According to Reuters, the study focuses on 445 men aged 50 or older of whom 79 were pilots and 71 had cataracts, concluding the pilots have triple the risk of developing cataracts.
Cataracts, removable with surgary, cloud the eye's lens and cause blindness. The type of cataracts studied, nuclear cataracts, are the most common, where the clouding begins in the center of the lens and spreads.
"The association between the cosmic radiation exposure of pilots and the risk of nuclear cataracts, adjusted for age, smoking status, and sunbathing habits, indicates that cosmic radiation may be a causative factor in nuclear cataracts among commercial airline pilots," study author Vilhjalmur Rafnsson writes in the journal, Archives of Ophthalmology
