Residents near Pa. nuclear plant seek out radiation-blocking pill

Although the Japanese nuclear emergency is unfolding more than 6,000 miles away, it has caused some who live near Pennsylvania's Limerick Generating Station to check their medicine cabinets for something they hope they'll never need: potassium iodide tablets.

The pills temporarily block the impact of radioactive iodine - one of the forms of radiation released in a nuclear meltdown - and the Montgomery County Health Department had given out 13,000 of them this week as of midday Thursday.

"You never know what could happen," said Pottstown resident Amy Nagle, who picked up pills Thursday morning with her daughter Hayley, 15. "Watching Japan, it could just happen in a second."

Experts say the chance of an earthquake leading to a radiation release in this region, much less a tsunami, is extremely remote. And the radiation from Japan poses no risk to people here.

Still, several residents said they were prompted by the Japan disaster to make sure they were prepared for any eventuality. Potassium iodide, which is sold over the counter, protects young people from radiation exposures that can cause thyroid cancer.

Adults over 40, on the other hand, do not need the pills except in an extremely dire situation - with radiation levels worse than the 1986 Chernobyl incident in the former Soviet Union, said Harvard endocrinologist James V. Hennessey, chair of the public health committee for the American Thyroid Association.

Still, anyone who lives or works within a 10-mile radius of the Limerick nuclear reactors is eligible for free pills from the county health department office in Pottstown. Residents in counties without a health department who live near reactors can call the state at 1-877-PA-HEALTH (1-877-724-3258).

Among employers who stocked up this week was drugmaker Pfizer, which has a facility in Collegeville. Montgomery County gave the company 5,000 doses of two pills each, health department spokeswoman Harriet Morton said. Individual residents get two doses - a total of four pills for adults. A single dose works for 24 hours.

In Chester County, a portion of which is near Limerick, health officials said a few people had called to request pills. A similar response was seen in Salem County, home to the Hope Creek and Salem reactors.

The spike in interest at Pottstown was apparently driven in part by a report on www.msnbc.com, which ranked the nation's reactors by the probability that a seismic event could lead to damage in their cores. The data, which ranked Limerick as having the third-highest chance of damage, were in turn cited in local newspapers.

Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said it was inappropriate to use the data for such a ranking, in part because they included a mix of preliminary and final numbers for various sites. The preliminary number for Limerick was roughly a 1-in-18,000 chance of damage, but Burnell said that factors in quakes much stronger than anything that would ever occur on the East Coast.

Even so, it was enough to prompt Howard and Verna Lownes to drive to the Pottstown health center from their home in nearby Trappe.

"It scares you a little bit," Verna Lownes said after she and her husband obtained four ThyroSafe pills apiece.

She said pills they had obtained during a previous county distribution were past their five-year shelf life.

State officials said they had an adequate supply of pills for now. The pills can also be purchased, but not every place has them. Michael Cionci, the pharmacist at Parvin's Pharmacy in Bryn Mawr, said his wholesaler was out of stock. The drugs have been in great demand on the West Coast and in Asia.

The pills work because of a sort of chemical version of musical chairs. Both potassium iodide and radioactive iodine are readily absorbed by the thyroid. But if you first flood the thyroid with potassium iodide, there is no more room to absorb any of the radioactive compound, said Adam P. Dicker, professor and chair of radiation oncology at Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University.

He stressed that the threat of thyroid cancer is greatest among children, citing the rise in cases in areas near Chernobyl where pills were not distributed. Children in nearby Poland who were given potassium iodide pills, however, did not experience an increase in risk.

Dicker stressed that the pills do not protect against other forms of radiation typically released in a reactor crisis, and indeed, health officials say the pills are a secondary measure after evacuation. They can also harm people with thyroid problems, certain skin diseases, or those with an allergy to iodine or shellfish.

Hennessey, the endocrinologist, said that for those over 40, the primary risk from radioactive iodine is not cancer but hypothyroidism - a condition marked by an impaired metabolism and lethargy, among other symptoms.

But even that is unlikely without radiation levels worse than Chernobyl, he said.

The reason children's thyroids are at risk is that their glands are still maturing, the cells are actively dividing and making copies of their genetic material. They are thus susceptible to radiation damage, Hennessey said.

Verna Lownes, meanwhile, already had the message that potassium iodide was not a magic bullet. Her best hope lies in the fact that she and her husband travel from time to time, she said:

"I've always said, I hope if something happens, we're not here."