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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 08 2018, @07:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the breathing-dust-is-bad-for-you dept.

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)


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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday May 08 2018, @04:59PM (2 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @04:59PM (#677089)

    "While on the moon, do not preform trepanations without vacuuming the floor first".
    Dang, that's a tough one to remember. Can you add that to the spaceship's safety posters?

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday May 08 2018, @09:05PM (1 child)

    by frojack (1554) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @09:05PM (#677186) Journal

    You can't reliably vacuum this stuff because you end up blowing it around even more.

    The dust used in this study was ground to ≤7μm in size, the best approximation of moon dust they could come up with.

    While that is still large enough to be trapped by the best hepa filters on the market, (0.3-microns), the reason they stopped at 7 microns is that the processing and handling and containment would become too expensive and dangerous to go much finer.

    Lunar samples go much finer than this study. Some small enough to slip from the lungs directly into the blood stream.

    All three
    samples contain a significant number of particles Because of the high abundances of these small
    particles and their unique chemistry (glass with npFe0
    ), these particles once in the respiratory system
    could remain in the lungs and cause severe lung fibrosis
    or other diseases, or for the they
    might even enter directly into the blood system, where
    the metallic np-Fe could interact to reduce the Fe3+ in
    the hemoglobin.

    https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/nlsc2008/pdf/2072.pdf [usra.edu]

    The study in this TFS is largely redundant with the pdf linked above from 2008.

    --
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    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday May 08 2018, @09:13PM

      by frojack (1554) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @09:13PM (#677188) Journal
      Ooops messed up the paste....

      All three samples contain a significant number of particles <2.5 μm.

      Because of the high abundances of these small
      particles and their unique chemistry (glass with npFe0),
      these particles once in the respiratory system
      could remain in the lungs and cause severe lung fibrosis
      or other diseases, or for the <100 nm grains", they
      might even enter directly into the blood system, where
      the metallic np-Fe could interact to reduce the Fe3+ in
      the hemoglobin.
      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.