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Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants

cnn.com

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Re: Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants

#41

Post by wiredfool »

ch4s3 wrote: post #29
4d4m wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/study-shows-toxic-... If you think of the last 10 flights you were on, how many had the gym sock smell? That's the real occurence rate. I'd say in my experience across all airlines its around 7/10 flights I can detect via smell a fume event.

I’ve never noticed this in 35 years and I have an unusually sensitive sense of smell.

I don’t think I’ve noticed gym socks smells, but I can certainly smell kerosene basically every time when outdoors at the airport, and often in the plane.

Re: Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants

#42

Post by mmustapic »

4d4m wrote: post #8

Boeing, Bombardier, Learjet, Embraer and Airbus should be forced to clean up aircraft cabin air they poison us with. For people who don’t know how GROSS this is: on almost every modern passenger jet, the air you breathe is pulled through the engine’s Bleed-Air system before entering the cabin. As oil, hydraulic fluid, or other contaminants leak into that system, those superheated fumes can be pumped directly into the…

The Boeing 787 has a bleedless system. It uses dedicated electric compressors for the cabin air.

Re: Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants

#43

Post by Der_Einzige »

4d4m wrote: post #8

Boeing, Bombardier, Learjet, Embraer and Airbus should be forced to clean up aircraft cabin air they poison us with. For people who don’t know how GROSS this is: on almost every modern passenger jet, the air you breathe is pulled through the engine’s Bleed-Air system before entering the cabin. As oil, hydraulic fluid, or other contaminants leak into that system, those superheated fumes can be pumped directly into the…

Like others, I have zero experience with any of the things you are mentioning, but I want flying to be more expensive, more luxurious, and far more comfortable in general for everyone so please keep giving them a hard time about this.

In general, 50% or more of the people flying should not be flying, and going back to the pre-privatization era alongside much stricter regulations on seat sizes would be awesome as it would force actual economics of scale to kick in for the good seats and keep the burger king crown wearing crowd ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onib3bDo6Z0 ) off these airplanes for good.

Re: Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants

#44

Post by potatoking »

jeswin wrote: post #34
jader201 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as my understanding is they don't have pilots fly too often From a quick search, I can’t find evidence of this. If anything, pilots are in the air more of their week/lives vs. flight attendants.

In my search, I found that they spend almost an equal number of hours in air like you said - 75-100 hours per month. If that's the case, after adjusting for sex, these numbers holding would throw some uncertainty into the radiation hypothesis.

The fuselage probably has a lot less attention to shielding even if the cockpit seems very exposed.

Re: Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants

#45

Post by magnetic »

seethishat wrote: post #27

I read once that a CT scan is roughly equivalent to 1000 hours of flight WRT radiation exposure. I've had about 6 or 8 of those over the years.

This chart has the flight & CT scan scenarios (among many other): https://xkcd.com/radiation/

Re: Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants

#46

Post by Der_Einzige »

amluto wrote: post #38
4d4m wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/study-shows-toxic-... If you think of the last 10 flights you were on, how many had the gym sock smell? That's the real occurence rate. I'd say in my experience across all airlines its around 7/10 flights I can detect via smell a fume event.

In my experience, a large fraction of flights have very stinky air during a substantial portion of the time from when the engines start until takeoff. Whether this is “gym sock” or something else has never been entirely clear to me.

I think airplanes reek too, but mostly because the cleaning done on the seats/cabin is pathetic by overworked and underpaid cabin crew, the average American doesn't wash their asshole (no bidet culture in the USA) so they have smeared shit stains on most of their undergarments, standard BO, etc

Coincidentally, when I am flying anywhere in Asia, I get none of this. I'd unironically rather be on an Indian airline for most flights because for all the flack that Indian people get about cleanliness, they're far more likely than the average gringo to have used a bidet at some point in their lives.

Re: Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants

#47

Post by triceratops »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #28
technothrasher wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These incidents are literally called "fume events" Your first FAA link says that these 'fume events' are rare: "The report found that the rate of cabin air quality events is less than 33 events per million aircraft departures." This is about one event every 30,000 flights.

I have a pretty sensitive sense of smell, and I regularly smell oil/smoke/hydrocarbon smell after they're starting the engines. It also sticks on your clothes after the plane ride, and I'm quite sure it's not just stinky seat smell.

I don't have a sensitive sense of smell and I still smell it.

Re: Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants

#48

Post by 4d4m »

bagxrvxpepzn wrote: post #40
criddell wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic: when did using solve as a noun take off? There are so many good nouns that work there (challenge, task, etc...) or use the verb form (is tougher to solve).

In the bay area this trend of nounifying verbs is common amongst VCs and C-level startup execs. I'm not sure if it's arisen due to peacocking or a higher incidence of ESL in those communities.

ESL/clevel exec, guilty!

Re: Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants

#49

Post by petesergeant »

ch4s3 wrote: post #29
4d4m wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/study-shows-toxic-... If you think of the last 10 flights you were on, how many had the gym sock smell? That's the real occurence rate. I'd say in my experience across all airlines its around 7/10 flights I can detect via smell a fume event.

I’ve never noticed this in 35 years and I have an unusually sensitive sense of smell.

43 years for me, and in addition to being notably smell-sensitive, I’ve also taken a probably close to 500 long haul flights

Re: Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants

#50

Post by Ductapemaster »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #28
technothrasher wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These incidents are literally called "fume events" Your first FAA link says that these 'fume events' are rare: "The report found that the rate of cabin air quality events is less than 33 events per million aircraft departures." This is about one event every 30,000 flights.

I have a pretty sensitive sense of smell, and I regularly smell oil/smoke/hydrocarbon smell after they're starting the engines. It also sticks on your clothes after the plane ride, and I'm quite sure it's not just stinky seat smell.

I usually smell it too. I've noticed its when they switch from the air handler provided by the jetway (big yellow hose) to the plane's onboard system. Perhaps there's some sequencing procedure that the staff is moving through too quickly trying to get the plane out on time, or it's just an acceptable amount of cross-contamination.
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