They're being approved all over the world. The U.S., U.K., Russia, Australia, Europe and now Canada. Scanners which have potentially devastating health effects have received the blessing of Canada's privacy czar.

They're being marketed worldwide as the next greatest airport scanning technology. The new scanners will allow airport security officials to lift the ban and cease current restrictions on traveling with cosmetics, liquids and other personal care products that have been considered a threat since the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

"They've planned this very well," said health freedom activist Gerard Stevens. "First they spend years making everybody angry and frustrated for restricting carry-on items at airports, and now they launch deadly x-ray machines which are being fraudulently acclaimed as the savior that will allow the ban to be lifted." Stevens claims that Canadian citizens are being conditioned like dogs into an ever increasing fear-based state of mind. "There is no longer a regard for health or freedom of choice in Canada, as people are slowly being coerced into systematically giving up their rights," Stevens added.

Chantal Bernier, Canada's assistant federal privacy commissioner, said Friday the national air security agency has successfully answered her office's questions about the project. The system, tested in British Columbia at the Kelowna airport, has stirred controversy because the scanner produces ''naked'' images of passengers.

"It is a very touchy issue, and we have addressed it with exactly that level of care," Bernier told a gathering of security officials and academics.

"In our view, these privacy safeguards meet the test for the proper reconciliation of public safety and privacy," Bernier said.

Meanwhile, many such scanners are reportedly using terahertz (THz) waves, the radiation that fills the slot in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and infrared. Emerging evidence suggests that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication.

"Anything that interferes with DNA replication can cause cell death," said geneticist Andrew Lau. "Cell mutations and chromosomal aberrations would likely be more common once such scanners are implemented." Lau stated that the cumulative radiation would likely affect passengers in the long-term.

In a preliminary assessment early last year, the air-security authority said the scanner project amounted to a "low privacy risk" due to the built-in safeguards.

The scanners are already in use at airports in cities including Amsterdam, Moscow and Phoenix. They are also found in the high-security "green zone" of Baghdad and at some U.S. courthouses and prisons.

The Syndey Morning Herald reported two weeks ago that the Melbourne Airport was implementing similar scanners that could see the genitals of passengers. Transport security authorities are trialing the new "X-ray backscatter" body scanner, which has been described by critics as a "virtual strip search".

Tests are also being carried out on new scanning equipment in airports across the European Union and Asia with Kromek scanning products using spectral radiation.

RapiScan Systems scanners as reported in the Telegraph are being deployed in the U.K. under intense criticism since they can show up any breast enlargements and a clear outline of passengers' private parts.

Despite increasing evidence linking radio frequencies to miscarriage, brain cancer, and electomagnetic hypersensitivity, the Canadian air-security authority says the radio frequency waves emitted by the body scanner meets health-and-safety standards..

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Reference Sources 104, 114, 172
November 2, 2009