles like cosmic rays are quite low). It's been theorized that the belts might protect us somewhat from solar wind, but I don't believe it's been proven.

Loren
Aw, you were doing so well until "it's equivalent". Down with the linear no-threshold model! Not that I have a better one...

bump

stox: Sounds about right, 24 flights a year would work out to about 1 Rad, the same limit used for US nuclear workers.

The limit for nuclear workers is 5 Rad per year set by the US Government.

The companies that expose their workers to radiation follow a self administered level of 3 Rad for workers so they never get close to the government limit. This prevents them from accidentally exposing workers to the governments limit, thus preventing extremely expensive fines.

Even with these limits, some workers are exposed to more radiation than this due to emergency maintenance work that simply must be completed for the safety of the reactor and the surrounding communities.

/spent too much time in the nuclear industry.