Submitted by Curious-Nothing6234 t3_z6ssvh in explainlikeimfive
TTTHD t1_iy310t1 wrote
If you are talking about the full body scanners that you stand in and raise your hands, those are not Xray. Only the things that scan bags are xray and they have shielding tunnels.
pseudopad t1_iy324cy wrote
That's correct. The full body scanners use millimeterwave radiation that is non-ionizing (can't cause DNA damage) and barely gets deeper than your clothes.
The metal detectors don't use radiation at all, they use magnetic fields and detect changes in the field as metal passes through it.
Malkiot t1_iy4b2nw wrote
Technically magnetic fields are also radiation and both scanners / detectors use electromagnetic radiation, albeit of different frequencies.
Mand125 t1_iy4m4i5 wrote
They used to have some backscatter x-ray machines for full body scanning at some airports because federal contracting rules required two sources for scanners.
Since then they’ve been removed because any dose of x-rays is worth avoiding when you have the millimeter wave scanners available.
No-Comparison8472 t1_iy78vlw wrote
Health hazard of EMF radiation is not just a matter of frequency. A laser can burn through the skin yet its frequency is usually a million times lower than the GHz found in these millimeterwave chambers.
As_TheHoursPass t1_iy6hb8q wrote
The US did have full body x-ray machines post-911. The name for them was backscatter. They did cause increased cancer rates, because they were ionizing radiation.
The priority back then was on airplane safety. 911 did some really weird shit to American society, including authorizing a mass indefinite detention and torture system. Back then waterboarding was being debated in civil society as a humane way of extracting information.
Famous intellectual Christopher Hitchens infamously aligned himself with the rightwing neocons and thought that waterboarding wasn't torture and that it wasn't a big deal. He agreed to have himself waterboarded to put his beliefs to the test, and immediately after 1 waterboarding session lasting just seconds he flipped his mind and started calling it torture. He was one of the only people ever to to try it, and it must have changed at least some minds in broader society.
If you weren't around back then you wouldn't really understand. The country lost its marbles entirely. You'd think America was normal prior to Trump, but no it wasn't.
I don't know if they're still in service today, but it's always worth asking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray
Here's the video of Hitchens agreeing to being waterboarded.
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