12/20/2006

Baby in baggage x-ray LAX


According to the world famous LA Times. 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. I can't imagine what the lady was thinking by doing that. Maybe she is slightly deranged??

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. Thank goodnes for that, although you'd be more inclined to get a larger dose of radiation by just flying in the plane for a couple of hours.

Officials, who declined to release the 56-year-old woman's name, said she spoke Spanish and apparently did not understand English. I don't care if she speaks brogue, it must take an element of stupidness to put your grandchild onto a conveyor belt in a plastic box that disappears into a large machine. Speaking english is not the reason that this woman did this. Lack of common sense is.

She initially didn't want the baby transported to a hospital, but security officials called paramedics and insisted that the child be examined by a doctor. Maybe she was an illegal immigrant?

The grandmother and the child were subsequently allowed to board an Alaska Airlines flight to Mexico City.

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.

There is always going to be one or two that slip through the cracks... Sometimes you just wonder how it happened.

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