HEALTH FEARS:AS JAPAN scrambles to contain a possible nuclear disaster, 8,000km away on the Pacific west coast Americans are busily doing what they do best – panicking.
The three US government-approved suppliers of potassium iodide, a drug used as a protection against radiation sickness, have all sold out after a run on stocks from anxious west-coasters fearful that the nuclear discharge from Japan was heading towards them. So intense was the rush that one of the suppliers, Anbex Inc, had been cleaned out of its 10,000 packets of 14 tablets within 24 hours of the Japanese earthquake.
The fact that only minuscule amounts of radiation have been detected on the American west coast, and that potassium iodide can have serious side-effects, has done nothing to dissuade the hoarders.
According to MSNBC, about one-fifth of doctors in the west coast states of California, Oregon and Washington have dealt with questions from anxious members of the public worried that they are in danger from the nuclear drama unfolding across the Pacific.
Potassium iodide has some potential benefits as protection against the immediate impact of radiation.
In particular, it helps avoid cancer of the thyroid. But it only works in the short term and is not a preventive treatment, as many of the west coast hoarders seem to think. – ( Guardianservice)