Originally Posted by
trvlr64
"Actually they made me take all of the money out of my wallet and hold it in my hand. And I was only 5 feet away from the other agents going through my luggage and I was watching them the entire time my body was being patted down.
Had I witnessed anything out of the ordinary I would have stopped the pat down and demanded a supervisor immediately.
As for telling them why I didn't want to walk through the X-ray unit I felt it is necessary to "educate" them that it is ionizing radiation. They are standing right next to the unit. Where is the lead shielding? By radiation protection standards there is a 6 foot minimum when x-rays are being produced. You see us x-ray techs behind a lead wall when we are taking your x-rays.
Maybe the TSA will start having high incidents of cancer or other radiation health issues and then someone will realize that this type of unnecessary exposure is not worth it.
I will never believe this is safe. As I was being patted down I watched many children being sent through the x-ray unit. That's just asinine.
The whole process probably took less than 8 minutes. They all changed their gloves. Even the TSA doing the pat down changed his gloves in front of me and informed me before he was going to do this and how he was going to touch my body during the pat down.
Not once was I left alone. Someone was around me the entire time.
It will be interesting how many times I will have to go through this at FLL Terminal 2. I have a flight every week until the end of August. I will use the other security lines to see if I get selected to stand in the X-ray unit since I observed that line #1 is set up to use the X-ray unit as the primary scanning.
Regarding the bolded section, was it a full-body patdown that they performed on you? IOW, did they start on your shirt collar, while you were standing, and end by patting down your feet while you were seated?
Thanks for taking the time to relay your experience.