Radiation link in flight attendant's breast cancer, French court finds | Hacker News Reader

Radiation link in flight attendant's breast cancer, French court finds

bbc.com

94 pointsdazhbog59 comments

There's no doubt cumulative exposure is a risk factor as a population.

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/pilots-flight-attendants-have-g...

But how can they point to one individual and say it's causal? Maybe they caught some radon. Maybe something else?

My friend who is a Radiologist said all the older, more seasoned Radiologists don't have any hair that grows on their hands anymore. She said she was glad to get out because even if they provide lead bibs, the doctors doing emergency radiology type treatments were still exposed long term.

There have also been developments that have reduced radiation doses 30-90% per imaging event with the transition from film to digital xrays and the progression of the various digital sensors continued to reduce doses. Current leading edge and future sensors have potential to improve on this by orders of magnitude having the sensitivity to count photons. So current old radiologists might have exposures that new radiologists may never get remotely close to by the time they're old.

Interesting. I didn't know radiologists were exposed to radiation. I thought that was the job of the radiology techs.

Yeah, that was my reaction too. But there is a subfield called interventional radiology, perhaps GP post is referring to that?

Yes, she did intervention.

That seems like it would be the most important part of the whole article, and it was left out.

It’s possible that the standards of evidence in a civil case is low enough that they don’t have to demonstrate a causal link. Only that there is radiation in the air and that radiation causes cancer.

The article acknowledged that you cannot say for certain what caused her cancer. The court determined, however, that the increased radiation exposure qualified as a workplace hazard that increased her risk of cancer and was therefore a contributing factor. At least, that's the way I understood it.

This seems like pretty strong evidence that the Linear No-Threshold Model for radiation exposure is the correct model. Not great for the many companies attempting to revive the nuclear power industry.

Not really. A round trip transatlantic flight hits you with ~0.06 to 0.1 mSv and a chest x-ray is on the order of up to ~0.02 to 0.1 mSv, so roughly similar. There's a reason x-ray techs stand behind a wall, you have a VERY small chance of DNA damage with each exposure and for most people that doesn't matter because you don't fly that often or get that many x-rays but if you do it all the time, your bound to have a high energy particle smash into the wrong part of a cell's DNA. This isn't an effect of cumulative small doses but rather rolling the same dice many times.

There are thermal baths with quite high concentration of radon.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180306-a-spa-where-pati...

Most exposed are not the visitors, but the thermal bath workers.

"Workers and visitors in thermal spas are exposed to radiation from radon and short-lived daughters. Radon concentrations in the premises of a thermal bath in Budapest were investigated; high radon concentrations (up to 7.15 kBq.m-3) were found in some rooms. Bronchial dose and effective dose equivalent values were estimated for the staff and the visitors. In some cases the effective dose was about or in excess of 20 mSv annual limit for the workers. Doses for the visitors were about 4 mSv per year, but exposure of the public from radon is still outside the scope of the system of dose limitation."

https://academic.oup.com/rpd/article-abstract/56/1-4/319/310...

There are few places on Earth with high natural background radiation:

Ramsar, Iran (the maximal estimated dose-rate received by inhabitants is 80 mSv/year

Kerala (India), Orissa (India), Guarapari (Brazil), Yangjiang (China)

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12402632/

https://academic.oup.com/jrr/article/65/Supplement_1/i32/792...

You do get DNA damage all the time, just very few of them lead to cancerous growth. So it would make sense the risk goes linearly up with exposure.

You also evolved in a world with radiation and have repair mechanisms in place so it makes sense that the "realized" damage is not necessarily linear.

You have to be up to date on the exposure of a "chest xray" because tech improvements have considerably changed this in our lifetimes.

And cultural references can be dramatically and wildly off.

  "Plant director Bryukhanov reports no more than 3.6 roentgen, which I'm told is the equivalent of a chest x-ray, so if you're overdue for a check-up…"
  – HBO Chernobyl

https://xkcd.com/radiation/

This isn’t exactly correct. Cancer is not (typically) caused by a single DNA mutation, but multiple accumulated errors.

What? Nuclear Power workers are exposed much less than flight attendants and everyone else gets more radiation from their occasional flight.

Yes, disasters are worse but most other power options are killing people in non visible ways.

Whether the disasters are worse depends on your metric. The deaths from Fukushima was, to my knowledge, only a few elderly individuals who had stress-induced heart failures. And that's a worst-case scenario with corruption, old designs, complete negligence and dual natural disasters hitting the plant in parallel.

It seems absolutely silly, but even wind power kills more people per TWh produced than nuclear due to workplace accidents in installation/maintenance.

Also not sure why lung cancer from oil/coal air pollution would be less visible than hypothetical radiation-induced cancers.

EDIT: Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p..., accidents include indirect deaths. Solar is the only energy source that beats nuclear in safety.

Both arguments can be correct: if X dose of radiation increases cancer risk, and it's shown that a nuclear plant released Y dose (by, oh, say, leaking tritium into the earth [1]), it's not out of the question to ask them to pay into a compensation fund. That has no bearing on whether wind turbines kill people.

1: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/03/22/what-we-know-about-...

I see the good intent but I cannot agree on several points.

First point is that even though radiation can cause cancer, radiation is part of life. If my basement has higher levels of radon, who should compensate me? What about the radiation exposure from requested x-rays, or food?

Second is responsibility. If I decide to fly a lot, my increased radiation exposure is not the fault if the airline. It's not their fault that the atmosphere is less protective up there, and everyone flying is equally exposed. Now if they could prevent the radiation they preferably should, but until then their responsibility is disclosure of this information to allow informed decisions. Can't blame the ocean for being wet.

Third is that by that logic, it very much has bearing whether "wind turbines kill people", as it implies that every fractional possible cause of harm must all be measured and pay in proportion to their possibility of damage.

There would be no way to even start. However, I do agree that when accidents or negligence/malice is involved, it makes sense that the actor spends energy cleaning up. For example, the biological harm to people in Fukushima was practically non-existent, but the short-term the economic and social harm was there and was entirely avoidable. Damages should be paid.

(Of course, windmills don't kill people, point is that wind, nuclear and solar is so harmless that the only thing we're looking at is differences in construction-related workplace accidents, which are a bit higher with windmills and lower with solar.)

First paragraph of your reply is the relative privation fallacy: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relativ...

You cannot make the claim that releasing toxins is okay because some toxic elements occur naturally.

( Also, if your basement has a radon problem, you can mitigate it by better ventilation. You cannot mitigate a contamination zone without decades-long cleanup.)

Personal responsibility only assumes informed consent. This is why cigarette packs have warnings on them. I would argue that w passenger does have a case against the airline for not informing them that they are being exposed to cancer causing radiation even when everything this perfectly normal. The classic argument "but what about plane crashes? They don't inform you about that" is different, because crashes are.by definition abnormal, tragic, and rare. Whereas absolutely everyone on board is getting a dose every time they fly. As for medical exposure, I will go out on a limb and say that's covered under medical consent forms, and/or a medical research board has determined that the benefits from the dose outweigh the cancer risk.

But that only covers airline passengers, not employees that are getting orders of magnitude more dose. That only strengthens the argument that the airline shares liability. Do you think coal miners should have no case for lung diseases because maybe they got it from cigarettes? Or inherited it? Their employment put them in the position where they got exposed. Therefore the employer is liable for their illness.

That is not what relative privation fallacy is. The topic at hand is repeated exposure to low radiation does, I gave examples or negligible to high dosages. Disagreement does not make something a fallacy.

Twofold response:

1. It was not directly part of my claim, but yes releasing "toxins" as a binary concept has to be okay because the world, nature and ourselves naturally releases toxins. Irresponsible, excessive or unnecessary release is what matters.

2. In the airline case, it is not the airline releasing anything. It is cosmic rays and solar flares, which you went closer to. The airline should give a heads up in case this information evaded you, but it's the sun you'd need to sue. You'll have to get in line behind all the skin cancer lawsuits it's dealing with though.

A beach body guard has a massively increased risk of skin cancer compared to an office worker. You can, at most, ask for a shade for your watch tower or complimentary sunscreen.

Even for coal and oil powerplants for example, the right thing to focus on is getting rid of it, not extracting ongoing damages. Wind, nuclear, sun.

For flying, in either come up with a viable way and of radiation shielding passenger planes so it can be pushed for policy, or don't fly. Also don't go to very high altitude locations also carry increased risk.

As for contamination zones, that's specifically something the one to blame will have to keep paying to manage and clean up. Their fault, their bill. But even with all that it still ends up being what takes the fewest lives, due to just how much work for society that one plant did vs. any alternative.

> only a few elderly individual who had stress-induced heart failures

Caused by the evacuation

>only a few elderly individuals

Agreed, but one of the key reasons plants are so expensive is to ensure that power workers are exposed to much less radiation than flight attendants.

The fact that even a small amount of discharged radiation can cause damage makes everything more expensive for those companies, not just design and certification of the reactor itself but also liability insurance.

The radiation exposure caused by the flight is a known. Fraunhofer institute once had the calculator they made for Lufthansa (if I remember correctly) publicly available. You could enter flight numbers and it would aggregate your exposure.

Speculation: Most forms of breast cancer occur because of bad protein production from a specific gene. My guess is this flight attendants breast cancer isn't from any known breast cancer gene.

Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49389524

> Smoking was authorised on Air France flights until 2000.

I'm sorry, what? The first flight I took which I recall in detail was in 1995 and even back then the "no smoking sign" seemed redundant.

Guess it wasn't.

A couple of things:

From what I remember as a kid in the 1990s in the US, smoking was allowed on international flights. It was one of those grey areas that happen when traveling between countries with different laws.

I've also seen a lot of jokes about French culture being waaay more "pro smoking" than US culture.

Thus smoking beling allowed on Air France until 2000 doesn't surprise me.

Up until 2004 you had to book a non-smoking rail-car in France. I remember having to book a seat in the smoking section because the non-smoking cars were full. Smoking was only being phased-out in high-school yards (for 15-18 yo highschoolers not only the staff)

Yikes! I always thought the jokes about French kids smoking were just jokes and exgaggerations!

Smoking on flights is less dangerous than lithium batteries. At least a cigarette fire can be seen and put out. A lithium battery in thermal runaway can explode and is not possible to extinguish as it is self-perpetuating.

Lots of Europe especially France is packed with smokers. One of those things you take for granted living in the US and once you travel abroad you realize how much of the world still burns tobacco and it’s everywhere.

They've mostly switched to vapes now. It's still annoying, but at least it doesn't leave trash all over the streets.

Seeing the sidewalks / parks outside of the main train station in Prague covered in cigarette butts as an American tourist in 2019 was certainly something.

> but at least it doesn't leave trash all over the streets

Last time I was in London I saw enough disposable vapes on the sidewalk to build a home-sized backup battery...

I really believe disposable vapes should be banned

They are banned in the UK since 2025. I still see vapes littered around in places but not sure if they are from before or technically non-disposable models that people have cast off regardless.

Indeed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy-wFixuRVU

I smoked less in Prague than in the US. I was addicted to nicotine, sure, but I was also addicted to taking a little vacation outside whatever venue, and in Prague (in 2008) you could smoke just about anywhere.

> They've mostly switched to vapes now. It's still annoying, but at least it doesn't leave trash all over the streets.

Vape fumes also smell far less bad and are almost not toxic to bystanders.

I hate smoke but I wouldn't say vapes are any less bad. It's rare to get a face full of smoke, though, as smokers are generally considerate enough at this point, while vapers seemingly have no qualms with releasing huge clouds of sickly vapour right into crowds of people.

You can't be serious. If someone smokes indoors, you can smell it for hours or days afterward. All your clothes smell like it the next day. Nothing remotely like this happens with vapes. It's far less bad.

Smoking/vaping in indoor public places has been banned across the EU/UK for decades so you only encounter unwanted smoke/vapour outside.

Or in indoor non-public places.

> at least it doesn't leave trash all over the streets.

It leaves lithium ion batteries everywhere. There are even YouTube videos by people scavenging them to build small battery banks.

How many Americans do you think smoke? (Genuine question, I've never been to the States but did live in South America, and was absolutely shocked by how almost nobody smokes there.)

It has supposedly dropped to below 10% (but higher on average in rural areas than in cities, and of course that's just smoking, not the use of other nicotine products)

https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/u-s-smoking-rate-hits-an-all-t...

The article suggests that 18%+ are using some kind of nicotine product in general (zyn, chewing tobacco, vape, smoking)

In any case it has been mostly successfully purged from public spaces.

Holy cow, that's low -- congrats!

The UK is the same as the US in this regard. It's quite a shock going to the continent. The most shocking for me was Germany. Regular suburbs up and down the country have vending machines selling cigarettes on every street corner. You don't have to walk more than a block from anywhere to buy cigarettes, 24 hours a day, it seems. What's more is they still have smoking establishments due to having an exception to the EU-wide smoking ban, because of course they do. I went to a smaller bar and didn't even know what was wrong at first, but something seemed different, then realised it was smoke which is at this point a distant memory in the UK.

Seen those in Italy.

You use your healthcare insurance card to access the goods - whoever thought of this has quite the sense of humour.

Italy too. It's bizarre trying to hop on the trenitalia trains while a bunch of random people are standing on the platform right in front of the doors trying to get a few last drags in before the train leaves.

I'm not American though and while smokers are everywhere here, I don't recall ever being on a flight where smoking was allowed, even though the one mentioned was a connecting flight through Paris.

By some weird overlap of times/policies, as far as I can tell, Air France never flew a Concorde flight where smoking wasn't allowed.

(British Airways banned smoking on their Concorde flights in 1997.)

"loi Évin", from 1991, do not allow people to smoke in transportation. I used to travel air France and air Inter plane from 1990 to 2000. I never see anybody smoking in a plane.

C'mon, man. The use of the 'attributable fraction' (AF) in legal cases about toxin exposure is well established, if not uniformly legally applied. Careful epidemiology routinely produces the `excess relative risk' of an exposed population to a specific exposure. From this the AF can be computed as ERR/(1+ERR). For example, for uranium miners in the early days of the nuclear program the AF for lung cancer (via radon in mines) was 60% or more. Large scale epidemiology for U.S. cabin crews is already past the planning phases. Naturally not much can be said about one individual's case (except via intrusive genetic testing for predisposing factors), but the AF permits at least a rational way of proceeding.

Is that used in France too? It’s not clear to me what part of the article you’re reacting to

The idea that "courts" are equipped to address scientific questions is ridiculous. Perhaps French courts are better -- in the US, it is very much about decisions based on a confrontational presentation of "evidence", something like "debates" about evolution or vaccine injuries.

Debates are about persuasion, not reality. And, in some contexts (like whether you should go to jail), there is a process argument that there needs to be a debate-like process. Science deals in facts and statistics that have associated uncertainty. For scientific questions, there should be better decision making processes than courts.

Is your comment based on the body of the article, or the title? The article explains right near the top that it was ruling on it being classed as an occupational disease:

> Sophie Lainault...sought to have her cancer recognised as an occupational disease, brought on by conditions at work.

> This has now been confirmed in a landmark court ruling...which said that cosmic radiation was one of three carcinogenic hazards arising from her profession. The other two were passive smoking and prolonged night work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com