This Is What Happens If You Get Moon Dust in Your Lungs

Good news! Moon dust won’t shred your lungs apart! Granted, if you tried to breathe it in as it exists in its natural habitat, you’ll have greater issues to deal with than the dust itself, as the lack of oxygen will be a bit of a hurdle. But if you were a lunar colonist who accidentally inhaled some moon dust upon the reentry of a station after some moon gallivanting, you’ll be fine.

This news comes to us from a recent study by Australian researchers and published in Life Sciences in Space Research. The researchers found that moon dust is less harmful to human lungs than the air pollution millions of us breathe every day down here on Earth.

Specifically, the study focused on those tiniest of the tiny moon dust particles that could slip past your body’s defenses and straight into your lungs — but they didn’t use real moon dust. Researchers recreated Moon dust in a lab, then exposed human lung cells to it.

It found that, yeah, it causes some irritation, coughing, and sneezing, but overall it’s no different than inhaling any of the common dusts we encounter in our day-to-day lives. It showed no signs of developing into long-term damage like silicosis or other chronic respiratory diseases.

This is great news for NASA’s Artemis missions, which aim to send humans back to the Moon for extended stays. You don’t want your astronauts developing lung disease because they took in a lungful of dust that poofed off their boots.

“The results contribute to the safety case for returning humans to the Moon,” said coauthor and UTS scientist Brian Oliver.  

To be clear, inhaling any kind of dust is not good, especially in high quantities. At some point down the line, we are going to have to answer the question of what happens when someone breathes in too much moon dust. What new, exciting, and exotic illnesses will they be stricken with? Only time will tell. But for now, at least we know that a little bit of moon dust won’t kill you.