Widow looking for answers after Quebec man dies in Texas Ironman competition
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
A Pentagon study has found high rates of cancer among U.S. military pilots and for the first time has shown that ground crews who fuel, maintain and launch those aircraft are also getting sick.
The data had long been sought by retired military aviators who have raised alarms for years about the number of air and ground crew members they knew who had cancer. They were told that earlier military studies had found they were not at greater risk than the general U.S. population.
In its yearlong study of almost 900,000 service members who flew on or worked on military aircraft between 1992 and 2017, the Pentagon found that air crew members had an 87 per cent higher rate of melanoma and a 39 per cent higher rate of thyroid cancer, while men had a 16 per cent higher rate of prostate cancer and women a 16 per cent higher rate of breast cancer. Overall, the air crews had a 24 per cent higher rate of cancer of all types.
The study showed ground crews had a 19 per cent higher rate of brain and nervous system cancers, a 15 per cent higher rate of thyroid cancer and a nine per cent higher rate of kidney or renal cancers, while women had a seven per cent higher rate of breast cancer. The overall rate for cancers of all types was three per cent higher.
There was some good news reported as well. Both ground and air crews had far lower rates of lung cancer, and air crews also had lower rates of bladder and colon cancers.
The data compared the service members with the general U.S. population after adjusting for age, sex and race.
The Pentagon said the new study was one of the largest and most comprehensive to date. An earlier study had looked at just Air Force pilots and had found some higher rates of cancer, while this one looked across all services and at both air and ground crews. Even with the wider approach, the Pentagon cautioned that the actual number of cancer cases was likely to be even higher because of gaps in the data, which it said it would work to remedy.
The study "proves that it's well past time for leaders and policy makers to move from skepticism to belief and active assistance," said retired Air Force Col. Vince Alcazar, a member of the Red River Valley Fighter Pilots Association, which had lobbied the Pentagon and Congress for help. Alcazar serves on the association's medical issues committee.
The study was required by Congress in the 2021 defense bill. Now, because higher rates were found, the Pentagon must conduct an even bigger review to try to understand why the crews are getting sick.
Isolating potential causes is difficult, and the Pentagon was careful to note that this study "does not imply that military service in air crew or ground crew occupations causes cancer, because there are multiple potential confounding factors that could not be controlled for in this analysis," such as family histories, smoking or alcohol use.
But aviation crews have long asked for the Pentagon to look closely at some of the environmental factors they are exposed to, such as jet fuels and solvents used to clean and maintain jet parts, sensors and their power sources in aircraft nose cones, and the massive radar systems on the decks of the ships they land on.
When Navy Capt. Jim Seaman would come home from a deployment aboard an aircraft carrier, his gear would reek of jet fuel, his widow Betty Seaman said. The A-6 Intruder pilot died in 2018 at age 61 of lung cancer. Betty Seaman still has his gear stored and it still smells of fuel, "which I love," she said.
She and others wonder if there's a link. She said crews would talk about how even the ship's water systems would smell of fuel.
She said she and others have mixed feelings about finally seeing in data what they have suspected for years about the aviation cancers. But "it has the potential to do a lot of good as far as early communication, early detection," she said.
The study found that when crew members were diagnosed with cancer, they were more likely to survive than members of the general population, which the study suggested was because they were diagnosed earlier due to regular required medical checkups and were more likely to be in better health because of their military fitness requirements.
The Pentagon acknowledged that the study had gaps that likely led to an undercount of cancer cases.
The military heath system database used in the study did not have reliable cancer data until 1990, so it may not have included pilots who flew early-generation jets in the prior decades.
The study also did not include cancer data from the Department of Veterans Affairs or state cancer registries, which means it did not capture cases from former crew members who got sick after leaving the military medical system.
"It is important to note that study results may have differed had additional older former service members been included," it said.
To remedy that, the Pentagon is now going to pull data from those registries to add to the total count, the study said.
The second phase of the study will try to isolate causes. The 2021 bill requires the Defense Department not only to identify "the carcinogenic toxicants or hazardous materials associated with military flight operations," but also determine the type of aircraft and locations where diagnosed crews served.
After her husband got sick, Betty Seaman asked him if he would have chosen differently, knowing his service might be linked to his cancer.
"I flat-out asked Jim. And he, without hesitation, said, `I would have still done it."'
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Facing pushback from physicians and businesspeople over the coming increase to the capital gains inclusion rate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy Chrystia Freeland are standing by their plan to target Canada's highest earners.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that what's happening now in a trash-littered federal park in Quebec is a perfect metaphor for how the Trudeau government runs things.
Police are investigating after a transport truck collided with a train in Sarnia.
The world is seeing a near breakdown of international law amid flagrant rule-breaking in Gaza and Ukraine, multiplying armed conflicts, the rise of authoritarianism and huge rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar, Amnesty International warned Wednesday as it published its annual report.
As some family doctors are retiring and others are moving away from family medicine, there are fewer medical students to take their place.
Individuals being barred from entering Ontario’s legislature while wearing a keffiyeh say the garment is part of their cultural identity— and the only ones making it political are the politicians banning it.
United States authorities who have been searching for a pair of missing kayakers from British Columbia since the weekend have recovered two bodies in the nearby San Juan Islands of Washington state.
A Winnipeg man said a single date gone wrong led to years of criminal harassment, false arrests, stress and depression.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a Grade 4 student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.