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A lot of things are cancer machines. Including our earth and solar system. I certainly hope they continue to test these devices and analyze the risks, but I'm not feeling too scared by things like this:

The UK Health Protection Agency has completed an analysis of the X-ray dose from Backscatter scanners and has written that the dose is extremely low and "about the same as people receive from background radiation in an hour".

Flying itself exposes you to significant levels of radiation in any case (compared to being on the ground). They even have to reroute flights due to it sometimes.

Dr Robert J. Barish, an expert in aviation related radiation, even claims the average minute spent in flight exposes you to the same level of radiation as a single full body scan. Given the different types of scan available, though, this strikes me as only a vague estimation at best.



So you're saying with these scanners we're now going to get twice as much radiation? Which side are you arguing for? :)


No, he's saying it's insignificant.

1 body scan = 1 hour normally = 1 minute aboard a flight

By comparison, last time I got a real x-ray the x-ray tech told me the radiation was about equivalent to a cross country (~5 hour) flight.




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