Review of NASA's Evidence Reports on Human Health Risks: 2017 Letter Report (2018)
Chapter: Review of NASA's Evidence Reports on Human Health Risks
HEALTH AND MEDICINE DIVISION
Board on Health Sciences and Policy
December 28, 2017
John Charles, Ph.D.
Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center
2101 NASA Parkway
Houston, TX 77058
Dear Dr. Charles:
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies), at the request of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and with guidance from the National Academies’ Standing Committee on Aerospace Medicine and the Medicine of Extreme Environments, established the Committee to Review NASA’s Evidence Reports on Human Health Risks. This letter report is the fifth in a series of five reports and completes the National Academies’ independent review of the more than 30 evidence reports that NASA has compiled on human health risks for long-duration and exploration spaceflights (IOM, 2014, 2015; NASEM, 2016, 2017). This 2017 letter report examines five of NASA’s evidence reports:
- Risk of Bone Fracture Due to Spaceflight-Induced Changes to Bone (Sibonga et al., 2017a)
- Risk of Early Onset Osteoporosis Due to Space Flight (Sibonga et al., 2017b)
- Risk of Cardiac Rhythm Problems During Space Flight (Lee et al., 2017)
- Risk of Renal Stone Formation (Sibonga and Pietrzyk, 2017)
- Risk of Adverse Health Outcomes and Decrements in Performance Due to In-Flight Medical Conditions (Antonsen et al., 2017)
