A Pentagon study found high rates of cancer among military pilots and for the first time showed that the ground crew who fuel, maintain and launch the planes are also getting sick.
The data has long been sought by retired military pilots who have been raising the alarm for years about the number of air and ground crew they know who have cancer. He was told that previous military studies had found that there was no greater risk than the general US population.
In a one-year study 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 a 39% higher rate of thyroid cancer than men. prostate cancer rates are 16% higher and women breast cancer rates are 16% higher. Overall, aircrew had a 24% higher cancer rate of all types.
The study showed that ground crew had a 19% higher rate of brain and nervous system cancer, a 15% higher rate of thyroid cancer and a 9% higher rate of kidney or kidney cancer, while women had a 7% higher rate of breast cancer. The overall rate for all types of cancer was 3% higher.
There was some good news reported as well. Both ground and aircrew have lower rates of lung cancer, and aircrew also have lower rates of bladder and colon cancer.
The data compares service members to the general US population after adjusting for age, sex and race.
The Pentagon says the new study is one of the largest and most comprehensive to date. The previous study only looked at Air Force pilots and found some higher rates of cancer, while this one looked at all services and air and ground crew. Even with the broader approach, the Pentagon warns that the actual number of cancer cases could be higher because of data gaps, which it says will be addressed soon.
The study “proves that it took a long time for leaders and policymakers to move from skepticism to trust and active assistance,” said retired Air Force Col. Vince Alcazar, a member of the Red River Valley Fighter Pilots Association, which has lobbied the Pentagon. and Congress for help. Alcazar serves on the association’s medical affairs committee.
The study was required by Congress in the 2021 defense bill. Now, as the higher rates are discovered, the Pentagon must conduct a larger review to try to understand why crews are sick.
Isolating potential causes is difficult, and the Pentagon carefully notes that this study “does not show that military service in aircrew or ground crew causes cancer, because there are a variety of potential confounding factors that cannot be controlled for in this analysis.” such as family history. , smoking or using alcohol.
But flight crews have long asked the Pentagon to scrutinize some of the visible environmental factors, such as jet fuel and solvents used to clean and maintain jet parts, sensors and power supplies in the plane’s nose cone, and there are plenty of them. the radar system on the ship’s deck was landed.
When Navy Capt. Jim Seaman would return home from a deployment on an aircraft carrier, the equipment would be jet fuel, his widow Betty Seaman said. The A-6 Intruder pilot died in 2018 at the age of 61 from lung cancer. Betty Seaman still stores the equipment and still smells the fuel, “which I love,” she said.
He and others wondered if there was a link. He said the crew would talk about how the ship’s water system would smell of fuel.
He said he and others have mixed feelings about finally seeing data on what they’ve suspected for years about aviation cancer. But “it has the potential to do a lot of good as far as early communication, early detection,” she said.
The study found that when crew members were diagnosed with cancer, they were more likely to survive than members of the general population, which the study suggested was because they were diagnosed earlier because of the necessary medical examinations and were healthier. due to military fitness requirements.
The Pentagon acknowledged that the study had gaps that could have led to fewer cancer cases.
The military health system database used in the study did not have reliable cancer data until 1990, so it may not have included pilots who flew early-generation jets in previous decades.
The study also did not include cancer data from the Department of Veterans Affairs or state cancer registries, meaning it did not capture cases from former crew members who became ill after leaving the military medical system.
“It is important to note that the results of the study may have been different if older service members had been added,” he said.
To address the issue, the Pentagon will now pull data from the registry to increase the total number, the study said.
The second phase of the study will try to isolate the cause. The 2021 bill would require the Department of Defense not only to identify “toxic, carcinogenic or hazardous substances associated with military aviation operations,” but also to specify the type of aircraft and location where the diagnosed crew served.
After her husband fell ill, Betty Seaman asked him if he would have voted differently, knowing his service might have been linked to cancer.
“I asked Jim right away. And without hesitation, he said, ‘I’ll definitely do it.’