Comments on “Incidence of cancer among licensed commercial pilots flying North Atlantic routes”

Abstract Gudmundsdottir et al. in their paper entitled “Incidence of cancer among licensed commercial pilots flying North Atlantic routes” published in Environmental Health have evaluated the effects of exposure to higher levels of cosmic radiation on cancer incidence in the pilots of commercial fli...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental Health
Main Author: S. M. J. Mortazavi
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: BMC 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-017-0333-2
https://doaj.org/article/39e57d4b443b405aa90930277229bb96
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Summary:Abstract Gudmundsdottir et al. in their paper entitled “Incidence of cancer among licensed commercial pilots flying North Atlantic routes” published in Environmental Health have evaluated the effects of exposure to higher levels of cosmic radiation on cancer incidence in the pilots of commercial flights. Despite its remarkable strengths, the paper authored by Gudmundsdottir et al. has some shortcomings. The shortcomings of this paper such as not determining the shape of dose-response relationship for radiation-induced cancers, limitations in flight dose calculations, the weaknesses of CARI-6 as the program used by Gudmundsdottir et al. to estimate the effective dose of galactic cosmic rays, and the problems associated with unpredictable nature of the magnitude and duration of solar particle events are discussed.