"There are currently 500 body scanners, split about evenly between the two technologies, deployed in airports. The TSA plans to deploy 1,275 backscatter and millimeter-wave scanners covering more than half its security lanes by the end of 2012 and 1,800 covering nearly all lanes by 2014."

potential risk to such a huge contract with a company Chertoff is profiting from seems like a pretty darn good reason to delay the study.

It's hard to come out with a study saying they're completely safe right when the EU is banning them for being unsafe.

Give the gift of a dosimeter badge this holiday traveling season.

(TSA agents aren't allowed to have one, maybe the brighter ones will start to wonder why.)

I would love to wear a dosimeter under my shirt while going through a scanner. Though, I always opt for the pat down.

Why not wear it on the outside?

They would ask you to remove it before entering the scanner.

This is Hacker News, right? :)

Easy solution: stitch it visibly into the fabric of your innermost garment. You want the TSA goons to see the dosimeter if it turns a nice bright mutant-alert color.

I think it would be more effective if it were a nice bright mutant-alert color when you exited the scanner and they asked to see under your shirt because an object was detected. :)

Any recommendations of a dosimeter badge? I'd like to do this test when I fly home for the holidays.

It's very easy to get false positives with dosimeters. See http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/515496-YZWUcS/webvi... A nuclear waste disposal facility had 10% of dosimeters falsely trigger each quarter. Eventually they traced the cause to some overhead lights. Different types of dosimeters can be falsely triggered by heat, cold, UV, or solvents.

People at the TSA know this, which is why they banned dosimeters. Even if backscatter machines are perfectly safe, the TSA is big enough that there will be countless false positives.

That's not why the TSA banned them. It ruins the security theater illusion and would bring on countless lawsuits.

The real way to end the TSA reign of terror is to force congresspeople, tsa executives and everyone else who wrote themselves into exemption from all scans and gropes - to actually have to go through lines and security theater. Then it would end quickly.

Enough. Radiation badges are used routinely in hospitals. I assume that there are far more health care workers that handle radiation than there are TSA agents working backscatter machines (but perhaps it is a mistake to underestimate the extent of the TSA waste).

How much harm do the scanners do to TSA employees who are around it for hours each day? If it's shown to severely affect them, or if they can be 'scared' into believing it does, it might solve this problem once and for all.

The closest thing I've seen regarding backlash from TSA workers is this inquiry by TSA union reps at Boston's Logan Airport about a possible cancer cluster: http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/30/did-airport-scanners-g...

The union asked TSA to provide workers with dosimeters, but the request was never fulfilled.

For those of you who don't know, Boston Logan is like ground zero for the xray backscatter machines. The TSA there is a well oiled machine, busy irradiating a very high percentage of airport travelers. It's one of the few airports where I routinely have to request a pat down since they rarely have that one line that is only being sent through a metal detector. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire Boston population starts to glow in a couple of years from all of the radiation being dished out at this airport.

I don't get the impression that they're allowed to talk about their jobs.

You wont get rid of the xray scanners even if all employees have dosimeters and understand the dangers. You just increase their salaries through hazard pay.

What blows my mind is that the masses care more about cellphone electric fields more than DNA mutating rays. I blame popular brainwashing news stations like fox, msnbc, CNN. Etc.

We need to make it in the best interest of news agencies to drum up and manufacture some panic about this.

It amazes me that people continuously complain about these things, yet nothing ever changes. People still go through the scanners, and the TSA keeps buying more.

I have flown nearly 100 times this year so far and have not been through one once. I make it a practice to make it as uncomfortable for the screener as the process is for me. I am rude and comply only to the bare minimum. If I have time, I make a point to call the supervisor over and complain about the process. If I am pulled aside and made to wait longer than 15-20 seconds for the patdown, I loudly complain. What they're doing is illegal (unreasonable search and seizure) and I feel no obligation to make that job easier. On the contrary, every single person who flies should be doing their damnedest to make this process excruciating for the TSA.

I've noticed that the TSA have been given soft skills training.

"Just doing my job" is no excuse, but it's very difficult to be mean to somebody who is illegally searching you if they are smiling and understanding.

I've never gone through one. It's been really inconvenient for me (and them) a few times, but the constant propaganda of "this won't hurt you, but will protect you," seems to work.

It makes no sense to me that people choose to go through the scanners knowing that they don't have anything to hide from the scanner, and anyone who does just wouldn't go through it.

"This won't hurt you, but it will protect you. I can't really explain to you why, but you should trust me."

I have never gone through one, and I don't intend to ever go through one. If I do it will be against my will.

I've stopped flying, I've warned my friends and family, I've written Congress, and I've donated to support the EPIC lawsuit against TSA:

http://epic.org/privacy/airtravel/backscatter/

I opt out, every time. But to be fair, I'm not someone who looks like your stereotypical threat so I am sure there are those who'd just like to keep their head down, or have kids and just want to get on with their flight.

It's amazing how complacent people are when intimidated in a security theatre.

>It's amazing how complacent people are when ...

in general.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

We're creatures of obedience to the extent where we cease to be intelligent beings.

I rather enjoy loudly opting out every chance I get. I say it loud enough so the whole line hears me. And really, who doesn't enjoy a nice pat down? Sadly, my complaints have not yet convinced anybody else in these lines to join me. Sheep. Yet I'm the one corralled into the opt-out pen.

Well, you've just convinced me to (very) loudly opt-out every time. Thanks!

Does anyone have a reference to the allegation that someone who influenced the decision on purchasing the scanners has a vested interest in the scanner company?

Google Michael Chertoff, Rapiscan Systems. Some articles/posts have conspiracy vibe, but the facts are there.

Ever since the introduction of plastic, we, human being, are slowly doomed.

This is not to say that X-Ray is good or bad. Just that, the cause of cancer is everywhere and it becomes our lifestyle.

Are you trying to link X-Rays to cancer, or plastic?

I'm not a scientist, but as I understand it one of the leading causes of cancer is simply that we live long enough to get it these days.

I think what he's trying to say is that since simple metal detectors are becoming less and less effective, the amount of radiation given to us in attempts at "security" is growing and will continue to grow exponentially.

What does 'as you understand it' mean?

The leading causes of cancer might be carcinogens, including documented viral infections, synthetic chemicals similar to hormones, bioaccumulating toxins, but not only age related accumulation of random transcription errors.

I actually meant that we've learned to cure a lot of the diseases that kill people in relative youth, allowing slower acting things like cancer to catch up with us.

If the average life expectancy is 30 years because of bear attacks and cholera, it's unlikely that anyone will die colon cancer. But if the average life expectancy is 80, it becomes much more likely.

Carcinogens mostly cause small increases in the probability of cancer. GP is right; the main cause of cancer is "being old". It's true that, if you eliminated every source of DNA damage and miscopying, cancer wouldn't happen; but even if you eliminated all external carcinogens, that wouldn't stop the process, just slow it a bit.

Or more simply, oxygen is a carcinogen by the strictest definition.