XRAY Scanning - risks recognised

[blu]

I remember seeing this topic here (or FT) recently, but cannot locate.
This has hit the news today. Apologies if it has already been mentioned. It's US based.

"A group of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) raised concerns about the "potential serious health risks" from the scanners in a letter sent to the White House Office of Science and Technology in April.
Biochemist John Sedat and his colleagues said in the letter that most of the energy from the scanners is delivered to the skin and underlying tissue.
"While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high," they wrote."

Further details:
Scanners at US airports 'may be dangerous' - Yahoo!7

 

[medhead]

That's is an absolute beat up if every I read one. The skin is "may be dangerously high". Except it isn't dangerous at all. They have taken the current theory that any amount of radiation dose may statistically cause cancer to try to claim that is it dangerous. This is the worse kind of misuse of statistics by these scientists.

There are valid reasons to challenge these scanners but radiation dose isn't one of them.

Wow the link I would have included has disappeared. Keeping secrets is a good reason to challenge these things.