Our collective idiocy in a nutshell (with said nutshell to be fondled by your friendly neighborhood TSA Agent):
Peter Rez, a physics professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, did his own calculations and found the exposure to be about one-fiftieth to one-hundredth the amount of a standard chest X-ray. He calculated the risk of getting cancer from a single scan at about 1 in 30 million, “which puts it somewhat less than being killed by being struck by lightning in any one year,” he told me.
While the risk of getting a fatal cancer from the screening is minuscule, it’s about equal to the probability that an airplane will get blown up by a terrorist, he added. “So my view is there is not a case to be made for deploying them to prevent such a low probability event.”
X-ray the awesome!
November 18, 2010 at 3:05 pm
I’m not worried about the xray exposure. I’m just looking forward to the inevitable, inevitable day when 250,000 naked people xray jpgs (likely sorted by cup size and penis length) are uploaded to bittorrent. What’s that you say, the photos are deleted right away? I can just imagine when the TSA commissioned these machines, they decided that when the terrorism jury trial rolls around, the prosecution will be happy to say “of course we don’t have that xray scan showing the bomb, it was deleted!” Yeah, right.
November 18, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Maybe they should have had Diebold design them…
November 18, 2010 at 3:55 pm
The mistake you make, Owen, is assuming that there will be a terrorism jury trial.
November 18, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Heh.
November 18, 2010 at 4:24 pm
[...] Via The Poor Man Institute, I learn that an Evil Fiziks Type has calculated the odds of getting cancer from a Pr0notron 3000 scan, and they are about equal to the odds of dying in a terrorist attack. Both deaths are inflicted as part of campaigns of fear and manipulation, but the cancer is slower and more painful. Also, passengers can jump on top of a terrorist trying to explode in his pants. * You can’t jump on top of a tumor. Well, you could, but it won’t help much. [...]
November 18, 2010 at 5:56 pm
lol thanks !!!
November 18, 2010 at 7:32 pm
first thank you
im accepted risk is good point he said
November 18, 2010 at 7:34 pm
i will not forget 100/100
passengers can jump on top of a terrorist trying to explode in his pants
so is normal to say that
November 19, 2010 at 8:05 am
Look Arizona State does not impress. Moreover as a physics prof that doesn’t make him ipso facto a radiation biology or radiation bichemistry expert. Now perhaps the dosage in terms of photons is as he says. But what is the energy of these photons? Does he not know that, yes although harder x-rays do more damage WHEN ABSORBED, their mass absorption coefficient is also much less than longer x-rays? AND that soft x-rays still generate hydroxyl radicals and break DNA?
The comparitive risk has to be weighted not just be the dose but also by the mass absorption.
November 19, 2010 at 8:29 am
Dude, don’t go getting all sciencey on us. You’ll muck up the snark value.
November 19, 2010 at 8:36 am
secondharmonic: yeah, whatever, that risk estimate is a lower bound. It could (probably is) higher.
But if the lower bound risk is still higher than the risk of dying in an airborne terror incident, then it doesn’t make sense to do the x-rays.
Increasing the risk estimate from the x-rays just makes the case stronger, but the problem is that those making the decisions are impervious to actual FACTS. So unless people are dropping like flies ten steps out of the scanner, the pornification will continue.
NOW, as an added bonus, here’s something you can do before going through the body scanner: rub Zinc oxide ointment (baby rash cream) on yourself, in “interesting” patterns.
The Zinc will backscatter x-rays much more than flesh, so you can write “FU TSA” and it should show up on the scanner (but not on a patdown!) Guns, knives, bombs, radiation symbols, copyright symbols, clickwrap EULAs, penis extenders, Windows BSODs, use your imagination!
November 19, 2010 at 10:03 am
OK, except why do I get the feeling that if I did write FU TSA on my chest, say, I would be totes asking for ‘enhanced interrogation’?; I mean of course, without actually vocally “asking”.
November 19, 2010 at 5:19 pm
secondharmonic-
You are correct that physics professors are not automatically experts on radiation hazards. (I should know, because I’m a physics professor and I don’t know shit about radiation hazards.) However, this guy has a paper that has been accepted in a peer-reviewed journal on radiation dosimetry. Now, that certainly doesn’t guarantee that his analysis is correct (God knows there’s crap out there in peer-reviewed journals) but it’s at least plausible that he has some insights here. He isn’t just some random physicist spouting off (like me).
November 20, 2010 at 10:01 am
So how would rather die, Mr. Smart Guy Fancypants? After suffering for years with cancer, or quickly in a giant ball of Terror Flame?
Because those are your only choices.
November 22, 2010 at 8:08 am
You mean like Albus Dumbledore?
November 20, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Posit 911 as a vast explosion emitting much radiation. (That much is true.) Place what passes for representative government between 911 and now. See how an expanding cone of stupidity grows ever larger as the years progress.
Google images offers this as an example of Terror Flame:
http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/55817424.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=77BFBA49EF878921F7C3FC3F69D929FD3D6E8E24F8AD364C01D476BB7B10EED222024E6DB05D1E1C7497451F39BA9143
November 22, 2010 at 6:30 am
He calculated the risk of getting cancer from a single scan at about 1 in 30 million,
Yeah, but who gets only one scan in a lifetime? It’s the cumulative exposure over a lifetime that’ll get you. Especially when you’re x-raying kids.
November 24, 2010 at 11:15 am
Yeah, but his point is that even if you only get scanned once (which as you say is unlikely), the risk of getting teh cancer from that one scan is at least as great as your odds of dying in a terrorist escapade aboard your flight, and it doesn’t make sense (from a risk-management perspective) to have even a single scan done.
November 22, 2010 at 5:20 pm
On scans & pat-downs, as this string seems to be discussing, need to be stopped now. Why? Cause, if we let these things slide then what will they force on us next time? And, there will be a next time!
November 23, 2010 at 8:54 am
You must all carry a secret code-identification GPS buttplug at all times. Even if you shit it out, you must retrieve it and reinsert it. Or else you are a terrorist.
November 26, 2010 at 10:27 am
How deep the X-rays penetrate gives you a hint as to what tissue is being potentially damaged by exposure to them. These are “back scatter” X-ray machines, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be some X-rays that are powerful enough to do some significant penetration, especially once we all quit bitching about it and they decide they need to turn up the settings in order to get more detailed images.
So, all you guys out there who carry your gonads in little thin skin sacks are at greater risk than those of us who keep ours inside our bodies. You know, depth of penetration and all that. I thought you’d want to know.
November 27, 2010 at 10:08 am
That’s just the thing. I suppose it it auperduper secret what wavelength range they are employing? Moreover, at least for some even soft xrays, the cross section for electronic Raman is pretty high, comparable to back scatter itself, and so even if it is counted as a scattering event, not a net absorption, it still excites the molecules. Maybe enough to split them.
November 27, 2010 at 10:08 am
“is superduper secret”.