Something or someone who, due to sensitivity to his, her, or its surroundings, acts as an indicator and early warning of possible adverse conditions or danger. A canary in a coal mine
is an advanced warning of some danger. The metaphor originates from the times when miners used to carry caged canaries while at work; to detect if there was any methane or carbon monoxide in the mine, the canary would die before levels of the gas reached those hazardous
to humans. The canary had little control over its fate, but it continued to sing the miners knew they were safe. In one sense, living this way indicates a willingness to experience life’s dangers without compromise and if the canary died, they’d evacuate the miners.
In case where a person or event is described as a canary in a coal mine, it usually means that they are being unwittingly used in some experiment. Like the first person to try to walk across a rickety rope bridge, mine field or a test pilot. The ‘canary’ has no training, isn’t equipped to handle their environment, has no choice and may not realize the task they are attempting is extremely high risk. You may want to compare this to ‘cannon fodder’ who is considered important and are sent into war without their leaders worrying if they die.
Flight attendants are exposed to a wide range of carcinogens ~ Flight attendants may face higher than average risks of breast and skin cancers, a new study finds, though the reasons why aren’t yet clear. Harvard researchers found that compared with women in the general
U.S. population, female flight attendants had a 51% higher rate of breast cancer.
Meanwhile, rates of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers were about two to four times higher, respectively. The ongoing Harvard study which began in 2007 and included over 5,300 U.S. flight attendants, isn’t the first to find heightened cancer risks among airline crews.
But it’s one of the largest and most comprehensive to look at the issue, according to lead researcher Eileen McNeely. However, because it’s what’s called an observational study, it could not prove cause and effect. https://www.fahealth.org/team/
Contact with a number of chemicals…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts4aeBn0lAQ
1/3 Flight crews have a number of exposures that could potentially play a role, said McNeely,
an instructor in environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health. “There’s been a lot of speculation about exposure to cosmic ionizing radiation,” she said. That refers to radiation that comes from outer space. At flight altitudes, people are exposed to higher levels of it. The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) says that of all US workers exposed to radiation, aircrew have the highest average levels. However, no one knows for sure whether cosmic radiation is to blame for flight attendants’ higher cancer risks, McNeely said. Radiation is all around us, and when you travel by plane, you’re exposed to cosmic radiation. So what does this mean for our health? Does air travel expose us to unsafe radiation levels? Check out this episode Hosted by: Michael Aranda to see how flying among cosmic rays affect us in the sky.
Aircrews can also come in contact with a number of chemicals, she noted. And before smoking bans went into effect, they were habitually breathing in secondhand smoke.
Plus, McNeely said, flight crews deal with constant time-zone changes and irregular sleep schedules, which means many disruptions to the body’s circadian rhythm, or “internal clock”. Also Checkout Second Shift Nurse Breast Cancer Study?
“It’s hard to tease out which of those factors might be more important than others, or whether it’s a combination of all of them,” McNeely said. However, it’s also possible there are factors unrelated to flight attendants’ jobs, said Dr. Paolo Boffetta, a professor of oncology and environmental medicine at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, in New York City.
“For example, they may have more UV [sun] exposure because of their opportunity to travel,”
said Dr. Boffetta, who was not involved in the study.
The longer on the job, the higher the cancer risk!
In addition, he said, women on aircrews may put off having children or have fewer kids, compared with other women. And reproductive factors like that are associated with the risk
of breast cancer. Still, McNeely said, her team found some evidence that the longer flight attendants had been on the job, the higher their cancer risk was. Among women, the risk of non-melanoma skin cancer rose in tandem with job tenure. That supports the theory that job exposures are the culprit, McNeely said.
Overall, 3.4% of female attendants had been diagnosed with breast cancer, versus 2.3% of other US women. Meanwhile, 2.2% had been diagnosed with melanoma, compared with just under 1% of other women. The biggest difference was seen in rates of non-melanoma skin cancers, which are highly curable. Over 7% of female flight attendants had been diagnosed with those cancers, compared to just under 2% percent of other women.
Male flight attendants had higher rates of skin cancers than other men. According to McNeely, the findings will “not be news” to aircrews. They’ve long been aware their occupation may be linked to increased cancer risks.
Causes Unclear
The question is, if the causes are unclear, what can be done? McNeely noted that the European Union has already taken a step, requiring aircrews be monitored for their radiation exposure. If it reaches a certain level, their work schedules are adjusted. There are no official radiation limits for US aircrews, according to NIOSH. Dr. Boffetta said that regardless of the reasons, the higher rates of skin and breast cancers among flight attendants underscore an important point: They should get recommended cancer screenings. The potential risks to flight crews
bring up another question: What about passengers who fly frequently?
McNeely said it’s not clear whether they face any health risks. “We study workers first, because they have the greatest exposures,” she noted. ” Always remember exception to this adage, Doctors gave little cancer sufferer Skye Savren-McCormick only a 10% chance of survival –
but two years later she was the flower girl at her bone marrow donor’s wedding.”
2/3 A study has found that American flight attendants are more likely than the general population to develop several cancers, including breast and uterine cancer, melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer. American flight attendants have a higher prevalence of several forms of cancer, including breast, uterine, gastrointestinal, thyroid, and cervical cancers, when compared with the general public, according to new research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The analysis, one of the largest studies of cancer among cabin crew members to date, is the first to show that U.S. flight attendants also have an elevated rate of non-melanoma skin cancer.
The findings are “striking given the low rates of overweight and smoking in our study population, which highlights the question of what can be done to minimize the adverse exposures and cancers common among cabin crew,” said Irina Mordukhovich, a research fellow at Harvard Chan School and the corresponding author of the paper. The study was published online in Environmental Health on Monday. Flight attendants are exposed to several known and probable cancer risks, including cosmic ionizing radiation, disrupted sleep cycles and circadian rhythms, and chemical contaminants. Moreover, cabin crews are exposed to the largest effective annual ionizing radiation dose relative to all other U.S. radiation workers because of both their exposure to and lack of protection from cosmic radiation.
Despite these known risks, flight attendants have historically been excluded from Occupational Safety and Health Administration protections typically granted to U.S. workers. Protections instituted in 2014 are limited. The Harvard researchers began studying flight attendants’ health more than a decade ago, launching the Harvard Flight Attendant Health Study. The new findings are based on a 2014–15 survey in which 5,366 U.S. flight attendants were asked about health outcomes and symptoms, work experience, personal characteristics, and employment history. The researchers compared the prevalence of cancers among the flight attendants with similar information from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, an annual study of approximately 5,000 citizens that is conducted by
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Flight attendants had a higher prevalence of every cancer that was examined, especially breast cancer, melanoma, and non-melanoma skin cancer among women, echoing multiple U.S. and European studies. Job tenure was linked to non-melanoma skin cancer among women, with borderline associations for melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer among men. The findings suggest that additional efforts should be made in the U.S. to minimize the risk of cancer among flight attendants, including monitoring radiation doses and organizing schedules to minimize radiation exposure and circadian rhythm disruption, according to the researchers.
“The E.U. already evaluates radiation exposure among flight attendants, which our findings show may be an important step toward lowering cancer risk among this work population,” said study author Eileen McNeely. Other Harvard Chan School authors were Brent Coull, Sara Gale, Steven Staffa, and Samuel Tideman. Funding for the study came from the
Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute.
3/3 According to Alice Park of Time, the report, published in the journal Environmental Health, is based on data collected by the Harvard Flight Attendant Health Study (FAHS), which was launched in 2007. The researchers behind the study sought to shed light on an understudied occupational group. Though flight attendants are frequently exposed to a number of possible
or probable cancer-causing factors—like sleep disruptions, radiation, and pesticides and other chemicals in the cabin—the long-term effects of this exposure have not been well documented.
Between 2014 and 2015, researchers studied 5,300 flight attendants through surveys that were disseminated online, via mail and in person at airports. The surveys asked respondents about flight schedules and cancer diagnoses. The researchers then compared the responses to the health status of 2,729 non-flight attendant adults with similar socioeconomic backgrounds, using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES),
which surveys around 5,000 Americans each year.
The comparison revealed higher rates of uterine, cervical, breast, gastrointestinal, thyroid and melanoma cancers among flight attendants. The disparity was especially pronounced with breast, melanoma and non-melanoma cancers. Flight attendants had more than double the risk of developing melanoma, and more than quadruple the risk of developing non-melanoma cancers. They were also 51 percent more likely to develop breast cancer than the general population. To the researchers’ surprise, they found a higher risk of breast cancer in female flight attendants with three or more children; typically, a woman’s risk of breast cancer decreases as she has more children.
“This study is the first to show higher prevalences of all cancers studied, and significantly higher prevalences of non-melanoma skin cancer compared to a similarly matched U.S. sample population,” lead study author Eileen McNeely of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health tells Lisa Rapaport of Reuters. McNeely also notes that “[n]on-melanoma skin cancer among women increased with more years on the job, suggesting a work-related association.”
The study suggests a number of factors that could be contributing to higher cancer risks among flight attendants. As Jen Christensen of CNN points out, flight attendants are often exposed to known or possible carcinogens like pesticides, jet fuel and fire retardants. Because they often cross time zones, flight attendants also could also be dealing with disrupted circadian rhythms, and irregular sleep patterns have been shown to increase the risk of cancer development.
Poor air quality inside the cabin is also a concern.
Another risk factor could be flight attendants’ exposure to cosmic ionizing radiation, high-energy particles from outer space that collide with particles in the Earth’s atmosphere, “causing a chain reaction of particle decays,” according to NASA. Humans are protected from cosmic radiation on the ground, but there are increased chances of exposure at high altitudes. The WHO has found that exposure to ionizing radiation can lead to increased risk of cancer in humans; the CDC says it is investigating specific links between cosmic ionizing radiation and cancer. Click here to learn about how lung cancer rates are now higher in young American women than men.
The European Union requires that flight attendants’ schedules be arranged so that they do not exceed a certain amount of ionizing radiation each year. But there are no official dose limits for flight crew in the United States. Study co-author Irina Mordukhovich, a research associate at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, tells Park of Time that going forward, the study’s results will need to be replicated to confirm possible risks. But she hopes the current study calls attention to the potentially grave health hazards flight attendants face on the job.
Vitamin C helps prevent cancer?
https://fox6now.com/2018/
06/26/study-flight-attendants-
get-more-uterine-thyroid-and-other-cancers/
Q&A: What is your daily routine? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHDALlN20jw
“We have known carcinogens that flight crews are exposed to,” she says, “and we’re hoping
that this study allows people to start thinking about what should be done to implement protections.” So as you can see the canary in the coal mine theory (an Alaskan Glacier melting quicker than normal can signify future trouble. Much like one group in an occupation can
be studied for troubling facts about cancer. Many business and political analysts use this phrase to describe a harbinger of the future. One small event in an isolated area may not seem especially noteworthy, but may offer the first tangible warning of a larger problem developing.
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