WASHINGTON -- Major suppliers of pills that provide protection from radiation say they're out of stock due to panic buying, even though experts say that the Japanese nuclear catastrophe poses no health threat to Americans.
It's a different story in Japan, where a failing nuclear plant spewed out more radiation on Tuesday, as the crisis concluded its fifth day. With thyroid cancer posing the most immediate health risk, Japanese officials made plans to distribute potassium iodide pills in an attempt to prevent it.
Troy Jones, president of nukepills.com in Mooresville, N.C., said he has sold 6,500 orders of iodine pills in the last four days. In a normal four-day period, he said he'd sell only 100. He said most of the orders came from customers in Washington state, Oregon and California who want to protect themselves from any Japanese radiation.
"Everybody thinks it's going to just land in their backyard in Malibu or something," Jones said.
On Capitol Hill, Democratic Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts called on the Obama administration to supply all U.S. citizens living within 20 miles of a nuclear plant with emergency pills.
The World Health Organization said that taking iodine tablets could be an important action to reduce the risk of thyroid cancer from radiation exposure. But it said that the decision should only be made by national health authorities.
Most experts in atmospheric science say very little radiation could end up in the U.S.
"Even though the winds are blowing radiation out into the Pacific, they're (thousands of) miles from the U.S.," said Thomas Tenforde, president of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. "Plumes of radiation are going to get dispersed pretty widely. They're not just going to travel in a straight line to North America."
Dan Jaffe, a University of Washington Bothell atmospheric chemist who has studied pollution patterns crossing the Pacific from Asia for 20 years, said it's possible that radiation from a major meltdown of one or more nuclear reactors in Japan could reach the Puget Sound, 4,800 miles away. But he said there would be no health risk.
"I can't imagine a scenario where the radiation release would be big enough to be a health hazard," he said.
But some said that trying to measure radiation could get tricky.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who directs the Union of Concerned Scientists' nuclear safety program, said that contamination levels are not necessarily lower the farther away people are from the source. In the Chernobyl disaster, some places 100 miles away had more radiation than other points 10 to 15 miles away. The distribution depends on how winds carry it and where rains wash it down, he said.
Ed Lyman, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists global security program and an expert on nuclear plant design, said that there were some reports that Japanese officials hadn't handed out potassium iodide pills immediately. If true, that would be a concern, because people need to take the pills several hours before they're exposed to the radiation, he said.
As for the United States, Lyman said "it's unlikely, even worst case, that there would be significant health effects for people."
"No amount of additional radiation is a good amount, but I would think that would not be significant or anything for the U.S. to be concerned about," he said.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Wednesday, March 16th 2011 at 11:58AM
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