If the Japanese Are Fleeing the Radiation Leaks from Their Nuclear Plants, Shouldn't We All Flee the Radiation Exposure from TSA Body Scanners?

TSA Defends Privacy, Safety of Imaging Machines

March 16, 2011

AP – The Transportation Security Administration on Wednesday defended its privacy policy at airports and the safety of an advanced imaging machine that transmits low radiation doses.

Testifying before skeptical House members, two TSA officials said imaging machines used for passenger screening have software that prevents the full-body images from being retained, stored or transmitted.

The officials, Robin Kane and Lee Kair, also said a single screening from a "backscatter" imaging machine produces radiation similar to a dose from about two minutes of flying at 30,000 feet.

The chairman of a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee, Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, said he isn't convinced privacy is being protected.

"Nobody has to look at my grandmother naked to secure an airplane," said Chaffetz, a frequent critic of the TSA.

A Columbia University radiology researcher, David Brenner, testified that despite a low individual risk, it's possible that radiation from backscatter machines could cause cancer in 100 people a year.

Brenner, director of Columbia's Center for Radiological Research, called the number "a best estimate," but acknowledged "this number is quite uncertain." He added that the cancer risk to each individual is as low as one in 10 million.

When TSA security officials Kane and Kair testified they were unaware of TSA ever retaining full body images of passengers, Chaffetz demanded to know why the answer wasn't an unequivocal "no."

"I'm frustrated by the lack of candor," Chaffetz said.

The TSA has installed two types of explosive-detecting machines that produce full body images: the "backscatter" that emits radiation and millimeter wave machines that do not. The agency says that with no concerns about radiation exposure, it uses both types to foster competition between manufacturers.

TSA also said it is testing a new type of imaging that will only show anomalies rather than a full body image.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, expressed doubt about TSA's contention that it does not save images — which are viewed in a separate area away from public security lines.

"We've obtained from the U.S. Marshals Service more than 100 images" from a Marshals' scanner at the U.S. Courthouse in Orlando, Rotenberg said.

They were among 35,000 images that the Marshals acknowledged — in a Freedom of Information response — that they retained from the Orlando screenings.

He added that TSA has acknowledged, in a Freedom of Information response, storing and recording images while testing the machines.

"TSA has 2,000 images. They don't want the public to see this," he said. The TSA has refused to turn over the images.

The Center has filed a lawsuit to stop the TSA from using scans that show a naked image of a passenger's body. The group contends the machines violate privacy laws, religious freedom and the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The TSA officials, who refused to sit on the same panel as Rotenberg because of the lawsuit, said the advanced imaging machines are vital to keep up with terrorist tactics.

"We have witnessed the evolution of this threat from checked baggage, to carry-on baggage, and now to air cargo and non-metallic explosives hidden on the body," Kane and Kair said in a joint statement.

TSA Records: Some Scanners Emit Ten Times Expected Radiation

March 14, 2011

The New American - Americans concerned about exposure to potentially dangerous levels of radiation from the Transportation Security Administration’s full-body scanners just got another reason to worry:

USA Today reports that on March 11 the TSA announced “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, of course, insists that all the machines are safe and that the records indicating the high radiation levels are the result of recordkeeping errors by technicians. TSA spokesman Nicholas Kimball told USA Today that, for example,

“The testing procedure calls for the technician to take 10 separate scans” for radiation levels, “add them up and then divide by 10 to take an average. They didn’t divide by 10.”

In addition, says the paper, “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.”

The agency posted reports from 127 X-ray devices, including some used to scan checked luggage, on its website.

“Of the reports posted, about a third showed some sort of error,” Kimball told USA Today. Even more alarmingly, of the reports from 40 backscatter (i.e., full-body) scanners, 19 had errors, including six that were described as “considerable.”

None of this might have come to light, however, if not for pressure from USA Today and members of Congress. On December 7 the newspaper reported on scanner radiation concerns of both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and TSA employees; it had already requested that the TSA release the inspection reports for all its X-ray scanners. Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), John Dingell (D-Mich.), and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) all called for more openness from the TSA regarding the safety of its scanners. Three days later the agency began reviewing its maintenance reports, whereupon it discovered the alleged errors.

It is now in the process of releasing the results of its review for all 4,500 airport X-ray devices, including the 247 backscatter machines, all of which it is retesting as a result of its findings. It is also, according to the paper, requiring maintenance contractors to “retrain personnel involved in conducting and overseeing the radiation survey process.”

Chaffetz, now chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations, is skeptical of the TSA’s assertion that the divergent maintenance records are simple errors, telling USA Today that,

This “sounds like an excuse rather than the real facts,” adding, “I’m tired of excuses. The public has a right and deserves to know. It begs [sic] the question, ‘What are they still not sharing with us?’ These are things you cannot make mistakes with.”

Both Chaffetz and his upper-chamber counterpart, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, declared the TSA’s supposed errors “unacceptable.” Collins noted that despite TSA assurances that the scanners are safe,

“[I]f TSA contractors reporting on the radiation levels have done such a poor job, how can airline passengers and crew have confidence in the data used by the TSA to reassure the public?”

Chaffetz’s criticism was even more stinging, pointing out that the same agency that is “bumbling such critical tasks” as inspecting scanners for safety is also “supposed to be protecting us against terrorists” — hardly a reassuring thought.

Given this latest revelation, can Americans be sure that the TSA’s scanners really are as harmless as the agency would have them believe? Some scientists have already expressed the opinion that even the low level of radiation the TSA claims its scanners are emitting could be detrimental.

But what if a scanner malfunctions and the TSA doesn’t realize it, as could very well be the case since its technicians don’t seem to recognize when test results are out of whack? In its December report on scanner radiation concerns, USA Today wrote:

Peter Rez, a physics professor at Arizona State University, also worries about the possibility of higher doses or even radiation burns if a machine malfunctions and the scanning beam stops on one part of the body. Rez, who has reviewed a patent application for the backscatter system, notes that the scanner has a fail-safe system that is supposed to shut down the X-ray beam if there’s a problem. “But we all learned this summer that fail-safe systems do fail,” Rez said, referring to the mechanical failures that resulted in the massive Gulf oil spill.

Rez told the paper on Friday that the contractor mistakes TSA identified only heighten his concerns.

“I’m totally unconvinced they have thought … through” what to do if a scanner starts emitting extremely high radiation levels, he said.

The TSA has done precious little to protect Americans from terrorism, and now they can’t even be sure that the agency is protecting them from its own scanners. Meanwhile, it violates the Constitution and basic human decency innumerable times daily by showing airline passengers’ naked bodies to its employees and requiring those employees to grope the most intimate parts of some of those passengers’ anatomy.

The TSA’s announcement of its “mistakes” may, however, have salutary effects. It is likely to bolster the growing state resistance to the agency’s gross violations of air travelers’ dignity. This, in turn, may lead to calls for Congress to restrict or even abolish what Professor Rez described as this "large, bumbling bureaucracy."

What’s the Real Radiation Risk of the TSA’s Full Body X-Ray Scans?

November 17, 2010

Discover Magazine - It’s not like this week was the first appearance of the full-body X-ray scanners in American airports. Yet, thanks to the looming holiday travel season, leaked X-ray images that were supposed to be kept private, and high-profile rebellion by pilots’ organizations and disgruntled passengers, anger is rising against the Transportation Security Administration’s new airport rules.

Under the policy, those chosen for extra screening face the dilemma of having their naked bodies revealed to TSA scanners or opting out and having agents feel them up in search of explosives.

But behind the outrage at being asked to surrender even more of our dignity just to get on a plane, there’s another full-body scanning issue simmering: the health dangers of radiation.

How much radiation, and where?

This was the main concern of the Allied Pilots Association. Pilots are already exposed to higher levels of radiation than nearly all professionals because they spend so much time at altitude and receive radiation from space; asking them to take an X-ray every time they get on a plane (even one that the TSA says is thousands of times less intense than a hospital chest X-ray) was asking too much. Popular Mechanics posted more details on pilot exposure.

So what about the rest of us, who fly perhaps only a few times per year? Back in May, professors at the University of California, San Francisco, led by John Sedat sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration with a litany of red flags about using back-scatter X-ray with such frequency—mostly that the safety has not be independently proven. The FDA finally replied with a lengthy letter citing study after study that show full-body scanning is safe, the agency says.

The UCSF profs’ main beef is this: We know the risks of medical chest X-rays, for example, which penetrate the skin to make those pictures of our bones. The back-scattering X-rays the TSA uses, however, aren’t like that at all—they penetrate just the clothes and the top layers of skin, and the scanner reads what’s reflected back. Because the full body scanners don’t need to go through your skin, they use less powerful radiation than the X-ray machines in the hospital. That sounds good in theory, but it means the skin absorbs a bigger blast than it would in the hospital, and the professors say we don’t know the effects of that skin exposure well enough to say that it’s safe.

The low-energy rays do a “Compton scatter” off tissue layers just under the skin, possibly exposing some vital areas and leaving the tissues at risk of mutation. When an X-ray Compton scatters, it doesn’t shift an electron to a higher energy level; instead, it hits the electron hard enough to dislodge it from its atom. The authors note that this process is “likely breaking bonds,” which could cause mutations in cells and raise the risk of cancer. [

FDA, in its response letter, said:

The concern that “the dose to the skin may be dangerously high” is not supported. The recommended limit for annual dose to the skin for the general public is 50,000 µSv. The dose to the skin from one screening would be approximately 0.56 µSv when the effective dose for that same screening would be 0.25 µSv. Therefore the dose to skin for the example screening is at least 89,000 times lower than the annual limit.

Not everybody is convinced by the FDA case. I asked Columbia’s University’s David J. Brenner, who helped draft guidelines for full-body scanners (but now says he wouldn’t have done it if he knew the scanners would be used in such a widespread fashion), and he wrote back,

“We know the radiation dose is very low but there are different views about just how low. We do need more independent analyses of the radiation doses involved.”

The meaning of risk

The FDA and the TSA, in all their responses, have repeated that the X-ray exposure and therefore the risk of full-body scanners is minuscule. But minuscule is not “non-existent,” and when you start exposing a large percentage of the flying public to more X-rays, there’s no such thing as completely “safe.”

“They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays,” [says] Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine…. “No exposure to X-ray is considered beneficial. We know X-rays are hazardous but we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner.” [[

Brenner says the most important thing to understand is that there are three levels of risk: the risk for a single trip through the scanner, the risk for pilots and flight attendants who make many trips through the scanner every year, and the risk to the general population when you think of it as a whole. That general population risk is what Love is talking about when he says “someone is going to get skin cancer.” Brenner says it can’t be ignored; here’s his explanation in full:

To illustrate generally what I mean here, suppose some activity involves a very very small cancer risk, say one in ten million (these are not necessarily numbers for airport scanners, just trying to illustrate what a population risk means…). Now suppose 10 people are exposed to that small risk: chances are none of them would get cancer as a result of that activity. Now suppose a billion people are each exposed to that risk of one in ten million: then chances are that some of them (we wouldn’t know which of them) would get cancer as a result of that activity, even though the individual risk is extremely small. So even though the individual risk is very small, the impact on the population may not be small if the exposed population is large.

This is potentially the case with airport X-ray scanners. We know the individual risk is very small, but multiply that by the number of people going through airport security each year in the US (currently about 700 million, maybe one billion a decade from now), then we start to have a concern about the population risk.

Some people more susceptible?

The basic risk of X-ray exposure isn’t the only worry. Back in May, Brenner pointed out that X-ray damage does not hit all passengers equally.

Recent research, Brenner says, indicates that about 5 percent of the population — one person in 20 — is especially sensitive to radiation. These people have gene mutations that make them less able to repair X-ray damage to their DNA. Two examples are the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 mutations associated with breast and ovarian cancer, but scientists believe many more such defects are unknown.

“I don’t know if I’m one of those 5 percent. I don’t know if you’re one of those 5 percent,” Brenner says, “And we don’t really have a quick and easy test to find those individuals.”

Furthermore, the UCSF researchers write in their letter, older passengers are more susceptible to mutagenic effects of X-rays, and “the risk of radiation emission to children and adolescents does not appears to have been fully evaluated.”

What is Radioactive Iodine Poisoning?

March 15, 2011

Associated Content - In the aftermath of the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the tsunami that caused massive destruction, Japan now faces the threat of nuclear radiation exposure. The fear of a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant raises health questions about the radiation risk and long-term effects on the population exposed.

Radioactivity can be carried by the wind, as seen in 1986 at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union. It has been found that thyroid cancers were diagnosed at Chernobyl since the accident due to the intake of the radioactive iodine fallout.

Nausea and vomiting are the first symptoms of radioactive iodine poisoning. About a month later, victims may develop low blood pressure, hair loss, more vomiting, fatigue, dizziness, infection and an inability to heal. Long-term effects include cancer and teratogenic mutations to fetuses exposed to radiation. These include smaller brain size, poorly formed eyes, abnormally slow growth and mental retardation.

What is radioactive iodine (I-131)?

Radiation poisoning damages organs and other tissues. Radioactive iodine released into the air gets into the lungs and may also contaminate the local food supply. Farm animals and agriculture all are contaminated by radiation, creating increased radiation exposure for years to come. This internal contamination with radioactive iodine causes the thyroid gland to quickly absorb the radioactive iodine. Taking potassium iodine pills helps to prevent thyroid cancer.

What is KI (potassium iodide)?

Potassium Iodide (KI) is needed by the body to make thyroid hormones. The goal with taking the pills is to saturate the thyroid with healthy iodine to shield the thyroid from radioactive iodine. Taken an hour before known fallout, KI pills block the radioactive iodine to protect the thyroid gland, thus preventing cancer in the future. It only protects the thyroid, no other parts of the body. Children are the most sensitive to radioactive iodine. Iodine crosses the placenta and KI protects the growing fetus.

KI comes in a liquid or tablet form. According to the FDA, adults and breastfeeding women should take 130mg. Children between 3 and 18 years of age should take 65mg if under 150 pounds. Infants and children younger than 3 should take 32mg. A newborn's dose is 16 mg. A single dose of KI protects the thyroid gland for 24 hours. Usually one dose is all that is required unless radioactive iodine lingers longer in the environment. KI should be administered before a radioactive cloud, but can be taken three to four hours after exposure.

If you are allergic to iodine, have thyroid disease or a shellfish allergy KI may be harmful. Side effects include intestinal discomfort, allergic reaction, rashes, and inflammation of the salivary glands. Prevent radioactive vapor or dust from entering the lungs and the digestive tract.

Protecting the public, precautions for those at risk

In addition to taking potassium iodide pills, an important deterrent to reduce or eliminate internal contamination from I-131 is to find an alternate source of food outside the contamination zone. I-131 falls on vegetation and pastures where cows feed contaminating their milk. Other contaminates are from the air, eating eggs and leafy vegetables. Cleanse skin with lukewarm water and a mild soap such as Ivory, Dove, and Neutrogena and do not rub your skin. Do not use table salt as a substitute for KI; it does not contain enough iodine to block radioactive iodine from reaching your thyroid gland.