TSA lifting ban on 'common' lighters in August
Andrew Compart, Travel Weekly, 7/23/2007
Airport security screeners are still confiscating about 22,000 lighters each day, but soon they won't have to take them -- and travelers won't have to give them up.
The Transportation Security Administration, in what it called a "common sense, risk-based security decision," is lifting its ban on "common" lighters in carry-on luggage as of Aug. 4.
The TSA will still ban the "torch lighters" that people often use for pipes and cigars. Those lighters have a consistent stream of air-propelled fire with a thin, needle-like flame that is hotter and more intense than the flame on common lighters, and have long been banned as a hazardous material.
Most lighters, however, are of the common butane type.
According to the TSA, screeners confiscated more than 11 million lighters last year. But the TSA now says lighters "are not a serious threat," and that removing the ban will free screeners to increase their focus on more important tasks such as finding explosives or components of improvised explosive devices, identifying suspicious behavior and performing extra screening on randomly selected passengers.
The TSA also noted the U.S. is the only country in the world to ban lighters.
The TSA initiated its ban on butane lighters in April 2005 to comply with a mandate from Congress, signed into law by President Bush as part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. But last October Congress approved, and the president signed, a Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act that gave the TSA administration the discretion to stop enforcing the ban on lighters.
The TSA also is modifying the rules associated with carrying breast milk through security checkpoints, so that mothers traveling without their infant or toddler will be permitted to bring breast milk in quantities greater than three ounces as long as it is declared for inspection at the security checkpoint.
Previously, the exception was allowed only for mothers traveling with their infant or toddler.
The TSA said the breast milk could be subject to additional screening, but reiterated that it will not ask travelers to taste it as proof.