This is a pretty curmudgeonly viewpoint, but one of my objections is that I simply don't trust people without MDs to operate radiological equipment. I mean, sure, in normal operations, there are some non-peer-reviewed studies suggesting that the total radiation dosage is negligible (and people somewhat rightly bring up the cosmic radiation point -- as part of my Department of Energy orientation, I was told that airline crews get some of the highest radiation exposure of any career), but as a computer scientist, the question that occasionally comes into my mind is: how would the average TSA agent actually know if their radiological equipment is operating normally?If the radiation dose is large, I can also see them being an issue (but I'm pretty sure it's not that bad.)
I think that's a fair position to take. There are probably a lot of safeguards in place to make sure you don't get massive doses of radiation, but it's very true - your average TSA agent is no genius and probably would have no idea if anything was awry. I think we could do a lot better than the TSA, in terms of security oversight; it'd be nice to have people who are more professional. TSA agents tend to be all over the place.
As far as I know, TSA agents are not required and possibly not allowed to wear radiation exposure badges. Why should we trust that these machines output a safe level of radiation (for passengers or workers) if the company has proven to be untrustworthy?
Regarding that specific issue, I think the fear is that if they let their employees wear dosimeters, then people would think, "Man, if the agents have to wear dosimeters, then there's probably a serious risk of dangerous levels of radiation." So that puts us at "the simplest way not to have problems is to never know if you have problems," i.e., disable the check engine light in your car and nothing's ever wrong with it.