Originally Posted by
FriendlySkies
Not good PR for TSA when they harass people for opting-out.
The entire point of the molestations is to impose coercion to force you through the scanners. They are basically under orders to make your life miserable if you refuse to be obedient and have yourself irradiated.
Because they want you in the machines ... you won though ... they lost
Originally Posted by
FriendlySkies
Interesting experience. First off, I wish these clerks would not be shouting nonsense about the backscatter producing less radiation than two or three minutes of flight time
This is a materially false claim they are making. The irradiator scanners utilize tuned "soft x-rays" that are specifically designed to intersect with molecules in your skin.
All x-rays are high energy and have the ability to knock atoms off of your molecules. There is no such thing as a "safe x-ray". You can get cancer from a single x-ray particle when it messes up your DNA and your cell replicates it becomes cancerous.
Now here is where the TSA is really lying. The soft x-rays that intersect with your body, well the overwhelming amount of these is blocked by the hull of a plane and these are the most dangerous cosmic radiation. Because the hull of the plane has similar densities as your body.
The x-rays that go through the hull of the plane also almost always go right through your body.
The scanner radiation specifically intersects with, blasts, and is absorbed by your body, this is how they make the images. It is utterly criminal that they are materially misrepresenting things in this manner. There is no comparison between flight cosmic radiation and the tuned x-rays in the scanner that are designed to collide with the molecules in your body.
Do not go through those machines!! Here is why:
1) The reason we can even opt-out is for liability reasons. When people start getting cancer, especially frequent fliers, the TSA is going to say "you could have opted-out, why didn't you?" as their legal defense.
2) They don't allow TSA agents to wear radiation badges, even if they buy themselves and hide them. If the machines are safe, why can't these people wear the badges?
3) The TSA was ordered by congress and is being sued to release the real xray dosage information for the machines and they've refused to. Why?
4) The machines themselves are capable of putting out up to 100,000 more radiation than being claimed and the radiation is variable. Because there are no controls or disclosure on how much you are exposed to, what is to stop some jack-... from sitting in his office and whiggling the knob and blasting you with radiation? Absolutely nothing.
5) The majority of the absorption of the radiation actually occurs in your head and is highly concentrated in your skin.
6) The TSA is not disclosing how it tests the safety of the machines against malfunction and John Hopkins has backed away from the TSA's claim that they said the machines are safe. If there is a malfunction in one of these machines or the scanner pauses or stops on your body and blasts you with concentrated xrays, your molecules and your DNA is going to melt and you are going to get cancer.
And ... under no circumstances should you -EVER- let children through or near these things. Because most of the radiation is absorbed in the head, children have very thin skulls and their brain will absorb almost all of it. Children's bodies are undergoing very rapid cellular division and under a lot of growth stress (the reason good nutrition is very important for kids ... bad nutrition can leave them without sufficient building blocks to grow). The slightest screw up in these DNA/RNA replication sequences can become cancerous.
People think they are safer than dental xrays/etc. But consider this ... the radiation in these machines is tuned to intersect your soft tissue whereas bone xrays are tuned to intersect bone. The majority of "hard xray"s that intersect bone go right through your body or hit the calcium deposits in the bones (less organic).
These TSA xray machines are specifically designed to intersect with your soft tissues which are at the highest risk of developing cancer.
The bottom line here is that these machines -are not safe- and the TSA is lying about it, but they know that if you get cancer from them you'll never be able to prove it and even if you can they will claim "you could have opted-out, its not our fault".
Don't go through those machines ... they aren't safe. They are only safe for the TSA because they know you won't be able to prove the lawsuit if you get cancer 20 years from now as a result of walking through these machines only once (it only takes one x-ray particle to ionize the right atom in your DNA, make the cell mutagenic, and you've got cancer).