I’M FROM THE GOVERNMENT…
The wise declaration of President Ronald Reagan, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.'” occur in my thoughts when I think about the developing turbulence about the Transportation Security Administration’s latest rule of scanning of the bodies of travelers.
HIGH-LEVEL DOSES OF RADIATION FROM TSA BODY SCANNERS A GROUNDS FOR DISTRESS
A collection of authorities uttered their point to Obama’s science and technology adviser John Holdren. Dr. John W. Sedat, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, UC, San Francisco and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, in a well-thought-out dispatch was joined by three other similarly credentialed faculty members in expressing their concerns in that letter dated April 6, 2010. In that correspondence they expressed “concerns about the potential serious health risks” around the “the dose to the skin may be dangerously high” that the TSA is administering at airports around this country. In that communication they pointed out that radiation raises cancer threats by harming the DNA and an assortment of components inside the cells.
WHAT THE RADIATION INVADES, NOT THE DOSAGE, MAKES THE DISTINCTION
The scanners the Transportation Safety Administration makes use of focus the main part of the radiation on the surface of the skin and pierce a few millimeters into the skin. The alarm is that there are some very radiation-sensitive tissues close to the skin such as testes, eyes, and circulating blood.
Considering this, it seems illusory to assert that the amount being administered is a 1000 times less than a chest X-ray, or, that it is a lot less than what air travelers are exposed to while flying in the airplane. It is the quantity of the tissue exposed that is important when potential effects of radiation damage are evaluated.
ARE YOU, OR SOMEONE YOU LOVE, IN ONE OF THESE CATEGORIES?
Babies, young children, pregnant women, older people, people having impaired immunity (those with HIV infection, cancer patients, people with immune deficiency diseases, and people with abnormal DNA repair mechanism are some groups of persons that are at a more elevated risk than others. At this time the Transportation Safety Administration is not differentiating between these groups and others based on the hazards.
Older people are also in a unique category when it comes to radiation exposure. Their DNA accumulates a significant quantity of unrepaired damage, to the point where even low doses of radiation can start the promotion of skin cancers, including melanoma which can have the potential of becoming life threatening. Exposing their eyes to low doses of radiation is also a concern, since exposure to radiation might raise their chance of developing cataracts.
WE CAN’T COUNT ON THE AUTHORITIES
Remember when the American College of Radiology assured us that the CT scans were not dangerous and that the radiation amounted to one chest X-ray. Now we have learned that the dose that is in a CT scan is equal to 1,000 chest X-rays. Based that experience, it can pretty much be predicted that when the real effects of these full body scanners on wellbeing become recognized, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and the rest of the “officials” who contend the scanners are safe will have made themselves scarce.
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