What is naturally-occurring “background” radiation exposure?
We are exposed to radiation from natural sources all the time. The average person in the U.S. receives an effective dose of about 3.1 mSv per year from naturally occurring radioactive materials and cosmic radiation from outer space. These natural “background” doses vary throughout the country. People living in the plateaus of Colorado or New Mexico receive about 1.5 mSv more per year than those living near sea level. The added dose from cosmic rays during a coast-to-coast round trip flight in a commercial airplane is about 0.03 mSv. Altitude plays a big role, but the largest source of background radiation comes from radon gas in our homes (about 2 mSv per year). Like other sources of background radiation, exposure to radon varies widely from one part of the country to another. To explain it in simple terms, we can compare the radiation exposure from one chest X-ray as equivalent to the amount of radiation exposure one experiences from our natural surroundings in 20 days.
