TSA's Porno-Scanners: More Dangerous Than Terrorists?

Possibly. From LRC:

What TSA and FDA experts do not say is that X-rays used by the scanners are very different from the X-rays used in the medicine. Medical X-rays are "hard," and use higher frequency photons with energies from 50KeV to 150KeV. These energetic photons are penetrating (like background radiation from the Sun, radioactive elements in soil, etc), and for them biological tissues are semi-transparent. The "soft" X-rays used in backscatter machines (20KeV or less) are mostly absorbed in the skin – making them useless for medical imaging. All medical X-ray emitters are equipped with special filters to suppress soft X-rays – both to increase clarity of images and to reduce exposure.

The health effects of hard X-rays are well studied due to their wide-spread usage. Information on health effects of soft X-rays is scarce.

Because of the penetrating nature of hard X-rays, the exposure is spread all over the body (and exposure limits are calculated per kilogram of body mass). With soft X-rays the exposure is concentrated in the skin, which makes the effective exposure per unit of mass of tissue 100 or more times bigger than for hard X-rays.

Now imagine if you're a frequent air traveler. You're more likely to die from skin cancer caused by these TSA pornoscanners than from terrorists.

From the Daily Mail:

The airport X-ray scanner has been touted as one of the best ways to prevent a future terrorist attack.

But now a leading scientist has come forward to say it is just as likely to kill you as a terrorist's bomb blowing your plane out of the sky.

The bizarre warning stems from a statistical coincidence which apparently shows that you are just as likely to die from radiation allegedly emitted by the scanners as you are to die due to a terrorist bob on your flight.

All of this makes you wonder about the direction in which this country is heading.