Travel expert weighs in on claims airport scanners can tell you are on your period
Topics: Periods, Travel, Explained, Women's Health, Tyla Exclusive
Rhiannon Ingle
Featured Image Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Topics: Periods, Travel, Explained, Women's Health, Tyla Exclusive
Airports at the best of times are stressful and, at the worst of times, utter chaos.
As if the relentless rushing, expensive food and drink and sensory overload weren't enough, we've also all got to go through the ordeal of security where we desperately try to navigate confusing rules, undress and interact with stern-faced authority figures all while constantly worrying about missing your flight.
And to add to the travel anxiety, a number of frequent flyers are claiming that they set off the alarm going through the security body scanners because of their period underwear.
Influencer Lindsey Gurk shared on social media that she was stopped by workers who asked if she had 'any dangerous items' around her crotch area, which was lit up on the scanner.
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"I said, 'Well, I got my period panties on'. She said, 'Alright, would you like to go to a private room or do you want to do it here?'" Lindsey continued.
She explained she told the worker she was happy to do the body search then and there but warned that she had a 'whole diaper situation' going on.
Lindsey ended the video telling followers: "If you're wondering why I received a double warning? Because blood has metal, a lot of iron."
A travel expert has since weighed in on such claims that airport scanners can tell you are on your period.
Daniel Hurley, COO & Founder of Global Charter, exclusively opened up to Tyla a little more about the situation.
Hurley, who is a London-based aviation and travel expert with 17 years of experience, explained how airport screening technology actually works in practice, and he shared what travellers should realistically expect from metal detectors.
The expert notes: "Walk-through airport metal detectors are built to detect metal objects by sensing disturbances in an electromagnetic field.
"They don’t detect biological fluids, and they can’t pick up blood. The iron in blood argument is the usual hook for this rumour, but it doesn’t stack up in real-world physics.
"It's not metallic iron, and it isn’t behaving like a conductive lump of metal in the way a detector responds to coins, keys, belt buckles, underwired bras, or some implants."
Hurley added: "It’s chemically bound within a protein and dispersed through the bloodstream, so it doesn’t produce the kind of signal these detectors are designed to alarm on."
According to the travel expert, where the confusion becomes understandable is that airport security uses several different screening tools, and people tend to blend them together into one machine that can detect anything.
"Alongside traditional metal detectors, many airports use millimetre-wave body scanners (often called body scanners or Advanced Imaging Technology)," Hurley continued. "These don’t detect fluids either.
"Instead, they use software to compare the scan to a generic body template and flag areas on the surface that the system can’t automatically resolve.
"That flag can be triggered by entirely benign things that happen to sit on the body, including a sanitary pad, incontinence product, an ostomy bag, a bandage or dressing, bulky seams, or even dampness or sweat in some situations."