Brain Cancer risk?
 

Well, I've already lost two close Delta Pilot friends to Brain Cancer, and now another pilot friend has it.

Is it me, or do Pilots seem to get it a lot more than the general public? I know of zero people in my circle of -nonpilot- friends who have ever had it, yet I can name 5 Delta pilots who have died from it in the past 25 years or so.

This latest case told me his doctor said the chances of getting brain cancder are 1 in 30,000...I'm sure I don't know 5 x 30,000 people, but I do know of 5 Delta Pilots who have died of it. That's a pretty small group, less than 10,000, even if it is over the past 25 years. And I don't know all of them, obviously there are probably many more whom I have not heard about.

So, if there are any Brain Surgeons in the house, do you see more incidences of brain cancer in airline pilots, than in the general public?

Pilots at other arilines, do you see many cases of brain cancer in your pilot group? Or maybe it's something in the ATL water supply...? :eek:

Some reading material for ya while cruising at 410:

http://www.faa.gov/library/reports/m...media/0316.pdf

Thanks for the info. GB. But what I'd like to see is the actual data, ie. how many pilots are getting brain cancer, when (at what age), and is that number higher or lower than the general population, as a percentage of all actively flying Comercial and Military Pilots, and then figure out why, unless the ratio is exactly the same as the general, non-flying, public.

I'm not so worried about the 'cosmic' radiation from the sun, although it can't be good for you, but I am more worried about the electronic stuff we are exposed to on the flight deck, all day and all night. Like wearing a headset all day. Is that the same as having a cell phone in your ear all day? Probably not, but it can't be good for your brain cells!

Is there some evidence that cell phones are causing an increase in brain cancer in the general population? Why? Radio and eltronic waves near your ear? Well, what about all the electronics in the typical airline cockpit? Is that good for you?

to date there is no evidence of any of the above discussed causing brain cancer. Studies continue especially with cellphones.

Thanks, do you know if anyone is keeping track of what kills Pilots, ie. what is the most common ailment that medically disqualifies us, (heart disease? Cancer?) and what is the most common ailment that kills us before reaching 'retirement age' (now 65).

When the age was first raised to 65, I figured at least 50% of the 'over 60' pilots wouldn't make it to 65 (keep a first class medical) but I just flew with a 63yr. old copilot, and I cannot think of a single -over 60- pilot who has lost his medical, and I know (and fly with) quite a few of them.

Of course in these days, very few are smoking and drinking like they did back in the 1970's. I don't know a single pilot who smokes cigarettes any more, where as 25 years ago I didn't know too many who didn't. They are eating better too, not nearly as overweight as they were 25 years ago...so...maybe that's why most of the over 60 guys are surviving to 65.

Genetics. If you live long enough and escape all the other killers, you will develop some form of cancer. That is a fact.

Radiation in mild doses may prevent some cancers, radiation is used as a treatment, because many cancer cells cannot tolerate it as well as normal cells.

Cell phones-you are exposed daily to far more electromagnetic energy than a cell phone could ever produce.

You are going to die, some will die sooner than others, but living to the ripe old age of ninety is not always a happy outcome. Enjoy.:D

same as gen population: heart incl bp, diabetes, cancer ,mental health. Many medicines are now approved for all. After cancer rx, one can return to flying. So in general pilots health issues are no different than other 'executive' professions.

I had heard that 'if you live long enough' thing before, but it was about prostate cancer. So...I guess I am just unfortunate enough to know 5 airline pilots who have all died of brain cancer in their 50's? And it's just a coincidence that they all fly for the same airline? And the incidence of brain cancer in pilots is no different than the general population?

My gut says no. Are there any published numbers that say yes?

I doubt there is any proven relation between pilots and the general population with regard to death rates, my guess is that pilots are on the whole more healthy because of the extensive selection process.

I find it interesting that many people die when engaged in healthy activities such as tennis or running.

You cannot escape your fate by riding to the next village.

My grandmother probably speeded things up a bit by drinking bourbon straight and smoking unfiltered Camels, she was taken early at age 87. Still quite spry, even at that age.

My Wife's Grandmother lived to be 102...and from about age 82-92 I would sneak her a 6 pack of Coors Light a couple times a week, put it in the back of her fridge. She would tell the others they were mine, but she drank one every day. She said that's what kept her 'lubricated'.

And she walked a lot, almost every day, about a 3 mile loop, from her house to the post office, to her book club, to her girlfriend's house and back home. She never smoked though.

My Dad died of cancer when he was 33, I was 6. He smoked like a chimney. I do not have a single picture of him without a cigarette in his hand, even in his wedding photo, so I had a pretty strong incentive to never start.

My mother is still going strong at 78, very sharp mind, does income tax work pro-bono for the 'elderly'! She also walks 3 miles every morning and drinks a beer a day with dinner! (and not a Light Beer, but the real stuff, Sam Adams or Smutty Nose Stout)

But she was early into the 'health food' craze, even before there was a health food craze. When we were kids in the 1960's, she had us drinking skim milk, always. And oatmeal for breakfast, no eggs and bacon. She had a salad on the table before every meal and NO SALT allowed. We rarely ate red meat, mostly chicken, fish and pasta dishes.

My great grandmother smoked 2 packs a day until she died at 94 and drank like a fish. Jim Fixx died at 52 after his daily run. Go figure.

Death is inevitable, unfortunately.

All that aside, in Air Force Special Operations Command, it's not pilots, but loadmasters who seem to frequently get brain cancer and die. I personally know three and have heard of four more (two who were not loadmasters - one flight engineer and one pilot). AFSOC did a study, but basically said it was within the statistical numbers for 'normal'...and I always trust everything the military says. ;)

In the end, something's going to get you - no sense worrying about it. ;)

Tomorrow is promised to no one.

I may get the quote wrong but:

Yesterday is a memory
Today is a gift
and
Tomorrow is a mystery

Were the 5 AFSOC guys all based in the same location, or spread out far and wide?

I was in the NH Air Guard at Pease AFB from 1984-1992, and when the DOD budget cuts/base closures in 1992 came, they closed the active duty end of the base. Some developers wanted to build some stuff there, but get this, first, they would have to pay for a special "Clean Up" of all the dirt around the ends of the runway.

For years the AF had been dumping jet fuel out there. It was common practice when a KC 135 didn't 'get water' on take off, to abort, taxi back, and dump about 10,000 (or more) of gas out the boom, onto the grass, to get lighter for a no-water take off.

Well, after about 20 years of this, and the base closure, the EPA started checking the ground water around the base...guess what? High levels of Benzine in the ground water...the same water we'd all been drinking for years!

Long story short, no developer wanted to spend that kind of money, and -hope- the EPA would then approve their project...but only if the ground water was cleaned up.

My two closest friends who both had the brain cancer both flew out of Pease as well...

Coincidence? Perhaps, but I'm betting every KC135 base around the world was doing the same thing, (dumping fuel off the side of the runway) back then, when the Water Wagons were flying. So maybe your crew chiefs were once stationed at a KC 135 base with well water?

Spread out - different MDSs as well...all deployed to similar locations over the years though.

That was the done thing back in the SAC glory days. Fill 'em full for alert. On scramble, figure TOLD while taxiing out, dump what you couldn't take off with. ;)

Tankers still dump more gas every day than a squadron of Herks carry! They just do it airborne now - 'adjusting gross weight'

I was a 135 guy back in the day, but shortly after I got in, we got rid of the water wagons and got the E model (JT3D engines, with Thrust Reversers!).

A few month back Delta had a couple 747's in one month, about a week apart, both coming out of DTW going to Asia, both had to turn back just after takeoff.

Each one dumped somewhere around 250,000 lbs of fuel all over Michigan...I hope those crews didn't run their APU's more than 5 minutes prior to pushback. We wouldn't want to waste even more fuel.

There was a picture of one of them spewing fuel posted on the inter-tubes somewhere.

Other Cancer
 

Well you know, recently I read an article that claimed Icelandic pilots had higher skin cancer rates that the general population. Other reports indicated a higher risk of AML for pilots. This is a very serious and mostly uncurable form of lukemia.
I would be careful before drawing any conclusions. Cancer rates vary greatly by age and many other factors not mentioned in either article.

Your friend's quote is accurate. I looked up the rates; found a study from the UK. This study was the UK as a whole, not pilots. For people in the pilot working-age group (25-65), it is between 1 in 30,000 (young) to 1 in 10,000 (older).

I was stationed in Germany for 6 years. During that time, I knew about 200-250 pilots, backseaters, and their wives. Of them, 5 got cancer; three were brain cancer. About 50-50 between flyers and their wives, so it didn't seem to be about flying...more about location.

The Eifel region of Germany has a lot of limestone. Limestone often has radium, and with it, radon gas. I wonder if our homes had radon, or if the local water (which came from local wells) had radium dissolved in it. All I know is for my group, at one locale, the rate seem to be at least 100 times normal.

Timbo:

The strength of the electric field from your headset is nothing compared to being swept by an ATC radar at close range, or taxiing in front of an airliner with its radar operating. (Or maybe even sidelobes of your own radar). For all the time I spent in a plexiglass cockpit, locked-up by the radar of another fighter, I should be called Orville Redenbacher---my popcorn should have popped by now.

Incidence of cancer among Nordic airline pilots over five decades: occupational cohort study

Incidence of cancer among Nordic airline pilots over five decades: occupational cohort study

This made me feel a little better about it.

George Carlin Quote.............
 

The AMA has just published an article that indicates saliva causes cancer, but only if swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time.

Humor is the best medicine!

http://famousdeadmormons.com/images/192.jpg

Enter Content

Hi Timbo

I'd be really interested to hear from you about your Delta colleagues re brain cancer. I have some info you might like to hear. Maybe you could contact me please?

Thanks
Notadolly

That is a shame. I imagine that if there was some major connection between flying and cancer they would have addressed it by now. Prayers out to your friend, let him and yourself be healthy!

I saw this post because I had the same hunch that cosmic radiation would cause a high incidence of brain tumors in pilots. No I'm not a pilot, but I am researching primary brain tumors and wanted to put yall at ease or at least try. There have been many studies on this topic here is what I think is the most comprehensive of the studies.

Cancer incidence among 10,211 airlin... [Aviat Space Environ Med. 2003] - PubMed - NCBI

This is an extremely robust study of 10000 pilots which concludes:

"This large study, based on reliable cancer incidence data, showed an increased incidence of skin cancer. It did not indicate a marked increase in cancer risk attributable to cosmic radiation although some influence of cosmic radiation on skin cancer cannot be entirely excluded."

So I think you are just extremely unlucky and Im very sorry to hear about your friends. Im PMing you to ask you about your friends if you dont mind.

Best

He died of Rectal Cancer, right?

So where was his tongue and his saliva??:eek::eek:

That was a joke, just for him. I'm sure he would appreciate it.

Sorry I didn't see your post until just now. It's been nearly a year, and my friend died of brain cancer (Glioblastoma) last June. At his funeral I spoke with one of his daughters, a 20 something lawyer in Seattle.

She said she had done some research and that type of brain cancer is specific to one type of person:

White Males, over 50, type A personalities!

Who does that sound like to you?

Airline Pilots! :eek:

She said she had a college room mate who'd dad also died of the same thing, he was a mid 50's white Lawyer. So, it may not be the cosmic or radio radiation, but the specific gene type that puts you at risk.

I told her I was glad I was a slacker, not a Type A! ;)

We have had several that I know of at FedEx die of brain cancer.

I know of 6 Delta guys who all died of brain cancer, but that's over the past 25+ years. Here's what I found in two minutes on Google:

Other risk factors include:[23]
Sex: male (slightly more common in men than women)
Age: over 50 years old
Ethnicity: Caucasians, Asians
Having a low-grade astrocytoma (brain tumor), which often, given enough time, develops into a higher-grade tumor
Having one of the following genetic disorders is associated with an increased incidence of gliomas: Neurofibromatosis
Tuberous sclerosis
Von Hippel-Lindau disease
Li-Fraumeni syndrome
Turcot syndrome


Pathogenesis

Glioblastoma multiforme tumors are characterized by the presence of small areas of necrotizing tissue that is surrounded by anaplastic cells. This characteristic, as well as the presence of hyperplastic blood vessels, differentiates the tumor from Grade 3 astrocytomas, which do not have these features.

Skin cancer is big among airline pilots. My Dad had skin cancer removed from his ears. Give some consideration to wearing some high SPF sun block when you fly. Especially above FL300.

So glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) has 4 subsets: classical, neural, proneural, and mesenchymal. It sounds like there are a ton of ya'll with friends getting GBM. Like I said there are are many studies reporting there's no increased risk for GBM in pilots..... but from what I'm hearing here I gotta disagree. Additionally if the pilots being stricken with these tumors are evolving the same subtype of GBM it could have HUGE implications in the study of the disease.

Do any of yall happen to know more information about your friends tumors, any info could be really helpful.

I try and wear sunblock as much as possible. Especially because I'm a Citation X driver and that sun-is-a-shinin' at FL 470.

"High energy" radiation (ie cosmic) penetrates the body deeply and is less likely to "dump" it's energy into the skin.

UV radiation (ie the sun) is by far the primary mode for radiation-induced skin damage.

I have an HP background and have casually researched pilot radiation exposure. The only significant statistical uptick in cancers for pilots seems to be skin cancer...but since cockpit windows filter almost all UVB (the UV component known to cause cancer) I suspect that pilots get more skin cancer because of off-the-job lifestyle factors...we are more likely to be active outdoor types with a lot of time on our hands than the average white-collar guy.

Based on "typical" career flight times and altitudes there "should" be a very slight but measurable increase in overall cancer risk for pilots due to additional radiation exposure. I'd be a lot more worried about other, controllable, lifestyle factors. That said...a big solar flare could give you quite a dose on a long high-altitude flight.

Cockpit windows block most UVB, which is the component known to cause skin cancer. UVA gets through and is known to cause skin aging, fatigue, and immune system impairment, so I use sunblock while flying for those reasons.

When I'm doing outdoor activities on my days off I use sunblock to try to prevent skin cancer.

I have three childhood friends 33-34 years of age, of which two are best friends and all graduated in the same class from the same HS, and all three have terminal brain cancer as of this time last year.

As an added bonus, it has moved into the lungs of two of them.

None are pilots, none smoke though one smoked a little grass in college.

On top of that, a fourth girl who happens to be a year younger from the same HS and is an ex gf of my brother's, had the same symptoms (a weekend long migraine) as the one girl did who found out she had terminal cancer, so she went to the ER on a Sunday and demanded a scan.

Sure enough, scheduled surgery for Monday. Ninety-nine percent was removed and chemo has beat back the rest at this point (this was April 2013).

BTW Timbo, this is metro ATL so maybe it is the water as you eluded to in your post? Who knows. :confused:

Well all the guys I knew who died of brain cancer all lived in south eastern New Hampshire, or north eastern Mass. There is a lot of granite in the ground up there, granite is supposed to hold radon gas.

So....whether there was benzene in the water from years of dumping jet fuel on the ground, or radon gas in everyone's basement, from the granite, I don't know, but it seemed weird to me that so many of these guys were getting the same thing, glioblastoma.

BUT, the info online says it predominately attacks white males over the age of 50...so...? Maybe it's not the benzene in the water or the radon in the granite, but a genetic thing?

Most interesting when non medical folks muse about this type of disease. I see WAG’s are still a driving force when contemplating the unknown. Unless of course, you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. ;)

Genetic predisposition combined with environmental factors could result in significantly elevated risk.

Yes, I have been gathering also that Genetic predisposition may not be the only reason people are getting cancer. Environmental factors have been thought as being what is damaging a persons DNA. It is difficult to prove directly that a certain substance has caused a particular persons cancer, but they have been able to prove that certain environmental factors cause damage to DNA that has otherwise not been proven to have been previously damaged.

My general, broad understanding...

Cancer is generally understood to be caused by damage to cellular DNA resulting in unconstrained cell growth. This damage occurs primarily due to outside (environmental) factors such as radiation, chemical agents, or free radicals.

Free radicals are interesting, they are basically unstable molecules with a part missing, and the chemical "jagged edges" can react strongly with other molecules, including DNA. They can be created by chemical processes or radiation. The chemical process can be outside agents, or even natural biological processes within the organism.

Radiation can damage DNA directly, or by creating free radicals within the organism which then interact with DNA.

It's theoretically possible, but probably rare, that DNA could spontaneously mutate to produce cancer. DNA has evolved over literally billions of years and is pretty stable, so most damage is probably caused by outside factors.

A genetic pre-disposition could manifest in several ways...

A section of DNA might be more susceptible to damage or more likely to result in cancer when damaged.

But the other way genetics come into play is AFTER the cancer-causing damage occurs...most cancerous cells actually get destroyed by your immune system very quickly and never survive to multiply and spread into cancer as we know it. A genetic "loophole" in the immune system can cause the immune system to be prone to miss certain type(s) of cancerous cells.

It gets complicated.

Paying the cost to be the boss!

Brain cancer survey
 

I've flown for UAL for over 25 years, 15 years or so long haul on some of the highest radiation routes (eg LAX to LHR). I now have Grade 3 anaplastic astrocytoma. Survival is about 25% over 5 years. Often turns into GBM, the deadliest form of brain cancer (survival around 12 months give or take). I've looked at the various surveys and none of them seem to take into account the changing nature of commercial flying and include this type of month in month out long leg high altitude flying for many years. My experience is the same as Timbo's (the original poster on this thread). Far more pilots seem to die of brain cancer (or acquire other forms of cancer) than mere chance would suggest. A friend at British Airways has the same impression, despite radiation rules and monitoring being much more stringent in Europe.

I would like to conduct an informal survey. Please could you private message me with all the cases you know of (and ask around among those you fly with). I'd like to put together a more up-to-date (if unscientific) picture of what's really going on out there. I promise to publish the (de-identified) results on this thread. Purpose is to protect other pilots by making them aware of any risks (so they can bid their flying to take account of this if they wish) and perhaps change the regulatory situation.

Useful information if available:
Routes flown, for how many years, equipment, airline. Type of military flying if applicable with same info.. Anything to indicate how much radiation might have been received and for how long.

Incidentally, I read on the website of a major cancer center that anaplastic astrocytomas are caused by - you guessed it - ionizing radiation!