YOU Docs Daily
Are Full-Body Airport Scanners a Cancer Risk?
Q. Is the radiation from those full-body airport scanners harmful?
-- C. Reilly, via e-mail
A. Assume the position: Put your hands on your head. Spread your legs. Say cheese!
In seconds, the two types of scanners used at more than 100 U.S. airports zap a full-body, naked image of you and -- discovering that you're packing a hip replacement, not a bomb -- send you to your flight. It's far more pleasant than the crotch-checking pat-downs sometimes used when you set off the alarm and TSA agents can't tell why. (Really, they're just trying to keep us safe.) Still, the big question is: Is there a cancer risk?
You're not alone in worrying about cancer-causing radiation, especially since the European Union has now banned "backscatter" x-ray scanners, which account for about half of all airport x-ray scanners in the U.S. Here's what happens when you're technologically undressed and assessed. (We YOU Docs fly constantly, by the way, so this is personal.)
Backscatter scanners -- two big, boxy contraptions you stand between -- run a thin x-ray over your body. In another room, someone checks the image. Once you're cleared, the image is deleted forever.
How much radiation did you get? Not nearly as much as you will in flight. Winging through the upper atmosphere from coast to coast exposes you to 4,000 times more radiation than the scanner emits, and you'd need 40 backscatter scans to equal one dental x-ray. Eat seaweed to reduce your body's radiation absorption.
Besides, millimeter-wave scanners, which use harmless radio waves -- not x-rays -- are spreading fast. They resemble rounded phone booths, produce better images, and are designed to be more discreet. They're in ever-more U.S. airports (78 as of last fall) and Europe. Find out if your cell phone is a cancer risk.
While no one needs more radiation in our over-zapped lives, we're not worried about backscatter scanners. But if you're twitchy about a different kind of exposure -- that is, being super-viewed by anonymous screeners (however fleetingly), that's different. In that case, choose the pat-down, or take the bus.
