Well, I saw a clip of Jay Leno last night,and he ripped on the new procedure/policy a bit. Any "press" or air-time on such non-sense is a good IMO.

Ciao,
FH

BOS has them in Terminal A, at least in the elite/medallion/DL Shuttle line. It works great, and I cannot imagine it is expensive, though I often underestimate the government's ability to waste money.

I can think of two things that would be entertaining to do as part of this new effort:

• One would be finding a way to "tag" an undershirt with a material that would not set off a WTMD or HHMD but would show up on the millimeter wave bodyscan. Foget writing KHIAI on a mippie bag when you can wear it!
• The second would be to come up with some mock bios and swap them out. This one is more risky as chances of getting turned in are higher, and they probably can charge you with vandalism for doing so. But imagine how fun it would be to have alternate bios on display throughout the lines.

Let's get planning

I guess that would alleviate some of the yelling. I wonder how they are going to staff these checkpoints. Are they going to seek out the calmest screeners in the airport and move them to the new checkpoints? I missed the part that explained the mural wall. Is that to be placed before or after the WTMD's? I guess that will help with screener accountability, their names would be available.

I have to be honest, this is bordering on fear-mongering (nothing personal though) in my opinion. Radiation is not just radiation; as posted above, there are many different spectrums ranging from harmless radio waves on one end, to extremely harmful and energetic gamma rays on the other end. Visible light is radiation also; I assume most people do not actively avoid visible light for fear of it causing cancer? Sitting in the sun causes exposure to ultraviolet radiation (which can, in the long run, cause cancer), a totally different part of the spectrum.

Radiation that penetrates clothing certainly does not have to penetrate skin. That's an irresponsible assumption to make.

Further, being honest, refusing to use this scanner technology based on unfounded "health" fears is basically like shooting yourself in the foot. It discredits any arguments against the implementation of the device, because it creates the impression that the opponents have not done their research and are basing their opinions more on scare tactics and vague assumptions about the "unknown" than what is actually known.

As I have said, a far more relevant argument that holds its own water would be from a privacy and legal point-of-view, and whether or not the government has the right to essentially "undress" us without giving us a choice. Now, that we can argue about seriously. Not arguments about "radiation" that bring up more emotion than reasoned debate, and would fit better in sensational news reporting than sober examination/debate.

There is no evidence of medical risk due to "cumulative exposure" to infrared radiation.

Ultrasound would be even worse, both as en effective method to detect objects as well as from a privacy point of view. Ultrasound works on principle of soundwaves, not radiation, and thuis requires direct contact with an object. Medical ultrasounds require direct contact with skin; basically, every passenger would have to get undressed (hardly an improvement over a blurry image as far as privacy concerns go). Furthermore, ultrasound over clothing would not work... it would be sticky mess.

There is no reason to fear "radiation" just because the popular imagination equates radiation with Hiroshima and Chernobyl. Indeed, those incidents involved radiation, but not the sort of radiation we are talking about here, really very far from it.

People, correct my facts if anything is incorrect...

This is what I would be worried about...

I know it's easy to laugh at these efforts, but seriously, many other countries have checks that are just as thorough as the TSA's without pissing everyone off. First, they greet and treat you as if you are a customer, not an annoyance. Second, they never, ever bark at you or paw through your stuff with you not there. And they certainly never give you that "do you want to fly today" nonsense. At least 50% of the problem with the TSA is in their attitude.

Agreed, and attitude starts at the top. There is no leadership at the TSA. After 9/11, the TSA was thrown together in a rush and no one has taken the time to sit down and think about what works and what doesn't. No one in Congress wants to be the one to point out that the emperor has no clothes, since their opponents would then claim that they are soft on terror. Hiring and training standards are weak, and there is no accountability. The bad TSOs are bad because the TSA allows them to be.

Mike

And they do it without candles, mood music or purple lighting. I wonder how ?

I'm waiting for the day that an inept screener somewhere flags a cancer/mastectomy survivor that has a prosthesis as "potentially carrying explosive material" - or "gels greater than 3 ounces".....

If it can penetrate clothing, then it will penetrate my bare skin. No thanks.

You still haven't provided any independent technical verification of your claims. What is the source you have for the technical data around these scanners? Where is the long term research on health?
These devices are not passive 'infrared cameras' - they use penetrating energy.

There are transducer-free ultrasound applications, which have been available for a few years, and some of these technologies could be tuned to detect the presence of hard objects against the body. Here is a link to one company that makes a 'through-the-air' ultrasound scanner: http://www.qualitymag.com/CDA/Archiv...00f932a8c0____

Thanks, but I am not so dumb that I can't tell the difference between nuclear radiation in super-high doses and controlled radiation for medical/scanning purposes.

Data of low level x-rays and health goes back to around the 1950s. A cursory search of PubMed of the National Institutes of Health will reveal a multitude of peer-reviewed articles with some having free access to full text. Just did a quick search and I found an article showing research on rats that had been exposed continuously to low-level x-rays for 18 months at about twice the level recommended for maximum dosage for those working directly with nuclear material (i.e. CT-scanners, nuclear power plant). Electron microscopy of skin from the rats showed redistribution of biometals in the keratinized layer of the skin (i.e. the layer of dead, crystallized skin cells that protects the living cells underneath). Nothing mentioned about malignancies or cell hyper- and/or metaplasia. Reference: Jyotirmoy Chatterjee, Kuntala De, SK Basu, AK Das. "Low-level X-ray exposures on rat skin." Biological Trace Element Research. 1994 Dec;46(3):203-10.

For specific information about dosages from these airport body scanners, go to the following peer-reviewed article: O Hupe, U Ankerhold. "X-ray security scanners for personnel and vehicle control: dose quantities and dose values." Eur J Radiol. 2007 Aug;63(2):237-41.

So basically, a scan with this new airport scanning device would result in a dose of radiation equivalent to 0.29% of a typical long-haul flight (so about 350 times more radiation exposure/absorption as the scanner). Do people avoid long-haul flights due to health risks associated with radiation exposure? As far as I know, there has never been a case of cancer or serious chronic (physical) condition linked to flying too much, otherwise everyone with a shinny FF card should be trading down to the pleb levels asap.

For information about recommended maximum (absorbed) dosage, you can probably find information on the websites and/or publications of the US Nuclear Regulatory Administration or the US Environmental Protection Agency. The information is also included the article referenced above. 1 mRem is the recommended maximum absorbed dosage of background radiation for a member of the public from approved devices. That is about 10,000 times the dosage received from a single airport body scan. So you could be scanned 10,000 times, in a sense, before you received the maximum safe dosage of background radiation as a member of general public.

Background radiation from natural sources (i.e. cosmic background radiation, radon in the soil, naturally occuring uranium etc.) is even higher than 1 mRem, at about 2.5 mRem. Man-made background radiation from nuclear and coal-fired plants, medical devices, residual fallout from atmospheric weapons testing etc. amounts to about 1.2 mRem for a typical person in a developed/rich-income country, compared to about 0.6 mRem for a worldwide average. This information comes from a UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.

For information from the popular press, a google search will lead one to a New York Times article that addresses both the pro and con arguments from a health perspective, as well as the (in my opinion more important) privacy and civil liberties concerns.

New Airport X-Rays Scan Bodies, Not Just Bags

So basically, conclusion from the quickly slapped together information above that the radiation dosage from an airport body scanner is pretty much negligable and/or non-existant, with long-term effects easily deducable from having studied the long-term effects of normal radiation exposure (it being negligable to health) as well as rat studies showing signifigantly higher exposure produced no mention of malignancies.

I can't provide any more information. I'm not a physicist, so anybody with greater expertise/knowledge please indulge us. I'm just someone with what I consider to be an informed opinion. So do with the information what you want.

I still think beating my chest about how the risks of these scanners are unknown and possibility dangerous will get me more laughs than serious due consideration, and discredit me to the point where more important concerns about privacy and civil liberties will not receive a receptive or attentive audience.

For bocastephen, I have no information handy, in terms of peer-reviewed journals or university textbooks, that say anything about clothing/skin penetration and radiation. This is what I know to be fairly accurate: up to about 3000nm, radiation penetrates the upper layer of skin, which are exposed the same levels (if not more) levels of radiation from background sources and even more from the sun across the spectrum (which is why your skin gets hot under the sun). For all intents and purposes, this is not skin penetration, in the sense that the subdermal layers are reached and damaged, such less more sensitive to damage underlying tissues and organs. As such, the radiation, in my estimation, will not cause cellular damage to the degree that cancer will result, unless you have Xeroderma pigmentosum (an exceedingly rare genetic disorder predisposing people to skin cancers). So basically, you assertion "if it penetrates clothing, it will penetrate my bare skin" is inaccurate or at best inconclusive and does not provide sufficient information. Do you have sources to show this radiation will penetrate your skin?

And your linked article about ultrasonic transducers only seems applicable to materials such as metals and plastics; the article makes no reference to whether or not this technology is applicable and/or safe for use on humans, unless I am missing something.

Whew... so much for the last 20 minutes. Need to get going...

Kip Hawley is an embarassment to the legal profession and all of its members, past, present and future, as well as the University of Virginia Law School and all of its alumni, present and future. He should have his JD revoked by the University of Virginia and be disbarred and then be banned from taking employment that requires any more thinking than a burger flipper.

I can't believe this imbecile has a JD from one of the top law schools in the country.

From the article:
"Screeners will view images of passengers' bodies in a remote room and delete them."

As someone who guards her privacy, chastity and modesty very closely, I'd say that such a request would be out of the question. I'm waiting until marriage for anyone to see me naked (and then, ONLY the husband is allowed). So a random TSO? I don't think so.

And I'm flying out of BWI in May.

Yippee Skippy.

Just say NO if the "opportunity" is offered.

Which brings me to another point: does anyone know if the TSA has tried to force minor children through either the backscatter or this other new contraption they have come up with?

Is a parent allowed to refuse their minor child to be subjected to being seen naked? Why haven't the Kettles started to scream about this?