Since many sources of human food are ultimately derived from terrestrial plants, the relative concentration of carbon-14 in human bodies is nearly identical to the relative concentration in the atmosphere. The rates of disintegration of potassium-40 and carbon-14 in the normal adult body are comparable (a few thousand disintegrated nuclei per second). The beta decays from external (environmental) radiocarbon contribute approximately 0.01 mSv/year (1 mrem/year) to each person's dose of ionizing radiation. This is small compared to the doses from potassium-40 (0.39 mSv/year) and radon (variable).
Carbon-14 can be used as a radioactive tracer in medicine. In the initial variant of the urea breath test, a diagnostic test for Helicobacter pylori, urea labeled with approximately  carbon-14 is fed to a patient (i.e., 37,000 decays per second). In the event of a H. pylori infection, the bacterial urease enzyme breaks down the urea into ammonia and radioactively-labeled carbon dioxide, which can be detected by low-level counting of the patient's breath.