Several doctors are expressing concerns that full-body scanners may indeed deliver a low level of energy as advertised — reportedly this is why they’re “safe” compared to X-ray machines — but they worry that all the energy becomes dangerously concentrated on and directly beneath the skin, particularly at the face and neck, delivering much more radiation to the traveler than previously thought.
The upshot: You may not get lung cancer from the machines, but your risk of skin cancer — particularly basal-cell carcinoma — could be significantly higher. In children, the impact may likely be even worse.
Columbia University’s David Brenner says that this effect of concentrating energy on the skin means that the level of radiation delivered is actually 20 times higher than official estimates. Brenner helped to write the original guidelines for using these scanners in 2002, and says now that he did so only with the intention and understanding that the scanners were not going to be put into heavy use nationwide.
Concerns over these scanners are becoming more and more common. The lawsuits over the invasion of privacy caused by such scanners are already under way, as the semi-naked images produced by the scanners lend themselves to ogling and worse.
Others have suggested that the scanners are ineffective — Israel doesn’t use them because it says they are easily fooled. And another doctor has raised additional medical concerns by suggesting that the type of radiation used by the scanners can “rip apart your DNA.”
Meanwhile, expansion of the scanners continues. Assume the position.
— Christopher Null is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.
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