If you get radiation from flying, are pregnant women told not to fly?

What radiation when flying? Where did you hear that? There should no more radiation than a day at the beach.

I believe my friend was told not to fly during her last few weeks of pregnancy. I think it had more to do with the fact the doctor wanted her near the hospital though, and she was having problems with her pregnancy. She ended up going into labor a month early, probably because of the complications she was having. So I think her doctors refusal to allow her to fly was more about keeping her butt near the hospital because of what was going on. I’m not sure.

http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/faqs/pregnancyandflying.html

This should answer all your questions.

You get no more radiation from flying than you do from walking around in downtown Denver. Actually, Denver can give you a lot more.

The increase in dose is not large, and passengers are not generally monitored for cumulative exposure. Pregnant women do not face a large increase in risk though, as a long distance flight is only equivalent to a few weeks of normal background radiation. Ideally there would be some warnings for frequent flyers, but the risk is so low it is not worth the cost of an educational program to warn people.

@DarkScribe You get a greater radiation exposure from flying because a lot of cosmic rays are attenuated by the atmosphere, and at high elevations the intensity is still relatively high. Pilots have been classified as radiation workers in OH&S laws for a number of years now.

Never heard of that, flew while prego. its all good.

@MrGeneVan That was a interesting site, but the questions are mostly about concerns about miscarriage. That is not my question. They don’t give pregnant women x-rays because it can cause the baby to get cancer many years later (they learned this the hard way—x-raying pregnant women and then those babies 20 years later getting cancer). So, my question was really whether anyone has ever looked at the results of whether the women who fly when pregnant have children who later have more tendency to get cancer. As I am writing this, I realize that no one has probably ever thought about this notion—and also probably there are likely no data on this at all.

@FireMadeFlesh You get a greater radiation exposure from flying because a lot of cosmic rays are attenuated by the atmosphere

Yes, there is an almost imperceptible difference as all radiation is attenuated by metal, plastic, glass etc. (Try to get a suntan through a glass window.) As I noted, a day at the beach will exceed the increased radiation from flying. Astronauts who have no atmospheric protection at all aren’t wandering about suffering from radiation sickness. A commercial pilot who has a working lifetime of increased exposure still ranks lower in cancer incidence than a person who spends several months per year surfing or sailing in tropical areas.

@DarkScribe That is true, but sunscreen doesn’t do a pilot much good. I’m not sure how much UV gets past a liberal application of sunscreen. I just gave the comment I did because your answer seemed to indicate you were not aware of the increased exposure to pilots.

@DarkScribe I am happy to hear this, if true. I have been told many times that flying across the country is like getting a chest x-ray. And I know this is something that pregnant women would avoid—so I was thinking about it.