Ellen Pompeo is extremely well-known as an actress, but that didn’t stop the Grey’s Anatomy star from being held at the airport. The bomb squad was called because they thought her sunflower seeds could have been explosives. How did that happen? Read on to find out.
Delayed For Red-Flagged Seeds
Good American Family stars Ellen in the true story of Natalia Grace. That boosted her face on TV even more. So, you might wonder how she ended up being detained by the TSA. The story emerged a few days ago, and she told Travel and Leisure that she nearly missed her flight.
The outlet cited her as saying:
I had a bag of sunflower seeds, like organic sunflower seeds from Erewhon, so they were probably the most expensive sunflower seeds money can buy. They literally held me for an hour, and they brought the bomb squad in. And I was like, ‘what is happening? Is this a joke?”‘
Well, it wasn’t a joke, and aviation safety means that the officials don’t care who you are if other people are in potential danger. She told the outlet that perhaps the bag the seeds were in had some sort of “chemical” on it. Anyway, not wanting to hang about, she offered to toss them out. However, they told her to wait until “the Bomb Squad” checked them out.
Can Seeds Be Mistaken For Explosives?
When someone shared the story on Reddit, a few people turned up in the comments. One of them posted a crying face and said, “The bomb squad for sunflower seeds.” It does seem a bit silly, after all. However, someone else in the chat thought they had an answer for Ellen Pompeo’s encounter.
They wrote, “Organic matter looks like plastic explosives in the x-ray they use. Based on what my mom (former TSO) told me a while back, I’d guess there were charging cords or cables near the sunflower seeds, which could give the overall appearance of a potential bomb.”
Is that for real? According to X-Ray Screener UK, the commentator is correct. In fact, when viewed through X-ray, organic substances and explosives can look alike because they absorb X-rays in a similar way. Both tend to appear as orange tones in X-ray images, making it difficult to tell them apart without further examination.
The website noted that there are “three main categories of materials: 1. Organic (Orange), 2. Inorganic (Blue), and 3.Mixed (Green), or coloured with Pseudo Colour, which is artificial colourisation of grey levels. Artificial colourisation…can assist in identifying certain threats amongst clutter.”
What are your thoughts? Did you know that your organic snack could be mistaken for a bomb or explosives? Let us know in the comments below, and come back here often for all your celebrity news and updates.