The United States stands nearly alone in its embrace of backscat­ter x-ray body scan­ners at air­ports, down­play­ing legit­i­mate con­cerns over the cumu­la­tive can­cer risk posed by ion­iz­ing radi­a­tion emis­sions from these machines. Even though most devel­oped nations, includ­ing the Euro­pean Union, have opted against using these machines that have a known car­cino­genic mech­a­nism, the TSA and the FDA both claim that the x-ray scan­ners pose no long-term health risk to any­one, includ­ing tra­di­tion­ally vul­ner­a­ble seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion, such as chil­dren and preg­nant women.