NEW YORK, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- The dose of radiation from an airport's full-body scanner would be no more than people already get in a high-altitude jet, a U.S. radiation expert said.
Doses delivered by so-called backscatter scanners are tiny and the same as delivered at high altitudes from naturally occurring cosmic rays, Robert Barish, a New York radiation consultant, told The New York Times in a story published Saturday.
President Barack Obama this week called for greater use of scanners and Congress has appropriated funds for 450 scanners for U.S. airports. The heightened concern followed the Dec. 25 attempted bombing of a plane en route from the Netherlands to Detroit.
Full-body scanners used in some airports now use a less powerful, non-ionizing radiation, but produce fuzzier images than backscatter scanners, U.S. Transportation Security Administration officials said.
Critics of backscatter scanners argue the radiation dose may be tiny, but it still means added exposure to radiation and an increased risk of cancer, the Times reported.
