Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants | Hacker News Reader

Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants

cnn.com

100 pointsjader201101 comments

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...

I read once that a CT scan is roughly equivalent to 1000 hours of flight WRT radiation exposure. I've had about 6 or 8 of those over the years.

This chart has the flight & CT scan scenarios (among many other): https://xkcd.com/radiation/

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.

WOW, what a cool chart! :)

Thanks for the link!

Didnt know that one Mammogram is that intensive, so my partner shouldnt go each year, Id guess?

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. But you still wouldn't expose any normal human to that level of radiation.

Air crew radiation exposure depends strongly on cruising altitude and Latitude, for example flight Tokyo JP – New York NY is about 67 microsievert.

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-...

> 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.

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/understanding-...

When are you getting your captain stripes then?

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.

Cancers rates among Orthopedic surgeons are also much higher than those faced by non surgeon doctors.

This is due to exposure to the radiation from intra operative x rays.

Our company shared a wall with an xray lab next door. My coworkers and I were always curious what impacts it would have to our health.

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;

Public link: "I/Q Sampling for Signal Phase" https://share.gemini.google/rDVcVwDnWPTc

It's a Twistor-Grassmanian mapping?

Attendants have higher risk than pilots. This kind of makes sense, as my understanding is they don't have pilots fly too often. Meanwhile, attendants are flying all the time.

> as my understanding is they don't have pilots fly too often

From a quick search, I can’t find evidence of this. If anything, pilots are in the air more of their week/lives vs. flight attendants.

I guess I am going off when a pilot spoke at my high school for career day. (Decades ago...)

In my search, I found that they spend almost an equal number of hours in air like you said - 75-100 hours per month. If that's the case, after adjusting for sex, these numbers holding would throw some uncertainty into the radiation hypothesis.

The fuselage probably has a lot less attention to shielding even if the cockpit seems very exposed.

This is peak HN. Two engineers running google searches without any primary sources speaking up about the issue.

Account created 2021

Collaboratively trying to figure out an unknown. I quite enjoy this type of interaction of strangers versus the typical arguments

According to a bit of Googling (which included LLM responses so if you need to be sure verify what follows), although flight attendants and pilots spend about the same amount of time in the air and so get the same exposure, flight attendants have fewer rest requirements and scheduling protection. This results in them working more erratic shifts with shorter rest windows, which results in more circadian rhythm disruption than in pilots.

Important mechanisms in the body to suppress tumor growth and repair DNA damage are linked to circadian rhythms and are less effective when those rhythms are disrupted.

I wonder if pilots' medical checks would catch some of these early?

Probably not unless there was something presenting, as a Class 1 FAA medical exam is checking medical history, vital signs, vision, hearing, cardiovascular health, neurological function, and general physical condition. There's a urine test for blood, glucose, protein. Last one I had there was no blood test or cancer screening unless it was something showing on the skin.

Interestingly, to me, my last medical was 2 years ago and there was no concern for the spot on my cheek that turned out to be basal cell carcinoma.

It varies with the airline and their staffing needs and your seniority as well. Some might fly you to your legal limits and you might have to get a ride back home on top of that. Some you might be on call but never really called, and might not be formally scheduled for much, and therefore might only fly a couple times a month through some stretches.

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.

So... not remotely comparable.

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.

… IF they die?

You do not understand what I'm saying.

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.

A water bladder above the cockpit might help? I'm not a nuclear physicist, but I stayed at a HolInn Express last night...

Don't forget your lead body armor when going on long flight trips (which they can't charge you extra for).

Not an auth wall.

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.

I've wondered if billionaires get their jets lined with lead.

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.

hmmm...

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.

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.

Boeing, Bombardier, Learjet, Embraer and Airbus should be forced to clean up aircraft cabin air they poison us with.

For people who don’t know how GROSS this is: on almost every modern passenger jet, the air you breathe is pulled through the engine’s Bleed-Air system before entering the cabin. As oil, hydraulic fluid, or other contaminants leak into that system, those superheated fumes can be pumped directly into the cockpit and cabin. These incidents are literally called "fume events" and are the basis of the "gym sock" smell you can detect when in airports or on a plane, especially during takeoff and landing. 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.

[FAA overview](https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/cabin-air-quality-0)

And no, the HEPA filter people like to point to does not make this problem disappear. HEPA filtration primarily cleans recirculated particles. It does not magically remove every gas, vapor, or contaminant entering through the aircraft’s air-supply system.

[FAA research](https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/data_research/resear...)

The absurd part is that we already know how to avoid this architecture. The Boeing 787 is the major commercial exception: its cabin air is supplied by dedicated electric compressors rather than engine bleed air.

So this is not some unsolved engineering problem. The industry made a DESIGN choice to KEEP using a system capable of feeding contaminated engine air into a sealed tube full of passengers, pilots, and flight attendants. Zero regard for their well-being in order to save a few pounds and eck-out more miles per gallon.

Flight crews spend thousands of hours breathing this air over their careers. Passengers have no meaningful ability to know when contamination occurs or opt out. Manufacturers and airlines alike are afraid to put contamination sensors on their planes because it exposes them to liability - it shows the true extent of the problem.

That is not an acceptable health standard in 2026, and it wasn't when these decisions were made. Fix the source, stop pretending filtration alone solves it, and make bleed-air-free cabin ventilation the standard for new aircraft. Demand this from your regulator or determine who is responsible for your health effects.

The article specifically says flight attendants are only at increased risk of radiation related cancers, but not others.

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).

It’s no different than “a big ask” or a “tough sell”.

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.

ESL/clevel exec, guilty!

Physicists noun-ified work

Also "invite" instead of invitation.

> 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.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/study-shows-toxic-...

If you think of the last 10 flights you were on, how many had the gym sock smell? That's the real occurence rate. I'd say in my experience across all airlines its around 7/10 flights I can detect via smell a fume event.

Of the last 50 flights I took, none had gym sock smell.

If anything smelled it's usually due to a passenger. But nothing from the aircraft itself

We're not talking about stinky passengers, those are normal, expected smells :)

Politely, I don't believe you haven't noticed the smell - this statistically is impossible when at an airport with multiple planes. You can smell it daily, at any airport terminal of your choosing, impossible to ignore when closer to the gates. It's a smell powerful enough to not get eaten by the various encapulation, ozone generators, and air fresheners used in public commerical environments like airports. The smell comes through from the planes and gangways into the terminal itself.

Next trip: With a clear nose, smell the air at the airport entrance and then compare this with the smell closer to your gate. The contaminated airs smell it's very similar to a wet locker room or gym bag that was left for days without cleaning. You won't ever miss it again, and your stat will flip to detected in 50 out 50 visits.

I assure you I'm very sensitive to smells and I haven't smelled anything like that in a plane

I’ve never noticed this in 35 years and I have an unusually sensitive sense of smell.

I don’t think I’ve noticed gym socks smells, but I can certainly smell kerosene basically every time when outdoors at the airport, and often in the plane.

This is because it's an airport and there are tens of thousands of gallons of kerosene around, including several gallons per minute per running jet engine actively burning and turning into combustion products.

Even in a perfectly working bleed air system, the air comes from outside the plane, which on the tarmac of an airport, is god awful, shitty, and not at all healthy.

Lot's of other commenters talking about how the smell goes away at altitude.

Because it doesn't come from the packs (except in fume events), and what people are usually smelling is that airports have very bad air, and that air is much cleaner at 30k feet.

The miniscule oil vapor/droplets that are making their way into the bleed air system from engine compressor seals will still happen at 30k feet. If you don't smell something at all times on a plane, it cannot be coming from that.

This level of contamination would be like working at a gas station, which can be a health hazard. OSHA regulates air quality for employees working around hydrocarbons.

43 years for me, and in addition to being notably smell-sensitive, I’ve also taken a probably close to 500 long haul flights

In my experience, a large fraction of flights have very stinky air during a substantial portion of the time from when the engines start until takeoff. Whether this is “gym sock” or something else has never been entirely clear to me.

I think airplanes reek too, but mostly because the cleaning done on the seats/cabin is pathetic by overworked and underpaid cabin crew, the average American doesn't wash their asshole (no bidet culture in the USA) so they have smeared shit stains on most of their undergarments, standard BO, etc

Coincidentally, when I am flying anywhere in Asia, I get none of this. I'd unironically rather be on an Indian airline for most flights because for all the flack that Indian people get about cleanliness, they're far more likely than the average gringo to have used a bidet at some point in their lives.

There is one specific plane type (Airbus A320) that has significantly more fume events than all other plane types, suggesting that plane type or associated engine has a design or procedural flaw.

Since airlines consolidate on specific types, it is possible that some travelers experience this problem often and others very rarely.

Through no choice of my own, I seem to only fly on Boeing 737s, but the one recent time I was on an Airbus (A321neo) there was a distinct exhaust odor upon engine startup.

That sounds awful; it means 3+ times a day a whole plane of a passengers is getting sprayed with this stuff.

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 don't have a sensitive sense of smell and I still smell it.

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.

There are more than 100,000 flights per day. So not that rare at all.

> 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?

https://farahandfarah.com/blog/toxic-airplane-fumes-workers-...

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 lavoratories and pest fumiagation during passengered 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.

FWIW I probably 2-5 round trips per year and I’ve never seen a flight attendant spraying anything

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 >_<

The Boeing 787 has a bleedless system. It uses dedicated electric compressors for the cabin air.

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.

Oh how the middle class hates having to share with the poor.

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.

This but unironically.

The rich smell better than I do. I can learn from them.

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.

The 787 in economy (as configured by most airlines) is hell in every other way so boy what a quandary

> oil, hydraulic fluid, or other contaminants

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

The CNN article has more info on the study, for those without access to download it:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/19/health/flight-attendants-pilo...

Thanks! I've put that link at the top and moved the paper link to the toptext.

[stub for offtopicness]

(We've since changed the top link.)

paywalled (even with a "free" account")

  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.

I suspect they don't have regular sleep schedules, which partially explains the elevated risk. Nurses and 3rd shift workers all have elevated cancer risk.

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?

It’s wild I can’t even read the abstract to understand what they found.

The abstract is clickbait. What the hell?

You won't believe what we found!

It's a research letter, not a full article. Accordingly, there's no abstract. They just show the first of 11 paragraphs as a teaser.

Yep. Your time is FREEEEE!

Paywalled garbage, even if you waste your time "signing up."

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