Pilot study on the effects of lunar dust
15.05.2026 -
The renewed interest in lunar exploration is bringing an old topic back into the scientific spotlight - the "Lunar Hay Fever" described by Harrison Schmidt during the Apollo 17 mission. This referred to an acute, allergy-like reaction in astronauts caused by inhaling lunar dust. Could this pose a problem for future lunar missions?
Reliable research into the health effects of regolith dust requires robust testing systems. In collaboration with the Departments of Thoracic Surgery at UMMD, a pioneer in the development of physiological airway models, and Bioprocess Engineering at OVGU, we have begun investigating the effects of lunar dust (simulant JSC-1) on the human respiratory tract. Our pilot study has already shown that the physiological and biological responses of the airway model to JSC-1 differed significantly from those to terrestrial reference particulate matter (PM10). This suggests that Lunar Hay Fever cannot be extrapolated from data in existing air pollution studies, but it also offers hope that we can gain new insights into this topic before humans set foot on the Moon again.
Our pilot study has now been published in Trends in Biotechnology: https://www.cell.com/trends/biotechnology/fulltext/S0167-7799(26)00146-0