Hi Rex,
I have a semi-medical question related to travel for you.

The father of a friend of mine has been here in California visiting for the last four weeks. Unfortunately he also fell ill and has since been diagnosed with cancer. They are trying to get him back to England as soon as they can.

Here is my question. They have X-Rays to take with them for his doctors back home to look at, and I thought the best thing for them would be to walk them through security instead of pack in their luggage. What do you think... would the sercurity X-rays do anything to them?

Any other advice you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for all of your help in the past and present. I'm so glad that you continue to weather the storms of Fodors! You are definitely an asset!

Debi- I'm not sure why you would address such a question to Rex, given that he is a Dr., not an expert on airport checkpoint screening, he would really have no expertise in screening procedures regarding film and the types of equipment in use at the airport screening checkpoints. But I do.

You have a number of options you can avail yourself of here. First, for your own edification, you can put your question directly to the people who will do the screening-the TSA. Their email address for questions of this nature is the following:

[email protected]. They should get back to you in a day or two.

Second, you can go on the TSA website and read about transporting film through the screening checkpoint here:

www.tsa.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/film.htm

Now, as you will see from the TSA site, you can request a hand inspection of the X-ray film. This I would advise you to do. And when you check in with the airline at the airport, explain the situation to them, they can help to facilitate your passage through the checkpoint, and in some instances can accompany you and do the explanation for you. This should not be necessary, however.

Otherwise, you will merely approach the checkpoint yourself and advise the screeners that you are requesting a hand inspection for your medical x-rays, that they should not go through the machine. And that's it. This will be no problem AT ALL.

I'll butt in here, as I have a Health Physics/nuclear safety background -- hence my handle.

You need not worry about x-ray screening damanging you films. The images you will be carrying are no longer "sensitive", having already been exposed and then developed. They quite stable now and are no more sensitive to the low level x-rays used in airport screening than a photograph would be.

I would suppose you would want to hand-carry them anyway, as many films are of a large sise any you would not want to damage them by folding them in your luggage - or risk losing them.

I wish your friend's father all the best.

Hmmm... well for starters, I try to avoid posting at this hour of the day (night) because I don't relish letting it be seen that I am up at this hour, and sitting at the computer. Though, it is only 12:43 where I am right now (Kansas), not 1:43. I had been in bed, but had to get back up.

Second, to be consistent, I should admonish DebiC for having used a very inappropriate message header, a "curiosity-seeker" that says, in effect "if you want to know what this question is about, you have to stop and take a look at it". Wrong, wrong, Debi. You should have used a message header like "How should x-rays best be transported through an airport, to avoid a security issue?"

Now, spygirl is partly right. I don't have much expertise on a <i>sophisticated</i> question involving x-ray film and airport security screening equipment. But both of you have <i>waaaay</i> missed the fact that this is NOT a sophisticated question about x-ray film. Presumably, because you have never (much) handled &quot;an x-ray&quot;.

The &quot;x-rays&quot; in question are <i>prints</i> of <i>exposed, developed</i> &quot;x-ray film&quot; (more properly known as &quot;cassettes&quot;. <i><b>Un</b></i>exposed x-ray film (cassettes) would be damaged (i.e., exposed) in airport security, as would likewise, <i>exposed</i> but <i><b>undeveloped</b></i> x-ray film cassettes. I cannot imagine a situation where a traveler would be traveling with either one. All he has is <u>prints</u>. No more at risk than pictures in a book.

As an aside, the radiology department might be able to download the images, either onto a portable (solid-state) disk-type device (the kind that ressembles a stubby ink-pen) or telecommunicate them directly to any other radiology department in the world. Hospitals have been using digitally captured images for some years now. The average medium-sized general hospital formerly kept an enormous number of old &quot;x-rays&quot; in its file room that were virtually never ever looked at again - - and the recoverable silver in such a file room would typically bring a million dollars in scrap salvage value. No more.

It is somewhat equally amazing that the <i>other</i> medical information that ought to be transferred with this patient will almost certainly NOT be transported back to England in digital form. Nor from England to France or between any two other countries. Printed paper copies remain the archaic storage medium of choice for virtually all medical information.

The Fodors forum &quot;search engine&quot; is light years ahead of the non-existent world of digital medical information management (it's faintly better in some neonatology settings, than in some specialties, but still very primitive).

I hope your friend's father has uneventful travels.

Best wishes,

Rex

Obviously, nukesafe didn't take 30 minutes preparing a reply, as I did!

As usual Spygirl takes things to the outer reaches of paranoia and way beyond the limits of science inot science fiction or perhaps thriller fiction.
Rex &amp; Nukesafe - thnak you for the reality check.

should be &quot;into&quot;

Sarvowinner, well said ! I'm glad to know there are at least a few people who know the history of Spygirl (possibly banned from Fodors as Airlawgirl a few years ago).

Having been a reader and occasional poster of Fodors for a long time, I know better than to ask a question the way I did. I apologize. It was late and I was just trying to help a friend.

She was asking me what I thought about the X-rays and I immediately thought of Rex and how he helped the woman whose mother had to have surgery in Paris and how extremely helpful he was. I was thinking X-ray-travel-doctor-question-REX!

Spygirl, that is why I directed my question to Rex. Thank you for the TSA information.

Thank you Nukesafe for taking the time to answer. I don't consider you to be butting in, just trying to be helpful.

Rex, once again, you go above and beyond. I didn't expect an answer so late. But it was the detailed, insightful answer that I expected. Thank you for taking the time. In these days of cyberland you come to think of people like you as &quot;friends&quot; that we can depend on for answers and you did not dissapoint.

I will ask my friend to look into digitally transferring the X-rays to the hopsital in England. It has been a very sudden and sad situation. They received the diagnosis yesterday. He had no idea that he was this sick. The cancer has already spread significantly and he doesn't appear to have much time. Maybe six months.

My friend is pregnant and in the middle of her third trimester and can't fly back with him so she is trying to do as much as she can from here. Thank you again for all of your help. My friend thanks you too!

DebiC ~

I would not worry about your message header, for heavens sake.

You were in a moment, and thought of a fellow Fodorite to turn to for an answer.

Had it been me, I would have felt complimented that your first thought was to single me out and ask this important question on behalf of your friend.

Best of luck, Tiff

DebiC-

Hi. I'm the one with the Mother in the French hospital that Rex so graciously helped. Rex's idea to get the x-rays downloaded is a good one. But in case that doesn't work, I just wanted to pass along that we took back my mother's post-surgical x-rays in her checked luggage and they came back fine. In our situation, which is different than your friend's, we didn't feel the need to carry them on the plane because it wouldn't have been a problem if they got delayed in her luggage. We were more concerned about them getting bent in carry-on and making the flight with as little to carry on as possible. I think checked luggage also gets scanned these days like carry on luggage so I can report that the x-rays came back just fine. I wish the best of luck to your friends.

I for one would not question Rex's knowledge on anything related to medicine. Give him 2 weeks to review, and I would not even doubt what he said about quantuum physics.

&lt;&lt;Give him 2 weeks to review, and I would not even doubt what he said about quantuum physics.&gt;&gt;

Whoa there! For the life of me, I cannot get a handle on what exactly is a boson, nor a hadron!

I've read what wikipedia has to say over and over, and I still don't get it.

What about a hardon, rex?

Was that some sort of intentional pun?

And by the way, have you looked at Wikipedia for two weeks yet? Maybe you just need to give it some time.

Huh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadron

I don't think that hadron research is fast-breaking that it will read any different two weeks from now.

Perhaps the page you're more likely to learn something from is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil

I actually didn't think that that was a real particle -- but yes, I did notice that it was &quot;dr&quot; rather than &quot;rd.&quot;

Just found it amusing that of all the elementary particles you used that one as an example.

Didn't know that that was the technical name of that drug. Interesting.

I'm sorry that for my juvenile attempts at levity in this serious thread.

Good luck, DebiC!