Moon dust and wet wipes

I've been trying to think of a metaphor to describe what was happening at school, and I think I've finally found one.
Space travel.
I saw a NOVA once about how a chunk of foam damaged a spacecraft. It was part of the thing, a kind of insulation if I remember correctly, and during liftoff it tore free and bounced off of something and severely damaged it, and everyone laughed at the poor scientist who finally figured out what had happened. He proved mathematically that he was probably right, but they still didn't believe that it was possible. He had to get them all out in an empty field and shoot a piece of the foam at a section of the outside of a spacecraft at the speed that it would have been traveling during the liftoff, and only when it punched a hole clean through the thing did his colleagues admit that they may have been a bit close-minded. Because, seriously, it was only foam!
I feel like that. Only I'm not willing to go into anaphylactic shock in front on an audience to prove that I'm not crazy.
How many of you have thought about living on the moon? Probably all of us, myself included. It's the kind of thing the media loves to talk about. But do you know what could screw that up?
Moon dust. It gets into everything. There are records of it clogging equipment during moon landings. And if you stir it up, it floats. And floats. And floats. And gets into bits of your space suit you'd really prefer remained dust free. But how many of you knew about that before I told you? How many of you would have considered that something as small as dust could be potentially deadly? How could dust harm anything? We never saw that on Star Trek!
And, seriously, could traces of peanut oil ever really hurt anyone? No one told us that could happen! People with food allergies are twitchy nerds with poor social skills, everyone knows that! You can't take them seriously when they tell you they could die!
There are simple solutions to both problems. Spacecrafts need to be designed with no loose parts, and we need to seal up equipment so moon dust can't get in.
I just need to avoid peanuts! I just need to be allowed to read ingredients lists and run a wet wipe over things before I touch them! It's not that hard!
But no one wants to believe the problem exists. It's too weird. It gets in the way. It spoils our idea of how things should work.
But refusing to believe in something doesn't make it go away. Scientists eventually had to admit that moon dust and insulation could potentially be very dangerous. I'd like to think that, one day, some of my teachers will realize they could have seriously hurt me.
But I'm not holding my breath.