Forget Japan's Radiation Cloud -- Could a TSA Scanner at LAX Give You Cancer?

By Simone Wilson Thu., Mar. 17 2011 at 11:45 AM

headcount.org

Oversexed AND dangerous?

OK, don't actually forget the radiation cloud. Radiation clouds are not to be messed with, no matter how dissipated. But at an international moment when radiation risks are very much on the radar, we're somewhat disconcerted with the news that 22 of the controversial airport-porn machines at LAX, and 500 nationwide, are being re-tested after a routine check showed Rapiscan Systems radiation levels at 10 times those previously reported.

We knew those devils were bad for our dignity, but our health, to boot?

"In our review of the surveys we found instances where a technician incorrectly did his math and came up with results that showed the radiation readings were off by a factor of 10," Peter Kant, executive vice president of Rapiscan Systems, told the LA Daily News.

"A factor of 10"? That has to be the biggest euphemism we've heard since "sexual assault." What Kant means to say that the scanners were noted as giving off 10 times the radiation levels previously recorded.

It's being brushed off as a possible clerical error, but we're spooked. Plus, a couple different scientists think even the old radiation levels shouldn't be taken lightly.

From the Los Angeles Times:

David J. Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, says that, while individual risk may be close to zero, population risk is significant -- and thus the TSA should opt for scanners that don't use X-rays.
Brenner calculates that, because the TSA could perform about a billion scans a year, even if the two scans needed for round-trip travel pose only a one-in-a-million chance of developing cancer for an individual, some people would still get sick from the scans.

There's also a recent Wired investigation about the safety of the scanners:

John Sedat, a biochemistry and biophysics professor, says he's not going to get on an airplane again -- at least not until the TSA rethinks its deployment of hundreds of body scanners that hit travelers with a tiny amount of radiation.
"I'm not going to go through these machines. And I'm not going to be groped either," the 68-year-old University of California, San Francisco, scientist said in a recent telephone interview. "Us older people are probably only one mutation away from melanoma. I'm not going to go through these machines and basically ask for the problem. We all know the older you get the more sensitive you are to sunlight and X-rays."

TSA spokesman Nico Melendez at LAX tells us he hasn't heard of the (likely bungled) reports indicating Rapiscan Systems were emitting 10 times their expected spurts of radiation. He says the scanners are indeed being re-checked, though -- then points us to the TSA's press release page and says he'll call us back.

What do you think? Is this whole radiation scare in California -- Japanwise and airportwise -- a bunch of hoopla? Or should we be overly cautious?

Tags:

airport scanners, cancer, carcinogens, Japan earthquake, LAX, nuclear power, radiation, scanners, TSA, tsunami, x-ray

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Steve Scanner

To those who support the TSA. Please, take a car. I do not want to share a plane with cowards. You have the right to free travel. Go anywhere you wish. You do not have the right to interfere with my constitutional liberty/privacy. You actually don't have any “right” to fly without risk to your life but I do have a (legally-protected) right to not have my groin groped or viewed without permission. The TSA isn't due any credit for stopping planes being hijacked. There is more chance of you killing, or being killed by someone by driving your car, so if you are also willing to accept the government preventing you driving your car, your arguments might have some validity. Alternatively, you can accept that there are always risks in life, and while we can do what we can to prevent many of them, we cannot prevent them all and no risks are worth sacrificing liberty and the personal privacy/dignity that these TSA policies take away. If you do not want to get on a plane where people have not been groped or had their body scanned with radiation and had naked images of themselves viewed by strangers, please find other transportation. It is not your right to fly to your destination while insisting other people's dignity and fundamental human rights are taken away.

No one is forcing you on that plane; however, I suggest you get over your fear. Nothing is ever totally safe and without risk but some things are worth taking risks and preserving liberty is the most noble risk of all.

Join us on Flyertalk.com http://www.flyertalk.com/forum...and FacebookAll Facebook Against Airport Full Body Scanners16,000 of us

Joansutt

Time and time again I have read of errors made in XRay procedures. Some of these errors were made by trained personnel in hospitals; through neglect or simply ignorance, they allowed patients to be exposed to lethal amounts of radiation. In the case of the TSA scanners, I doubt that there are many people trained in actually measuring and regulating those machines on anywhere near a regular basis. Mistakes by mainly untrained personnel are to be expected, and quite likely. They will probably not know when a machine malfunctions, And they do malfunction - machines are not perfect. I always said and still say: Don't go through those machines.

joa

What about all the crime and shootings all the time in the downtown areas of most us cities????? how about we trade the billions of dollars for these crap machine, and put that money to better, more EFFECTIVE and IMMEDIATE SOLUTIONS! like doubling, tripling the police force in these areas!

and that is just 1 example!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they dont care about us.

Lisa Simeone

The scanners are a billion-dollar boondoggle being foisted on us by, surprise surprise, corporations. Rapiscan, Chertoff, et. al. are making money by using us as guinea pigs and treating us as chattel. We're being abused by a Big Brother apparatus that tells us it's for our own good. Gee, nobody named Orwell or Huxley ever warned us about this before . . . !

But millions of Americans are just fine with it. Hands down your pants? Quit whining. Breasts being groped? No big deal. Threatened with arrest for speaking up? Who cares. Your children get molested? Fuggedaboutit.

When your response to 9/11 is not logic or reason, but hysteria and fear mongering, then irradiating, groping, bullying, intimidating, and humiliating people is par for the course. Oh, well. In a democracy, people get the government they deserve.

Joansutt

Right. Corporations are not interested in people. They are interested in money.

drumbabe

I will NOT go through the scanners. As a very frequent flyer, I regularly look for the line without the scanner and frankly, I'm tired of playing that game. I'm vocal in telling other flyers about the health dangers and most are unaware of the risks. Even worse, almost all don't realize that they don't have to go through that way or don't realize they have don't it until it is past.

I may have to current submit to the violations for my job but my family doesn't. We won't be flying anywhere for vacation anytime soon. I would probably be in jail if one of those thugs tried to expose or grope my 9-year-old daughter.

Banphotoradar

Obama could stop these x-rays and patdowns any time he wanted to. TSA is under the executive branch. Call your congressional reps and senators and ask them why they aren't stopping this dangerous tyranny.

TBlissing

An opinion: perception expressed

Lets us not forget the microwave:Trinoble Russia banned the use of a microwave.Microwave causes cancer, and has other health risks. ( but it may be the equivalent to the cigarette, known to be unhealthy, and yet people still smoke anyway.) (smoker = second hand smoke= effecting us all)

It brings up do you know whats around you and what could be harming you, others, and children. Start analyzing the items, places, people, environment, around you.Question why? Care about yourself enough take action on making healthy changes.When one person does this, it effects us all.We all are together making this world. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to know this. It takes having to take responsibility for our actions. Really no excuse holds fact, when up against truth and facts. The excuse causes harm.

Times are changing and higher evolution of the human race is occurring at a faster pace. Makes us all have to be more aware.