Space Radiation Doesn't Seem to Be Causing Astronauts to Die from Cancer, Study Finds

LiveScience ^ | July 5, 2019

[SMGFan]

MORE Space Radiation Doesn't Seem to Be Causing Astronauts to Die from Cancer, Study Finds Credit: NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins on a spacewalk in 2013. Outer space is a notoriously harsh environment, exposing astronauts to high levels of radiation. And radiation exposure can increase cancer and heart disease rates in earthbound humans.

But a new study has some good news: Space radiation doesn't seem to increase astronauts' risk of death from cancer or heart disease, at least not at the doses they experienced during historical missions. Still, longer missions — such a mission to Mars — will likely come with much greater radiation doses that could pose larger health risks, the authors said.

Space travel exposes the body to higher levels of ionizing radiation than those typically experienced on Earth. And at high doses, that radiation has been tied not just to cancer and heart disease, but to a host of other health problems as well.

Previous studies haven't found a link between space travel and an increased risk of death from cancer or heart disease; but since relatively few people have traveled to space, these studies may have been too small to detect such a link, the authors said. [7 Everyday Things That Happen Strangely in Space]

The new study analyzed information from 418 space travelers, including 301 NASA astronauts who had traveled to space at least once since 1959, and 117

[SMGFan]

Except for Congressman elect Jack Swigert?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Swigert#Death

[Dave Wright]

Many countries including France, Japan, and China consider “low” dose radiation to actually be beneficial at preventing disease and improving lifespan. Its called hormesis and it has been studied in people who live with high background radiation levels such as the area near Chernobyl. The US subscribes to the Linear No Threshold (LNT) theory that maintains if high doses are bad then there is no lowest dose that can be good. Maybe space travel research will help settle the issue. The low gravity environment is a bigger problem for biological systems. Blood clotting is disrupted and several types of antibiotics seem to be less effective in space so disease may be a greater risk than the radiation.

[escapefromboston]

But does it give them any super-powers?

[Yossarian]

Only 24 astronauts have been beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO), outside of the protective shield of Earth’s magnetic sphere.

Radiation is far, far worse out there.

[Bob434]

good then i wanna get all my X-Rays, pet scans, cat scans etc done in outer space from here on out

[cba123]

Good point.

He had a lot of time, up there.

[norwaypinesavage]

" at high doses, that radiation has been tied not just to cancer and heart disease, but to a host of other health problems as well."

High doses of most anything are bad. Take water, for instance. It is essential for life, but can also kill, in high enough doses. There is increasing evidence that the evil "nuclear radiation" is simply not a killer in low doses. In Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, the rates of cancer in residents who survived the initial blast and radiation was actually lower (though statistically insignificant) than the population of Japan as a whole.

The fear of radiation, in my opinion, is vastly overrated.

[Paal Gulli]

Earth's magnetosphere -- which deflects space radiation -- extends thousands of miles into space. The ISS only orbits at about 250 miles. Only 24 men ever have flown far enough from earth to receive the full brunt of space radiation so to say the rest received "space radiation" is misleading because all the rest only have received partial space radiation. Ever man, woman and child receives partial space radiation every time they venture out of doors during the hours of daylight.

These numbers are for Mercury/Gemini/Apollo program astronauts (and excluding Edgar Mitchell, who died after the numbers were tabulated).

Death related to cardiovascular disease for the astronauts who never flew was 9%.
For those who only flew orbitally (which was lower altitude than the ISS) or sub-orbitally was 11%.
For the 24 men who went to the moon, it was 43%.

https://observer.com/2016/07/space-radiation-devastated-the-lives-of-apollo-astronauts/

[NCC-1701]

Of the twenty four that has been beyond LEO, three of them have made the trip twice. There is only one alive from those three. He’s 91 years old. I wonder if any conclusions can be made about that.

[Yossarian]

I think the sample size is just too small, especially for these trips trips that didn't spend too much time outside the earth's magnetosphere.

If we implement the "LOP-G", Artemis program, and future Mars programs aggressively, I think we'll start to get radiation-based health problems showing up. (Unless they really push the envelope in rad-hard habitats, which I'd be happy to see.)