Posted on 01/06/2010 11:48:51 AM PST by decimon
Amid concerns regarding terrorists targeting airliners using weapons less detectable by traditional means, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is ramping up deployment of whole body scanners at security checkpoints in U.S. airports. These systems produce anatomically accurate images of the body and can detect objects and substances concealed by clothing.
To date, TSA has deployed two types of scanning systems:
Millimeter wave technology uses low-level radio waves in the millimeter wave spectrum. Two rotating antennae cover the passenger from head to toe with low-level RF energy.
Backscatter technology uses extremely weak X-rays delivering less than 10 microRem of radiation per scan ─ the radiation equivalent one receives inside an aircraft flying for two minutes at 30,000 feet.
An airline passenger flying cross-country is exposed to more radiation from the flight than from screening by one of these devices. The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement (NCRP) has reported that a traveler would need to experience 2,500 backscatter scans per year to reach what they classify as a Negligible Individual Dose. The American College of Radiology (ACR) agrees with this conclusion.
The ACR is not aware of any evidence that either of the scanning technologies that the TSA is considering would present significant biological effects for passengers screened.
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The ACR encourages those interested in learning more regarding radiation associated with imaging and radiation oncology procedures as well as radiation naturally occurring in the Earth's atmosphere to visit www.radiologyinfo.org.
For more information or to speak to an ACR spokesperson, please contact ACR Director of Public Affairs Shawn Farley at 703-648-8936 or sfarley@acr-arrs.org.
We are talking a picosecond(or less) pulse of exposure, like a flashbulb only much shorter duration, and not visible light. How warm would your food get if you powered on the microwave for one-trillionth of a second?
Black body radiation plots at the source of the heat — the filament. Just how much sub micron energy gets past the glass of the bulb?
Also that’s not a plot of scanner output versus output at one inch from the light bulb, which would be helpful get a ballpark estimate of the risk of the Thz band.
You also mentioned florescent lights, there are a number of phosphors, and spectrums resultant. What level of Thz radiation comes out of them?
I’d like to know if there are somewhere in somewhat normal and longterm human places of work or living ambient levels of terahertz radiation absorbed at the skin above the level employed by the scanners.
And that applies to all parts of the body exposed to the scanners, not just the bare face and hands.
My best understanding at this time is there are no such exposed populations or studies of them. That’s just to establish a base line.
Still, since you also mentioned radon gas once before — even that there are such groups is no guarantee of safety — that is indeed what the radon scare and radon remediation efforts are all about. It may be that we do have have sub-populations of people at health risk from existing terahertz radiation source and have not yet made the connection. That was the case with radon.
Ever used an infrared massager? They emit in the far infrared range 4 - 1000 microns(4mm-1000mm)-just above what we are discussing. I wonder how long that method of therapy has been around?
Intrinsically safe, in my and most everyone's opinion, but to each his own.
Ah, heck. Let's just run everyone and their gear thru one of these.
Might be fun to go watch, even.
If that turns some TSA pervert on, they would be just as excited looking at the real thing. Watch out for the hospital X-Ray tech too.
I had a friend who designed a super-heated steam radiant heating system for a local famous theater. I will count that kind of radiant heat as “experimental” — for whatever reason it burned people at a depth in the flesh they did not feel — at least until the burn had gotten bad. That opening night was not a happy one the few days following. He turned the temperature down before they booted him.
That story in based on his retelling of it. I never bothered checking it out.
x-rays are much different (rarely full body and conducted by trained medical personal) and penetrate the skin deeper to the bone mass. These machines are designed to penetrate clothing only, will be viewed by thousands of unscreened government rent-a-cops, and are a lot more intrusive. There will be pedophiles, perverts and sickos in the this group of quickly hired rent-a-cops without a doubt.
You are comparing apples to oranges. What I find amazing is how hard we fight for the Second Amendment and are so willing to sacrifice our freedom and privacy, both of ourselves and children in the name of seemingly just cause.
thanks, bfl
There is no comparison to the 2nd amendment here. We do not have a constitutional right to get on an airplane. Reasonable precautions to prevent some lunatic from blowing that plane out of the air and killing all on board are not out of line with the constitution. If it takes a body scan, so be it.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...
This conversation between me and you is being stored digitally and could show up in court. Every phone call you make is logged and some recorded, every webpage you ever visited is digitally recorded, every movie you checked out or ordered is recorded, traffic cams record your movements, millions of street cameras watching your every visit to a store or work, every email and text messaged you make is stored and recorded, every financial transaction recorded, and list goes on... I guess allowing government employees to see our children nude is not a big deal after-all. We are the land of the free!
Far better than some other government employee seeing them as a charred hunk of meat in a pile of wreckage.
Let’s just agree to disagree. We both have valid points, but disagree on the means. ;^)
Last chance to pull you over to my side using a quote:
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Well if air travel were an 'essential liberty,' Ben Franklin would have been correct. I'd paraphrase this way;
Those who will not take prudent precautions when faced with certain danger deserve what they get.
New Full Body Scanners Can't Detect Liquid Explosives Properly say Experts
I think that includes powdered explosives also.
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