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Lunar Dust: A Major Worry for Moon Visitors
smooth wombat writes "Wired has a story which talks about a danger to possible future inhabitants of the Moon that is rarely brought up: the highly abrasive lunar dust. Unlike Earth, the Moon has no erosive capabilities to smooth the edges of rocks or dust. As a result the lunar dust has arms that stick out, like Velcro, and sticks to everything. As the astronauts who walked on the moon found out, the dust scratched lenses and corroded seals within hours. Some of the particles are only microns across which means once they get into your lungs, they stay there. This could cause a lung disease similar to silicosis."
Worth mentioning is that lunar dust has not been in contact with the common gases we simply breathe as humans. Nor with the fluids & matter of our lungs.
As well as not being ground down by the action of air and water like dust on earth is, many of these particles could contain practically any mix of extremely reactive substances, substances that have not been oxidised for example, by the actions of an air atmosphere.
RST
Toner cartridges carry a distribution of particle sizes that are considered 'safe' for you to inhale because they can't stick in your lungs.
;P
You can also make toner with such a small particle size distribution it is actually taken into the blood stream and excreted, well, normally.
You get into trouble, however, when you get into particle sizes between the two of those ranges (Which escape me ATM).
That sized dust goes into the lung and stays there- too large to get absorbed, too small to get exhaled out.
It will also exhibit most of the properties of statically charged nano-particulates: It gets everywhere, fast.
There may be a 'clean room' to disengage the suits, but no matter how you adjust for the problem (save going underwater in an ultrasonic scrubber) that dust will move with you.
Maybe installation of those 'ion-breeze' units from SharperImage will fix it....