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Why not adopt safer, non radiation, airport scanners?

Given that the two types of machines are both deemed effective by the T.S.A., why doesn’t the agency just abandon backscatters and use the millimeter wave machines, which don’t pose radiation issues?

Radiation Questions Over a Body Scanner – NYTimes.com. By JOE SHARKEY July 26, 2010“………travelers also do not fully trust the security agency’s assurances that the new machines are safe, that they can’t be defeated by a terrorist and that personal privacy will be protected — at least, to the extent the agency has claimed.

Let’s just focus today on radiation, a concern with one kind of body scanner that is being installed at airports, the so-called backscatter machines. As of last week, the agency had bought 250 backscatter units, which scan body surfaces using an “ultra low dose” of X-ray radiation, according to the manufacturer, Rapiscan Systems.

The T.S.A. says it had also bought 242 other body scan machines that use millimeter wave technology, which doesn’t emit radiation but uses “harmless radio waves,” according to its manufacturer, L-3 Security and Detection Systems.

As of last week, the agency said, there were 99 backscatter units and 43 millimeter wave units at 41 airports. The machines cost about $150,000 each……

repeated low-dose exposure to radiation at airport checkpoints is a cumulative risk, and that the safety of the backscatter technology has not yet been adequately demonstrated by impartial research.

In a letter on May 28, several organizations and individuals, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Ralph Nader, asked Congress to stop deployment of the devices pending “an independent review of the devices’ health effects.”

And in April, three Republican Senators, Susan Collins, Jon Kyl and Saxby Chambliss, wrote to the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, urging the department to evaluate a type of body imaging called auto-detection technology used at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.

That technology identifies potentially threatening objects on a person without actually showing naked body images and also “avoids exposing passengers to radiation,” the senators said.

But for now, the agency is committed to the backscatters and millimeter wave machines.

To me, the obvious question is: Given that the two types of machines are both deemed effective by the T.S.A., why doesn’t the agency just abandon backscatters and use the millimeter wave machines, which don’t pose radiation issues? On the Road – Radiation Questions Over a Body Scanner – NYTimes.com

July 27, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, radiation, radioactive