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TSA Officers aren't permitted to wear dosimeters on the job. PRetty damning, if you ask me. Here's their fationale from teh FAQ in the linked article [1] "Q:

by toss1 7y ago

TSA Officers aren't permitted to wear dosimeters on the job. PRetty damning, if you ask me. Here's their fationale from teh FAQ in the linked article [1] "Q: Why aren’t your officers permitted to wear dosimeters? A: There is a really good reason for this. The emissions from our X-ray technology are well below the requirements that would require their routine usage. To help reassure passengers and employees that the technology is safe, however,health physicists with the U.S. Army have been conducting area dosimeter surveys at multiple airports nationwide." This is at best massively flawed reasoning by the TSA, and at worst a deliberate misleading rationale. 1) While the NORMAL dosage is of course well below any level that would make a dosimeter useful, a dose from a malfunction or bent/broken/missing shield panel could easily exceed dosimeter detection thresholds. 2) Spot checks are nice, but unless they are very frequent, they could easily miss a malfunction and leave it overdosing agents and people for a long time. Even if inspections are every 6 months at every airport station, that will leave a malfunction overdosing people for on average, three months. 3) Detecting, identifying, and repairing a malfunctioning system could be done much sooner and at lower cost by using dosimeters, either on employee volunteers or just hanging them on the chairs & workstation surrounds. It is this kind of frankly stupid stick-your-head-in-the-sand reasoning that breeds distrust of governments and the companies that supply them. [1] https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2011/06/30/tsa-cancer-cluster-myth-buster https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2011/06/30/tsa-cancer-cluster-myth-...

gridlockd 7y ago
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say this is poorly worded. TSA officers also aren't permitted to hygrometers on the job. Why? Because there's no point to wearing a hygrometer as a TSA officer. Unlike with the dosimeter, that doesn't need to be spelled out. That doesn't mean they aren't allowed to perform dosimeter readings at all, it just means it's not acceptable to carry this equipment around all the time. > While the NORMAL dosage is of course well below any level that would make a dosimeter useful, a dose from a malfunction or bent/broken/missing shield panel could easily exceed dosimeter detection thresholds. Do you actually know that these could be harmful, or is it just a suspicion?
- munk-a 7y ago
  TSA officers may not be offered hygrometers, but I doubt if there is anything explicitly preventing them from carrying their own hygrometer - actively preventing officers from carrying dosimeters seems more likely to be tied to prevent any long term lawsuits. We get bombarded by all sorts of radiation throughout the day, describing a malignant skin mole to a back-scatter vs. the sun isn't something you could do without evidence. The collection of such evidence is specifically being prevented. So I'd assume this is more like coal miner operators in the 1800s planning ahead to protect themselves from the eventual outbreak of black lung.
- toss1 7y ago
  I won't give them the benefit of the doubt on poor wording (they have plenty of time and resources to get it right). As far as we know, there is no general ban on wearing instrumentation of any other on the job, unless it is somehow clumsy and would interfere with their duties or the appearance of their uniform. In contrast, the simplest dosimeter is typically a very small patch of photographic paper in an envelope opaque to visual light but transparent to harder radiation (towards the gamma end of the spectrum). It is like an inch square, or like a typical nametag, easily worn in a shirt pocket, no more visible to anyone else than a credit card in the shirt pocket. The only plausible reason to forbid this is to prevent any kind of whistleblower event. Of course I do not know the actual levels of radiation inside each machine or all of their possible failure modes. However, we do know 1) high-energy radiation dosage is cumlulative -- each day's dose adds up, so if you have 1/100th of a critical dose each day in a workzone, in less than four months, you should be banned from that work zone. This is the way it works in many facilities dealing with radiation sources, and everyone wears dosimeters which are checked, and people are reassigned when the total dosage exceeds the prescribed level. 2) There are medical limits on how many x-ray and CT-Scan procedures are allowed for patients, again due to the cumulative nature of radiation exposure. Even with the very low-doses of modern machines, these are a concern and are tracked (I know this from the experiences of several close family members). 3) The TSA machines do produce sufficient radiation in their beam to fog ASA800 and higher film. This is definitely a non-trivial dose. Tho obviously not lethal in a single dose (e.g., if you rode through the machine), it is significant. If an interior shielding panel is bent or somehow mis-installed during manufacturing, maintenance, or repair, it is entirely plausible that people working regularly in the area of the leaking radiation could be overexposed. So, no, this is not even close to mere suspicion or Luddite "ooh radiation bad" -- and yes, we do know that these could be harmful, especially over extended periods. I hope you are not an employer with that attitude.

by toss1 7y ago

gridlockd 7y ago

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say this is poorly worded. TSA officers also aren't permitted to hygrometers on the job. Why? Because there's no point to wearing a hygrometer as a TSA officer. Unlike with the dosimeter, that doesn't need to be spelled out. That doesn't mean they aren't allowed to perform dosimeter readings at all, it just means it's not acceptable to carry this equipment around all the time. > While the NORMAL dosage is of course well below any level that would make a dosimeter useful, a dose from a malfunction or bent/broken/missing shield panel could easily exceed dosimeter detection thresholds. Do you actually know that these could be harmful, or is it just a suspicion?

munk-a 7y ago
TSA officers may not be offered hygrometers, but I doubt if there is anything explicitly preventing them from carrying their own hygrometer - actively preventing officers from carrying dosimeters seems more likely to be tied to prevent any long term lawsuits. We get bombarded by all sorts of radiation throughout the day, describing a malignant skin mole to a back-scatter vs. the sun isn't something you could do without evidence. The collection of such evidence is specifically being prevented. So I'd assume this is more like coal miner operators in the 1800s planning ahead to protect themselves from the eventual outbreak of black lung.
toss1 7y ago
I won't give them the benefit of the doubt on poor wording (they have plenty of time and resources to get it right). As far as we know, there is no general ban on wearing instrumentation of any other on the job, unless it is somehow clumsy and would interfere with their duties or the appearance of their uniform. In contrast, the simplest dosimeter is typically a very small patch of photographic paper in an envelope opaque to visual light but transparent to harder radiation (towards the gamma end of the spectrum). It is like an inch square, or like a typical nametag, easily worn in a shirt pocket, no more visible to anyone else than a credit card in the shirt pocket. The only plausible reason to forbid this is to prevent any kind of whistleblower event. Of course I do not know the actual levels of radiation inside each machine or all of their possible failure modes. However, we do know 1) high-energy radiation dosage is cumlulative -- each day's dose adds up, so if you have 1/100th of a critical dose each day in a workzone, in less than four months, you should be banned from that work zone. This is the way it works in many facilities dealing with radiation sources, and everyone wears dosimeters which are checked, and people are reassigned when the total dosage exceeds the prescribed level. 2) There are medical limits on how many x-ray and CT-Scan procedures are allowed for patients, again due to the cumulative nature of radiation exposure. Even with the very low-doses of modern machines, these are a concern and are tracked (I know this from the experiences of several close family members). 3) The TSA machines do produce sufficient radiation in their beam to fog ASA800 and higher film. This is definitely a non-trivial dose. Tho obviously not lethal in a single dose (e.g., if you rode through the machine), it is significant. If an interior shielding panel is bent or somehow mis-installed during manufacturing, maintenance, or repair, it is entirely plausible that people working regularly in the area of the leaking radiation could be overexposed. So, no, this is not even close to mere suspicion or Luddite "ooh radiation bad" -- and yes, we do know that these could be harmful, especially over extended periods. I hope you are not an employer with that attitude.