THE Lowly Peon

Radiation Chart

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20 March 2011, 11:08am

A simple infographic on the beloved XKCD to help explain what it means when people say how bad the radiation is in Japan.

A few interesting facts on the graph:

• Living within 50 miles of a coal power plant gives almost 4 times as much radiation as living within 50 miles of a nuclear plant
• Living in a concrete, brick, or stone building for a year gives about as much radiation as 3.5 chest X-Rays
• A mammogram gives off much more radiation than most other medical scans (the only exception on this list being a chest CT scan), and roughly 15% of all background radiation absorbed per year is from medical scans
• A flight from NY to LA gives as much radiation as two chest X-Rays

I also liked the disclaimer: "...it's for general education only. If you're basing radiation safety procedures on an internet PNG image and things go wrong, you have no one to blame but yourself."