My wife and (young - 4) daughter will be transiting CDG twice this year, and I wish to determine what sort of MMW device use they may be confronted with. Unlike me, I do not believe these travelers have sufficient awareness of the issue, particularly with kids/mmw and questions thereof.

First transit is inbound from PTY, outbound then to RUN. Return trip is the reverse.

On the inbound side, assuming AF checks their baggage through to RUN (another matter I need to check), what security will they need to clear if they stay in the clean zone? How about on the return?

Is RUN considered non-schengen despite belonging to France, meaning they don't have to go through passport control either way in CDG?

Any info/guidance appreciated.

French overseas departments are not part of the schengen area.

Non-schengen to non-schengen connections on AF.

I only encountered metal detectors on such connections at Terminal 2E.

Passing through T2A/C and T1, no sign of MMW devices. I think they should be fine.

There are no issues with kids and MMW scanners. There is no ionising radiation exposure and the scan is NOT revealing in any way, it only shows where the computer believes there may be anomalies.

OP - Don't worry about CDG. No NOS.

That's irresponsible. There have been several scientific articles on the danger of MMW.

That's a bizarre statement to make. Send me any solid, peer-reviewed research you can find. Seriously, anything. Even one paper.

It is well known here that I'm no fan of the MMW or of the NoS in any form: it is expensive, ineffective (misses things a metal detector would find), invasive (particularly for people with medical devices or other innocent items under their clothes) and slow. It prevents passengers from maintaining sight of their belongings, increasing the risk of theft by security staff or other passengers.

However, this is not true:
There was one (1) paper about terahertz waves at a much higher frequency and enormously higher power level than used by MMW scanners. It provided a computer model (not measurements) that suggested (not proved) that there was a possible (not proven) mechanism which might (or might not) cause some type of damage to DNA strands. The technology described in the paper was significantly different from a MMW scanner, and even then, the author himself was very cautious about drawing any solid conclusions. The media, however, reported it as "airport scanners will shred your DNA."

There was a second paper casting doubt on even the tentative conclusions of the first paper.

Exactly, whether you agree with a technology or not, lying about it is not the right answer. These things are incredibly safe, if they weren't then the entire world around us would have long destroyed us.

Keep the debate to effectiveness, privacy rights (you have no right to privacy in an airport though), etc...

They used to say fluoroscopes were "incredibly safe" as well.

Don't claim something is "safe" when it has never been allowed to be properly tested.

Agreed - see below.
Where it is written that you have no right to privacy in an airport? TSA (and its international counterparts) has limited authority to search people and property beyond what would be allowed in other contexts. They can require that I submit my bag to an x-ray, and they can open the bag (or better, ask that I open it) to look at my papers to ensure that they are indeed papers or that the laptop is a laptop.

They do not have the authority to read the papers and copy down information from them (company data, research results, account details) or browse the laptop to see what my taste in music is like. The contents of my papers and laptops are still private to me.

Similarly they have the authority to search my person to the extent necessary to determine that I am not a threat to the aircraft. They do not have the authority to require that I strip naked in the concourse, or ask questions about my health, food preferences or personal habits.

And that's only at the checkpoint, not the entire airport. Airport staff can't demand to know my salary or ask whether I drink alcohol simply because "there's no right to privacy in an airport".
And they used to say lots of other things were "incredibly safe" and they turned out to be "incredibly safe."
The MMW scanner uses radio technology which is directly comparable to numerous other technologies which have been in very widespread use for decades and which are not considered harmful. The power levels can be directly compared to, for example, a cell phone or the radar sensors that open doors at the grocery store - the MMW is many orders of magnitude lower. (Yes, this accounts for the fact that you're close to it and it's "focusing" the energy at you and everything else - even with all that it's orders of magnitude less radio energy than your cell phone.)

As Allie said above, if the MMW is dangerous, then cell phones and other radio systems would be causing people to immediately drop dead all over the place.

I think grey carpets are incredibly safe. But I doubt that the grey carpet at SYD security checkpoints has ever been properly tested to see if it causes cancer. "Safety" doesn't work like that - it works on the basis that carpets in general, and grey carpets in other contexts, have never been implicated in cancer, so there is no need to test the grey carpet at the checkpoint.

Honestly this goes far beyond anything I wanted from the thread (thanks to those who helped answer my question) - I already stated I don't want my daughter in any imaging machines - that is the only position I can approach this from. If CDG doesn't have imaging machines, then my problem is solved (does RUN, for that matter?).

Furthermore, in general with devices like this, the burden is on the device proponents to present long-term exposure studies, etc., to support safety of the device. As you are no doubt aware, no such studies were done and to my knowledge aren't being done, nor were they for the backscatters (which many of the same agencies using MMW swore up and down were safe). If this device were being used 1% as much in a hospital setting, of course, such data would have been required of the manufacturers by both the FDA and the EU counterpart entity).

This is essentially where I am coming from, in terms of acting in the interest of the safety of my family and myself. I am more concerned about the backscatter example rather than fluoroscopes, however, though both are appropriate.

delete please

I understand completely you not wanting your daughter in any imaging machine and you should have that right.
The MMW scanner uses radio energy. Like WiFi, like Bluetooth, like cell phones, like any number of other systems that are around you every day.

Where is it written that "long-term exposure studies" must be done to support the safety of such devices? Do you think that such studies were done on WiFi, Bluetooth, vehicle keyless entry? (Answer: no.)
The studies that were done for MMW were about as follows: "The MMW scanner produce xx watts per square centimeter of radio energy on the surface of the person being scanned. Long-established safety standards for radio energy say that the limit is yy watts per square centimeter. xx is much lower than the limit of yy; therefore these devices can be used."

This is the same type of analysis that has been done for cell phones, WiFi, Bluetooth and all those other radio devices. I'm a radiocommunications engineer and I do these sort of calculations for a living. I've seen the numbers on MMW scanners (they were supplied to the FCC to assess interference to other radio systems and are on the FCC website) and done the calculations. The levels come out as being several orders of magnitude less than exposure to cell phones (which are in turn several orders of magnitude lower than the maximum exposure allowed.)

X-ray ("backscatter") is different. The long-held safety standard is that there is no "safe" limit and that any exposure should be kept to the minimum necessary for the medical purpose. Since backscatter body scanners serve no medical purpose, there is no excuse for using these on the public.

The fact that the same agency said both devices are safe doesn't make them both unsafe; it is possible for them to be right (quite possibly by accident) about one and wrong (deceitful, whatever) about the other.
Cite? Cell phones or tablets with WiFi or old-fashioned pagers used in hospitals required FDA approval? I don't think so.
There are any numbers of drugs that have been approved by the FDA, gone on the market (sometimes for decades) and then been withdrawn as unsafe. Here is a list of 35 since 1970. By your argument (and Himeno's) you should not use any medication approved by the FDA as "safe" because they've gotten it wrong before. It's much easier that way than assessing each case on its merits.

There are many good reasons to avoid the body scanner, as outlined above. But claiming that it's unsafe because it hasn't been tested to (non-existent) standards is just like airport security claiming that your 4 year old might be a dangerous criminal because she hasn't been proven otherwise. It is fear-mongering driven by "we don't know so it's better to be safe" rather than reason and logic.

1. These are not imaging machines. They use an algorithm to determine location of anomalies. The technology can be used for imaging, but it is not. It is no different from saying weather RADAR is a cooking appliance. Sure, the technology CAN be used to heat food, and the power level is definitely high enough, but that's not what it's being used for!

2. Agreed 100% - the standards for RF and ionising radiation are completely different, and the very fact the TSA was willing to violate ALARA was despicable. MMW is a totally different story.