Travel By Means Of Commercial Airlines Could Possibly Mean Close Up Encounters With Airport Full Body Scanners
The thwarted terrorist assault on a passenger jet traveling to Detroit, where the would be terrorist had explosives in his underwear, has got governments around the world deciding to install full body scanners at airports in order to, hopefully, block 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 the majority of full body scanners installed are the backscatter X-ray type this article will be about them only. The question that both passengers and governments really should be wanting to know but are not doing so is. Is the full body scanner safe to use? Will habitual airline passengers who are scanned many times a year sustain any detrimental effects to their health?
X-rays:
X-rays, also called Rontgen Rays, are a type of ionizing radiation. If you have previously had an X-ray you will know that while the Radiologists takes a X-ray he stands behind a radiation proof screen to be able to protect himself against the ionizing radiation.
If you have had a X-ray whilst at the dentists you will see that the Dentist will also stand at the back a screen or leave the room while the X-ray is taken. Radiologists and Dentists understand that exposure to X-rays can cause malignant tumors.
As reported by Cancer Research UK. The percentage of cancers due to X-rays is 0.6 percent.
Mammograms:
Most women at high risk -- those with a genetic or familial predisposition to breast cancer -- who may have had five or more mammograms in their twenties were found to be 2.5 times more likely to develop breast cancer than high-risk women who had not received any mammograms.
Older females at high-risk increased their chances of developing breast cancer by 1.5 times by having mammograms. Simply, in high risk women, mammograms increase the chances of having breast cancer. The greater the number of mammograms you have the greater the risk of getting cancer.
Upon reviewing the scientific data the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has published new recommendations regarding mammograms.
Specifically, that women under the age of 50 do not need mammograms unless there is a good reason for doing so. That women above 50 should only get them every other year. The radiation from mammograms may be low-dose radiation but it is still X-rays. The same type of ionizing radiation used in backscatter X-ray full body scanners.
If getting a mammogram raises the risk of a woman developing breast cancer then what about the amount of ionizing radiation a female would receive if she were being scanned using a Backscatter X-ray full body scanner every time she went on a journey on a commercial airline.
CT Scans:
One can find more than enough evidence to show that exposure to X-rays is harmful for your health. It would be advisable to reduce exposure to ionizing radiation as much as possible. A way to accomplish this would be to not have any kind of unneeded medical X-rays. For example some people have annual full body CT scans as part of a yearly health and wellbeing check-up.
According to a research report in the New England Journal of Medicine one third of all CT scans are medically unnecessary. When you consider that throughout the year 2006, in the US, there were greater than 62 million CT scans, this means that there were over 20 million unnecessary CT scans carried out that year.
All airports will eventually have body scanners installed for the purpose of security reasons. You can currently opt out of the airport body scanner and get a pat-down, however this may change some time in the future as airports would prefer everybody to go through the body scanner.
If you travel frequently then, according to the scientific evidence, you will be exposing yourself to X-rays which could cause you to sustain serious health problems.
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