Hi! I am concerned about an x ray that my baby received. She is 7 months old. I suspected that she had swallowed something so I took her in for an x-ray. She received and nose to rectum front and side view. It was a mobile machine in a rural hospital.
The x ray indicated she did not swallow anything. Now I am very upset that I let my anxiety cause her to receive unneeded radiation. I’m afraid that I have hurt her health—since there was only risk and no benefit at all, especially since it seems like her whole body was in the field of the x ray.
I know there’s no way to know her exact dose. But how bad is it?
Thank you for reaching out to Ask the Experts. There is no need for concern. Parents rely on medical professionals to provide medical care to their children in instances like you have described. In this case the medical providers determined it was best to perform medical imaging on your child to determine if a foreign object had been swallowed and if there was risk to your child’s health. The use of medical imaging is to be justified and optimized. Therefore, the benefit versus risk is determined for each patient before medical imaging utilizing ionizing radiation is performed. The benefit (i.e., diagnosis) typically outweighs the small hypothetical risk associated with medical imaging procedures utilizing ionizing radiation.
Medical providers perform a chest x ray study on individuals who have swallowed foreign objects and an additional abdominal x-ray study if the foreign object is unknown. Due to your child being 7 months old at the time of the x-ray study, they were an appropriate size for a “babygram” x ray to be performed, which is a full body x ray of an infant that includes both the chest and the abdomen. As you described there were two x rays taken (i.e., front and back) and the radiation dose received by your child is similar to the average dose received from a standard chest x ray of 0.1 millisieverts (mSv).
To put 0.1 mSv into perspective, natural background sources that we all receive, such as cosmic, terrestrial, and natural internal sources of radiation result in a dose of approximately 0.01 mSv per day. Therefore the radiation dose received by your child from the x rays is approximately equivalent to 10 days of natural background radiation exposure and the additional risk of cancer for your child is negligible.
Best wishes to you both!
Christopher Helstern, PhD, CHP
Answer posted on 7 January 2026. The information posted on this web page is intended as general reference information only. Specific facts and circumstances may affect the applicability of concepts, materials, and information described herein. The information provided is not a substitute for professional advice and should not be relied upon in the absence of such professional advice. To the best of our knowledge, answers are correct at the time they are posted. Be advised that over time, requirements could change, new data could be made available, and Internet links could change, affecting the correctness of the answers. Answers are the professional opinions of the expert responding to each question; they do not necessarily represent the position of the Health Physics Society.