Digital xrays
Patients are often concerned with the level of radiation exposure from our dental radiographs. We certainly understand this concern and wanted to show the levels of actual exposure from various sources including dental xrays. Listed below is data collected from the American Nuclear Society website.
According to the American Nuclear Society, this is how much radiation you expect from common activities:
- 28mrem = 1 year living in Atlanta, GA
- 47mrem = 1 year living in Denver, CO
- 1 mrem = two hours in a jet plane
- 7 mrem/year = from living in a brick house
- 10 mrem/year = cooking with natural gas
- 2 mrem/year = from sleeping next to someone else
- 36 mrem/year = from smoking one pack of cigarettes a day
- 42 mrem = breast mammogram per breast
- 700 mrem = abdominal x-ray
- 63 mrem/year = living in the Colorado Plateau area
- 0.5 mrem = one dental x-ray using traditional paper film
- 0.1 mrem = one dental x-ray using digital xrays as we use in our office
Therefore a full mouth series of xrays(20 films) would be 2 mrems and a traditional bitewing series(4 films) would be 0.4 mrems.
Rest assured we only take xrays when they are needed. The amount of radiation (mrem) that a patient receives during dental x-rays is very small when compared to other sources of radiation in everyday life.