Taking A Trip By Commercial Air Carriers Could Possibly Mean Close 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 under-wear, has got governments around the world deciding to install body scanners at airports in order to, hopefully, stop any other suicidal terrorist from smuggling explosives onto commercial airlines.
Airport Body scanners use one ot two systems - millimeter wave sensors or backscatter X-rays. As the majority of full body scanners installed are the backscatter type this article will be about these only. The question that both passengers and governments really should be asking but are not doing so is. Is the full body scanner safe to use? Will regular airline passengers who are scanned many times a year sustain any undesirable 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 be aware that while the Radiologists takes the X-ray he stands behind a radiation proof screen to be able to shield himself against the ionizing radiation.
If you have had a X-ray whilst at the dental practitioners you will see that the Dentist will also stand at the rear of a screen or leave the room while the X-ray is taken. Radiologists and Dentists understand that subjection to X-rays can cause malignant tumors.
As reported by Cancer Research UK. The proportion of cancers due to X-rays is 0.6 percent.
Mammograms:
Females at high risk -- those with a hereditary or inherited predisposition to breast cancer -- who may have received 5 or more mammograms in their twenties were 2.5 times more likely to develop breast cancer as compared to high-risk women that had not received any kind of mammograms.
Elderly females at high risk increased their chances of having breast malignant tumors by 1.5 times by having mammograms. Simply, in high-risk females, mammograms increase the chances of having breast cancer. The more mammograms you have the greater the likelihood of having cancer.
Upon examining the clinical data the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has made new recommendations concerning mammograms.
Particularly, that women under the age of 50 do not need mammograms unless that there exists a good reason for doing so. That women over 50 should only get them every other year. The radiation from mammograms might be low-dose radiation but it is nevertheless X-rays. The same type of ionizing radiation utilized in backscatter X-ray full body scanning equipment.
If getting a mammogram increases the risk of a woman having breast cancer then how about the amount of ionizing radiation a female might be receiving if she were being scanned with a Backscatter X-ray full body scanner every time she took a trip on a commercial airline.
CT Scans:
One can find more than enough proof to demonstrate that exposure to X-rays is harmful to your health. It would be recommended to lessen exposure to ionizing radiation as much as possible. A way to accomplish this is to not have any kind of unnecessary medical X-rays. For example some people get yearly full body CT scans as part of a yearly health and wellbeing examination.
As per a research report in the New England Journal of Medicine a third of all CT scans are clinically not necessary. When you consider that throughout the year 2006, in the United States, there was greater than 62 million CT scans, which means there were over 20 million unnecessary CT scans carried out that year.
All of the airports will eventually have body scanners installed for the purpose of security purposes. You may currently opt out of the airport body scanner and get a pat-down, but this may change some time sooner or later since airports would prefer everybody to go through the body scanner.
In the event you travel regularly then, according to the scientific research, you are going to be exposing yourself to X-rays which could cause you to sustain severe medical problems.
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