New research has discovered that airline pilots and their cabin crews are more likely than the general population to suffer from melanoma.

Melanoma is a potentially dangerous type of skin cancer that arises when cancerous growths develop after unrepaired DNA damage to skin cells triggers mutations, eventually leading to malignant tumors. It’s estimated that melanoma kills approximately 9,710 people in the U.S. every year.

If melanoma is diagnosed and treated early on, it’s almost always curable. However, in cases where it’s not, the cancer can spread to other parts of the body, at which point it becomes much more difficult to treat.

A number of previous studies have suggested that pilots and cabin crew were more likely to develop this type of skin cancer, considering the increased altitude-related exposure to UV radiation. Although it’s well known that pilots and their crews are more exposed to ionizing radiation, which is regularly monitored, UV radiation exposure isn’t a well-known occupational risk factors for these professionals.

Researchers involved in the current study analyzed the risk of melanoma in pilots and canon crews by looking through medical literature. The analysis included 19 previous studies involving over 266,000 participants.

The researchers discovered that the overall standardized incidence ratio (SIR) for developing melanoma was 2.21 times higher in those with any airline occupation, compared to the general population.

Such a difference points to the important implications for occupational health or airline pilots and crews.