Airport screeners have seized 4.8M items WASHINGTON (AP) =97 Airport screeners have seized more than 4.8 million= items=20 =97 including guns, knives, a kitchen sink pipe and a circular saw =97 in= the=20 13 months the federal government has been in charge of security. The=20 Transportation Security Administration on Monday gave its most thorough=20 accounting of seizures at the nation's 429 commercial airports. The tally= =20 since February 2002: 1.4 million knives, 2.4 million sharp objects, 1,101=20 guns, 15,666 clubs, more than 125,000 incendiary items and nearly 40,000=20 box cutters. Local police arrested 922 people at checkpoints, though how=20 many of those resulted in convictions is not known. TSA spokesman Brian=20 Turmail said the numbers show that despite efforts to alert the traveling=20 public about what items are barred from planes, more education is needed.=20 He said the agency is working with airports to put passenger information on= =20 airport radio stations, but some people will never learn. "If you don't=20 know by now that box cutters are inappropriate, no amount of public=20 education is going to make a difference," Turmail said. Among the more unusual items collected by screeners: a 15-piece cutlery=20 set, a machete, a trailer hitch, horseshoes, that kitchen sink pipe and=20 circular saw and metal wall hangings depicting the Greek god=20 Apollo. "Those are found with some regularity," Turmail said, referring to= =20 the wall hangings. The sharp points around the figure's head make it=20 similar to a throwing star used in martial arts, he said. Paul Hudson,=20 executive director of the Aviation Consumer Action Project, an airline=20 safety and security advocacy group, called the number of confiscated items= =20 mind-boggling. "If that's how many they've found, how many still got=20 through?" he asked. A test last spring by the Transportation Security=20 Administration showed screeners found knives only 70% of the time and=20 missed one in four guns. Turmail said the TSA tests screeners regularly, and he's confident that=20 screening has improved. David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers=20 Association, said the vast majority of confiscated items are things people= =20 simply forgot to leave at home. Even frequent travelers sometimes forget to= =20 go through their bags for scissors or cigarette lighters before leaving on= =20 a trip, he said. He credits the TSA with making air travel safer. The agency has changed=20 the list of forbidden items over the past year, now allowing tweezers, nail= =20 clippers and toy transformer robots that once were prohibited. The agency=20 posts the list on its Web site. During March, the first full month the TSA was in charge of screeners,=20 409,801 items were confiscated, including 4,711 box cutters and 55 guns.=20 Last month, 326,793 items were taken, including 1,132 box cutters and 61=20 guns. The number of so-called incendiary devices, which include butane=20 lighters, nearly quintupled from September and October and stayed above=20 10,000 a month ever since. Turmail said it's because screeners now know=20 better what qualifies as an incendiary device. People do seem to be getting the word about box cutters, which were banned= =20 from aircraft cabins after Sept. 11, 2001, because authorities believe the= =20 19 hijackers used them to commandeer the planes. Last month, screeners=20 confiscated only about a fifth of the record 5,145 taken from passengers in= =20 April. Airports have various ways of getting rid of items taken from=20 passengers. Washington Reagan National Airport sends them to a metal=20 grinder before they're melted down, while several California airports =97=20 including San Jose Mineta International Airport and Oakland International=20 Airport =97 offer them on the eBay online auction site, Turmail said. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.tha.gov.tt/ TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************