Putting Japanese radiation numbers in perspective

Radiation does, however, feel acceptable when used in benign circumstances such as medical imaging. You can pay £800 ($1000) and get a whole-body CT scan as part of a medical check-up, but it can deliver you a dose equivalent to being 1.5 miles from the centre of the Hiroshima explosion.

Because more than 70 million CT scans are carried out each year, the US National Cancer Institute has estimated that 29,000 Americans will get cancer as a result of the CT scans they received in 2007 alone.
David Spiegelhalter
Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk
Cambridge University

Click to expand...