As they should...

TSA workers, experts worry about radiation exposure

Despite assurances, some TSA workers don't trust that the agency has fixed the kinds of maintenance and monitoring issues identified by the CDC, said union official Rodriguez.

Because TSA workers at airports in Boston and San Juan were troubled by what they saw as possible cancer clusters among colleagues, the TSA this year requested health hazard evaluations of their work areas to address radiation concerns, CDC records show. The CDC found nothing unusual about the number of cancer cases and determined they were likely unrelated to airport X-ray machines, the reports say.

And a TSA employee at an unidentified airport asked CDC in June to examine concerns about radiation exposures from standing near the new full-body X-ray scanners for hours a day. The CDC said it didn't have authority to do a hazard assessment unless three or more current employees at one location made a joint request, according to a September letter from the CDC to the unnamed worker. The CDC provided the letter to USA TODAY.

Since April 2009, the Army team also has been studying the radiation doses received by TSA workers at six airports, Philadelphia, Baltimore, West Palm Beach, Memphis, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore. The report is not yet final, but Szrom said all the data shows radiation exposure is low — "well below" limits that would require workers to routinely wear radiation monitoring badges.

The backscatter machines have drawn criticism among some scientists and health experts who are concerned about subjecting thousands of travelers to even tiny doses of radiation.

Peter Rez, a physics professor at Arizona State University, also worries about the possibility of higher doses or even radiation burns if a machine malfunctions and the scanning beam stops on one part of the body. Rez, who has reviewed a patent application for the backscatter system, notes that the scanner has a fail-safe system that is supposed to shut down the X-ray beam if there's a problem. "But we all learned this summer that fail-safe systems do fail," Rez said, referring to the mechanical failures that resulted in the massive Gulf oil spill.

Rapiscan Systems, the company that makes the full-body backscatter X-ray scanners used by TSA, did not respond to interview requests.

The new full-body scanners have raised more concerns than the baggage X-ray machines, despite TSA and FDA assurances that they're safe.

David Brenner, director of Columbia University's center for radiological research, questions whether it's good public policy to give millions of people the backscatter scans — even if the health risk is remote.

"The radiation dose is very, very low indeed," Brenner said. "From most individuals' point of view, I don't think one should have much concern about walking through these scanners."

But as millions of scans are performed on large populations of people, Brenner said "you can be reasonably convinced a certain number of people will end up with a cancer from the radiation exposure, despite the fact the risk to the individual is very low." Skin cancer, is the primary risk, he said.

Link:
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2010-12-06-tsa-xray-inside_N.htm