About FlightRadiation

We are an independent research team building accessible cosmic-radiation dose reports for passengers and non-occupational frequent fliers. We are not the FAA, not the ICRP, and not a medical practice. The model we use, however, is the same one used by aircrew dosimetry programs worldwide.

Who built this

FlightRadiation is a small, independent editorial and analytics project. The team includes contributors with backgrounds in physics, aviation, and technical writing. We are not licensed physicians, radiation-protection officers, or aviation-safety regulators. Nothing on this site is medical advice or a substitute for an occupational-medicine review.

Our work draws entirely on publicly available primary sources: FAA Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) publications, ICRP recommendations, NCRP reports, the published CARI-series papers by Friedberg and Copeland, and NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center data. We add nothing proprietary to the underlying physics; we add interpretation, route-by-route dose attribution, and reader-friendly presentation.

Why this site exists

The FAA publishes a public CARI-7A web tool that anyone can use to compute the dose from a single flight. It works, but it uses defaults a layperson wouldn't recognise and returns a bare number with no context. We built a report around one flight that closes three gaps:

• Plain-language output. A dose in microsieverts means nothing on its own. The report puts the flight next to everyday comparisons, a chest X-ray, a dental bitewing, a year of natural background, so the number lands.
• ICRP-103 context. The report places the flight against the reference levels that matter: the ICRP-103 public level (1 mSv/yr), the pregnancy target (1 mSv across gestation), the FAA aircrew action level (6 mSv/yr), and the occupational five-year averaged limit (20 mSv/yr).
• Annualising one route. If you fly the same route regularly, the report multiplies the flight out to a yearly figure and shows where it falls against the 1 mSv public level.

How we make money

One thing, one price: a $15 PDF report. No subscription, no upsell, no ad tracking, no email list sale. The fee covers the compute for running CARI-7 on your flight, the dosimetry rendering, and the small editorial team that maintains the methodology and source library. We do not accept sponsorship from airlines, aircraft manufacturers, or any party with a stake in the dose numbers we report.

Editorial standards: what we will claim

• Every numeric dose value in a published report is traceable to a specific model run (CARI-7 or CARI-7A) with named inputs (origin, destination, cruise FL, departure date, heliocentric potential).
• Every reference threshold we cite is named with its source publication (e.g. ICRP-103 §5.6.2, FAA AC 120-61B Table 1).
• Every guide article on this site lists its primary sources at the bottom and dates the last review.
• When a number is an estimate or model output rather than a measurement, we say so.

What we will not claim

• We do not give medical advice. We will never tell a reader "do not fly" or "this dose is dangerous." We will tell them what the number is and which licensed professional (radiation oncologist, occupational-medicine physician, obstetrician) is qualified to advise on individual risk.
• We do not certify aircrew dose for regulatory purposes. Carriers operate their own dosimetry programs under FAA AC 120-61B. Our reports are educational and individual; they are not a substitute for an employer's program.
• We do not endorse, and are not endorsed by, the FAA, ICRP, NCRP, ACOG, NOAA, or any other agency named on this site.
• We do not model dose from in-flight solar particle events unless the user supplies dates that overlap a logged SPE, and even then the uncertainty is large and we will say so on the report.

What this site doesn't cover

• Spaceflight dose. Civil aviation ceiling is below 51,000 ft for almost all aircraft and almost all routes. Suborbital and orbital dose calculations are a different physics problem and require different codes (e.g. HZETRN).
• Military aviation. High-altitude, sustained-supersonic, and combat-profile flying is outside the validated input space of CARI-7 for civil routes.
• Airport scanner dose. Backscatter-X-ray and millimetre-wave scanners deliver doses that are biologically trivial compared to flight dose and are covered well by other sources (e.g. ANSI/HPS N43.17).
• Cabin air quality, ozone exposure, jet-lag chronobiology. Real concerns, real literature, different topic.

Corrections

If you spot an error (a wrong threshold, a misattributed citation, an out-of-date publication number), please email [email protected]. We log every factual correction publicly on our corrections page, and we will issue a corrected report to any buyer affected by a model error.

Last reviewed 30 June 2026