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Flying at higher altitudes also increases chance of developing cancer due to cosmic radiation.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12862322 https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/aircrew/cosmicionizingradia... https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/air_travel.html

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The first study:

> METHODS: A cohort of 10,051 male and 160 female airline pilots [...] was followed for cancer incidence [...].

> RESULTS: Among male pilots, there were 466 cases of cancer diagnosed vs. 456 expected.

So, a heightened risk of (466-456)/10051 = 0,001% if I read this correctly.

Or am I misunderstanding something here? I guess so, because this seems close to negligible.

You forgot to multiply by 100 when you went to %, so it's actually 0.1% higher. Still pretty low.

ah, thanks, silly mistake! Anyway, still a surprisingly low risk. Seems within the margin of error to me.

Couldn't this be curbed by better radiation shielding on the plane itself?

Not necessarily. Photons at Compton-dominant energies (200-5000 keV) can’t be effectively shielded because every material (including, eg, lead) absorbs them about the same. Also, shielding is inevitably heavy.

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