Search This Blog

Thursday, June 27, 2013

AAPM Report On Airport Scanners

""Long-term stochastic effects such as cancer risk are assumed to be directly proportional to received dose with no safe threshold. The cancer risk cannot be estimated with any precision, but is likely to be so low as to be indistinguishable from other background risks. The risk to the individual is thought to be close to zero
for a scanned individual, but “at the population level the possible effect cannot be ignored in the
assessment of acceptability of the introduction of the security scanners using x-rays for passenger
screening.” (AAPM quoting their reference 22)

For perspective, we think it important that this potential increase in risk to the population be considered in light of the presumed increase in risk originating from the much greater radiation exposure from the flight itself."

From Report 217.

2 comments:

  1. That's really incredibly little radiation. Is my memory playing tricks, or do medical X-rays produce more? (I know CAT scans produce considerably more, but I mean ordinary X-rays).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Medical x-rays produce more. You have to look at the intent of scanners versus medical. Scanners are trying to image the body's surface to find hard, large objects (knives, guns, etc.) Medical x-rays are trying to image below the body's surface to find anything from bone breaks (hard and large) to tumors (small and soft). The dose from medical x-rays vary widely depending on what one is looking to image. A typical mammogram is around 0.4 mSv as compared to the 11 nSv of the scanner.

    ReplyDelete