Researchers are using toenail clippings for a study related to lung cancer

Dr. Aaron Goodarzi, PhD, is leading an interdisciplinary team at the University of Calgary looking at environmental causes of lung cancer, like radon. The naturally occurring, odorless, colourless but radioactive gas is the second leading cause of lung cancer after tobacco smoking. 

Despite that, rules governing lung cancer screening programs can’t yet include radon exposure as one of the risk criteria. The reason being few people can reliably report their radon exposure across decades like they can report the number of years they’ve smoked tobacco. 

Goodarzi may have a solution. He’s currently recruiting for a study that may provide critical data to estimate a person’s lung-cancer risk on the added basis of long-term radon exposure. To do this he needs Canadians’ toenail clippings.

“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.”

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