HEALTH: Sailors steer clear of the dry life
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The drunken sailor is a not just a character from a sea shanty - he is alive and unwell and living in Scotland.
A survey which followed 15,000 Royal Navy submariners for 30 years, found that the sailors' death rate from cirrhosis of the liver was more than twice the national average and was particularly high in Scotland. Moreover, four times as many of them died from alcoholic poisoning as men in the population as a whole. Not surprisingly, three times as many drowned.
Despite the incidence of cirrhosis, the submariners had a lower death rate than the male population as a whole because they got less skin cancer, leukaemia and respiratory disease.
The study, published today in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, looked at a group who trained in both diesel and nuclear submarines between 1960 and 1979, and followed them until 1989.
A Navy spokesman said: `We have a fairly sensible programme of education and guidance on alcohol. Although the death rate from cirrhosis was higher than average in the Navy in the 1970s, it evened out in the 1980s."
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments