Airport Scanners ~ What The TSA Is Hoping To Conceal

By Theodora Filis

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) X-ray scanning
machines are a sci-fi fan's dream. Lower-energy beams penetrate clothing and the topmost layers of skin, exposing any explosives concealed under clothing. 

The TSA has set up 172 full-body image scanners at 68 airports across the United States. 

According to a group of scientists and professors, low-energy rays do a "Compton scatter" of tissue layers just under the skin, possibly exposing some vital areas and leaving the tissues at risk of mutation.

Scientists from the University of California San Francisco wrote to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy expressing concerns that the scanners might expose the skin to high doses of X-rays that could increase the risk of cancer and other health problems, particularly among older travelers, pregnant women and people with weak immune systems.

Tests in Italy raised questions about airport body scanners following field tests at international airports in Rome, Milan, Palermo, and Venice. The Italian civil aviation authority concluded that airport body scanners were inaccurate and inconvenient.

The European Commission has stated that body scanners have “raised several serious fundamental rights and health concerns,” and recommended using less intrusive measures. Governments have been advised to consider other techniques to achieve the same end without the use of ionizing radiation. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration acknowledges that the X-ray technology used in the scanners poses a cancer risk, albeit one they say is "so low it presents an extremely small risk." 

"A person receives more radiation from naturally occurring sources in less than an hour of ordinary living than from one screening with any general-use X-ray security system," writes FDA Engineer Daniel Kassidy.

So… how much is too much?  Most body scanners deliver less radiation than a passenger is likely to receive from cosmic rays while airborne. That sounds reassuring, but there have been no studies to date indicating what repeated exposure to the X-rays means to frequent air travelers.

Unfortunately, we won't really know what exposing millions of people to X-ray scanners will do until we actually expose millions of people to X-ray scanners.

Until the long-term studies on the use of these machines are concluded, you get to choose between irradiation and being felt up by a non-doctor.

This gives the United Airlines slogan "Fly the friendly skies" so much more meaning!