Airport Tests of Memory Cards

[Michael Fanelli]

Finally! A real life test of the effect of airport xrays on memory cards by SanDisk and the TSA:

"At the request of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the ITIP Testing Subcommittee studied the effects of checked and carry-on baggage screening devices on electronic storage media. ITIP performed tests on various electronic storage media formats (Secure Digital, Compact Flash, Memory Sticks, etc.) using Smith Heimann 7555i X-Ray scanner (used at security check point stations), RapidScan 520 X-Ray Scanner (used at security check point stations), the InVision CTX 5500 Explosives Detection System (EDS) (used to scan checked baggage) the Sentrie walk through metal detector and the Garrett hand held metal detector.

"Results: No apparent adverse effect on any of the media cards, or to the digital camera. Contents of cards remained intact throughout all of the passes with all of the equipment. Image quality remained uncompromised. Cards were undamaged, and files could be written to, and read from each one."

Great news! Film users should continue to follow the same guidelines and precautions as usual.

From http://www.i3a.org/itip.html
by way of http://www.dpreview.com

[Arctirus]

Great news! Thanks for posting!

[Trevor Ash]

awesome post. thanks for thinking about us!

[Axle]

Good to know! Thanks for the heads up!

[EmbeddedMatt]

Any other result would have been startling considering all of these cards are just packaged flash memory just like what's in your cell phone. I've never heard of anyone worrying about carrying their cell phone through airport security.

[opus]

Matt, my thoughts exactly. I would think that laptops would have started exhibiting problems if xrays were at all a problem for electronics.

[adamsti]

What another waste of money by the TSA. Anybody with just a rudimentary knowledge of this stuff knows that CF cards would not be harmed by this. I can't believe someone even requested this.

Since this is a family forum, this is about all I can say. This kind of wasteful spending just makes my blood boil. The TSA needs to get its act together and stop fooling with general aviation, but that is another topic, and I'll leave it at that.

[Michael Fanelli]

What another waste of money by the TSA. Anybody with just a rudimentary knowledge of this stuff knows that CF cards would not be harmed by this. I can't believe someone even requested this.

Since this is a family forum, this is about all I can say. This kind of wasteful spending just makes my blood boil. The TSA needs to get its act together and stop fooling with general aviation, but that is another topic, and I'll leave it at that.

Please provide the "rudimentary knowledge of this stuff" that we all know.

In actual fact, this subject has been debated in great length both here and on other web sites. I personally emailed Lexar and SanDisk about 1.5 years ago and got an "OK" from Sandisk and a "hand inspect only" from Lexar. Over on DP Review, questions always arise and get lrage responses in both directions. There were even several EEs arguing the issue. Up until this point, no one knew for sure which airport devices would or would not have an effect.

People have been claiming for years that their laptop computers and hard drives were being damaged by check-in scanners. We also now know that this is untrue.

The other issue resolved is that these cards and cameras are also safe from the very high intensity checked baggage scanning devices. This was not known by anyone nor supported by facts one way or the other.

Yes, government does waste money. This is not one of those situations. With the proliferation of digital cameras, travellers needed to know whether or not their images will be safe. Up until now, it was all guess work based on antedotal "evidence."