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-...
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.
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-...
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.
Thanks for the link!
Didnt know that one Mammogram is that intensive, so my partner shouldnt go each year, Id guess?
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.
This is due to exposure to the radiation from intra operative x rays.
And then there’s the inverse square law too.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If anything smelled it's usually due to a passenger. But nothing from the aircraft itself
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.
Would love both to be solved, which would lead to good outcomes. Any thoughts on why attendants have different outcomes?
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.
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.
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.
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.
The rich smell better than I do. I can learn from them.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/19/health/flight-attendants-pilo...
(We've since changed the top link.)
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
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.
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?