It’s estimated that about 200,000 people in the United States have Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) at any one time.

But the common denominator of a small group of patients at a Virginia clinic over a 15-year period is worrying the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Eight were dentists; a ninth was a dental technician.

The dental professionals were 23 times more likely to have IPF than the rest of the population, the CDC said in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, released Friday. Something in their workplace environment may have been poisoning them, investigators said, although they don’t know what.

IPF causes scarring of the lungs, according to the report. It can be slowed, but nothing can remove the scar tissue. Over time, the lungs have difficulty getting oxygen to vital organs like the heart and brain.

In April 2016, a Virginia dentist who had just been diagnosed with IPF and was undergoing treatment at a specialty clinic called the CDC with a warning: Several other dental professionals had sought treatment at the same facility.

Investigators dug deeper, poring over nearly 900 records of IPF patients at that clinic over a 21-year period and found the nine patients with the common work history.

The median survival age of IPF after diagnosis is three to five years. But first, patients experience shortness of breath, a dry, chronic cough, weight loss, joint and muscle pain and clubbed fingers or toes.

Dentists and people who work in their offices are exposed to a specific set of hazards, particularly silica, polyvinyl siloxane, alginate and other toxic substances that can be inhaled when they’re polishing dental appliances or preparing amalgams.

Older dentists usually fare worse, both because of increased opportunities for exposure and because they may have practiced at a time when safety standards weren’t as stringent.

“We do work with materials and with human bioproducts that are potentially damaging to our bodies if we inhale them,” Paul Casamassimo, chief policy officer of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry’s Pediatric Oral Health Research and Policy Center, told CNN.

A 2016 clinical trial tested a device designed to recondition lungs outside of the body to increase the numbers of donor organs available for transplants. (Reuters)

For example, the dentist who alerted the CDC never smoked “but reported not wearing a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health-certified respirator during dental activities throughout his 40-year dental practice,” the CDC said. During the past 20 years, he started wearing a surgical mask, which still may have been inadequate.

“More work has to be done before we can make any conclusions about the risk dentists or other dental personnel have,” Randall J. Nett, lead author of the study and medical officer with the U.S. Public Health Service, told CNN.

Even though CDC investigators have not figured out what, specifically, caused IPF in the patients, the study’s release may still do some good.

Before, workers exposed to dust from wood and metal have been warned to take precautions to prevent IPF, but this is the first time the CDC has warned that dentists and the people who work in their offices are vulnerable.

And IPF may not have a cure, but there are protective measures: namely proper ventilation and wearing a respirator during certain procedures.

(The Washington Post)

“The launch went according to plan: the hypersonic missile hit its target,” the ministry stated.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the southern military district has had possession of the missile since the beginning of December.

Footage Russia released shows two pilots gearing up to take off and then flying toward a jet holding a massive missile. The missile detaches from the jet and flies on its own, with patriotic music playing in the background.

Putin unveiled the Kinzhal missile earlier in March as one in a new line of nuclear weaponry that could overcome U.S. defense systems. His state of the nation address was seen as possibly signaling another arms race with the west.

“I would like to tell those who have been trying to escalate the arms race for the past 15 years, to gain unilateral advantages over Russia, and to impose restrictions and sanctions … The attempt at curbing Russia has failed,” Putin said.

But U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said the hypersonic missile and other weapons Putin claimed are in the pipeline do not change Moscow’s position.

“I saw no change to the Russian military capability and each of these systems that he’s talking about that are still years away, I do not see them changing the military balance,” Mattis said. “It doesn’t change anything other than how much money do they want to spend on something that does not change at all the strategic balance.”

Putin in his address said Russia is developing missiles and underwater drones, among other weapons, because the U.S. pulled out of the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty it had signed with the Soviet Union.

This article was first written by Newsweek