Airport Full-Body Scans Pose Little Radiation Risk
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Airport body scanners pose little radiation risk to travelers, emitting less than 1 percent of the dose a person would get from cosmic rays while flying at high altitudes, according to a report.
Researchers from the University of California said fliers would have to undergo 50 airport body scans to equal the amount of radiation received from a single dental X-ray, 4,000 scans to match the radiation exposure from a mammogram or 200,000 scans to equal that from an abdominal CT scan. Their report is published today online in the Archives of Internal Medicine.