trvlr64

When the pat downs started at FLL terminal 2 the bottom of my feet were either touched or scanned by the metal detector wand.

That was at the very beginning. But for the past few months they haven't touched my feet at all.

I think maybe you just had a TSO who loves feet.



Personnally as a Rad Tech who has x-rayed more feet than I can count over the years I absolutely hate feet and find people wearing flipflops all the time to be nausiating. I wish people would wear shoes, your toes ain't cute.

I was completely disgusted on my flight the other day when I witnessed a Father taking his barefoot female Child into the lavatory. I can only hope he lifted her up before letting her walk on the lavatory floor..........because we know GENTLEMEN we miss all too often.

.

usafwso

It is one of ways that the government is "culling the herd". TSA employees are simply TOO stupid to understand.

noithatkuongthinh

It can affect your health

Mats

Two different issues here.


1. Foot paranoia
Common sense is long gone. There have been cases other than the Richard Reid of passengers carrying weapons in shoes. And I remember having to take my shoes off at Heathrow in the 80s.

But it makes a mess. Having everyone take off their shoes is cumbersome and pointless. Statistically, how many flights enter the USA every day or fly around the world with no shoe inspection and no adverse effects? (A jingoist TSA enthusiast would say, "What if?" "But... but...?")

Wanding, swabbing, and inspecting bare feet contributes to the TSA's lack of credibility. Many of us have stories of wanding and inspecting bare skin: short-sleeve shirts, shorts, no socks, etc. I cannot see any reason other than paranoid bureaucracy to support this practice.

2. Radiation Exposure
Although I am not a fan of millimetre wave screening, question its purpose, and there is a potential for adverse health consequences, I think the real threat to employees involves baggage, not passengers.

Checked baggage goes through CT scanners, using much higher radiation doses. And those who are screening hand luggage are standing or sitting next to almost continuous-use x-ray equipment. (Medical x-ray and CT equipment is used only intermittently--when a patient is present.)

The recent GAO report about the lack of maintenance makes me think of the 2008 episode at Cedars-Sinai in which more than 200 patients received eight times the ordered radiation dose. This took place over an eighteen-month period. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct...cedars-sinai14

Although there is a risk to passengers, I think that TSA employees and contract employees who work around them are at extraordinary risk: poorly maintained equipment using high-dose radiation.

My former neighbour was a police officer, and he developed metastatic testicular cancer from a radar gun using to identify speeding. Such irony: equipment designed to protect the public actually caused significant harm.

Your safety is our priority.

greggarious

They do the bottoms of the feet because a small knife could be hidden there.

(Whether you can hijack a plane with a small knife is irrelevant - they just feel obligated to make sure nothing is smuggled in)

pon18n

Isn't it that you get much higher dose of radiation while you're airborne anyway?

BillyBleach

The scaremongering on this thread, unsurprisingly is not warranted and highly uninformed. You need to pass through a millimeter scanner 1000–2000 times to equal the dose from a medical chest X-ray.

Not to mention the fact that the average flight a window seat passenger would receive twice the dose of the scanner (2uS).

ref - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...87850714000168

Frankly anyone who is avoiding the x-ray scanners due to radiation fears, is so uninformed it's sad. If they took any level of investigation into radiation risks in electronics and the regulation around radiological emissions, there really wouldn't be anything to be fearing.

Boggie Dog

There are no backscatter whole body imagers currently in use at U.S. airports.

Based entirely on your comment I don't think you fully understand the differences between backscatter and millimeter wave scanners.

As far as radiation exposure goes one government agency stated that there is no known safe exposure limit. Other agencies have made other claims. The backscatter scanner units used by TSA was never independently tested for emissions so we really don't know how dangerous, or not, they actually were.

saizai

BXR was removed May 2013. This thread was started in 2011. Things have changed.

saizai

BTW, AFGE itself argued that there should be dosimeters for TSA.

https://www.afge.org/about-us/agenci...th-and-safety/

Don't know if that's changed since 2010.

petaluma1

Don't some of the baggage scanners use heavy-duty radiation? Those screeners aren't allowed to wear dosimeters.

Boggie Dog

The current crop of baggage scanners are CT type. Yes to x-rays.

Loren Pechtel

The radiation dose of a millimeter scanner is zero.

The backscatter scanners are gone.

However, there was good reason to be afraid of them--while they were supposed to produce only that low dose they weren't subject to the normal safety standards of such equipment. The machines should have had periodic inspections, the workers should have had dosimeters.

gingersnaps

Trust us, we are the government.

DHS and TSA Intentionally Misled Public About the Risk of Cancer from Body Scanners

martindo

I got a polite laugh in Schiphol when I asked for the pat-down instead of the machine. The two guys who are their equivalent of TSA said "we don't use radiation, we use ultrasound". Can anyone confirm that this new scanning method is widely (universally?) in use now?

As for Billy's comment, perhaps he should review safety standards. They are generally based on exposure per kg of body weight. But the TSA machines are designed to penetrate only to the skin, not to function as an x-ray. So, if they indeed use radiation, the safety would have to be changed by a factor of 100 or so -- how much does your skin weigh?