WASHINGTON.- A study of the Pentagon -the Department of Defense USA– found high cancer rates among military pilots and, for the first time, showed that the ground crews who fuel, maintain and launch those planes are also getting sick.
Retired military aviators who have long requested this data sounded the alarm for years about the number of air and ground crew who knew they had cancer. They were told that previous military studies had found that they were no more at risk than the country’s general population.
In a one-year study on a sample of nearly 900,000 service members who flew or worked on military aircraft between 1992 and 2017, the Pentagon found that aircrew members had an 87% higher rate of melanoma and 39% higher rate of thyroid cancer, while men had a 16% higher rate of prostate cancer and women a higher rate 16% higher than breast cancer. In general, aircrew had a 24% higher rate of cancer of all types.
In addition, the research revealed that ground crews had a 19% higher rate of brain and nervous system cancer, a 15% higher rate of thyroid cancer, and 9% higher rates of liver or kidney cancer, while women had 7% more likely to get breast cancer. The overall rate of cancers of all types was 3% higher.
In contrast, both ground and aircrew had much lower rates of lung cancer, and aircrew also had lower rates of bladder and colon cancer.
The study was requested by the US Congress under the 2021 defense bill. Now, because higher rates were found, the Pentagon needs to do an even bigger review to try to understand why crews get sick .
AP
