Maine Senator Wants Independent Study of TSA's Body Scanners

OverTheGeicoE writes "U.S. Senator Susan Collins, the top Republican on the homeland security committee, plans to introduce a bill that would require a new health study of the X-ray body scanners used to screen airline passengers nationwide. If the bill becomes law, TSA would be required to choose an 'independent laboratory' to measure the radiation emitted by a scanner currently in use at an airport checkpoint and use the data to produce a peer-reviewed study, to be submitted to Congress, based on its findings. The study would also evaluate the safety mechanisms on the machine and determine 'whether there are any biological signs of cellular damage caused by the scans.' Many Slashdotters are or have been involved in science. Is this a credible experimental protocol? Is it reasonable to expect an organization accused of jeopardizing the health and safety of hundreds of millions of air travelers to pick a truly unbiased lab? Would any lab chosen deliver a critical report and risk future funding? Should the public trust a study of radiology and human health designed by a US Senator whose highest degree is a bachelor's degree in government?"

Comments

Should of done that

[Dyinobal]

Isn't this something our fabulous leaders should of demanded before spending a crap load of money and deploying them all around the nation?

I missed the part...

[CrimsonAvenger]

...where whathername insisted on "designing the study".

As opposed, of course, for calling for a study to be done - not the same at all.

How independent?

[Pirulo]

<quote>TSA would be required to choose an 'independent laboratory'</quote>

How independent if the TSA has to choose it?

Are we missing the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep seeing these things that seem to be attempting to show that these naked scanners are unhealthy. But is that really a distraction from what we should be considering?

1. Doesn't human dignity require that we treat travellers as people and not the same way that we treat convicts?

2. Don't these security measures do more harm than good by forcing people to accept a microcosm of "police state" for no discernable benefit?

Politicians

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Isn't this something our fabulous leaders should of demanded before spending a crap load of money and deploying them all around the nation?

Isn't this something that's better late than never, considering that it's too late to say it should be done beforehand?

This. Politicians are not engineers. And even if they were, when they do something right, it makes more sense to praise them for it than it does to point out how foolish they may have been not to have done it earlier. Attacking them only makes sense if you are trying to defeat them in the next election--which is probably not the right thing to do when they do something right. =)

re: Why deploy now ... think about outcomes later?

[King_TJ]

The obvious answer to the question is, as usual; "Follow the money!"

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-11-22-scanner-lobby_N.htm

http://www.infowars.com/chertoff-linked-to-body-scanner-manufacturer/

IMO, the *real* question we should be asking is why we believed this costly new technology, coupled with a whole new govt. agency to operate it, was going to accomplish anything substantial in the first place? The argument over the cost is tough to make without somebody insisting that either A) it created so many new jobs for American citizens that it added a lot of value, and/or B) if it saves even ONE human life, how can you put a price on that? So IMO, we can probably just ignore the "cost" angle, and simply ask if the TSA screening procedure we've implemented is a net positive, or a net negative for everyone?

Personally, I think you've got to be drinking some serious govt. kool-aid if you REALLY believe this nonsense of putting anyone on a secret "watch list" (based on the discretion of agents hired from the general public at hourly pay starting at around $11/hr.), and making everyone walk through body scanners before boarding commercial planes is going to save you from terrorist acts. As one of my friends pointed out, you can go to most airports in the U.S. and find that the only thing keeping you from wandering out to the hangars and runways is a chain-link fence around their perimeter. If someone REALLY wanted to sabotage a plane, they could throw on a mechanics' outfit or something, run out onto the tarmac, and do whatever they wanted to do with a parked jet, or even quickly insert something into some luggage on one of the transports, waiting to be loaded onto a flight. Trying to secure the plane from the terminal's boarding gate so heavily ignores all the other possibilities. Meanwhile, we've created a situation where EVERYONE is inconvenienced and put at risk of being falsely labeled a "potential terrorist" for transgressions as simple as wearing a t-shirt with a counter-culture political message printed on it, or making the wrong comment while standing in line.

Freedom = 0, Terrorists = 1 by my score-card

Re:It was done

[tragedy]

Agree with you on the lack of benefits of the scanners. As far as the safety. As someone who works in radiation safety, can you elaborate some more. Conventional wisdom on radiation safety is that the dangers are cumulative, but that's clearly not really the case. Maybe for long term risks like cancer, but clearly in the short term, higher intensity is more dangerous. For an extreme example, consider em radiation in the 560 to 490 nm wavelengths. Exposure is, as far as anyone has ever studied, virtually harmless. An entire lifetime's exposure adds 0% to cancer risk as far as I know. However, take a person's average exposure over the course of a month and give it to them in a tenth of a second. The cancer risk is still 0%, but that's only because the person has just been utterly vaporized. Maybe try instead taking a person's exposure to those frequencies in full sunlight over their whole body and concentrate it for 30 seconds on just one square centimeter of their body. No instant death this time, but that square centimeter will be completely and permanently destroyed. Also, cancer risk from that is now no longer 0% because of all of the byproducts from the burn.

So, yes you get more radiation from the flight than you do from the body scanner. People forget that visible light is radiation too, of course. So, technically, you get far more radiation from the lights in the plane than you do from either of them. Radiation safety obviously has to take these things into account, and it gets technical. Maybe many of us here won't understand the deeper issues involved in a full technical explanation of the relative safety of the body scanners versus the flight. We're a pretty technical crowd, however, I'm pretty sure just about all of us can withstand a lot more detail than you gave. So, if it's your field, by all means educate us on _why_ the scanners are so safe.

Re:Too late...

[Jason Levine]

There are two problems with the deterrent claim:

1) The TSA keeps claiming we need these new and more intrusive security programs to catch terrorists. Yet, they haven't caught any.

2) There really isn't any way to test the deterrent claim. Yes, you could have some random airports reduce security on the line to pre-911 levels. (Don't announce it and rotate daily which airports have these security reductions.) Then, you could test which flights had more instances of terrorist attacks. However, if the deterrent of the enhanced security is true, it would apply to the dropped security lines as well since the terrorists wouldn't know ahead of time which airports to target. In short, it's untestable unless you announce the reduced security airports ahead of time and nobody would authorize that.

BTW, they might not have let terrorists get on board with a weapon, but there are plenty of instances of the TSA missing weapons. A quick Google search found an instance a couple of weeks ago of them missing a weapon in a carry-on bag. ( http://www.myfoxdfw.com/dpp/news/Plane-Left-Gate-With-Gun-on-Board-DFW-Airport-Says-011812#ixzz1jr0xQJdZ ) By the time they realized the issue, the woman was gone. She was apprehended 90 minutes later. What if this was a terrorist instead of a little old lady, though? I just don't see the reasoning behind removing shoes and ditching all liquid above X ounces (in the trash can, no less.... if it was an explosion risk, I wouldn't toss it there!!!) when they have trouble with simple things like guns.