Radiation Pill Stockpile Plan Faces Further Delay

Radiation sickness pills are unlikely to be made available to people living within 20 miles of nuclear power plants before early next year, despite a congressional order that the medication be stockpiled by mid-2003, USA Today reported today (see GSN, Oct. 25, 2004).

Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) called the delay in providing potassium iodide pills “outrageous.”

“Nuclear power plants are at the top of the al-Qaeda target list,” he said. “Potassium iodide is an inexpensive way to protect infants and children.”

Some 21.9 million U.S. residents live within a 20-mile radius of a nuclear power plant, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Two years of bureaucratic indecision about which government agency should be in charge of the federal government’s bioterrorism antidote stockpile caused the delay, said Robert Claypool, emergency preparedness planning director for the Health and Human Services Department.

Health and Human Services came out on top in the dispute with the Homeland Security Department, according to USA Today (Mimi Hall, USA Today, Oct. 11).

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