Remember how the Transportation Security Administration was created and installed in order to guarantee, or at least improve, the safety of the American public as they availed themselves of our comprehensive airplane transportation network?
Yeah, neither do I, actually, but you can witness just how much your “safety” takes a back seat to the Thousands of Sexual Assaulters’ agendas, whatever the hell they are, when you read about how they inflicted ten times the intended radiation on American citizens:
The Transportation Security Administration announced Friday that it would retest every full-body X-ray scanner that emits ionizing radiation — 247 machines at 38 airports — after maintenance records on some of the devices showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.
As a reminder to my readers, ionizing radiation is not your friend, and there is no such thing as a “safe” dose – even the background radiation we are exposed to by simply stepping outside can, and does, cause some cancers. What do you think walking into an unshielded, uncontrolled, and, ohbytheway, untested x-ray machine will do for you?
At best, Chaffetz said, the radiation reports generated by TSA contractors reveal haphazard oversight and record-keeping in the critical inspection system the agency relies upon to ensure millions of travelers aren’t subjected to excessive doses of radiation.
“It is totally unacceptable to be bumbling such critical tasks,” Chaffetz said. “These people are supposed to be protecting us against terrorists.”
In the past, the TSA has failed to properly monitor and ensure the safety of X-ray devices used on luggage. A 2008 report by the worker safety arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the TSA and its maintenance contractors had failed to detect when baggage X-ray machines emitted radiation beyond what regulations allowed. They also failed to take action when some machines had missing or disabled safety features, the report shows.
Chaffetz said the TSA’s characterization of the maintenance mistakes “sounds like an excuse rather than the real facts.”
“I’m tired of excuses,” Chaffetz said. “The public has a right and deserves to know. It begs the question, ‘What are they still not sharing with us?’ These are things you cannot make mistakes with.” Chaffetz said he expects to address some of his concerns during a hearing Wednesday.
(Emphasis added.)
Make no mistake – through observed, recorded, and reported negligence, the TSA is willfully endangering the health and safety of any Americans who fly on airlines. Remind me again what their purpose is… and why we are keeping them around?
(Courtesy of Barron Barnett.)
I’ve said it before.
Every time I see an X-ray machine in a medical center they’ve ALWAYS had the certificates of testing and the operators credentials where it’s easily readable (although I wouldn’t be able to decipher it- it’s there).
I’ve never bee through one, but no where have I seen any pictures of the TSA ‘fun zone’ with anything that looked like certificates.
Why do I have the image in my mind of those unregulated xray machines they had in the shoe stores back in the 1950′s that gave the people using them a whopping big dose of radiation every time they went into the store?
@ Kurt P: I have seen backscatter machines (thankfully, I have not been through one), and I cannot say as though I recall seeing any kind of certification sticker either… Of course, I did not see any shielding for the machine approach or the workers, either, so, again, that is just an indicator of how the TSA views your “safety”.
@ DaddyBear: The outputs are probably not on the same scale, but you are also not far off in your imagery…