Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: I'm Radioactive - Watch out for the TSA goons.

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Topic: I'm Radioactive - Watch out for the TSA goons.

Richard Hamilton
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1341
From: Evansville, Indiana
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 07-30-2013 10:32 AM

Sean, You're talking about things that everyday people are exposed to. Have you ever been injected via IV with radioactive liquid so that you can be scanned from head to toe for a few hours?

Frank, Hope your PET scan results turned out o.k.

Rick

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 07-30-2013 11:31 AM

With airport security, the fun really starts if you have any films in your luggage.

I was once taken into an interview room and given an interrogation as the result of changing planes in Memphis a few years ago, with a 1,000ft reel of 35mm in my carry-on. I was going to a conference to show the film, which was of a 1938 newsreel (don't worry - it was a safety dupe, not nitrate). Ironically, the customs people when I arrived from Amsterdam barely gave it a second glance, but when I went through the TSA check for the connecting flight, they saw it on the x-ray monitor and pulled me out of the line. They got it into their head that either I was involved in piracy/copyright theft, or was trying to import pornography, or both. The fact that the film was only eight minutes of footage and was labelled with the name and address of a major archive didn't seem to make much difference. Eventually they rang the hotel I told them I was staying at, confirmed that I was actually headed there, and let me go on the strength of that - after I'd missed the plane, of course.

Ironically, if the reel had been nitrate, then if it hadn't been labelled with the appropriate UN hazmat flammable solid sticker, the TSA people would neither have known nor cared about it.

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Sean McKinnon
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1712
From: Peabody Massachusetts
Registered: Sep 2000

posted 07-30-2013 12:50 PM

Yes, I have had injections of radio active tracers and had CT and PET scans I have also had many dental and medical x-rays. I am not sure what that matters though. There is no reason for people with medically necessary radio isotopes in their system to be treated like suspected criminals. The reason this is occurring is because people have an irrational fear of radiation and radio active material.

Radiation treatments save lives, nuclear imaging helps to diagnose disease and save lives. Instructing people to take such unnecessary precaution and treating them like criminals is a barrier to treatment. Barriers to treatment keep people from receiving life saving treatment.

There are people who are so "against radiation" (which again is silly because us, our world, and the food we eat is all radio active) that they will refuse life saving treatment. I feel that any time someone dies when it could have been prevented is a tragedy. Especially when the same people who will refuse life saving treatment have no problem flying or mountain climbing or doing other things which expose them to more radiation than they would normally encounter.

Frank - I went to a catholic elementary school in an old building in the early 80's we still had fall out shelters in the basement and we had to participate in twice yearly drills where we would have to go into the basement and stand with our backs against the wall.

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Chris Slycord
Film God

Posts: 2986
From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007

posted 07-30-2013 01:29 PM

Sure, radioactive imaging is great... but I actually think it's the opposite to what Sean is mentioning and that the medical community doesn't do anywhere near enough to avoid radioactive imaging.

Like many doctors and insurance co's want someone with low back pain to first get an xray when they suspect that there's a problem with a disc. Great, except discs don't show up on xray (xray being poor for soft tissue) and low back xray uses a lot more ionizing radiation than for other parts of the body. Or how women can only get their yearly breast exams paid for if they use xray (mammogram) rather than MRI, despite the fact that the latter detects cancer much earlier. And while this avoids the expense of treatment costs later, they pay for the xray because it's cheaper than the MRI.

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