[ RadSafe ] Is it a privacy or radiation issue?

[Mark Ramsay]

This is of course interesting - if you like, we need 'security
detriment' as a new ICRP term to look specifically at the benefit /
detriment from using x-rays in security, much in the same way that
occupational and medical exposure is dealt with.

That would also get over the slightly unusual justification argument
when looking at the benefit to a single person who has had a scan from a
security system.

Take a flight with 299 passengers.

Person 1 gets a scan - benefit to person 1 = zero

Benefit to persons 2 - 299 = positive (i.e. person 1 not holding
anything that could cause harm to flight).

Persons 2-299 then have scans - each person's personal benefit from the
scan is zero. However, person 1 has just received benefit from all those
other exposures.

The above is rather poorly written, but I think you get my drift. The
basis is not totally alien to current ICRP in that medical exposure can
be seen as a benefit to a person and to wider society. However, I the
connection between 299 passengers is much stronger than thinking about
society in general.

Mark

www.ionactive.co.uk

 

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Khalid A.
Sent: 25 November 2010 08:28
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Is it a privacy or radiation issue?

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
>
>
>
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