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New (as of 2019) airport CT scanners

I have heard back from the UK's Department for Transport. Good news, they are taking notice.




Dear Mr Gulliver,

Thank you for contacting the Department for Transport regarding your concerns over the safe
carriage of photographic film through aviation security checkpoints, particularly those
equipped with Computed Tomography (CT) X-ray cabin baggage equipment. I have been
asked to reply.

We are aware of the work you cite undertaken by Kodak and Ilford investigating the impact of
CT X-ray equipment on photographic film. With this in mind, we have recently written to
airports to advise that they are able to carry out a physical hand inspection, supported by
other testing methods as appropriate for photographic film that is presented separately to
bags, as an alternative to screening via CT X-ray, should a passenger request it.

This is in conjunction with separate advice offered by Kodak and Ilford to remove film from
cabin baggage and present it to security staff separately for screening.

Thank you for taking the time to write to the department on this matter.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Benjamin Jones
 

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Thank you for your effort. Good to read that some airports have been approached on this matter by an authority.
 

I would also like to thank you for your effort and for sharing the results.
 

Fantastic effort, Aguliver! For those of us who need to connect in LHR for a fight to continue onward to International destinations, I hope this new policy improves the absolutly-no-response reactions that air travel veterans have come to regard as SOP by LHR security..
 


T*H*A*N*K Y*O*U*!!

[/center]​
 
Excellent... a very hopeful response from a seasoned policy advisor. Bravo!
 

Outstanding effort!
 
I'm happy to help....it's just been pointed out that somehow a partial image of the letter appears in my message. Which is odd because all I did was cut/paste from a PDF.

What I shall do tomorrow is make a jpeg of the PDF with certain details removed, so that anyone can download and/or print it out for use at airports.
 
Agulliver said:
I'm happy to help....it's just been pointed out that somehow a partial image of the letter appears in my message. Which is odd because all I did was cut/paste from a PDF.
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You put in a link to a JPG that was an image of the Department for Transport logo and a little tiny bit of the addressee header of the letter.
 
Wow.......350rolls..!!!
Can i assume you are a professional photographer.?
What are you working on there.?

Faroe Islands.
That is some fairly rugged (per most of us anyway) acreage.
Have you been there before.?
 
Agulliver said:
I'm happy to help....it's just been pointed out that somehow a partial image of the letter appears in my message. Which is odd because all I did was cut/paste from a PDF.
Click to expand...

Because that computer stuff still is kind of new to us, being one reason we hang to that odd film...
 
AgX said:
Because that computer stuff still is kind of new to us, being one reason we hang to that odd film...
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LOL.....I've been using computers 40 years. But I am none the wiser how cutting and pasting text from a PDF ended up with part of the PDF that I did not cut ending up as an attachment in a forum post...when I did upt even click to "upload image or file". But no matter, it lead someone to suggesting that I post the letter which is a good idea.

Anyway here is the full letter with my details removed. Not that I am especially worried about them appearing here but because people may wish to print this out or save it to a device to show at airport security.

 
I flew out of Schiphol aka Amsterdam Airport twice in September, they have CT scanners but when asked they did a hand check of my film. The first line operators didn't know about film but their supervisors did and all was well.
Bordeaux and Montreal airport still use x-ray so I didn't ask for hand check.
 
Has anyone gone through Frankfurt (Germany) airport recently? Do they have the CT-scanners there or still the older style X-ray machines? If CT-scanners, is the security staff willing do do a hand check? I'll be flying to the Netherlands next week. I'll buy my film there. My experience with Schiphol is also that asking for a hand check of film is ok but I don't know about Frankfurt. Two years ago, Frankfurt still had x-ray machines which were fine for film. I'm considering bringing a tank and develop before flying back home.
 
Just got back from my trip. No CT scanners for carry-on luggage at Frankfurt a/d Main airport. I bought my film at the Calumet store in Rotterdam which was at walking distance from the hotel. For the return flights starting at Amsterdam Schiphol airport, I asked for a hand inspection of the film rolls which I had packed in a clear ziplock bag. Schiphol has CT-scanners. I explained to the security guy that the new CT scanners are a problem for film and that the old x-ray scanners were fine. That helped and the film didn't go through the scanner. No additional scans for carry-on luggage in Frankfurt and Montreal.
 
I had one non-CT scan at FAE / Faroe Islands airport of the 15 rolls I held back after I shipped my other film home. I shot 5 rolls of it so I processed it when I got home and it looked fine, same D-max as film at home so that meant that it did not get CT x-rayed on the way out to me during transit as a package with FedEx.

Today I got the big package of film that shipped via DHL to me from the Faroes. The Apple Airtags are just perfect for sending packages like this and keeping your sanity. I ran 20 randomly picked rolls of the fastest stuff which was TMY2 and it all came out perfect, no change in D-max on the way back either.

I think this is going to work for me, shipping the film ahead and then back before I leave. Only 210 more rolls to go…
 
I'm booked to fly from Luton to Lanzarote in February, and of course to return a week later. No idea if Luton has any of the CT hand baggage scanners but I know how to spot them and will be ready to request a hand inspection if necessary. Not sure about the situation at Lanzarote airport.

Then April I'll be going LHR to DFW, then DFW to XNA and back 10 days later. Could be fun, though at least I know I can request hand inspections at any point.

I will update everyone as to how it all goes after each trip.
 
Agulliver said:
Then April I'll be going LHR to DFW, then DFW to XNA and back 10 days later. Could be fun, though at least I know I can request hand inspections at any point.
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I had to google XNA to see what airport that was. As much as everyone (myself included) likes to complain about the TSA, one thing I do appreciate is that hand inspections are part of official policy, so you're not just hoping on the goodwill of a particular individual. Generally, the TSA agents have been very friendly and have had no issue performing the handcheck for me.
 

How do Apple Airtags et al survive when exposed to CT scans? Does anyone have experience?
 
Sirius Glass said:
How do Apple Airtags et al survive when exposed to CT scans?
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If you look at how heavily you need to blast electronics with gamma rays in order to do damage, it's fairly obvious. It's just not in the same ballpark. Moreover, electronics tend to be damaged by heavy bombardment with gamma rays, not xrays. While the spectra overlap, gamma rays typically have energies up to one or several orders of magnitude higher than xrays. Compare it to throwing an apple at someone. If you throw it by hand, it's unlikely to do any damage. If you shoot it with a canon at someone, hospitalization or death may occur. However, if you throw the same apple by hand at bone china vase, the vase won't survive. The apple is the radiation (hand-thrown = xray, canon-shot = gamma ray), the person hit by the apple is the electronics, the china vase is photographic film.
TL;DR: not all radiation is created equally. People tend to forget that the electromagnetic spectrum stretches pretty far and that this involves rather fundamental differences in energy levels.
 
In addition, an Apple Airtag is just a little chipset with Bluetooth. If x-ray scanners damaged Airtags, they would also zap phones, laptops, and anything else with miniaturized semiconductors (including electronic cameras), yet hundreds or thousands of those go through each scanner every day without incident.

The problem is that film is designed to be a photon detector, and though X-rays are out of its primary sensitivity band, enough X-rays can do enough damage to render it unusable. (Digital cameras are also photon detectors of course, but they work differently and also can be flushed before each exposure.)
 
Agulliver said:
Anyway here is the full letter with my details removed. Not that I am especially worried about them appearing here but because people may wish to print this out or save it to a device to show at airport security.

View attachment 286034
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Thank you for doing this, I guess we'll see how compliant to that instruction are the grumbled employees manning the scanning stations! I'm due to fly Gatwick in April (first time in an airplane since 2019...), I'll be taking a couple of rolls with me to see what happens!
 
OK, so the verdict is in on shipping film abroad.

In short, it worked. For the past 10 days I developed 270 rolls of 120 film, 240 of it shot in the Faroe Islands and it all looks good, densitometer readings are all really close. So now I can plan my next adventure, I am thinking 4-6 weeks in Greenland next year.
 
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