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On 19 February 2017, conspiracy and metaphysics web site Collective Evolution published an article (titled Los Alamos Study Finds Airport Scanners Can Rip Apart & Alter DNA) that was written by Kathy J. Froti, a clinical psychologist with no professional background in biology or physics who claims to have been taught how key mathematical information affects the consciousness of the cells from multi-dimensional beings of light whose goal is to bring healing to our world after a near-death experience. In that post, she reviews a litany of complaints about the older backscatter x-ray scanners once employed by the Transportation Security Administration before diving into perceived health risks of the newer, millimeter wave technology: The new technology Froti describes, referred to by the TSA as millimeter wave Advanced Imaging Technology, has been in common use at American airports since 2012. It works by bouncing electromagnetic waves of a specific frequency range called terahertz radiation, which is described in a 2007 report on its potential for security applications: To support her argument that these devices are dangerous, she links to a 2009 MIT Technology Review article discussing a study (the Los Alamos study) that sought to address interactions between the natural frequencies present in the hydrogen bonds of DNA and a THz field: Because (and despite Froti's claim of high energy) these electric fields are not strong enough to actually cleave chemical bonds, they reasoned that another mechanism must be present if terahertz fields are to impart any biologic effect. In their study, Alexandrov and colleagues wanted to investigate the possibility that terahertz radiation, because it is similar in frequencies of energy holding hydrogen bonds together, could possibly interact in a way so as to amplify each other’s signals to the point where it could break chemical bonds: Ultimately, the authors found that while unlikely, it is possible that, under a set of remarkably specific conditions, such a phenomenon is possible: One reason Froti may have avoided the study itself is that it makes no mention of airport scanners, although the MIT Technology Review article did use them as a news hook for its story. According to the actual authors of the paper, however, their research holds no relevance to airport scanners. In an e-mail, Alexandrov (the lead author of the Los Alamos study), told us: Co-author Anny Usheva reiterated this point via email as well: Indeed, she clarified that her research (on which she said they have made progress but are held up due to a lack of funding) aims to use THz radiation over much longer intervals of time to reprogram cells for regenerative medicine: Needless to say, an airport scanner does not expose travellers to eight hours of continuous radiation. The federally funded research and development center Pacific Northwest Laboratories highlights the actual time frame on a page describing the development of the TSA’s scanners: That same website, conveniently, lists all of the patents associated with the TSA's millimeter wave technology. While there are several frequency ranges associated with the methodologies patented to analyze millimeter data, the three patents that describe the actual device employed by TSA makes it clear that only a small fraction of the terahertz range is utilized, as described in the most recent patent filing: Expressed in GHz, the broadband exposure (i.e. multiple wavelengths at the same time) Usheva investigated was 100 to 10,000 GHz, a range that barely overlaps with with the TSA’s stated range of 1 to 110 GHz, and a far cry from broad band terahertz radiation. The authors of the study themselves refute the claims made by the Collective Evolution post and the study itself is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant to the technology utilized by airport scanners. As such, we rate this claim as false.
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