Ionizing radiation from medical imaging. Average man-made exposure is much higher in developed countries, mostly due to CT scans and nuclear medicine. Natural background radiation comes from five primary sources: cosmic radiation, solar radiation, external terrestrial sources, radiation in the human body, and radon. The background rate for natural radiation varies considerably with location, being as low as 1.5 mSv/a (1.5 mSv per year) in some areas and over 100 mSv/a in others. The highest level of purely natural radiation recorded on the Earth's surface is 90 µGy/h (0.8 Gy/a) on a Brazilian black beach composed of monazite. The highest background radiation
Gray (unit) Gray (unit) The gray (symbol: Gy) is a derived unit of ionizing radiation dose in the International System of Units (SI). It is defined as the absorption of one joule of radiation energy per kilogram of matter. It is used as a unit of the radiation quantity absorbed dose which measures the energy deposited in a unit mass at a certain position, and of the radiation quantity kerma, which is the amount of energy that is transferred from photons to electrons per unit mass at a certain position. The corresponding cgs unit to the gray is the rad (equivalent to