Florida airport could be first in US to ban naked body scanners

Sunday, December 18, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: body scanners, airport, Florida

(NaturalNews) Air travelers flying out of Fort Lauderdale - Hollywood International Airport (FTL) in Florida may soon no longer have to worry about being forced through the US Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) naked body scanners. CBS 4 in Miami reports that the commission of Broward County, where the airport is located, is considering a measure that would ban the cancer-causing devices from the popular travel hub.

If the measure is enacted, FTL will be the first airport in the US to officially ban naked body scanners. The commission has rightly stated that the devices have never been scientifically proven to be safe -- and until they are, the machines have no business being in airports where thousands of passengers are exposed to potentially harmful doses of ionizing radiation.

Just a few weeks ago, the European Commission led the way in protecting citizens by banning backscatter X-ray naked body scanners from most European airports (https://www.naturalnews.com/034213_airport_sc...). Though the TSA and its parent agency, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claim the scanners emit minimal amounts of dangerous radiation, there are, again, no studies proving this to be true.

In fact, the TSA has gone out of its way to oppose any independent testing of the safety of the machine, and refuses to conduct its own legitimate safety studies. And yet at the same time, the agency expects the public to just trust its word on the matter, which continues to be the repeated and tired mantra that individuals are exposed to far more radiation every time they get an X-ray or sit on an airplane.

But this irritating, broken-record of a claim is simply not true, and many scientists and radiation experts have come out saying that the machines can cause cell damage and cancer. And since the TSA refuses to release any technical information, details, or test data showing that radiation levels are within the claimed limits, there is no real reason to believe otherwise (http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/antonov1.1...).

A PBS report published earlier this year has already found that, contrary to the TSA's claims, naked body scanners could cause as many as 100 passengers to die every year from cancer. Besides this, the machines themselves are an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, which is a fact that many involved in the argument often fail to address.

Sources for this article include:

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2011/12/13/broward...