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 from
2020-2024, covering ~13 million deaths across 503 occupations,
including roughly 14,000 pilots and 7,000 flight attendants. The analysis adjusted for age at death, sex, race/ethnicity,
education, and marital status.
So in other words, breast cancer was the cause of death at a rate 61% higher for flight attendants than for the comparison population of other occupations.
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?
Quite interesting. My reaction is that one of these is much more easily controlled and an input for cancer than the other. Radiation shielding is a tougher solve due to weight and other factors, where air quality is an easy, known fix.
Would love both to be solved, which would lead to good outcomes. Any thoughts on why attendants have different outcomes?
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.
> 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 also don't have a pretty sensitive smell and I smelled it a lot, especially cherosene like while boarding and before or during taxing, but later gets better.
it happened to me only on certain planes or cheaper airlines and i never managed to correlate it enough to plane, situation or airline.
the smell is very pungent and scratches the throats, typical fulel /exhaust like.
I learned about the air system passing through the motor because of the safety incident case, where the safety for engine malfunctioned and junctioned high temperature engine oil into the air system when triggered, causing cabin and pilot problems breathing and visibility.
does anybody know which conditions usually trigger this fuel like smell and perhaps which engine models are more prone to such condition?
the fact that it goes away when flying let me me think something related to systems used when on ground
The conditions that trigger the "Fuel like smell" of kerosene is that you are in a place where thousands of gallons of actual kerosene are handled, moved, spilled, and burned every day.
The air quality at an airport is horrific, in general, and as long as the plane is on the ground, it will be moving that air into the cabin.
People notice it because you go from highly filtered, airport air, to unfiltered air on the jetway, to possibly filtered (depending on specifics) air from the ground equipment, to bleed pack air.
It goes away when you are flying because the air quality 4000 feet above the airport is so much better.
The oil seals in a jet engine are not magically perfect, and so there is absolutely some miniscule amount getting into bleed air. But bleed air comes out from the compressor section, before any fuel can be there, and modern jet engines are exceptionally good one way valves (compressor stall is the term for when they aren't). Engine oil consumption is also monitored for every single flight, but not to that level of precision.
If the smell goes away in the air, it cannot be related to small amounts of oil vapor coming from the engine compressor section. Because that would still be present at 30k feet.
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.
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.
> This is so pervasive you'll see airline attendants spraying glycol-based air fresheners during these times to COVER UP the smell of this toxic stuff
I've never once seen a flight attendant do that. Flown hundreds and hundreds of times. You'd think something that's "so pervasive" would have been common enough that I'd have seen it dozens of times?
Feels like youre defensive about this would love to know why. If you havent seen aerosols on a flight youre being disengenous or are not looking up/around. They are used for lavstories and pest fumiagation during flights regularly and those are uses we agreed to as a society. Ive seen firsthand them sprayed during takeoff and landing at the time fume events are most noticed by passengers.
Disclaimer: I am an aviation enthusiast and loves planes and their design. I am unaffiliated with any airline or manufacturer. I want everyone to breathe ok.
> Feels like youre defensive about this would love to know why.
It couldn't possibly be that someone else has real-world experiences that differ from your own?
> If you havent seen aerosols on a flight youre being disengenous or are not looking up/around.
Or they just actually really weren't used on any of the flights GP was on?
> Ive seen firsthand them sprayed during takeoff and landing
GP hasn't, and neither have I.
Your experiences are not universal and it is impolite to accuse others of being "disingenuous" simply for reporting experiences that differ from your own.
I believe the pilots air source works differently than the rest of the cabin - at least on the 737. Maybe that explains the difference between the pilots and the flight attendants.
That's interesting to know (thanks for calling it out!), and makes me feel extra glad I've worn a mask during the entire flight on every flight I've been on since 2020 (not that I've been on many)... turns out I was avoiding a lot more than just COVID etc. heh >_<
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.
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).
The problem is that in the current world business class is overpriced because economics of scale don’t kick in and they know they can get away with far higher margins.
The point is to make business class the worst class of cabin, so the average cost/profitability will look a lot closer to current economy.
And yes airlines have razor thin margins. This is why privatizing them is a mistake. I the taxpayer am just fine with my tax dollars going to force the air industry to stop committing war crimes in the sky with their garbage economy seats and garbage treatment of the average flyer.
Where are you? North America? Europe? Asia? Somewhere else? I've flown quite a bit in the USA and in Asia, and airlines feel somewhat different in America vs. in Asia. (Not 100% different, of course). Oh, and I've flown a few Middle Eastern airlines (like Emirates) from time to time, and they also have a different feel. If your name is any indication, I'm guessing you're in Germany or Austria, in which case I don't know what the airlines act like where you live. (Last time I was in Europe was over 20 years ago). But how airlines treat their customers does vary quite widely, in my experience, from one country to another. I quite like Korean Airlines, though they're never the cheapest available — and I'll sometimes be willing to pay an extra $150-200 (on a $1000 ticket across the Pacific) to fly Korean Airlines rather than, say, China Eastern. (A colleague once got stuck on the ground for fourteen hours on a China Eastern flight because the airline hadn't paid their airport fees and the airport wouldn't let them pull up to the terminal and disembark until the airline paid the airport. Have to let planes land, that's a safety issue... but they're under no obligation to let the planes pull up to the terminal without paying. My colleague's experience made me swear off flying China Eastern forever.)
But every airline I've flown has had different price options, usually three or four, within economy class: cheapest option (picked by nearly everyone) where you can't cancel, slightly more expensive option where you get more flexible cancellation policies, even more expensive option where you get more benefits (details vary widely from airline to airline, but sometimes include "slightly fancier seats", i.e. there's a mid-grade section that's fancier than economy but less fancy than business class), and so on. So if you want better seats, it's a matter of picking an airline that offers that mid-grade seat section, and paying a bit extra for it.
As for razor-thin margins, that means people are paying about as low prices as possible for airline tickets. GOOD. That means they're able to fly cheaply. And if they want to trade off some convenience for cheaper prices, that's no reason for you to complain about their decisions. You still have the option of paying more for fancier seats, right?
But when you say you want to "make business class the worst class of cabin", I can't help but remember that you said that 50% of the people flying "should not be flying", and suspect you of not wanting the hoi polloi to be flying, because flying should be reserved for the Special People like you. If I'm misunderstanding your meaning, GOOD, and sorry for misunderstanding you. But if I've understood you correctly, then there just aren't any polite words I can think of to express my opinion of that terrible, elitist worldview. Hopefully I'm just misunderstanding you, and you'll explain what you actually meant.
Recently designed a sustainable thermofluid that it says would work as hydraulic fluid and a de-icing fluid: LBGPC: Lignin, BioPG, Graphene, Phytic acid, Citric acid
Wonderful work by Mr. XKCD (Randall Munroe).
This was published in 2011 when there was "some" misinformation in the U.S. press about the Fukushima nuclear accident.
Based on this chart some proposed to use "bananas" as unit of radition (equivalent to 0.1 uSv).
So (from this chart) one flight from New York to LA exposes you to 400 bananas worth of radiation.
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 is probably your smallest concern.
For general comparison astronauts are exposed to approximately 72 millisieverts (mSv) while on six-month-duration missions to the International Space Station (ISS).
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.
> In terms of absolute risk, about 6.9% of flight attendant deaths were from these cancers — roughly 1 in 14. Among pilots, it was 6.7%. For the general working population, it was 5%, said the study’s first author, Dr. Vishal Patel of Harvard Medical School.
So it looks like LNT is maybe a bit too optimistic at low doses, because (with the caveat I'm not entirely sure what precisely these percentages mean) the reported excesses are 1.9 and 1.7 percentage points.
Without access to the study and study data we don't know what was measured and how it was calculated, because the value for absolute risk in general working population, the value 5%, is very different from other cancer death studies.
According the The American Cancer Society the risk of dying from any cancer is 17.2% for males, 16% for females for the overall US population.
Cosmic radiation is mainly protons and heavier nuclei. It's called radiation for legacy reasons, but it's a different beast from Earth's medical CT scans and X-rays which are manly photons.
Cosmic radiation hitting planes is also not the original cosmic protons and He nucleus etc, but secondary N and O nucleus hit by Cosmic particles creating a shower of neutrons, secondary and gamma protons, muons, pions, nuclear fragments... There's also a high dose of photons from these collisions, but proportionally it can be 500x less photons than a CT scan for a 10h USA-Europe flight.
What's biologically significant for air crew are these secondary protons and neutrons, which punch above their weight in damage interactions, they are not comparable to X-rays in Sieve alone.
Replacing X-Ray and CT with new imaging would reduce exposure.
HIFU ultrasound arrays are already approved.
Recent research here indicates that longitudinally-polarized Proca waves are usable for Angstrom-scale medical imaging and treatments including tumor lysis and DNA repair.
There are apparently ways to target cancerous cells by their bio signatures in order to only target non-benign tissues.
I'm happy that I kept on with this line of research long enough to realize the medical capabilities (and fire suppression) it enables;
Lead is bad because the high energy particles hitting lead can multiply particle count. You’d need a significant amount, like 25cm thickness. Too much for weight limits of any airplane.
This doesn't really say what it looks like it says.
They don't have an above average risk of dying of cancer. Rather, if they die they are more likely than average to have died of cancer.
Which is not exactly surprising given that the medical screenings remove many of those who would die of heart issues. What would be strange is if there wasn't a higher percentage of cancer deaths.
To illustrate, my numbers are not meant to be accurate. Population at large, 100 red marbles (heart), 80 black marbles (cancer), 80 blue marbles (everything else). Cancer is 80/260 of the total.
Medical checks, you removed 80 of those red marbles. Now you have cancer at 80/180 of the total.
The percentage of cancer went up. Did the total cancer? No.
According to Gemini, radiation related cancer rates aren't higher in high elevation cities like Quito or La Paz... Shouldn't they be too? Airliners fly a lot higher but people live in these 24x7.
High altitude Equatorial populations and air crew exposures are different beasts. A 10h flight close to the North Pole is like living in Quito for almost a month. The type of dosage (bursts x contínuous) also matters as the body can probably accommodate more easily, but that's just me saying. Then add natural selection to that mix that should have helped prepare high-altitude populations residents for those living conditions, which will heavily skew the data. Finally, the cosmic shower has lost a lot of energy from 12,000m to say 2,500m, so the "hit" is not the same. It all may end up having an exponential effect reducing cancer rates...
So a flight attendant that clocks ~700h a year, that's roughly 5 years of living in Quito in a year of flying in Sieves. Now, given that the air crew studies are not all that conclusive yet, take high-altitude populations at 5x less exposure and all these other factors I've mentioned, and they will end up having an even lower chance of showing up in any cancer studies.
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[ 157 ms ] story [ 1198 ms ] threadhttps://www.cnn.com/2026/08/19/health/flight-attendants-pilo...
So in other words, breast cancer was the cause of death at a rate 61% higher for flight attendants than for the comparison population of other occupations.
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?
Would love both to be solved, which would lead to good outcomes. Any thoughts on why attendants have different outcomes?
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.
it happened to me only on certain planes or cheaper airlines and i never managed to correlate it enough to plane, situation or airline.
the smell is very pungent and scratches the throats, typical fulel /exhaust like.
I learned about the air system passing through the motor because of the safety incident case, where the safety for engine malfunctioned and junctioned high temperature engine oil into the air system when triggered, causing cabin and pilot problems breathing and visibility.
does anybody know which conditions usually trigger this fuel like smell and perhaps which engine models are more prone to such condition?
the fact that it goes away when flying let me me think something related to systems used when on ground
The air quality at an airport is horrific, in general, and as long as the plane is on the ground, it will be moving that air into the cabin.
People notice it because you go from highly filtered, airport air, to unfiltered air on the jetway, to possibly filtered (depending on specifics) air from the ground equipment, to bleed pack air.
It goes away when you are flying because the air quality 4000 feet above the airport is so much better.
The oil seals in a jet engine are not magically perfect, and so there is absolutely some miniscule amount getting into bleed air. But bleed air comes out from the compressor section, before any fuel can be there, and modern jet engines are exceptionally good one way valves (compressor stall is the term for when they aren't). Engine oil consumption is also monitored for every single flight, but not to that level of precision.
If the smell goes away in the air, it cannot be related to small amounts of oil vapor coming from the engine compressor section. Because that would still be present at 30k feet.
I've never once seen a flight attendant do that. Flown hundreds and hundreds of times. You'd think something that's "so pervasive" would have been common enough that I'd have seen it dozens of times?
Feels like youre defensive about this would love to know why. If you havent seen aerosols on a flight youre being disengenous or are not looking up/around. They are used for lavstories and pest fumiagation during flights regularly and those are uses we agreed to as a society. Ive seen firsthand them sprayed during takeoff and landing at the time fume events are most noticed by passengers.
Disclaimer: I am an aviation enthusiast and loves planes and their design. I am unaffiliated with any airline or manufacturer. I want everyone to breathe ok.
It couldn't possibly be that someone else has real-world experiences that differ from your own?
> If you havent seen aerosols on a flight youre being disengenous or are not looking up/around.
Or they just actually really weren't used on any of the flights GP was on?
> Ive seen firsthand them sprayed during takeoff and landing
GP hasn't, and neither have I.
Your experiences are not universal and it is impolite to accuse others of being "disingenuous" simply for reporting experiences that differ from your own.
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.
We don’t mind the rich flying private jets, but for the love of god don’t put a poor person next to us on a plane.
The point is to make business class the worst class of cabin, so the average cost/profitability will look a lot closer to current economy.
And yes airlines have razor thin margins. This is why privatizing them is a mistake. I the taxpayer am just fine with my tax dollars going to force the air industry to stop committing war crimes in the sky with their garbage economy seats and garbage treatment of the average flyer.
But every airline I've flown has had different price options, usually three or four, within economy class: cheapest option (picked by nearly everyone) where you can't cancel, slightly more expensive option where you get more flexible cancellation policies, even more expensive option where you get more benefits (details vary widely from airline to airline, but sometimes include "slightly fancier seats", i.e. there's a mid-grade section that's fancier than economy but less fancy than business class), and so on. So if you want better seats, it's a matter of picking an airline that offers that mid-grade seat section, and paying a bit extra for it.
As for razor-thin margins, that means people are paying about as low prices as possible for airline tickets. GOOD. That means they're able to fly cheaply. And if they want to trade off some convenience for cheaper prices, that's no reason for you to complain about their decisions. You still have the option of paying more for fancier seats, right?
But when you say you want to "make business class the worst class of cabin", I can't help but remember that you said that 50% of the people flying "should not be flying", and suspect you of not wanting the hoi polloi to be flying, because flying should be reserved for the Special People like you. If I'm misunderstanding your meaning, GOOD, and sorry for misunderstanding you. But if I've understood you correctly, then there just aren't any polite words I can think of to express my opinion of that terrible, elitist worldview. Hopefully I'm just misunderstanding you, and you'll explain what you actually meant.
Will safe aerospace batteries spare us from this?
Recently designed a sustainable thermofluid that it says would work as hydraulic fluid and a de-icing fluid: LBGPC: Lignin, BioPG, Graphene, Phytic acid, Citric acid
Based on this chart some proposed to use "bananas" as unit of radition (equivalent to 0.1 uSv).
So (from this chart) one flight from New York to LA exposes you to 400 bananas worth of radiation.
Thanks for the link!
Didnt know that one Mammogram is that intensive, so my partner shouldnt go each year, Id guess?
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-...
So it looks like LNT is maybe a bit too optimistic at low doses, because (with the caveat I'm not entirely sure what precisely these percentages mean) the reported excesses are 1.9 and 1.7 percentage points.
According the The American Cancer Society the risk of dying from any cancer is 17.2% for males, 16% for females for the overall US population.
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/understanding-...
Cosmic radiation hitting planes is also not the original cosmic protons and He nucleus etc, but secondary N and O nucleus hit by Cosmic particles creating a shower of neutrons, secondary and gamma protons, muons, pions, nuclear fragments... There's also a high dose of photons from these collisions, but proportionally it can be 500x less photons than a CT scan for a 10h USA-Europe flight.
What's biologically significant for air crew are these secondary protons and neutrons, which punch above their weight in damage interactions, they are not comparable to X-rays in Sieve alone.
This is due to exposure to the radiation from intra operative x rays.
And then there’s the inverse square law too.
HIFU ultrasound arrays are already approved.
Recent research here indicates that longitudinally-polarized Proca waves are usable for Angstrom-scale medical imaging and treatments including tumor lysis and DNA repair.
There are apparently ways to target cancerous cells by their bio signatures in order to only target non-benign tissues.
I'm happy that I kept on with this line of research long enough to realize the medical capabilities (and fire suppression) it enables;
Public link: "I/Q Sampling for Signal Phase" https://share.gemini.google/rDVcVwDnWPTc
It's a Twistor-Grassmanian mapping?
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.
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.
(We've since changed the top link.)
Getting your sleep cycle thrown out of calibration on a regular basis probably doesn't help either.
They don't have an above average risk of dying of cancer. Rather, if they die they are more likely than average to have died of cancer.
Which is not exactly surprising given that the medical screenings remove many of those who would die of heart issues. What would be strange is if there wasn't a higher percentage of cancer deaths.
To illustrate, my numbers are not meant to be accurate. Population at large, 100 red marbles (heart), 80 black marbles (cancer), 80 blue marbles (everything else). Cancer is 80/260 of the total.
Medical checks, you removed 80 of those red marbles. Now you have cancer at 80/180 of the total.
The percentage of cancer went up. Did the total cancer? No.
Not a pay wall.
Not even a cookie wall (Block Element! bullet ricochet noise)
But a Terms of Use wall?
For an article?
I just wanna read it.
So a flight attendant that clocks ~700h a year, that's roughly 5 years of living in Quito in a year of flying in Sieves. Now, given that the air crew studies are not all that conclusive yet, take high-altitude populations at 5x less exposure and all these other factors I've mentioned, and they will end up having an even lower chance of showing up in any cancer studies.
So... not remotely comparable.