Federal officials claim radiation risks from the U.S. Transportation Security Administration's new full-body scanners are low, but several scientists are calling on the administration to rethink whether the numbers really add up.
The TSA says the radiation from its security scans amounts to about a thousandth of the amount a patient receives from a standard chest X-ray, or an amount "equivalent to two minutes of flying on an airplane."
But a physics professor at Arizona State University in Tempe not only conducted his own study, finding the radiation exposure 10 times what the TSA estimates, but also argues that the health risks aren't mathematically worth taking.
Prof. Peter Rez explained to MSNBC that the while the risk of getting a fatal cancer from the screening is minuscule, it's about equal to the probability an airplane will get blown up by a terrorist. Either way, the professor argues, dead is dead.
"There is not a case to be made for deploying [the scanners] to prevent such a low probability event," Rez says.
Furthermore, a team of scientists from the University of California San Francisco have written a letter to the White House warning that the scanners present – above and beyond the risks to the general population – "potential serious health risks" to certain segments of society, such as the elderly and the pregnant.
"There is good reason to believe that these scanners will increase the risk of cancer to children and other vulnerable populations," say the cosigners of the letter, which include experts in biochemistry, imaging, X-rays and cancer research. "We are unanimous in believing that the potential health consequences need to be rigorously studied before these scanners are adopted."
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