"As someone who travels just occasionally, I would have no hesitation in going through the X-ray backscatter scanner," Brenner said. "Super frequent fliers or airline personnel, who might go through the machine several hundred times each year, might wish to opt for pat-downs. The more scans you have, the more your risks may go up — but the individual risks are always going to be very, very small."
NCRP has recommended that backscatter X-ray systems adhere to an effective dose of 0.1 microsieverts (µSv) or less of ionizing radiation per scan, which roughly equates to the radiation exposure each passenger receives in under two minutes on the plane while flying at 30,000 feet. The average person in the United States receives an effective dose of about 3 millisieverts (3,000 µSv) per year from naturally occurring radioactive materials and cosmic radiation from outer space.
— Read more in David J. Brenner, Ph.D., D.Sc., "Are X-ray Backscatter Scanners Safe for Airport Passenger Screening? For Most Individuals, Probably Yes, but a Billion Scans per Year Raises Long-Term Public Health Concerns"; and David A. Schauer, Sc.D., C.H.P., "Does Security Screening with Backscatter X-rays Do More Good than Harm?" in the current issue of Radiology.
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