[bvw]

That's a misbegotten press release, one that could end up being very expensive for them. There's simply not enough data on the health effects of the millimeter wave technology, and the radiologists have made a real mistake in essentially treating the two as equal. We know a LOT about x-rays, since we have a history over 100 years with time, and many billions of uses. We have almost nothing on the terahertz equipment since it is essentially new technology only available in the past ten plus years. A October 2009 survey said:

The evidence that terahertz radiation damages biological systems is mixed. "Some studies reported significant genetic damage while others, although similar, showed none," say Boian Alexandrov at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and a few buddies. Now these guys think they know why.

Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they've found is remarkable. They say that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication.

I strongly advise sticking to airport terminals with x-ray scanners until it can be determined whether these new technology scanners (millimeter wave, or terahertz) machines are actually unzipping DNA.

[PeaceBeWithYou]

You, or whoever you sourced that from have taken it way out of the context of the study.

Here is a Link to the cited study.

[uncommonsense]

Thanks for the info on these scanners. Do you have any tips on how to identify the machines (as if we have a choice on what we're subjected to)?

Another question on these scanners - couldn't the terrorists form the bomb material into something anatomically inconspicuous, or do they show the composition of what they scan?