Tuesday, November 15, 2011

EU bans backscatter scanning machines

  Regardless of research indicating otherwise, the TSA insists on using the backscatter x ray technology that may cause cancer. Thus the EU has banned their use in Europe.

As a ProPublica/PBS NewsHour investigation detailed earlier this month, X-ray body scanners use ionizing radiation, a form of energy that has been shown to damage DNA and cause cancer. Although the amount of radiation is extremely low, equivalent to the radiation a person would receive in a few minutes of flying, several research studies have concluded that a small number of cancer cases would result from scanning hundreds of millions of passengers a year. 
European countries will be allowed to use an alternative body scanner, on that relies on radio frequency waves, which have not been linked to cancer. The TSA has also deployed hundreds of those machines – known as millimeter-wave scanners – in U.S. airports. But unlike Europe, it has decided to deploy both types of scanners.

  We've written extensively about the suspected hazards of the backscatter machines, which are now being deployed in the streets of this nation, as this picture depicts.
FYI, this is what a backscatter scanner looks like:

This is what a tech millimeter looks like:

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