Baby Put Through Airport X-ray

A woman passed her one-month-old grandson through the x-ray machine at Los Angeles international airport, it was revealed yesterday.

A security worker saw the baby entering the machine sitting on a plastic bin intended for hand luggage and jackets. The official hurriedly pulled the bin out along the conveyor belt.

After the incident on Saturday the baby was taken to the nearby Centinela hospital and checked for radiation. Doctors cleared the child, finding that in the seconds the baby spent in the machine he would have received no more radiation than would naturally be absorbed from cosmic rays from space in a day.

The identity of the woman was withheld, although she was said to be 56, spoke little English and was an inexperienced traveller.

She and her grandson were bound for Mexico.

"The lady obviously mistakenly put the baby in the machine. It was an unfortunate incident," a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration told Associated Press.

The incident has led to suggestions that airport staff are stretched too thinly at security checkpoints and are unable to keep an eye on all travellers.

Passengers are required to pass jackets, metal objects, shoes, laptops and any liquids they are carrying through the x-ray scanners, and there is confusion over what is expected.

The last such case occurred in the airport in 1988, when a child passed through the x-ray equipment strapped into a car seat.