According to this National Geographic articlethere isn’t much risk to an individual occasionally flying as a result of gamma ray radiation, but do airline pilots have an above average incidence of cancer, or any other maladies, as a result of almost daily bombardment by gamma rays? You would expect to see some ill effects, wouldn’t you?
They have run the experiment and collated results.
The incidence rate of cancers did not show any connection.
The nuclear radiation for air travel is below damaging threshold and the body is able to repair the damage , or if there is any its only slight.
Given only two types of cancer were only slightly increased, they felt there was more practical reasons for those - skin cancer comes from the bookish northern types going out in the sun, and the prostate cancer also from lifestyle influence…
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-help/about-cancer/cancer-questions/airline-staff-and-cancer
Radiation dose for a high flying jet is measured at 6 uSv per hour , which is tiny in terms of health risk. Its only 10 times higher (for someone who is flying 12 hours each and every day) , than background.
1 Siervert (when exposed to it all in a short time… ) causes a 5% risk of cancer.
There’s been more concern in recent years due to the increasing number of transpolar flights. Evidently there is more cosmic radiation in this area than near the equator, something to do with the thinner magnetosphere (exposure is even higher during periods of elevated solar flare activity). According to NYT, someone taking five round trips between NY and Hong Kong could receive more than the maximum recommended annual exposure. This would be true for pilots, cabin crew, and passengers.
You sure about that? On the famous XKCD radiation chart, “1 Sievert” is somewhere between "dose causing symptoms of radiation poisoning if received in a short time (400 mSv) and “Severe radiation poisoning, in some cases fatal (2 Sv).” Maybe you meant 0.1 Sv?
Depends what you mean by “a short time”.
The limits for astronauts (as dose to the skin) are 150 rem (1.5 Sv) in 30 days, 300 rem (3 Sv) in a year, and 600 rem (6 Sv) in a whole career.
That same page gives the typical annual exposure for airline flight crew as 200 mrem (0.002 Sv).
A quick drive-by note regarding the OP:
The radiation at commerical airline altitudes is mostly hadronic in nature, particularly protons and neutrons. Only a small fraction is in the form of gamma rays.