Will airport X-ray machines harm CDs?
I work for the Transportation Security Administration in Miami. A lot of people come through with photo CDs from their vacations. At least one resort tells customers that the discs should be hand checked. We don't mind doing that. But I would like to know definitively if X-ray machines harm discs. Over the years, I've gotten lots of questions on film and memory cards. But I've never gotten one on CDs.
According to information online, the answer to your question is no. Kodak says on several sites that CDs and DVDs are not harmed by airport X-rays. That goes for digital memory cards, too.
The discs in question are probably CD-Rs. These are recordable only once. They use a dye, which is burned when the disc is recorded. It takes a fair amount of heat to affect the dye. That is not a problem with the airport machines.
CD-RWs use a different process to accept data. But it also is heat based. So I would think that they, too, could sail through without a problem.
Commercially made discs are molded, not burned. They would be even less likely to be affected.
Given all that, I would not worry about taking CDs through airport machines. The same goes for DVDs.
I work for the Transportation Security Administration in Miami. A lot of people come through with photo CDs from their vacations. At least one resort tells customers that the discs should be hand checked. We don't mind doing that. But I would like to know definitively if X-ray machines harm discs. Over the years, I've gotten lots of questions on film and memory cards. But I've never gotten one on CDs.
According to information online, the answer to your question is no. Kodak says on several sites that CDs and DVDs are not harmed by airport X-rays. That goes for digital memory cards, too.
The discs in question are probably CD-Rs. These are recordable only once. They use a dye, which is burned when the disc is recorded. It takes a fair amount of heat to affect the dye. That is not a problem with the airport machines.
CD-RWs use a different process to accept data. But it also is heat based. So I would think that they, too, could sail through without a problem.
Commercially made discs are molded, not burned. They would be even less likely to be affected.
Given all that, I would not worry about taking CDs through airport machines. The same goes for DVDs.
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