http://www.gsnmagazine.com/cms/features/news-analysis/1757.htmlThe Nuclear Regulatory Commission is planning to distribute approximately nine million potassium iodide tablets to state and local governments and Native-American tribes. The tablets will be stockpiled for populations living within a “10-mile emergency planning zone” surrounding commercial nuclear power plants across the country.
Revised rules issued by the NRC in 2001 require that state, local and tribal governments “consider including potassium iodide (KI) as a protective measure for the general public to supplement sheltering and evacuation in the unlikely event of a severe nuclear power plant accident,” according to a solicitation released by the NRC earlier this month.
“Potassium iodide is a salt, similar to table salt,” explains the NRC’s Web site. “It is routinely added to table salt to make it ‘iodized.’ Potassium iodide, if taken within the appropriate time and at the appropriate dosage, blocks the thyroid gland's uptake of radioactive iodine and thus reduces the risk of thyroid cancers and other diseases that might otherwise be caused by thyroid uptake of radioactive iodine that could be dispersed in a severe reactor accident.”
When the NRC originally considered this policy, it had planned to distribute adult-sized tablets with a dosage of 130 mg, but since the Food and Drug Administration has approved a pediatric dose of 65 mg, the NRC has decided to distribute that smaller tablet. “Each tablet shall be scored-in to enable the user to break the tablet into at least two pieces,” says the solicitation, and each tablet will be individually wrapped in blister packaging.
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