In-flight dose estimates for aircraft crew and pregnant female crew members in military transport missions.
Aircraft fighter pilots may experience risks other than the exposure to cosmic radiation due to the characteristics of a typical fighter flight. The combined risks for fighter pilots due to the G-forces, hypobaric hypoxia, cosmic radiation exposure, etc. have determined that pregnant female pilots should remain on ground. However, several military transport missions can be considered an ordinary civil aircraft flight and the question arises whether a pregnant female crew member could still be part of the aircraft crew. The cosmic radiation dose received was estimated for transport missions carried out on the Hercules C-130 type of aircraft by a single air squad in 1 month. The flights departed from Lisboa to areas such as: the Azores, several countries in central and southern Africa, the eastern coast of the USA and the Balkans, and an estimate of the cosmic radiation dose received on each flight was carried out. A monthly average cosmic radiation dose to the aircraft crew was determined and the dose values obtained were discussed in relation to the limits established by the European Union Council Directive 96/29/Euratom. The cosmic radiation dose estimates were performed using the EPCARD v3.2 and the CARI-6 computing codes. EPCARD v3.2 was kindly made available by GSF-National Research Centre for Environment and Health, Institute of Radiation Protection (Neuherberg, Germany). CARI-6 (version July 7, 2004) was downloaded from the web site of the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute, Federal Aviation Administration (USA). In this study an estimate of the cosmic radiation dose received by military aircraft crew on typical transport missions is made.
Alves
J G
JG
Instituto Tecnológico e Nuclear, Departamento de Protecção Radiológica e Segurança Nuclear, E.N. 10, 2686-953 Sacavém, Portugal. jgalves@itn.pt
Mairos
J C
JC
D001359:Aviation; D001822:Body Burden; D003359:Cosmic Radiation; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality; D008889:Military Personnel; D016273:Occupational Exposure / Q000032:analysis*; D011247:Pregnancy; D011829:Radiation Dosage; D011834:Radiation Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D011835:Radiation Protection / Q000379:methods*; D012062:Relative Biological Effectiveness; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012993:Solar Energy