Getting Touchy at the Airport - NYTimes.com
A typical dental X-ray exposes the patient to about 2 millirems of radiation. According to one widely cited estimate, exposing each of 10,000 people to one rem (that is, 1,000 millirems) of radiation will likely lead to 8 excess cancer deaths. Using our assumption of linearity, that means that exposure to the 2 millirems of a typical dental X-ray would lead an individual to have an increased risk of dying from cancer of 16 hundred-thousandths of one percent.
I'm not worried so much about the X-rays (although it turns out geezers are more susceptible), I'm worried about the math. That calculation looks suspicious to me. At least until I'm sure these guys can do the arithmetic I don't want them shooting their mutating death beams at me.
Of course I might be wrong. I have a cold. Right, it's a tiny, tiny cold, almost imperceptible, but it is all the excuse I need to trot over to the grocery store and lug back a whole, giant bag of feel-good food. Yea! So I think I'm spending the rest of the weekend eating crackers and cheese and cinnamon coffee cake and potato chips and, oh yeah, a can of chicken noodle soup. For medicinal purposes.
And then I'll worry about the math.
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