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TSA To Retest Full Body Scanners For Radiation
cultiv8 writes with this excerpt from USA Today:
"The Transportation Security Administration announced Friday that it would retest every full-body X-ray scanner that emits ionizing radiation — 247 machines at 38 airports — after maintenance records on some of the devices showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected. The TSA says that the records reflect math mistakes and that all the machines are safe. Indeed, even the highest readings listed on some of the records — the numbers that the TSA says were mistakes — appear to be many times less than what the agency says a person absorbs through one day of natural background radiation.
Even so, the TSA has ordered the new tests out of 'an abundance of caution to reassure the public,' spokesman Nicholas Kimball says. The tests will be finished by the end of the month, and the results will be released 'as they are completed,' the agency said on its website."
Shouldn't they be testing the radiation output from these machines at regular intervals to make sure they're safe?
(as opposed to just checking them when the public needs "reassuring")
In the past, the TSA has failed to properly monitor and ensure the safety of X-ray devices used on luggage. A 2008 report by the worker safety arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the TSA and its maintenance contractors had failed to detect when baggage X-ray machines emitted radiation beyond what regulations allowed. They also failed to take action when some machines had missing or disabled safety features, the report shows.
Oh, wait, that's right. For the most part, they're incompetent, or just don't care.
The least they could do while subjecting people to discomfort and harm is ensure that they're keeping damage to a minimum. Assholes.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Where you have to get your balls groped to be able to travel. You would be hard pressed to make a public servant grope your balls even in 3rd world countries. But, its free in america.
..
That, or a good dose of healthy radiation
"Hello sir ! What would you like to have today ? Ball-grope, or radiation ?"
now come to think of it, even that 'hello sir' part may be extra in that sentence.
Read radical news here
Given the rash of medical radiation devices that have been gorking people because they were working incorrectly, I do worry about this.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/health/06radiation.html?src=mv
How about we have an agency OTHER than the TSA provide data on how much radiation in being emitted. Not hard to do -- OSHA rep visits the airport, run the test on each machine, and out. TSA never has to do math again; the radiation output is not a security question anyway.
And you avoid situations like this one, where testing gets somehow... skipped.
Source: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/02/umdnj_didnt_test_medical_x-ray.html