Heathrow body scanners

[Clarekav]

I'm wondering if anybody knows of a way around going through the body scanners at the airports.
I'm going to London tomorrow and while I think coming in from Ireland might be okay it is going home in week time and going through those scanners that has me worried
especially when they damage DNA as well as humiliate.
Has anyone gone through these things?
Does anyone know of a law or alternative way to pass this security method?

 

[shijing]

Hi Clarekav --

I'm wondering if anybody knows of a way around going through the body scanners at the airports.
I'm going to London tomorrow and while I think coming in from Ireland might be okay it is going home in week time and going through those scanners that has me worried
especially when they damage DNA as well as humiliate.
Has anyone gone through these things?
Does anyone know of a law or alternative way to pass this security method?

I don't have any experience with the full body scanners myself, but I believe that they are being used in Heathrow terminal four only:

http://news.cheapflights.co.uk/2010/02/full-body-scanners-manchester-heathrow-airport-security-privacy-terminal-naked-scanners/

There is a list of the airlines which leave from the various terminals here. As long as they don't install more scanners, this may still be a moot point depending on which terminal you are leaving from. Can you figure it out based on your airline?

 

[Clarekav]

Thanks Shijing
It is terminal 1 :)
I must say I feel relieved, I may just escape it.
Lets hope that they don't install more of them in the future.

 

[Chu]

There is also DMSO.

From DMSO: Nature's Healer by Morton Walker: pg. 53

When DMSO is painted on the leg of a rat the leg is shieled from the effects of x-rays

The radioprotective properties of DMSO were originally reported in 1961. DMSO safeguards a number of cells, cellular systems, and whole animals against the letal and mutagenic effects of X-rays.

Worth a try! Have you used DMSO before? You can read a lot about it on the forum. You may smell like a sparragus or a rotten egg for a day or two, but if you drink lots of water, it's not so strong.

 

[Guardian]

I'm wondering if anybody knows of a way around going through the body scanners at the airports.

A female netfriend told airport security she was pregnant and they didn't force her to go through the body scanner.

Of course this isn't going to work if you're a man :P

 

[Ca.]

I was wondering, would silk undergarments, be of any protection if worn the day of the flight, under street cloths? Or would it cause more problem's (make one possibly sweat a little) than solve and perhaps just a little wishful thinking? I am looking for information to the idea but have yet to have found any at the monument. This website also talks of other concerns about electromagnetic radiation and addresses a small article about the airport body scanners mentioned, but it is dated for the beginning of this year 2010.

http://www.emfinterface.com

2010
Airport Body Scanning Raises Radiation Exposure, Committee Says

By Jonathan Tirone – February 5, 2010

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) — Air passengers should be made aware of the health risks of airport body screenings and governments must explain any decision to expose the public to higher levels of cancer-causing radiation, an inter-agency report said.

Pregnant women and children should not be subject to scanning, even though the radiation dose from body scanners is “extremely small,” said the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety report, which is restricted to the agencies concerned and not meant for public circulation. The group includes the European Commission, International Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear Energy Agency and the World Health Organization.

A more accurate assessment about the health risks of the screening won’t be possible until governments decide whether all passengers will be systematically scanned or randomly selected, the report said. Governments must justify the additional risk posed to passengers, and should consider “other techniques to achieve the same end without the use of ionizing radiation.”

President Barack Obama has pledged $734 million to deploy airport scanners that use x-rays and other technology to detect explosives, guns and other contraband. The U.S. and European countries including the U.K. have been deploying more scanners at airports after the attempted bombing on Christmas Day of a Detroit-bound Northwest airline flight.

“There is little doubt that the doses from the backscatter x-ray systems being proposed for airport security purposes are very low,” Health Protection Agency doctor Michael Clark said by phone from Didcot, England. “The issue raised by the report is that even though doses from the systems are very low, they feel there is still a need for countries to justify exposures.”

3-D Imaging

A backscatter x-ray is a machine that can render a three- dimensional image of people by scanning them for as long as 8 seconds, the report says. The technology has also raised privacy issues in countries including Germany because it yields images of the naked body.

The Committee cited the IAEA’s 1996 Basic Safety Standards agreement, drafted over three decades, that protects people from radiation. Frequent exposure to low doses of radiation can lead to cancer and birth defects, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Most of the scanners deliver less radiation than a passenger is likely to receive from cosmic rays while airborne, the report said. Scanned passengers may absorb from 0.1 to 5 microsieverts of radiation compared with 5 microsieverts on a flight from Dublin to Paris and 30 microsieverts between Frankfurt and Bangkok, the report said. A sievert is a unit of measure for radiation.

European Union regulators plan to finish a study in April on the effects of scanning technology on travelers’ privacy and health. Amsterdam, Heathrow and Manchester are among European airports that have installed the devices or plan to do so.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has said that it ordered 150 scanners from OSI Systems Inc.’s Rapiscan unit and will buy an additional 300 imaging devices this year. The agency currently uses 40 machines, which cost $130,000 to $170,000 each, produced by L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. at 19 airports including San Francisco, Atlanta and Washington D.C.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Tirone at jtirone@bloomberg.net www.bloomberg.com

See Also: Radiation Safety Group Says Naked Body Scanners Increase Risk Of Cancer

 

[Clarekav]

I'm wondering if anybody knows of a way around going through the body scanners at the airports.

A female netfriend told airport security she was pregnant and they didn't force her to go through the body scanner.

Of course this isn't going to work if you're a man :P

Not a bad idea I might try that.

Ailén
I haven't heard of DMSO, sounds interesting.
Don't know if I'll be able to find some though but it might help in the future especially for the medical benefits if it helps arthritis.

 

[Pierre]

I'm wondering if anybody knows of a way around going through the body scanners at the airports.

A female netfriend told airport security she was pregnant and they didn't force her to go through the body scanner.

Of course this isn't going to work if you're a man :P

For men, a solution might be to tell that you've a cancer or that you're recovering from a cancer and therefore you must absolutely avoid any radiation which are of course mutagen and carcinogen.

 

[Clarekav]

Back from London.
Luckily they didn't have the full body scanners in terminal 1 but they took photos of passengers heading on any domestic flights from Heathrow.
They gave very little indication that they were going to take security photos before entering security so I was caught off guard.
For a moment I thought I would get through without having the photo taken but I was informed that flights to Ireland are considered domestic.
There was no reasoning with them, the security staff insisting that it was for my own protection so nobody could use my passport after passing security, so they take a photo and then compare you to this photo later on at another security check point. They said that the system reboots and the photos are deleted after 24hrs. How true that is I don't know.

Anyhow London was interesting, lots of history and I did enjoy it.
I never seen so many CCTV cameras in my life. I suppose that is to be expected in Big Brother London.

 

[Ollie]

...
I never seen so many CCTV cameras in my life. I suppose that is to be expected in Big Brother London.

It is not only London that has numerous CCTV cameras in the UK!!!

 

[Clarekav]

...
I never seen so many CCTV cameras in my life. I suppose that is to be expected in Big Brother London.

It is not only London that has numerous CCTV cameras in the UK!!!

It wouldn't surprise me.
I haven't been to many places in the UK, I was in Edinburgh a few times, there seemed to be less CCTV there than London but enough for me to feel uncomfortable.

 

[alphonse]

I was away for a while in California, for work, flying on Virgin from Heathrow to LA

Still no scanners at LHR Terminal 3 but they had them at LAX when I was flying home.

When I said that I preferred not to go through one, I was told it was not obligatory and they directed both my colleague and I to a (shorter!)
line that just had the normal metal detectors.

Security was busy, with winding queues, and it wasn't until I got to the front that I realised that you could actually choose your lane, and avoid the scanners without
the hassle of having to ask, if you were careful to stand in the correct line.

I am not sure if the same rules apply every where, but I hope that might reassure any one one else who is about to fly, that feels worried about the scanners.

Al

PS - one chap I spoke to who went through the scanner , said he "tripped it" and they still gave him a very thorough and in his opinion an overly-intrusive "pat down"
Which seems to make them completely pointless anyway !

 

[kidcharlemagne]

Hmmm, I'm a bit worried now since I'll be flying in from ATL (Terminal 4). I sincerely hope it is true that you can opt out of the full body scan because i would much rather take a full intrusive pat-down than be blasted by radiation! My fingers will be crossed for that one!

 

[kidcharlemagne]

Update: I actually never even saw a TSA scanner in the ATL airport and never had to go through one upon arriving at Heathrow! Whew! But I heard that Europe has been much less accepting of this security method and that they have started to ban them altogether. Need to research that one though as I haven't seen any proof of that statement myself.

 

[Gertrudes]

Update: I actually never even saw a TSA scanner in the ATL airport and never had to go through one upon arriving at Heathrow! Whew! But I heard that Europe has been much less accepting of this security method and that they have started to ban them altogether. Need to research that one though as I haven't seen any proof of that statement myself.

Apparently that's true. From _http://www.wddty.com/body-scanners-will-be-banned-at-european-airports-because-of-cancer-risk.html

Body scanners will be banned at European airports because of cancer risk

12 December 2011
Travellers arriving at European airports won’t have to go through the full-body x-ray scanners being introduced in the US. The EU has decided the scanners are dangerous, and could cause cancer.
The scanners use ionizing radiation, which could damage DNA. Early studies suggest that they are likely to trigger a small number of cancers every year from the millions of air passengers scanned.
The scanners, which detect explosives by revealing the full body underneath clothes, are already being used in hundreds of airports around the US. Eventually, every airport in the country will be equipped with them, says the US Transportation Security Administration.
European airports will instead be introducing body scanners that use radio frequency waves, believed to be a safer alternative, that still detect explosives being carried onboard.
A trial for the x-ray scanners is still taking place at some airports in the UK. After the trial is finished, they will be used only as a secondary security measure if the conventional metal detector picks up something suspicious.
(Source: ProPublica).

Propublica, the original source (_http://www.propublica.org/) has a specific section with a number of articles with the latest news on body scanners. I wonder though, what type of 'safer' radio frequency waves body scanners are they planning to implant....