Lingering questions on the safety of backscatters have
forced the TSA to commission an independent study.
Following months of congressional pressure, the
Transportation Security Administration has agreed to contract with the National
Academy of Sciences to study the health effects of the agency's X-ray body
scanners. But it is unclear if the academy will conduct its own tests of the
scanners or merely review previous studies.
The machines, known as backscatters, were installed in
airports nationwide after the failed underwear bombing on Christmas Day 2009 to
screen passengers for explosives and other nonmetallic weapons. But they have
been criticized by
some prominent scientists because they expose the public to a small amount of
ionizing radiation, a form of energy that can cause cancer.
The scanners were the subject of a 2011 ProPublica series,
which found that the TSA hadglossed
over the small cancer risk posed by even low doses of radiation. The
stories also showed that the United States was almost
alone in the world in X-raying passengers and that the Food and Drug
Administration had gone against
its own advisory panel, which recommended the agency set a federal safety
standard for security X-rays.
The TSA maintains that the backscatters are safe and that
they emit a low dose of X-rays equivalent to the radiation a passenger would
receive in two minutes of flying at typical cruising altitude.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine ,
the top Republican on the Senate homeland security committee, introduced a bill
mandating such a test earlier this year.
"I am pleased that at long last the Transportation
Security Administration has heeded my call to commission an independent
examination into the possible health risks travelers and TSA employees may face
during airport screenings," she said in a statement Monday night.
According to a brief contract
notice posted on a government procurement website, the National
Academy of Sciences will convene a committee to review previous studies to
determine if the dose from the scanners complies with existing health and
safety standards and to evaluate the TSA's methods for testing and maintaining
the machines.
Collins' office said the language in the contract notice
wasn't final and that the study would be consistent with the senator's calls
for an independent investigation. TSA spokesman David Castelveter added,
"Administrator [John] Pistole has made a commitment to conduct the study
and TSA is following through on that commitment."
Still, it's unclear how much the study that the TSA is
proposing will add to what's known about the machines, mainly because it's not
known if the National Academy of Sciences will conduct new tests or confine
itself to examining previous studies. In the past, TSA has contracted with the
Food and Drug Administration, the
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and the
Army Public Health Command to test the scanners. All three studies
found the radiation was in line with a voluntary standard set by an industry
panel that included FDA scientists.
A 2012
study by the Department of Homeland Security's independent watchdog
supported the findings but based its report on previous tests performed by the
TSA and the other groups.
This fall, the TSA began replacing the
X-ray body scanners with millimeter-wave machines—a technology radiation
experts consider safer—at most of its biggest airports. The TSA said the move
was done to speed up lines and that the X-ray scanners would eventually be
redeployed at smaller airports.
Europe has prohibited the X-ray scanners while Israel , which
is influential in the security world, has recently begun testing
them.
The TSA study will not address privacy, cultural, or legal
concerns that have been raised by the scans, the contract notice said.
This story first appeared on the ProPublicawebsite.
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