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Electronic body scanner machines at all security checkpoints in all commercial airports in the United States. IN about two years, if all goes according to the plans of the Transportation Security Administration, those vintage airport magnetometer metal detectors will be replaced by electronic body scanner machines at all 2,200 security checkpoints in all 450 commercial airports in the United States.

Let’s just focus today on radiation, a concern with one kind of body scanner that is being installed at airports, the so-called backscatter machines. As of last week, the agency had bought 250 backscatter units, which scan body surfaces using an “ultra low dose” of x-ray radiation, according to the manufacturer, Rapiscan Systems.

The T.S.A. says it had also bought 242 other body scan machines that use millimeter wave technology, which doesn’t emit radiation but uses “harmless radio waves,” according to its manufacturer, L-3 Security and Detection Systems.

As of last week, the agency said, there were 99 backscatter units and 43 millimeter wave units at 41 airports. The machines cost about $150,000 each.

Radiation is a hot issue, so to speak. Reader reaction to the backscatters has ranged from a few claiming “there is no safe level of radiation exposure” to the many others expressing concern that the T.S.A. has rushed into buying these devices without adequately assessing the health question of repeated exposure to radiation.

If you’re interested you could, and should, look up safety issues related to the backscatter technology. The T.S.A. says that the technology has been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The results, the agency said, confirmed that radiation doses for individuals “were well below the dose limits specified by the American National Standards Institute.”

According to the agency, “a single scan using backscatter technology produces exposure equivalent to two minutes of flying on an airplane,” where slightly higher levels of radiation are routine.

But others who have studied the technology argue that repeated low-dose exposure to radiation at airport checkpoints is a cumulative risk, and that the safety of the backscatter technology has not yet been adequately demonstrated by impartial research.

In a letter on May 28, several organizations and individuals, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Ralph Nader, asked Congress to stop deployment of the devices pending “an independent review of the devices’ health effects.”

And in April, three Republican Senators, Susan Collins, Jon Kyl and Saxby Chambliss, wrote to the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, urging the department to evaluate a type of body imaging called auto-detection technology used at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.

That technology identifies potentially threatening objects on a person without actually showing naked body images and also “avoids exposing passengers to radiation,” the senators said.

But for now, the agency is committed to the backscatters and millimeter wave machines.

The agency does not entirely dispute that. “T.S.A. competitively bids technologies and makes selections through a comprehensive research, testing and deployment process,” said Kristin Lee, a spokeswoman. “Technologies must meet detection standards, and T.S.A. tests these technologies in both laboratory and field environments.”

Source: The New York Times