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

• Published in: Environmental Health
• Main Author: S. M. J. Mortazavi
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2017
• Subjects: Cancer; Pilots; Commercial flights; Cosmic radiation; Industrial medicine. Industrial hygiene; RC963-969; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-017-0333-2; https://doaj.org/article/39e57d4b443b405aa90930277229bb96

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.