Tag: Airport Body Scanners

Are the new backscatter x-ray airport body scanners going to give you skin cancer? Probably not. And when I say probably, I mean really really really unlikely. The risk posed by these scanners is well within the “if you are worried about this, best not ever leave your house or turn on the light switch” type parameters we consider “safe” for all our other modern “conveniences”. For an excellent discussion of their safety, go read Mike’s post “Airport Body Scanners Won’t Give You Cancer” now. I’ll wait for you to come back. . .

. . .ok, welcome back. That was pretty solid, eh? Mike does good work, no?

What is curious about this debate is its absolutist nature.

The scanners will give you cancer.
– or-
The scanners are the only way to stop the terrorists.

In the rest of our lives, we regularly balance probabilistic risks with probabilistic benefits all the time, and reject absolutist thinking as childish. Continue reading “Airport Body Scanners: Not Much Risk, Even Less Benefit?”

With the big holidays just around the corner, thousands of folks are about to get their first taste of the TSA’s new virtual strip search machines – X-ray body scanners. Privacy issues may be the main concern for most people, but the safety of these things has some people worried.

Back in April, a group of UCSF professors with a range of expertise in x-rays and biology wrote a letter to White House advisor John Holdren (PDF) raising some potential safety concerns about the TSA’s X-ray scanners. Continue reading “Airport Body Scanners won’t give you cancer”