[ RadSafe ] Is it a privacy or radiation issue?

[Khalid A.]

The issue has two major concerns; health physics and civil right. I am not
going to comment on the 2ed one (i. e., the civil right) as it is
dramatically varying between states, and it is absolutely based on
constitutional or legal aspects and not scientific facts. It is obvious that
the radiation dose received by passengers from these scanners is very low
and as it is stated in one of the threads mails, it is less than the cosmic
rays from flying at 10,000 m.

It seems that we lose to follow our health physics way of judgment which the
risk balance (i.e., benefit cost balance). People tend to expose to X-rays
or even to much higher dose such as CT scans because of the medical
benefits. Accordingly, I suggest that security benefits compared to
radiation risk (having ALARA in mind) is the guiding conclusion to tackle
the fist point of the two concerns.

Furthermore, I would like to see regulation (operation and design) that
prevent public, including operators from such practice. I am not with or
against but certainly will adopt the conclusion of such study.


Best regards

Khalid A. Aleissa,
P. O. Box 6086
Riyadh 11442
Saudi Arabia
Office +966-1-481-3617         Fax +966-1-2810983 or +966-1-481-3887



On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 7:25 AM, Ahmad Al-Ani <ahmadalanimail at yahoo.com>wrote:

> Many radiation experts naively think that scaring people of radiation is
> the way to protect them from the associated risk. But time proved that this
> approach created an unnecessary radio-phobia within the majority of people,
> and complete apathy within the authorities when there is actual risk.
>
> I believe this whole uproar about airport scanners is not about radiation
> exposure, rather about privacy and civil rights. And the advocates of those
> issues have good experience in riding any train that will take them to their
> objectives.
>
> This time, they took the radiation train, and many of us radiation experts
> subsidized their tickets, for lack of educating the public, and not engaging
> with the manufacturers and users of those scanners early on in the process.
>
> According to Johns Hopkins Report below, the effective dose per scan is
> less than 0.05 micro Sv, the same dose an airline passenger at 10,000 m
> altitude get in 3 minutes from cosmic rays.
>
> http://www.tsa.gov/assets/pdf/jh_apl_v2.pdf
>
> Ahmad Al-Ani
> Radiation Physicist
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> You are currently subscribed to the RadSafe mailing list
>
> Before posting a message to RadSafe be sure to have read and understood the
> RadSafe rules. These can be found at:
> http://health.phys.iit.edu/radsaferules.html
>
> For information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe and other settings
> visit: http://health.phys.iit.edu
>