Ohfergoodnessake! From the LA Times:
A woman going through security at Los Angeles International Airport put her month-old grandson into a plastic bin intended for carry-on items and slid it into an X-ray machine.
The early Saturday accident — bizarre but not unprecedented — caught airport workers by surprise, even though the security line was not busy at the time, officials said.
[snip]
Security experts said the incident underscored a more widespread concern about the screening process at LAX and other airports.
“The screeners are still reporting that they’re being pushed,” said Brian Sullivan, a retired Federal Aviation Administration security agent. “If a baby can get through, what the hell else can get through?”
Since the baby didn’t “get through” (according to the article, it just got in, where the screener saw it and immediately got it out), that’s hardly the problem. This is:
“Rather than focus on the radiation dose, which is a small amount, we need to focus on why this happened, so it doesn’t happen again,” said Dr. James Borgstede, a diagnostic radiologist at Penrose-St. Francis Health Systems in Colorado Springs, Colo., and president of the American College of Radiology. “Human beings weren’t meant to go through those things.”
And this:
“We’re trying to figure out what changes we can make, short of putting up signs saying, ‘Don’t put your baby through the X-ray machine,’ ” Melendez said. “We’re trying to determine how we can make this not happen again.”
Please don’t let them spend too much time and money on this effort to avoid every possible permutation of stupidity, k? You can’t keep these kinds of things from happening.
Coffee is hot, and people occasionally dump it in their laps. Hammers are intended to impact the heads of nails, but they are detrimental to one’s dexterity when applied to a thumb. Microwave ovens are not intended to serve as kitty’s after-bath fur dryer. Addicts of intraveneous drugs sometimes inject themselves with toxic poisons and die.
Darwin wasn’t writing fiction, you know…
I thought the same as you, when I read the stories about this – but then, when I thought back to the articles on the backscatter X-ray machine that is being tested out for use in airport screening, I am no longer so sure that the lady was just demonstrating her lack of understanding of the rules of the gene pool.
Besides, the TSA keeps telling us not to over think this stuff (and overthinking is certainly something that the TSA can’t be convicted of doing!) – so, if the lady felt the baby was going to have to go through some sort of electronic screening, and oftentimes people are told they must go through the metal detector all by themselves, then maybe putting baby through the x-ray machine made sense to her.
At least, the screeners didn’t miss the baby – or think it was some sort of weapon!
~EdT.
Instead of putting the blame on airport security, it seems more appropriate to question whether the grandmother was a few bricks short of a full load. Regardless of her experience in traveling, it’s just common sense to not put a baby on a conveyor belt. Signs were posted in Spanish and English.
I am not sure anyone was questioning the actions of the screeners as they relate to this particular incident – I would say they picked up on the situation pretty darn quick, and reacted appropriately.
What I do question, however, is the whole security-theater thing which would have us believe that 3.0 oz of hair gel in a 1-qt Zip-lock baggie is OK, but 3.1 oz. of hair gel in a regular sandwich baggie represents a Clear and Present Danger to the security of the State. Or that somebody dropping their iPod into the toilet is grounds for evacuating everything within a 5-mile radius of the airplane. Or, that matching up a photo ID with a boarding pass, then a boarding pass with a passenger manifest – but never matching up the person with the photo ID with the boarding pass with the passenger manifest at the same time – does anything whatsoever to enhance my safety when I fly.
Of course, it may be that the woman didn’t know how to read – last I checked literacy is not a pre-requisite for travelling on a commercial aircraft. And, as I noted above, the TSA doesn’t encourage taxing one’s brain by actually thinking about this whole thing – and thinking goes hand-in-hand with common sense.
~EdT.