Full Body Scanners Cause Cancer - Especially In Children

[Obama 2012 1,714]

(news.com.au) - A U.S. scientist warned radiation from controversial full-body airport scanners has been dangerously underestimated and could lead to an increased risk of skin cancer -- particularly in children, news.com.au reported Wednesday.

University of California biochemist David Agard said that unlike other scanners, the radiation from these devices is delivered at low energy beam levels, with most of the dose concentrated in the skin and underlying tissue.

“While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high,” Agard said.

Of further concern is that a failure in the device, like a power or software glitch, could cause an intense radiation dose to a single spot on the skin.

The concentration on the skin -- one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the body -- means the radiation dose is actually 20 times higher than the official estimate, David Brenner, head of Columbia University’s Center for Radiological Research, said.

Brenner says the most likely risk from the airport scanners is a type of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma, which mainly occurs on the head and neck and is usually curable.

The research also shows children are more vulnerable to radiation damage, because they have more cells dividing at any one time than when fully grown and a radiation-induced mutation can lead to cancer in adulthood.

Officials from the U.S. Transportation Security Administration and the Food and Drug Administration have tried to allay concerns by saying that it would take thousands of trips through the scanners to equal the dose from one X-ray scan in a hospital.

Source: news.com.au

http://www.myfoxdfw.com/dpps/news/scientist-full-body-airport-scanners-may-increase-cancer-risk-dpgonc-20100519-fc_7629379

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

A couple things to think about....

Stochastic radiation effect

Effects of ionizing radiation, whereby the probability of their occurrence, but not their severity is a func-tion of the dose without the existence of a threshold value. Non-stochastic effects, today called deter-ministic radiation effects, are those in which the severity of the effect varies with the dose and for which a threshold value exists. In the dose range relevant for radiation protection purposes, inheritable damage, cancer and leukaemia belong to stochastic radiation damages. The probability that stochas-tic radiation damage will occur differs widely for the irradiated individual organs or tissues

ALARA

As defined in Title 10, Section 20.1003, of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR 20.1003), ALARA is an acronym for "as low as (is) reasonably achievable," which means making every reasonable effort to maintain exposures to ionizing radiation as far below the dose limits as practical, consistent with the purpose for which the licensed activity is undertaken, taking into account the state of technology, the economics of improvements in relation to state of technology, the economics of improvements in relation to benefits to the public health and safety, and other societal and socioeconomic considerations, and in relation to utilization of nuclear energy and licensed materials in the public interest. For additional detail, see Dose Limits for Radiation Workers and Dose Limits for Radiation Workers.