Military studies cancer risks for American pilots

A long-awaited Pentagon study has revealed that US military aviators contract various forms of cancer far more frequently than Americans at large, confirming the suspicions of pilots and surviving family members who had long suggested that their disease and death rates seemed unusually high. The study, which was based on health outcomes for nearly 900,000 service members, found that overall cancer rates were 24% above normal for members of air crews who served between 1992 and 2017, 87% higher than average for melanoma and 39% higher for thyroid cancer. Male pilots and crewmen face a 16% higher rate of prostate cancer, while female air crew veterans have a 16%, higher rate of breast cancer. The study also found that members of ground crews had elevated risks of various cancer types, including 19% higher rates of brain cancers. The Pentagon acknowledged that its evaluation likely undercounted cancer cases because its data was unreliable for earlier generations of pilots.

A narrower study completed in 2021 looked only at US Air Force pilots and compared their cancer rates to those of service members in general. The latest study comes to light after the US Air Force launched an investigation into cancer risks for service members who worked in America's nuclear missile silos.