Life Articles

The halted terrorist attack on a passenger jet heading to Detroit, where the would be terrorist had explosives in his under-wear, has got governments around the world arranging to install security scanners at airports in order to, hopefully, put off any other suicidal terrorist from smuggling explosives onto commercial airlines.

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

X-rays:

X-rays, also called Rontgen Rays, are a form of ionizing radiation. If you have at any time had an X-ray you will be aware that whilst the Radiologists takes the X-ray she stands behind a radiation proof screen to be able to protect herself from the ionizing radiation.

If you have had a X-ray when at the dental practitioners you will discover 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 exposure to X-rays could cause cancer.

As per Cancer Research UK. The proportion of cancers as a result of X-rays is 0.6 percent.

Mammograms:

Women at high-risk -- those with a genetic or familial predisposition to breast tumors -- who have received 5 or more mammograms in their twenties were 2.5 times more prone to develop breast cancer than high-risk women who has not had any kind of mammograms.

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

After examining the clinical data the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has made completely new recommendations regarding mammograms.

Specifically, that women younger than 50 should not have mammograms unless that there exists a 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 still X-rays. Exactly the same kind of ionizing radiation utilized in backscatter X-ray full body scanning equipment.

If getting a mammogram increases the chance of a woman developing breast cancer then what about the level of ionizing radiation a woman might be receiving if she were being scanned with a Backscatter X-ray full body scanning device every time she went on a journey upon a commercial airline.

CT Scans:

There is more than enough proof to demonstrate that exposure to X-rays is harmful to your health and wellbeing. It would be advisable to reduce exposure to ionizing radiation whenever possible. One way to achieve this is to not have any kind of unnecessary medical X-rays. As an example some people have annual full body CT scans as part of an annual health examination.

As per a research report in the New England Journal of Medicine a third of every CT scans are medically unnecessary. Considering that during the year 2006, in the United States, there was more than 62 million CT scans, that means there were over twenty million unnecessary CT scans carried out that year.

All airports will ultimately have body scanners installed for security purposes. You may currently opt out of the airport body scanner and get a pat-down, but this can change some time in the future as airports would like everyone to go through the full body scanner.

In the event you travel on a regular basis then, based on the scientific evidence, you will be exposing yourself to X-rays which can cause you to suffer severe medical problems.

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