Yesterday the European Union prohibited the use of X-ray body scanners, the kind frequently used by airport security in United States, citing cancer risks. American airport security, meanwhile, has deployed hundreds of scanners, screening millions of airline passengers – and if the European Commission’s conclusions can be trusted, exposing a fraction of those passengers to cancer risks.

Says Propublica:

X-ray body scanners use ionizing radiation, a form of energy that has been shown to damage DNA and cause cancer. Although the amount of radiation is extremely low, equivalent to the radiation a person would receive in a few minutes of flying, several research studies have concluded that a small number of cancer cases would result from scanning hundreds of millions of passengers a year.

It would be a little awesome if this meant that the general paranoia surrounding air travel was beginning to subside, and that we might one day be able to board an aircraft without having to strip off belts, shoes, etc., but the European Commission is still going to be using body scanners – just ones that rely on radio waves instead of x-rays, and don’t give you cancer.

Yay, air travel.

[Source: Propublica]