Military pilots and ground crew with high rates of cancer: Pentagon study

High rates of cancer among military pilots have been discovered by a Pentagon study.

And for the first time, it has been shown that the ground crews that power, maintain and launch these planes are also getting sick.

The Pentagon released the study in early February, the Associated Press reported.

Retired military airmen had long sought the data, the AP said Sunday, March 19.

Military airmen had been sounding the alarm for years about how many air and ground crew members they knew had cancer.

They were told that previous military studies had found they were no more at risk than the general US population.

But in a year-long study of nearly 900,000 service members who flew or worked on military aircraft between 1992 and 2017, the Pentagon found that crew members had an 87% higher rate of melanoma and a 39% higher rate of thyroid cancer, as the AP reported.

Meanwhile, men had a 16% higher rate of prostate cancer and women a 16% higher rate of breast cancer.

Overall, aircrew had a 24% higher rate of cancer of all types, according to the AP.

The study showed that ground crews had a 19% higher rate of brain and nervous system cancers, a 15% higher rate of thyroid cancer, and a 9% higher rate of kidney or kidney cancer. kidney.

Women, on the other hand, had a 7% higher rate of breast cancer, according to the same study.

The overall rate of cancers of all types was 3% higher, the AP noted.

Navy A-6 Intruder pilot Jim Seaman was one of those who died of cancer at age 61.

He died in 2018.

He is among a group of pilots who have been diagnosed with cancer, the Associated Press reported.

His widow Betty Seaman is part of a large group of Airmen and surviving spouses who have lobbied Congress and the Pentagon for years to investigate the number of cancers facing Airmen and ground personnel.

The Pentagon acknowledged that the study had flaws that likely led to an undercount of 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 first-generation jet aircraft in the during the previous decades.

Some good news too

There was good news, however, also reported.

Ground crew and air crew had much lower rates of lung cancer, and air crew also had lower rates of bladder and colon cancer.

After adjusting for age, gender and race, the data compared service members with the general US population.

The Pentagon said the new study was one of the largest and most comprehensive to date.

An earlier study looked only at Air Force pilots – and found higher cancer rates, while this one looked at all services and air and ground crew.

Even with the broader approach, the Pentagon warned that the true number of cancer cases was likely to be even higher due to data gaps – which it said it would work to fill.

The study was mandated by Congress in the 2021 defense bill, the AP noted.

Now, since higher rates have been found, the Pentagon needs to conduct even more scrutiny to try to figure out why crews are getting sick.

The Pentagon was careful to point out that the new study “does not imply that military service in the aircrew or ground crew occupations causes cancer, as there are multiple potential confounding factors that cannot be controlled for. in this analysis”, such as family history. cancer, smoking or drinking alcohol.

Localized prostate cancer

Meanwhile, an entirely different study found that men diagnosed with localized prostate cancer who want to avoid immediate surgery or radiation can safely choose to actively monitor the disease as a method of treatment.

That’s according to a recent study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Study researchers determined that most men should not panic or rush to make treatment decisions after a diagnosis because the cancer death rate 15 years later was relatively low, regardless of therapeutic approach.

The study began in the UK in 1999.

It involved 2,664 men aged 50 to 69 who had been diagnosed with localized prostate cancer.

Of these men, 1,643 were enrolled in a trial studying three different treatment methods: surgery to remove the tumors (553), radiation therapy (545) and active surveillance (545).

Elizabeth Pritchett of Fox News Digital, along with the Associated Press, contributed reporting.