Risks to your health from CT scans

I could not believe what I was hearing from a work colleague about the amount of radiation you get from a single CT scan

The radiation dose from natural background radiation (radiation that we all are continuously exposed to from cosmic rays, radioactive materials present in the earth and building materials, and radioactive materials normally present within our own bodies) is approximately 3 mSv per year. Therefore, in every three-year period you receive the equivalent of a CT scan from natural background radiation.

How the hell do you slip slop and slap from that one? Especially if you need to go and get one?

Then again there are even more worrying articles around:

for example at www.cancer.org

Those full-body CT scans advertised at some health care centers may be delivering as much radiation as a low-dose atomic bomb, according to a new study. And that means people who get them could be raising their cancer risk, researchers from Columbia University report in the journal Radiology (Vol. 232, No. 3:735-738).

"The radiation dose from a full-body CT scan is comparable to the doses received by some of the atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where there is clear evidence of increased cancer risk," said David J. Brenner, PhD, D.Sc, lead author of the study and professor of radiation oncology and public health at Columbia University in New York.

He calculated that a 45-year-old person who has one full-body CT scan would have a lifetime risk of dying from cancer because of that radiation of about 1 in 1,200. But if that same person got a scan a year for 30 years (30 total scans), his risk of dying from cancer because of that radiation would increase to almost 1 in 50. However, a person's overall risk of dying from cancer is affected by many things, including age, smoking and other lifestyle habits, and genetics.