Showdown at the Airport Body Scanner

Wren McDonald

Like the author of this article, I do not walk through airport body scanners. We should all opt out – and especially, not allow our children to walk through them.

Showdown at the Airport Body Scanner
by Nathaniel Rich, New York Times, 25 May 2013

I have never walked through an airport body scanner — or, as I think of it, “the cancer machine.” In the years since these radiation chambers began appearing in airports across the United States, I have developed a variety of tricks to avoid submitting myself to them.

At checkpoints that use a combination of cancer machines and traditional metal detectors, it is just a matter of choosing the right queue. Often, however, a single line feeds into both machines, making the Transportation Security Administration officer responsible for directing passengers to one or the other. Since the officer gives priority to the cancer machine, relatively few passengers end up walking through the metal detector.
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