WASHINGTON — Eleven major airports will begin using body scanners to screen passengers as the Transportation Security Administration launches a plan to buy 1,000 of the machines over the next two years. The scanners can look under passengers’ clothing in order to detect weapons and explosives.
Boston Logan International Airport received one new scanner this week and will get two more next week. All will go into the same terminal. Among the other airports getting the scanners are Los Angeles International, Chicago O’Hare and Charlotte Douglas International.
The Transportation Security Administration bought 150 scanners in September using $25 million from the federal stimulus package. It plans to buy 300 more this year and 500 next year. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano ordered the installation accelerated after the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt of an airliner over Detroit.
The scanners, made by California-based Rapiscan, are 9 feet long and 6½ feet wide, much larger than metal detectors. Airport screeners view images from the machines in a nearby closed room.
The new scanners will bring the total number of airports with the machines to 29. That includes 17 of the nation’s 30 largest airports.
Airports with scanners will continue to use metal detectors, both as an alternative for passengers who want to avoid the machines and in checkpoints without the scanners. Passengers who opt to skip a scanner will go through a metal detector and be hand-searched by a screener.
(Source: http://www.usatoday.com/)
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WARNING!–New Airport X-Ray Scanners Cause Cancer
The Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety says these things pose a health risk — and that pregnant women and children should not be forced through them. The report — which wasn’t meant to be made public — also said governments should have to justify their use of these radiation machines.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
Remember: There is NO safe level of ionizing radiation. If you have to fly in Big Brother’s world, I feel bad for you — because the plan is for EVERY air traveler, including pregnant women and babies, to pose for the government’s candid cameras.
William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.
#1 deepthinker
William Douglass is a quack who is against breastfeeding and mammograms, and claims that smoking cigars is healthy. You’d be best not to follow or quote him.
Google for some REAL studies on the scanners, most claim that it’s minimal radiation and does not come anywhere close to a real x-ray. See the Fox News report on their website.
That being said, I think you should try to minimize all radiation whenever possible – including airport scanners, high radiation cell phones, and EZ-Pass.
Dear Justajew (no. 2):
You mean well, but you’re behind the times. Dr. Douglas is right on this issue and on mammogram x-rays.
The U.S. Government has just advised many younger women to stop having annual mammograms, because radiation is cumulative–it never leaves the body, and just continues to add up, until it reaches a cancerous dose.
Dr. Douglas is a fourth-generation doctor, who is very flamboyant. But don’t be fooled. His reaseach is solid, and when he argues against the mainstream, he’s got the date to back him up.
Is there a tznius problem for our people to enter these scanners. I can just imagine what the moslems would say. . .
As long as the alternative of a standard metal detector and a pat-down is offered, commercial flights will likely continue as a viable transportation option.
Should they do away with the metal detectors and force people into these radiation machines to get on to a plane, I imagine a great number of people will simply stop flying and either drive or simply not go.
I think it can used productively. they should have radiology techs standing by to detect tumors. This will kill 2 birds with one stone. pun intended.