Assessment of ionizing radiation from PC monitors and TV receivers

It is well known that cathode-ray tubes (CRT) emit low level ionizing radiation in the form of X-rays. At present, practically all CRTs are carefully manufactured to reduce such radiation to a minimum which amounts to a small fraction of the total ambient or background radiation due to natural sources. The purpose of this work was to actually measure the radiation levels emitted by standard PC monitors and TV receivers, operating either alone or in computer rooms with large numbers of monitors. Even when such values are low enough to be considered “safe”, they are detectable and measurable and we report here our findings. A resume of the meaning of the units employed is given in the appendix