AP Retraction: No Iodine Pills, No Radiation Poisoning at Brattleboro High School

"Iodine Pills" at Brattleboro High School
On Saturday April 14, there was a rally against Vermont Yankee in downtown Brattleboro.  AP had a story about it which was widely reprinted. Among other places, the story appeared in the Burlington Free Press.  The article was titled Vermont Yankee protest draws quadruple-digit crowd.

The AP story included this astounding statement:
Putney resident Nancy Olsen, 65, a teacher, said she stumbled upon the rally and stopped to see what people had to say. Overall, she said, she has mixed feelings about the plant remaining open.


“When the school distributed iodine pills to the teachers it was a little bit of a shock, because I hadn’t really thought about it that much,” she said, referring to the pills that were handed out at Brattleboro Union High School during last year’s tritium leak to counteract the radiation poisoning. 


What-what-what-what?? ( That was my reaction.)  Pills were handed out at Brattleboro High School?  Only to the teachers?  KI for tritium? "The radiation poisoning?" And the tritium leak was 2010, not last year, though that seems a rather trivial point, considering everything else.

Calling the High School

After I read this, I called Brattleboro Union High School to find out more about it.  Olsen is a teacher at the high school, and they offered to connect me to her.  However, I figured I already knew what she had said, and did not ask to be connected.  I wanted to know if and when such pills were distributed: therefore, I wanted to speak to the principal.

I spoke to people, but I didn't do a very good investigation. I am not blaming anyone for not resolving the issue.  Everybody was very nice. Everybody also seemed very eager to refer me to someone else to talk to. Before I was done, I had spoken with someone in the prinicipal's office, someone in the school district office, and one of the school nurses. I was also encouraged to speak to the Vermont Department of Health, but I didn't follow up.  In general, the people I spoke to didn't know about any KI distribution, but nobody said: "It certainly did NOT happen."

I folded my mini-investigation. Before I folded, I spoke to some Brattleboro friends about my adventures. I have no idea if my friends followed up the investigation.

Retraction

Something happened.  I don't know who did what, but something happened that encouraged the AP to write a correction, which is now running in various papers. Here's the correction:

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (AP) — In a story about the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, The Associated Press erroneously reported several details about a tritium leak from the plant. The tritium did not cause radiation poisoning and posed no harm to the public, according to state health officials. The leak took place over a couple of months in late 2009 and early 2010, not last year. Also, the Vermont Health Department distributes potassium iodide — not iodine— pills in case of a leak of a different type of radiation and did not distribute pills for the tritium leak.

It was good to see this correction.

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My own coverage of the rally is in two parts: Three Views of the April 14 Rally, and We start with Vermont Yankee.  Later, we shut down capitalism.

Potassium Iodide Is Not Your Friend: To Be Taken Only as Directed

Real Pills

Our local health food store sold out of potassium iodide within two days of the start of the Fukushima problems. There has been a run on potassium iodide tablets all over the world.

Potassium iodide, like other drugs, should only be taken when it is needed. Yet people in Vermont seem to feel they need it to protect them from radiation, when reports say that only very low levels of radiation from Fukushima will reach our coasts.

On the other hand, people may feel it is better to be safe than sorry. What is wrong with taking some pills as a prophylactic?

A lot, it turns out.

The Endocrinologist's Letter

A group of medical societies specializing in endocrinology recently issued a letter explaining why people should not take these pills unless they are actually exposed to significant quantities of radioactive iodine. On March 18, the following medical societies and association issued a statement on Radiation Risks to Health. The associations are:

• the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists
• the American Thyroid Association
• The Endocrine Society,
• the Society of Nuclear Medicine

Here is a key quote from that letter:

However, KI should not be taken in the absence of a clear risk of exposure to a potentially dangerous level of radioactive iodine because potassium iodide can cause allergic reactions, skin rashes, salivary gland inflammation, hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism in a small percentage of people. Since radioactive iodine decays rapidly, current estimates indicate there will not be a hazardous level of radiation reaching the United States from this accident. When an exposure does warrant KI to be taken, it should be taken as directed by physicians or public health authorities until the risk for significant exposure to radioactive iodine dissipates, but probably for no more than 1-2 weeks.

That is a pretty impressive list of side effects. Plus, you should only take the pills for a week or two at a time.

Other doctors are also concerned with prophylactic use of KI. As JoNel Aleccia, MSN health writer notes in a recent blog post, doctors are already seeing people with side effects from potassium iodide, and poison control centers are getting calls. The pills are particularly dangerous for people over forty, who run a comparatively low risk of thyroid cancer (if radionuclides were actually present) and a high risk of allergic reactions to KI.

Dr. Edward Maher, president of the Health Physics Society and on the board of the Ethan Allen Institute Energy Education Project, also forward this recently updated KI fact sheet, written in February of this year.

The conclusions are all the same. Don't take KI unless you need it.

And if that isn't enough, remember that K (potassium) is a beta-emitter, like tritium. It is the basis for the radioactivity in bananas. By taking a KI pill, you are deliberately increasing your exposure to internal beta radiation. As noted in my posts about bananas, you are not increasing your exposure by any significant amount. However, avoiding radiation may be another reason to not take the pills. Better to be safe than to be sorry?

Imaginary Pills

Last week, I gave a talk about Vermont and Japan to a local meeting of the American Nuclear Society. The discussion was serious and interesting, and we were lucky enough to have David Ropeik in attendance at the meeting. He is an expert in how people perceive risk. He pointed out that people like to feel they have some control over events. If keeping KI pills in the medicine cabinet makes a person feel prepared, what is the harm in it?

In all honesty, I had never looked at it this way. I presumed if you had the pills, you would take the pills. But maybe not. Maybe having the pills is an insurance policy. In my opinion, the person buying the KI pills is insuring against something that is extraordinarily unlikely to happen. Something it is not worth insuring against. For me, buying KI pills would be the equivalent of buying a special policy that insured me only against the possibility that a plane might fall into my house.

Still, that is my opinion, and obviously other people don't share this view of radiation risk in Vermont.

So my current advice would be: if you are worried about radioactive iodine from Japan affecting you in Vermont, buy KI pills. But for Pete's sake, don't take them!

Potassium Iodide Crystal Structure Graphic from Wikimedia

Snake Oil from Wikimedia