USask researchers used the Canadian Light Source to look at changes in the lungs
Lungs of female mice exposed to typical levels of airborne ag contaminants showed signs of changes after five days, University of Saskatchewan (USask) research shows.
“We looked at a mixed exposure of glyphosate and endotoxins (toxic molecules found inside the outer cell wall of certain bacteria like E.coli) collected from a field,” Shelly Kirychuk, director of the Canadian Centre for Rural and Agricultural Health, told Farms.com.
Kirychuk and a research team placed the mixture, which reflected the same quantity of endotoxins and herbicide farmers would inhale over a work week, into the noses of female mice.
Some mice only received exposure to glyphosate and endotoxins separately.
Surveillance using traditional x-rays showed slight changes in the lungs in a little as five days to the mice exposed to the mixture.
“We could see a little bit, but not what we could all significantly different,” Kirychuk said.
The mice then underwent imaging using the Canadian Light Source (CLS), Canada’s national synchrotron research facility with a high-intensity light that generates beams of light brighter than the sun.
“We have a method that we call multiple image radiography,” said Dean Chapman, an expert in synchrotron imaging and professor in the USask College of Medicine. “It has an ability to see the texture of the lungs, and that textured property is what we’re looking at. And when the lungs are impaired in some way, it becomes relatively easy to look at.”
The CLS provided a deeper understanding of how the mixed contaminant exposure of glyphosate and endotoxins was affecting the lungs of the mice.
“We could see that there were impacts in the small airways of the lungs from these exposures,” Kirychuk said.
The images showed fluid build up. And the alveoli, small air sacs that support the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the breathing process, became thicker due to inflammation or tissue damage.