Comment by glimshe
1 month ago
According to Gemini, radiation related cancer rates aren't higher in high elevation cities like Quito or La Paz... Shouldn't they be too? Airliners fly a lot higher but people live in these 24x7.
1 month ago
According to Gemini, radiation related cancer rates aren't higher in high elevation cities like Quito or La Paz... Shouldn't they be too? Airliners fly a lot higher but people live in these 24x7.
High altitude Equatorial populations and air crew exposures are different beasts. A 10h flight close to the North Pole is like living in Quito for almost a month. The type of dosage (bursts x contínuous) also matters as the body can probably accommodate more easily, but that's just me saying. Then add natural selection to that mix that should have helped prepare high-altitude populations residents for those living conditions, which will heavily skew the data. Finally, the cosmic shower has lost a lot of energy from 12,000m to say 2,500m, so the "hit" is not the same. It all may end up having an exponential effect reducing cancer rates...
So a flight attendant that clocks ~700h a year, that's roughly 5 years of living in Quito in a year of flying in Sieves. Now, given that the air crew studies are not all that conclusive yet, take high-altitude populations at 5x less exposure and all these other factors I've mentioned, and they will end up having an even lower chance of showing up in any cancer studies.
So... not remotely comparable.