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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

#71

Post by beembeem »

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.

This is peak HN. Two engineers running google searches without any primary sources speaking up about the issue.

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

#72

Post by ViktorRay »

1-6 wrote: post #62
ViktorRay wrote: post #35

Cancers rates among Orthopedic surgeons are also much higher than those faced by non surgeon doctors. This is due to exposure to the radiation from intra operative x rays.

Our company shared a wall with an xray lab next door. My coworkers and I were always curious what impacts it would have to our health.

Probably nothing if the wall was lead lined.

And then there’s the inverse square law too.

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

#73

Post by jerlam »

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.

It's probably good old "normalization of deviance". Smelling exhaust/fumes is common enough that it would not get reported unless someone has a medical event. And reporting it would require investigation and downtime which management would frown upon.

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

#74

Post by leonidasrup »

missedthecue wrote: post #17
Supermancho wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

paywalled (even with a "free" account")

Cancer Flight attendants Pilots ------------------------------------------------------ All radiation-related 1.50x 1.36x Breast cancer 1.61x 1.57x CNS / brain cancer 1.51x 1.28x Multiple myeloma 1.34x 1.08x Leukemia 1.12x 1.27x Lymphoma 1.19x 1.04x Prostate cancer 1.75x 1.38x Melanoma 1.63x 1.28x Nonmelanoma skin cancer 1.50x 1.22x Other cancers 1.21x 0.97x It was a cross-sectional analysis of U.S. death certificates…

It's bad we don't access to the full study, because we could learn more about the methodology.

Did the study adjust for socio-economic factors? The average income of pilots is much higher then average income of flight attendants, income affects lifestyle which affect cancer rates and access to healthcare.

When comparing occupations, how do the rates of cancer of pilots/flight attendants compare to miners, especially underground miners? Miners got quite lot of radiation exposure from radon in certain regions. How about workers in chemical plants?

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

#75

Post by leonidasrup »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #51
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.

Depends on the actual scan. A head CT can be as little as one sievert while a full blown angiogramm can be more than ten sievert. A pilot can accrue 40k flight hours over his career. If 90% of that is at cruising altitude (meaning 3-6 microsievert/hour), that would be 100-200 mSv in total. That would be equivalent to more than a hundred head CTs or a dozen angios. If you need that many CTs, your lifetime cancer risk…

Air crew radiation exposure depends strongly on cruising altitude and Latitude, for example flight Tokyo JP – New York NY is about 67 microsievert.

https://www2.ans.org/pubs/magazines/nn/docs/2000-1-3.pdf

For general comparison astronauts are exposed to approximately 72 millisieverts (mSv) while on six-month-duration missions to the International Space Station (ISS).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_ionizing_radiation_...

According to linear no-threshold model (LNT model) the incidence of cancers due to ionizing radiation can be modeled as increasing linearly with effective dose at a rate of 5.5% per sievert, so a flight crew member receiving 200 mSv lifetime dose should have 1.1 % higher lifetime chance of cancer then general population. LNT is quite good model for high doses, but there is much less confidence for LNT at low doses, there both studies which confirm LNT at low doses and reject LNT at low doses.

For the overall US population risk of developing any cancer is 39.9% for men, 39.0 % for women.

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/understanding-...

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

#76

Post by m463 »

elromulous wrote: post #57

I've wondered if billionaires get their jets lined with lead. Lead is notoriously heavy, but if you buy a 737 and it only ever has to fly you and a couple other people, it might be feasible. Or I guess they could just line one section where they spend the majority of the time.

hmmm...

looks like there's something called ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene.

"UHMWPE/hydrogen-rich benzoxazine composite (UHC) exhibits excellent cosmic radiation shielding."

maybe that should be a thing.

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

#77

Post by xeromal »

beembeem wrote: post #71
jeswin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is peak HN. Two engineers running google searches without any primary sources speaking up about the issue.

Account created 2021

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

#78

Post by jerlam »

4d4m wrote: post #13
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.

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.

There is one specific plane type (Airbus A320) that has significantly more fume events than all other plane types, suggesting that plane type or associated engine has a design or procedural flaw.

Since airlines consolidate on specific types, it is possible that some travelers experience this problem often and others very rarely.

Through no choice of my own, I seem to only fly on Boeing 737s, but the one recent time I was on an Airbus (A321neo) there was a distinct exhaust odor upon engine startup.

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

#79

Post by Obscurity4340 »

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.

Physicists noun-ified work

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

#80

Post by rmunn »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #43
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…

Feel free to pay extra for the fancy seats up front, known as either first class or business class depending on the airline you're flying (I've seen other names for them like "premier" or something, too). But if you keep up the "I know what's best for other people" attitude that you display in your second paragraph, don't be surprised if people start thinking... poorly of you. (I rewrote that sentence multiple times. That's the kindest way I can put it. A lot of my earlier drafts were... more unkind).
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