Are Body Scanners More Dangerous Than The TSA Divulges?
I’M FROM THE GOVERNMENT…
The intelligent words of President Ronald Reagan, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.'” occur in my thoughts as soon as I reflect upon the Transportation Security Administration’s regimen of scanning of the bodies of travelers.
EXCESSIVE DOSES OF RADIATION FROM TSA BODY SCANNERS A BASIS FOR INTEREST
Dr. John W. Sedat, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, UC, San Francisco and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, in a well-thought-out letter was joined by three other similarly credentialed faculty members in expressing their concerns in that letter dated April 6, 2010. In that communication they expressed “concerns about the potential serious health risks” regarding the “the dose to the skin may be dangerously high” that the Transportation Safety Administration is administering at airports across the United States. In that communication they pointed out that radiation heightens cancer perils by harming the DNA and diverse components inside the cells.
WHAT THE RADIATION INVADES, NOT THE DOSAGE, IS WHAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE
The scanners the Transportation Safety Administration uses concentrate the majority of the radiation on the surface of the skin and pierce a few millimeters into the skin. The alarm is that there are a quantity of very radiation-sensitive tissues close to the skin such as testes, eyes, and circulating blood.
Considering this, it looks unreliable to assert that the amount being administered is a 1000 times less than a chest X-ray, or, that it is considerably less than what travelers are exposed to while flying in the airplane. It is the quantity of the tissue exposed that is important when the effects of radiation are evaluated.
ARE YOU, OR SOMEONE YOU CARE FOR, IN ONE OF THESE CATEGORIES?
Infants, tikes, pregnant women, seniors, individuals having impaired immunity (those with HIV infection, cancer patients, people with immune deficiency diseases, and people with defective DNA repair mechanism are some categories of those that are at a much higher risk than the general public. At this time the TSA is not differentiating between these groups based on the hazards.
Seniors are also in a distinctive division when it comes to radiation exposure. Their DNA accumulates a considerable amount of unrepaired harm, to the point that even low doses of radiation can start the growth of skin cancers, including melanoma which is potentially deadly. Subjecting their eyes to low doses of radiation is also a concern, since exposure to radiation might boost their hazard of developing cataracts.
WE CANNOT COUNT ON THE PROFESSIONALS
Recollect when the American College of Radiology assured us that the CT scans were safe and that the radiation amounted to one chest X-ray. At the present we have learned that the dose that is in a CT scan is equal to 1,000 chest X-rays. Based that experience, it can pretty much be predicted that when the real effects of these full body scanners on healthiness become known, Secretary of Homeland Security and the rest of the “officials” who insist the scanners are not dangerous will no longer be around.