Are airline flights a cancer risk?

[Kip Powick]

Just curious...does anyone know where the union "data" comes from??

Anyone have a link.?? .I can't seem to find any data.

They are when you fly over the North Pole, says the flight attendants union at Cathay Pacific Airlines. That airline will limit flight crews to just two trips a month on its "ultra long-haul" nonstop flights between New York and Hong Kong, AFP reports. Union officials say exposure to "cosmic radiation" increases dramatically at 26,250 feet above the North Pole, warning that prolonged exposure could increase the risk of cancer. "If you do two and a half polar flights a month you are in the danger zone," says Becky Kwan of the Flight Attendants Union. The union also says it's concerned that no limits have been put on customers. Airline officials reportedly feel that such a move is not necessary since customers do not fly enough to be at risk.

[nsbs]

How dangerous is flying?

Altitude matters. Whether you are flying in an airplane or living at a high altitude such as Tibet - the amount of cosmic radiation your body must deal with is increased.

During solar radiation storms, passengers on jets flying nearer Earth's poles can get zapped with than the equivalent of 10 chest X-rays

A 1996 paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology examined the incidence of cancer among 2,740 Air Canada pilots. The group had a sharply higher incidence of four specific types of cancer compared to the general population: myeloid leukemia, astrocytoma, prostate cancer, and malignant melanoma.

* Myeloid leukemia is definitely associated with radiation exposure, and occurred in the Air Canada pilot group four times more frequently than in the general population. A Danish study also found an association between exposure to cosmic radiation and leukemia among aircrew - it was published in Lancet 1999; 354: 2029-31

* Astrocytoma (a type of brain cancer) occurred twice as often in the Air Canada pilot group as in the general population, and increased incidence has also been found in other studies of airline pilots.

* Significantly higher incidences of prostate cancer were found in both the Air Canada study and another study of British Airways pilots. Current thinking is that this might be related to electromagnetic radiation from weather radar and other avionics rather than from cosmic radiation.

* A study of female airline flight attendants in Finland and Denmark showed an increased incidence of breast cancer, and a study of male U.S. Air Force pilots showed they had significantly more genital and testicular cancer than non-flying USAF officers.

In 2000, the European Union introduced legislation which requires all European airlines to monitor cosmic radiation levels during flight and to inform aircrew of the possible health risks.

NASA says:

"Airline pilots, crew, and passengers definitely are hit by more cosmic radiation than someone on the ground. The radiation is stronger at higher altitudes, and especially over the poles. Individual flights are almost certainly not a problem, since the radiation will never get anywhere near the 2.5 millirem per hour maximum allowable radiation dose (OSHA) even for a 41,000 ft flight right over the poles. But it is possible that pilots and crew accumulate enough to slightly increase their cancer risk. A Finnish study showed a higher breast cancer rate for stewardesses than for non-stewardesses, but there are other environmental factors (air quality for instance) that could affect this.

The weight of shielding required to protect against this radiation would make these flights nearly impossible. So there's not really anything you can do except decide not to fly

[Moon The Loon]

Don't know about this instance Kip, but just before C3 went the way of JetsGo, ALPA was considering a study using dossimeters. I was involved in an individual study where I'd subscribed to a dossimeter for nearly two years. I was organizing the data to send to this new study group when two major landmarks on the NYC skyline disappeared

Are Cathay F/A's unionized and if so, by what agency? Maybe they have a website?

[Kip Powick]

Yup, Thanks..I found the same story...finally.

I would add this......

Time Magazine - JULY 9, 2001, VOL.158 NO.1

"Yet to become a legal issue is the worry over cosmic radiation. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, at 12,000 m air travelers are exposed to as much as 265 times the radiation dose they receive on the ground. Some airlines take pregnant female flight attendants off airborne duties to avoid exposing the fetus to cosmic rays.

Passengers who make a transpolar journey, like the new direct Hong Kong-New York routes operated by Continental Airlines, United Airlines and, from September, Cathay Pacific, receive on average the equivalent to three chest X rays. (The rays concentrate around the North Pole's magnetic attraction.) Five round-trips on these flight paths would put the traveler in excess of the recommended annual limit for exposure to radiation, experts say.

Already, since the flights commenced in March, Continental and United have rerouted one each, Continental citing passenger health concerns, United radio interference from solar radiation. (United said last week it was canceling its flight from next month for business reasons.) Maria Blettner, head of Germany's Radiation Protection Commission, is finishing a large-scale mortality study on cancer among flight crews, which is examining the medical history of 22,000 pilots and 50,000 flight attendants.

Results are due soon, but Germany's Cockpit Association, a professional organization of pilots and engineers, warns the findings will reveal breast-cancer rates among stewardesses may be twice as high, and skin-cancer rates up to 15 times as high as those of the general populace."

Should I worry?

Although you can’t feel them, cosmic rays, and/or their secondary particles, pass through you all the time. Mostly they won’t touch the sides. But, occasionally they will connect with one of your atoms, and, if your DNA repair system doesn’t kick in, you might in some way mutate. Standard theories of Darwinian evolution always mention random mutations, but rarely point out the mechanism behind them - cosmic rays are a leading cause.

At current levels, unless you are a pregnant frequent flier, there are many, many other factors in your daily life that do you more harm. But if the level of cosmic ray bombardment increases - as it has done in the past - it might be prudent to investigate ways of shielding yourself from them

[Moon The Loon]

"... and, if your DNA repair system doesn’t kick in, you might in some way mutate."

That's a bad thing, right?

Think about it - humankind (PC!) has virtually stopped evolution in humans in the past 100 years with advances in medical treatment. But other lifeforms (bacteria, viruses, lower levels of the foodchain) continue to evolve. Eventually we humans will fall victim to one or more of these evolved organisms as we will have effectually reduced our resistance to the newer strains.

So if pilots and flight attendants "mutated", wouldn't that kind of make us "super humans"?

Then, people could really say "Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird?..."

[Innuendo]

A 1996 paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology examined the incidence of cancer among 2,740 Air Canada pilots. The group had a sharply higher incidence of four specific types of cancer compared to the general population: myeloid leukemia, astrocytoma, prostate cancer, and malignant melanoma.

Well, edited to say that here is a link.

http://aje.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/abs...nalcode=amjepid

Sorry about the size of the link, if it will not copy for you I found it through Google and a search in the site using "Air Canada Pilots".

I wonder how they carried it out. They must have missed me because this is the first I have heard of it. Did they have access to 2,740 AC Pilot's medical records and if so how? I kinda thought that that info would be somewhat confidential. Any one at ACPA know anything about it? Would the AC medical dept have been party to it? Maybe my memory is failing me but if they had surveyed that many guys surely it would ring a bell.

Any way there are a number of other surveys of the same type. It looks like you click on "extract" you get thumbnail summaries from some of them. The survey of Swedish cabin attendants for instance says that their cancer incidence in that study is in line with the general population. Sounds like some heavy reading if you have the time.

A couple mention melanoma but do suggest that a study of recreational exposure would be useful. That may be a point when you see how many ski, sail, play golf and so on with the associated sun exposure.

Just came across another paper with another opinion.

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/325/7364/0

[Vsplat]

Well, maybe the answer, study or no, is for the regulator to mandate the carriage of dosimeters by long-haul crews. When you hit your dosage limit for the period, you're off duty (or the route, of other duty for your type is available) until the start of the next period.

Thoughts?

Vs

[Innuendo]

Monitoring crew exposure should not be all that hard. Your flights are recorded for pay purposes by flight leg so general routings should be able to be compiled. Dosimeters are not new, we wore them in the military (although I am not sure what type of radiation was recorded) but how about putting some sort of exposure recording device on the aircraft as a permanent monitor. Should be reasonable to correlate exposure with routing, altitude and flying time and gather data that way.

The gent who did the study in the '90s out of RMC with AC pilots ( met him on a flight, Don Hudson has more info) said that if the radiation levels that his survey was looking at had been high enough to meet the criteria that applied to radiation industry workers it would put a fair crimp into scheduling of crews.

[Moon The Loon]

Concorde had a radiation meter on the F/E's panel. Collection of the data is easy. The will to do so is not.