Greetings list-members -- for those of you planning on flying for fun or
fieldwork this summer, watch out for those airport X-ray machines!  Two recent
articles, one in the May/June issue of Photo Techniques and one from the
editorial in May's Shutterbug, describe new "Film-killer X-ray" security
equipment being used in "certain large American and foreign airports" which
destroys film, exposed and otherwise.  The new equipment is InVision
Technologies CTX-5000 baggage scanner which the FAA is paying for (they cost a
cool $900,000 each!).  On MOST domestic flights, only checked baggage is at
risk, they say, but on international flights, "carry-on baggage may be at risk
as well."  When asked, an InVision official acknowledged that the "rate of
scanned films that are damaged is 100%."  Apparently David Attenborough and
crew found out this was too true.  He and a BBC film crew spent five weeks in
New Guinea filming on location and passed thru the Manchester airport and lost
everything!
The photo folks say we have three options:  insist on having your film
hand-inspected, buy your film when you get there and/or ship film to yourself
to your work site (and home) in several batches by way of a shipper such as
Fed/Ex who will guarantee no x-raying.  Oh, and if you thought maybe using one
of those lead bags would help--get this.  These new X-ray machines are
programmed to respond to anything mysterious by re-scanning just that area with
a high-power narrow beam CAT scan which will penetrate anything -- so the lead
bag GUARANTEES your film is ruined.  The FAA will not give out the list of the
airports with these new X-rayers for security reasons but InVision has a web
site which posts the domestic list -- no help for the foreign ones, tho.  So
hang on to your film bags, folks.
 
Anne Stoll
Behavioral Sciences
University of La Verne
La Verne, California