This is so horrible. How could anyone feel comfortable flying with this mess? Either you have to go through a scanner which shoots massive cancer-causing XRay doses into you, or you have to be forced into a highly aggressive (aka abusive) patdown. This story only lists half the horror.. reality of what is happening is worse. I can't even write about the truth! Astaghfiruallah, may Allah protect us from this!
:salam2:
I found this today and thought I'd share it to hopefully ease your concerns about the "cancer causing effects" of the body scanners.
http://www.science20.com/adaptive_complexity/airport_body_scanner_wont_give_you_cancer
Here is another article but I'm pasting it here because the website it's on has a picture of what the scan shows and, well, you don't need to see it....it's a woman's upper body....
I want you to know though, that I am NOT posting it because of WHO wrote it....just for the science it contains.
http://www.examiner.com/science-society-in-national/what-full-body-scanner-radiation-means-to-you
Yes, the new equipment at airport security can see what you look like naked, sort of. It can’t see your tattoos but it can see your piercings; it can’t make out your nipples or various patches of fur, either. But can it give you cancer? Here’s the information you need to judge for yourself.
The equipment creates images of your body by scanning a narrow beam of x-rays across your body. The x-rays either penetrate your skin and propagate through your body, the same way as hospital or dental x-rays, or are bounce off your skin, back toward a detector. These back-scattered x-rays are the ones from which the image is built.
A second technique involving millimeter-long wavelength electromagnetic radiation are also used. The reflected radiation is again resolved into an image. The millimeter-wave technology is more challenging and less accurate than the x-ray technique. For reasons already described here, it cannot cause cancer.
X-rays, on the other hand are an entirely different beast.
The mechanism for how electromagnetic radiation causes cancer is well understood: ionizing radiation. What happens is that photons whose wavelength is below the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, wavelengths well under a micron (a factor of about a thousand smaller than a millimeter), knock electrons off of atoms/molecules. The ionized molecules become free radicals and if those molecules are components of the cell’s DNA, the genetic code is messed up. If the cell doesn’t fix the injured strand, then the errant gene programs the cell to create cancer cells.
The mechanism is called the photoelectric effect for which Einstein won the Nobel prize.
Cell phone radiation, radio and microwaves, have wavelengths thousands of times too large to hurt cells, but x-rays aren’t.
Of course the radiation exposure of Full Body Scanners is limited by the FDA to what are considered acceptable levels. Here’s what the FDA says on their web page:The national radiation safety standard sets a dose per screening limit...a full-body x-ray security system must deliver less than the dose a person receives during 4 minutes of airline flight.The reason that the dosages are quoted in equivalent times spent in flight is that at higher altitudes we are exposed to greater amounts of extra-planetary and extra-galactic radiation, both from the sun and from cosmic rays. The atmosphere absorbs a lot of the very small wavelength electromagnetic radiation, like x-rays. And, in one of the miracles that permits live to exist on Earth, the ionosphere catches most of the charged particles that would otherwise be headed for us. The radiation from charged particles, alpha and beta-radiation as well as muon radiation make up the particularly nasty cancer causing radiation released by atomic weapons.
Back to x-rays, there’s no reason to dispute the FDA and body scanner manufacturers’ claims that it’s equivalent to a 2-4 minute extension of your flight. When exposed, you are, after all, headed for an airplane and cheerfully exposing yourself to a considerably larger dose than if you stayed here. Plus, x-rays are not the most egregious form of radiation (alpha rays which are high energy helium nuclei, are the nastiest). However, it the relationship between ionizing radiation and is believed to be cumulative. The time you spend on an airplane + the time you spend getting dental or medical x-rays + the time you spend in the Colorado Rockies (lots of Uranium up there, and high altitude, too) accumulates, every hour of it increasing the probability of tumor formation.
Full body scanners do increase your exposure to radiation, not very much, but more than a pat down. You can turn down the scan in favor of a nearly intimate pat-down by someone of the same sex.
So what will it be for you, ma’am/sir? A nice grope or a shot of x-rays?
(The author, Ransom Stephens, Ph.D., worries less about radiation exposure than about the population being conditioned to tolerate government (or corporate) searches every time they travel a long distance. Plus, Dr. Stephens would prefer a nice grope, though he stipulates that he’d like to choose the groper and is offended by the implicit sexism in the requirement that he can’t be so groped, errr, patted down, by someone of the opposite, or at least an other, sex. In any case, while you’re on the plane you should read his novel, The God Patent, he guarantees you’ll like it with or without pat down. With is better.
You are welcome to republish the text of this article without needing further permission, provided that you (1) attribute the work to its author, Ransom Stephens, Ph.D., and, (2) provide Dr. Stephens 25% of the gross income garnered by his contribution, should your publication be a garner-er of money and (3) include some shameless promotion of his novel The God Patent.)
EDIT: I hadn't read this idiot's "disclaimer"....sorry.... I could have found the "science" somewhere else...
