Airport body scanners are safe during pregnancy, here's how they work
picture alliance / Contributor / Getty Images
Airport scanners in the US come in two types: millimeter-wave scanners and x-ray backscatter scanners.
Both types of scanners are safe to use on children, adults, or women who are pregnant.
This article was medically reviewed by Olivia P. Myrick, MD, who is a clinical assistant professor with the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at NYU Langone.
If you're pregnant and worried about the safety of those full-body scanners at the airport, you can rest easy. These scanners, which first emerged in US airports after the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day in 2009, pose no harm to you or your baby.
The two types of airport scanners you may come across in the US are millimeter-wave scanners and x-ray backscatter scanners. Here's what you need to know about each.
Full-body scanners use harmless nonionizing radiation
Typically, the device used by airport security is called a millimeter-wave scanner, which uses radio waves — the same radiation that your phone, television, and radio use to function.
There are two types of radiation: nonionizing — like radio waves and visible light — and ionizing — like X-rays and Gamma rays. When you think about harmful radiation that can cause cancer, that's high-energy ionizing radiation.
Nonionizing radiation is the least harmful of the two types of radiation and is what full-body millimeter-wave scanners at airports use. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), common exposures to nonionizing radiation do not pose a risk to pregnant women and their babies.
This is because nonionizing radiation is lower energy than ionizing radiation. This means that when a ray of nonionizing radiation strikes your body, it doesn't have enough energy to damage the cells of the average child, teen, adult, pregnant person, and fetus.
Moreover, low-energy, nonionizing radiation, "doesn't reach very far inside the body," says Andrew Karam, PhD, CHP, a board-certified radiation safety professional. "But more importantly, it's not physically able to cause all sorts of damage that can lead to birth defects or that can lead to cancer."
Even the backscatter scanners of the past are safe
X-ray backscatter scanners were more commonly used until they were removed from major US airports in 2012 due to concerns that the revealing images produced by the scanners violated the privacy of travelers.
They were replaced with millimeter-wave scanners but still remain in use at some airports. You can check what type of scanner is at your local airport in ProPublica's searchable database.
Despite concerns, the amount of radiation exposure from backscatter scanners has not shown to be high enough to pose a threat to human health — pregnant or otherwise. A 2011 study in the Archives of Internal Medicine estimated the risk of cancer from radiation exposure with backscatter scanners and found that the risks to health were "truly trivial."
The researchers estimated that there are theoretically six types of cancers that could occur among 100 million flyers during their lifetime due to exposure from backscatter scans. These six types of cancers are considered minimal when compared to the "40 million cancers that would develop in these individuals over the course of their lifetimes due to ... underlying cancer incidence," the researchers report.
Also, according to the CDC, a fetus can safely be exposed to a maximum dose of 100 millisieverts (0.1 Gray) of ionizing radiation at any point during pregnancy without harmful health effects. A backscatter scan exposes you to approximately .00003 millisieverts to 0.0001 millisieverts or about less than one-millionth of the CDC's recommended limit.
You are exposed to harmless radiation every day
The flight itself exposes you to more radiation than a single backscatter or full-body scan. The amount of radiation from one backscatter scan is equivalent to one to three minutes of flight time.
But that doesn't mean you should fear flying either. "It's just not possible for a woman taking a flight to be exposed to enough radiation from that flight to cause any problems with her pregnancy," says Karam.
If you are still concerned about walking through a full-body scanner at the airport, you can always request a pat-down instead, which will be done by a female Transportation Security Officer.
Related stories about pregnancy:
How to choose a pregnancy test at the store and why digital tests aren't necessarily better
How much weight you should gain during pregnancy, according to doctors
Foods to avoid during pregnancy and how to still stay healthy
How long it takes to recover from a C-section before you can drive a car, take a bath, and have sex
Read the original article on Insider
