Radiation Link In Flight Attendant's Breast Cancer, French Court Finds
- Reference: 0185208948
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/08/26/2356248/radiation-link-in-flight-attendants-breast-cancer-french-court-finds
- Source link:
> Sophie Lainault, a 59 year-old former stewardess on Air France, sought to have her cancer recognized as an occupational disease, brought on by conditions at work. This has now been confirmed in a landmark court ruling in the southwestern town of Bayonne, which said that cosmic radiation was one of three carcinogenic hazards arising from her profession. [...] As stewardess and later purser on Air France airliners, Lainault clocked up 12,600 flight hours between 1989 and 2019. More than half of these were at night. Many long-distance high-altitude flights from Paris would have taken her near the North Pole, where exposure to radiation from space -- strictly speaking particles from the sun and other stars -- is the most intense.
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> A study this month at the Harvard Medical School in the US found that flight attendants and pilots had the highest level of radiation-related cancer deaths among more than 500 different professions. In all, about 6.9% of deaths among flight attendants and 6.7% of deaths among pilots were from radiation-related cancers, according to the analysis. These proportions were higher than for other professions including nuclear technologists, who are routinely exposed to radiation from non-cosmic sources yet placed 12th on the list, the authors said.
"In France the link between breast cancer and certain hazards has been established for a number of professions, such as nurses ... but this is the first time for an air-hostess," said Lainault's lawyer Elisabeth Leroux.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0j3z6147jo
Time for lead lined bras and skirts! (Score:3)
Male pilots might even write off some heavy duty chastity gear as safety equipment! Seriously though, some form of protection should become a norm for people with exposure this frequent, Airlines inevitable concerns of impact on aesthetics of the outfits and scaring the customers be fuckin' damned. I'd like to fly planes knowing that the people servicing me aren't getting meaningful cancer risk just because some other people think it's their job to slut it up.
How about lining the planes? (Score:2)
How about lining the planes? After all, not only the staff on a plane are exposed to the radiation, and frequent business flyers would be exposed to a lot of it too depending on where they fly to.
Re: (Score:2)
Meaningfully shielding entire (or I guess at least the upper half of) airplane would also make em so much heavier that they'd inevitably end up slower (particularly in climb), which'd in turn mean you'd spend longer time exposed to the radiation and eat into the benefit and further make the boondoggle even more expensive. You're also wasting money on shielding the whole human when much our bodies are pretty resistant. A really high value one is shielding the pelvis because you're protecting both the gonads
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> just because some other people think it's their job to slut it up.
Slut up? I think you're conflating some serious issues here. This has nothing to do with "slutting it up". Male Stewarts are fully dressed all over and yet suffer the same radiation doses. You can dress up and dress down as much as you like, to stop radiation in any meaningful way requires wearing cloths that are, simply put, not at all comfortable to wear for more than the shortest periods of time.
You're ignoring very real practical issues with radiation protection.
Re: (Score:2)
Simple cloth does not shield anyway.
To shield an airplane you probably would need a magnetic field, no idea how practical that could be put onto a passenger pane, though.
Re: Time for lead lined bras and skirts! (Score:2)
[1]They're actually working on something like that. [techspot.com] It currently weighs 57 pounds, so it's not comfortable.
[1] https://www.techspot.com/news/113483-nasa-tested-vest-could-cut-astronauts-radiation-exposure.html
Re: (Score:2)
What the summary fails to mention is that the other two factors were passive smoking and night work. Smoking was allowed until 2000, and apparently there is some evidence that working at night increases women's risk of getting cancer.
I would have thought that rather than altering the uniforms, the best way to protect staff would be to add shielding to the aircraft. Since the radiation is coming from above, and they rarely go near the windows, it only needs to be in the ceiling. According to [1]this paper [sciencedirect.com], alum
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0969806X22001736
Radiation treatment... (Score:2)
Is she getting it?
sitting is dangerous (Score:2)
If airline attendants can sue for radiation then can office workers sue for health concerns caused by sitting for long periods of time?
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Errr yes. No seriously, does your office not follow ergonomics regulations? There's a reason my employer has sitting / standing desks and mandatory breaks. Get your arse up and walk to the watercooler.
I blame Russia (Score:2)
If Russia wasn't such a hostile country, flights would have been able to go over Russia instead of the North Pole and flight crew and passengers wouldn't have needed to be as much exposed to cosmic radiation.
I have been told that a flight across the North Pole would expose you to about the same amount of radiation as a CT scan, but I haven't checked the figures.
BTW. I'm planning to fly over the North pole twice next month anyway, because I have chronic latent blood cancer and I'm not going to live forever.
Re: (Score:2)
Thinking that flying over the north pole twice is in any way changing your life expectancy even if you don't have latent blood cancer is a failure of the education system and nothing to do with radiation.
This education problem is corroborated by the fact you think people don't fly over Russia because of some war, whereas in reality you don't fly over Russia because most of the world recognises the earth isn't flat, and a trans polar route is often the fastest and cheapest way to get across the northern hemi
Re: (Score:2)
What's this education? If Polish people who reside at the northernmost tip of the country radiate more heat we should definitely know about it! (Winter is coming and heating oil is getting expensive...)
why stop there? (Score:2)
poles are russia's fault too. and winter!
Re: (Score:2)
you think people don't fly over Russia because of some war, whereas in reality you don't fly over Russia because most of the world recognises the earth isn't flat, and a trans polar route is often the fastest and cheapest way to get across the northern hemisphere.
Most flights currently going over the pole: would go via Russia. For example Tokyo - London.
Russia has banned the air space for western airlines since the war. And the Asian ones: follow example and avoid the airspace, too.
So, for your example of f
the math bit (Score:2)
it is possible to calculate the total amount of radiation she was exposed to, and to map that to tables that link radiation exposure to risk of cancer and death.
The tables can probably be challenged - I recall indications that the risks of long term low intensity exposure were overrated. But regardless of that, there will be a question of 'how high does the number for risk of getting cancer have to be before the judge decides the state has to pay compensation?
Re: maybe it was... (Score:4, Informative)
Except maybe it definitely wasn't those things because it's physically impossible for those wavelengths to ionize biological compounds (outside of just heating the whole thing up to a temperature where it decomposes thermally) and thus they physically cannot damage DNA. An incandescent lightbulb is more capable of giving you cancer than any radio frequency device of equivalent power output.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, that comes from sitting on the lap of a passenger pressing her chest into his face, while he has a phone at his ear: her own fault!