Body Scanners And The Increasingly Aggressive Security Pat-Down

Air travel just keeps getting better, doesn't it? If one anti-body scanner activist--the guy behind Opt Out Day, whereupon everyone will refuse to be scanned at airport security--gets his way, the day before Thanksgiving will become, not the busiest travel day of the year, but the most chaotic, delayed, frustrated, frazzled, and dreaded on the calendar. 

The planned protest taps a growing unease over the full-body scans. Privacy groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center are seeking a court order to halt the use of invasive scanners, saying the scanners are illegal and violate passenger privacy. They also say the government has done little to ensure that images taken by the devices are not saved. (The Transportation Security Administration has asserted that the machines cannot store pictures, but security personnel at a courthouse in Florida were found to not only have saved images but shared them among colleagues in order to humiliate one of their co-workers.)

Scientists have also expressed concern that radiation from the devices could have long-term health effects on travelers. 

Dr David Brenner, head of Columbia University's center for radiological research, has said that although the danger posed to the individual passenger is very low, he is urging researchers to carry out more tests on the device to look at the way it affects specific groups who could be more sensitive to radiation. Brenner said children and passengers with gene mutations - around one in 20 of the population - are more at risk as they are less able to repair X-ray damage to their DNA. 

"The individual risks associated with X-ray backscatter scanners are probably extremely small," he told the UK's Daily Mail last winter. "If all 800 million people who use airports every year were screened with X-rays then the very small individual risk multiplied by the large number of screened people might imply a potential public health or societal risk. The population risk has the potential to be significant."

Although passengers have the right to opt out of going through a scanner, the TSA recently announced that passengers who opt out of body scanners at airport security checkpoints would be required to undergo an enhanced physical pat-down that would include agents using open hands and fingers to touch and press chest and groin areas of passengers. In the past, agents were instructed to use the backs of their hands for pat-downs.

Update on Wednesday, November 17, 2010 at 5:49PM by Kathy

The Washington Post reports that the TSA now says if you refuse to submit to screening, you will not fly. Period. Here's the full story.

Update on Friday, November 19, 2010 at 5:14PM by Kathy

The software programmer who opted out of a thorough security search at the San Diego airport last Saturday has already inspired the headline heard 'round the world: Don't Touch My Junk. The viral video came first. Obviously, the rap song is being remixed at this very moment and sweatshops are madly printing t-shirts.  

Pop Tarts To The Rescue

This is an iPhone sleeve, not an actual Pop Tart.Passengers on the stranded cruise ship off the California coast have no doubt been suffering some indignities. The bars and casino have been closed, for example, and they've had to play cards to pass the time. The bottomless trough of a buffet typical on mass cruise ships? Reduced to bare bones. Passengers have been subsisting on Spam, Pop Tarts and canned crabmeat flown in by Navy helicopters. (Note to self: Next time, pack trail mix.)

Read a news report in The Washington Post

Bedbug Registry: Don't Leave Home Without It

In a sign of the times, bedbugregistry.com--a website that reports bedbug outbreaks in hotels and rental apartment buildings around the U.S.--is raking in the eyeballs.  The site, which offers an interactive map of infestations and "Recent Bedbug Reports" on the homepage, describes itself as follows:The Bedbug Registry's logo.

"The Bedbug Registry is a free, public database of bedbug sightings in the U.S. and Canada. We have about 20,000 bedbug reports dating back to 2006.

[The] site is administered by Maciej Cegłowski, a writer and computer programmer, as a way of getting vengeance against bedbugs after a traumatic experience in a San Francisco hotel."

The registry even offers alerts, which are emails sent when someone within a mile of you reports bedbugs. For people living in New York City, that could become burdensome for the inbox.

Update on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at 1:03PM by Kathy

Word has it the best information for fighting bedbugs comes from a report by the New York City Bedbug Advisory Board, which came out this year, and can be found here. The report's advisory report represents some of the nation's best bed-bug exterminators, so address books should be updated accordingly. The good news is the report details many ways to get rid of the pests without toxic chemicals, including using steam heat to fry the suckers.

Some gems from the report:

"Bed bugs are a pest like no other. There is no simple, straightforward, or typical treatment; it requires approaches and resources that are different than most other pests."

"Private residential rental housing violations data in New York City show a greater than 240% rise in bed bug violations (from 2006-2009, from 1,193 to 4,084 violations.)"

"Ideally, a Bed Bug Academy should be established. The Academy would provide comprehensive training to stakeholders in the public and private sector."  

One shudders to think of the entrance exam for the Bed Bug Academy!

Italians To Issue Mini-Skirt Fine

The mayor of Naples, a southern Italian beach town, has ordered police officers to fine women who wear short miniskirts or show too much cleavage, as part of a battle to raise what he describes as the level of public decorum.Twiggy, not to be confused with Snooki, thank you

At a council meeting on Monday, Luigi Bobbio, who was elected on Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party ticket, won a vote to ban clothing considered "very short" from the town of Castellammare di Stabia, south of Naples. Police will get the power to hand out €300 ($420) fines to offenders.

Explaining what he meant by "very short", Bobbio said officers would target women wearing miniskirts that did not fully cover their underwear. "The display of too much cleavage will also earn a fine," added a spokesman.

(Snooki, please rearrange vacation plans accordingly.)

Bobbio said he had faith in officers to make snap decisions. "They won't need to carry out checks up close," he told Corriere del Mezzogiorno. "One glance will be enough to judge."

The new rules, which were approved by the town council yesterday, drew outrage from local centre-left politicians, who mounted a sit-in outside the town hall. "The Bobbio administration is male chauvinist," the organisers of the protest said in a statement. "This town does need decorum, but not the decorum that is measured by a tape measure held against women's clothing."

"By equating women's clothing with urban decorum, this measure implies women are no more than benches or hedges," said councillor Angela Cortese.

Cortese said she was equally angered by a local priest, Don Paolo Cecere, who praised the move and claimed it could cut down on sexual harassment.

The miniskirt ban is one of 41 new decorum measures introduced by Bobbio. Swearing in public, kicking footballs in the street, lying on benches, climbing trees and walking a dog with a lead longer than two metres will also be targeted. Bobbio said people would not be allowed to wander off the beach in their swimming costume. "This is not Majorca," he said.

Never mind Times Square in August.

Read the Guardian story.

One Less Insult In Airline Travel

Most of us have a very different experience than Roger Federer en route from departure terminal to arrival gate: the lost hours of pre-travel travel; the forced intimacy with strangers as we strip off our sweaters and belts, and bend over to remove shoes when passing through security; the disgraceful dimensions of Economy Class seats we normal-sized people squeeze ourselves into (consider the industrially farmed chicken next time you're buckling your seat belt); the rank obliviousness of fellow flyers who block the aisle during boarding, stuff obscene suitcases in the overhead bins, and recline their seats so as to be in the lap of the poor sap directly behind. And so on. Never mind all the great new airplane features like charging for luggage, offering extra leg room for an extra fee (in some circles, that used to be called extortion), and the sanctimonious announcements about alcohol consumption we've heard on recent international flights. The good news: air quality. It's measurably better than it is in an average office building, according to a recent report from the National Research Council’s Transportation Research Board. 

Cabin air is refreshed about 15 times an hour, compared with less than 12 an hour in an office building, Dr. Mark Gendreau, an emergency and aviation medicine expert at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass. told the New York Times recently. On most full-size jets, the air is also circulated through hospital-grade HEPA filters, which are supposed to remove 99.97 percent of bacteria and the minuscule particles that carry viruses. The cabin air is also divided into separate ventilation systems covering every seven rows or so, limiting the ability of germs to travel from one end of the plane to the other.

Perhaps we can breathe a bit easier when forced to ride with the great unwashed. Just don't touch anything! Many frequent fliers, including Dr. Gendreau, take some precautionary measures to reduce the risk of contact with infectious germs once onboard. They wipe down the unstowed tray table, the handle on the overhead bin, and other hard surfaces with alcohol-based hand sanitizer. A handy thing to have--if you can get it past security--since some doctors say it's unwise to use the water in an airplane bathroom even to wash your hands. Bon voyage.

Dr. Merrell's Tip: