https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/aircrew/cosmicionizingradia...
Sounds like there is enough to evidence to perform a longitudinal cancer study across air transport workers to better understand the potentially increased cancer risk.
EDIT: Is hazard pay warranted? Also, perhaps airlines should have to provide estimated cumulative exposure to employees based on their flight trip logs. Estimation should be straightforward based on flight track logs combined with cosmic radiation satellite data.
I guess the added weight would cost a lot in fuel...
Also, when radiation is blocked by matter, secondary radiation is generated. Since the composition of cosmic radiation is for sure different than the one found in other occupational settings, lead vests might or might not have the same effect. Also, the aluminium skin of the aircraft already has a similar effect. There might not be that much to be done practically.
It would be interesting though to let flight crew wear radiation badges.
How do they stop sales of scanning equipment to people who want to do testing? You could easily buy them abroad, and do tests abroad.
Also, could you cite the US Code on this please. Thanks.
Not taken one through the body scanner, I’ve not actually had to go through a body scanner in quite a while at the airport. Just usual metal detector.
Anyway the point of my comment wasn't to re-litigate this. It's more that the original comment struck me as "can't the fox just guard the henhouse?"
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/scientists-cant-ch...
https://www.financialsense.com/contributors/gonzalo-lira/a-f...
> Pilots and cabin crew have approximately twice the incidence of melanoma compared with the general population. Further research on mechanisms and optimal occupational protection is needed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4482339
As someone who enjoys looking out the window, I treat it much like going to the beach and re-apply sun screen in longer flights.
Just take a cheap dosimeter on your next flight. I have an Atomfast that I often make recordings of exposure with for amusement, as well as using it when looking at neat rocks outside (some areas I like to hike in have surprisingly high radiation levels due to there being some of uranium in the rocks).
From what I recall from the Chernobyl studies, the risk of being ill with cancer during the lifetime is 39% for females and 41% for males. The occupational hazards may get the individual risk up a little, but overall cancer is sadly a very frequent occurrence.
Evolution only optimized our parts to last for so long, and once you get past that age, everything kind of starts failing simultaneously.
In nature, dying of old age is incredibly rare as you are much more likely to die from predation or injury. Even if you suffered no ill effects from aging, ie you were biologically immortal, passing on your genes successfully would still require you to have offspring reasonably early in life. There is only selection pressure on your genes up to the point where you have successfully passed on your genes. It makes sense for evolution to keep you alive while raising your kids, and even while helping your offspring raise their kids (see the Grandmother Effect [0]), but eventually the marginal utility of your support drops so low, and the odds you're already dead rises so high, that there is simply no selective pressure. As an illustrative example, you could have a gene that makes you twice as strong as you were at 25, but if it only activates after you're 150, you and evolution would never know.
On top of this, many genes have tradeoffs. If there is any mutation that gives benefits early in life but is harmful later in life, evolution will tend to select for it, especially versus the reverse. Similarly, traits that only provide a benefit for a finite period which is nevertheless long compared to natural lifespan can be favored over traits that work indefinitely (eg many mammals are born with a few sets of teeth and have no way of repairing them). This leads into more general accumulation-of-damage theories of aging.
We see many species in nature, particularly those unlikely to undergo predation and at low risk of injury, with substantially longer or even indefinite lifespans. In the lab, we can also breed organisms like fruit flies to have substantially longer than natural lifespans.
There is no evidence that living longer is harmful to others in hunter gatherer societies of the sort we evolved to live in, and certainly no evidence that such harm would still be present in modern, industrial societies.
[0] https://www.statnews.com/2019/02/22/grandmother-effect-helps...
Having breast cancer in your mid-30s, like a couple of my late dear friends did right after they had their children... often a death sentence...
This is happening much vastly more frequently with cats and some folks suspect a now banned chemical is to blame.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/magazine/the-mystery-of-t...
If this happens to your cat there are 3 choices.
- Die soon
- Take Methimazole. It will partially control thyroid levels but not well so your cat still dies but later than option one.
- A vet implants a small radioactive pellet destroying the problematic tissue. Most cats will live as long as they otherwise would have and few have to take thyroid hormone.
There are a few generic factors that are clearly causatively linked, but that doesn't mean we could work out less strong, or rarer links.
Whole genome sequencing is becoming more common as is immunological and genetic studies on cancer cells.
We might know one day but probably not any time soon.
Knowing any of these things is actually quite hard, and would require a lot of detailed data just to identify a potential pattern.
Died of breast cancer.
"Aircrew may be more likely to get skin cancer and female flight attendants may be more likely to get breast cancer than the general population."
If I understand correctly, you're saying a single commercial flight is enough to trip the dosimeter?
A single full body CT of radiation every year for that flight crew.
Source: wore one of these daily for years and would get regular reminders not to bring them on flights or anywhere else they would have to go through an xray machine (eg some federal buildings)
So in other words, there’s a lot of potential causes.
You do get additional radiation exposure while flying. Wonder if we should also study the effects of higher radiation exposure in the airline industry.