I couldn't remember seeing many (if any) x-ray scanners in European airports - it's almost always regular metal detector gates.
X-rays do cause cancer and must not be used in airports. Enough using terrorists as an excuse, there are much easier targets - but it's been quiet for a while and hopefully continues that way.
I fly through Schiphol all of the time and I have opted-out without any issues before.
They had me walk around it, and they patted me down US style. The person on duty with a clipboard was asking people why they opted out and I explained to them that I do not feel comfortable that the machines are safe and that cancer runs in my family and I would prefer to not have exposure to ionizing radiation.
I am from The Netherlands and being able to speak in the agents native tongue probably helped as well.
I went through in August, and it was mm wave. Humorously enough, the security guard said, in broken english, "sound, not dangerous like your scanners".
When I flew through Schipol this summer I was indeed on a flight where the scanners were "required".
However, when it was my turn I stopped up and told the guy at the scanner that I wanted to opt-out.
At first he just looked puzzled and said he did not understand what I was saying. After first repeating, and then rephrasing "I do not want to go through those scanners", he told me to talk to his supervisor.
I then approached the metal detector (which was blocked by a mobile barrier) squeezed in between the two huge scanners. The guy on the other side then tried to wave me through the scanners again at which I simply pointed to the metal detector.
After then shouting to him that I wanted to go through there he finally approached me.
He removed the barrier and told me to then take off my shoes before going through (notably not a requirement in the scanners).
This is where it a bothersome experience turned into a really lousy experience.
Just as I passed through the detector when I was passing in between the two active scanners (imagine the radiation there) he came up to me face-to-face, at a really uncomfortably close distance.
He asked me angrily why I didn't want to go through the scanners. Was it privacy issues? Because those were accounted for. So what could I possibly be thinking? It really felt like an interrogation.
I told him I was concerned with the health risks associated with there scanners, and that a group of American academics had signed a letter stating that these scanners weren't actually proven safe.
This is then where it got really bizarre, because at this he said plain out "Oh yeah? What do they know about these machines? What about trusting European scientists instead??". *
At this point I was simply shocked and horrified. I believe I managed to ask him if he actually knew where the machines where from, before he finally just shrugged at me and let me escape from the scanners.
I was later told by another, much nicer guard at another security check (we all actually had to go through two checks within the span of an hour), that I sure had the option to opt-out, but only until the end of this year at which point they would become mandatory for everyone.
Notably, at no point in this security circus was I or any of the other passengers told that we even had the option of opt'ing-out.
And as soon as I was through the metal detector, they closed it up again, so no other passengers might get the idea that they too had the right not to be scanned.
* I do not believe these scanners have been tested for real in Europe or "by European scientists", before perhaps now.
if you read the link you provided, you'd find mentioning of increased leukemia and thyroid cancer in humans and animals as result of such "therapeutic" exposure. And it is understandable because the ionizing radiation like sledgehammer hits varios accidental pieces of the internal cellular machinery. It is normal to see some repair machinery being activated in response, it is also normal that some pieces are just broken so that results in the cancer and other mutations.
Btw, the "ionizing radiation" is a very wide range of frequencies and their effect on the living matter is different (and such aggregate measure as dose/Sv takes only overall absorbed energy into account which provides only very general classification of the potential effects)
The only mention of thyroid cancer in that article was a single study of cobalt-60 exposure (unknown levels).
The point is, everyone here is getting all worked up over uSv exposure, when after they get on the plane, they are exposed to several thousand fold levels of radiation.
you just don't get it, don't you? The exposure amount is just one variable. Just for example of how exposure amount alone is meaningless to determine the outcome - locally deposited ~60Sv (with ~20Sv deposited into healthy tissue) during radiotherapy course is rarely fatal while 5Sv received whole-body during the same period of time would almost always be fatal.
Maybe you don't get it? I'm guessing that's the case since you're using an extreme example.
The point is, the levels of radiation experienced in back-scatter scanners is several thousand fold LESS than that experienced while in flight. Both are total body exposures, although one could argue that the exposure times are different.
Either way the exposure is well below the limits that cause concern, therefore my original point (that low levels of radiation may be beneficial), still stands.
no. Again, you just don't get it. The absorbtion site and effects on it also depends on the type and frequency of the radition. Back-scatter is mostly absorbed by skin while the radiation experinced while in the flight comes in different frequency range (more energetic gamma rays which pass through and backscatter less from the matter, incl. aircraft shell and human body and thus result in more even absorbtion through the body).
Hormesis is valid for exposures of less than 100 mSv.
The airport scanners are in the uSv range.
How is my comment not applicable?
"The Health Physics Society (HPS) reports that a person undergoing a backscatter scan receives approximately 0.05 μSv (or 0.005 mrems) of radiation; American Science and Engineering Inc. reports 0.09 μSv (0.009 mrems)."
Dosage and risk is energy * weighting factor / mass.
It's not accurate to calculate radiation exposure as an average over the whole body when it's consecrated in a small area like the skin. Especially when skin cancer is so prevalent AND deadly.
