The interaction of Earth life with lunar soils became a topic of great interest during the exploration of the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s and, as a result, spurred the creation of a variety of government-sponsored research and technology development efforts that focused on understanding the toxicity of lunar dust. Since then, our understanding of lunar dust toxicity has evolved significantly and has arisen from numerous advancements credited to both the NASA and Soviet Union space programs.
Years before astronauts were first exposed to lunar dust during the Apollo era, biological concerns about lunar materials prompted NASA to develop the extensive lunar quarantine program (LQP) (Kemmerer Jr et al. 1969), which was an infrastructure of technology, operational controls, and protocols designed to ensure that Earth and its ecology would be protected from any possible hazard associated with the return of lunar material. Designed to protect the public’s health, agriculture, other living...
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Rask, J. (2018). Lunar Dust Toxicity. In: Cudnik, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Lunar Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05546-6_123-1
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