Slashdot Mirror
TSA's mm-Wave Body Scanner Breaks Diabetic Teen's $10K Insulin Pump
OverTheGeicoE writes "Savannah Barry, a Colorado teenager, was returning home from a conference in Salt Lake City. She is a diabetic and wears an insulin pump to control her insulin levels 24/7. She carries documentation of her condition to assist screeners, who usually give her a pat-down search. This time the screeners listened to her story, read her doctor's letter, and forced her to go through a millimeter-wave body scanner anyway. The insulin pump stopped working correctly, and of course, she was subjected to an invasive manual search. 'My life is pretty much in their hands when I go through a body scan with my insulin pump on,' she says. She wants TSA screeners to have more training. Was this a predictable outcome, considering that no one outside TSA has access to millimeter-wave scanners for testing? Would oversight from the FDA or FCC prevent similar incidents from happening in the future?"
FYI: medical products, especially ones that have the potential to kill if they malfunction, have to undergo substantial testing to demonstrate their immunity to electromagnetic interference. This includes stuff like TV, radio, and cellular transmissions, microwave ovens and WiFi. There are also special field frequency/strength combinations, such as the typical medical detector or consumer anti-theft device.
However, there aren't regulations regarding immunity to mm-wave and THz scanners, and certainly not at the intensities these devices use. I suspect that, if you were to test a broad range of existing medical products, many of them would fail, because many of them have mm-scale electrical features (especially, circuit board traces) that would be highly susceptible.
I don't know if it is a real petition or not, but what I do know is it is a real SPAM list. Ever since signing it, they've been bombarding me with shit asking for money and their opt out doesn't seem to want to opt out.
I am more than a little annoyed.
The war on terror will never be over as long as the TSA is around. Radiation bombardment? Groping children? Sounds like Al-qaida has outsourced overseas.
Ummm, go to any beach in Europe and knock yourself out.
We Americans are diseased in the head in many ways.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
That can be pretty difficult to do with electronics. Any circuit board can act as an antenna, and (apparently) these mm machines sometimes also produce x-rays beyond what one would encounter in normal life, which is what fried the pump.
First, there was absolutely no need for her to pass through any sort of scanner, as is evidenced by her previous flights, when she produced the documentation and was given a pat-down search instead.
Second, the circuitry wasn't designed for this sort of radiation, since it's never encountered outside a lab - as even the summary makes clear.
Third, the scanners routinely emit a lot more radiation than the makers claim.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Type I diabetes is caused by the autoimmune destruction of the pancreatic islet cells which produce insulin. It has nothing to do with corn syrup or the FDA.