The thwarted terrorist attack on a passenger jet traveling to Detroit, where the would be terrorist had explosives in his under-wear, has got governments around the world preparing to install security scanners at airports in order to, hopefully, stop any other suicidal terrorist from taking explosives onto commercial airlines.
Airport Full body scanners use one ot two systems - millimeter wave sensors or backscatter X-rays. As the majority of security scanners installed are the backscatter type this article will be about these only. The question that both passengers and governments ought to be asking but are not doing so is. Is the full body scanner safe to use? Will regular airline passengers who are scanned several times a year experience any unfavorable effects to their health?
X-rays:
X-rays, also called Rontgen Rays, are a form of ionizing radiation. If you have previously had an X-ray you will be aware that whilst the Radiologists takes the X-ray he stands at the back of a radiation proof screen so as to shield himself from the ionizing radiation.
If you have had a X-ray whilst at the dental practitioners you will discover that the Dentist will also stand behind a screen or leave the room while the X-ray is taken. Radiologists and Dental practitioners realize that subjection to X-rays can cause cancer.
As reported by Cancer Research UK. The proportion of cancers as a result of X-rays is 0.6 percent.
Mammograms:
Women at high risk -- individuals with a hereditary or inherited predisposition to breast cancer -- who have received 5 or more mammograms during their twenties were 2.5 times more likely to develop breast malignant tumors as compared to high-risk women that had not had any kind of mammograms.
Elderly women at high risk increased their likelihood of having breast malignant tumors by 1.5 times by having mammograms. Basically, in high-risk females, mammograms increase the chances of getting breast cancer. The more mammograms you have the higher the likelihood of having cancer.
After examining the clinical evidence the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has made new suggestions concerning mammograms.
Particularly, that women under the age of 50 should not have mammograms unless that there exists a very good reason for doing so. That women over 50 should only get them every second year. The radiation from mammograms might be low-dose radiation but it is nevertheless X-rays. The same kind of ionizing radiation utilized in backscatter X-ray full body scanning equipment.
If having a mammogram increases the risk of a female having breast cancer then how about the amount of ionizing radiation a woman might be receiving if she were scanned with a Backscatter X-ray full body scanner each time she took a trip on a commercial airline.
CT Scans:
There is more than enough proof to demonstrate that exposure to X-rays is hazardous to your health. It might be recommended to lessen exposure to ionizing radiation as much as possible. One way to accomplish this is to not have any unnecessary medical X-rays. For example some individuals get yearly full body CT scans as part of a yearly health examination.
As per a report in the New England Journal of Medicine a third of all CT scans will be clinically not necessary. When you consider that during the year 2006, in the United States, there was more than 62 million CT scans, that means there were over 20 million needless CT scans done that year.
All of the airports will eventually have body scanners installed for security purposes. You may currently opt out of the airport body scanner and have a pat-down, but this may change any time sooner or later since airports would prefer everyone to go through the body scanner.
In the event you fly on a regular basis then, according to the medical research, you are going to be exposing yourself to X-rays which could cause you to suffer severe medical problems.
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