N830MH

Hi All,

I just went through at TSA checkpoint and I saw those people who went through the MMW. I opt-out from the bodyscanner. I didn't want go through the scanner. He asked me to step aside. I wait for another TSO that he escorted me into the secondary screening. He gave me patdown all over my body and he grope me. I didn't appreciate for TSA behavior at LAS tonight. TSA should be more respectable to others.

The WTMD is closed. I saw those passengers who sent through MMW. I didn't want go through the MMW. I have kept avoid the scanner. Should I need file lawsuit against TSA?

Good riddance to TSA!!!!

tkey75

Sure, why not.

N830MH

Also, I saw TSO that they gave patdown some passengers who are cleared from MMW. I wasn't too ashamed for what they did to those passengers. WTMD should kept open for all-day long. There is no reason to closed the WTMD. It's unacceptable!!!

exbayern

FYI SFO isn't TSA; it's an outside company.

I'm sorry to hear what happened but in my experience the female TSOs at SEA generally are quite unpleasant with those with medical reasons for not using the MMW. chollie may be able to chime in as well. I actually posted I think well back on this thread giving SEA credit for the one time I encountered a relatively pleasant female TSO there.

Your experience is similar to what many of us experience; point out a sensitive area and it gets 'extra special' scrutiny.

FliesWay2Much

I will ask around the office and ask some NASA colleagues when I get back from my current overseas trip. For now, I can only offer qualitative comments.

First of all, cosmic radiation from the sun is made up of many subatomic particles of many types that give off varying level of radiation. Here's a good place to start: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/.

From this textbook, designed in 1996 for grades 7-12 in the U.S.:

Source: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/Curric_7-12/Chapter_4.pdf

Note that this was written in 1996 and applies to commercial aviation flights over the North Pole during periods of heightened solar activity (i.e.: geomagnetic storms).

Here is a whole lot of reading material: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/Education/ed_sites.html.

The term "cosmic rays," which already sounds like a death sentence, is a generic term for space weather coming from the sun and all of the rest of the stars in our universe. Virtually all "cosmic ray" effects for humans on earth, or near it, come from solar wind and other space weather phenomena. So, for the rest of this post, I will use the term "solar radiation" rather than "cosmic rays."

As the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center materials note, effects of solar radiation are attenuated by the earth's magnetic field, atmosphere, and Van Allen belts. When you're flying, there is an additional attenuation from the aircraft's fuselage, insulation, and even the cabin atmosphere before a fraction of space ions reaches your skin. Oh yeah, it also needs to penetrate your clothing and the blanket the FA brought you. FYI, the #1 reason why we haven't sent humans outside the Van Allen belts, except for brief visits to the moon, is because of adverse solar radiation effects. The simple reason why we have never sent humans to Mars (and won't in our lifetime) is because the solar and "Cosmic Rays" radiation would kill the crew before they got to Mars.

So, comparing dosage of "Cosmic Rays" received during a long airplane flight to the dose of radiation received during a TSA backscatter screening is simply absurd. But, science doesn't matter to the TSA or to most of the American public. They buy this line hook, line, and sinker.

Backscatter radiation, as used by the TSA, is a specific frequency of radioactivity concentrated on the surface of the body. (Big backscatter radars are also a great way to detect low observable aircraft such as the B-2 bomber, as the Australians found out.)

Medical x-rays quickly penetrate through the body. That's why broken bones and abscessed teeth show up so readily. TSA X-rays are designed to only penetrate the clothing and to concentrate of the surface of the skin and below for a few mms. The TSA X-ray, unlike the medical x-ray, never leave the human body. So, only a fraction of the x-ray dose you got at the dentist actually stays in your body. But, 100% of the TSA Cancer Box radiation not only stays in your body, it remains in your skin. By the way, the surface of the body + a few millimeters also includes the eyes. You won't find anyone talking about adverse effects of TSA Cancer Boxes on eyes.

Then, there's the really basic argument that x-rays you receive in a doctor's office or at the dentist are medical x-rays administered by trained medical staff. The backscatter x-ray you receive at a TSA checkpoint is an industrial x-ray administered by you-know-who. To subject a living organism (airline passengers) to an industrial x-ray is somewhere between absurd and criminal.

The Hopkins report suggested that there should be a three-dimensional "keep out" zone around the TSA Cancer Boxes measured in multiple feet. The real victims (although I really don't feel the least bit sorry for them) are the TSA clerks who stand inside the "keep-out" zones day in & day out.

WillCAD

Uhh... no.

X-ray energy emitted by the BSX scanner doesn't "stay in your body" or "remain on your skin". The x-ray energy passes through clothing but bounces off of the skin and returns to the machine; the machine detects the patterns of the returns and forms an image from those returns.

During the scan, a certain amount of that energy is absorbed by the body. A certain amount passes through the soft tissues of the body and bounces off the bones or other internal structures. A certain amount passes completely through the body.

By the way, the x-ray energy of the BSX scan is not "designed" to do anything; it's x-rays. It's the scanner itself which is designed to emit x-ray energy at pre-set levels and detect it when it bounces off the subject and returns.

N830MH

Actually, it is CAS, but not a federal screener. It was own private security company. Because they are independently.

See the website is at:

http://www.covenantsecurity.com/sfo/

RadioGirl

I think the second bolded statements contradicts the first. In both medical and BSX x-rays, some proportion of the energy is absorbed in some part of the human body. Although I don't believe we have enough information to say how much, we can draw some conclusions by the way they work.

With medical x-rays, a significant portion of the energy goes through the body to the film/detector on the other side, so that the proportion of the energy that's absorbed is distributed throughout the body (unequally, depending on the characteristics of bone/muscle/organs/etc, but all through.)

With BSX x-rays, a significant portion of the energy is reflected off the outer layers of the body. While much of the energy is reflected, some is absorbed, and in this case that energy is NOT distributed throughout the body but is concentrated in the outer layers of the body - skin, eyes. (I believe that very little, if any, energy would pass all the way through the body or reflect off bones, otherwise we'd see the full skeletal structure in the BSX image.)

Maybe - and I'm just making up numbers as an example - 99% of the energy passes through in a medical x-ray and 1% is absorbed, and 99% of the energy is reflected in a backscatter x-ray and 1% is absorbed. My understanding of the experts' objections to BSX NoS is that it's invalid to compare [1%] of energy absorbed by an entire body with [1%, or 0.5%, or whatever] of energy absorbed only in the skin, which is what TSA tries to do with their "BSX=3 minutes of flying at altitude" or "BSX=1/10000 of a chest x-ray" arguments.

I don't know what the proportions are, but I wouldn't assume that just because there's enough energy reflected for the imager to work, there's almost no energy being absorbed. If you stand in sunlight, there's (more than) enough energy reflected to make you visible, while at the same time there's enough energy absorbed to warm your skin and cause skin damage.
I believe it's a combination of the frequency and the energy of the photons. An emitter is "designed" so that the emitted x-rays will do what is needed.

exbayern

Again, it is not TSA but an outside company. What I posted is not incorrect. They do tend to be more by the book but I have at times also found them to be more reasonable than some TSOs.

WillCAD

Not really. When x-ray energy is absorbed by the body, it is transmuted to something else. There are different types of absorption depending on the wavelength of the x-ray, and the details of the physics are way above my head, but the x-ray energy is no longer x-ray energy after it's absorbed. Hence, x-rays don't "stay in the body" after exposure, any more than sunlight "stays in the body" after exposure.

True, and I have seen sample BSX images on the net where the skeletal structure IS visible in the extremeties, where the soft tissues are thinner and the energy can pass through it, bounce off the bones, and pass through it again on the way back out to the detectors. These images don't look exactly the same as a medical image, however, I assume due to the difference between pass-through and reflective imaging techniques.

I'm not sure where TSA gets their numbers for those ridiculous analogies, especially since it seems that the amount of radiation exposure per minute of flight time varies wildly according to your position above the earth, time of day, altitude ASL (not above ground), time of year, and time of the 11-year solar cycle. On the other hand, the amount of energy emitted by a BSX scan is much more consistent, barring bad calibration and poorly maintained machinery (insert chuckle here).

All I know for sure is that BSX exposure is artificial and optional, whereas the exposure I get from the sun is natural and unavoidable. And sure, going into the upper layers of the atmosphere where exposure is higher is also optional, but I have yet to ever hear of a rash of cancer clusters among pilots or flight crews from such exposure, whereas I believe it's only a matter of time before there are documented cancer clusters popping up amongst TSOs who work in proximity to those infernal machines.

petaluma1

Actually there have been studies showing a greater incidence of leukemia among flight crews than the general population. This was cited as an argument for flight crews to avoid backscatter.

Polar Bear

X-ray and sunlight are all Electromagnetic radiation but they carry different level of energy. When the electromagnetic radiation is absorbed by the matter, e.g. skin or body, the energy could be transform to other types of energy. When sunlight is absorbed by the skin, it usually turns into heat. It is usually harmless but it can cook you, i.e. sun burn. X-ray is called ionizing radiation, which can ionize atoms and disrupt molecular bonds. When it is absorbed by skin or body, the energy will break molecular bonds and DNA of your body cells, i.e. ionizing molecular bonds. The X-ray does not stay in the body but the absorbed energy is and damage is done. Human body can repair minor damages of DNA and body cells but you don’t want to absorb any more ionizing radiation than you need.

As we are told to wear hat and apply sunscreen to prevent sun burn and skin cancer. We are also told to wear sunglass to prevent snow blind and cataracts. Unfortunately, we don’t have any person protection equipments to use against airport X-ray cancer machines and MMW NOS machines. The best option is not go through or near them.

Polar Bear

Schmurrr

The Secret Service document obtained by EPIC last week (linked here) includes some data about the radiation emitted by the backscatter scanners and how the scanners are to be operated.

It is interesting that most of the exposure data in the test report have been withheld or are N/A. The only exposure data provided at all is the leakage data (which is zero). Why would the rest of the data about level of exposure (including background radiation) be secret or N/A? Even if the exposure levels do not meet the standards in this test report, that might only mean that the particular unit tested needs calibration, which does not seem like a national security issue. The standards themselves are not secret.

Also interesting is the 10-month difference between the test date and the "calibration due date." That seems like a long time given how many people go through these scanners.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on these scanners or the science of radiation. I am just pointing out information that I have questions about.

KenTarmac

Interesting find. The lack of data and excessive use of N/A indicates to me that the exposure measurement survey wasn't done at all or was done incorrectly. First of all, there should be some value inserted for the Background Radiation reading.

When filling out a survey N/A should never be used. If the recorded value is some amount less than 1 or equal to 0 it should be indicated (recorded) as such.

The 10 month difference between the test data and the calibrationd due date is a good thing. The calibration interval for the test unit - in this case a Fluke 451P Pressurized μR Ion Chamber Survey Meter is 12 months. Which means that the survey was done just a little more than two months after the survey meter calibration was verified.

However, it doesn't mean squat if the survey wasn't done at all, wasn't done correctly or wasn't recorded correctly as appears to be the case.

reamworks

We can predict with near certainty that every TSO that every gets cancer will sue the Federal Government and will win millions of dollars to supplement their stolen iPad, cash, and pill booty!