SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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.
🌻🌻 [google.com]