AND NOW: Handheld X-Ray Scanners

The Military Now Has X-Ray Guns

The Military Now Has X-Ray Guns (Defense One, June 22, 2014):

Superman had X-ray vision. Now, so does the United States military, in the form of an X-ray gun that can see through fabric, rubber and aluminum to find drugs, money, explosive liquids and even people. The recently released X-ray gun is the first device of its kind that a soldier or would-be superhero can hold in her hands. It’s about the size of a breadbox and works with the press of a button, allowing the user to actually see the outline of organic material buried behind cloth, leather or even aluminum by running the X-ray gun over the material and zapping it with low-level X-rays.

Read moreAND NOW: Handheld X-Ray Scanners

FBI: KKK Member, Accomplice Created Lethal X-Ray System To Harm And Kill ‘Enemies Of Israel’

KKK member, accomplice created lethal X-ray system, FBI says (CNN, June 20, 2013):

New York (CNN) — Two New York state men have been charged in a bizarre plan to develop a mobile X-ray system that would be used from afar to silently kill people that they deemed “undesirable,” federal officials said.

Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, and Eric J. Feight, 54, were arrested Tuesday after an undercover operation by the Albany FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. They were charged with conspiracy to provide material support for use of a weapon of mass destruction, according to the criminal complaint.

Crawford and Feight were developing a device “intended to be mobile … designed to turn on remotely from some distance away” that would emit “some dangerous levels of X-ray radiation,” according to John Duncan, executive assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York.

Individuals who might have been “subject to this X-ray radiation, would not immediately know that they had been harmed until some days later when they would either be injured, or it could result in their death,” he said.

The suspects intended to use the device a Department of Justice news release said.

Read moreFBI: KKK Member, Accomplice Created Lethal X-Ray System To Harm And Kill ‘Enemies Of Israel’

US: Major Airports To Remove Invasive X-ray, Body Scanners

Major Airports to Remove Invasive X-ray, Body Scanners (CNBC, Oct 23, 2012):

TSA introduced the so-called Backscatter scanners, sometimes referred to as the “naked” X-ray machines, at U.S. airports in 2009. Many travelers were not happy that naked images of themselves were displayed to TSA officers in a nearby room. In addition to privacy concerns, travelers were concerned about radiation exposure.

Read moreUS: Major Airports To Remove Invasive X-ray, Body Scanners

Dr. Helen Caldicott (Co-Founder Of Physicians For Social Responsibility): Pacific Northwest Got Whacked Hard By Fallout From The Fukushima Disaster With Radiation Rates Hundreds Of Thousands Of Times Higher Than Normal Background Radiation (Video – April 2, 2012)

MUST-SEE!

Watch the video here:

Dr. Helen Caldicott (Co-Founder Of Physicians For Social Responsibility): What We Learned From Fukushima (Video – April 2, 2012)

Dr. Helen Caldicott (Co-Founder Of Physicians For Social Responsibility): If Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 Collapses I Am Evacuating My Family From Boston (Video – April 2, 2012)

MUST-SEE!

Watch the video here:

Dr. Helen Caldicott (Co-Founder Of Physicians For Social Responsibility): What We Learned From Fukushima (Video – April 2, 2012)

Prof. John Sedat On DHS’ X-ray Scanners: ‘Society Will Pay A Huge Price In CANCER Because Of This’

Flashback:

US Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners

TSA Full Body Scanner Radiation Safety Tests Were Rigged

TSA Body Scanners Show Radiation Levels 10 Times Higher Than Expected

Inside TSA Body Scanners: How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart Human DNA

Review of the TSA X-ray backscatter body scanner safety report: hide your kids, hide your wife

Dr. Russell Blaylock: Body Scanners More Dangerous Than Feds Admit

Airport Body Scanners: Why You should REJECT ‘Routine’ NON-Diagnostic X-ray

How Body Scanner Terahertz Waves Can Tear Apart DNA

Full-Body Scanners Emitting ‘High-Energy’ Radiation Increase Cancer Risk

US prisoners forced to submit to radiation experiments for private foreign companies


DHS’ X-ray scanners could be cancer risk to border crossers (CNET News, Jan. 12, 2012):

Even though a public outcry has prompted Homeland Security to move away from adding X-ray machines to airports–it purchased 300 body scanners last year that used alternative technology instead–it appears to be embracing them at U.S.-Mexico land border crossings as an efficient way to detect drugs, currency, and explosives.

A 63-page set of specifications (PDF), heavily redacted, obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center through the Freedom of Information Act, says the scanners must “be based on X-Ray or gamma technology,” which use potentially dangerous ionizing radiation at high energies, and “shall be capable of scanning cars, SUVs, motorcycles and busses.”

“Society will pay a huge price in cancer because of this,” John Sedat, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California at San Francisco, told CNET. Sedat has raised concerns about the health risks of X-ray scanners, and the European Commission in November prohibited their use in European airports.

Read moreProf. John Sedat On DHS’ X-ray Scanners: ‘Society Will Pay A Huge Price In CANCER Because Of This’

US Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners

See also:

TSA Full Body Scanner Radiation Safety Tests Were Rigged

TSA Body Scanners Show Radiation Levels 10 Times Higher Than Expected

Inside TSA Body Scanners: How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart Human DNA

Review of the TSA X-ray backscatter body scanner safety report: hide your kids, hide your wife

Dr. Russell Blaylock: Body Scanners More Dangerous Than Feds Admit

Airport Body Scanners: Why You should REJECT ‘Routine’ NON-Diagnostic X-ray

How Body Scanner Terahertz Waves Can Tear Apart DNA

Full-Body Scanners Emitting ‘High-Energy’ Radiation Increase Cancer Risk

US prisoners forced to submit to radiation experiments for private foreign companies



A sign at a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint instructs passengers about the use of the full-body scanner at O’Hare International Airport. (Getty Images)

U.S. Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners (ProPublica, Nov. 1, 2011):

Update (11/01): This story has been updated with a comment from The Chertoff Group, from which ProPublica had sought comment before publication.

Look for a PBS NewsHour story on X-ray body scanners, reported in conjunction with ProPublica, to air later this month.

On Sept. 23, 1998, a panel of radiation safety experts gathered at a Hilton hotel in Maryland to evaluate a new device that could detect hidden weapons and contraband. The machine, known as the Secure 1000, beamed X-rays at people to see underneath their clothing.

One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine because it violated a longstanding principle in radiation safety — that humans shouldn’t be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit.

“I think this is really a slippery slope,” said Jill Lipoti, who was the director of New Jersey’s radiation protection program. The device was already deployed in prisons; what was next, she and others asked — courthouses, schools, airports? “I am concerned … with expanding this type of product for the traveling public,” said another panelist, Stanley Savic, the vice president for safety at a large electronics company. “I think that would take this thing to an entirely different level of public health risk.”

The machine’s inventor, Steven W. Smith, assured the panelists that it was highly unlikely that the device would see widespread use in the near future. At the time, only 20 machines were in operation in the entire country.

“The places I think you are not going to see these in the next five years is lower-security facilities, particularly power plants, embassies, courthouses, airports and governments,” Smith said. “I would be extremely surprised in the next five to 10 years if the Secure 1000 is sold to any of these.”

Today, the United States has begun marching millions of airline passengers through the X-ray body scanners, parting ways with countries in Europe and elsewhere that have concluded that such widespread use of even low-level radiation poses an unacceptable health risk. The government is rolling out the X-ray scanners despite having a safer alternative that the Transportation Security Administration says is also highly effective.

Read moreUS Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners

Fascism We Can Believe In: Blackout On DHS Backscatter Vans And Body-Scanners

Redacting all but your privacy – DHS Voyeurism, Backscatter Vans and Body-scanners (Activist Post, August 18, 2011):

Apparently public information can be redacted into an unaccountable oblivion, and the only boundary to black-marks are your private parts where they end for the sake of voyeurism. EPIC’s Freedom of Information Act request was answered with what looks more like a Hubble malfunction than a document regarding body-scanners and mobile X-ray (Backscatter) vans. See PDF.

“ZBV” – Z Backscatter Van

YouTube

The implication of such things are many, and it is not surprising that the very agency vigilantly attempting to criminalize normal civilians would want to keep these technologies as private as possible while applying them on the public. The good news – however hopeless – is that EPIC has filed suit to force disclosure of these documents. If it is the public who are to be the subjects of this technology, then it is the public who should be thoroughly informed of it. The DHS clearly opposes this, and seeks to covertly employ their spyware wherever they can. We really must ask where this will stop if left unchecked. The likeliest answer is that it will not.

The Eccentric Intelligence Agency: Helping the Ouroboros finish itself.

Read moreFascism We Can Believe In: Blackout On DHS Backscatter Vans And Body-Scanners

Prof. Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University On The UGLY TRUTH About The Nuclear Disasters Of Chernobyl And Fukushima (Video)

A MUST-SEE!

Prof. Hiroaki Koide also measured radiation levels in Tokyo.

The Japanese government never admitted to this amount of contamination in Tokyo.

Prof. Hiroaki Koide concludes that if Tokyo has been contaminated this much, then ‘areas within Fukushima prefecture must be seriously contaminated’.



Added: 08.06.2011

More from Prof. Hiroaki Koide

Japan Is Waking Up!!! – Prof. Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University: ‘Pressure Not To Release Radiation Data’

Prof. Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University: ‘No One Knows How Fukushima Could Be Wound Down’ – Corium May Be Melting Through the Foundation

TSA Full Body Scanner Radiation Safety Tests Were Rigged

(NaturalNews) It can now be revealed by NaturalNews that the TSA faked its safety data on its X-ray airport scanners in order to deceive the public about the safety of such devices.

As evidenced by recent events in Washington, we now live in an age where the federal government simply fakes whatever documents, news or evidence it wants people to believe, then releases that information as if it were fact. This is the modus operandi of the Department of Homeland Security, which must fabricate false terror alerts to keep itself in business — and now the TSA division has taken the fabrication of false evidence to a whole new level with its naked body scanners (see below).

Even physics professors question the TSA’s obvious cover-up

The evidence of the TSA’s fakery is now obvious thanks to the revelations of a letter signed by five professors from the University of California, San Francisco and Arizona State University. You can view the full text of the letter at: http://www.propublica.org/documents…

The letter reveals:

• To this day, there has been no credible scientific testing of the TSA’s naked body scanners. The claimed “safety” of the technology by the TSA is based on rigged tests.

• The testing that did take place was done on a custom combination of spare parts rigged by the manufacturer of the machines (Rapidscan) and didn’t even use the actual machines installed in airports. In other words, the testing was rigged.

• The names of the researchers who conducted the radiation tests at Rapidscan have been kept secret! This means the researchers are not available for scientific questioning of any kind, and there has been no opportunity to even ask whether they are qualified to conduct such tests. (Are they even scientists?)

Read moreTSA Full Body Scanner Radiation Safety Tests Were Rigged

TSA Body Scanners Show Radiation Levels 10 Times Higher Than Expected

Don’t miss:

Inside TSA Body Scanners: How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart Human DNA

Review of the TSA X-ray backscatter body scanner safety report: hide your kids, hide your wife

Dr. Russell Blaylock: Body Scanners More Dangerous Than Feds Admit

Airport Body Scanners: Why You should REJECT ‘Routine’ NON-Diagnostic X-ray

How Body Scanner Terahertz Waves Can Tear Apart DNA

Full-Body Scanners Emitting ‘High-Energy’ Radiation Increase Cancer Risk

US prisoners forced to submit to radiation experiments for private foreign companies


TSA to retest airport body scanners for radiation

The Transportation Security Administration announced Friday that it would retest every full-body X-ray scanner that emits ionizing radiation – 247 machines at 38 airports – after maintenance records on some of the devices showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.

The TSA says that the records reflect math mistakes and that all the machines are safe. Indeed, even the highest readings listed on some of the records – the numbers that the TSA says were mistakes – appear to be many times less than what the agency says a person absorbs through one day of natural background radiation.

Even so, the TSA has ordered the new tests out of “an abundance of caution to reassure the public,” spokesman Nicholas Kimball says. The tests will be finished by the end of the month, and the results will be released “as they are completed,” the agency said on its website.

Read moreTSA Body Scanners Show Radiation Levels 10 Times Higher Than Expected

European Parliament Spent £600,000 On Six Body Scanners That Were Never Used Because MEPs Argued It Would Be An Infringement Of Privacy


MEPs led the campaign to stop the use of the scanners in the Parliament yet they are in use in 70 airports across Europe, including London Heathrow Photo: PA

The body scanners, bought in 2005 at a cost of £100,000 each, are “rotting” in the basement of the building in Brussels and have never been used.

When the scanners, which create an image of a person’s nude body, were eventually delivered to the Parliament in the autumn of 2005 MEPs objected to them being used in the building on privacy grounds.

Nikki Sinclair, a British independent MEP, said the Parliament tried to sell the machines but failed to do so.

Read moreEuropean Parliament Spent £600,000 On Six Body Scanners That Were Never Used Because MEPs Argued It Would Be An Infringement Of Privacy

Documents Reveal TSA Research Proposal To Use Body-Scanners On Pedestrians, Train Passengers

Now the TSA denies what the DHS proposed before:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano Proposes Full-Body Scanners For Trains, Boats, Metro (The Hill)

US: Full-Body Scanners Popping Up At Courthouses (AP)

Body-scanners are so ‘safe’:

Inside TSA Body Scanners: How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart Human DNA

Review of the TSA X-ray backscatter body scanner safety report: hide your kids, hide your wife

Dr. Russell Blaylock: Body Scanners More Dangerous Than Feds Admit

TSA: Top US Government Officials Exempt From Screenings

Airport Body Scanners: Why You should REJECT ‘Routine’ NON-Diagnostic X-ray


Full documents obtained by EPIC through a Freedom of Information Act request

Epic Body Scan Foia Docs Feb 2011[1]

Updated with the TSA’s response below, which denies implementing airport-style scans in mass transit.

(Forbes) — Giving Transportation Security Administration agents a peek under your clothes may soon be a practice that goes well beyond airport checkpoints. Newly uncovered documents show that as early as 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has been planning pilot programs to deploy mobile scanning units that can be set up at public events and in train stations, along with mobile x-ray vans capable of scanning pedestrians on city streets.

The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Wednesday published documents it obtained from the Department of Homeland Security showing that from 2006 to 2008 the agency planned a study of of new anti-terrorism technologies that EPIC believes raise serious privacy concerns. The projects range from what the DHS describes as “a walk through x-ray screening system that could be deployed at entrances to special events or other points of interest” to “covert inspection of moving subjects” employing the same backscatter imaging technology currently used in American airports.

The 173-page collection of contracts and reports, acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request, includes contracts with Siemens Corporations, Northeastern University, and Rapiscan Systems. The study was expected to cost more than $3.5 million.

One project allocated to Northeastern University and Siemens would mount backscatter x-ray scanners and video cameras on roving vans, along with other cameras on buildings and utility poles, to monitor groups of pedestrians, assess what they carried, and even track their eye movements. In another program, the researchers were asked to develop a system of long range x-ray scanning to determine what metal objects an individual might have on his or her body at distances up to thirty feet.

“This would allow them to take these technologies out of the airport and into other contexts like public streets, special events and ground transit,” says Ginger McCall, an attorney with EPIC. “It’s a clear violation of the fourth amendment that’s very invasive, not necessarily effective, and poses all the same radiation risks as the airport scans.”

Read moreDocuments Reveal TSA Research Proposal To Use Body-Scanners On Pedestrians, Train Passengers

Review of the TSA X-ray backscatter body scanner safety report: hide your kids, hide your wife


I am a biochemist working in the field of biophysics. Specifically, the lab I work in (as well as many others) has spent the better part of the last decade working on the molecular mechanism of how mutations in the breast cancer susceptibility gene, BRCA2, result in cancer. The result of that work is that we now better understand that people who have a deficient BRCA2 gene are hypersensitive to DNA damage, which can be caused by a number of factors including: UV exposure, oxidative stress, improper chromosomal replication and segregation, and radiation exposure. The image below shows what happens to a chromosome of a normal cell when it is exposed to radiation. It most cases, this damage is repaired; however, at high doses or when there is a genetic defect, the cells either die or become cancerous.

Quite some time ago, I posted a short educational video that describes how BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations cause cancer. In short, when a person who has a mutation in one of these genes is exposed to environmental factors that cause DNA damage, they simply don’t repair the damage with the same efficiency as the general population. Over the course of their lifetime, the incremental exposures to relative small and seemingly safe doses of ionizing radiation (which is everything from UV light to X-rays to gamma radiation) statistically accumulate damage (or the effects of damage and improper repair) until the probability of developing cancer becomes almost certain. This is because BRCA1 and BRCA2 are both part of a molecular process that is very similar to the spell-check on your word processor (in oncology parlance, these genes are known as caretakers of the genome for this specific reason). When these genes don’t work, mutations accumulate faster and eventually results in cancer.

Its because of my interest in this aspect of cancer biology that I felt compelled to review the safety reports released on the TSA website here. However, my interest is not only professional, but also personal. My grandmother died of breast cancer in 2005 after being in remission for 20+ years. While she was never tested for either BRCA1 or BRCA2, her family history indicates that there is a strong probability of one of these mutations running in my family. Including my grandmother, at least four of her siblings developed cancer: two died of breast cancer, one developed a rare form of leukemia and another died of skin cancer. All of her female siblings had cancer, and its noteworthy that her mother died of a very young age (maybe 30’s or early 40’s) of an unknown (to me) cause. For these reasons, I fear that inadequate safety evaluation of these machines could unduly expose my family (and myself) to levels of radiation that might be harmful should this high familial cancer rate in fact be hereditary.

Last spring, a group of scientists at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) including John Sedat Ph.D., David Agard Ph.D., Robert Stroud, Ph.D. and Marc Shuman, M.D. sent a letter of concern to the TSA regarding the implementation of their ‘Advanced Imaging Technology’, or body scanners as a routine method of security screening in US airports. Of specific concern is the scanner that uses X-ray back-scattering. In the letter they raise some interesting points, which I’ve quoted below:

  • “Our overriding concern is the extent to which the safety of this scanning device has been adequately demonstrated. This can only be determined by a meeting of an impartial panel of experts that would include medical physicists and radiation biologists at which all of the available relevant data is reviewed.”
  • “The X-ray dose from these devices has often been compared in the media to the cosmic ray exposure inherent to airplane travel or that of a chest X-ray. However, this comparison is very misleading: both the air travel cosmic ray exposure and chest X-rays have much higher X-ray energies and the health consequences are appropriately understood in terms of the whole body volume dose. In contrast, these new airport scanners are largely depositing their energy into the skin and immediately adjacent tissue, and since this is such a small fraction of body weight/vol, possibly by one to two orders of magnitude, the real dose to the skin is now high.”
  • “In addition, it appears that real independent safety data do not exist.”
  • “There is good reason to believe that these scanners will increase the risk of cancer to children and other vulnerable populations. We are unanimous in believing that the potential health consequences need to be rigorously studied before these scanners are adopted.”

Read moreReview of the TSA X-ray backscatter body scanner safety report: hide your kids, hide your wife

Dr. Russell Blaylock: Body Scanners More Dangerous Than Feds Admit

Dr. Russell Blaylock is a nationally recognized board-certified neurosurgeon, health practitioner, author, lecturer, and editor of The Blaylock Wellness Report.

The growing outrage over the Transportation Security Administration’s new policy of backscatter scanning of airline passengers and “enhanced pat-downs” brings to mind these wise words from 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.’”

So, what is all the concern really about — will these radiation scanners increase your risk of cancer or other diseases? A group of scientists and professors from the University of California at San Francisco voiced their concern to Obama’s science and technology adviser John Holdren in a well-stated letter back in April.

The group included experts in radiation biology, biophysics, and imaging, who expressed “serious concerns” about the “dangerously high” dose of radiation to the skin.

Radiation increases cancer risk by damaging the DNA and various components within the cells. Much of the damage is caused by high concentrations of free radicals generated by the radiation. Most scientists think that the most damaging radiation types are those that have high penetration, such as gamma-rays, but in fact, some of the most damaging radiation barely penetrates the skin.

One of the main concerns is that most of the energy from the airport scanners is concentrated on the surface of the skin and a few millimeters into the skin. Some very radiation-sensitive tissues are close to the skin — such as the testes, eyes, and circulating blood cells in the skin.

This is why defenders using such analogies as the dose being “1,000-times less than a chest X-ray” and “far less than what passengers are exposed to in-flight” are deceptive. Radiation damage depends on the volume of tissue exposed. Chest X-rays and gamma-radiation from outer space is diffused over the entire body so that the dose to the skin is extremely small. Of note, outer space radiation does increase cancer rates in passengers, pilots, and flight attendants.

Read moreDr. Russell Blaylock: Body Scanners More Dangerous Than Feds Admit

Airport Body Scanners: Why You should REJECT ‘Routine’ NON-Diagnostic X-ray

See also:

Full-Body Scanners Emitting ‘High-Energy’ Radiation Increase Cancer Risk



Recent “News” and media misinformation touting airport x-ray scanners “safety” is misleading!

Policies that allow the traveling population to be subject to greater exposure of ionizing, non-diagnostic x-ray will lead to greater incidence of thyroid disease, and greater burden on the health care system of this country. Ultimately it also means more money out of your hands, and into the hands of the pharmaceutical giants, the insurance companies who will raise their rates again with the excuse of greater disease rates, and the manufacturers of these airport x-ray scanners. None of these entities care that your long-term health is at risk, proportionately with greater x-ray exposure.

Do you remember the last time you got x-rays at the dentist? They used a “thyroid shield” as an addition to the lead apron, in an attempt to block any scatter radiation from reaching your thyroid gland in your neck. Scatter radiation is often labeled as “harmless,” yet they use a shield for this at the dentist’s office. Why? The thyroid is one of the most vulnerable tissues in your body.

Have you also noticed that any time a person takes your x-ray, they leave the room? Guess why. It is to reduce their exposure to scatter radiation. Cumulative scatter radiation is unhealthful. This is a fact. It is not at all comparable to ultraviolet radiation, that you experience every time you go out into the sun, or fly in a plane. X-radiation is classified as ionizing radiation, while ultraviolet radiation is NOT. When they tell you your exposure from scatter radiation from each scan (classified as ionizing radiation) is less than your exposure to “background” radiation (including aspects from ultraviolet radiation that are NOT a type of ionizing radiation), they are comparing x-ray to daylight. It is not an intellectually honest comparison. Sunlight is not ionizing radiation.  “Cumulative scatter radiation is unhealthful. This is a fact.”

The effects of x-ray exposure are not immediately measurable. The wrong question to ask is if one scan has been shown to be “harmful.” There is no short-term way to measure the long-term effects. This common question only considers the short term consequences, which cannot be measured, and is therefore a foolish, misleading question. Every time this obnoxious question is asked, the wrong issue is addressed and the confused public continues to line up at the airport for a dose of ionizing scatter radiation.

The real issue is the long term effects of large populations being exposed to non-diagnostic ionizing radiation, and the disaster it poses for our own health and our healthcare system. We are commencing this disaster right now, by this short-sighted and dangerous policy.

Read moreAirport Body Scanners: Why You should REJECT ‘Routine’ NON-Diagnostic X-ray

World’s largest pilot union shuns full-body scanners, warning cites radiation risk

Those scanners tear apart DNA and cause cancer!


The world’s largest independent airline pilot association is warning its members to avoid security screening by full-body scanners out of concern the machines emit dangerous levels of radiation.

The American Pilots Association, which represents about 12,000 pilots, is recommending members instead submit to new pat-down searches, even though critics have described them as “horribly invasive” and likened them to foreplay. The recommendation is based on concerns that, contrary to claims by the US Transportation Security Administration, the types of X-rays emitted by the machines could pose serious risks that still aren’t well understood.

“We are already subjected to larger amounts of radiation by flying long distances at high altitudes,” Captain Sam Mayer, who is the APA’s communications committee chairman, told The Register. “While the TSA is telling us it’s completely safe, that may be true for the occasional user, but we haven’t seen any data yet talking about the long term cumulative effects of this over time.”

The pilots are by no means alone in voicing concern over the safety of the backscatter X-ray scanners, which are also known as advanced imaging technology. In April, radiation experts from the University of California, San Francisco, warned President Obama’s science assistant that the machines pose potentially serious health risks.

Although the machines operate at relatively low beam energies of about 28keV, the radiation is delivered only to passengers’ skin and underlying tissue, the scientists argued in an April 6 memorandum (PDF) to John P. Holdren, assistant to the President for science and technology. While the dose might be safe if absorbed by the entire body, directing all of it to the skin only may be dangerous.

They continued:

The X-ray dose from these devices has often been compared in the media to the cosmic ray exposure inherent to airplane travel or that of a chest X-ray. However, this comparison is very misleading: both the air travel cosmic ray exposure and chest X- rays have much higher X-ray energies and the health consequences are appropriately understood in terms of the whole body volume dose. In contrast, these new airport scanners are largely depositing their energy into the skin and immediately adjacent tissue, and since this is such a small fraction of body weight/vol, possibly by one to two orders of magnitude, the real dose to the skin is now high.

The scientists also warned that travelers might face health risks from malfunctioning machines or from overzealous screeners who raise the dose in an attempt to improve a scanner’s resolution.

Read moreWorld’s largest pilot union shuns full-body scanners, warning cites radiation risk

US government deploys mobile X-ray technology to randomly scan cars and trucks

See also:

–  Former FDA Scientist: FDA Suppressed Medical Imaging Safety Concerns

US prisoners forced to submit to radiation experiments for private foreign companies

Full-Body Scanners Emitting ‘High-Energy’ Radiation Increase Cancer Risk

Just one CT scan exposes you to as much radiation as 100 chest X-rays

Mammograms cause breast cancer, groundbreaking new research declares


As an antiterror measure, the US government has deployed mobile X-ray technology to randomly scan cars and trucks. But the measure is riling privacy proponents.


Using the Z Backscatter Van, officials detected drugs hidden in the body of this pickup truck. Business Wire/File


For many living in a terror-spooked country, it might seem like a great government innovation: Use vans equipped with mobile X-ray units to scan vehicles at major sporting events, or even randomly, for bombs or contraband.

But news that the US is buying custom-made vans packed with something called backscatter X-ray capacity has riled privacy advocates and sparked internet worries about “feds radiating Americans.”

“This really trips up the creep factor because it’s one of those things that you sort of intrinsically think the government shouldn’t be doing,” says Vermont-based privacy expert Frederick Lane, author of “American Privacy.” “But, legally, the issue is the boundary between the government’s legitimate security interest and privacy expectations we enjoy in our cars.”

American Science & Engineering, a Billerica, Mass.-company, tells Forbes it’s sold more than 500 ZBVs, or Z Backscatter Vans, to US and foreign governments. The Department of Defense has bought the most for war zone use, but US law enforcement has also deployed the vans to search for bombs inside the US, according to Joe Reiss, a company spokesman, as quoted by Forbes.

On Tuesday, a counterterror operation snarled truck traffic on I-20 near Atlanta, where Department of Homeland Security teams used mobile X-ray technology to check the contents of truck trailers. Authorities said the inspections weren’t prompted by any specific threat.

The mobile X-ray technology works by bouncing narrow X-ray streams off an object like a car and then analyzing the scatter rate of the returning rays. Operators can then locate less-dense objects that could be bodies or bombs.

Backscatter X-ray is already part of an ongoing national debate about its use in so-called full body scanners being deployed in many US airports.

In that case, US officials have said they will not store or share the images and will use masking technology to avoid revealing details of the human body.

TSA lies exposed: Full-body scanners do save and transmit images, secret documents reveal

Nevertheless, information security advocates have filed suit to stop their deployment, citing concerns about privacy.

Read moreUS government deploys mobile X-ray technology to randomly scan cars and trucks

Americans Get Most Radiation From Medical Scans

Airport scanners, cell phones and microwaves do destroy your health.

For a summary on cell phones see this.


US MED Overtreated Radiation
In this photo taken June 3, 2010, Dr. Steven Birnbaum works a CT scanner with a patient at Southern New Hampshire Medical Center in Nashua, N.H. (AP)

We fret about airport scanners, power lines, cell phones and even microwaves. It’s true that we get too much radiation. But it’s not from those sources – it’s from too many medical tests.

Americans get the most medical radiation in the world, even more than folks in other rich countries. The U.S. accounts for half of the most advanced procedures that use radiation, and the average American’s dose has grown sixfold over the last couple of decades.

Too much radiation raises the risk of cancer. That risk is growing because people in everyday situations are getting imaging tests far too often. Like the New Hampshire teen who was about to get a CT scan to check for kidney stones until a radiologist, Dr. Steven Birnbaum, discovered he’d already had 14 of these powerful X-rays for previous episodes. Adding up the total dose, “I was horrified” at the cancer risk it posed, Birnbaum said.

After his own daughter, Molly, was given too many scans following a car accident, Birnbaum took action: He asked the two hospitals where he works to watch for any patients who had had 10 or more CT scans, or patients under 40 who had had five – clearly dangerous amounts. They found 50 people over a three-year period, including a young woman with 31 abdominal scans.

When other radiologists tell him they’ve never found such a case, Birnbaum replies: “That tells me you haven’t looked.”

Of the many ways Americans are overtested and overtreated, imaging is one of the most common and insidious. CT scans – “super X-rays” that give fast, extremely detailed images – have soared in use over the last decade, often replacing tests that don’t require radiation, such as ultrasound and MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging.

Radiation is a hidden danger – you don’t feel it when you get it, and any damage usually doesn’t show up for years. Taken individually, tests that use radiation pose little risk. Over time, though, the dose accumulates.

Read moreAmericans Get Most Radiation From Medical Scans

Full-Body Scanners Emitting ‘High-Energy’ Radiation Increase Cancer Risk

Now they will force this very harmful technology unto the public, thanks to the dangerous underwear bomber:

US government lies about Flight 253 ‘crotch bomber’ patsy: Summary of the evidence; Yemen attack implication (Examiner)

Evidence Mounts for US Complicity in Terrorism (Veterans Today)


full-body-scanner

There are two types of scanners we will have to endure at the airport; the millimeter-wave scanner and the ‘backscatter’ X-ray scanner. Both emit ‘high-energy’ radiation and are dangerous.

Body scanners have revolutionized the practice of medicine and has saved many lives, but we must question the government’s mandate to have people endure high-energy radiation in a non-life-threatening situation. We must protest the use of full-body scanners on children and young adults as they are at greater-risk of developing brain tumors and cancer from these machines. Cancer and tumors especially in the young will likely increase as more body scanners are being installed on a nationwide scale. There is just no “safe” dose of radiation, 50% of America’s cancers are radiation-induced.

People with medical implants such as pace-makers should also avoid electromagnetic pulse generating body scanners as they can significantly alter the waveform of the pacemaker pulse.

The millimeter wave scanners emit a wavelength of ten to one millimeter called a millimeter wave, these waves are considered Extremely High Frequency (EHF), the highest radio frequency wave produced. EHF runs a range of frequencies from 30 to 300 gigahertz, they are also abbreviated mmW. These waves are also known as terahertz (THz) radiation. The force generated from terahertz waves is small but the waves can ‘unzip’ or tear apart double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the DNA that could interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication.

Clothing and organic materials are translucent in most millimeter-wave bands. Perfect for detecting metal objects on subjects at airports, but not so great at picking up low-density materials such as plastic, chemicals or liquid which were some of the items used by the underwear bomber.

Full Body X-ray Scanners provide exceptionally clear views of subjects by combining data from multiple images, but increased exposure to X-rays can also cause mutation in DNA, leading to cancer. X-rays are considered ionizing (penetrating) radiation, ionizing radiation in any dose causes genetic mutations, which set all living cells exposed on the path to cancer. Cancers associated with high dose exposure include leukemia, breast, bladder, colon, liver, lung, esophagus, ovarian, multiple myeloma, prostate, nasal cavity/sinuses, pharyngeal, laryngeal, pancreatic and stomach cancers.

Read moreFull-Body Scanners Emitting ‘High-Energy’ Radiation Increase Cancer Risk

Just one CT scan exposes you to as much radiation as 100 chest X-rays

Medical imaging tests expose patients to dangerous amounts of unnecessary radiation

ct-scan

(NaturalNews) A University of Wisconsin (UW) study has found that patients who receive computed tomography (CT) scans for various abdominal and pelvic conditions often receive a slew of additional scans that are unnecessary and that expose them to excess radiation. The findings were presented at the meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

A typical CT scan involves taking images of the patient using an intravenous injection of an imaging chemical in order to contrast the image. Occasionally it is helpful to take more than one image, but many times doctors will order multiple images unnecessarily.

In many cases, doctors are not being careful to assess the doses of radiation they are administering to patients. Though they are supposed to take certain measures to accurately ensure that the radiation dosages are as minimal as possible while still achieving successful scans, Kristie Guite, M.D., of UW emphasized that many doctors do not follow this principle.

Study coauthor J. Louis Hinshaw, M.D., backed up this point by explaining that CT protocols are meant to be custom-tailored to a patient’s specific condition. In a great majority of cases, a one-size-fits-all approach is taken that puts the patient at increased risk.

Dr. Hinshaw suggests that patients who are prescribed CT scans should ask their doctors about the risks involved. They should also find out from the CT facility how many image exposures will need to be taken and if a lesser amount would suffice for their particular conditions.

Read moreJust one CT scan exposes you to as much radiation as 100 chest X-rays