A troubling report from ProPublica/PBS Newshour:
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.These don't appear to be the new naked body scanners, these are something else - they're quite literally beaming the same x-rays you get during an x-ray. You know, the thing you're not supposed to get unless you really need it. Well, you're going to be getting it every time you fly. Or more accurately, you'll either get the naked scan or an x-ray scan, and it's not entirely clear which one you're getting. Oh my God, listen to this:
A ProPublica/PBS NewsHour investigation of how this decision was made shows that in post-9/11 America, security issues can trump even long-established medical conventions. The final call to deploy the X-ray machines was made not by the FDA, which regulates drugs and medical devices, but by the TSA, an agency whose primary mission is to prevent terrorist attacks.
Research suggests that anywhere from six to 100 U.S. airline passengers each year could get cancer from the machines. Still, the TSA has repeatedly defined the scanners as “safe,” glossing over the accepted scientific view that even low doses of ionizing radiation — the kind beamed directly at the body by the X-ray scanners — increase the risk of cancer.
“Even though it’s a very small risk, when you expose that number of people, there’s a potential for some of them to get cancer,” said Kathleen Kaufman, the former radiation management director in Los Angeles County, who brought the prison X-rays to the FDA panel’s attention.
Because of a regulatory Catch-22, the airport X-ray scanners have escaped the oversight required for X-ray machines used in doctors’ offices and hospitals. The reason is that the scanners do not have a medical purpose, so the FDA cannot subject them to the rigorous evaluation it applies to medical devices.Excuse me? The FDA had no role. We let a bunch of national security types decide if the scanners were dangerous when their number one priority was catching terrorists, not stopping mom and little Jimmy from getting cancer as reasonable collateral damage.
Do take a look at the entire article. It's painfully long. Which is useful to prove their point, but not very useful for actually getting people to read the entire thing (mock me now, you try to read it). Still, it's an important piece.
