Thursday, May 26, 2011

The Radiation Retest Results are In: Scanners Operating Safely

Remember how we told you in this post that there had been some errors in our reports and we were going to retest all of our AIT units to ensure they were screening at safe levels? Well, we’re done, and everything came back just fine. You can see all the reports here just as we promised. You can read a recent Reuters article on the subject and while you’re reading up on the subject, be sure to take a look at an article from the Archives of Internal Medicine, co-authored by a UCSF scientist concluding that there is no significant threat of radiation from the scans.

To put things in perspective, here are some sources of radiation you may not have been aware of: 

  • One year of naturally occurring background radiation: 300 millirem 
  • Annual recommended limit to the public of radiation from man-made sources: 100 millirem
  • Chest X-ray: 10 millirem 
  • Flight from New York to Los Angeles: 4 millirem 
  • One day of natural background: approximately 1 millirem (corrected 3/16/11 20:56)
  • Drinking three glasses of water a day for a year: 0.045 millirem
  • One backscatter X-ray scan: Approximately 0.005 millirem 
    Blogger Bob
    TSA Blog Team

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