Long haul airline crews susceptible to leukemia

Danish Scientists suspect cosmic radiation causes chromosome damage to long-haul airline crew, possibly making them more susceptible to leukemia, the British medical weekly, The Lancet, reports.
The Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen last year reported a relatively high incidence of leukemia and other cancers among pilots and other crew who flew long-range routes at high altitudes.
Taking the research further, the same team say they have pinpointed genetic changes or flaws among aircrew with leukemia or a bone-marrow condition that appears to be a precursor of the disease.
The abnormalities were spotted in the “long arm” chromosome 7 among 12 out of 26 aircrew who had been treated for leukemia or the precursor condition, myelodysplasia. That rate compares with only 81 abnormalities out of 761 leukemia or myelodysplasia cases in the general public.
“Our results indicate that deletions or loss of the long arm of the chromosome 7 in myelodysplasia and acute myeloid leukemia could be an indicator of previous exposure to ionising radiation,” the team say. They call for further research to confirm the apparent link.
Exposure to cosmic radiation – high-frequency energy washes around space, partly as a result from the “big bang” that is believed to have created the universe – is filtered by the earth’s atmosphere. However, the filtering effect lessens the higher one travels. For the general public, the risk is minimal, however. Cosmic radiation accounts for only eight per cent of their total source of radiation, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.