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U.S. Researchers Back Distributing Potassium Iodide Near Nuclear Plants By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — Authorities should make potassium iodide pills available to people living near nuclear power plants in the United States so that they will have the cancer-fighting pills available in their homes in the event nuclear material is released in an attack or accident, according to a study released yesterday (see GSN, April 24). The congressionally mandated study, produced by an expert committee convened by the National Research Council, recommends that potassium iodide tablets be “predistributed” to all people aged 40 and under, especially pregnant and lactating women, living near nuclear plants. The council called on states and municipalities to determine how and where to stock and distribute potassium iodide and on the federal government to maintain a potassium iodide stockpile, fund state and local efforts, and consider extending the allowable shelf life of potassium iodide. The researchers provided a model for states and cities to use in determining where and how to conduct potassium iodide distribution, which in the United States has generally focused on 10-mile emergency planning zones around nuclear facilities. Potassium iodide works to prevent the thyroid from absorbing cancer-causing radioactive iodine, an expected component of material that would be released in a containment failure at a nuclear power plant. Potassium iodide does nothing to counteract the effects of other dangerous isotopes that can be released in a nuclear incident, including those likely to be used in a radiological “dirty bomb.” The council’s recommendations appear to go beyond current federal policy as implemented by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The commission, which recommends that states consider predistributing potassium iodide as part of emergency planning, offered in December 2001 to provide the drug upon request to states that have residents within 10 miles of nuclear plants. It has provided 18 such states with a total of more than 10 million pills, but the program does not provide for continuing provision of the pills, as called for in yesterday’s report (see GSN, Feb. 5, 2002). “We felt that it should not be a one-time offer and it should not be just giving the pills out,” said research committee member Edward Wilds, who directs the Connecticut Environmental Protection Department’s Radiation Division. Emergency Management Director Donald Hall of Calvert County, Md., which was singled out for praise in the report for the effectiveness of its federally supported potassium iodide program, echoed the research committee’s concern about the future of the drug’s predistribution (see GSN, Jan. 14, 2002). Hall suggested that the commission’s provision of potassium iodide to states could be an unsustainable “political” move. “What our problem is, is we get it started, and they’re not going to fund it anymore, and the locals are going to have to fund it,” he said. The advantages of predistribution over stockpiling of the drug remain a matter of some debate. Hall said Calvert County “always … agreed with the stockpiling more than the distribution anyway” before Maryland obtained federal resources for distribution. He added that Calvert County’s planning for evacuation provides for enough “cushion” that potassium iodide distribution might not become especially important. The researchers stressed the importance of local and state decision-making in distributing the drug to account for varying conditions around the country. “A strategy is needed,” they wrote, “whereby local planning agencies could develop geographic boundaries for a KI [potassium iodide] distribution plan based on site-specific considerations, because conditions and states vary so much that no single best solution exists.” The study also indicates a need for “a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses, short-term and long-term successes and failures and resource requirements of different KI distribution plans implemented in the United States and abroad.” According to a related study released this year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency, countries such as the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland distribute potassium iodide widely to people living near nuclear plants. Countries including Australia and Japan stockpile but do not predistribute the tablets, while distribution varies geographically in countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom (see GSN, Aug. 5, 2002). Although potassium iodide is the most widely known medical countermeasure for nuclear incidents, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration moved after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to investigate other products that could be useful against the effects of isotopes other than radioactive iodine. The FDA announced in January of this year that it had found ferric hexacyanoferrate, better known as “Prussian blue,” generally “safe and effective” for use against the effects of radioactive cesium and thallium. In September, the FDA made a similar announcement on pentetate calcium trisodium and pentetate zinc trisodium, which encourage excretion of transuranium isotopes. In October, the agency approved a specific version of Prussian blue, produced by Heyl and known as Radiogardase.
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