Airport scanning and the cancer risk

“Even if the risk associated with an individual going through a scanner one time is miniscule,” he said, “when you multiply that miniscule risk by say two or three hundred to correspond to the potential annual usage of a commercial air crew or a very frequent flier, the estimated risk may still be small, but it is no longer `miniscule.`”

Can You Get Cancer From Airport Scanners?, The SOP, 29 Nov 10, Jerome R. Corsi A Columbia University expert in radiation today confirmed that it is quite “likely” that the radiation from screening machines being installed nationwide by the Transportation Security Authority to use on airline passengers will cause cancer.

The word comes from David J. Brenner, of Columbia`s Center for Radiological Research, and whose research involves radiation biology, low dose risk estimation and radiotherapy.

There`s no use depending on TSA “research” that denied or minimized that risk because those results have been bought and paid for, he noted…….

Join tens of thousands of Americans in a petition demanding action against the intrusive airport screening procedures implemented by Janet Napolitano and send a letter to Congress, President Obama and others telling them exactly what you think about the issue.

Brenner undermined Department of Homeland Security statements that X-ray imaging scanners are safe by explaining the government`s research is not peer-reviewed.

“We know the radiation dose is very low, but there are different views about how low is low,” Brenner, a Ph.D., told WND.

“TSA is basing its claims for safety on research the government has commissioned,” he said, “not on peer-reviewed independent studies published in scientific journals.”

He cited a report by three scientists from Arizona that is peer-reviewed that concluded that cancer is a public health “concern” from even low doses of radiation.

The article, “The Dose from Compton Backscatter Screening,” was co-authored by Peter Rez of the Department of Physics at Arizona State University in Tempe, Robert L. Metzger of Radiation Safety Engineering, Inc., in Chandler and Kenneth Mossman of Scholl of Life Sciences at Arizona State University in Tempe.

It was accepted for publication October 7, 2010, in the Oxford “Journal of Radiation Protection Dosimetry,” a peer-reviewed journal.

“The major public health effect of concern at low doses of ionizing radiation is cancer,” Rez, Metzger and Mossman wrote. “It is not possible to determine reliably whether a radiogenic risk is present in an X-ray screened population because of the high spontaneous incidence of cancer and the multifactorial nature of disease causation.”

Rez, Metzger and Mossman also pointed out that the health risk increases if the TSA X-ray equipment malfunctions, noting that, “serious consideration should be given to the possibility of unintended and unnecessary doses to passengers due to malfunctioning equipment.”

His greatest worry is the overall population risk.

“The bigger concern is indeed the overall population risk,” he argued. “To illustrate generally what I mean here, suppose some activity involves a very small cancer risk, and a very large number of people are exposed to the risk, then the chances are that some of them would get cancer as a result of that activity, even though the individual risk is very small.”……..

Can You Get Cancer From Airport Scanners?