The research and development (R&D) arm of diamond giant De Beers, DebTech, says that it is ready to make its body scanning technology available to the market, as airports step up security following an attempted terrorist attack in December 2009, in the US.
International Air Traffic Association director-general and CEO Giovanni Bisignani told Mining Weekly that the air transport system could not provide 100% pat-down searches in the long term, and had recommended a smaller percentage of intensive pat-downs, accompanied by technologies or appropriate screening procedures.
The UK and the Netherlands have already indicated that they will be implementing body scanners, while Nigeria’s civil aviation authority has reportedly said that it, too, will implement such procedures this year. The US Department of Homeland Security has also announced that it will increase the prevalence of full-body scanners at its national airports in the coming months, with funding for the units being received through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
DebTech marketing manager Nico van Zyl says that the company has already started discussions with airports regulator Airports Company South Africa (ACSA), while it plans to also market its Scannex X-ray body scanner, which was initially used primarily for resource protection by the De Beers group. ACSA has said that it is not yet planning to implement the use of full-body scanners.
However, DebTech sees great potential for the Scannex system to be rolled out in air-ports in the US and in Europe. The low-dose X-ray full-body scanner is able to detect very small diamonds, while the X-ray dose is small enough to allow for a number of scans to be performed on a person each year, without posing health risks.
The scan is nonintrusive as it does not provide bodily outline details, but shows more dense body parts, such as bones and nonbody items that may be hidden inside or on the body.
DebTech R&D and technical manager Gordon Taylor tells Mining Weekly that developing the body scanner posed several technical challenges. The machine needed to be able to produce rapid results and have a quick turnaround time for the continuous scanning of personnel.
“We also had to decrease the exposure to radiation to allow people to undergo multiple scans during the course of a year. “Current Scannex installations operating within a larger access control system have been able to scan 90 people an hour through a single machine” he says.
A Scannex unit will cost about $0.5-million, excluding support costs. However, the system is not labour or maintenance intensive. The unit requires at least one person to operate the system, while four or more viewers can be connected to a scanner simultaneously.
Taylor explains that, once a scan is completed on one person, the person can be moved to a separate waiting room to allow another person to enter the scanning area. A viewer can then assess the scan of the person in the waiting room and, if nothing of concern is found in the scan, the viewer will open the waiting room door to let the person through.
A number of waiting rooms can be used, allowing the scanning area to remain open.
