Xray machines and Radios

[Motoman]

I've carried radios in my bag many times through Xray machines and never had a problem. But hey have all been up market flash memory ones. However i'm curious to know if the older EEPROM memory radios like the Syntrx and Philips PRP80 are damaged or EEPROMs erased by Xray machines. Has anyone know of this? Thanks.

[HLA]

i've never heard of anything being erased and i really gotta do some reverse thinking here that no news is good news in that nobody's made a big fuss about it so it must not be happening. i also gotta think that cell phones & laptops use the same types of memory chips and i've never heard of cell phones or laptops going bad in x-ray machines.

[kc7gr]

I've carried radios in my bag many times through Xray machines and never had a problem. But hey have all been up market flash memory ones. However i'm curious to know if the older EEPROM memory radios like the Syntrx and Philips PRP80 are damaged or EEPROMs erased by Xray machines. Has anyone know of this? Thanks.

I wouldn't worry. Look at how many laptop computers, all containing EPROMs or EEPROMs, go through airport X-ray systems on a daily basis, all without a single problem (based on the fact that I've never heard anything in the news channels, mainstream or tech, that would indicate a problem).

Some older memory devices are, I think, actually more durable than more contemporary chips.

You've got plenty of other things to worry about when traveling. This should not be one of them.

Keep the peace(es).

[mr.syntrx]

Not a problem at all, with the sort of dosage we're talking about from an airport X-ray machine.

If this sort of thing happened, digital cameras, PDAs, smartcards, laptops etc, all of which contain Flash and/or (E)EPROMs, would be getting nuked all the time. The news media would be whining all day long about it.

[Bob W]

Not a problem at all, with the sort of dosage we're talking about from an airport X-ray machine.

The X-ray machine for carry on luggage really isn't a problem. I work at a Nuclear Plant, and run my laptop and other electronic goodies thru the same type of machine sometimes multiple times in a day. I haven't had a problem with a laptop I've had for almost two years.

There is a new problem child called the CTX-5000 that's used for checked baggage. That thing first does an X-ray scan with levels similar to the checked baggage machine - around 3 mR/hr. If the computer detects something of interest, it goes into a mode where instead of just looking through things with the X-rays, it blasts the items with enough high energy X-rays to make the items being looked at emit Neutrons, and it looks at the signature of the emitted Neutrons to figure out if there's something in the bag that shouldn't be. It sees right through those lead film bags. That could be enough energy to do damage.

[PETNRDX]

In my 17 years as a Bomb Disposal Technician I X-Rayed stuff nearly every day. Hundreds of consumer electronics items of all sorts. And Lots-O-Cameras and film. I never experienced damage to our stuff, or the public's stuff. I suppose that doesn't mean that it can't happen, but it is really doubtful. And that was using an X-ray source that is MUCH more powerful than the airport scanners. I know that I never worry about the airport equipment. But, always remember, if you ARE worried, have them hand check it. Another method is to UPS or FEDEX the item to where you are travelling. I do that often just to avoid the hassles.

[Bob W]

Apparently, those new machines for checked baggage can be really nasty. Both Kodak, and the TSA say that they WILL damage film. Whether that translates into the abilty to cause enough electron leakage in things like flash memory, or eproms to change bit states, I don't know. These things are capable of creating fields high enough to liberate Neutrons. I do know that relatively reasonable fields of Gamma and Beta cause odd things to happen to image sensors in cameras - they get really noisey.

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professi ... xray.jhtml

http://www.tsa.gov/public/display?conte ... 198004a860

[jim]

Film? Isn't that something that Hollywood used to use?

[transistor747]

One of my customers is a chemical plant that, until a few years ago, operated a mercury plant that used very high levels of magnetic fields, generated by huge electromagnets.
We had a problem with early MT1000s, HT600s, etc. They would loose their programming. /\/\ sent engineers to look at the customers site, they changed the internal shields in the radios and that fixed the problem.

Sam