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Link to the AS&E "ZBV" mobile X-Ray van in question [0], sourced from the linked Fox News article. From the AS&E website: "Dose to Cargo: Less than 0.1 microSi

Link to the AS&E "ZBV" mobile X-Ray van in question [0], sourced from the linked Fox News article. From the AS&E website: "Dose to Cargo: Less than 0.1 microSievert (μSv) per scan (equivalent to 10 microRem (μrem)), at an average speed of 5 km/h (3 mph) at a scan distance of 1.5 m (5 ft). Should a stowaway accidentally be scanned, the effective dose is well below the ANSI specified limit for accidental exposure and is equivalent to flying two minutes at altitude." [0]http://as-e.com/products-solutions/cargo-vehicle-inspection/mobile/product/zbv/#safety http://as-e.com/products-solutions/cargo-vehicle-inspection/... Edit: Why the downvotes? Pretty objective information...

cryoshon 11y ago
I don't consent to any form of non-necessary irradiation, regardless of the quantity. Not sure why the NYPD gets to irradiate me without consequences (which constitutes a search of my person, without a warrant or consent, not to mention having a potential medical impact on people not suspected of any crime) when we can hardly point cameras at them despite it being explicitly legal.
- aaronkrolik 11y ago
  I fail to see how my post is implying that you should be fine with non-necessary irradiation. I'm quoting and linking the manufacturers website.
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    The quantities of radiation quoted by the manufacturer are extremely low. The actual effective absorbed dose might be different from what they actually say, of course. I am anticipating that someone will come forth to defend this illegal searching by claiming that the radiation dose is negligible or irrelevant. I want to counter this defense by posing the matter as philosophical rather than an empirical question of whether the irradiation is harmful or not. EDIT: Ah, in the time that it took me to write this, I have been proven correct.
    - mikeyouse 11y ago
      How's this for a compromise: Philosophically, the government should not be irradiating people without their consent under any circumstance. Empirically, there is no* health risk from doing so with these vans. * By any reasonable measure of increased incidence of cancer from small doses of radiation.
      - rnovak 11y ago
        Except there's nothing to support the latter statements. The statement made by the manufacturer 1) could be totally false, 2) refers to a specific single-use of the technology. They're claiming a specific output per-scan. What if the police are using this van with 10-second scan intervals, pointed at the same building, with people inside, for several hours? That's a fairly plausible scenario which could result in several ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more irradiation.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        > That's a fairly plausible scenario which could result in several ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more irradiation. "Orders of magnitude" is not a magic phrase you get to throw around to scare people. Assuming 10 seconds intervals and instantaneous scans going on for 8-12 hours you've gone up just about 3 orders of magnitude. That is, from banana-equivalent dose to about the background radiation dose, per this handy radiation reference[0]. In other words, people in that building receive twice the amount of radiation that they would naturally do. That is assuming a hell and a lot of scans while also ignoring the protection offered by distance and the building itself. I refuse to be scared. [0] - https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
        rnovak 11y ago
        It wasn't thrown around to scare people, it was used because it's accurate. I fail to see how my statement is inaccurate considering by your own admission there are indeed several (3) orders of magnitude difference. The point I was trying to make was saying that it's some negligible number is wrong. By your own handy reference, it's the equivalent of 2 Dentist x-rays. The dentist at least has the decency to put a lead bib over you.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Was it supposed to imply anything? Or it was just an information dump for information's sake, leaving it to the readers to make their own conclusions? Because regardless of what your post's purpose was, people are obviously gonna read that extract as "hey, it's inside safety limits, so it's ok". When we post something without further comment it's quite safe to assume that people will think we agree with it, and we're using it to pass a message (especially the most obvious reading it has). The only other interpretation that's (a little less) common, is for people to think we've quoted it sarcastically.
- VLM 11y ago
  "I don't consent to any form of non-necessary irradiation, regardless of the quantity." Standing in front of the US capitol building for about an hour is also about 0.1 uSv. Granite is quite radioactive, you know. Some kitchen countertops are much worse. 0.1 uSv is also the generally accepted as the "banana equivalent dose". Bananas are a decent source of potassium, which aside from being an essential element is also somewhat radioactive. There is no fixed accepted dose rate for flying. More than a couple and less than a dozen uSv/hr is about as accurate as you're gonna get. Depends on flight path and altitude and who knows what all else. The claim that its a couple minutes of flight is not all that far from the truth, more or less. People who don't really understand what they're afraid of can't rationally minimize risks anyway. Perhaps the granite in a kitchen countertop or architectural decorative feature would increase cancer death rate by 0.0001% but cancer due to chemical catalyst contamination in a replacement laminate countertop MIGHT be ten times the cancer death rate of radioactive granite. Or maybe not. Assuming they're telling the truth about the dose, I wouldn't worry about the radiation dose. Its small enough to be measured but biologically irrelevant. What is highly suspicious is a police state violating constitutional amendments probably isn't very concerned with citizen health and probably feels no need to tell the truth. I could see some PR guy claiming its only 1 banana-equivalent-dose or an hour sitting at a granite countertop or whatever because he knows its irrelevant, even if the actual dose is so high that passersby hair is falling out and they're getting radiation burns because its an enormously higher dose. I mean, the government would never lie to us, would they?
  - colordrops 11y ago
    Your argument is fallacious. An analogy of your argument: gravity exerts harmless levels of physical force on your body, therefore the government has the right to exert harmless levels of physical force on your body. By the way, radiation exposure is cumulative throughout your lifetime. There is no safe minimum level of radiation exposure. How much radiation you get on a flight is irrelevant to the topic at hand.
    - hugh4 11y ago
      The government already entitles itself to do far worse things than bounce a few photons off me now and then -- eg every year they pry open my wallet and entitle themselves to a very large fraction of my income.
- randyrand 11y ago
  Your consent is not needed even for unnecessary radiation. If I shine my high beams on your car, or have a cellular phone call next to well - too bad. I'm entitled to bombard you with radiation if I want to. But for the sake of argument Ill assume you just care about ionizing radiation (UV, Xray, Gamma, Neutron, etc). In that case I agree consent should be needed for medium to high dose. It's unfeasible to get the consent of everyone for low doses (x-ray machine x-rays can travel for miles and theoretically infinitely far). In this case it appears the dose is only about that of eating a banana. Hard to argue you need to consent to that for radiation concerns unless you also agree that everyone should consent to every xray scan that every hospital executes, or every time your colleague brings in bananas to work. Privacy concern is valid though. Radiation one is just fear mongering if OP is correct.
  - rnovak 11y ago
    That's PER SCAN. Do you think the Police roll up, do a scan, and then take off? No. They're sitting there scanning constantly (most likely), so to use your analogy, that's a lot of banana eating.
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      Even more banana eating for the cops running the thing...
      - rnovak 11y ago
        Did you even read the article? can be operated remotely from more than 1,500 feet Yeah, totally dangerous for the cop </sarcasm>
        AnimalMuppet 11y ago
        Can be, yes. How often will it be? How often will it be operated remotely, and there's no other police in the immediate vicinity doing traffic control or some such? [Edit: the article also talks about scanning the inside of a house in 15 seconds. That's not going to happen if they drive up the van, park it, get out, walk 1500 feet away, scan the house, walk back... (Yes, I know, they can drive away and back in another vehicle. It's still not likely to be operated remotely in that usage - all the activity makes it too conspicuous.)]
- vacri 11y ago
  > I don't consent to any form of non-necessary irradiation, regardless of the quantity. TV, radio, cell towers...
- oh_sigh 11y ago
  I suspect you don't actually hold true to this policy of not consenting to "any form of non-necessary irradiation, regardless of the quantity."
patio11 11y ago
In case you're not up on your conversions, that is ~1 banana equivalent dose.
- mikeyouse 11y ago
  The requisite XKCD chart: https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/ Interestingly, it's nearly the same radiation dose as is living within 50 miles from a nuclear power plant for 1 year. Which is only interesting since the Indian Point nuclear power plant is ~35 miles from Manhattan.
- Retric 11y ago
  This assumes it's a full body exposure. The top layers of your skin is ~5% of your body weight and your only getting that on one side of your body so ~2% of your body weight. Thus, even if the average is 1 banana equivalent dose, your skin is getting ~50 times that which may or may not be safe, but it sounds worse. PS: Of course this also assumes nothing breaks and it stays in motion, if the vehicle stops without turning off you might get hundreds or thousands of times that.
  - refurb 11y ago
    Isn't all x-ray exposure one sided based on the radiation source? Doesn't all radiation exposure start with the skin? X-ray penetrate so not all energy is deposited on the skin's surface.
    - Retric 11y ago
      Backscatter only works because the frequency does not penetrate very well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray PS: Airport scanners are estimated at 1 death per 200 million scans so if used in every airport they would kill ~4 Americans a year. http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/press_releases/bts016_13 http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/press_releases/bts016_13
      - deleted 11y ago
noonespecial 11y ago
Great. So what happens when the police get to love these things and there's 7500 of them in a city and you get scanned by 5 at once continuously wherever you go?
jostmey 11y ago
And what happens if someone stands in front of it? Are they assuming that the person is inside a metal car? The maker neglects to mention how much radiation the device emits, and instead distracts us with this useless statistic.
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pkinsky 11y ago
So the FAQ of the company that sells sketchy (until recently) secret X-Ray vans to the NYPD asserts that they're completely safe. Have these dosage levels been independently tested?
belorn 11y ago
The information look to be carefully selected to paint a very biased picture. It assume a certain amount of metal is between the scanner and the human being, and the air flight comparison is there to minimize the emotional response to risk. Let assume that this van and flying two minutes at altitude gives around 0.00something risk to cancer and thus death. If someone shoot a gun into the air, do they expose innocent people to the same risk as this mobile X-Ray van? What about a factory that dumps mercury into the water supply, and then compare that to the average increase in heavy metal from eating a single banana? Objective information is easily shaped to change public opinion, and I for one will be very careful when it is about unnecessary exposure to risk (and I can guarantee that the operators of the van uses protective gear against radiation).
TrevorJ 11y ago
If somebody only takes a penny from my wallet, they still stole it without my consent. Even if x rays were 100% completely harmless, it still amounts to being searched without my consent.

cryoshon 11y ago

I don't consent to any form of non-necessary irradiation, regardless of the quantity. Not sure why the NYPD gets to irradiate me without consequences (which constitutes a search of my person, without a warrant or consent, not to mention having a potential medical impact on people not suspected of any crime) when we can hardly point cameras at them despite it being explicitly legal.

aaronkrolik 11y ago
I fail to see how my post is implying that you should be fine with non-necessary irradiation. I'm quoting and linking the manufacturers website.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  The quantities of radiation quoted by the manufacturer are extremely low. The actual effective absorbed dose might be different from what they actually say, of course. I am anticipating that someone will come forth to defend this illegal searching by claiming that the radiation dose is negligible or irrelevant. I want to counter this defense by posing the matter as philosophical rather than an empirical question of whether the irradiation is harmful or not. EDIT: Ah, in the time that it took me to write this, I have been proven correct.
  - mikeyouse 11y ago
    How's this for a compromise: Philosophically, the government should not be irradiating people without their consent under any circumstance. Empirically, there is no* health risk from doing so with these vans. * By any reasonable measure of increased incidence of cancer from small doses of radiation.
    - rnovak 11y ago
      Except there's nothing to support the latter statements. The statement made by the manufacturer 1) could be totally false, 2) refers to a specific single-use of the technology. They're claiming a specific output per-scan. What if the police are using this van with 10-second scan intervals, pointed at the same building, with people inside, for several hours? That's a fairly plausible scenario which could result in several ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more irradiation.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        > That's a fairly plausible scenario which could result in several ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more irradiation. "Orders of magnitude" is not a magic phrase you get to throw around to scare people. Assuming 10 seconds intervals and instantaneous scans going on for 8-12 hours you've gone up just about 3 orders of magnitude. That is, from banana-equivalent dose to about the background radiation dose, per this handy radiation reference[0]. In other words, people in that building receive twice the amount of radiation that they would naturally do. That is assuming a hell and a lot of scans while also ignoring the protection offered by distance and the building itself. I refuse to be scared. [0] - https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
        rnovak 11y ago
        It wasn't thrown around to scare people, it was used because it's accurate. I fail to see how my statement is inaccurate considering by your own admission there are indeed several (3) orders of magnitude difference. The point I was trying to make was saying that it's some negligible number is wrong. By your own handy reference, it's the equivalent of 2 Dentist x-rays. The dentist at least has the decency to put a lead bib over you.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Was it supposed to imply anything? Or it was just an information dump for information's sake, leaving it to the readers to make their own conclusions? Because regardless of what your post's purpose was, people are obviously gonna read that extract as "hey, it's inside safety limits, so it's ok". When we post something without further comment it's quite safe to assume that people will think we agree with it, and we're using it to pass a message (especially the most obvious reading it has). The only other interpretation that's (a little less) common, is for people to think we've quoted it sarcastically.
VLM 11y ago
"I don't consent to any form of non-necessary irradiation, regardless of the quantity." Standing in front of the US capitol building for about an hour is also about 0.1 uSv. Granite is quite radioactive, you know. Some kitchen countertops are much worse. 0.1 uSv is also the generally accepted as the "banana equivalent dose". Bananas are a decent source of potassium, which aside from being an essential element is also somewhat radioactive. There is no fixed accepted dose rate for flying. More than a couple and less than a dozen uSv/hr is about as accurate as you're gonna get. Depends on flight path and altitude and who knows what all else. The claim that its a couple minutes of flight is not all that far from the truth, more or less. People who don't really understand what they're afraid of can't rationally minimize risks anyway. Perhaps the granite in a kitchen countertop or architectural decorative feature would increase cancer death rate by 0.0001% but cancer due to chemical catalyst contamination in a replacement laminate countertop MIGHT be ten times the cancer death rate of radioactive granite. Or maybe not. Assuming they're telling the truth about the dose, I wouldn't worry about the radiation dose. Its small enough to be measured but biologically irrelevant. What is highly suspicious is a police state violating constitutional amendments probably isn't very concerned with citizen health and probably feels no need to tell the truth. I could see some PR guy claiming its only 1 banana-equivalent-dose or an hour sitting at a granite countertop or whatever because he knows its irrelevant, even if the actual dose is so high that passersby hair is falling out and they're getting radiation burns because its an enormously higher dose. I mean, the government would never lie to us, would they?
- colordrops 11y ago
  Your argument is fallacious. An analogy of your argument: gravity exerts harmless levels of physical force on your body, therefore the government has the right to exert harmless levels of physical force on your body. By the way, radiation exposure is cumulative throughout your lifetime. There is no safe minimum level of radiation exposure. How much radiation you get on a flight is irrelevant to the topic at hand.
  - hugh4 11y ago
    The government already entitles itself to do far worse things than bounce a few photons off me now and then -- eg every year they pry open my wallet and entitle themselves to a very large fraction of my income.
randyrand 11y ago
Your consent is not needed even for unnecessary radiation. If I shine my high beams on your car, or have a cellular phone call next to well - too bad. I'm entitled to bombard you with radiation if I want to. But for the sake of argument Ill assume you just care about ionizing radiation (UV, Xray, Gamma, Neutron, etc). In that case I agree consent should be needed for medium to high dose. It's unfeasible to get the consent of everyone for low doses (x-ray machine x-rays can travel for miles and theoretically infinitely far). In this case it appears the dose is only about that of eating a banana. Hard to argue you need to consent to that for radiation concerns unless you also agree that everyone should consent to every xray scan that every hospital executes, or every time your colleague brings in bananas to work. Privacy concern is valid though. Radiation one is just fear mongering if OP is correct.
- rnovak 11y ago
  That's PER SCAN. Do you think the Police roll up, do a scan, and then take off? No. They're sitting there scanning constantly (most likely), so to use your analogy, that's a lot of banana eating.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    Even more banana eating for the cops running the thing...
    - rnovak 11y ago
      Did you even read the article? can be operated remotely from more than 1,500 feet Yeah, totally dangerous for the cop </sarcasm>
      - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
        Can be, yes. How often will it be? How often will it be operated remotely, and there's no other police in the immediate vicinity doing traffic control or some such? [Edit: the article also talks about scanning the inside of a house in 15 seconds. That's not going to happen if they drive up the van, park it, get out, walk 1500 feet away, scan the house, walk back... (Yes, I know, they can drive away and back in another vehicle. It's still not likely to be operated remotely in that usage - all the activity makes it too conspicuous.)]
vacri 11y ago
> I don't consent to any form of non-necessary irradiation, regardless of the quantity. TV, radio, cell towers...
oh_sigh 11y ago
I suspect you don't actually hold true to this policy of not consenting to "any form of non-necessary irradiation, regardless of the quantity."

patio11 11y ago

In case you're not up on your conversions, that is ~1 banana equivalent dose.

mikeyouse 11y ago
The requisite XKCD chart: https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/ Interestingly, it's nearly the same radiation dose as is living within 50 miles from a nuclear power plant for 1 year. Which is only interesting since the Indian Point nuclear power plant is ~35 miles from Manhattan.
Retric 11y ago
This assumes it's a full body exposure. The top layers of your skin is ~5% of your body weight and your only getting that on one side of your body so ~2% of your body weight. Thus, even if the average is 1 banana equivalent dose, your skin is getting ~50 times that which may or may not be safe, but it sounds worse. PS: Of course this also assumes nothing breaks and it stays in motion, if the vehicle stops without turning off you might get hundreds or thousands of times that.
- refurb 11y ago
  Isn't all x-ray exposure one sided based on the radiation source? Doesn't all radiation exposure start with the skin? X-ray penetrate so not all energy is deposited on the skin's surface.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Backscatter only works because the frequency does not penetrate very well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray PS: Airport scanners are estimated at 1 death per 200 million scans so if used in every airport they would kill ~4 Americans a year. http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/press_releases/bts016_13 http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/press_releases/bts016_13
    - deleted 11y ago

noonespecial 11y ago

Great. So what happens when the police get to love these things and there's 7500 of them in a city and you get scanned by 5 at once continuously wherever you go?

jostmey 11y ago

And what happens if someone stands in front of it? Are they assuming that the person is inside a metal car? The maker neglects to mention how much radiation the device emits, and instead distracts us with this useless statistic.

deleted 11y ago

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deleted 11y ago

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pkinsky 11y ago

So the FAQ of the company that sells sketchy (until recently) secret X-Ray vans to the NYPD asserts that they're completely safe. Have these dosage levels been independently tested?

belorn 11y ago

The information look to be carefully selected to paint a very biased picture. It assume a certain amount of metal is between the scanner and the human being, and the air flight comparison is there to minimize the emotional response to risk. Let assume that this van and flying two minutes at altitude gives around 0.00something risk to cancer and thus death. If someone shoot a gun into the air, do they expose innocent people to the same risk as this mobile X-Ray van? What about a factory that dumps mercury into the water supply, and then compare that to the average increase in heavy metal from eating a single banana? Objective information is easily shaped to change public opinion, and I for one will be very careful when it is about unnecessary exposure to risk (and I can guarantee that the operators of the van uses protective gear against radiation).

TrevorJ 11y ago

If somebody only takes a penny from my wallet, they still stole it without my consent. Even if x rays were 100% completely harmless, it still amounts to being searched without my consent.