marklyon

Old Civil Defense devices are not what they need.

If I were a TSO, I would sign myself up for a monthly film badge service like http://www.sierradosimetry.com and never go to the airport without the badge in my pocket. I would be very careful about tracking my exposure and maintaining accurate records.

InkUnderNails

I think I knew that.

It really is difficult to do humor on a forum, yet I continue to try.

Maybe I should have used a smiley or two or a sarcasm tag.


Serious: I did think of them when I saw it. I suspect that their risk is much greater than anyone is letting on. I had a good friend that was assigned to Hiroshima as part of the occupation force. I never will forget his telling me that their unit reunion was getting incredibly small. He was 55 at the time.

Fornebufox

These ARE old -- my father worked with these (or possibly designed them? with his security clearance we never knew exactly what he did) back in the 60s! I have a few slightly earlier models, kept as mementos.

realjd

Great info in that other thread, thanks! I wish people would keep the health issue firmly focused on the backscatter machines where it belongs. There are plenty of other reasons to oppose NOS devices; bringing up health arguments against MMW only hurts our cause IMO.

As an engineer, I find the technology very cool even if I'm strongly opposed to it's use in airports.

m44

x-ray are also radio waves.
How much is "not much" - it only takes one knocked DNA.

Loren Pechtel

So is light.

I guess the TSA shouldn't be allowed to look at passengers.

WillCAD

Well, in the case of the MMW body scanners, "not much carcinogenic radiation" would consist of exectly 0.0000000% carcinogenic radiation. Zero. Nada. NONE.

Millimeter waves, which are part of the microwave spectrum, are non-ionizing radiation.

Unlike x-rays, which are deadly ionizing radiation, which in large enough cumulative doses can cause multiple types of cancers.

The MMW body scanners are perfectly safe. Completely. They're about as effective as throwing a blunt dart at a cork board, but they're not dangerous.

I'm sure all of this has been discussed earlier in this four-year-old resurrected thread, though. Just look for posts by RadioGirl; she's an expert in this crap, er, subject matter.

guflyer

How would you reconcile this with the information in these sources which seems to indicate that MMW may be harmful: http://preventdisease.com/news/12/08...chnology.shtml

http://www.technologyreview.com/view...ear-apart-dna/

These are both posted in another thread. I am not trying to challenge your post; I am not an expert and am trying to figure out for myself whether MMW is safe. Sources like the ones listed above cause me hesitation in trusting that MMW is safe, so I would appreciate any additional information regarding this.

WillCAD

Well, firstly, the PreventDisease article is so long, I'm not going to bother reading the whole thing. But many of the parts that I skimmed are full of demagoguery and vague "We don't know!" "It's never been tested!" nonsense, bordering on superstition, so I tend to view such pieces with skepticism. It's also not written by doctors or scientists, which brings it further from the land of reliability.

Secondly, the MIT article is about terraherz waves, not millimeter (gigahertz) waves. Totally different part of the EM spectrum.

I find this post by RadioGirl to be the most compelling argument on this issue:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/15419328-post48.html

Read it over. At the end of that post, by someone who works in the field and knows about EM radiation, if you're not reassured that the health risks of MMW scanning are so low they're not worth discussing, then you're never going to be convinced.

inet32

To be fair, flying itself is a radiation hazard. Background cosmic ray radiation at cruising altitude is non-trivial and pregnant flight attendants are advised to take precautions, but overall risks are considered relatively small: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/air...radiation.html
In 1994 I once freaked out a visibly pregnant flight attendant because she saw me with a Geiger counter on a flight to LAS (I'm a science geek and was planning some amateur geology in Nevada and Arizona) and asked what it was so I showed her, but unfortunately we were at 39,000 ft so it emitted a steady squeal instead of random "tick...tick...tick", and when I explained that it means we were all being shot through with radiation she was visibly shaken up.

How does the exposure from backscatter full-body scanners compare with a 6 or 8 hour flight at cruising altitude from background radiation?

Boggie Dog

What does it matter at this point in time since no Backscatter Whole Body Imagers are in service? The reason the Backscatter WBI were removed was not for radiation concerns but over the graphic images delivered, even though TSA stated the images were suitable for viewing by young children. We may never know exactly how much radiation we were actually exposed to since TSA is known to be less than a reliable source of information.

inet32

Good grief. Don't they teach physics in high school anymore? X-rays are ionizing radiation, which is radiation with enough kinetic energy to ionize a molecule (such as a nucleotide) Typically in excess of 33 eV. X-rays are 100 eV to 100K eV.

m44

@inet32:
Good grief is right. Your comment just proved the point. You obviously do not know that ionizing radiation is also radio waves. You know only about AM/FM radio waves if that.
You did not learn much of the physics - did you?

inet32

Actually, they're not. Definition of "radio waves" (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_wave) is Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum longer than infrared light.

If you'd like this in more formal terms you can look here or here
The terms "radio waves" and "radio frequency"(RF) refer to only one segment of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Apparently more than you did. And what does this have to do with the topic? As noted earlier, radio waves are too low-energy to be ionizing.

m44

This is the problem - you do not understand the physics continuity, but you can read the wiki without integrating any of the knowledge.
I am certain that none of those waves care for the wiki definitions.

This has o lot to do with the topic. Ionizing waves are not the only enemy. Radio (as per your wiki definition) waves can cook you brain without being ionizing. The waves used to scan at the airport do not do much to thick skinned adults - but do you know their effect on thin skinned children 40 years later?