Japan’s Nuclear Crisis Revives Debate Over Iodide Tablets via NYT

The nuclear calamity at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan has reopened a 30-year debate about how to stockpile potassium iodide, a drug that protects the human thyroid gland from radioactive iodine emitted in reactor accidents.

Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, pointed out on Tuesday that he held a hearing on this subject in March 1982, after the commission that investigated the Three Mile Island accident recommended stockpiling the drug. Twenty years after that, Congress approved a law including a provision that he wrote requiring the federal government to provide the drug to state and local governments for people within 20 miles of reactors, if the governors requested it.

Continue reading at Japan’s Nuclear Crisis Revives Debate Over Iodide Tablet

 

This entry was posted in *English and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply