Travel By Means Of Commercial Air Carriers May Mean Close Up Encounters With Airport Full Body Scanners

The halted terrorist assault on a passenger jet going to Detroit, where the would be terrorist had explosives in his underwear, has got governments around the world preparing to install security scanners at airports in order to, hopefully, prevent any other suicidal terrorist from smuggling explosives onto commercial airlines.

Airport Body scanners use one ot two systems - millimeter wave sensors or backscatter X-rays. As most body scanners installed are the backscatter X-ray type this article will be about them only. The question that both passengers and governments should really be asking but are not doing so is. Is the full body scanner safe to use? Will ordinary airline passengers who are scanned many times a year sustain any undesirable consequences to their health?

X-rays:

X-rays, also called Rontgen Rays, are a type of ionizing radiation. If you have ever had an X-ray you will know that when the Radiologists takes the X-ray she stands behind a radiation proof screen to be able to safeguard herself against the ionizing radiation.

If you have had a X-ray while at the dentists you will notice that the Dentist will also stand behind a screen or get out of the room while the X-ray is taken. Radiologists and Dentists understand that subjection to X-rays could cause malignant tumors.

According to Cancer Research UK. The percentage of cancers caused by X-rays is 0.6 percent.

Mammograms:

Women at high-risk -- those with a genetic or inherited predisposition to breast tumors -- who may have had five or more mammograms during their twenties were 2.5 times more prone to develop breast cancer than high-risk women that has not received any mammograms.

Older women at high risk increased their own chances of developing breast malignant tumors by 1.5 times because of mammograms. Simply, in high risk women, mammograms increase the chances of getting breast cancer. The more mammograms that you have the greater the risk of having malignant tumors.

Upon reviewing the scientific evidence the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has made completely new recommendations regarding mammograms.

Particularly, that women younger than 50 do not need mammograms unless there is a very good reason for doing so. That women over 50 really should only get them every other year. The radiation from mammograms may be low-dose radiation but it is nevertheless X-rays. Exactly the same type of ionizing radiation used in backscatter X-ray full body scanners.

If having a mammogram increases the chance of a woman developing breast cancer then how about the level of ionizing radiation a female would receive if she were scanned with a Backscatter X-ray full body scanning device every time she went on a trip upon a commercial airline.

CT Scans:

One can find more than enough evidence to show that exposure to X-rays is hazardous to your health and wellbeing. It would be advisable to lessen exposure to ionizing radiation whenever possible. A way to do this would be to not have any unnecessary medical X-rays. As an example some people have yearly full body CT scans as part of an annual health and wellbeing check-up.

According to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine a third of every CT scans are medically not necessary. Considering that throughout the year 2006, in the US, there were over 62 million CT scans, that means there were over twenty million unnecessary CT scans carried out that year.

All of the airports will ultimately have body scanners installed for the purpose of security reasons. You can currently opt out of the airport body scanner and have a pat-down, but this can change some time in the future since airports would like everybody to go through the scanner.

If you fly on a regular basis then, based on the scientific evidence, you are going to be exposing yourself to X-rays which can cause you to sustain serious health problems.

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