US airport screening in question after health and screening issues

Apr 25 2004

Security screeners at Miami International Airport have become ill for the fourth time in a single month.

A security checkpoint was closed for more than 16 hours this weekend after six Transportation Security Administration employees started vomiting. Two were taken to a hospital.

No fights were affected.

A T-S-A spokeswoman says a paramedic is stationed at the checkpoint today, and the airport plans to perform tests tomorrow to see if the source of the problem can be identified.

It is the fourth time a Miami concourse has been closed after security screeners became sick. On April seventh, 36 T-S-A employees were taken to hospitals after an odor was blamed for eye irritations, nausea, headaches and dizziness.

Security screeners at Orlando International Airport refused to let a cancer patient board a flight home to Denver because they said she no longer resembled her identification photos.

Athena LaPera, 35, finally flew out of Orlando International Airport on a Frontier Airlines flight two days after she was turned away by security screeners.

LaPera said she has lost weight and hair because of chemotherapy treatments since the photos were taken for her US passport and Colorado driver's licence.

“I feel very degraded and angry,” said LaPera, who was returning home from vacationing in St. Augustine and whose husband works for Frontier Airlines.

LaPera spent most of Tuesday trying to resolve the issue only to be told during a conversation with a federal Transportation Security Administration employee in Washington that she needed new photos and a doctor's note to explain her changed appearance.