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Continuing safety concerns about USA’s X ray airport scanners

X-Ray Scans at Airports Leave Lingering Worries NYT,  By RONI CARYN RABIN , 6 Aug 12, Even before she was pregnant, Yolanda Marin-Czachor tried to avoid the full-body X-ray  scanners that security officers use to screen airport passengers. Now she’s adamant about it: She’ll take a radiation-free pat-down instead any day.  THE CONSUMERAdvice on money and health.

“I had two miscarriages  before thispregnancy ,” Ms. Marin-Czachor, a 34-year-old mother and teacher from Green Bay, Wis., recalled, “and one of the first things my doctor said was: ‘Do not go through one of those machines. There have not been any long-term studies. I would prefer you stay away from it.’ ”

There are 244 full-body “backscatter” X-ray scanners in use at 36 airports in the United States. They operate almost nonstop, according to the Transportation Security Administration. Other airports use millimeter wave scanners, which look like glass telephone booths and do not use radiation, or metal detectors…..

 some experts are less sanguine, and questions persist about the safety of using X-ray machines on such a large scale. A recent study reported thatradiation from the machines can reach organs through the skin . In another report, researchers estimated that one billion X-ray backscatter scans per year would lead to perhaps 100 radiation-induced cancers  in the future. The European Union has banned body scanners that use radiation ; it is against the law in several European countries to X-ray people without a medical reason.

The machines move a narrowly focused beam of high-intensity radiation very quickly across the body, and David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center, says he worries about mechanical malfunctions that could cause the beam to stop in one place for even a few seconds, resulting in greater radiation exposure.

For security reasons, much about how the machines work has been kept secret…… John Sedat, emeritus professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, believes that the effective dose could be 45 times as high as the T.S.A. has estimated, equivalent to about 10 percent of a single chest X-ray……. The machines, though, have had mechanical problems. A recent T.S.A. report said that between May 2010 and May 2011, there were 3,778 service calls concerning mechanical problems in backscatter X-ray machines . Radiation safety surveys were conducted after only 2 percent of the calls.

Those at greatest risk, however, may be T.S.A. employees and others who work in the terminals and go through security daily. A 2004 National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health study of T.S.A. baggage screeners urged the agency to have employees wear film badges to monitor ongoing exposure systemically , as many hospital and lab employees do, and to label machines more prominently. The agency has not done so.  http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/x-ray-scans-at-airports-leave-lingering-worries/

August 8, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general