Radiation link in flight attendant's breast cancer, French court finds

ByHugh Schofield Paris correspondent.

Key points

• As stewardess and afterwards purser on Air France airliners, Lainault clocked up 12, 600 flight hours between 1989 and 2019.
• Sophie Lainault, a 59 year-old former stewardess on Air France, sought to have her cancer recognised as an occupational disease, brought on by conditions at work.
• In all, regarding 6.9% of deaths among flight attendants and 6.7% of deaths among pilots were from radiation-related cancers, according to the analysis.
• Air France remarked it had played no part in Lainault's legal case and had not seen the reasoning behind the court's decision.
• A French court has for the first time recognised cosmic radiation as a factor in the breast cancer of a long-serving flight attendant.

For context, a French court has for the first time recognised cosmic radiation as a factor in the breast cancer of a long-serving flight attendant.

This has now been confirmed in a landmark court ruling in the southwestern town of Bayonne. It remarked that cosmic radiation was one of three carcinogenic hazards arising from her profession. The other two were passive smoking and prolonged night work. Smoking was authorised on Air France flights until 2000.

In practice, the decision means that Lainault. This person is in remission from her cancer, can take early retirement with any further treatment fully reimbursed by the French health system.

And by establishing breast cancer as an officially-recognised risk for flight crews, the court has additionally cleared the way for numerous other similar claims, lawyers say.

"My dearest wish is that the decision encourages other women who up until now have not had the courage to take this step, " Lainault remarked.

As stewardess and afterwards purser on Air France airliners, Lainault clocked up 12, 600 flight hours between 1989 and 2019. More than half of these were at night.

Plenty of long-distance high-altitude flights from Paris would have taken her near the North Pole, where exposure to radiation from space – strictly speaking particles from the sun and other stars – is the most intense.

In practice, a study this month at the Harvard Medical School in the US, external discovered that flight attendants and pilots had the highest level of radiation-related cancer deaths among more than 500 different professions.

These proportions were higher than for other professions including nuclear technologists. This person are routinely exposed to radiation from non-cosmic sources yet placed 12th on the list, the authors remarked.

It has long been known that air travel at high altitudes exposes individuals to cosmic radiation, but the dose for most travellers is regarded as statistically insignificant, external. Exposure at the poles is more intense since elsewhere the earth's magnetic field acts as a shield.

"In France the link between breast cancer and certain hazards has been established for a number of professions, such as nurses. But this is the first time for an air-hostess, " remarked Lainault's lawyer Elisabeth Leroux.

"The health and security of our staff is an absolute imperative, " it remarked. "Every employee has a medical accompaniment that goes well beyond the regulatory minimum."

For now, radiation link in flight attendant' s breast cancer, French court finds remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.