Re: [Politics_CurrentEvents_Group] The Airport Scanner Scam: Trading Dignity for False Security

here is a bit of imformation for you,, I know folks that were RM,, radition monitors, and they have questions about the safety of these scanners, We do not know if they leaky, if they are truely safe,,

----- Original Message -----

From: Dave Ketchum

To: Politics_CurrentEvents_Group@yahoogroups.com

Cc: PEACENET@LISTSERV.BINGHAMTON.EDU

Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 3:52 PM

Subject: [Politics_CurrentEvents_Group] The Airport Scanner Scam: Trading Dignity for False Security

We can estimate the cost of installing and using such scanners. Can even estimate whether their use would save enough lives to be worth such.

If one such scan would reduce the scanned passenger's life as much as a medical X-ray, this info would help the above estimate.

BUT medical X-rays are describable as "hard", and are well studied due to their wide-spread usage. The X-rays used by the scanners are very different, are describable as "soft", and have been studied much less.

These "soft" X-rays used in backscatter machines (20KeV or less) are mostly absorbed in the skin – making them useless for medical imaging. All medical X-ray emitters are equipped with special filters to suppress soft X-rays – both to increase clarity of images and to reduce exposure.

So, here some thought about "soft" X-rays:

Dave Ketchum

From: Stephen Unger <unger@cs.columbia.edu>

Date: December 6, 2010 2:25:53 PM EST

...

At the other end, there are a number of good reasons to believe that
the health risks imposed by the scanners are a good deal higher than
indicated by simple calculations based on the exposure values supplied
by the government and the manufacturer. The matter of concentration of
the rays in the skin, as opposed to the whole body is one issue. Another

is the contention by scientists that 5% of the population is particularly

vulnerable due to genetic factors. Or that children and pregnant women

are also more vulnerable. Malfunctioning scanners could
inflate the number of deaths, and, seeing how operations like TSA
function it seems to me most likely that this would be an important
source of trouble, and that incidents of such failures would be
covered up.

In response to my posted article, I received a link to an article I
was not aware of, which I think makes a plausible case that the
radiation harm would be more serious by orders of magnitude than is
generally supposed. I strongly recommend that people read this. It is
accessible at
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/antonov1.1.1.html

Steve