Nobody said living in space was going to be easy. Beyond the actual difficulty of getting there, day-to-day living won't be a moonwalk in the park either. Even with oxygen habitats to breathe in, a new study finds, lunar dust could quickly infiltrate human lungs, leading to a host of health problems.

Prolonged exposure to lunar dust could impair airway and lung function and make diseases like bronchitis commonplace in a moon community, says the new study published in GeoHealth by Stony Brook University in New York. The dust could also induce inflammation in the lungs, increasing the risk of cancer.

Lunar dirt isn't like Earth dirt. Crucially, the Earth has a protective atmosphere, while the moon does not. The lunar soil is frequently and reliably beset by charged particles from the upper layers of the sun, known as solar wind. Once they hit the moon, the solar particles make the lunar soil electrostatically charged, similar to the static cling created by rubbing a balloon on someone's hair.

Scientists have known about lunar dirt's unusual properties for decades. During the Apollo 11 crewed landing, the astronauts noted that "particles covered everything and a stain remained even after our best attempts to brush it off." The dust maintained a "distinct pungent odor like gunpowder noted when helmet removed." While the Apollo astronauts suffered no serious ailments from the lunar dirt, that could be due to the fact that their time on the lunar surface was so brief.

“If there are trips back to the moon that involve stays of weeks, months or even longer, it probably won’t be possible to eliminate that risk completely,” Bruce Demple, a biochemist at Stony Brook and senior author of the new study, said in a press statement.

The new study exposed human lung cells and mouse brain cells to soil samples that mimic lunar dust. The team grew the cells under controlled conditions and then ground the material into a fine, breathable powder.

What they found was conclusive: when inhaled, the dust decimated the lung and mouse cells up to 90 percent. In the case of the human lung cells, the damage was too catastrophic to fully measure. The simulated lunar dust even damaged the cells at a DNA level.

The same properties of lunar dust that make it terrible to breathe also make it cling to everything, meaning it will be difficult to prevent it from getting into breathing areas entirely—an additional engineering challenge for a moon habitat. But humans have only been flying to space for about half a century, and scientists are just starting to get a grip on the multitude of challenges facing long-term space dwellers. In another half century, who know where we'll tread.

Source: American Geophysical Union

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