Unfortunately, there is nothing you or any lawyer can do to stop inflight radiation.

[very long, informative post from my nuclear engineering days deleted due to FT bug]

The points I was trying to add before they were deleted were

1. Airline workers don't wear dosimetry (unlike power plant or xray workers), so the amount of radiation that they receive is unknown.

2. Flight crews clearly receive more than federal limits on power plant workers, so Homer would be pulled before a flight attendant (maybe not a pilot - they don't work very many hours for their big pay).

3. Pregnant FAs don't have legal protection, unlike radiation workers, who must be pulled once they declare a pregnancy in writing (and not until).

4. No matter what any lawyer or greenie says, it is still far safer than driving. I'd prefer a slight risk of cancer at the age of 70 than a auto collision at 30. Any action that puts more people in cars is completely irresponsible.

5. Even so, those "more likely to receive cancer" studies don't tell the big picture. Repeated studies of power plant workers show that they live -longer- than the general public. This is most likely due to the "healthy worker" effect. I expect that a pilot study would show the same. When everyone else dies at 70, and you get a cancer at 80, are you worse off? I guess it depends on how you keep score.

I'm sure, though, that given a long enough leash, the lawyers will **** everything up through baseless lawsuits that, in the end, won't change the fact that going up in the air gets you a few more bits of radiation. I know the facts, and I prefer to fly.

As an old nuke prof used to say to us, "Aeronautical engineers are allowed to kill people, but you are not!"

[This message has been edited by Tino (edited 09-13-2000).]