Should members of the public be concerned about radiation exposure from body scanners at airports?
The use of body scanners at airports exposes individuals to a negligible x-ray dose and a miniscule increased risk of cancer. Unlike medical imaging, in which x-rays are used to penetrate the skin to visualize organs and other parts of the body, body scanners use low level x-rays to visualize what is on the surface of the skin. The amount of radiation to which a traveler is exposed from a single body scan is about the equivalent of the amount of radiation he or she would experience during one minute of flight in an airplane at 40,000 feet.
