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Can you get cancer from flying?

September 18, 2000

Air personnel may be exposed to a higher dose of radiation than earlier calculated, and the risk for cancer may be underestimated. This conclusion is presented by research student Somsak Dangtip in his PhD thesis at Uppsala University, Sweden. His findings are based on new evidence from experiments at the The Svedberg Laboratory.
It is wellknown that airfare crew get higher radiation doses than medical X-ray personnel, due to cosmic rays. Recently, it has also been reported that personnel onboard airplanes experience increased risk for some types of cancer tumors. It is, however, difficult to know exactly how big the problem is, and how severe damages the radiation from space actually causes.
In his PhD thesis, Somsak Dangtip of Department of Neutron Research shows that these effects might be an even larger problem than previously anticipated. Experiments at the The Svedberg Laboratory at Uppsala university, Sweden, reveals that the nuclear reactions, which ultimately causes tumors, might be significantly underestimated.
For these experiments, a new facility for measuring nuclear cross sections, has been built. The equipment serves multi purposes: i.e. to study methods for cancer treatments, for studies relevant for destruction of nuclear waste and nuclear weapons, and to make electronics less sensitive to radiation.
The risk of having cancer links to the radiation dose. At high flight altitudes, neutrons are the dominating source of radiation. The energy of the neutrons varies, from very low to high energies. Radiation doses can be measured, either by direct measurement or through theoretical calculations.
In the low energy region both methods agree, and assess well a dose estimation. In the high energy region where no direct measurement has been done earlier, one has been forced to rely on calculations. Somsak Dangtips findings show that in the high energy region, where no data existed before, radiation doses from neutrons, obtained from calculations, has been underestimated.
The title of the thesis is “Experimental Studies of Neutron-Induced Reactions in
Light Nuclei”, and it will be publicly examined on September 22. Faculty Opponent is Professor Jean-Pierre Meulders from Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. Somsak Dangtip e-mail address: somsak.dangtip@tsl.uu.se

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