The World Truly Is Crazy!

[queerbychoice]

Note to anyone who may end up responsible for disposing of me when I'm dead: I absolutely DO NOT want an advertisement on my tombstone. If anyone ever does such a thing I'll do my absolute best to come back to haunt them for the rest of their days.

Also: Can anyone verify for me whether this is true or not? It smells weird to me; even amidst all the lunacy of 9-11 aftermath, I have an extremely hard time believing that the American airport companies could get away with pulling something like this without the traditionally puritannical mainstream citizens of America screaming bloody murder in newspapers all over the country. But I can't locate any mention of it on Snopes, so I can't prove anything.

Comments

[cici.livejournal.com]

There's an article in US News about the x-ray machines. I'm not sure of the date, but I know it was pretty recent.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

::goes to look::

hmm . . . if

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::goes to look::

hmm . . . if <a href="http://nl12.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?s_hidethis=yes&p_product=UW&p_theme=uw&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&s_dispstring=20011008008768&p_field_advanced-0=&p_text_advanced-0=("20011008008768")&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&xcal_useweights=no">this</a> is what you're thinking of, then from what little I can tell, it looks like at least it's not an extremely widespread practice yet.

Anyone who flies gets irradiated already during the flight; planes fly high enough in the atmosphere that a significant increase in radiation from the stars gets in during the flight - the risks are similar to the risks from an X-ray, except some people fly a lot more often than they get X-rayed. And the airlines have only recently begun compiling data on increased cancer among frequent flyers because of this, and have not yet taken any steps to try to make planes more radiation-proof. Adding extra irradiation this way will just increase the risk even more. I'm certainly glad I'm not a frequent flyer.