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TSA (Finally) Studying Health Effects of Body Scanners

Posted by timothy on from the different-kind-of-transparency dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A 2011 ProPublica series found that the TSA had glossed over the small cancer risk posed by its X-ray body scanners at airports across the country. While countries in Europe have long prohibited the scanners, the TSA is just now getting around to studying the health effects." I'm not worried; the posters and recorded announcements at the airport say these scanners raise no health concerns.

5 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The hypocrisy just keeps getting worse. by jwinterm · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hate to rain on your parade, but gamma rays and x-rays are both just photons. What do you mean they're not the same thing? They're exactly the same thing, they just originate from different parts of the atom.

  2. Re:The hypocrisy just keeps getting worse. by shentino · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nuclear radiation IS electromagnetic radiation.

    That's what photons ARE, packets of electromagnetic impulses.

    Gamma rays just happen to have higher frequencies than microwaves or radio waves, but fundamentally they are both light.

  3. Re:Capitalisim [sic] by Vainglorious+Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    They're a cash grab for scanner makers, who are politically connected to the TSA.

    eg Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security secretary who shilled hard on the "need" to install full-body scanners, then later acknowledged that his consulting agency had a client that manufactured the machines. That is the kind of corruption one would expect in a third world tinpot dictatorship.

    --
    My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
  4. Re:scanner = 13 uW cm^2; cell = 100 mW cm^2 by SecurityGuy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Frequency matters. I can sit in front of my IR heat dish and dump watts/cm^2 into my body and get no effect other than pleasant warmth. When you start talking about ionizing radiation, that is individual photons that are energetic enough to knock electrons off atoms, you get effects that you'll never see simply by dumping energy into a volume.

    I'm not bothering to look up what radiation these scanners use, merely pointing out that comparing watts is not what you want to be doing.

  5. Ok, but you have the core facts wrong. by Gordo_1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Up until a couple months ago, there were *both* backscatter X-Ray machines and millimeter wave machines in use in US airports. The backscatter X-Ray machines WERE NOT properly tested and WERE deployed FIRST. They're undoing that mistake now by removing the backscatter machines (at least from the airport checkpoints I frequent.)

    I heard that the backscatter machines were being relegated to smaller airports, but I have no firsthand knowledge of that situation.