Dramatic Increase in Cancer Rates Found in Military Pilots and Ground Crews

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A study done by a group in the Pentagon found that pilots and ground crews who fuel and maintain these aircrafts have a higher rate of getting cancer than normal people. This is something that retired military aviators have been asking the government to research since they know a lot of air and ground crew members who got sick with cancer.

The Pentagon did a study over the course of one year on nearly 900,000 people who had flown or worked on military aircraft between 1992 and 2017. They found that air crew members had much higher rates of melanoma and thyroid cancer than normal. Also, men had a 16% higher rate of prostate cancer, while women had a 16% higher rate of breast cancer. To put it simply, the overall rate of all types of cancer was 24% higher for those who worked in the air crews compared to those who didn’t.

The study showed that ground crews had more brain and nervous system cancers, thyroid cancer, and kidney/renal cancers than before. Women also had a higher rate of breast cancer. Overall, rates of all types of cancers were 3% higher.

On the positive side, both ground and air crews had lower rates of lung cancer. Air crews had even fewer cases of bladder and colon cancers.

The data looked at how the service members were different from everyone in the United States, taking into consideration how old they were, their sex and their race.

The Pentagon just did a new, huge study that was one of the most detailed studies ever done. A previous study only looked at Air Force pilots and it found more cancer cases than average. This time they looked across all services and at air and ground crew members too. Even after widening their approach, the Pentagon warned us that there might actually be even more cancer cases out there because the data isn’t complete yet. They’re now working on fixing this problem to get better results.

Retired Air Force Col. Vince Alcazar is part of the Red River Valley Fighter Pilots Association which works to make sure leaders and policy-makers do something to help them. He’s on the association’s medical issues committee and says a study they looked at has shown that it’s time for action instead of just talking about it.

Congress made the Pentagon do a study. The results showed that something is making people sick in the military. So now, there needs to be a bigger review to figure out what it is that’s causing people to get sick.

The Pentagon studied if being part of the military has any connection with cancer but it was hard to know what caused it. They couldn’t be sure because there might be other things like family history, smoking or drinking alcohol that could affect the study results.

Aviation workers have been asking the Pentagon to look at what might be harming them, like jet fuel and cleaning products that they use on jet parts, sensors around the nose cone of a plane, and the big radar machines on ships.

When Navy Captain Jim Seaman came home from his trips in an aircraft carrier, his things always had a strong smell of jet fuel. He passed away because of lung cancer at the age of 61, back in 2018. His widow Betty Seaman still has his items stored and they still have that same fuel-like scent which she loves.

She and other people are wondering if there is any sort of connection: she stated that crew members used to mention how even the ship’s water seemed to have a similar aroma.

She said that even though there are mixed emotions about finding out confirmations for their beliefs about aviation cancers, it could help a lot with identifying cancer risks earlier and faster.

Researchers discovered that people who work in the military have a better chance of surviving cancer than other people. They think it is because crew members get regular medical check-ups, meaning they can detect health issues earlier. Crew members also have to stay fit to meet military requirements, so these people are usually healthier overall.

The Pentagon said that some cases were not included in the study and this could mean the number of cancer cases was underestimated.

The military health system database studied didn’t have exact records about cancer until 1990, so it might not have included pilots who flew in early generations of jets.

Also, the study did not include cancer cases from the Department of Veterans Affairs or state cancer registries which means former crew members who got sick after leaving the military medical system may not be considered in this.

The study found that including more older veterans would change the results. To fix this, the Pentagon will use information from their registries to get an accurate number of veterans.

The next part of the research aims to figure out why some things happened. A law passed in 2021 said that the Defense Department should find out what kind of things during military flying might cause cancer, as well as which types of aircraft and where pilots were when they got sick.

Betty Seaman asked her husband if he would have done things differently knowing his service could be connected with him getting cancer.

I simply asked Jim if, given all the facts, he would have made the same decision as before. To my surprise, he promptly replied ‘yes,’ without hesitating even a bit.