Think that there's not enough radiation from an airport X-ray to worry about?
You may want to reconsider that assumption.
From a letter to Dr. John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology: “Dear Dr. Holdren: We, a number of University of California, San Francisco faculty are writing- see attached memo- to call your attention to our concerns about the serious potential health risks of the recently adopted whole body back scatter X-ray airport security scanners...
“Dr. Sedat (one of the signatories) is Professor Emeritus in Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, with expertise in imaging... The other cosigners include Dr. Marc Shuman, an internationally well known and respected cancer expert and UCSF professor, as well as Drs. David Agard and Robert Stroud, who are UCSF Professors, X-ray crystallographers, imaging experts and NAS members...
“We are writing to call your attention to serious concerns about the potential health risks
of the recently adopted whole body backscatter X-ray airport security scanners. This is
an urgent situation as these X-ray scanners are rapidly being implemented as a primary
screening step for all air travel passengers.
“Our overriding concern is the extent to which the safety of this scanning device has
been adequately demonstrated. This can only be determined by a meeting of an
impartial panel of experts that would include medical physicists and radiation biologists
at which all of the available relevant data is reviewed.
“An important consideration is that a large fraction of the population will be subject to
the new X-ray scanners and be at potential risk, as discussed below. This raises a
number of ‘red flags’...”