To the relief of people who enjoy taking advantage of cheap airplane tickets and cheap vacation packages, new tests of the full body scanners being used at airports found that the radiation being emitted was within acceptable levels.
Full body scanners have been deployed at dozens of U.S. airports to deter attacks on U.S. planes which have continued to be a primary target of al Qaeda militants.
The latest reports confirm previous testing and show that every backscatter unit currently used for passenger screening in U.S. airports is operating well within applicable national safety standards, according to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
Currently 78 U.S. airports have deployed 486 full body scanners, of which 247 are backscatter machines which expose a traveler to about 0.0025 millirem of radiation when being scanned.
The scanners are designed to not be able to produce more than 0.005 millirem per scan. A chest X-ray exposes the patient to 10 millirem of radiation. The maximum recommended exposure to man-made radiation is 100 millirem per year.
TSA increased the deployment of full body scanners to detect explosives in response to a Nigerian mans failed attempt to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear on a flight to Detroit from Amsterdam on Christmas day 2009.
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