An individual’s risk of dying from cancer from such an exposure is estimated to be vanishingly small -- about one in 10 million for a trip involving two screening scans, writes David J. Brenner, PhD, DSc, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center.
According to the FDA, which regulates X-ray devices, “There is no need to limit the number of individuals screened or, in most cases, the number of screenings an individual can have in a year.”
But Brenner believes the picture changes when you look at it from a larger, public health perspective, in which a billion travelers are scanned in the U.S. each year.
“In the present context, if a billion X-ray backscatter scans were performed each year,” writes Brenner, “one might anticipate 100 cancers each year resulting from this activity.” Brenner also points to a heightened risk of cancer among children, which he says is five to 10 times higher than the risk to middle-age adults. Flight personnel, who pass through scanners hundreds of times each year, could also be at greater risk than the average traveler.
"Super frequent fliers or airline personnel, who might go through the machine several hundred times each year, might wish to opt for pat-downs,” Brenner says in a news release. “The more scans you have, the more your risks may go up -- but the individual risks are always going to be very, very small."
Our argument was different from that of the typical radiologist or physicist. They look at total body radiation and his is volume dependent. Our argument is the superficial cells and the pathways changes that result from the radiation. We argue that melanocytes in melanoma sensitive individuals can be significantly increased as a result of this backscatter approach. The metrics used are frankly old metrics and do not take into account what we now know about cancer and pathway dynamics.
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