I’M FROM THE GOVERNMENT…
The shrewd expression 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 mind as soon as I ponder over the growing hubbub on the subject of the Transportation Security Administration’s new-found plan of full body scanning fliers.
PENETRATING DOSES OF RADIATION FROM TSA BODY SCANNERS A REASON FOR CONCERN
A collection of experts articulated their unease to Obama’s science and technology adviser John Holdren. Dr. John W. Sedat, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, in a well-thought-out correspondence 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” on the subject of the “the dose to the skin may be dangerously high” that the TSA is administering at airports across the country. In that correspondence they made it known that radiation enhances cancer perils by damaging the DNA and diverse components inside the cells.
WHAT THE RADIATION INVADES, NOT THE DOSE, MAKES THE DIFFERENCE
The scanners the Transportation Safety Administration makes use of concentrate nearly all of the radiation on the surface of the skin and penetrate a few millimeters into the skin. The concern is that there are a quantity of very radiation-sensitive tissues close to the skin such as testes, eyes, and circulating blood.
In light of this, it seems illusory to assert that the dose being administered is a 1000 times less than a chest X-ray, or, that it is far less than what air travelers are subjected to while flying in the airplane. It is the quantity of the tissue exposed that matters when potential effects of radiation are evaluated.
ARE YOU, OR SOMEONE YOU ARE FRIENDS WITH, IN ONE OF THESE GROUPS?
New borns, young children, pregnant women, older people, individuals having impaired immunity (those with HIV infection, cancer patients, people with immune deficiency disorders, and people with defective DNA repair mechanism are various categories of those that are at a much higher risk than the general public. At this time the Transportation Safety Administration is not differentiating between these groups and others based on the dangers.
Older people are also in a unique class when it comes to radiation exposure. Their DNA accumulates a considerable quantity of unrepaired damage, to the point that even small doses of radiation can cause the development of skin cancers, including melanoma which is potentially life threatening. Exposing their eyes to low doses of radiation is also a concern, since exposure to radiation might increase their risk of developing cataracts.
WE CANNOT COUNT ON THE PROFESSIONALS
Take into account that once the American College of Radiology give surety us that the CT scans were safe and sound and that the radiation was the equivalent of one chest X-ray. At the present we have learned that the dose that is in a CT scan is equal to one thousand chest X-rays. Based that experience, it can pretty much be predicted that when the real effects of these full body scanners on health become identified, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and the remainder of the “officials” who claim the scanners are safe will have made themselves scarce.
