Military personnel who deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq may have been exposed to significant amounts of dust and other respiratory hazards, leading to persistent respiratory symptoms and illnesses such as asthma and bronchiolitis. Researchers from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and National Jewish Health teamed up to investigate lung diseases seen in previously deployed military personnel.
USGS research geologist Heather Lowers will present findings on the characteristics of dust retained in the lungs of previously deployed military personnel at the GSA Connects 2022 meeting in Denver on Monday.
Never in my career did I think I would be looking at human lung tissue. Through some previous work we had done looking at the first responders at the World Trade Center, we connected with a team of pulmonologists and lung pathologists who were trying to better understand how inhaled particles could cause lung injury. Several of my co-authors at National Jewish Health have a grant from the Department of Defense to look at what’s causing some of the unexpected lung injuries in people who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Heather Lowers, Research Geologist, USGS
With financial support from the Department of Defense, National Jewish Health has built a clinic to evaluate previously deployed military personnel with symptoms of lung injury. Lowers’ job as the project geologist was to develop a method to extract and analyze the particles found in the lungs. Using techniques to produce high-resolution images of microscopic particles and characterize their elemental composition, Lowers assessed the composition and size of inorganic particles found in the lungs.
Of the 250 deployers who attended the National Jewish Health Clinic, 65 had a surgical lung biopsy as part of their clinical care, and 24 gave permission to have their lung biopsy studied for this research. Lung biopsies from the 24 deployers were compared with 11 civilian control samples of donated lung specimens matched for the deployers’ age and smoking history.
“We found that, in general, military deployers had more dust retained in their lungs per cubic centimeter of tissue that we looked at compared to controls. And the particles in general also seemed to be smaller in size, compared to dust which was maintained in the control group,” Lowers said.
They also found that both deployers who reported low/no sandstorm exposure or medium-high sandstorm exposure had higher amounts of dust in their lungs than the control samples.
“Typically, even when there aren’t dust storms, Soldiers are working in a pretty dusty environment. So we were looking at the culmination of everything that would have been inhaled during their deployment,” Lowers said. “Even driving a truck across the desert floor, you’re going to kick up dust and breathe it in.”
While these analyzes provide useful information about lung injury seen in previously deployed military personnel, Lowers hopes that more samples can be studied to more fully assess the characteristics of dust retained in the lungs.
“One of the challenges I’ve learned working with human subjects is that it’s very difficult to get enough people enrolled in these studies. So while we generally see differences between controls and deployers, the sample numbers are limited,” , Lowers said.
Based on the increased amount of dust found in the lungs of previously deployed military personnel, useful mitigation strategies will be needed to reduce deployers’ exposure to dust.
Source:
Geological Society of America