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Breathing Lunar Dust Could Give Astronauts Bronchitis and Even Lung Cancer
[In] a recent study, a team of pharmacologists, geneticists and geoscientists consider how being exposed to lunar dust could have a serious effect on future astronauts' lungs.
[...] Previous research has also shown that dust can cause damage to cells' DNA, which can cause mutations and eventually lead to cancer. For these reasons, Caston and her colleagues were well-motivated to see what harmful effects lunar soil could have on the human body. For the sake of their study, the team exposed human lung cells and mouse brain cells to samples of simulated lunar soil.
These simulants were created by using dust samples from Earth that resemble soil found on the Moon's lunar highlands and volcanic plains, which were then ground to a fine powder. What they found was that up to 90% of human lung cells and mouse neurons died when exposed to the dust samples. The simulants also caused significant DNA damage to mouse neurons, and the human lung cells were so effectively damaged that it was impossible to measure any damage to the cells' DNA.
Assessing Toxicity and Nuclear and Mitochondrial DNA Damage Caused by Exposure of Mammalian Cells to Lunar Regolith Simulants (open, DOI: 10.1002/2017GH000125) (DX)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 08 2018, @01:46PM (4 children)
Seems simple enough: create an environment here on Earth with high concentrations of regolith (simulant one would imagine), then import a microbe population and let natural selection work it out. Once you've got a (non-toxic to humans) population of microbes that can handle the regolith, work up to farming crops in the dust, developing crops that filter out dangerous regolith particles from the air, etc.
I think this may be a major failing of "The Martian"'s plot-line. Mars dust will be more earthlike due to being worked over by some kind of atmosphere, but still likely very different from most earth soils due to the lack of exposure to any significant water cycle for (say it like Sagan) Billions of years. Matt Damon's poop probably wouldn't have been strong enough to make the red soil habitable for first generation potato roots.
Sounds scary, but I'm pretty sure the Apollo astronauts got at least some dust exposure on the trip home - that didn't seem to cause any instant-death.
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(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:45PM (1 child)
There's no weathering by wind or water, but I wonder if small worms like C. elegans [wikipedia.org] could wear down the dust by eating it. IANABiologist, though, and I don't actually know very much about worms.
If they manage to reproduce in regolith soil, then each subsequent generation would have it a little bit easier because its parents have worn down the soil crystals a little bit.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:55PM
I'm thinking more along the lines of setting up some kind of dome, or artificial lights in a lava tube, and trying to farm in the natural soil there. Worms would be a good step in the process, taking the sharp edges off the grains. They're going to need something living in between the grains for them to eat.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday May 08 2018, @08:31PM (1 child)
The problem here is not toxicity (whatever the hell that actually means), but simply SHAPE of the dust.
Un-Reduced, un-eroded fine granules with lots of sharp corners. Not dissimilar from air-born pumice, glacier dust, or any other rock source that has not been weathered into rounded shapes.
There's actually NOTHING in TFA that indicates actual moon soil has any harmful properties other than shape. They never tested moon soil.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 08 2018, @08:59PM
Agreed, it's the shape of the dust that's the challenge, but TFS stated: 90% death - meaning 10% survival, which means that - while some survivors just got lucky, others likely had structural differences that helped them to survive. They might have to float up a bath of survivors and let them regenerate in a less challenging environment before challenging them with the sharp bits again, or mix in some ratio of friendly soil to start, but after a few hundred generations there should be marked differences in the surviving colony.
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