Thankfully, if you're spooked by backscatter scanners, there is good news: You can identify them at the airport fairly easily. They're the devices that require you to stand between two large (usually blue) boxes. The less-controversial millimeter-wave units, which rely on radio-frequency scans, look like a round telephone booth.

What does the TSA say about the approximately 250 backscatter machines that they deploy? They insist, with bureaucratic certainty and regulatory rigidity, that they are perfectly safe. The agency even goes to great lengths to provide reams of support material. It also claims that all sorts of other federal agencies have declared both backscatter and millimeter-wave scanners are harmless.

As usual with the TSA, however, there is room for skepticism.

For starters, the agency's major piece of supporting evidence for the safety of backscatter devices is literally written by the primary manufacturer of the devices. But the company, Rapiscan Systems, has political credibility problems. Just days after the Underwear Bomber struck, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff went on a media blitz touting the value of the backscatter devices. He never disclosed that the first ones were ordered when he was secretary of Homeland Security, the parent agency of TSA. Nor did he disclose that his eponymous consulting firm once worked for Rapiscan.

As for all those other government agencies and august independent bodies that the TSA cites as having endorsed backscatter technology? More than a few critics have punched holes in those claims.

If you're wary of backscatter scanners, however, you might be most concerned with the TSA's refusal to submit the devices to independent testing and oversight. Even after he promised a Senate Committee last month that he would conduct a study of the heath effects of the scanners, TSA administrator John Pistole reneged. His rationale? There was a new report available from the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security. But that report has yet to be made public.

At the end of the day—or, more accurately, before you take your next flight—you'll have to make your own decision on whether to submit to backscatter scanners. Whichever choice you make, there'll be plenty of "evidence" to support your conclusion.

Me? I go through backscatter scanners because I'm too lazy to object or too time-pressed to wait around for the TSA pat-down. But I fully understand if you take the advice of your doctor or your astrologer or your next-door neighbor and skip them—or just have visions of a bug-eyed Warren Oates from an old TV show dancing in your head.

The Fine Print…

A followup to last week's column on hotel financing: Sol Kerzner, the impresario behind the Atlantis resorts in the Bahamas and Dubai, Sun City in South Africa, and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, is the latest loser. Kerzner's company disclosed last week that it will forfeit the Atlantis resort on Paradise Island after failing to refinance its debt. The company is also selling its 50-percent interest in the Atlantis in Dubai.