High Altitude gamma rays kill sensors?

I don't have any tinfoil hats in my closet. Honestly. But I was reading a blurb in a magazine lately about gamma rays and how they can dead pixel sensors at high altitudes.

I read it almost thinking it was a ruse or some joke. Has anyone got some insight on this?

Apparently (the artical stated) that a typical airline flight was equivalent too 100 days (years?) at sea level.

Well, it's true that gamma rays do pass through most anything that isn't a layered heavy metal. However, that part about one airline flight (3-4 hours) is equivalent to 100 days on at sea level of radiation seems a bit fishy to me. If that were the case, then I think most airline pilots would get radiation poisoning relatively quickly, as gamma concentrations that high are never safe. If nothing else, they would all get cancer at an alarming rate.

Also, I'm not 100% sure how a gamma ray would cause a dead pixel in the first place. They can cause radiation poisoning and cancer because of how cells replicate, but to kill a pixel they would have to completely destroy the circuit attached to the pixel. And, while pixels are small, gamma rays are much, much smaller. It seems like it would take an inordinate amount of them hitting the exact right spot over and over to do any real damage.

Now I'm just waiting for a physicist to make me look like an idiot .