When I was a child growing up in Chicago, a trip to the pediatrician was made tolerable by a cool machine, called a Fluoroscope, in the doc's examination room that allowed my brothers and me to stand in front of it, fully clothed, and get a look at each others' innards. (The ribs were always my favorite). The neighborhood shoe store had its own abbreviated version: we put on the shoes we wanted to buy and stuck our feet in an x-ray machine so my mother could see if we really had enough growing room.
I shudder now at the very thought of this excess radiation; then again our pediatrician chained-smoked his way through examining us and, before long, died of lung cancer.
Having just consumed the four newspapers that land at my doorstep every morning, I read in both Chicago dailies and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal much about the full-body scanners that seem destined for airports around the world-- in hopes that they might prevent another near miss like the Christmas Day attempt by the young Nigerian to blow a hole in the side of the Amsterdam to Detroit airplane. I read about the ACLU and privacy concerns. I read that the scanners won't detect dangerous materials in body orifices; or stowed between layers of fat in an obese passengers. I read in an editorial in the Chicago Tribune that the scanners are "similar to MRI machines." I read in the Chicago Sun-Times that they're like "low-level X-rays."
I've read nothing about the accumulated radiation risk. Will pregnant women be forced to submit? What about women who aren't certain that they're pregnant? What about adolescents whose bodies are still developing, or, worse yet, infants or toddlers. Surely the day will come when some would-be terrorist decides to hide his chemicals and syringes in a baby's diaper or PJs.
What about people who fly often for business? What about the possibility that human error, messed-up settings could cause the machines to expose passengers to excess levels of radiation. It happened in one of the country's best hospitals recently when patients undergoing CT scans were exposed to dangerous, even potentially deadly, levels of radiation. Will we want to trust TSA employers to make certain all settings are correct all or even most of the time?
Before the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Congress revisits this issue--invasion of privacy has been the key concern for the latter--the subject of radiation exposure must be addressed.
Perhaps something could be worked out so passengers ordered into the scanners could get mammograms and dental x-rays at the same time.
Thomas P. Connelly, D.D.S.: Are We Getting Too Much Radiation From Dental X-Rays?
Dr. Cindy Haines: Why I Said 'No' To TSA Scanning
My simple yet brilliant answer is to get passengers and any luggage of choice on the plane. Anesthetize and fly them. No bombs, no boredom, no crying babies, no serving carts, wheels down in seemingly no time. No seats, stack them, save space. A trillion dollars saved. RapidRay for US Senate!!!
It is also true that every high-altitude commercial airplane flight exposes you to cosmic radiation (which is MORE energetic than x-rays) equivalent to several dental x-rays.
I am a big believer in the precautionary principle, but there is a flip side to the precautionary principle, which is: if you can tell that the the risk of a particular activity is irrelevant to overall risk, there is no reason to prohibit it. In this case, it is clearly true that scanning devices can be designed such that their contribution to a traveller's radiation exposure is far less than the unavoidable contribution (via cosmic rays) from simply taking an airplane trip. The scan radiation is irrelevant.
1. MRI has no ionizing (x-ray) radiation exposure.
2. Cell phones/ microwaves doe not create fluoroscopic exposure.
3. There is no data to accurately risk stratify ( the likelihood of developing cancer or a malignancy) as a result of of cumulative doses of even low-dose ionizing radiation- In other words the cumulative exposure of frequent travelers is potentially concerning if exposed to fluoroscopic based body scanners. additionally, I am pretty certain that some subsets of people are more prone to the effects of ionizing radiation as compared to others.
4. The comment of a person stating that a scan was done multiple times= multiple cumulative doses of radiation - not a trivial issue
5. Radiation concerns are higher in kids and pregnant females when compared to the general population.
6. Contrary to one of the people commenting- Pat me down anytime- Don't radiate me if I don't need to be radiated (IF these are radiation based body scan systems) This comes from one who does procedures guided by fluoroscopy on a dailyy basis.
There is no magnetic field or radiation exposure. Are you happy to own a microwave oven?
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/169/22/2078
"An estimated 1 in 270 women who underwent CT coronary angiography at age 40 years will develop cancer from that CT scan (1 in 600 men), compared with an estimated 1 in 8100 women who had a routine head CT scan at the same age (1 in 11 080 men). For 20-year-old patients, the risks were approximately doubled, and for 60-year-old patients, they were approximately 50% lower."
And that's just from one. What if you travel several times a year? Several times a month?
http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-is-radiation-exposure-from-full.html
"Dr. Albert J. Fornace Jr., an expert in molecular oncology at Georgetown University Medical Center, said such a low dose was inconsequential, even for pregnant women. “Obviously, no radiation is even better than even a very low level,” Dr. Fornace said. “But this is trivial.” But David J. Brenner, a professor of radiation oncology at Columbia University, said that even though the risk for any individual was extremely low, he would still avoid it."
Clearly, in the first case, radiation is not a concern, in the second, it is negligible (the amounts are lower than regular X rays). I wish that the author had bothered to read up on the actual technology first before holding forth. Scientific ignorance is painful to witness.
Are you certain that the scanners use X-rays and not some other technology?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/31/AR2009123101746.html
Do you realllllllly not want those scanning devices to be used because of the potential radiation effects?
Chance of a diaper wearing terraist: far less than 1%
I'll take my chances.
If intelligence procedures and policies had been followed, and if communications and technology were up to date, this even wouldn't even have happened.
Our govenment has been given broad powers to spy on all of our actions and communications, and the only thing they seem to be using this info for is drug busts and punitive actions against those with whom they have "issues" with.
Profiling absolutely should be done, and anyone traveling to & from, and with certain countries passports, SHOULD BE SINGLED OUT FOR CLOSER SCRUTINY.
I can see it now, after being indignantly humiliated by a security clerk posting the naked photo of Lindsy Lohan she's now been diagnosed with cancer. Tabloid heaven.
Coming to an airport near you.
Thank God for Corruption and greed. What would we do without it ?
One the biggest mantras in the medical profession are QC and QA, quality control, and quality assurance.
These are regular mandated checks to make sure equipment and tests and procedures are wroking correctly.
As a medical lab tech I am intimately aware of the daily, weekly, yearly, checks that are run of all tests, reagents, and equipment, even the filtered water. Labs are inspected annually, with the hospital, by FEMA, and also annually by either CAP or COLA.
I have no aquaintance with how the Radiology department manages it QC and QA, but I have not doubt that they have to prove that the equipment is working properly and that results are reliable.
Outside of a lab virtually no one in a hospital knows about the QC that goes on, nor would anyone not a lab tech be able to do the procedures of understand the math that determins the paramaters of being in QC or out of QC.
So who is going to insure that the equipment works safely and accurately, and who is going to make sure that those who do the QC are doing it correctly?