@rtscott2001 told me to put this in here. I’m still trying to figure out how to work this place!
4 Likes
Thanks Erik!
Just reading your paper now. I do urge @HUMANawg & @ALSDAawg especially to check this one out, maybe @MicrobesAWG too
Shafer, S., Schaffer, D., Anderson, G., & Antonsen, E. (2025). Medical Toxicology Considerations for Space Exploration. Wilderness & Environmental Medicine , 10806032251313960. https://doi.org/10.1177/10806032251313960
shafer-et-al-2025-medical-toxicology-considerations-for-space-exploration.pdf (570.3 KB)
6 Likes
It’s great! Thanks for sharing.
Kudos to the authors🙌
2 Likes
Ideas on how this line of research could leverage the data or tools in OSDR, or maybe any models which could be used for analysis or predictions?
2 Likes
Personally, I believe that a database can be created with the list of agents studied so far, and other suspects that could create health problems in the future, both in acute and in subtle chronic exposure.
It would then be necessary to wait for data from future space flights/missions to increase the number of cases.
This paper also makes me think that we could study whether there are links between the alteration of the microbiota and exposure to toxic substances, also making a possible Earth-Space comparison. @MicrobesAWG
Also, how do mitochondria respond to chemical stress? @AfshinBeheshti
I will look in our database to see what other data there is regarding toxicology. @rtscott2001
4 Likes
Hi Jessica,
Interesting paper. I do research in environmental microbiology and bioremediation as well as clinical microbiome work - I don’t recognise (mostly in mice microbiome) the type of niche change/metabolism in space that looks some like xenobiotic stresses, more a breakdown in host interactions immune, leading to more endotoxins, but there is a lot of complex change so a direct comparison with known exposure data would indeed be valuable. We could perhaps set a challenge to find high resolution (species/strain resolved) microbiome datasets [on earth+tox]?
Chemical exposure in the air forces is front page new here in Ireland at the moment: Ex-Air Corps members demand 'truth' after €2m chemicals case
4 Likes
Hello Nicholas,
Thank you for sharing your opinion and expertise.
@MicrobesAWG @daniela.bezdan what do you think?
NASA OSDR: Open Science for Life in Space (OSD-734) Would be relevant to this given the LCMS (depending on what intensity threshold was used)
2 Likes
@eantonse your post opened some interesting discussions 
1 Like
4 Likes
This and other narrative (meaning high level for program managers) risk DAGs are publicly published at Directed Acyclic Graphs: A Tool for Understanding the NASA Human Spaceflight System Risks - Human System Risk Board - NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)
4 Likes
Thank you very much!
1 Like
In General, this flow of risk might not be correct. It could be updated if the community can provide input to draw it better. This is part of what we did with the Toxicology paper at the top of this thread.
3 Likes
Cool - where would we put an orange radiation in there?
It’s interesting to only have microbiome feeding into immune (compromise, and maybe underlying the other contamination->infection increased risks), perhaps circadian disruption and altered gravity could be included.
1 Like