Or this was the real terrorist plot. Make the government spend billions on body scanners to cause everyone (TSA and flyers) to get cancer! Kill the infidels with their own radiation! Muuwaahaahaahaa! Ingenious, isn’t it, Mr. Bond?
In a FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, EPIC has just obtained documents concerning the radiation risks of TSA’s airport body scanner program. The documents include agency emails, radiation studies, memoranda of agreement concerning radiation testing programs, and results of some radiation tests. One document set reveals that even after TSA employees identified cancer clusters possibly linked to radiation exposure, the agency failed to issue employees dosimeters – safety devices that could assess the level of radiation exposure. Another document indicates that the DHS mischaracterized the findings of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, stating that NIST “affirmed the safety” of full body scanners. The documents obtained by EPIC reveal that NIST disputed that characterization and stated that the Institute did not, in fact, test the devices. Also, a Johns Hopkins University study revealed that radiation zones around body scanners could exceed the “General Public Dose Limit.”
Surprise surprise.
Not.
Now they’ll move the TSA workers behind a lead shield but say that it is okay for the rest of us to receive radiation.
As I posted here before, it is part of my profession to deal with radiation risk. From published documentation about X-ray full body scanners it is absolutely true that: a) “Slight of hand” calculation is used to diminish actual risk for several orders of magnitude even when machines are used properly (% of the body volume that absorbs all the radiation trick) b) To perform by the spec’ machines must be (and are) designed with ability to irradiate at much higher levels. (Like a car that you don’t drive all the time at the red-line rpm #). Combine that with poorly educated staff and already barely tolerable risk becomes unacceptable.
My risk estimate: 1 TSA full body Xray scan exposure is approximately equal to the radiation exposure upper limit for the whole year for your skin layer. Think for yourself as how that may change with inept operator.
Blind trust with negative results. Huh?!
I thought “cancer” took years/decades to show up?
Its radiation poisoning/over exposure that shows up in 2-3 years.
With Animby in the bush, Dusanmal, are my definitions out of date? out of context?
We should all send Care Packages full of dosimeters to the TSA drones at all of our local airports.
I wonder if they would get the hint and walk off the job . . .
I’m wondering what they would do if I brought my own dosimeter. Probably hassle me and call it suspicious behavior.
Cancer can take years to develop.
Radiation damage can reduce you to a ghostly shadow on a wall in the blink if an eye.
The TSA full-body scanners lie somewhere in between. (If I was of child bearing/child rearing age, I would prefer to be unemployed than go work for the TSA, but I also get hungry.)
The reason that TSA airport security job is seen as make work for the American economic underclasses with too little initiative, imposed of self-directed, to get a real job, or those who have just not been caught doing something criminal yet, is that these are the most expendable.
Face it, do you feel empathy for someone who’s job it is to un-erotically grope and abuse people while shoving lines of them through a machine like cattle in a slaughterhouse.
So they get radiation damage, (cancer is just one kind of damage,) do we care?
What kinds of people does that make the depraved minds who think up these machines? Just, make that only, people…
What kinds of people does that make the depraved minds who think up ways of making the rest of us need these machines? Just, make that only, people…
#5 A better question would have been were they ever in date.
The longer you live the more likely you are to get cancer from accumulating harmful mutations and maybe a failure of your immune system to suppress the cancers that occur before they become detectable.
On the other hand if you check I think you will find that a lot of young people who like tans get skin cancer.
I know the skin on my arms aged in months after I started walking per my Drs. recommendation while the skin on my stomach still looks youthful.
The problem with the TSA scanners is The Department of Homeland Insecurity installed the things and started using them with nobody having a clue what the risks were. We still don’t.
The people they say tested them for safety say they did no such thing and reports suggest that the people that occasionally check to see if they are running within speck were determined to be so clueless they couldn’t correctly determine their radiation levels in a previous report. That or the machines were giving out dangerous levels of radiation which the TSA denied.
My issue is, that for people, I don’t see that these machines can do anything an infrared camera can’t do by taking a picture of you using your body heat. The camera’s could have been had for less than a $1000. Any concealed object will retard the passage of infrared light and show up in black.
In #9, deowll said: …for people, I don’t see that these machines can do anything an infrared camera can’t do by taking a picture of you using your body heat.
Give that man a Kewpie doll.
In a refrigerated passage with low background heat/IR that would work just as effectively as the X-Ray scanners and not expose the TSA screeners to any radiation at all.
Its just that X-Rays have lost their scary-ness of the 1930s in Washington.Dr. Kildare has a lot to answer for.
Heat vision still has not made it into popular consciousness apart from blurry images in night-ranger sniper’s goggles.
Oh, I’m looking forward to handing this over to the SCANNER STAFF at Manchester Airport (UK).
These machines are nothing more than a Michael Chertoff payment plan.
Look for a TSA/ICE/Border Patrol “system equipment changeover”(doesn’t matter what equipment)proposal and approval just prior to Janet’s DHS departure. This will be Janet’s payment plan.
You don’t think they were in it to be patriotic Americans do you?
#7… “I’m wondering what they would do if I brought my own dosimeter.”
You would be fired.
That alone tells me that the TSA management knows there is a risk. But they refuse to consider it. If they really believed what they state, then they would not have any problem with their employees wearing dosimeters.
Think about it. No one knows if these machines are even calibrated or being operated properly. They are run by high school drop outs who can’t get any other job other than molesting people and standing next to machines that radiate things without any protection.
And what would TSA’s reaction be to a citizen wearing a dosimeter?
Many people are required to wear dosimeters to monitor their exposure. Regulations set the maximum exposure allowed per day, month, and per year. If you exceed any of those limits/time you may not work in those radiation areas.
Upon seeing a dosimeter the TSA will attempt to max it out. A dosimeter that is full is a threat to no one.
Long term exposure to ionising low dose electromagnetic radiation should be avoided. Use common sense. It’s like a deep sun burn.
Good. That’s justice.
Same goes for the sheep that allow themselves to be herded through them. This is well deserved upon all of them. Hopefully they all die slow, painful deaths.
Finally – some good news!
on the bright side maybe TSA agents will now start developing superpowers, hopefully x-ray vision
The title of the article says “Cancer clusters near body scanners”. The article itself says Congress authorized the use of full body scanners in 2009. Two years for so-called “clusters” to show up that are assumed right off the bat to be due to these body scanners? I call BS as a couple other posters have noted on here. This is WAY too soon for anything to show up that is anywhere close to be called a pattern.
I’m not saying that it could not happen, but to blindly assume a danger exists without much more evidence is just as bad as assuming blindlly that there is NO evidence. So on this one I will err on the side against the conspiracy theory, thank you.
>>> Kill the infidels with their own radiation! Muuwaahaahaahaa! Ingenious, isn’t it,
These are real people getting real cancer. Not that funny.
In any regards, it seems WAY to early for cancer to be showing up.
I wonder what leaks out from the baggage x-ray machines.
In # 19 Zamir said: TSA agents will now start developing superpowers.
I don’t know about super powers but they will be able to glow in the dark… 🙂
Well, 19 has it more or less right, though I’m not quite so evil.
All that needs to be done to stop this non sense is for all you morons to stop flying for a week or so. Since you can’t give up your addition to air travel for even a few days, you should suffer the consequences and stop bitching.
But, as far as it goes, 2 years is enough time for some types of cancers to start showing up due to radiation exposure. Lots of variables though. How many cancers, what kind, how old are the victims, how much radiation for how much time.
It DOES remind one of the shoe store flouroscopes that they used to have. Bad enough for the customers, but the sales people who were around the things all day every day are the ones that really tended to get sick.
http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/shoefittingfluor/shoe.htm
In # 20 ggore said: This is WAY too soon for anything to show up that is anywhere close to be called a pattern
You are assuming that ionizing radiation has the same distribution patterns as naturally occurring diseases. It doesn’t.
It doesn’t have the same infection, incubation or maturation processes.
The sources are known and there are no affects beyond the TSA staff. Individuals going through may get minimum doses but the cumulative dose absorbed by TSA staff may amount to many milli-Sieverts per hour.
The detection of clusters around the equipment can be done down to the pinpointing of a single defective machine within hours of the original report of someone showing the symptoms of radiation sickness.
In addition to wearing a radiologica badge, if you want to know whether the scanner is safe, carry a small fluorescent tube with you when you passing through. If it starts to glow, its not safe and you need to back away now!
The body scanner are ridiculous overkill anyway. Metal detectors sense 99% of any non-explosive weaponry, like knives. So why is a scanner needed? And a chemical sniffer, hooked up to the scanner chamber, would detect explosive residue, that visual scanner monitoring would miss. And NO radiation hazard would result. But I suppose the xray scanner was a more expensive sell. So they got approved, over chemical sniffing. Dumb!
Give them all a dosimeter and some full strength hemp oil, explain that the dosimeter will show them how their govt is trying to kill them.
and the hemp oil will bring them back to health, and in some cases will kill any tumors. it also might make them chill the fluck out.
rumor and anecdotal evidence has it that the weed also prevents brainwashing in some cases. Now that’s a scary thought for the govt.
google “run from the cure” for more info
>> # 25 msbpodcast
>> if you want to know whether the scanner is safe, carry a small fluorescent tube with you when you passing through. If it starts to glow, its not safe and you need to back away now!
What a fantastic idea!
But, better than back away, get it on video and post it on YouTube.
You might get arrested by TSA in the process but it would be worth the millions of hits it would get.
At least it might make people think twice before signing up with the TSA. Sure, you get to grope and humiliate who you want all day and see nude pix on the x-ray screens but you might get cancer. I feel sort of bad for friends and family of TSA agents with cancer but karma’s a bitch.