Europe Bans X-Ray Body Scanners Used at U.S. Airports

[KeepItReal]

Source: ProPublica

The European Union on Monday prohibited the use of X-ray body scanners in European airports, parting ways with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, which has deployed hundreds of the scanners as a way to screen millions of airline passengers for explosives hidden under clothing.

The European Commission, which enforces common policies of the EU's 27 member countries, adopted the rule “in order not to risk jeopardizing citizens’ health and safety.”

As a ProPublica/PBS NewsHour investigation detailed earlier this month, X-ray body scanners use ionizing radiation, a form of energy that has been shown to damage DNA and cause cancer. Although the amount of radiation is extremely low, equivalent to the radiation a person would receive in a few minutes of flying, several research studies have concluded that a small number of cancer cases would result from scanning hundreds of millions of passengers a year.

...
Five-hundred body scanners, split about evenly between the two technologies, are deployed in U.S. airports. The X-ray scanner, or backscatter, which looks like two large blue boxes, is used at major airports, including Los Angeles International Airport, John F. Kennedy in New York and Chicago's O’Hare. The millimeter-wave scanner, which looks like a round glass booth, is used in San Francisco, Atlanta and Dallas.



Read more: http://www.propublica.org/article/europe-bans-x-ray-body-scanners-used-at-u.s.-airports

[Demeter]

1. Another good reason to emigrate

to a non-euro country.

[hlthe2b]

2. Kudos.... and to those "authoritarian" types who refuse to accept this as an issue...

during the many and myriad TSA threads over the past year or so, WAKE UP. Just because the Bushies* decided to push the concept, rewarding their $$$ backers and Obama failed to question after the fact, does not mean they are safe, effective, efficacious, nor appropriate.

[Dawson Leery]

3. What's this? Health safety is ahead of profit?

Not in America.

[valerief]

11. Never in America, home of "If you get sick, die quickly." nt

[jakeXT]

4. ah 1998

On Sept. 23, 1998, a panel of radiation safety experts gathered at a Hilton hotel in Maryland to evaluate a new device that could detect hidden weapons and contraband. The machine, known as the Secure 1000, beamed X-rays at people to see underneath their clothing.

One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine because it violated a longstanding principle in radiation safety — that humans shouldn’t be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit.

“I think this is really a slippery slope,” said Jill Lipoti, who was the director of New Jersey’s radiation protection program. The device was already deployed in prisons; what was next, she and others asked — courthouses, schools, airports? “I am concerned … with expanding this type of product for the traveling public,” said another panelist, Stanley Savic, the vice president for safety at a large electronics company. “I think that would take this thing to an entirely different level of public health risk.”

The machine’s inventor, Steven W. Smith, assured the panelists that it was highly unlikely that the device would see widespread use in the near future. At the time, only 20 machines were in operation in the entire country.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=us-glossed-over-cancer-concerns

[lovuian]

5. I really do want to move to Europe

this scanner isn't stopping anything


X-ray body scanners use ionizing radiation, a form of energy that has been shown to damage DNA and cause cancer.

[bluedigger]

6. Would it help if we export some American lobbyists to convince them?

Lobbying - America's last competitive advantage.

[high density]

7. I'll celebrate when all body scanning is banned

Millimeter-wave will still be out there.

[truthisfreedom]

8. "I'm not walking through your cancer machine."

[PSPS]

9. +1

[Divernan]

10. Back scatter xray machines have never been independently tested & are not regularly inspected.

Got this from my Journal:

Back scatter machines have never been independently tested
Posted by Divernan in Latest Breaking News
Tue Aug 23rd 2011, 07:43 PM
I just took a university level overview class on nuclear radiation. There are different types of radiation, for one thing, so to compare the exposure one receives from a TSA machine scan with the type of background radiation from other sources is ill-informed, gullible and disingenuous at best, and knowingly deceitful at worst.

The manufacturers of said machines claim "trade secrets" and the science involved cannot therefore be replicated for independent testing or peer review. I repeat, the science has never been peer reviewed. The single reported safety "test"/demonstration was from a machine NOT identical to the ones in the airport.

You noted the fact of the high concentration of radiation on the skin - anyone who has had skin cancer should not go through the backscatter scanner.

There is no known requirement for specific regulations re regular, scheduled monitoring and callibration of each machine to make sure it is functioning properly and not putting out more radiation.

The TSA operators can "adjust" the scanner to higher doses to increase definition. You know those permits posted on every elevator on this country telling you when it was last inspected? Nothing like that on backscatter scanners.

There are a few of these scanners being tried out in other countries, but the operators there wear radiation dosimeters to monitor their exposure. TSA workers are not permitted to wear dosimeters.

I could go on and on with the deceptive spin put out by TSA & the manufacturers, but I can't condense a college course into a post.

I could care less about somebody looking at my old body via imaging. What I do care about is not getting a recurrence of skin cancer. So I'll opt out of the scanning and give some TSA worker the thrill (sarcasm!) of patting me down.

[stockholmer]

12. to be blunt, if we here in the EU ban something, yet the USA promotes it, odds are that 'it' is bad

Many types of GMO, back scatter x-ray's, quasi-torture such as waterboarding, cloned meat animals, flouride in the water supply, private for-profit health care, spanking/beating children, etc. The list goes on as the mind reels.....

[Divernan]

15. Don't forget Obama's push in behalf of cluster bombs.

U.S. takes the lead on behalf of cluster bombs – Salon.com
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2011/11/barack-more-cluster-bombs-obama%E2%80%94now-using-his-famed-eloquence-to-block-cutbacks-in-military-spending/

Saturday, Nov 12, 2011 11:16 AM 11:11:10 EST
U.S. takes the lead on behalf of cluster bombs
After long refusing to join the convention banning these weapons, Obama now works to overturn it
By Glenn Greenwald

Slightly more than two months after he was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama secretly ordered a cruise missile attack on Yemen, using cluster bombs, which killed 44 innocent civilians, including 14 women and 21 children, as well as 14 people alleged to be “militants.” It goes without saying that — unless you want Rick Perry to win in 2012 — this act should in no way be seen as marring Obama’s presidency or his character: what’s a couple dozen children blown up as a part of a covert, undeclared air war? If anything, as numerous Democrats have ecstatically celebrated, such acts show how Tough and Strong the Democrats are: after all, ponder the massive amounts of nobility and courage it takes to sit in the Oval Office and order this type of aggression on defenseless tribal regions in Yemen. As R.W. Appel put it on the front page of The New York Times back in 1989 when glorifying George H.W. Bush’s equally courageous invasion of Panama: “most American leaders since World War II have felt a need to demonstrate their willingness to shed blood” and doing so has become “a Presidential initiation rite.”

AND
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2011/11/obama%E2%80%94nobel-peace-prize-winner%E2%80%94leads-a-drive-to-overturn-the-global-ban-on-cluster-bombs/

Obama—Nobel Peace Prize winner—leads a drive to overturn the global ban on cluster bombs

UK backs bid to overturn ban on cluster bombs
Campaigners say US-led proposals to water down global ban give a ‘green light’ to use the weapons
JEROME TAYLOR
WEDNESDAY 09 NOVEMBER 2011

Britain is backing a US-led plan to torpedo the global ban on cluster bombs, in what MPs and arms campaigners fear is an attempt to legitimise the use of weapons that are widely deemed to be inherently indiscriminate.

In recent years, the UK has played a leading role in trying to rid the world of cluster bombs. It is one of 111 countries that have signed up to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, is on target to destroy its own stockpile, and has ordered the US military to remove any submunitions it holds on British soil.

But The Independent has learnt that the UK Government is supporting a Washington-led proposal that would permit the use of cluster bombs as long as they were manufactured after 1980 and had a failure rate of less than one per cent. Arms campaigners say the 1980 cut-off point is arbitrary, and that many modern cluster bombs have far higher failure rates on the field of battle than manufacturers claim.

[arikara]

18. What are the general feelings over there on the wireless

smart meters that electric companies are in such a major hurry to attach to all the houses all over the world?

[bikebloke]

13. For shame.

Now how is Chertoff supposed to buy another mansion?

[uppityperson]

14. First time I used one was in Europe, flying back to the states

The screening person told me they had to do what the TSA said to get people to fly to the USA. Edited to clarify that they didn't use them for people/flights flying not to USA.

[The Northerner]

16. K&R n/t

[Laelth]

17. Shameful when Europe protects its citizens' civil liberties better than the U.S.

Land of the free, indeed.

-Laelth