{"id":25808,"date":"2011-11-02T13:02:31","date_gmt":"2011-11-02T13:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cryptogon.com\/?p=25808"},"modified":"2011-11-02T13:02:31","modified_gmt":"2011-11-02T13:02:31","slug":"u-s-government-glossed-over-cancer-concerns-as-it-rolled-out-airport-x-ray-scanners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/?p=25808","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/u.s.-government-glossed-over-cancer-concerns-as-it-rolled-out-airport-x-ray\">Pro Publica<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><em>On Sept. 23, 1998, a panel of radiation safety experts gathered at a Hilton hotel in Maryland to evaluate a new device that could detect hidden weapons and contraband. The machine, known as the Secure 1000, beamed X-rays at people to see underneath their clothing.<\/p>\n<p>One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine because it violated a longstanding principle in radiation safety \u2014 that humans shouldn\u2019t be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think this is really a slippery slope,\u201d said Jill Lipoti, who was the director of New Jersey\u2019s radiation protection program. The device was already deployed in prisons; what was next, she and others asked \u2014 courthouses, schools, airports? \u201cI am concerned \u2026 with expanding this type of product for the traveling public,\u201d said another panelist, Stanley Savic, the vice president for safety at a large electronics company. \u201cI think that would take this thing to an entirely different level of public health risk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The machine\u2019s inventor, Steven W. Smith, assured the panelists that it was highly unlikely that the device would see widespread use in the near future. At the time, only 20 machines were in operation in the entire country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe places I think you are not going to see these in the next five years is lower-security facilities, particularly power plants, embassies, courthouses, airports and governments,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI would be extremely surprised in the next five to 10 years if the Secure 1000 is sold to any of these.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Today, the United States has begun marching millions of airline passengers through the X-ray body scanners, parting ways with countries in Europe and elsewhere that have concluded that such widespread use of even low-level radiation poses an unacceptable health risk.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via: Pro Publica: On Sept. 23, 1998, a panel of radiation safety experts gathered at a Hilton hotel in Maryland to evaluate a new device that could detect hidden weapons and contraband. The machine, known as the Secure 1000, beamed X-rays at people to see underneath their clothing. One after another, the experts convened by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,25,10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dictatorship","category-health","category-social-engineering","category-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptogon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}