“ We’ ve learned that our toenails hold long-term information about our exposure to radioactive toxicants in our environment such as radon gas. They are one of our body’ s archives of past exposure,” says Goodarzi, professor at the Cumming School of Medicine and a principal investigator on the study.
“ After you inhale radon, it quite quickly transforms into a specific type of radioactive lead. Your body treats radioactive lead from radon like it does all lead and stores it in slow-shedding tissues such as the skin, hair and nails.”
In a proof-of-concept( pilot) study published in Environment International, Goodarzi and co-principal investigator Dr. Michael Wieser, PhD, showed that measuring radioactive lead in toenails is a promising way to estimate a person’ s long-term radon exposure.
“ We believe we’ ve discovered a reliable, quantitative way to measure long-term radon exposure at an individual level,” says Wieser, a physics professor in the Faculty of Science.
“ We used a combination of personalized radiation dose epidemiology and isotope dilution mass spectrometry to evaluate ultrasensitive measurements of the radon decay product.
" We tested for lead isotopes in toenail cuttings and proved they can serve as a quantitative method to reveal lifetime radon exposure at an individual level.”
Participants in the Canadian Cancer Society-funded pilot project were recruited from the many thousands of people enrolled in the Evict Radon National Study. With new funding from the Canadian Cancer Society, there is a much larger validation trial underway now.
Researchers are hoping to recruit up to 10,000 people from all over Canada. Participants will need to test their homes for radon and collect and send in their toenail clippings for analysis by the research team.
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