4 ms·

There's no doubt cumulative exposure is a risk factor as a population. https://hms.harvard.edu/news/pilots-flight-attendants-have-greater-risk-radiation-relate

by imglorp 1mo ago

There's no doubt cumulative exposure is a risk factor as a population. https://hms.harvard.edu/news/pilots-flight-attendants-have-greater-risk-radiation-related-cancer-death-other-professions https://hms.harvard.edu/news/pilots-flight-attendants-have-g... But how can they point to one individual and say it's causal? Maybe they caught some radon. Maybe something else?

deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
Tabular-Iceberg 1mo ago
That seems like it would be the most important part of the whole article, and it was left out. It’s possible that the standards of evidence in a civil case is low enough that they don’t have to demonstrate a causal link. Only that there is radiation in the air and that radiation causes cancer.
- goodcanadian 1mo ago
  The article acknowledged that you cannot say for certain what caused her cancer. The court determined, however, that the increased radiation exposure qualified as a workplace hazard that increased her risk of cancer and was therefore a contributing factor. At least, that's the way I understood it.
webdoodle 1mo ago
Speculation: Most forms of breast cancer occur because of bad protein production from a specific gene. My guess is this flight attendants breast cancer isn't from any known breast cancer gene.
aeternum 1mo ago
This seems like pretty strong evidence that the Linear No-Threshold Model for radiation exposure is the correct model. Not great for the many companies attempting to revive the nuclear power industry.
- stackskipton 1mo ago
  What? Nuclear Power workers are exposed much less than flight attendants and everyone else gets more radiation from their occasional flight. Yes, disasters are worse but most other power options are killing people in non visible ways.
  - arghwhat 1mo ago
    Whether the disasters are worse depends on your metric. The deaths from Fukushima was, to my knowledge, only a few elderly individuals who had stress-induced heart failures. And that's a worst-case scenario with corruption, old designs, complete negligence and dual natural disasters hitting the plant in parallel. It seems absolutely silly, but even wind power kills more people per TWh produced than nuclear due to workplace accidents in installation/maintenance. Also not sure why lung cancer from oil/coal air pollution would be less visible than hypothetical radiation-induced cancers. EDIT: Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p..., accidents include indirect deaths. Solar is the only energy source that beats nuclear in safety.
    - ch4s3 1mo ago
      > only a few elderly individual who had stress-induced heart failures Caused by the evacuation
    - gosub100 1mo ago
      Both arguments can be correct: if X dose of radiation increases cancer risk, and it's shown that a nuclear plant released Y dose (by, oh, say, leaking tritium into the earth [1]), it's not out of the question to ask them to pay into a compensation fund. That has no bearing on whether wind turbines kill people. 1: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/03/22/what-we-know-about-the-monticello-nuclear-plant-radioactive-tritium-leak https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/03/22/what-we-know-about-...
      - arghwhat 1mo ago
weinzierl 1mo ago
The radiation exposure caused by the flight is a known. Fraunhofer institute once had the calculator they made for Lufthansa (if I remember correctly) publicly available. You could enter flight numbers and it would aggregate your exposure.
gleenn 1mo ago
My friend who is a Radiologist said all the older, more seasoned Radiologists don't have any hair that grows on their hands anymore. She said she was glad to get out because even if they provide lead bibs, the doctors doing emergency radiology type treatments were still exposed long term.
- copperx 1mo ago
  Interesting. I didn't know radiologists were exposed to radiation. I thought that was the job of the radiology techs.
  - jey 1mo ago
    Yeah, that was my reaction too. But there is a subfield called interventional radiology, perhaps GP post is referring to that?
    - gleenn 1mo ago
      Yes, she did intervention.
- colechristensen 1mo ago
  There have also been developments that have reduced radiation doses 30-90% per imaging event with the transition from film to digital xrays and the progression of the various digital sensors continued to reduce doses. Current leading edge and future sensors have potential to improve on this by orders of magnitude having the sensitivity to count photons. So current old radiologists might have exposures that new radiologists may never get remotely close to by the time they're old.

by imglorp 1mo ago

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

Tabular-Iceberg 1mo ago

That seems like it would be the most important part of the whole article, and it was left out. It’s possible that the standards of evidence in a civil case is low enough that they don’t have to demonstrate a causal link. Only that there is radiation in the air and that radiation causes cancer.

goodcanadian 1mo ago
The article acknowledged that you cannot say for certain what caused her cancer. The court determined, however, that the increased radiation exposure qualified as a workplace hazard that increased her risk of cancer and was therefore a contributing factor. At least, that's the way I understood it.

webdoodle 1mo ago

Speculation: Most forms of breast cancer occur because of bad protein production from a specific gene. My guess is this flight attendants breast cancer isn't from any known breast cancer gene.

aeternum 1mo ago

This seems like pretty strong evidence that the Linear No-Threshold Model for radiation exposure is the correct model. Not great for the many companies attempting to revive the nuclear power industry.

stackskipton 1mo ago
What? Nuclear Power workers are exposed much less than flight attendants and everyone else gets more radiation from their occasional flight. Yes, disasters are worse but most other power options are killing people in non visible ways.
- arghwhat 1mo ago
  Whether the disasters are worse depends on your metric. The deaths from Fukushima was, to my knowledge, only a few elderly individuals who had stress-induced heart failures. And that's a worst-case scenario with corruption, old designs, complete negligence and dual natural disasters hitting the plant in parallel. It seems absolutely silly, but even wind power kills more people per TWh produced than nuclear due to workplace accidents in installation/maintenance. Also not sure why lung cancer from oil/coal air pollution would be less visible than hypothetical radiation-induced cancers. EDIT: Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p..., accidents include indirect deaths. Solar is the only energy source that beats nuclear in safety.
  - ch4s3 1mo ago
    > only a few elderly individual who had stress-induced heart failures Caused by the evacuation
  - gosub100 1mo ago
    Both arguments can be correct: if X dose of radiation increases cancer risk, and it's shown that a nuclear plant released Y dose (by, oh, say, leaking tritium into the earth [1]), it's not out of the question to ask them to pay into a compensation fund. That has no bearing on whether wind turbines kill people. 1: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/03/22/what-we-know-about-the-monticello-nuclear-plant-radioactive-tritium-leak https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/03/22/what-we-know-about-...
    - arghwhat 1mo ago

weinzierl 1mo ago

The radiation exposure caused by the flight is a known. Fraunhofer institute once had the calculator they made for Lufthansa (if I remember correctly) publicly available. You could enter flight numbers and it would aggregate your exposure.

gleenn 1mo ago

My friend who is a Radiologist said all the older, more seasoned Radiologists don't have any hair that grows on their hands anymore. She said she was glad to get out because even if they provide lead bibs, the doctors doing emergency radiology type treatments were still exposed long term.

copperx 1mo ago
Interesting. I didn't know radiologists were exposed to radiation. I thought that was the job of the radiology techs.
- jey 1mo ago
  Yeah, that was my reaction too. But there is a subfield called interventional radiology, perhaps GP post is referring to that?
  - gleenn 1mo ago
    Yes, she did intervention.
colechristensen 1mo ago
There have also been developments that have reduced radiation doses 30-90% per imaging event with the transition from film to digital xrays and the progression of the various digital sensors continued to reduce doses. Current leading edge and future sensors have potential to improve on this by orders of magnitude having the sensitivity to count photons. So current old radiologists might have exposures that new radiologists may never get remotely close to by the time they're old.