dalm

A friend sent me a link to this article. Curious if anyone knows specifics as people are diagnosed with cancer everyday....and the body scanners have been in place for a relatively short time. Personally - I always opt out and take the pat down....but I've wondered about the exposure of people working in close proximity to the machines.

Cancer Surges In Body Scanner Operators; TSA Launches Cover-Up

http://www.infowars.com/cancer-surge...ches-cover-up/

gojirasan

Note that a patdown that makes glove to boxer short area skin contact could also cause cancer, particularly in women. Any young girl should be given a Gardasil vaccine before traveling. Actually, probably any female should get it, period. Going through a TSA checkpoint nowadays is pretty much equivalent to high risk sexual activity.

The only time this risk is negligible is if you actually watch the TSO remove both gloves without touching the outside of either of them with their bare hands (not easy for most people) and then get fresh gloves from the box, preferably without touching the box with their bare hands.

You also have to hope that that fresh box was not picked up by another TSO while still wearing contaminated gloves etc. HPV is highly contagious and a woman won't even know that she has it until she gets cervical cancer. An airport checkpoint is not the best place to be doing medical examinations.

Of course if you forget to ask for a glove change entirely then, at least for a woman, your risk of cancer may be higher than your exposure to the xrays. If you have already had a Gardasil vaccine then it is more difficult to quantify the risk, but no vaccine is perfect. Males obviously can't get cervical cancer, but they can transmit HPV to their sex partners who may then get cancer. HPV has also been slightly implicated in penile cancer.

Scubatooth

very well put, and close to what i would say if heard such shlock spewed from a blue shirt.


OT I have watched someone die of cancer from radiation poisoning, It was not a pretty sight and looking back even with all the gruesome destruction, death and dying i see at work it really hit a little close. Looking back the images (mental and real) and such still make me ill, and others would toss there cookies without a doubt.

4nsicdoc

Too bad, so sad. Ain't karma a beeyatch.

FliesWay2Much

Mrs Flies (Man! I love and admire that woman!) is a volunteer hospital chaplain. She sees death 2-3 times per week, multiple times per day, often from cancer. The fact that the TSA and, ultimately, the government of the United States of America, places its citizens, with taxpayer money, knowingly in a position of increasing their cancer risk is nothing short of felonious.

CDTraveler

Well, that's one theory. But I don't think there has been any previous in vitro experiment that replicates what may be happening in airports right now, so I personally, as a health care worker and cancer survivor, am willing to keep an open but suspicious mind on all reports of cancer in airport workers.

Some of these people may have been getting frequent short bursts of radiation for up to 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, for more than a year. Who knows what their pre-existing risk factors were? Was that sufficient radiation to cause previously damaged cells to mutate into cancer?

Time will tell, and I suspect the time required will be well under a decade.

exerda

Very good points.

Most cases, yes, we'd expect them to take decades to show up. But history certainly has an unpleasant share of cases of occupational cancers which occur after much more brief exposures but which were definitively linked to the job.

Bcteagirl

Exactly. I would like to point out that a significant proportion of TSA workers possess multiple risk factors for illness/cancer:
1) Overweight
2) High stress / lack of social support
3) Smoking?
4) Lack of exercise?
5) Poor diet?
6) Luggage x-rays?
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/causes

I like to explain it as a 'rocks in the boat' effect.(EDIT: or would the canary in the mine be a better example?) There are (usually!) multiple causes for cancer. Some people for lifestyle and genetic reasons will be more susceptable. (Mostly environmental, less genetic: http://www.fhi.no/dokumenter/356607961f.pdf )

While for a person with fewer health risks it may take longer, in susceptible individuals the effects can be magnified. Others have pointed out that the x-rays for luggage have been operating for a while. Another rock in the boat.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/f.../Risk/clusters

So what we may be seeing in a Cancer cluster of those who were already at high risk.

Alternatively, what we might be seeing is a cluster of individuals who were in the very early (undetectable) stages of cancer, who had their cancer growth increase due to negative recent environmental changes (e.g. stress and the new scanners).

There is still a chance it could be an aberration. Given that this particular cluster was not publicized, I would not use 'this is the only one we have seen' as a reason to suspect it as being an aberration. Despite not being a fan of TSA procedures, having had multiple family members with cancer I would not wish it on anyone.

Bungnoid

The naked body scanners have been in general use as primary screening for a relatively short time--since October 2010. However, they have actually been in use in a more limited capacity for much longer. According to one report (and I would imagine that it would be relatively easy to confirm this), they have been in use on a trial and testing basis at some airports (e.g., BOS) since approximately 2002 or 2003. That may very well have been long enough to plausibly account for effects that are showing up now.

polonius

there is no need to go into detailed forensics or statistical analysis with respect to the correlation between the NoS and mortality rates or "cancer clusters."

The fact is that terror as a cause of death is so statisticallly insignificant (certainly less than any confidence interval related to mortality analysis) that even a miniscule bump in the cancer rate (which is one of the biggest causes of mortality) would result in the "solution" killing for more people than the "problem".

Furthermore, there are effective ways of reducing terror. None of them involve pretending that the terror activities arise from wholly irrational, unresolvable problems like "they hate our freedoms". There is not a single terror group -- IRA, PLO, LTTE, ETA, Black Panthers, FARC, etc. whose genesis did NOT arise from genuine injustice and disenfranchisement. People don't just wake up one morning, look at their loving wives and families, and decide that rather than going to their meaningful, well-paid job, they're going leave that all behind, go underground, build bombs and hijack airplanes. They do it because they are forced into situations where they have no other options available other than terror or capitulation. Deal with that issue and you won't have terror, period. And it will cost less than some stupid cancer scanners.

AngryMiller

I would think that the x-ray leakage from the luggage and carry-on x-ray machines would be a greater threat to the screeners, if for no other reason that the machines must emit a higher level just to function properly.

Saitek

EPIC v. DHS Lawsuit -- FOIA'd Documents Raise New Questions About Body Scanner Radiation Risks : 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." For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. Department of Homeland Security - Full Body Scanner Radiation Risks and EPIC: EPIC v. DHS (Suspension of Body Scanner Program). (Jun. 24, 2011)

http://epic.org/privacy/airtravel/ba...radiation.html

Boggie Dog

I beleive this is the same discussion:


http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...radiation.html

bajajoes

I would NEVER work for tsa but the people that do would be prudent to invest in a "Dosimeter Watch" shown on Amazon. ID address is very long so I did not try to copy to forum. Cost may be prohibitive,$150-$200 each.
I've read in past that tsa did not allow screeners to wear dosimeter badges
but these look like a watch so probably wouldn't be spotted. @:-)
Their health/life? woud seem to justify the expense and could be a write off on tax return. ^
IF I were a "frequent flyer" I would invest in one and use it ONLY for airport screenings. I hope some FF eventually does and posts a report.

OnTheAsile

IF this is in fact correct, the reason may be TSA fears the public response to seeing the employees wearing the dosimeters, ie;massive Op-OUTS.
Marge to Harry: Hey Harry, see that TSA guy wearing a radiation badge. If he has to wear it maybe there is radiation risk for us.
Lets OP-OUT...

..