General > General Technical Chat
Can Customs X-ray or electromagnetic arcs damage circuits?
esepecesito:
--- Quote from: TimFox on July 09, 2021, 05:30:21 pm ---Damage by x-ray exposure to normal photographic film in checked baggage is well documented, but I have never encountered a problem with normal film (ISO 100 to 400) in carry-on baggage, although I try to avoid multiple passes through the machines when changing planes. In the US, I have the legal right to hand inspection, but that is not true in Europe and other jurisdictions.
--- End quote ---
I guess I was pretty luck... until 2007 I used to put in checked baggage 10 to 20 rolls of film ISO 100. Never had a problem. Not saying there is no problem... just I was lucky!!!
Zero999:
Antistatic packaging is cheap, so there's no excuse not to use it. I have returned some RAM I purchased off ebay, because it came wrapped in non-antistatic polythene bubble wrap. I admit, I was sort of lucky, because I had mistakenly ordered the wrong type of RAM and the seller wouldn't normally accept returns, but I had the right to return it, because it was packaged inappropriately.
TimFox:
--- Quote from: esepecesito on July 09, 2021, 07:15:55 pm ---
--- Quote from: TimFox on July 09, 2021, 05:30:21 pm ---Damage by x-ray exposure to normal photographic film in checked baggage is well documented, but I have never encountered a problem with normal film (ISO 100 to 400) in carry-on baggage, although I try to avoid multiple passes through the machines when changing planes. In the US, I have the legal right to hand inspection, but that is not true in Europe and other jurisdictions.
--- End quote ---
I guess I was pretty luck... until 2007 I used to put in checked baggage 10 to 20 rolls of film ISO 100. Never had a problem. Not saying there is no problem... just I was lucky!!!
--- End quote ---
Very high-power x-ray CT scanners were not introduced to checked baggage until around 2000, although they would not have prevented 9/11. It was in response to the bombing of PanAm 103 over Scotland in 1988 and the later crash of TWA 800 off the coast of New York in 1996, that was later determined not to be a bombing (although conspiracy theorists are still active).
LaserSteve:
I used to have problems with programmed PICs sent through the US Mail locking up.
Its not the screener that will get you, but the sterilizer might...
https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20020327_RS21184_00fb5ade1ddf87462b0e1c3636ff96d1113878ad.pdf
http://www.sfowler.com/investigations/Mail%20Irradiation.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service_Irradiated_mail
Nothing like a Rhodatron to get things stirred up.
Would be nice to know what they are using, because at one point I know they were ordering big Linacs..
I used to take b&W diagnostic film on airplanes with me as checked baggage, the first few layers of film in a pack would have an latent image of any metal salts in the logo paint of the package without evening developing. I had heard rumors of 230 KV CT machines in airport basements. The film was always packed in my tool kit so the MaS was being turned up to see what was in the clutter.
Steve
TimFox:
I once looked at sterilizing anthrax spores during the anthrax terrorism scares. A common process to sterilize surgical instruments, where the contamination layer is very thin and long-range radiation is not required, uses the electron beam directly from the linear accelerator to deliver a truly extraordinary dose (typically 25 kGy) to the bad stuff, without the conversion loss of electron beam power to photon power at the accelerator anode by Bremsstrahlung, although the x-ray beam has much longer range. (I don't remember how much was needed to kill anthrax spores, which are almost little rocks.) The lethal dose to a human is a measly 10 Gy (not kiloGray) or so, depending on dose rate. These electrons would also greatly over-expose a normal photographic emulsion, which is quite thin.
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