"Airports test explosives-detection device"

Friday, September 24, 2004

Airports test explosives-detection device 
4 cities using machines that scan passengers' IDs 
By Mimi Hall
USA TODAY 


Airline passengers at four of the nation's busiest airports are being asked
to hand over their wallets, passports and boarding passes - and not just so
that airport workers can look over their IDs. The documents are being tested
with new explosives-detection machines.

The devices are designed to pick up trace amounts of plastic explosives such
as the kind Russian authorities say were used by Chechen suicide bombers to
bring down two planes last month.

The 30-day tests at the four airports - Ronald Reagan Washington National
Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, Chicago's O'Hare International
Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York - are part of
a series of experiments by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
Tests at Reagan National started Sept. 9; tests at the other airports
started in the past week.

The TSA is testing passengers and their carry-on bags for traces of
explosives that are small enough to be hidden under clothes but powerful
enough to blow up airplanes.

Officials say that if a passenger has handled explosives before going to the
airport, the document scanners will pick up traces on the items the
passenger has handled.

The scanners will not be used on every passenger. TSA officials say only one
machine will be used in each airport, and that machine will be used at only
one terminal. At JFK, for example, the scanner is located at Terminal 4,
Concourse B.

And the scanners only will be used on documents held by those passengers
selected for additional security checks, roughly 15% of all passengers.

The machines work this way: A security worker takes the passengers' wallet,
passport or boarding pass and rubs each side of it on a cotton swab. The
swab then slides into the machine where it is analyzed. In six to eight
seconds, a screen shows whether any explosives were detected.

If the machine reports detecting an explosive, the passenger would be
questioned. Officials acknowledge that some legal substances - such as
fertilizer, gunpowder residue and nitroglycerin taken by heart patients and
found in some skin creams - can trigger the machines. But TSA spokeswoman
Amy von Walter said the machines performed well in tests over the summer at
a New Haven, Conn., railway station. And she said there have been no delays
at Reagan National since testing began.

At the end of the 30-day trial period, von Walter said TSA leaders will
decide whether to put the $150,000 scanners in place at airports nationwide.


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