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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

https://srag.jsc.nasa.gov/spaceradiation/What/What.cfm

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.

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> Estimation should be straightforward based on flight track logs combined with cosmic radiation satellite data.

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).

Can't they just make all employees wear lead vests?

I guess the added weight would cost a lot in fuel...

If anything they'd do the opposite so that the public doesn't get "the wrong idea" something dangerous is up. Just look at how Homeland Security made it illegal to measure how much radiation the post-9/11 security screening devices put out, forbade medical physicists from testing them, forbade employees working near the scanners from obtaining and wearing their own protection, and fired workers who wore their own dosimetry tags.

>Homeland Security made it illegal //

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.

Why is it our job to establish the safety of devices? The TSA lied through its teeth about these devices and is accountable only to themselves.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/scientists-cant-ch...

https://www.financialsense.com/contributors/gonzalo-lira/a-f...

Anyone who consents to the full body scans does it voluntarily. Just say no.

I'm talking about occupational exposures. Nobody cares about bananna-level events.

You could also just leave a dosimeter in your pocket when going through the airport next. There’s a few on the market that log over Bluetooth.

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.

I was referring to the security officers who stand next to the machines everyday. They were forbidden from measuring anything related to occupational exposure. At one point the TSA found itself caught in so many lies about their supposed "testing" that they ran a very public PR-style limited study. Coincidentally, nowadays the backscatter scanners have been quietly replaced with millimeter wave scanners.

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?"

An officer traditionally has been a person in military with a commission (or NCO), or police. TSA are government employees, with self-created pretend titles and fake badges. TSA can't detain or arrest and if scan tunnel shows possible weapon the TSA aren't allowed to touch it and the line cop does that.

Unlike in medical facilities, the radiation comes from multiple directions. Also, the crew moves around the plane. The vests would have to cover an impractically large area.

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.

I'm pretty sure military flight crews already do that, albeit with the idea of measuring exposure in case of nuclear war.

Probably makes sense to add HDPE+boron radiation shielding to the entire cabin. Or the simpler one, just don't fly as high.

Since we're on this topic, there also seems to be enough evidence to suggest you should wear sun screen when flying.

> 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.

Sunscreen blocks UV, not cosmic rays, which is the radiation for which jetliner passengers receive an unusually high dose. The glass in the windows probably blocks 75% of UV, and UV exposure is associated with other types of skin cancer, not melanoma (except in cases where one has a history of bad sunburns). In fact, in this review, melanoma is said to be inversely correlated with occupational exposure to UV:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9335442/

Sunscreen doesn't block cosmic rays, those are high energy atomic nucleus (that are normally filtered out by the atmosphere), not high energy photons/light (that end up on beaches). Did you previously find scholarly studies that suggest wearing sunscreen helps with melanoma, or did you just see high melanoma incidence rate in frequent flyers, and assumed sunscreen will help?

Glass will block most UV light, so maybe the melanoma is from the cosmic rays? Not sure if sunscreen helps with that.

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