Commercial flight crews show higher cancer rates: study

Many years ago there was another study that said for commercial pilots every year you worked after 55 it took two years off your life expectancy. Many of us thought there was some truth, due to sitting long hours in a cockpit or....it was a union thing to get us to retire early, considering it was a ALPA union study..hahaha

This latest study deals mostly with flight attendants which shows on average a one percent increase in certain types of cancers pretty much across the board after many years of working. Understand that flight crews work three or four + days a week for years and years, so for the average passenger you will be OK as flying will have little or no effect upon you cancer statistics..

Paris (AFP) - Flight crews have higher than average rates of certain cancers, according to a study of more than 5,000 US-based flight attendants.

"We report a higher lifetime prevalence of breast, melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers among flight crews relative to the general population," said Irina Mordukhovich, a researcher at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and co-author of a study published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Health.

"This is striking given the low rates of overweight and smoking in this occupational group," she said in a statement.

Out of 5,366 flight attendants who took part in the study, just over 15 percent reported ever having been diagnosed with cancer.

Taking age into account, the study found a higher prevalence of cancer in flight crew for every type of cancer examined.

www.yahoo.com...

a reply to: 727Sky

Hmm.... I wonder why?

20X normal at altitude.


BioNerd has some awesome content.

Very cool Chernobyl stuff.

I flew with an electrical engineer who had a rad meter he would take on some of the flights.. His was not digital as he had the old analog read out with a pointer over a back ground scale.. Up to 12 to 14 thousand feet the meter would show around 08:30 to the 09:00 position.. as you approached 20,000 ft. it would be reading around 11 to 11:30.. The big jump came after busting through 30,000 (depending on the time of year) and continue to climb as the aircraft climbed..

Some of our guys quit flying the polar routes due to radiation exposure they claimed was making them ill. Swollen eyes and skin patches that turned red and were always wanting a scratch.. Psychological or ?

I spent many an hour at 45,000 before I ever flew for the airlines.. But I was bold and did not know any better plus I was young..

It would be interesting if they would do this type of study for the U2 pilots and SR-71 guys.

Someone is hiding this info from the public by saying that it is not a problem for normal flyers.. The more you fly at higher altitudes the more the risk, frequent flyers can have increased risk of cancer and other metabolic issues. Jet lag is not just jet lag, it has a real medical reason. Same with blood, the blood acts irregularly when you increase altitude too fast, people on blood thinners can sometimes be restricted from flying. Nobody listens anyway, they want to do what they want to do. I try talking to women about food chemistry sometimes and I get the I do not like the texture thing a lot. WTF has texture got to do with eating right, sometimes foods that are good and appropriate for you have texures that people do not like. Their parents did not do a good job of teaching them how to eat. So they will need to take meds later on when something messes up. I studied vitamin A and retinol. If you lack some enzymes to convert enough vitamin A to retinol, you need to eat the food or take the supplements. Or else you will need glasses or contacts eventually and your skin will be too thin.

first jet lag is nothing more then a change in time zones lord .
say you live in florida and decide to goto CA for a weekk your body is use to sleeping from say 9 pm to 6 am .
once in CA your body now wants to sleep at 6 pm . You know what time it is your body takes a wile to adjust to new times zones when flying .

As for Rads it never accured to me but yep at 30,000 feet the rads you get would be tons and tons ore then our body's are evolved to handle .
Once in a wile flying would be no problem but when you log 1000s of hours as a pilot I would expect a jump in health issues .

Wow and we ( humans are just now realizing this lol . )

a reply to: 727Sky

A one percent increase for all cancers? This strikes me as odd, since not all cancers are equally stimulated by radiation as far as I know.
But of course this amount of radiation can't be good for you. Hardly news.

A cancer that is closely related to ionizing radiation exposure is melanoma. It is also one of the most commonly cancers to spread to other organs, most commonly the lungs, brain, lymphatic system (lymphoma) and liver. Metastatic malignent melanoma, caused by fermionic cosmic radiation, is one explanation for the higher cancer rates. At 39,000 feet, the body receives 10 times the radiation received at sea level. It gets even higher near the earth's magnetic poles. On any flights near the poles, I usually try for a cruise altitude of 37,000 rather than going on up to 45,000, or even 51,000 in the Gulfstream.