Interplay Between Air Travel, Genome Integrity, and COVID-19 Risk vis-a-vis Flight Crew

Frontiers in Public Health

Zachary D. Nagel¹  Sneh M. Toprani¹  Christopher Scheibler² 

[1] Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, United States;John B. Little Center for Radiation Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, United States;Environmental and Occupational Medicine and Epidemiology Program, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, United States;

关键词: flight attendant;    pilot;    COVID-19;    coronavirus;    DNA damage repair;    air travel;    aviation industry;    genomic integrity;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpubh.2020.590412

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

During air travel, flight crew (flight attendants, pilots) can be exposed to numerous flight-related environmental DNA damaging agents that may be at the root of an excess risk of cancer and other diseases. This already complex mix of exposures is now joined by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The complex exposures experienced during air travel present a challenge to public health research, but also provide an opportunity to consider new strategies for understanding and countering their health effects. In this article, we focus on threats to genomic integrity that occur during air travel and discuss how these threats and our ability to respond to them may influence the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of range of severity of the symptoms. We also discuss how the virus itself may lead to compromised genome integrity. We argue that dauntingly complex public health problems, such as the challenge of protecting flight crews from COVID-19, must be met with interdisciplinary research teams that include epidemiologists, engineers, and mechanistic biologists.

【 授权许可】

CC BY