Scientists question safety of x-ray airport scanners
MAY 18, 2011
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.025319
Science : The safety of the full-body x-ray scanners used at airports is being questioned by several scientists. Five professors at the University of California, San Francisco, and one at Arizona State University have written a letter to White House science adviser John Holdren in which they question why the Transportation Security Administration won’t allow independent testing of the scanners by outside scientists. Although the TSA says the scanners have already been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, NIST, and the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, the letter writers point out flaws in the testing. In addition, studies published in scientific journals in the last few months have also “cast doubt on the radiation dose and the machines’ ability to find explosives,” according to Michael Grabell of ProPublica.
© 2011. American Institute of Physics