https://hms.harvard.edu/news/pilots-flight-attendants-have-g...
But how can they point to one individual and say it's causal? Maybe they caught some radon. Maybe something else?
It’s possible that the standards of evidence in a civil case is low enough that they don’t have to demonstrate a causal link. Only that there is radiation in the air and that radiation causes cancer.
Yes, disasters are worse but most other power options are killing people in non visible ways.
Cancer-related mortality among US pilots and flight attendants
I'm sorry, what? The first flight I took which I recall in detail was in 1995 and even back then the "no smoking sign" seemed redundant.
Guess it wasn't.
Debates are about persuasion, not reality. And, in some contexts (like whether you should go to jail), there is a process argument that there needs to be a debate-like process. Science deals in facts and statistics that have associated uncertainty. For scientific questions, there should be better decision making processes than courts.
> Sophie Lainault...sought to have her cancer recognised as an occupational disease, brought on by conditions at work.
> This has now been confirmed in a landmark court ruling...which said that cosmic radiation was one of three carcinogenic hazards arising from her profession. The other two were passive smoking and prolonged night work.
From what I remember as a kid in the 1990s in the US, smoking was allowed on international flights. It was one of those grey areas that happen when traveling between countries with different laws.
I've also seen a lot of jokes about French culture being waaay more "pro smoking" than US culture.
Thus smoking beling allowed on Air France until 2000 doesn't surprise me.
Seeing the sidewalks / parks outside of the main train station in Prague covered in cigarette butts as an American tourist in 2019 was certainly something.
(British Airways banned smoking on their Concorde flights in 1997.)
You use your healthcare insurance card to access the goods - whoever thought of this has quite the sense of humour.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180306-a-spa-where-pati...
Most exposed are not the visitors, but the thermal bath workers.
"Workers and visitors in thermal spas are exposed to radiation from radon and short-lived daughters. Radon concentrations in the premises of a thermal bath in Budapest were investigated; high radon concentrations (up to 7.15 kBq.m-3) were found in some rooms. Bronchial dose and effective dose equivalent values were estimated for the staff and the visitors. In some cases the effective dose was about or in excess of 20 mSv annual limit for the workers. Doses for the visitors were about 4 mSv per year, but exposure of the public from radon is still outside the scope of the system of dose limitation."
https://academic.oup.com/rpd/article-abstract/56/1-4/319/310...
There are few places on Earth with high natural background radiation:
Ramsar, Iran (the maximal estimated dose-rate received by inhabitants is 80 mSv/year
Kerala (India), Orissa (India), Guarapari (Brazil), Yangjiang (China)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12402632/
https://academic.oup.com/jrr/article/65/Supplement_1/i32/792...
"Plant director Bryukhanov reports no more than 3.6 roentgen, which I'm told is the equivalent of a chest x-ray, so if you're overdue for a check-up…"
– HBO Chernobyl
It seems absolutely silly, but even wind power kills more people per TWh produced than nuclear due to workplace accidents in installation/maintenance.
Also not sure why lung cancer from oil/coal air pollution would be less visible than hypothetical radiation-induced cancers.
EDIT: Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p..., accidents include indirect deaths. Solar is the only energy source that beats nuclear in safety.
1: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/03/22/what-we-know-about-...
First point is that even though radiation can cause cancer, radiation is part of life. If my basement has higher levels of radon, who should compensate me? What about the radiation exposure from requested x-rays, or food?
Second is responsibility. If I decide to fly a lot, my increased radiation exposure is not the fault if the airline. It's not their fault that the atmosphere is less protective up there, and everyone flying is equally exposed. Now if they could prevent the radiation they preferably should, but until then their responsibility is disclosure of this information to allow informed decisions. Can't blame the ocean for being wet.
Third is that by that logic, it very much has bearing whether "wind turbines kill people", as it implies that every fractional possible cause of harm must all be measured and pay in proportion to their possibility of damage.
There would be no way to even start. However, I do agree that when accidents or negligence/malice is involved, it makes sense that the actor spends energy cleaning up. For example, the biological harm to people in Fukushima was practically non-existent, but the short-term the economic and social harm was there and was entirely avoidable. Damages should be paid.
(Of course, windmills don't kill people, point is that wind, nuclear and solar is so harmless that the only thing we're looking at is differences in construction-related workplace accidents, which are a bit higher with windmills and lower with solar.)
Caused by the evacuation
The fact that even a small amount of discharged radiation can cause damage makes everything more expensive for those companies, not just design and certification of the reactor itself but also liability insurance.
You cannot make the claim that releasing toxins is okay because some toxic elements occur naturally.
( Also, if your basement has a radon problem, you can mitigate it by better ventilation. You cannot mitigate a contamination zone without decades-long cleanup.)
Personal responsibility only assumes informed consent. This is why cigarette packs have warnings on them. I would argue that w passenger does have a case against the airline for not informing them that they are being exposed to cancer causing radiation even when everything this perfectly normal. The classic argument "but what about plane crashes? They don't inform you about that" is different, because crashes are.by definition abnormal, tragic, and rare. Whereas absolutely everyone on board is getting a dose every time they fly. As for medical exposure, I will go out on a limb and say that's covered under medical consent forms, and/or a medical research board has determined that the benefits from the dose outweigh the cancer risk.
But that only covers airline passengers, not employees that are getting orders of magnitude more dose. That only strengthens the argument that the airline shares liability. Do you think coal miners should have no case for lung diseases because maybe they got it from cigarettes? Or inherited it? Their employment put them in the position where they got exposed. Therefore the employer is liable for their illness.
Twofold response:
1. It was not directly part of my claim, but yes releasing "toxins" as a binary concept has to be okay because the world, nature and ourselves naturally releases toxins. Irresponsible, excessive or unnecessary release is what matters.
2. In the airline case, it is not the airline releasing anything. It is cosmic rays and solar flares, which you went closer to. The airline should give a heads up in case this information evaded you, but it's the sun you'd need to sue. You'll have to get in line behind all the skin cancer lawsuits it's dealing with though.
A beach body guard has a massively increased risk of skin cancer compared to an office worker. You can, at most, ask for a shade for your watch tower or complimentary sunscreen.
Even for coal and oil powerplants for example, the right thing to focus on is getting rid of it, not extracting ongoing damages. Wind, nuclear, sun.
For flying, in either come up with a viable way and of radiation shielding passenger planes so it can be pushed for policy, or don't fly. Also don't go to very high altitude locations also carry increased risk.
As for contamination zones, that's specifically something the one to blame will have to keep paying to manage and clean up. Their fault, their bill. But even with all that it still ends up being what takes the fewest lives, due to just how much work for society that one plant did vs. any alternative.
Last time I was in London I saw enough disposable vapes on the sidewalk to build a home-sized backup battery...
It leaves lithium ion batteries everywhere. There are even YouTube videos by people scavenging them to build small battery banks.
Vape fumes also smell far less bad and are almost not toxic to bystanders.
https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/u-s-smoking-rate-hits-an-all-t...
The article suggests that 18%+ are using some kind of nicotine product in general (zyn, chewing tobacco, vape, smoking)
In any case it has been mostly successfully purged from public spaces.