Activity and Dosages

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Here are the Doses Produced by Some Common Activities

Activity Dose (mSv)
Sleeping next to another person for one night 0.00005
Eating a banana 0.0001
Watching TV with an old CRT monitor, one hour 0.002
Arm X-ray 0.01
One flight from New York to Tokyo 0.25
Living in Australia for a year 1.5
Living in the USA for a year 3
Spending a day near the Chernobyl power plant in 2010 6
Flying as a pilot on the New York — Tokyo route for one year 9
Smoking daily one and a half packs of cigarettes for one year 36
Living one year in Guarapari, Brazil 175
Undergoing radiotherapy for prostate cancer 800
Spending 10 minutes in the reactor core of the Chernobyl power station after fuel meltdown 50,000

Here is the Radio-activity in Becquerels of Various Objects

Object Activity (Bq)
Water (l) 15
Coal mined in the USA (kg) 174
Brazil nuts (kg) 460
Tea (kg) 700
Coffee (kg) 1,000
Granite (kg) 1,000
Fly ash from coal mined in the USA (kg) 1,200
Whisky (l) 2,000
Australian superphosphate (kg) 3,000
Human body (70 kg) 7,000
Household smoke detector containing americium 30,000
Uranium ore (kg) 25,000,000
Vitrified nuclear waste from a nuclear power plant 50 years after irradiation (kg) 10,000,000,000, 000

These are average values and can vary by an order of magnitude depending on their origin.