One day soon, you may find yourself in a long airport line, waiting to be total body scanned for explosives or other terrorist devices. Microwave technology scanning is not the subject of this blog: ionizing radiation total body scanning is. And, as the New York Times reported on 1/9/2010 (p. A4) since Congress has now appropriated money for the placement of 450 scanners in American airports, the risk of being exposed to ionizing radiation for non-medical purposes has just increased.
About 1 out of every 57,000 Americans has a genetic abnormality (of which most of them probably are unaware) in the Sonic Hedgehog protein pathway, a system involved in protection against cancer (i.e., skin cancer and a brain cancer called medullablastoma) and other tumors (i.e., of the ovary and heart). The resulting disorder is called Gorlin Syndrome or Basal Cell Nevus Syndrome. For these people, who are at significant risk of developing extraordinary numbers of unusual and often aggressive basal cell cancers of the skin , the key to primary prevention of skin manifestations, experts write, is "Sun exposure and x-irradiation should be avoided."
While the amount of radiation exposure from airport screening equipment may not be large, any radiation exposure stimulates immediate biologic response and for those with genetic disability of the Hedgehog signaling system, risk of cancer.
At a national scientific meeting of the American Society of Hematology several years ago, an elegant discussion of the mechanism of the body's immediate response to radiation exposure was presented to a large sophisticated audience, with an observation that the American government might be considering low level exposure of large segments of the American population so that in the event of a terrorist attack involving radiation, Americans might have pre-existing "immunity" .
So we have moved to a tension between national safety and individual health. Is anybody watching?
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