Always good to see technology from the diamond world crossing over into the ‘mainstream’, and the New Year brings news of a state-of-the-art diamond industry technology potentially being used for airport security.

Engineers at De Beers subsidiary DebTech in South Africa have developed body scanners for use in diamond mines.

Now Engineering News in South Africa reports that DebTech has been in discussion with the South African airports organisation with a view to supplying body scanners to airports for security screening.

The Scannex system is already in use in diamond mines in South Africa and Namibia, according to Engineering News, for what is euphemistcally called ‘resource protection’, i.e. scanning staff and visitors to make sure that they aren’t hiding diamonds about their person.

The scanner uses X-rays to search a person’s full body and even tiny diamonds can be spotted apparently; the assumption must be that these scanners can also pick up other non-metallic articles that could present a security risk on aircraft.

This development follows the ‘Christmas Day bomber’ in the US who managed board a plane bound for Detroit with a syringe and explosive materials hidden within his clothing.

The X-ray dose is said to be low enough to prevent no health risks, even if a number of scans are performed on a person each year, and one machine can perform as many as 90 scans in an hour, according to Engineering News.

It’s also reported that the Scannex machines each cost around 3.7 million Rand (£316,000), excluding support costs.