Travel much? Pregnant much? Undergo cancer treatment much? Are you a baby? Here’s a great idea. Go to the airport. Expose yourself to uncertain amounts of radiation delivered by machines in questionable repair administered by untrained radiation technologists. Remember to smile with relief when they assure you that the amount of radiation you’re about to receive is negligible. (Negligible by what standards?) It might be an opportune moment to check if there’s any change to that dark spot your last CT scan and series of x-rays showed. Don’t be unduly alarmed if it’s enlarged. It’s either cancer or change in your pocket.
Idaho Observer by Amy Worthington, Sep 2003 (Note the date.)
Airport Travelers To Get
Ionizing X-Ray Radiation
Security To Die For
How Americans Will Be Nuked To Naked
By Amy Worthington
The Idaho Observer
9-9-3According to a recent Zogby poll, traveling Americans approve long lines and gridlock at airport passenger screening points. The majority polled appreciate delays and hassles of flying today’s suspicious skies and feel safer because the federal Transportation Security Agency (TSA) is in charge of airport screening.1 These happy line campers should be delighted to learn about TSA’s grossly invasive new security plans. The good times have just begun.
TSA Security Laboratory Director Susan Hallowell recently announced the agency’s intent to use back-scatter X-ray machines for passenger surveillance. These hugely expensive, closet-sized zappers can find the plastic bombs hidden in grandma’s underpants, while delivering a smacking dose of ionizing radiation to her breasts and thyroid gland.
Snooper X-rays penetrate a few centimeters into the flesh and reflect off the skin to form a naked body image for TSA security personnel to inspect. These machines are already being field tested at several U.S. airports, including JFK, LAX and Orlando.2
The most lucrative growth industry of our times is the “terror” business. Legions of companies lusting for government contracts are churning out police state technology at a frantic pace. In the last 17 months, TSA has received over 30,000 proposals for Big Brother technology and equipment needed to keep 280 million citizen-suspects under careful surveillance from the inside out.3
Big winners include companies whose equipment is assisting TSA’s Advanced Technology Checkpoint Project to nudify airline passengers.4 Digital Security Systems of Miami is promoting its ConPass Security Body Scanner, which can perform virtual cavity searches using deeply penetrating X-radiation. Company engineer Thomas Wiggins says the scanner can detect explosives hidden inside bodies or surgically implanted under flabby folds of skin. Wiggins admits that before 9-11, “The thought of using an X-ray system would have been like ordering our own death sentence.” Now Wiggins claims that the ConPass scanner “could scan a pregnant woman around 200 times without a health risk.”5
Virtually all passengers and airline crews who pass through airport screening checkpoints in the U.S. may soon be forced to submit to compulsory, whole-body X-ray exposure. Some fliers could be “fried” several times in one day. Frequent fliers could get hit hundreds of times each year. Pregnant women, infants, the chronically ill and immune suppressed would get the rays. Grateful herds of traveling livestock, prodded by TSA drovers through federally-funded “nuke chutes,” are expected to believe Hollowell’s scientifically unsupported assertion that ionizing radiation delivered via backscatter will be “about the same as sunshine.”6
Officials must naturally defend compulsory passenger X-rays as harmless. But they are signing no guarantees because ionizing radiation in the X-ray spectrum damages and mutates both chromosomal DNA and structural proteins in human cells.7 If this damage is not repaired, it can lead to cancer.8 New research shows that even very low doses of X-ray can delay or prevent cellular repair of damaged DNA, raising questions about the safety of routine medical X-rays.9 Unborn babies can become grotesquely disfigured if their mothers are irradiated during pregnancy.10 Heavily X- rayed persons of childbearing age can sustain chromosomal damage, endangering offspring.11 Radiation damage is cumulative and each successive dose builds upon the cellular mutation caused by the last.12 It can take years for radiation damage to manifest pathology.
A leading U.S. expert on the biological effects of X-radiation is Dr. John Gofman, Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Gofman’s exhaustive research leads him to conclude that there is NO SAFE DOSE-LEVEL of ionizing radiation.13 His studies indicate that radiation from medical diagnostics and treatment is a causal co-factor in 50 percent of America’s cancers and 60 percent of our ischemic (blood flow blockage) heart disease.14 He stresses that the frequency with which Americans are medically X-rayed “makes for a significant radiological impact.”15
This highly credentialed nuclear physicist states: “The fact, that X-ray doses are so seldom measured, reflects the false assumption that doses do not matter…[but] they do matter enormously. And each bit of additional dose matters, because any X-ray photon may be the one which sets in motion the high-speed, high energy electron which causes a carcinogenic or atherogenic [smooth muscle] mutation. Such mutations rarely disappear. The higher their accumulated number in a population, the higher will be the population’s mortality rates from radiation-induced cancer and ischemic heart disease.”16
A report in the British medical journal Lancet noted that after breast mammograms were introduced in 1983, the incidence of ductal carcinoma (12 percent of breast cancer) increased by 328 percent, of which 200 percent was due to the use of mammography itself.17 A Lawrence Berkeley National Lab study has demonstrated that breast tissue is extremely susceptible to radiation-induced cancer,18 confirming warnings by numerous experts that mammograms can initiate the very cancers they may later identify.19 Dr. Gofman believes that medical radiation is a co-factor in 75 percent of breast cancer cases.20 So why would girls and women want their breast tissues irradiated every time they take a commercial flight?
Cancer is number two cause of death in the U.S. behind heart disease. The more marathon walks and cookie eating contests we sponsor to fund the “war” on cancer, the more cancer we get. “America isn’t winning the war on cancer after all,” the Wall Street Journal recently reported.21 The National Cancer Institute admits that America’s cancer rates in almost every category are rising steadily.22 Airline pilots and cabin crews suffer a significant incidence of leukemia, skin and breast cancer due to chromosomal damage from ionizing cosmic radiation encountered during years of flying at high altitudes.23
Dr. Gofman’s research reveals a dose-response relationship between medical X-rays and fatal heart disease, the number one killer of Americans. He found that X-radiation is a powerful atherogen, causing mutations in smooth muscle cells of coronary arteries. These radiation damaged cells are unable to process lipoproteins correctly, resulting in atherosclerotic plaques and mini tumors in the arteries.24 Radiation used to treat breast cancer can badly damage the heart.25
As Dr. Gofman and other experts argue for improved diagnostic techniques and equipment to reduce medically necessary X-ray exposure, TSA gears up to impose frivolous, nonmusical exposure, even though conventional airline security measures have proven adequate since 9/11. To date, the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association have been silent about TSA’s sinister plan to deliver unlimited doses of carcinogenic, mutagenic, heart damaging radiation to the flying public. No health studies are planned to gauge short and long-term effects of the radiation TSA will deliver to inspect our innards.
Big Brother’s zap madness is a predictable result of America’s post 9-11 security hysteria. But here’s the irony: Dr. Gofman says X- radiation has the effect of “grenades and small bombs” on human cells.26 If we permit TSA to continually “bomb” our DNA in the name of security, what have we accomplished?
Besides ionizing beams, the feds are also testing other types of surveillance radiation. A flubbed holographic scanner developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory allows officials to strip search humans with ultra-high frequency radio waves.27 Millivision of Amherst, Mass., has engineered a millimeter wave scanner using radio frequencies 1,000 times higher than those of an FM broadcast.28 These waves pass through clothing, packaging and building materials. Ultra-high radio frequencies include radar, a spectrum of radiation known since WWII to cause cancer and neurological disability in humans.29 Microwave frequencies are documented by recent studies on cell/cordless phone radiation to be carcinogenic and teratogenic (causing abnormal embryonic development).30
An example of unexpected health repercussions caused by high frequency radiation used on humans is fetal ultrasound technology. Ultrasound equipment bombards a fetus for up to one hour with megahertz radiation. This radiation, which cycles millions of time per second, can cause mutation and bleeding in the intestinal cells of rodents.31 Swedish scientists say routine ultrasound scanning of pregnant women may be causing subtle brain damage in unborn babies.32 Approximately half of all pregnancies in the U.S. result in prenatal or postnatal death, or an otherwise less than healthy baby.33 Many wonder if routine exposure of America’s fragile unborn to megahertz radiation might be a factor, among others, of this shocking national statistic. Is fetal ultrasound exposure playing some part in the national epidemic of delayed development in infants, plus learning and behavior difficulties suffered by millions of our school children? Exposing the unborn to ionizing X-radiation at airport checkpoints is an even more dangerous game of roulette.
Fedgov’s planned use of health damaging radiation on the traveling public seems especially tragic and abusive to those of us convinced that the War on Terror is a giant con job. Massive evidence indicates that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were intentionally staged to justify increased power over and surveillance of Americans.34 Key NORAD and other military officials had to be in on the ruse.35 President Bush ambushed himself when he openly lied about what he knew and when he knew it on the day the Twin Towers went down.36. He has been caught lying about so many issues that Homeland Security should issue a red alert every time he is about to move his lips. The Bush administration’s ongoing cover-up of 9/11 is so blatant that even Bush’s own investigatory commission has expressed outrage at his efforts to block its requests for vital information and resources.37
Meantime, TSA claims concern that Americans may feel humiliated at being viewed naked by X-ray screeners. But whatever airport nuke-nazis see through our clothing is nothing that the undertaker won’t see after excessive, state-mandated radiation puts us “down” for good. Mandatory airport surveillance radiation delivered to an already grossly ill population would afford our financially strapped government an ingenious “final solution” to numerous political and economic problems. No muss, no fuss, this cull in the Cuckoos’ nest. Each useless eater lines up for his deferred-lethal dose. The weak will die soonest, the strong will eventually become the weak–no questions asked and nothing proven. It’s hard for a Prozac nation to imagine such sinister motives behind the terror industry, but the documented truth is, our amoral leadership has been brazenly murdering Americans for decades.38 Genocide specialists have been especially fond of unleashing various forms of deadly radiation on the unwitting masses, as documented by the federal Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.39 Now here we go again!
RapiScan appears to be the winner in the airport human scanner supply biz. The link is to their FAQs page.
This thing can not scan for “explosives, illegal chemicals, weapons, and special nuclear material containers” nor is it capable of “cavity searches” (ahem), so the question may be what purpose, related to flight safety, is served by using these machines at all?
(Incidentally, entry level costs for these machines is $100,000 US per.)
“”If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?” – Will Rogers (1879-1935)
Forget scanners and cavity probes. Just have everybody drop their drawers so the checker and fellow passengers in line can all check to see if anyone is wearing underwear with odd bulges like this…
Reportedly this is a photograph of the actual underwear worn by Umar Farouk “Fiery Pants” Abdulmutallab which raises two important security questions. 1) Do all terrorists wear girlie underwear? and 2) What was it that happened again? His underwear looks to be in awfully good shape, all things we’ve been told considered, but then I’ve had teenaged sons.
of my mother telling me to always clean underwear, in case I ever tried to blow up an airplane … err … I mean … was ever in a car accident.
We need to have critical regulation of all forms of EM radiation – enormous sums of money are riding on the status quo of FCC rules, which state: only thermal-effect radiation can be measured / nobody cares. Cell phones & tech companies could lose billions over this.
The social control implications of all of this are staggering… Woodpecker signal & MKULTRA
–
Hongpong.com
radiation or from a terrorist act.
Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.
on the fact that you will not die from any terrorist act. The odds are negligible to minus zero. The radiation part… hmmm… what with all the unregulated individual and collective sources around about these days, I’m not so sure.
… it’ll most likely be from radiation. Now where did I store that information about what kind of foods to eat to prevent death from radiation. I’ll get back on that
Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.
The following remedies if used in the diet 4-6 times a week for 6 months, efficiently remove toxic metals. For prevention of toxic metal buildup, these remedies may be included in the diet periodically.
•Garlic
•Seaweeds or Algin* (a gelatinous derivative of kelp or other seaweed, is available as a nutritional supplement).
•Wheat- or Barley-grass*
•Mung beans (to remove lead)
RADIATION
Effects of radiation can occur from nuclear fallout (strontium 90, cesium 137, iodine 131, etc.), X-rays, microwaves, high-voltage power lines, televisions, video display terminals (including computer monitors), all electric devices, and many other sources that saturate people with radiation, causing free-radical pathology and thereby contributing to aging, cellular distortion, leukemia and other forms of cancer, birth defects, anemia, and other diseases.
Whether radiation is received environmentally, for medical diagnosis, or as radiation therapy, the effects can be countered with the items used to remove toxic metals.
Other useful chlorophyll-rich foods besides the cereal grasses are spirulina, chlorella, and wild blue-green micro-algae. Panax and Siberian ginseng are also effective. Panax is a standard ginseng grown in China, Korea, and the United States and is used for those with deficiencies. Siberian ginseng , its relative, is preferable to panax where no serious weakness exists (all these items are available in health food stores).
Several other common foods help counteract radiation. The glucoside rutin found in buckwheat protects against the effects of radiation. Apples and fresh sunflower seeds contain pectin, which binds radioactive residues and remove them from the body. Lecithin and bentonite clay (very effective) also have this action. The dosage of lecithin is 1 teaspoon daily. Bentonite clay is prepared by adding 4 ounces unboiled water to 1 ounce clay. Let sit for about 8 hours, then stir and drink the clay-infused water once daily. Plenty of other fluids should be taken throughout the day. Other edible clays including French green clay may be substituted for bentonite. It should be noted that radioactive isotopes from nuclear fallout and certain medical treatments can remain radioactive in the body for days, months, or even years, depending on the isotope. Most types of radiations such as microwaves, X-rays, and electromagnetic radiation, however, simply pass through the body, causing various forms of damage in addition to that of free radical formation. Such radiation sometimes causes radiomimetic products to form in the body; though not radioactive, they mimic radioactive substances, causing similar problems. Fortunately, the above remedies also denature radiomimetic products.
Essential fatty acids are useful to initiate cell renewal after a radiation burn. One tablespoon daily of fresh flax oil supplies these fatty acids as well as vitamin A, minerals, lecithin, and other vital nutrients. Aloe vera juices or gels are useful for skin burns. AN excellent external treatment in every form of radiation exposure is a bath of sea salt and baking soda. This method is used by some radioactive isotope specialists to reduce their own bodily radiation. Add 1 pound of both seas salt and baking soda to a warm bathe, and soak for 20 minutes; rinse with cool water. Repeat three times a week for one month in cases of serious exposure. Another decontamination procedure is clay baths; or add clay to salt/soda baths for added effectiveness. Use 1 cup bentonite or other clay and follow the above bathe directions.
People regularly exposed to elevated levels of radiation can use one or more of the above remedies daily to prevent side effects. However, prudence is urged. We know several Americans who became quite ill for weeks after the Chenobyl catastrophe in the Soviet Union – not from radiation, but from eating massive amounts of miso, seaweeds, and various supplements in an attempt to shield themselves from it. For specific incidences of contamination, recommended dosages of foods such as apples, miso, seaweeds, cereal grasses, micro-algae, sunflower seeds, and buckwheat can be the upper limits normally used in meals or as supplements. One or two remedies may be taken twice daily for three days to treat minor exposures (e.g., one X-ray diagnosis); or continue the remdies for as long as several weeks to counteract greater contamination.
Also ensure adequate intake of Vitamin B12 – it keeps cellular structures free of distortions that occur from cancer, aging, injuries, or degenerative diseases.
Eat a mostly legumes, grain and vegetable diet according to your current balance/imbalance.
Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.
First, the airplane flight itself will expose you to more radiation than the backscatter device. In fact, it will expose you to about 50x – 100x more radiation, as people exposed to backscatter X-ray devices absorb less than 0.01 mrem while a 5-hour flight will typically find you absorbing about 1 mrem extra. This is the equivalent of two chest X-rays.
This is not new research, it is several decades old. That being said, it is only slightly controversial and much of the research relies upon the assumption of a linear scale for damages from radiation. There are some who believe that effects are nonlinear at very low doses, diminishing the effects of such doses (i.e. that there is an effective threshold that radiation energy has to cross before it does any damage). I don’t know which is right, but the interpretation that any level of radiation is harmful relies upon the assumption of a particular model, which may be incorrect and which is disputed by some professional societies.
They already are, to the equivalent of a chest X-ray.
The incidence of new cases of cancer and the death rate from cancer are both declining. Not as fast as I’d like, but they’re going down.
I think they mean extremelyhigh frequencies. Ultra-high frequencies are UHF, used by old TVs… Regardless, no, radar is not known to cause cancer and neurological disability. Microwave frequency radiation, when absorbed in high quantities, can burn skin and cause damage to the eyes. It is not an ionizing radiation. There are still people actively looking into possible biological effects of radar and similar parts of the spectrum, but the evidence is pretty sketchy right now. Radiation is damaging primarily at the ultraviolet and higher frequencies, where it can interact with DNA and cellular structures.
By some studies, and they are in the minority. The weight of evidence is still against cell phones causing cancer. Plus, aren’t we talking about X-rays here? Why are microwaves and radar being brought up? They’re on the other side of the spectrum. If they’re so dangerous, then god help us when we are struck by visible light or infrared (heat).
Ultrasound does not utilize electromagnetic radiation. It’s in the name… SOUND. Ultrasound uses high-frequency mechanical vibrations to visualize internal organs and fetuses. That is what may cause fetal brain damage (if it does–mistaking sound for light is such a huge mistake that I’d be very suspicious of anything this article says).
Ok, that’s it.
especially on ultrasound.
The cell phone/brain cancer link is, though, still up for grabs. Some forms of brain cancer are going up – the glioma Ted Kennedy had, particularly, but that’s not an airport scanner issue, and may not be related to adult cell phone use.
Paging Obama: no more global photo ops – start working on creating jobs at home, now !
So, wouldn’t the glioma develop in his right hemisphere, the closest one to the source, since he would have had to hold the cell phone to his right ear?
because of his cell phone. I just meant that the type of brain cancer he had is the one whose numbers have increased.
Just as a “huh”- Kennedy seemed to have used both sides of his head for the conventional phone, unless one of the photos was a reversal – don’t know how that played out later with a cell.
here
and here
I would never attempt to make that level of 1-1 connection. Genetics has a lot to do with glioma too. Apologies if I was unclear.
Paging Obama: no more global photo ops – start working on creating jobs at home, now !
Again, note this article was dated 2003. I don’t know how much or if the technology has improved nor did I go to any of the cited sources for confirmations.
“”If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?” – Will Rogers (1879-1935)
The New American
also see:
New scanners break child porn laws
described the scanner photos as “ghost porn.” LOL.
… pancakes made with buckwheat flour, when travelling to and from the USA.
The glucoside rutin found in buckwheat protects against the effects of radiation. Apples and fresh sunflower seeds contain pectin, which binds radioactive residues and remove them from the body
Apparently, as airports around the world are making wider use of full-body scanners in an attempt to improve security, a debate is stirring about the health risks of exposing millions of people to small doses of radiation, which some experts say could contribute to a few additional cancer deaths a year.
Of particular concern are the “backscatter scanners” being installed in the U.S. and being considered for Britain.
… Full-body scanners already in some airports use a different type of technology called “millimetre wave,” which uses less powerful, non-ionizing radiation that does not pose the same hazards.
The situation is different with the backscatter machines being installed in U.S. airports, which use radiation-emitting X-rays to create a three-dimensional image of a person’s body that would detect hidden objects, such as weapons or explosives.
The scanner delivers a small fraction of the dose of ionizing radiation found in a dental X-ray — an amount so low that, on its own, it’s unlikely to raise an individual’s risk of cancer, said David Brenner, a radiation biophysicist who co-wrote a U.S. government report on backscatter machines.
Yet if millions or tens of millions of passengers a year were scanned at airports, the population-wide chances of developing cancer would be higher.Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear physicist at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Maryland, has estimated that if a billion passengers were screened with a backscatter scanner, that would mean 10 additional cancer deaths a year.
Anyway, Brenner said backscatter scanners would become a problem if they were used to screen all air passengers, rather than as a tool targeted at select groups.
Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.
Thanks bunches Adrena.
The sound of crunching apples gives me the willies, however yummy they may be and buckwheat pancakes are not exactly calorie free,but I’ll eat ‘em g*dd*m*t, anyway. This poor bod has absorbed quite enough radiation, thank you very much, without frivolously adding to it just to satisfy weird evil-doers-under-the-bed, government endorsed, fetisists or to increase the bottom line of fear exploiting corporations. And maybe I’ll just pop a few cloves of garlic in advance of the baggage check, so I can breathe heavily on the otherwise unemployable “security” detail, thereby possibly hastening their review of career paths.
“”If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?” – Will Rogers (1879-1935)