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. 2018 Jun 26;17(1):49.
doi: 10.1186/s12940-018-0396-8.

Cancer prevalence among flight attendants compared to the general population

Eileen McNeely  1 , Irina Mordukhovich  2 , Steven Staffa  3 , Samuel Tideman  3 , Sara Gale  1 , Brent Coull  3
Affiliations

Cancer prevalence among flight attendants compared to the general population

Eileen McNeely et al. Environ Health. .

Abstract

Background: Flight attendants are an understudied occupational group, despite undergoing a wide range of adverse job-related exposures, including to known carcinogens. In our study, we aimed to characterize the prevalence of cancer diagnoses among U.S. cabin crew relative to the general population.

Methods: In 2014-2015, we surveyed participants of the Harvard Flight Attendant Health Study. We compared the prevalence of their self-reported cancer diagnoses to a contemporaneous cohort in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES 2013-2014) using age-weighted standardized prevalence ratios (SPRs). We also analyzed associations between job tenure and the prevalence of selected cancers, using logistic regression and adjusting for potential confounders.

Results: Compared to NHANES participants with a similar socioeconomic status (n = 2729), flight attendants (n = 5366) had a higher prevalence of every cancer we examined, especially breast cancer, melanoma, and non-melanoma skin cancer among females. SPR for these conditions were 1.51 (95% CI: 1.02, 2.24), 2.27 (95% CI: 1.27, 4.06), and 4.09 (95% CI: 2.70, 6.20), respectively. Job tenure was positively related to non-melanoma skin cancer among females, with borderline associations for melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers among males. Consistent with previous studies, we observed associations between job tenure and breast cancer among women who had three or more children.

Conclusions: We observed higher rates of specific cancers in flight attendants compared the general population, some of which were related to job tenure. Our results should be interpreted in light of self-reported health information and a cross-sectional study design. Future longitudinal studies should evaluate associations between specific exposures and cancers among cabin crew.

Keywords: Cancer; Environmental health; Flight attendants; Occupational epidemiology.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study was approved by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health institutional review board, and all participants provided their written informed consent.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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