Military Pilots And Ground Crews Showing High Rates Of Cancer – Pentagon Study Reveals

A Pentagon research has found that military pilots had high incidences of cancer.

Also, it has been demonstrated for the first time that the ground workers who fuel, maintain, and launch those aircraft are also developing illnesses. Early in February, the analysis was made public by the Pentagon.

Retired military aviators had long desired the information.

The amount of air and ground crew members they knew who had cancer has long alarmed military aviators. They were informed that past military studies had shown that their risk was no higher than that of the US population as a whole.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon discovered that air crew members had an 87% higher prevalence of melanoma and a 39% higher rate of thyroid cancer in a year-long study of over 900,000 service personnel who flew or served on military aircraft between 1992 and 2017.

Although women had a 16% higher breast cancer rate and males had a 16% higher prostate cancer rate, respectively.

The risk of all cancers was 24% higher overall among flight personnel.

According to the study, ground personnel had an increased risk of kidney or renal cancer by 9%, an increased risk of thyroid cancer by 15%, and an increased risk of brain and nervous system tumors by 19%.

The same study also discovered that the incidence of breast cancer was 7% higher in women.

The total rate of all cancers was at 3%.

James Seaman, 61 , a Navy A-6 Intruder pilot, passed away in 2018 from cancer.

His widow Betty Seaman has battled Congress and the Pentagon for years to look into the high rate of malignancies seen by aviators and ground crew. She is one of several aviators and surviving wives who have done so.

The Pentagon admitted that there were flaws in the study that probably resulted in an undercount of cancer cases.

Pilots who flew early-generation jets in the earlier decades may not have been included in the study since the military health system database did not have adequate cancer data until 1990.