Standing Beside Scanner in Airports Leads to Absorption of More Radiation

A new study looking into the effect of radiation from airport scanners found that people absorb more radiation when they stand beside the scanner than when going through it.

The study was commissioned by the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) and made use of two scanners that were in active use at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and seven other scanners.

The researchers found that the radiation dose received from X-ray scatter airport scanners was equivalent what an average man receives every 1.8 minutes on the ground, which means that he has to go through 22,500 scans in a year in order to reach the standard maximum safe yearly dose determined by the American National Standards Institute and the Health Physics Society.

"This report represents a wholly independent review of the X-ray scatter airport scanners and is the first we know of to look at multiple scanners including those in actual airport use. We think the most important single take-away point for concerned passengers is to keep an appropriate perspective: the effective radiation dose received by a passenger during screening is comparable to what that same passenger will receive in 12 seconds during the flight itself or from two minutes of natural radiation exposure", one of the lead authors of the study, Christopher Cagnon said.

Source: Medindia