How X-Ray Scanners Became Mandatory In US Airports

OverTheGeicoE writes "ProPublica has a story on how x-ray scanners became the controversial yet mandatory security fixtures we in the US must now endure. The story title, 'U.S. Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners,' summarizes a substantial part of the article, but not all of it. The story also describes how government attitudes about the scanners went from overwhelmingly negative in the early 1990s to the naive optimism we see today. How did this change occur? The government weakened its regulatory structure for radiation safety in electronic devices, and left defining safety standards to an ANSI committee dominated by scanner producers and users (prison and customs officials). Even after 9/11 there was still great mistrust of x-ray scanners, but nine years of lobbying from scanner manufacturers, panic over failed terrorist attacks, and pressure from legislators advancing businesses in their own districts eventually forced the devices into the airports. The article estimates that 6 to 100 cancers per year will be caused by the x-ray scanners."

Comments

That's a good tradeoff

[Anonymous Coward]

So, 100 people a year could get a death sentence from a system that has yet to save a single life? That makes as much sense as anything else this government does.

Re:That's a good tradeoff

[heypete]

X-rays are ionizing radiation.

Re:That's a good tradeoff

[mbone]

There has been a long debate on this, most of which you can easily find by search engine. These devices do a raster scan with a fairly intense spot beam (most of this radiation goes right through you; the spot beam has to be strong as the signal is actually the fraction scattered off of your skin). The spot beam would be a problem if it was to sit on one location for any length of time, so you are totally reliant on the software to not get a serious dose. That alone is a real worry, as most medical Xray radiation problems are due to software errors. That also means that any repeated glints out of the device (say, by people's metal buttons) are likely to cause problems for nearby agents (as they tend to stand in the same place, and so could get repeated exposures). It also means that just wearing a dosimeter is pretty worthless. The agent's chest might get no glint exposure and their feet or crotch might get a serious one.

The above is pretty much the conventional wisdom. As a physicist, I also worry about the way that they calculated dosage (whole body versus surface exposure) may seriously underestimate the risk, but that worry is not very conventional. If I am right, look for skin cancers to start appearing in frequent flyers in areas normally covered by clothing. Of course, that will take a few years; Michael Chertoff is likely to have retired with his loot by then.

Re:That's a good tradeoff

[ChumpusRex2003]

Nice post. Just one correction, at the beam energies used in these devices (50 kVp - 120 kVp), most X-ray photons certainly do not go straight through you. At about 120 kVp, about 75% will get absorbed through the torso - and in the case of 50 kVp, essentially 100% will be absorbed (with only a fraction of a percent getting scattered, as 50 kVp is below the optimal range for Compton scattering in body tissues).

In fact, it was widely stated in the marketing information and propaganda for these scanners that the X-ray beam does not penetrate skin. This statement is patently false at all energies in commercial use. If they can get away with deliberate lies as basic as that, how can you reasonably believe any more difficult claims?

Broken window fallacy

[Compaqt]

...pressure from legislators advancing businesses in their own districts eventually forced the devices into the airports.

The idea is that you create "make-work" for people to do, and then there'll be more jobs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

The problem is the money you're spending is coming out of taxes, which is reducing the amount that would have been invested in other productivity-enhancing or job-producing activities in the economy.

Re:Broken window fallacy

[grumling]

Like the Hoover Dam was pretty much busy work to get the economy going again (jobs, money flow, pride, etc) and when it was complete it became a large source of electricity.

Bad example. The Hoover Dam was planned and sent through Congress during the Harding and Coolidge administrations. It was a happy accident that it was built during the 1930s, and Six Companies made out like bandits because they got labor at a much better price than estimated, and lots of it. In fact, the reason it is called the Hoover Dam and not Boulder Dam is because Hoover got the states together to sign the Colorado River Pact in the late teens and early 1920s. And the benefit to the US (and the world) is easily calculated in irrigated land in the southern US and the massive increase in food production that resulted.

A make work project would be about 1/2 the various epidemiological studies that look at cancer rates and power lines. Or locking up drug offenders for life.

I for one...

[taiwanjohn]

do not welcome our new x-ray overlords.

The TL;DR version.

[crow_t_robot]

"How X-Ray Scanners Became Mandatory In US Airports" --> Raw, unmitigated fear.

Re:The TL;DR version.

[dkleinsc]

No, that's not correct: It was raw, unmitigated corruption.

Or did you think it was an accident that then-DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, in charge of DHS when they made the decision to use the scanners, just happened to have a financial interest in the company that makes the scanners?

Re:Airport security is a farce

[ledow]

Even better:

I was once in an airport queue with an American friend who had, somehow, managed to bring a can of CS spray into a country where any sort of offensive weapon is illegal. CS spray is illegal for anything but police use over here. You will be arrested just for having it on you, whether you use it or not, whether it's for "self-defence" or not. It's just an instantaneous "arrest me".

They'd managed to bring it from the US, through all the "heightened" airport security post-9-11, onto a plane, into my country, through my airport security, carry it around London for several weeks in her handbag (including through museum entry security checks, public transport etc), and only because her friends spotted it when she opened her bag IN A LONDON AIRPORT as she headed home - specifically, the queue to security scanning - that anyone knew she'd had it.

In London, carrying CS spray is an instant arrest that would pretty much provoke an immediate armed response anyway, especially in an airport which is about the only place the average Brit would ever see live weapons in real-life (carried by the policemen).

We quietly and hastily had her dispose of it into the wheelie-bins used for over-size deodorants etc. (as you say, they're just a large, unchecked "trash can" full of material that you're NOT allowed to take on a plane because of it's contents or size, sitting in the middle of an airport foyer) and passed through the airport unhindered onto our destination.

God knows what happens in that bin. The incineration must be fabulous when they do it, because it could literally contain anything at all. And, as you point out, prime target to drop a couple of things in, along with a dozen or a thousand "innocent" items that your accomplices can put in there earlier in the day and be pretty much untraceable which one caused the explosion. Right by the entrance to a security queue which can take hours to pass through and contain thousands of passengers sounds pretty much perfect - and the risk is just that of dropping someone off at an airport and them dropping something in a bin designed for things to be dropped into anonymously, because those bins are not "airside".

6 to 100 cancers per year will be caused...

[fredrated]

In other words, more people will die from exposure to the scanners than would have died from the supposed terrorist attacks they 'protect' us from. And why? Money of course, that is what runs this country (into the ground).

Re:6 to 100 cancers per year will be caused...

[kilfarsnar]

Sure, but if we didn't have scanners and it was fairly trivial to get through security, they number would skyrocket.

That's your fear talking. These scanners have only been in place a few years. It's not like there were frequent attacks before that. So what are they preventing? All of this hysteria is caused by our reaction to a singular event over a decade ago; an event these scanners would not have prevented.

Re:I wish they would do the obvious

[mr1911]

You are still not safe.

You do understand that since the TSA is searching for the rogue bottle of water or shampoo that is 3.1 oz instead of 3 oz they are letting guns, knives, and who knows what else through the checkpoints. You do understand there are multiple paths to get nefarious things on an airplane. You do realize that the passengers on the plane no longer believe that compliance is the proper response and will deal with threats onboard such as the shoe and underwear bombers.

The TSA ensuring your "safety" is an illusion. If you believe it, then good for you - Santa still comes down the chimney and eats the cookies you left out. The TSA is security theater -- it looks like they are busy doing useful things, but in the end it is all an act.

Re:I wish they would do the obvious

[Chrisq]

Those who are afraid to smoke crack are effectively ruled by crack.

Those who are afraid to shove a red hot poker up there arses are effectively ruled by red hot pokers up their arses

Re:I wish they would do the obvious

[MozeeToby]

Try taking a classified military radio (in a properly marked courier bag with all the paperwork) through security. Between what the xray of the bag showed, his truthful answer to "did you pack this bag yourself" and his response to requests to open the bag (he correctly said that he couldn't do that nor allow it to happen) he spent the night with airport security and only got out when someone from the base personally came to get him and told the TSA that he had done everything correctly.

Re:I wish they would do the obvious

[SlippyToad]

About four years ago I went on a business trip. My then-wife had given me a small medallion with a chinese symbol on it. I could SEE when the cunt checked me in at the counter she noticed this medallion with a "funny foreign symbol on it" and lo and behold I was selected for a pat-down at security.

And as far as I know the cargo area of my plane was wide open to whoever the fuck wanted to get in there. That's my beef. This security theater shit is old. I did not have to take off my shoes in China or South Korea when boarding a plane (something I did 7 times in 10 days on a trip just a couple years back). It's all a sham.

We've been talked out of our privacy, our rights, and our dignity and now the elite of the world giggle and profit as we are made to parade naked in front of them like fucking zoo animals. Fuck them in the ear.

Re:Point gun at foot. SHOOT!

[Rob the Bold]

ok. 100 people a year. 10 years. I sincerely doubt the "terrorists" could kill 1000 people in 10 years on US soil.

...Except when they killed almost 3000 in one day...

So what?

And before you say I'm being flip or callous, remember this: more than that die every month from lack of medical care. Or this: more than 3000 died on 9/11 from cancer and heart/lung disease. There's no national day of mourning for the 9/11 victims of disease. Or the 9/10 victims. Or the 9/12 victims. And so on.

The only thing that makes the 3000 terror victims special was that they were concentrated in just a few places where large scale acts of vandalism took place. The others had the common decency not to bother the general population by passing away in houses, hospitals, nursing homes and on the street.

Go ahead, take a look at the National Vital Health Statistics and see what kills Americans. Pick any number you can imagine dying every year from terrorism and see what trivial thing beats it. 3000 a year? Peptic ulcers. 5000? Anemia. 20,000? Parkinson's. 45,000? Motor vehicle accidents. 75,000? Alzheimer's.

So in the 11 years since 9/11, including 2001, what's the average deaths by terrorism? Under 300, right? (And that's low because of my terror-repellent rock). That's about the same number as deaths among Eskimo and Native American women in "transport accidents."

My point? We're spending way too much time, causing way to much inconvenience, sacrificing too many liberties, and frankly being way to scared of one thing, when there are far better ways to spend our time, money, national soul, and global reputation on. We've ruined the country all in the cause of innumeracy.