Myrmidonisia
20-12-2006, 23:21
This doesn't quite qualify for the Darwins, but it's close (http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-baby20dec20,0,4869996.story).
"A woman going through security at Los Angeles International Airport put her month-old grandson into a plastic bin intended for carry-on items and slid it into an X-ray machine," the Los Angeles Times reports:
The early Saturday accident--bizarre but not unprecedented--caught airport workers by surprise, even though the security line was not busy at the time, officials said.
A screener watching the machine's monitor immediately noticed the outline of a baby and pulled the bin backward on the conveyor belt.
The infant was taken to Centinela Hospital, where doctors determined that he had not received a dangerous dose of radiation.
Officials, who declined to release the 56-year-old woman's name, said she spoke Spanish and apparently did not understand English. . . .
The rare incident drew attention to whether officials are staffing often-busy security checkpoints enough to prevent such an accident. And it raised questions about the danger of X-rays used to pick out suspicious metal shapes in passenger bags, given the medical community's warnings that even low amounts of radiation can build up over a lifetime.
How's that for a non sequitur? The line wasn't busy, but somehow the incident "drew attention to whether officials are staffing often-busy security checkpoints enough to prevent such an accident." Oh, and it "raised questions about the danger of X-rays." It seems to me the answer to these questions is pretty simple: Don't put babies through X-ray machines!
"A woman going through security at Los Angeles International Airport put her month-old grandson into a plastic bin intended for carry-on items and slid it into an X-ray machine," the Los Angeles Times reports:
The early Saturday accident--bizarre but not unprecedented--caught airport workers by surprise, even though the security line was not busy at the time, officials said.
A screener watching the machine's monitor immediately noticed the outline of a baby and pulled the bin backward on the conveyor belt.
The infant was taken to Centinela Hospital, where doctors determined that he had not received a dangerous dose of radiation.
Officials, who declined to release the 56-year-old woman's name, said she spoke Spanish and apparently did not understand English. . . .
The rare incident drew attention to whether officials are staffing often-busy security checkpoints enough to prevent such an accident. And it raised questions about the danger of X-rays used to pick out suspicious metal shapes in passenger bags, given the medical community's warnings that even low amounts of radiation can build up over a lifetime.
How's that for a non sequitur? The line wasn't busy, but somehow the incident "drew attention to whether officials are staffing often-busy security checkpoints enough to prevent such an accident." Oh, and it "raised questions about the danger of X-rays." It seems to me the answer to these questions is pretty simple: Don't put babies through X-ray machines!