Flight crews have higher than average rates of certain cancers, according to a study of more than 5,000 US-based flight attendants. "We report a higher lifetime prevalence of breast, melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers among flight crews relative to the general population," said Irina Mordukhovich, a researcher at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and co-author of a study published on Tuesday in the journal Environmental Health.
"This is striking given the low rates of overweight and smoking in this occupational group," she said in a statement. Out of 5,366 flight attendants who took part in the study, just over 15 percent reported ever having been diagnosed with cancer.
Taking age into account, the study found a higher prevalence of cancer in flight crew for every type of cancer examined. Some 3.4 percent of the women who flew for a living had breast cancer, compared to 2.3 percent in the general population.
The flight-crew rate was 0.15 percent compared to 0.13 percent for uterine cancer; 1.0 compared to 0.70 percent for cervical cancer; 0.47 compared to 0.27 percent for stomach or colon cancer; and 0.67 compared to 0.56 percent for thyroid cancer. The risk of breast cancer was higher in women who had never had children, as well as those who had three or more.
Comments
Comments are closed.