I’m waiting for my flight to Narita airport in Tokyo on United Airlines. From there Japan’s All Nippon Airlines will take me to Hong Kong. Seattle-Tacoma airport is busy .. many people are going home after visiting friends and family, of course.
I was grumpy this morning and endured the strip-and-body scan at security the best I could. One’s belt and shoes have to come off, as well as everything in pockets, even plastic items. So the number of items coming out in trays through the carry-on scanner is ever-growing. The other thing is that Europe has now banned X-ray body scanners, which use back-scatter ionized radiation, due to health and safety concerns. Instead of X-ray scanners, European airports will use millimeter-wave scanners that utilize low-energy radio waves. The article in Forbes magazine reports that in the USA, the TSA uses both types of scanners: some 250 X-ray scanners and 264 millimeter wave scanners. Sea-Tac airport uses the ‘bad’ one, the back-scatter X-ray machine.