Digital cameras and airport X-Rays

Factual Questions
1

Is there any concern with allowing your digital camera/memory cards to be run through the X-Ray machine at the airport?

2

According to the link below, nope.

http://www.nikon-euro.com/nikoneuro_en/faq/general/en/FAQ_gen_en_24.htm

3

I agree there’s no problem in sending the actual digital camera through the x-ray machine, but I would be wary of sending the memory cards (be they smartmedia, compact flash…) though. The reason for this, is that (perhaps) the x-ray radiation could flip a bit in the memory. Might just change the color of a pixel slightly, but might also screw up the header of a jpg (or whatever) file. Again, probably won’t happen, but it’s always a possibility.

4

Theoretically, yes. But I think it’s mostly a problem on RAM, not flash memory. If flash memory was vulnerable to X-rays, you’d think laptop manufacturers would warn you about it. (Most computers store the BIOS on flash memory - if you damage it the computer will not boot up.)

If you really are worried about it, they’ll probably let you bypass the X-ray machine, but I think the risk of dropping and breaking the camera while doing it is higher.

5

I’ve done it a few times and there have never been any adverse effects.

6

I did once & it wiped the memory. You do have to put the camera through the xray machine, i saw a sign saying as such, laptops too. But I would give the memory card to one of the guards to hand check.

7

If RAM is more susceptible to a flipped bit than flash, I’ve passed my laptop through airport x-rays countless times, while in the “suspend” state where the memory is left active. Never had a problem. And I agree that it would be much more difficult for an x-ray to move charges out of an insulator, so changing flash would be even less likely.

8

I’ve sent my DC through airport X-Ray machines many times, with no problems. handy, yours is the first report I’ve seen of a problem, and I suspect that something other than the x-ray machine was the problem.

I’ll ask on http://www.dcresource.com and see if anyone has heard of any memory failures from x-ray machines.